Yu-Gi-Oh! Kill Count Part 2 - The Terror of Death T!
Yu-Gi-Oh! Kill Count Part 2 - The Terror of Death T!
The murder and mayhem continues as Seto Kaiba swears revenge!
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 4 through 7 of the manga.
Volume 4 is a doozy, as this is where we get Kaiba's "Death-T" revenge theme park (it's a whole thing – Yugi made Kaiba experience death in a shadow game after Kaiba stole his Grandpa’s Blue-Eyes White Dragon in Volume 2, so Kaiba has now turned the industrial might of his company towards torturing a group of teenagers – as one does).
The first kill in this volume happens off-screen (off-page?), wherein we learn Kaiba coerced a guy into killing himself to get the man’s Blue-Eyes White Dragon. This is not a detail in the Yu-Gi-Oh! anime, but I like to watch that show and remind myself occasionally, whenever Kaiba breaks out his Blue-Eyes, that it might be the card he stole from a man he convinced to commit suicide. 1 kill for Seto Kaiba.
Once Death-T gets properly underway, Kaiba's butler is electrocuted to death in one of the games, after being tricked by Honda's toddler nephew Joji (it's a whole thing). So the fourth person to earn a spot on our kill count board is Baby Joji, who gets 1 kill. Then Jonouchi has to fight a masked serial killer and, taking a page out of Yugi’s book, burns him alive to win. Jonouchi is now on the board with 1 kill, but he was beaten there by the baby, and will have to live with that shame for the rest of his life.
Volume 5, which concludes Death-T and has a few standalone stories, has no direct kills, but in flashbacks we learn that Seto Kaiba manipulated his adopted father Gozoburo into killing himself after taking over the company. So in the spirit of our game, I think Kaiba earned that one. 1 Kill for Seto Kaiba.
Volume 6 is a trip. This is another set of short one-off stories, and having not committed any direct violence in several volumes, Yami Yugi thirsts for blood.
First up, Yugi goes back to basics by murdering a bully in a shadow game – we don’t see the state of the corpse, but Yugi ominously remarks “The shadows always eat them alive” – and then ups the ante by playing a game of Dragon Cards with a weird kid, who gets his soul sucked out of his body when he loses. (Incidentally, “Dragon Cards” might actually the best game invented for the entire series – alas, it only appears here). Now, does having one’s soul removed count as ‘death?’ That’s a philosophical debate beyond the bounds of this exercise, so for the sake of simplicity, let’s just count that as a kill, and award 2 Kills to Yami Yugi.
We’re not done, though, since we then learn that the gang from Volume 2 didn't actually die in the 200,000 volt shock. I question the science of that, but hey, here they are. Not for long, though, since Yugi kills them again! This time, Yugi kills 6 bullies (2 more than last time), but the gang’s leader is killed by Jonouchi. So that is a net gain of 1 kill for Yami Yugi and 1 kill for Jonouchi.
By the way, all the violence in this chapter involves Yo-Yos.
Almost unbelievably, Volume 7 – possibly my favorite in the whole series – doesn’t have any kills. Yami Bakura steals the souls of the entire gang, but Yami Yugi wins the shadow RPG and gets them all back.
OFFICIAL YU-GI-OH! KILL COUNT AS OF VOLUME 7
Yami Yugi: 10 kills
Katsuya Jonouchi: 2 kills
Seto Kaiba: 2 kills
Baby Joji: 1 kill
Shadi: 1 kill
NEXT WEEK: We begin the first big arc of the series with Duelist Kingdom, and see who dies in Volumes 8 through 14!
Catch Up on the Complete Yu-Gi-Oh! Kill Count Series:
Like anime? Listen to the podcast I host with Sean Chapman, JAPANIMATION STATION, where we review all sorts of anime every week. Watch on YouTube or Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
Subscribe to The Weekly Stuff Podcast on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts!
Read the book 200 Reviews by Jonathan R. Lack in Paperback or on Kindle