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The original was posted on /r/characterrant by /u/aaa1e2r3 on 2023-10-05 15:53:25.

Having recently rewatched the first 4 series, one aspect of the writing that I’ve noticed is how well the card effects tie into the writing of the characters and the arcs they’re on.

Duel Monsters

With the three Egyptian Gods, how their power is calculated ties really well to their respective owners. Marik is someone who uses and takes advantage of others. On his own he’s dangerous but his real strength comes in how he uses others. This is reflected in how Ra’s base attack stat is based on the attack of the monsters used for his tribute summon.

Kaiba is someone who has not relied on others but rather draws from his own strength. In the face of beings with ancient magic artifacts and magic, it’s just him and his mind. This in turn is reflected in the Obelisk having a fixed innate stats with 4000 atk and def. Likewise the fact that his god card is the one not associated with an actual Egyptian god (Slifer’s original name is Osiris).

Yugi and Atem draw their power from the support of their friends behind them. With this being represented as Slifer’s power is drawn from the number of cards in the hand. Likewise the two mouths being a nod to Yugi and Atem.

GX

Zane’s philosophy when approaching duels was to always show his opponents their due respect, an aspect reflected in Cyber Dragon’s effect that it can be special summoned when only your opponent has a monster, literally matching his opponent’s energy by bringing out his ace to show his intent. When he becomes cynical after entering the pro-circuit his play style is about self mutilation. In the duels themselves, he shows this by having both him and his opponent wear shock collars that electrocute whenever they take damage, and him embracing this fact. This in turn is reflected in his Chimeratech and Cyberdark monsters, with the chimeratech being mass product summons using an amalgamation of all of his monsters in these monstrous chimeras, and cyberdarks drawing their power from the corpses of monsters in his grave.

5Ds

Each of the Signer Dragons reflect the character and personality of their Signer really well.

Yusei is starting the story dealing with his own survivor’s guilt and having a bit of a martyr complex, something reflected in Stardust Dragon’s effect that it can tribute itself to prevent the destruction of your cards(friends) with its sacrifice.

Jack is a guy who wants to rise above his lot in life breaking down the barriers of those who would stand in his way, as well as being willing to abandon his friends behind as he moves forward. Two aspects presented in Red Dragon Archfiend’s effect that it destroys all defence position monsters when it attacks and will destroy all monsters on his own field that failed to attack that turn.

Aki starts the series as the Black Rose Witch a duelist who lashes out at the world with her psychic powers causing massive destruction, until she learns to control her powers to be used to help her friends. This in turn being shown with Black Rose Dragon’s two effects either to nuke the entire field including herself, or to focus and target a single monster and shut down it’s attack down to zero instead.

Zexal

Yuma is someone who has slowly but steadily fallen into despair with the loss of his parents, neglect from his sister and grandmother, and the fact that he wasn’t a particularly good duelist. This changes when he opens the gate of destiny to meet Astral and his new ace monsters, The King of Wishes, Hope (Utopia). Yuma himself is someone that can be best described as someone who will get back up and try again repeatedly until he succeeds. This in turn is an aspect reflected in Utopia’s eff to negate attacks. Basically if he gets overwhelmed, he can use Utopia’s effect to negate and refresh things to try again at full power.

Shark starts as an angry kid with a chip on his shoulder for revenge. Something that gets reflected in his ace Number 32 Shark Drake, a monster whose effect is to revive a monster it destroys in battle specifically to battle it again, like a shark mauling.

Kite is dueling to hunt down Numbers to use their power to save his brother, doing so while working with his estranged father, His deck in turn is a reflection of his relationship with his Brother Heart (Galaxy cards are typically beneficial and build upon one another) and his father Faker (Photon cards typically being offensive more power focused) and coming together in his ace Galaxy Eyes Photon Dragon, which functions as an anti-xyz monster by stealing its xyz materials to empower itself, like how he is trying to steal the souls of Number monsters in order to empower his brother.