If you’re Yugi Muto, to duel is to trust that the Heart of the Cards will guide you to victory no matter the circumstances, and if you’re a viewer, you know that the King of Games rarely loses a duel in Yu-Gi-Oh! We are here to say that despite the frequent top-deck game-winning plays we see from Yugi and Yami Yugi, respectively, our protagonist has a litany of unearned victories that would have better served our hero and narrative had he lost. With legions of fans who grew up adoring or even emulating Yugi, it’s important to see his written imperfections.
Videos by ComicBook.com
That’s not to say the victories had in Yu-Gi-Oh! aren’t thrilling in their own right, and although the series pushes closer to rules-accurate matches in Battle City onward, there’s plenty of tension and drama throughout the series. That being said, plot armor has been known to rear its ugly head and protect our protagonist from what would be a perfectly fair loss, and in some cases, he outright blatantly ignored the rules. With that in mind, here are 10 matches in Yu-Gi-Oh! that Yugi or Yami Yugi should have lost.
First Duel Against Seto Kaiba
Kicking off our list with a pick we are sure will be met with disagreement, but simply put, Yugi’s first match against Kaiba sets a lot of unsavory precedents for the series. Firstly, this is where we get our introduction to the Heart of the Cards, a recurring theme that acts as a narrative tool giving Yugi the victory countless times. By all accounts during their first confrontation, Kaiba has the better deck and assembles a better board state than our protagonist throughout the entire duel.
However, the wind is rapidly taken out of our rival’s sail when Yugi draws into the final piece of Exodia (a five-card combo that automatically wins him the game), defeating Kaiba on the spot. A big loss this early in the series against a “superior” opponent would allow for a large swath of growth for Yugi and for Kaiba to feel less like the Vegeta of the OCG world.
Weevil in Duelist Kingdom
Yes, we hate Weevil, and so should you, but you are not considering how much more we could have hated him if he continued to be an absolute blight in Yugi’s side for the entirety of Duelist Kingdom. Weevil faces Yugi in a duel after pulling an underhanded trick and throwing Yugi’s five pieces of Exodia off of a boat. Through Weevil, we learn about the rules of Duelist Kingdom, and we see Yugi backed into a corner after making a haphazard deal putting his star piece and deck on the line.
Yugi losing to the underhanded Weevil would set the tempo that our hero would need to become a duelist beyond recognition during this arc, and with the loss of Exodia, we really had a chance to see Yugi be a creative deck-builder and not overly rely on the Heart of the Cards to win.
Mako Tsunami in Duelist Kingdom
Mako Tsunami is a clever duelist and a compelling character, making it all the more heartbreaking when he loses to Yugi through loosey-goosey cartoon card game logic. Early Yu-Gi-Oh! was still working out the general concept of the game and often played fast and loose with its rules. Heart of the Cards and, honestly, outright cheating win Yugi this low-stakes background character match.
Mako Tsunami dominates this duel for the majority of its almost twelve-minute run, he utilizes clever strategy as well as playing with the rules to his benefit gaining himself a battlefield advantage. Yugi is only able to secure the win by destroying the moon spell he had played earlier in the match, which somehow beached all of Mako’s fish-themed monsters. Also, do not get us started on Mako’s reasoning for wanting to win. A truly harrowing story about a boy looking for his father lost at sea? Sign us up!
Joey Wheeler in Duelist Kingdom
Joey Wheeler, the steely-chinned duelist after our own hearts, truly deserved nothing more than to defeat his best friend, Yugi Muto, at this moment, fair and square. Both duelists had fantastical showings during the Duelist Kingdom Arc, but only Joey showed exponential growth. Joey won through skill and deck-building prowess, while his magically inclined counterpart utilized the Heart of the Cards in almost every duel.
Setting the stage, we see Joey and Yugi having an all-out match with nothing held back, and we even see Joey utilize a combo he had used before to turn his Baby Dragon into Thousand Dragon while simultaneously destroying his opponent’s cards. However, like Mako Tsunami before him, Joey fell prey to one blunder: Yugi does not have to follow the rules. It is then revealed that Yugi’s Dark Magician does not die to Joey’s combo but instead is aged into Dark Sage, a card that Yugi is then able to leverage into a victory. This is despite the actual card game requiring you to control the Time Wizard, too. Sure, Yugi gives Joey the prize money later on, but Joey’s underdog story of saving Yugi’s grandpa could have been a great character moment.
