Text/Okny, Lushark
mourning.
For most of the world’s well-known cartoonists, their names often accompany the most important works in their lives, just as “Doraemon” for Fujiko F. Fujio, or “Legend of Sword Wind”. In Miura Kentaro.
The same goes for manga artist Kazuya Takahashi. As the creator of the series of comics “Game King”, he is better known by the pseudonym “Takahashi Kazuki”.
In 1999, the card game “Yu-Gi-Oh”, a card game based on comic content, was born. In the more than 20 years that followed, Yu-Gi-Oh! has sold more than 35 billion cards worldwide, and is known as one of the three major TCGs in the world. With fresh vitality – and all of this is naturally inseparable from its creator Takahashi.
On the morning of July 6, the Japanese police found the remains of a man wearing snorkeling equipment on the Anwa coast in Nago City, Okinawa Prefecture, and later identified him as Kazuki Takahashi, who was 60 years old.
1
In the Jump comics in the 1980s and 1990s, two cartoonists with the same surname “Takahashi” were active. One was Rumiko Takahashi who created works such as “Lucky Star Boy” and “Inuyasha”. The darling of the comic trend”, almost what he painted in his creative career;
In contrast, Takahashi and Nozomi, who share the same surname as her, have had much more tortuous encounters.
In 1981, the first work “ING! LOVE BALL” (ING! ラブボール), the first work of Kazuki Takahashi, who was still a student at the time, was successfully shortlisted for the 8th Shogakukan Rookie Manga Award. Mr. Fujiko F. Fujio, the author of “Doraemon”, affirmed his debut, and hoped that he could put more effort into the arrangement of stories and characters-Fujiko F. Fujio is Takahashi Kazuki One of his idols, his encouragement became an important driving force behind Takahashi’s creation.
In the following years, Takahashi and Nozomi worked as commercial illustrators, while insisting on contributing to Shueisha, serializing several works such as “The King of the Eagle” and “Burray”, which are just commercial achievements. And word-of-mouth response is mediocre. By the time he started to create “Yu-Gi-Oh”, it had been fifteen years since his debut.
Contrary to the memories of the vast majority of “Yu-Gi-Oh” animation viewers, the gloomy early style of the “Yu-Gi-Oh” comics may shatter many people’s childhood dreams.
The highly popular character in the work, the male No. 2 Seahorse Seto, can be said to be omnipotent in the early stages of the story. The bloody and cruel guillotine mechanism and the deadly stun gun props are all only to completely destroy the protagonist and his party. The overall tone of the work in the early stage is wild.
If readers are still impressed by the debut of the “Dark Mage” in the first episode of the animation, most of them will remember that after the duel, the dark personality of the protagonist Muto Game launched “Mind Break” on Kaiba Seto The whitewashed picture.
Although Seto Kaima in the anime version forgot his previous evil deeds as if he was nothing, but in fact, in the comic version, Kaima became a vegetative person under the influence of this mental attack, and stayed in the hospital for several times. moon.
The appearance of these bridges is largely because Takahashi is imitating the popular “JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure” at the time and trying a dark fantasy style.
President Haima is also almost a DIO-type “pure villain”
The original comics focused on depicting the evil stories of these madmen in the early days. The villains are domineering and the protagonists are not soft-hearted. The “weapons” used in the battle between them are all kinds of strange little games. From simply rolling dice to killing cars, the focus of the content is to emphasize the various games themselves, living up to the name of “Yu-Gi-Oh!”.
It is in such a gloomy and dark atmosphere that Chapter 9 of the comic introduces a card game called “Magic and Witchcraft”. The game obviously pays homage to the collectible card game “Magic the Gathering”, which was born in 1993. Under the superb brushwork of Takahashi Kazuki, the monsters he created are different in shape and full of tension, accurately grasping the readers. The pursuit of fantasy elements.
The popularity of “Yu-Gi-Oh” in this chapter is extraordinary, raising the popularity of this serialized work to a higher level.
“Demon” and “Dragon” are the core designs of “Yu-Gi-Oh” that remain unchanged for thousands of years
However, Takahashi Kazuki did not characterize “Yu-Gi-Oh” as a card game comic in this regard. After this story ended, the manga entered the 16-episode Death-T chapter, which was still the main game with all kinds of weirdness, and as a result, the popularity of the serialization also declined. At the end of the Death-T chapter, the popularity of this work fell to the bottom for a while, and even faced a cut in half.
The Y-axis is the popularity ranking of the works, and “Yu-Gi-Oh” even ranked 20th in the downturn.
According to subsequent interviews, the Death-T chapter is the part that Takahashi and Nozomi are most satisfied with, but readers are obviously more interested in the card game that appeared earlier. After some struggles to no avail, Takahashi and Nozomi finally decided to make “playing cards” the focus of the comics. It turned out that this choice changed his life.
