One of the things that still attracts me to Yu-Gi-Oh aside from the anime/manga, are some of the cards in trading card game. Many of the cards have stores behind them. And I’m not just talking about the more famous cards like Blue-Eyes White Dragon and Dark Magician. I’m talking about cards that have never even appeared in any anime/manga series. Even the most common card in a booster set can have the most colorful stories behind them.
Some of these stories are laid out in the illustrations of various Spell and Trap cards to be pieced together. While other stories are somewhat incomplete, and thus are a mystery. So I’ve decided to go ahead and start a post to go into some of these untold stories and mysteries behind the cards. And for this first post I’ve decided to cover a very old and mysterious pair of cards.
These are two very old cards that date back to the time of the original Yu-Gi-Oh saga. Chakra is a Fiend-type Ritual monster, and Resurrection of Chakra is the Ritual Spell that summons it. And despite the fact that these two cards date back to the time of the original series, they’ve only just been released in North America and the rest of the world this month. During that long delay, the cards have only existed outside of Japan in the various Yu-Gi-Oh video games that have come out over the years. Of course the illustration of Resurrection of Chakra was edited a bit upon U.S. release.
Click here to see the differences.
I’m a little irked sometimes when they edit card illustrations. Yet we all have to remember that this is a card game aimed at kids. Plus it doesn't happen as often as it used to with the newer cards. Despite any edits to the card illustration in Resurrection of Chakra though, one question remains. What the heck is going on in this ritual?
Here we see some nameless young woman being consumed by some sort of green mass in order to bring forth a demon. And when we look at the demon, Chakra, we can see that the young woman’s skull has become the midsection of the demon. In fact if one looks closely enough, strands of the woman’s hair can be seen running up Chakra’s upper body. A pair of eyes can also be seen in the sockets of the skull as well, but those eyes could just belong to the demon. So it’s clear that the young woman depicted in the Ritual Spell plays an important role, but just what sort of role seems unclear.
A big clue probably lies in the name of the ritual itself. “Resurrection” implies that the demon in question must be brought back from the dead. So at the moment I can see to possibilities. One is that the young woman in the Spell card is the corpse of Chakra in a pleasing human form and that the Ritual simply revives Chakra in its true form. But that doesn’t seem to explain the green mass that’s engulfing her.
The other possibility, and this seems more likely to me, is that the young woman depicted in Resurrection of Charka is simply an example. If we were to look at this ritual in a way that would probably be depicted in the anime or manga, the green mass would probably just be engulfing whatever monster was being used as tribute to revive Chakra. And that monster’s skull would become the midsection of the demon. The only problem I see with this theory is that Chakra is a level seven monster, so it would typically take two sacrifices to summon it. But then perhaps both the skulls would still become the demon’s midsection and would be arranged like a totem pole.
There are also mysteries about Chakra itself. For instance, why would it need to be resurrected? Did some sort of great warrior or a powerful being of good kill the demon? We may never know the full story behind Chakra or the ritual used to revive it. Maybe there is no story and what’s going on is open to interpretation. Either way, while Chakra may not be the most powerful Ritual monster out there, it is at the very least one of the most interesting.
Card collectors out there interested in getting their hands on Chakra and its Ritual Spell can find both cards in the new Number Hunters booster set. While they may not be the first choice for competitive play, they are at least a good conversation starter. That concludes this first post. Comments are very much welcome. I’d like to hear any other thoughts and theories about these cards.
