Yu-Gi-Oh! Kill Count Part 10 - Two Volumes, 165 Kills
You ain't seen nothin' yet
On Wednesdays, we’re reading Yu-Gi-Oh! here on JonathanLack.Com – specifically, as explained in Part I of this series, we’re looking at how many people are killed in the surprisingly violent original manga, and which characters rack up the biggest kill counts. And today, we’re continuing with Volumes 34 and 35 of the manga.
Volume 34 is by far the bloodiest volume to date – and it’s not even the deadliest volume we’re discussing today! We kick things off with Thief King Bakura at an inn, where he is surrounded by eleven men...and promptly blows them all to bloody smithereens, in the biggest single page kill of the series so far. 11 Kills for Thief King Bakura.
Next, Bakura races by these soldiers, and cuts their bodies to pieces. Hard to tell exactly how many but from that big panel on the second page, I count another 11 kills for Thief King Bakura. He’s racked up 22 kills in this volume alone and we’re far from done.
Next, Bakura draws out the Pharaoh by sending his monster after innocent bystanders. It’s impossible to say how many die in this sequence, and Yugi’s dragon comes in to save many of them. But I’ve scoured this page and I don’t think the six in the lower middle panel are so lucky. 6 Kills for Thief King Bakura.
On this page, Bakura’s monster blows up a section of town. So obviously, a lot of people died. How many is impossible to say. We see at least sixteen people fleeing in the panels above and I think it’s safe to assume this area has at least as many. We’ll round it up and say 20 kills for Thief King Bakura, conservatively.
So the Thief King has killed, at minimum, 48 people in this volume. Hot damn. And we’re still not done – because the Pharaoh kills him but good for it with the Sun Dragon Ra. Granted, time then gets reversed and Bakura comes back (it’s a whole thing), but hey, a kill is a kill. We will award this and all future kills by the Pharaoh to Yami Yugi for the sake of simplicity, since Yami Yugi is the spirit of the Pharaoh reincarnated. 1 Kill for Yami Yugi.
(The Viz Digital edition of the manga is missing the next page, so please excuse the handheld paperback photography)
Volume 35 is somehow even more deadly than Volume 34. We start with the tragic death of the Pharaoh’s horse, cast into this ravine by Bakura’s magic. The Pharaoh gets a new horse later, but you can tell it’s different by the coloring. R.I.P Horse. 1 Kill for Thief King Bakura.
In this volume, we learn the origin of the Millennium Items. It is not pretty. The former Pharaoh’s brother (the current Pharaoh’s uncle) Priest Akhenaden sacrifices 99 villagers from Kul Elna for the shadow alchemy to create the items. So that’s 99 Kills for Akhenaden, the bastard.
In the present, Priest Seto has ordered experiments to draw the “Ka” (monster spirits) from commoners. His servant Gebelk (modeled after the butler Baby Joji killed in Volume 4 – nice attention to detail there) has been forcing prisoners to fight with their Ka, killing 8. So that’s 8 Kills for Gelbek!
In defending Kisara, the woman who houses the Ka of the Blue Eyes White Dragon, Priest Seto kills one of the prisoners, as seen here...
...and then Kisara’s spirit, the dragon, incinerates the other with a blast to shatter the heavens. It’s pretty cool. So that’s 1 Kill for Priest Seto and 1 Kill for Kisara.
Next, five of the Pharaoh’s guards go into the crypts of Kul Elna after Bakura, who sends the ghosts of the dead villagers after them. I guess it’s the ghosts who technically do the killing, but since it was at the direction of Bakura, we will award these 5 Kills to Thief King Bakura.
Finally, the spirit of Mahado returns as the Pharaoh’s magic protector (the Dark Magician), and reveals that he learned of the terrible sacrifices at Kul Elna to create the Millennium Items, and told Yugi’s father, the former Pharaoh, who died of sadness and guilt. That’s 1 Kill for Mahado, I guess, though the man clearly meant well.
So that’s a total of 5 new players on the board and 165 new kills – coincidentally, the total number of kills earned by Thief King Bakura so far, clearly in the lead – and just from these two volumes. Damn.
Let’s finish today with some sexy horse panels.
OFFICIAL YU-GI-OH! KILL COUNT AS OF VOLUME 35
Thief King Bakura: 165 kills
Akhenaden: 99 kills
Yami Yugi: 12 kills
Gelbek: 8 kills
Seto Kaiba: 6 kills
Yami Bakura: 5 kills
Yami Marik: 3 kills
Creepy Mime: 2 kills
Katsuya Jonouchi: 2 kills
Marik Ishtar: 2 kills
Siamun: 2 kills
Shadi: 2 kills
Baby Joji: 1 kill
Kisara: 1 kill
Mahado: 1 kill
Pegasus J. Crawford: 1 kill
Priest Seto: 1 kill
The Sea: 1 kill
NEXT WEEK: The violence continues, and we learn the True Name of the Pharaoh!
Catch Up on the Complete Yu-Gi-Oh! Kill Count Series:
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