Yu-Gi-Oh! Kill Count Part 12 - The Story That Ends In Light (And Murder)
The end of Yu-Gi-Oh!, and of our silly 'kill count' series
On Wednesdays, we’ve been reading Yu-Gi-Oh! here on JonathanLack.Com – specifically, as explained in Part I of this series, we’ve looked 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 finishing the project with Volume 38, the final installment of Kazuki Takahashi’s immortal manga classic.
With his true name in hand and the God Horakhty summoned, the Pharaoh Atem vanquishes Zorc Necrophades – thus also dispelling Yami Bakura from the Millennium Ring in the present-day world. I think that's good enough to give 2 Kills to Atem.
But there's still the issue of the Evil Priest Akhenaden, who destroys his own body to inhabit his son, Priest Seto, and drive him to try killing the Pharaoh. In the duel, Kisara's spirit – the Blue-Eyes White Dragon – comes forth and vanquishes Akhenaden. 1 Kill for Kisara.
And that’s it for the ‘Millennium World’ arc, which leaves us with just the final movement of the series, in which, back in the present, Yugi must challenge Atem to a Duel and defeat him in order to send the Pharaoh’s soul to the afterlife. It's the climax of the series – Yugi and Yu-Gi-Oh split into two, against each other.
And before we get to the punchline of this thread, I just want to say that Yu-Gi-Oh! is a terrific manga. A silly, weird, bizarre manga...but also genuinely brilliant, so much of the time. It is creative, and memorable, and earnest, beautifully drawn from start to finish, and the storytelling, particularly in the series’ back half from the start of Battle City to the end, is so phenomenally good. And here, it achieves a truly great ending.
Through the conclusion of Battle City into the Millennium World arc, Kazuki Takahashi carefully knocks down all the pins he’d set up over time, wrapping up the arcs of Kaiba and Jonouchi in Battle City, then taking care of Atem through the memory world story, and now, in the final duel, bringing it all back to Yugi himself, who fully comes into his own as a person.
I got surprisingly emotional getting to the end again. It packs a wallop. This is a powerful ending – exactly the one we were very meaningfully building to all this time, even in the series’ earliest days when it was a weird game-obsessed horror manga with a murderous main character. Here, at the end, we no longer have two Yugi’s: We have one Pharaoh saying goodbye, and one Yugi Mutou left to live his life, just as it should be.
And because Yugi defeats him in the duel, overcoming his other self in skill and insight, Atem the Pharaoh gets to depart into the afterlife. Which means...
That the final kill of the series...
Goes to Yugi Mutou, for vanquishing his other self, and sending Atem to the great beyond.
1 Kill for Yugi Mutou.
OFFICIAL YU-GI-OH! KILL COUNT – THE COMPLETE SERIES
Thief King Bakura: 166 kills
Akhenaden: 100 kills
Atem (Yami Yugi): 16 kills
Gelbek: 8 kills
Yami Bakura (Zorc Necrophades): 8 kills
Seto Kaiba: 6 kills
Yami Marik: 3 kills
Creepy Mime: 2 kills
Katsuya Jonouchi: 2 kills
Kisara: 2 kills
Marik Ishtar: 2 kills
Siamun: 2 kills
Shadi: 2 kills
Yugi Mutou: 2 kills
Baby Joji: 1 kill
Mahado: 1 kill
Pegasus J. Crawford: 1 kill
Priest Seto: 1 kill
The Sea: 1 kill
Yu-Gi-Oh! starts weird, becomes obsessed with card games, and along the way...it turns into a genuinely great series. Battle City and Millennium World are some of my favorite arcs in any manga. You should read it. Yu-Gi-Oh! rocks.
And it has a lot of murder.
THE END
Dedicated to the memory of Kazuki Takahashi (1961 - 2022)
Thanks for all the memories, all the manga, and all the card games
Catch Up on the Complete Yu-Gi-Oh! Kill Count Series:
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