Yu-Gi-Oh Cosplay Gets Mai Ready to Duel

Yu-Gi-Oh is one of the biggest franchises in the world years after its initial debut, and one awesome cosplay is helping to highlight why with a cool take on Mai Valentine! Kazuki Takahashi's Yu-Gi-Oh manga started out as a much different kind of series in the pages of Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump than it's seen as today, and it's basically unrecognizable when you see what kind of franchise it has become. Making the very smart pivot early on to focusing on the trading card game originally just introduced as another one of the many shadow games, Yu-Gi-Oh has exploded in the decades since. 

Spanning multiple sequel manga, anime, video games, and many generations of a massively popular trading card game, Yu-Gi-Oh fans have seen all kinds of duelists show off their stuff in the franchise. But many of the characters introduced in the first generation are still ranked among the top of the fan favorites for a reason, and artist @danielledenicola on TikTok is helping to show off why by taking Mai Valentine to a whole new level with some surprising cosplay! Check it out: 

@danielledenicola

Omw to banish you to the shadow realm #maivalentine #yugiohcosplay

♬ Yu-Gi-Oh! Main Theme (From "Yu-Gi-Oh!") – Anime Zing

How to Read and Watch Yu-Gi-Oh

If you wanted to look into Kazuki Takahashi's original manga run of the Yu-Gi-Oh franchise to catch up with how it all first got started for Yugi Mutou and the others all the way from the very beginning, you can now find all chapters of the Yu-Gi-Oh manga with Viz Media's digital Shonen Jump library. As for the Yu-Gi-Oh anime, you can find the original series and many of its sequels now streaming with Crunchyroll. They tease the first Yu-Gi-Oh series as such: 

"Meet Yugi and his best buds Joey, Tristan and Téa. They share a love for the newest game that's sweeping the nation: Duel Monsters! Legend has it 5000 years ago, ancient Egyptian Pharaohs used to play a magical game very similar to Duel Monsters. This ancient game involved magical ceremonies, which were used to foresee the future and ultimately decide one's destiny. They called it the Shadow Games. Since the game used so many magical spells and ferocious creatures, it wasn't long before the game got out of hand and threatened to destroy the world." 

Where does Mai rank among your favorite duelists in Yu-Gi-Oh overall? Let us know all of your thoughts about it and everything Yu-Gi-Oh in the comments!