Webtoon Spotlight

Random Spotlight#9: Yugioh Rivals Ranked

They say that every good hero needs a good villain. But I think it's even more important to have a good rival to help them along the way. After all, any rival worth their salt knows full well that they must not only support the hero who gets in their way but also challenge them. And through these often fateful challenges, we get some of the most compelling characters in fiction. Anime, in general, has often given many examples of rivals that far eclipse our mc in some shape, way, or form. Because as much as we like to admit we sometimes are the rivals of our own lives. So naturally, I have to ask this simple question. Some of my favorite rivals in anime are Paul from Pokemon Dp, Bakugou from Mha, and Vegeta from Dbz. But we are not here to talk about other anime. Today we are going to be talking about the many rivals of Yugioh and discuss which one of them reigns supreme!

Rules and Notes

Let's get obvious rules out of the way since we've been here before. Obvious spoilers ahead for every Yugioh series from DM to Arc V and any pictures I use aren't mine. Like before, this will be a combination of my thoughts and feelings of each rival while also trying to judge how well they do in 10 duels against each other. In this scenario, they will duel in character with decks that they consider to be their strongest while at the same time having all magical powers restricted (Blazing Soul, Chaos Draw, etc.). For this list, I will have no ties, and I will also be using the MR3 format for duels. Finally, all of the duelists involved will be their anime counterparts and take all opinions I have on these people with a grain of salt. Now onto the list of combatants and decks, I will be using.

Kaiba-DSOD deck

Jack-EOS deck with no speed spells.

Kite-EOS deck

Shark- EOS deck with Nasch

Declan- EOS deck

The good news is that since their rivals, their decks are a lot more consistent then I bargained for, so there shouldn't be any real debate on cards they have. And now to the two big controversies on this list. First up while I do know that Kaiba DSOD is more or less the manga counterpart of Kaiba he still is animated and I can just say a lot more on this Kaiba then I can say on the anime version of him plus we could fill in some of the blanks with his prior decks(Obelisk and Critias notwithstanding). Finally, there are reasons why I excluded Zane and Chazz on this list. The main one being that I don't personally believe that they count as rivals, or at the very least, their now strong indicators of one. While Chazz has had many duels against Jaden, he kind of is treated as comedic relief after season 1. Plus, his deck is too inconsistent with scaling up to the others properly. Finally, Zane, to me, is not a rival, so much as he is a superior to Jaden. His first duel with him was to show how far he had to go, and their last duel was to show how Jaden would be like when he becomes a senior like him, so they will both be counted as honorable mentions. I think Aster is a better rival than both of them, but he's out of the running too. And before you guys ask why I then included Kite and Shark on the list is mainly because you can make great arguments for why both people of them are considered Yuma's rival that I will explain later (oh and side note Kite won't be having his Numeron Dragon since he never technically used it). Finally, for you, ARC-V fans Silvio Sawatari isn't on the list for the same reasons as Chazz is, and I don't even want to consider him up for analysis. Also, don't think this needs to be said, but the Arc-V counterparts of Jack and Kite are not the same characters and don't have any rivalry with Yuya, so they're out too. With all that out of the way, let's begin the list properly.