How About That Thing?

I confess, Yu-Gi-Oh has always been a bit of a fascination of mine. Back in the early 2000s, I found myself hopelessly addicted to the card game, the anime… Hell, I even played a video game or two that was based on it.

To clarify, though, my fascination with Yu-Gi-Oh lies exclusively with the very first version of original Yu-Gi-Oh that came to the states. AKA, Yu-Gi-Oh: Duel Monsters. I tried getting into the other series, but found the series getting progressively dumber and dumber with each new installment. And let’s face it, even Yu-Gi-Oh: Duel Monsters was asking you to suspend a LOT of disbelief.

Of all the story arcs in Yu-Gi-Oh: Duel Monsters, though, I’d have to say that Duelist Kingdom was probably my favorite. Probably because back then, the game was as simplistic as possible: no levels, no sacrificing weak monsters in order to summon stronger monsters… Hell, if you had the cards in your hand, you could literally summon three Blue Eyes White Dragons all at once on your very first turn! It was so simple, any dimwit with one functioning eye and a casual understanding of CCGs could get into it. True, they didn’t include the ability to attack the opponent directly, but when you could summon blue eyes white dragon on turn one, you probably didn’t need to.

Then, they had to start adding new bullshit that made no sense: syncro-summoning, pendulum summoning, XYZ-summoning… The list goes on. But Duelist Kingdom rules were definitely where it was at for me.

And you really can’t talk about Duelist Kingdom rules without talking about the guy who came up with the concept.

This here is Maximilian Pegasus: the main villain of The Duelist Kingdom arc, and the man who basically invented the Duel Monsters card game in universe. He’s… Eccentric. As all reclusive billionaires often are. Some have insisted the man might be gay, but honestly, I don’t see it. He definitely has a sort of six-year-old boy in a sixty-year-old man’s body kind of quality to him, but gay? I don’t think so.

Pegasus, as previously stated, is the creater of Duel Monsters. This means that he has access to pretty much all the cards in existence. Including cards that never saw release for one reason or another. The most iconic card in his entire deck being…

Ah yes, The Magical Toonworld. Within the Yu-Gi-Oh mythos, it’s a card so powerful, it was deemed unfair. Thus, it was never put into circulation. So naturally, Pegasus possesses the only copy.

How does it work? Well, once it’s played, all monsters on that side of the field become “toon monsters”. Meaning that when it’s the opponent’s turn, all the monsters live inside of an enchanted, and nigh indestructible pop-up book. When it’s Pegasus’s turn, the monsters all come out, and can attack at will. If you reflect attacks back at the monsters, though, they simply move out of the way. Because the cute ones never get hurt in Toonworld.

So yeah, pretty unfair. But then, you remember that Pegasus possesses a second item. The millennium eye.

Throughout the entirety of Yu-Gi-Oh: Duel Monsters, we are told that there are seven items known as “millennium items”.

• The Millennium Puzzle, the most prominent, possesses the spirit of an ancient pharaoh who takes over for the main character when it’s time to duel.
• The Millennium Necklace allows its possessor to see forward, and backward in time.
• The Millennium Key allows its possessor to enter someone’s mind and interact with their psychy.
• The Millennium Rod controls people’s minds, and in the uncensored version of the show (IE, the one American audiences didn’t get), it doubles as a knife.
• The Millennium Scale can detect whether someone is lying or telling the truth.
• The Millennium Ring possesses the infinite power of bullshit, near as I can tell.

But then, there’s The Millennium Eye. I consider it the coolest of the seven items… But then again, I’m kind of a sucker for eye powers. Also, I wouldn’t be shocked to find out it basically rendered his left eye useless in more casual settings. In my case, it’s the RIGHT eye, but all the same, it’s something I can relate to.

However, in Duel Monsters, The Millennium Eye gives Pegasus the ultimate unfair advantage. It allows him to see inside his opponent’s mind. Which, in a universe centered around card games, means he can see what cards you’re holding at any given time. So yeah, on top of having access to every card in the game, including and not limited to cards that were never released to the public, he STILL has to cheat. And I love it.

Yeah, having to cheat at a game you invented is kind of pathetic… But he’s the bad guy. You aren’t supposed to be cheering for him.

None of the other villains in Yu-Gi-Oh: Duel Monsters could ever stand the test of holding my interest. Marik came close, but once it became clear his gimmick was going to be The Winged Dragon of Ra rather than his Millennium Rod, I admit to checking out. Sue me, I figured he’d do more with his rod than assemble a cult. IE, I thought he’d use the power of The Millennium Rod during duels to make his opponent intentionally make terrible moves, or something like that. Other villains, like Noah, or Darts, or Siegfried, all just fell a bit flat for my liking. Not to mention I’d pretty much moved on from Yu-Gi-Oh before Bakura could finally do something besides form alliances with other villains and get his ass kicked.

But Pegasus? That was a guy who stood out. That was a guy I loved to hate. That was a guy I wanted to see the downfall of the moment he was made to be the main villain of the arc.

In the English dub, he was voiced by Darren Dunstan. Say what you will about 4KIDS entertainment, and I’ll probably agree with about 99% of it, but Dunstan fucking nailed this character. Giving him a voice with an aristocratic, snarky tone that implies that he doesn’t take anything, or anyone seriously. Even in defeat, his performance is one of the better I’ve seen from a 4KIDS dub.

Yu-Gi-Oh: Duel Monsters may have gone flat after a while, but Pegasus got me interested, and the prospect of seeing him get beat was what had me come back for more and more throughout that first arc. Admittedly, the idea of blocking his Millennium Eye with “the power of friendship” was kind of lame, and felt like the writers’ way of saying “Yeah, we kind of wrote ourselves into a corner on this one.” But still, a smarmy, elitist prick of a villain who still has to rely on underhanded tactics in order to beat you at a game that HE INVENTED is classic heel. And in the end, that’s all I really wanted out of my villains: someone to hate, someone to boo, and someone who’ll eventually fall at the hands of the hero. and that’s what Pegasus did.