Dark Yugi

"... Okay, but if I win, you have to endure a Penalty game!"

- Yami Yugi

Although more commonly known as a good, but mysterious person in the second anime series and the later portions of the manga, Yami Yugi (literally transferring as "Dark Yugi") starts as a very dark, cruel, manipulative gamer who relied both on incredible luck and dark magic to win games.

=Manga=

Yami Yugi, in the Yugioh manga, is a dark form of Yugi that started coming out when Yugi completed the "millennium puzzle", an ancient artifact that promises a wish granted to those who solve it. Yami Yugi is taller, and has more, messed up hair than Yugi. Yami Yugi only appears at night in the beginning, and takes revenge on the people who bully Yugi, by challenging them to a "shadow game". A shadow game reveals one's true nature, and-- in the case of Yami-- a loss is punishable by exploiting those traits, in the form of a "Penalty Game", an intensive form of dark magic from Yugi that creates illusion to bring out chaos towards its victim. For example, after defeating a gready, powerful bully, the penalty game, "Allusion of Avarice", made the bully believe that trash was, literally, money. Another involved a two faced teacher who would date men only to break their hearts, when she bullied the students after a man broke up with her, and lost Yami's challenge, Yami made it so that her true face, hidden behing a thick layer of make-up, would show ("Reveal the other face"). This is Yami's sense of "justice", which greatly differs from Yugi, with his "forgive and forget" attitude. Not until far in the manga does Yugi even become aware of Yami Yugi's existence.

As the manga goes on, Yami slowly begins to change into a kinder, more merciful person, though still being able to do more in the sake of "justice" than Yugi.

=Anime=



The closest version of the original Yami Yugi in anime is only seen in the first anime series, which is an adaptation of the original manga, but was never dubbed into english. Although Yami is noticably less cruel here, as his penalty games show, at one point is willing to risk killing Kaiba in order to save Yugi's grandpa, Yami promises to him that he will never do a thing like that again.

Second Anime
This anime series marked a clear change in the storyline, starting after the introduction storyline, working quickly past the Kaiba storyline, and almost immediatly jumping into the Pegasus storyline, and working from there. As a result, this anime focuses mainly on Duelist rather than random games. As another clear result, Yami is shown as being much more merciful. Here, he also nearly kills Kaiba in order to save Yugi's grandfather. The only penalty game shown here is "Mind Crush!", which he uses on Seto Kaiba to send his evil side to the Shadow Realm, and on Ghost Kaiba (Kaiba's evil side revived by Pegasus), Panik, and a mugger, to banish them to the Shadow Realm.

Apart from this, Yami is shown as being a much less poetically justified person here. His hair is also notably longer and less messy in this anime.



LittleKuriboh's Yu-Gi-Oh The Abridged Series
Unlike his counterpart of the original series, Yami Yugi is nasty, childish and sometimes portrayed as gay and like most of the characters in the abridged series,his personality is exaggerated. Like Yugi, he tends to be sarcastic and disbelieving of the plotlines of the episodes. He often uses Egyptian terms for surprised exclamations ("Holy Ra", "Sweet Mother Of Osiris!", "You Son Of A Sphinx!", "Holy Mumra!"). He has been called Yugi's "Imaginary Boyfriend", Nosferatu (nose-fur-ot-too) and Dan Green throughout this series.

There are occasions where he is stated to be gay. In the episode with the Gay Clown, he says that 'If you're a ghost, then I'm straight!'. In Episode 28, Grandpa Motou seems to acknowledge that Yugi and Yami are a 'couple' and Yami is his Imaginary Boyfriend. Also in Episode 23, he asks to spend time in front of the mirror to apply makeup, to which Yugi responds that he is "such a slut". He has also defended his ambiguous sexuality in Episode 2 when he thought Pegasus was saying they have something in common by being pedophiles.

Despite Téa's feelings for him, he displays little interest in her (even calling her a whore on occasion). However, after Téa admits to finding brainwashing people fun, Yami agrees, saying they have more in common than he thought. In Episode 36, Tea seems to arouse Yami when she's a brainwashed Steve.

A common running gag is that, regardless of being the main duelist of the series, he sees Duel Monsters as a card game that shouldn't be taken so seriously and also mocks the strange plays he made during Duelist Kingdom, claiming to cheat.

Although nobody knows his real name, everyone seems to know he's a Pharaoh. In the Fake series end, he states his real name to be Dan Green (Yugi and Yami's voice actor in the actual series). LittleKuriboh still uses the name Dan Green in a couple of short videos using a stuffed doll of Yami.