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In fact, long before the transformation of comics, the toy manufacturer Bandai bought the peripheral copyright of “Yu-Gi-Oh”, launched a large number of peripheral toys around the bizarre games in the early comics, and also produced corresponding animations for publicity.
This version of the animation is commonly known as the “Asahi version” in China. Due to the perfunctory production and a large number of collapsed paintings, it has been labeled as “black history” among fans, and it has become a story that everyone has heard of but no one has watched at the same time. old urban legend.
The hair color of the popular character Kaiba Seto in this version of the anime has been changed to green
In the same situation as the manga, the Asahi animation did not make any waves. At this time, Bandai also launched the card peripherals of “magic and witchcraft”, but it did not build a reasonable rule system for it, and it was completely unable to play the charm of the card game in the original work.
Bandai version cards, which are now out of print, also have a good price in the market
Until February 1999, the disheartened Bandai sold all the production rights around “Yu-Gi-Oh” to Konami, and the alternation of the old and new eras officially came.
After taking over “Yu-Gi-Oh”, Konami carried forward the strengths of his own game design, further improved the rules of the original work, determined the relevant terms and chose to express them rigorously. At that time, Konami named the rule “Master Rule”, and the name of “Master” has continued to today’s “Yu-Gi-Oh!”.
The latest game of “Game King” is “Master Duel”
The collectible card in the name of “Yu-Gi-Oh” was released, and it became an instant hit. When the well-known “Dark Mage” was released, the original event venue, Tokyo Dome, was filled with enthusiasm from the duelists, and the police were even dispatched to maintain public order that night.
An estimated 55,000 people attended the event for 10,000 people
In 1999, the year the “Yu-Gi-Oh” card was officially released, Takahashi and Nozomi’s public tax payment rushed to the first place in the Japanese cultural sector, with a total of more than 400 million yen, more than the second-ranked bird. Shan Ming is still a lot higher.
According to the original copyright negotiation between Konami and Takahashi Kazuki, the LOGO of the original comic will be printed on the back of each card sold, which also allows Takahashi and Kazuki to get a share of the royalties for every card sold, even if it is as low as 1% is scary enough in the face of tens of billions of card sales.
In fact, in the second year, Takahashi and Nozomi’s tax payment dropped a lot, and after that, they were not as good as cartoonists such as Takahashi Rumiko and Aoyama Gosho for a long time. This may be because after the card game became popular, Konami adjusted the relationship with Takahashi and Nozomi. In 2004, due to the change of the Privacy Act, Japan no longer discloses the list of high taxpayers, and the income of cartoonists can only be calculated based on the sales of cartoons, and the actual income of Takahashi and Nozomi has become a mystery. .
But as long as you talk about the income of Japanese cartoonists, someone will definitely mention Takahashi Kazuki, which to a certain extent comes from a short documentary that once visited his house. In the film, you can see that the Takahashi family has rows of showcase collections. With all kinds of Yu-Gi-Oh!
At the same time, there are also exquisitely decorated private cinemas, bars, entertainment halls, and workshops in the Gaoqiao Mansion. They can be called “luxury houses” in all aspects, which perfectly fits the comfortable life of “laying down and making money” in the imagination of the public.
But material life is obviously not all that Kazuki Takahashi pursues as a cartoonist.
3
For Konami, “Yu-Gi-Oh” has become a cash cow. Whether it is a derivative animation or an original manga, of course, it is best to promote the product as the first priority; but for Kazuki Takahashi, who is a cartoonist, “Yu-Gi-Oh!” ” is his work that has finally gained attention and recognition after many years, and Takahashi is naturally unwilling to give up his desire for expression and make it a pure money-making tool.
The compromise and tug of war between the two sides have always been reflected in the development history of Yu-Gi-Oh!
As the original author, Kazuki Takahashi has the final right to interpret the work. Even if Konami bought the surrounding copyright, he has no right to point out the original work. Comics often make some compromises with the established rules in order to show the conflict and unexpectedness of the story. The inconsistent behavior of “chuqian” was dubbed “kouhu” at that time, but now kouhu has become a general term. noun.
In order to defeat the “Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon”, which seemed “invincible” at the time, the game chose to fuse the dark attribute “Mammoth’s Graveyard” with the opponent’s light attribute “Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon”, and repel the attributes to make it self-sufficient. Destruction, it was quite a nonsense tactic 20 years ago
However, when it came to the animation funded by Konami, for the consistency and rigor of the rules, the duel details of the original had to be modified. At that time, it was Hikokubo Masahiro who was in charge of the animation “duel structure”, and he has also been involved in the duel structure of the series in future animation production.
As the story progresses to the later stage, this contradiction is further highlighted – the card-playing part in Takahashi’s writings becomes less and less, and instead, a heroic epic that spans generations is unfolded to readers; but Konami, in order to complete the task of selling cards, A lot of original chapters had to be inserted into the animation to emphasize the presence of playing cards.
