Okay, ya see this ? THIS IS THE ONLY TIME HE SHEDS A TEAR. EVER

He cracks tehre and then because after GIVING UP EVERYTHING FOR THEM, AFTER COMMITING SUICIDE TO STOP BAKURA, AFTER ACCEPTING TO WEAR THE RING, AFTER EVERYTHING HE HAD DONE FOR THE GANG, he is once again EXCLUDED AND ALONE.

ANYBODY WOULD EVENTUALLY CRACK AFTER STAYING STRONG FIR SO LONG, shut up.

And everyone keeps calling him Bakura when it’s his last name. That means they don’t trust him as much as he trusts them. They don’t consider him such a great friend as Ryou considers them.

Jonouchi and Honda are also their last names, though. I’m no expert, but in Japan you don’t call someone by their first name unless you’re really close (meaning family/lovers/BFFs, which is why only Shizuka calls his brother Katsuya) or to insult them, Yugi being the exception. Anzu also gets called “Mazaki” by Jonouchi in the first chapter, by the way.

Close friends can also call each other by their last name. It depends on the person and how comfortable they feel about that, or at least that’s how I understand it.

Bakura might not be as close to the rest of the gang as they are to each other, but they’re still close. As someone said in another post, they took him everywhere on the manga (only for the Spirit of the Ring to take over at some point), and they still cared about him in the anime. Even here you can see Jonouchi and Yugi about to try to stop him, if that matters.

That said, Bakura is still excluded and alone. However (at least how I see it anyway), it has less to do with the gang excluding him and a lot more with the poor guy being unfortunate enough to be chosen as the host of an evil spirit.

It is shown several times that the group see him as a friend. When they rolled the dice one the end of the Monster World game to bring him back to life and they got a super critical. Also during the final duel with Pegasus, he had the ability to block the power of the MI-eye, too. Also he is in Joey’s dream during the duel with Yami Marik.

I think what made him look so excluded, besides his Yami, is he being introverted and everyone being so unconcerned about whats going on.

I mean, they should bear multiple traumas with all the shadow games, kidnapping, mind torture and life-threatening situations. But no, not really. Guess thats the result of wanting to create a horror and end up writing a kids manga. Maybe it wouldn’t work having all the psychology around those traumatic events in a kids manga.

So it’s not that they care less about Bakura, just less about… everything..

Seriously, this is such a beautiful comparison to not only Seto’s growth over the course of the series, but YGO’s message in general. 

Zarathustra starts off alone in the dark, gloomy mountains and through his journeys and encounters with those around him, he opens his heart and ultimately ends in light. (The first lines reading, “When Zarathustra was thirty years old, he left his home and the lake of his home, and went into the mountains. There he enjoyed his spirit and solitude, and for ten years did not weary of it. But at last his heart changed,—and rising one morning with the rosy dawn, he went before the sun, and spake thus unto it  “ and the last, “Thus spake Zarathustra and left his cave, glowing and strong, like a morning sun coming out of gloomy mountains.”)

During the Millennium World arc, Kisara tells Priest Seto to let go of the darkness in him and accept the light— which he learns is love. Even the final words of the series are: “Everyone has a story, and that story ends in light.”

Showing Also Spracha Zarathustra in one of the series’s opening moments was actually perfect. It kind of brings everything full circle, if you think about it— for Seto and for the others (especially Atem). Both their stories began alone, in darkness— but in the end they both came out stronger due to the power of those they met, and though they return to where they came from, their stories end, like Zarathustra’s, in light.

One of the things I was always sad we never saw was the transition of Jounouchi from bully to Yugi’s best friend.  We saw how Yugi won him over and how Jounouchi responded, but we never got a clear picture of how things changed for them directly afterwards, especially with Anzu involved.

Jounouchi used to pick on Yugi, used to bully him.  Even if Yugi accepted his overture of friendship right off the bat with no suspicion, I can’t imagine Anzu was so easy to placate.  She would have been looking at Jounouchi and Yugi’s interactions very carefully (and judgmentally) in the beginning, something I can’t see Jounouchi taking very well.

If you read the first chapter, it’s pretty clear Anzu and Yugi have drifted apart somewhat through the years.  Sugoroku expresses surprise to see her when she stops by the game shop, and even comments on how her physical appearance has change, meaning she hasn’t been there for quite some time.  Even so, Anzu is still protective of her childhood friend, and doesn’t want to see him taken advantage of by someone who might just be pretending to be his friend in order to torment him further.

So, perhaps this is reading into things too much, but I could easily see Jounouchi spending more time with Yugi leading to Anzu spending more time with Yugi, rekindling a friendship that had otherwise died down somewhat.

I think you’re exactly right with that! Subconscious friendship jealousy is probably the reason Anzu decided to hang out with the dork trio outside of class.

And now that I’m thinking about it - all evidence points to chapter one being the first day of school; the school festival chapter takes place one week after the start of school, so it’s likely that Jounouchi didn’t actually have a track record of bullying Yuugi until the very day they met (and I’m pretty sure they went to different middle schools). Meaning, he only teased Yuugi that one time before he “saw the light” or whatever; so there wasn’t that much of a history between the two of them. I think it was an isolated event, and thus, much easier for Yuugi to forgive.

In chapters two through seven, we sort of see Jou’s relationship with Yuugi develop. Jou tries his damnedest to be what he deems to be a “good friend” - but things are still a little awkward between them. Yuugi’s too shy to voice his witty remarks, and Jou is just VERY PASSIONATE about helping his little buddy. I think Jou’s desperation to prove himself is what really made their friendship blossom like it did.

I’d also like to add onto that. If it was the first week of highschool, then the reason Yugi and Anzu probably weren’t close at that point was probably due to the fact Anzu may have gone through a faze (like most pre-teen girls) where she wanted to be accepted by her peers and drifted off from Yugi since he’s seen as The Weird Kid. She didn’t want to be ostracized so she probably dumped him as a friend to a degree, but then after a point, saw that she was wrong and started looking out for Yugi again. They still have a degree of contact, but it’s not the same as when they were kids until Jounouchi and the others come in.

Then there’s Jounouchi, who the others learn was part of a gang in middle school, so the reason Jounouchi’s so desperate is because he did a lot of crap with the gang he feels regret over and wants to make it up to a degree. At the start, his bullying was because he was just *so used* to doing that to people, and then Yugi just flips his world upside-down by protecting him from Ushio despite his previous actions that he realizes *Yugi* is the guy he wants to be. He’s the complete opposite person of the group he’s been hanging out with, and he wants to become the sort who would do anything for his friends because he *wants* to. Not because its an order, or it could get him hurt.

Jounouchi being an actual dweeb is the best (and can we talk about how he hugs the pillow?)

the goofy smile he has in his sleep kills me

I don’t want to ruin the mood (although I will), it’s just that I really like reading about such little traits, as Jou sleeping with lights on, that are easyly overseen.
Or forgotten. Like him having a drinking father.
And here goes the mood.

And in the Character Book (translation by yugiohbibleproject):

How known is that actually?