Rare Hunter in Battle City
As Battle City kicks off, Yugi faces the first of many “Rare Hunters,” duelists who play for cards and go after the rarest of the bunch. This specific Rare Hunter happens to be utilizing the Exodia cards, much like Yugi at the beginning of the series. This was a moment where the narrative really could have given Yugi his Heart of the Cards just desserts in having him lose to the very combo he won his first big duel with.
Yet, the duel we get instead is one that sees Yugi know exactly how to defeat an Exodia-centric deck without his very own Exodia (yay, character growth, we guess) and win back a card Joey had lost to the Rare Hunter in a previous duel. If you’re wondering if Yugi gives Joey back his card in this arc, to no one’s surprise, he does not.
[RELATED: The Yu-Gi-Oh! Early Days Collection Reminds Me How Far Games Have Come]
Strings the Mime in Battle City
Yugi’s duel against Strings is one that left us wondering what the Yu-Gi-Oh! story might look like if they didn’t keep handing Yugi the exact card he needs to win at all times. Yugi faces Strings, a mime being controlled by Marik, the central antagonist of Battle City. At this point of Battle City, Yugi is under the impression that his only shot at defeating any of the other duelists with God cards is to secure one himself.
How does he secure this card? Well, he defeats Strings, who uses the god card, Slifer the Sky Dragon, in their duel. So, as a general recap, in his resolution that he needs a god card to defeat a god card, Yugi then defeats a god card without one. This entry is less about Yugi’s skill as a duelist and more about the principle, and that he can’t even keep his own story straight in terms of how he can or can’t win.
Mind-Controlled Joey Wheeler in Battle City
Another match against Joey, and yes, this one is a bit more nuanced, but in all fairness, it should still be featured as an outright loss. This specific match has Yugi facing his best friend Joey once again, only this time Joey is being controlled by Marik. The stakes are high for this duel as their friend Tea is tied to a trap to force Yugi into the duel.
The match comes to a head when Joey is able to briefly re-establish control of himself and help Yugi. In the end, both duelists end up at zero life points, bringing them to a draw, but this was one of the situations where lose or draw, Yugi learns the same lesson and garners the same vitriol towards Marik.
Dartz in Waking the Dragons
The final duel of the Waking the Dragons arc has rivals Yugi and Kaiba team up to face off against Dartz. This battle boils down to an eventual one-on-one duel between Dartz and Yugi after Kaiba is reduced to zero life points. The duel is plagued with what can only be seen as narratively driven plays made by Kaiba to support Yugi towards an eventual victory.
This battle could have honestly gone either way, and having Kaiba be the one to deal the final blow against Dartz would have made sense. The entire cast had been plagued by Dartz’s actions the entire arc, and Yugi aiding Kaiba towards a win and sacrificing his own life points makes a lot more sense for the character.
Jaden Yuki in Yu-Gi-Oh! GX
Jaden Yuki, the protagonist of Yu-Gi-Oh! GX faces off against Yugi in an epic duel that showcases both players’ abilities. Throughout the Yu-Gi-Oh! GX series, we have seen Jaden lose a number of times as he honed his skills to face any antagonist that came his way. The match itself is a lot of fun, and we get to see the new generation of Yu-Gi-Oh! interact with the legacy cards that Yugi brings to the field, however, as the end of the game rolls around, we, the viewers, are left with one big unanswered question.
The duel fades to black before we see any real victor, allowing for fans of either duelist to decide the fate of the duel. But in all honesty, this game should have ended by officially passing the torch to Jaden and allowing Yugi to be retired as the King of Games, at least for the time being.
Seto Kaiba in Dark Side of Dimensions
Our final entry is one that has been added to the Yu-Gi-Oh! world relatively recently. Seto Kaiba faces Yugi Muto once again, only this time, Yugi does not have the Millennium Puzzle, meaning he will be facing Kaiba alone. Kaiba starts this match off by referencing that Yugi had never defeated him without the Pharaoh’s influence, and we get to see the match kick off. This battle is high octane and a lot of fun, with new monster cards that give the old legacy cards some new power.
However, as this duel is about to reach its climax and it appears Seto Kaiba has been defeated once again, the duel is interrupted. Another duel where Yugi is given a vague victory and another duel where, realistically, the narrative takes no damage from allowing Yugi to lose. All of these fancy new Blue-Eyes White Dragon cards have to be worth something, right?