Fortunately, these original stories have a good reputation. The popular card “Olihagang’s Enchantment” is from the original “Doma Chapter”
According to Takahashi Kazuki’s interview with Kaima Seto’s voice actor Tsuda Kenjiro, Takahashi’s own attitude towards “Yu-Gi-Oh” cards is actually very complicated. He believes that “cards are just tools, and the most important thing in comics is the characters themselves”, which coincides with the comments that Mr. Fujiko F. Fujio gave him back then.
In 2004, Takahashi Kazuki drew an end to the eight-year serialization of “Yu-Gi-Oh”, and no longer led the follow-up works, and handed over the expansion of card gameplay to Konami, and only participated in some character design and supervision work. Entered a state of “semi-retirement”.
When talking about this game that changed his life, Takahashi said in the early days that he had only “played it a few times”, and when Konami later released “Yu-Gi-Oh! It is to admit frankly that he “often loses to heavy krypton players”. Considering his economic strength and depth of collection, this rich man obviously did not take this game seriously.
Later “Yu-Gi-Oh” introduced dazzling summoning methods such as coherence, excess, and pendulum, but it has no direct connection with Takahashi and Nozomi. In 2020, “Yu-Gi-Oh” has entered a new era, and the seventh game in the series adopts a new gameplay and world view. Since then, even the name of Takahashi Kazuki no longer appears in the “original” column.
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Even though the freedom of wealth has long been realized, painting is undoubtedly still Takahashi Kazuki’s heart. From time to time, he will post the latest paintings on his blog and Instagram from time to time. Some of the paintings are also by him.
Takahashi and Nozeng said that his childhood dream was actually to join the Tsuburaya company that filmed the “Ultraman” series to become a monster designer. From a certain point of view, his wish has indeed been realized.
Even if he no longer dominates the plot content related to Yu-Gi-Oh, Takahashi still participates in the monster design work in the works for a long time, and some cards have traces of his life. 
such as adding your own Shiba Inu to the game
The popular monster “CNO.39 Hope King Hope” that appeared in the animation “ZEXAL” is his proud work. It is a monster he designed on the premise of CG animation, and he tried the performance effect that could not be expressed with a brush.
Hope Emperor Hoperay’s appearance is also a famous scene in the animation known as “handsome”
In 2018, Takahashi made a short comeback and serialized the short comic “THE COMIQ”, a suspenseful reasoning story with a cartoonist as the protagonist.
In the postscript of this manga, Takahashi mentioned that this was the first time he used a tablet to draw in many years, and he really felt the convenience of it, especially when he was able to lie down and draw when he had low back pain – although he himself said It’s an understatement, but it’s clear that Takahashi and Nozomi, like many other manga artists, suffer from various occupational diseases.
In 2019, it was reported that Takahashi and Nozomi were about to publish a new comic book again, and they were cooperating with Marvel to describe the story of Iron Man and Spider-Man. Those who are familiar with Takahashi know that among Japanese cartoonists, Takahashi and Nozomi’s style of painting is biased towards American cartoons, and the opportunity to write Marvel works may indeed be enough for him to come out of the mountain again.
When the comic was officially released, readers discovered that this was a single-piece linkage work of a sketch nature. In the comics, Iron Man and Spider-Man encountered an opponent who summoned monsters through cards.
No matter how you look at this enemy, it is based on the seahorse Seto
Perhaps, no one would have expected that this comic, which spoofed Yu-Gi-Oh in the world view of other works, would become the last public work left by Takahashi Kazuki.
Epilogue
In addition to manga, Takahashi and Nozomi also have a wide range of hobbies. He once mentioned that he was thin and thin when he was a child, and only painting could make him attract the attention of other children and planted the seeds of love for painting. But in the days that followed, Takahashi was keen to participate in various outdoor activities and had a strong body, which was completely different from the image of a weak professional cartoonist in everyone’s imagination.
Other cartoonists have been impressed by Takahashi’s butterfly swimming in the river
It is precisely for this reason that the news of Takahashi’s death now seems particularly sudden.
In 2019, Takahashi and Nozomi also attended the Magic Monaco exhibition in Monaco as judges for a manga competition. Although he is over sixty years old, he is still in good spirits and dressed in fashion.
After the game, Takahashi also answered questions from the audience about his painting career, the creation of Yu-Gi-Oh, and the past and future of this card game. At the end of the interactive session, the host invited him to paint a picture on the spot to thank the fans for their continuous support, “A picture is worth a thousand words” (A
picture is worth a thousand words).
Takahashi did not draw any sketches. With a marker in his hand, he began to ink, first the eyes and face, then the hair and outline. Six minutes later, the image of the dark game appeared on the paper. “Game King” readers and fans prefer to use another word to call the protagonist, “King-like”.
Image via Blog: In the name of the pharaoh
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