bakura ryou/獏良了

ryou is a character from yugioh duel monsters, which is a series that i feel needs no introduction if you've been around the anime scene for even the smallest amount of time. ryou himself, however, requires more explaining.

who is bakura ryou?

ryou is part of duel monsters' main cast... but it doesn't really feel like it since he's so underutilized, both in the manga and the anime. he's the host of the spirit that dwells within the millennium ring (commonly referred to as yami bakura by the western community, sometimes even just bakura for short and occasionally dark bakura in the earlier years), and that's mainly what people know him for. one look within the yugioh community and you're bound to see the spirit more than ryou himself. but we're not here for the spirit, we're here for ryou!

lieu, why do you like a character that has more fanart than manga panels and animation frames?

well... it's hard to explain.
ryou is a mysterious character; you rarely ever get to know him. his feelings about the plot, about the spirit of the ring, about other characters... we rarely ever get his insights about anything regarding yugioh. i feel that's what draws me and other ryou lovers to him: it's easy to project yourself onto him because so much of his character is left up to interpretation.

but! it's not as if we don't know anything about him.

ryou is, in short, a tragic character. he's basically left to the whims of the plot and the poor guy is practically dragged around to suffer. from losing his mother and sister at an early age to getting possessed by an evil spirit that put his friends in comas to getting forced by the same spirit to create a diorama that would kill his friends, dude was just not having a good time!

wait, hold on! let's backtrack a little. i say he was forced to make that diorama, but... we don't really know for sure if he was coerced into doing it by the spirit or if he had any sort of say in the matter. his relationship with the millennium ring, as i've mentioned before, is left up in the air. something important i need to mention is that the millennium ring gets taken away from ryou at one point during the story (though it's different between the manga and the anime). when he finds it again, he's not shown to be scared or irritated or feeling any negative emotion toward it. in fact, he's shown to be ecstatic that it's back:



which begs the question: just what on earth is up with ryou and the spirit of the ring?
this is a question that we'll never get an official answer for, as the creator—kazuki takahashi—never felt a need to address this in detail. sometimes we don't even know if an iconic ryou moment is actually the spirit pretending to be him! that's how little we know about the dynamic between these two and even less about ryou himself.

but throughout it all, we get the overwhelming sense that ryou is a deeply lonely character. he lives alone in an apartment that's just a little too big. he never thinks to ask his friends to help him deal with the spirit that's possessing him and always pushes them away when they offer to help. he was the only main cast member that wasn't allowed into memory world because he was perceived as too evil to enter (as he was housing the spirit of the ring). if we want to go further, even his design alone makes him an outlier of the main cast (white hair? purposefully designed as a bishounen-type character? wearing a school uniform that's a different shade of blue from the domino uniform to show that he's different from the rest of the main cast?). i relate to that character struggle a little too much for my liking, so i suppose that also plays a part in why i like him so much!

this is all based on what's depicted in the manga alone. the anime, on the other hand, erases ryou from a good deal of the story and puts more focus on the spirit occupying him. i also feel like i wouldn't be doing ryou justice if i didn't talk about...

the yugioh fandom (and how ryou has been affected by it)

back in the early stages of the yugioh fandom, it was very common for people to depict ryou as innocent, helpless, passive... essentially what many poor feminine or gnc animanga guys were subjected to back in the day (not to say that it still doesn't happen, but that if you were active in the scene back then you'd know it was VERY common). it didn't help that the anime also contributed to this interpretation, as ryou's agency as a character was mostly stripped away in relation to the millennium ring and he was depicted as helpless to the antics of the ring spirit. this would all only be slightly distasteful... if it hadn't been shown in the manga that ryou is absolutely capable of successfully fighting back against the spirit.



heck, his INTRODUCTORY ARC establishes that:
1. he can and will do anything to defy the spirit of the ring for the sake of his friends should he see fit
2. he has absolutely no sense of self-preservation and is absolutely willing to die for his friends
3. his stubborn/defiant nature plays some part in why he's able to wield the millennium ring and NOT get scorched by it

so yeah. he's absolutely not helpless, but he does definitely get into all sorts of situation doesn't he?

oh wait, i forgot to mention he likes creepy things.



what a funny little guy!




thanks for making it this far through my rambling! i wanted to add some of my favorite images/gifs/videos/etc. of ryou and do a lot more with this page, but i wanted to get this out just in time for his birthday (september 2). it's been more than a year since i became absolutely obsessed with this guy, so i have plenty more to say about him! but that will be for another time.