TGFan's guide on making a Yu-Gi-Oh! Protagonist

During my time on Deviantart, I've seen a lot of OC's for a lot of series (well duh, the website's freaking known for it!), and Yu-Gi-Oh! is no exception. But with the ones I see, they're mostly either ship fodder (which I won't touch on, shipping is out of my area of expertise) or they completely miss the point on what makes the protagonists so special in the first place. I did manage to find some GOOD Protagonist OC's in the forms of xbrain130.deviantart.com/art/K… and ycm.wikia.com/wiki/Yuga_Senku as some good examples for you to look at. With that out of the way, let's talk about some of the pitfalls I see a bit too often.

1. The name: This one is a bit more obvious than the others, but I see so many people ignore this. Think about it, what do the names YUgi Mutou, Judai/Jaden YUki, YUsei Fudo, YUma Tsukumo, YUya Sakaki and YUsaku Fujiki have in common? I'm pretty sure You've worked it out already: It's that magic syllable: "Yu". It comes from the Kanji "遊", meaning game (because, you know, Yu-Gi-Oh! is a card game), so please make sure to add it in if possible. Also, another thing I noticed with this, some people don't just give their protagonist a generic Japanese name without checking what it means, they give them very western names. PLEASE DON'T DO THIS, I understand a lot of your memories may have been shaped by 4Kids, but it's kinda the general consensus that they screwed it up, and even then, the hero has usually been exempt from this (The only exception was Judai's name change to Jaden, and even the he still had the "Yu" in his name).

2. The design: Again, obvious, but people still overlook it. The hair is so self-explanatory at this point, it's a meme. So I won't go into that. But the rest of the design has to convey a lot about them, I mean, Yusei's design is cool and all, but it shows us that he rides his D-Wheel (Duel Runner) often and is a skilled mechanic. I guess that's just OC advice in general, but seriously, I've seen so many designs, both official and unofficial that look really good, but don't tell a thing about the character.

3. The deck: This one is a bit harder than the others, but I'll explain. First of all, try to stay away from previously established decks, it can really defeat the purpose of the next parts. I won't go too far into this, but to create an "Archetype" (as in things like Numbers, Elemental HEROes, Performapals etc.) for a protagonist, think about who they are as a person, decide a Type, Attribute and gimmick for the archetype with those in mind, and you have yourself most of their deck. This is probably the least important part, but keep in mind though that the Yu-Gi-Oh! anime is an advertisement first and a show second, and every 3 years now, Konami introduces a new Summoning Method, your series will probably have a new Summoning Method too (You don't have to do this, but it can help). Their initial Ace monster must, and I mean MUST have 2500 ATK and 2000 DEF, and if you using a new kind of monster, this card is going to be one of those cards (The only exceptions to this rule are Dark Magician who has 2100 DEF and Firewall Dragon who doesn't have DEF because Linkswag). If they have a power indicator (Level, Rank, Link etc.), I'd go with making it either 4, 7 or 8, whatever the "mid-range" of that indicator is.

4. The Rival: Of course in any Shonen anime, we need a rival to push our protagonist onward to be better than them. The rivals in question often have an arrogance problem, love wearing long coats, probably have a tragic backstory and/or a younger sibling and use an Ace monster with 3000 ATK (usually a dragon in most cases, but Reiji had a Fiend monster). They're often considered to be among the best duelists in the series, but don't play them TOO edgy, that'd just be off-putting.

5. Their abilities: This may seem a bit arbitrary, but trust me, it's worth investing in this. All of the protagonists have some kind of supernatural abilities, Yugi can swap out for Atem, Judai can see the spirits of Duel monsters, Yusei has the power of the Crimson Dragon, Yuma can turn into a Super Saiy-uh... ZEXAL, Yuya is 1 quarter of Zarc and Yusaku has "Link sense" (whatever that is). Looking at our OC role models over here, Kohaku has nothing (yet, it's still early days for GSTART), but Yuga has a King's Mark which allows him to enter & exit the mirror dimension freely. Just a warning, don't give them some kind of future-sight or mind-reading abilities. That's just too overpowered.

6. Their age: This can be pretty loose, but Yu-Gi-Oh!'s heroes have been somewhere between the ages of 12 to 20. Yuma's the youngest at 13, Yusei is the oldest at 18 (then 19 & 20 as the series goes on), Yuya is 14 and Yugi, Judai, Yusaku and the example OC's are 16. I'd highly suggest the 12 to 20 age-range (although you can make them whatever gender you want, go nuts on that.)

7. Their world: I don't see a lot of OC's doing this and it makes me really disappointed that everyone falls into this trap. Our 2 Examples, Kohaku & Yuga however, keep away from this, that being the worlds that GSTART & Xross take place in. With the exception of GX & 5D's, did any of the Yu-Gi-Oh! series ride on the backs of the older series, or did they just do their own thing? The answer is of course: the latter. Unless you're specifically making a character tied to the older casts, don't rely on GX's old cast to flesh out the new one you created, if they don't have a reason to be there, don't put them there.

That should be it! Thank you to KogaDiamond1080 for the image I used (Sorry for taking it without permission! DX) Please let me know what you guys think down below!