CHARACTER Character Name: Ryou Bakura Canon: Yu-Gi-Oh Age: 16 Timeline: After the Yu-Gi-Oh: Duelist manga, but not the resolution of the Millennium World arc If playing another character from the same canon, how will you deal with this?: The only time this would become relevant is in both Bakuras referencing each other, in which case I would be applying them both because they coexist with each other. They’re used to sharing headspace and talk to each other often, so it’s not so much playing another character as two sides of the same coin! I just thought it prudent to apply them both so as to show all sides of them. :3
Personality: Ryou Bakura is a most confusing young boy. For the most part, he’s identified mainly as a member of Yugi’s group of friends, the least mentioned one and of course, the owner of the Millenium Ring. He is most infamously known to house the soul of the dark entity of the Ring which goes by his name for brevity’s sake, and there is little more to him than that in the storyline, particularly the anime storyline.
Ryou, however, is more than just a host. The dark entity—his Yami—only has access to what he has access to as a student and as a citizen of Domino. As such, their deck is one they both share an interest in. Judging by the conversation that Ryou shares with Jonouchi around the start of the Battle City tournament, it can be inferred that he is interested in occult themes, and study of his overall Duel Monsters deck structure shows that this is very true. Necromancy, spiritualism, ghosts, and demonlike creatures are a part of the deck Yami Bakura uses against Yugi in the finals of Battle City.
Ryou also shows a deep interest in table-top RPG games, including “Monster World,” which is arguably a Yu-Gi-Oh variant of Dungeons and Dragons or something similar. He has admitted to spending an entire night awake thinking up a campaign, and he owns a great deal of table-top RPG paraphernalia.
More specifically to his personality…as stated, Ryou is usually considered in-canon as a side-character when he’s not possessed by his Yami. And this is true, as well as proven consistent by the way he is excluded from even joining Yugi, Anzu, Honda, and Jonouchi in viewing the Pharaoh’s memories for “containing evil in his heart.” It boils down to his unimportance without his Yami.
Because of this, and in part due to his penchant to dwell on the side of dark themes, he tends to take a fatalistic outlook on things concerning himself when the chips are down. And he can be very overemotional when pushed, as seen again, when he was banned from viewing the Pharaoh’s memories. He bolted from the room in tears. But just as he can express his sorrow openly, Bakura also has a strength of heart that cannot be dampened entirely. The very first time he met Yugi and friends, his Yami arranged for them to start a campaign of “Monster World,” and through cheating and use of the Millennium Ring, sealed all of the others’ souls into their lead figures…with the exception of Yugi’s alter-ego, Yami Yugi. Later in the game, Bakura makes his presence known by controlling the game's computer, influencing his own alter-ego’s rolls negatively, imposing his own NPC character into the game, and eventually sacrificing his soul to make sure his friends were safe.
Bakura has a very polite outward demeanor, which makes him easy to be taken advantage of, and leads to bullying. Karita, the gym teacher at his high school, even went so far as to demand he cut his hair, yanking on it and saying he was not to return without having gotten a crew cut by the next school day. Ryou doesn’t say anything to this, and just asks to be left alone by his peers once the teacher stops picking on him.
Another attribute that should be noted is that Bakura is quite smart. Being one of Yugi’s only friends short of Jonouchi who actually follows the game of Duel Monsters, he is the one who usually makes commentary on the matches in the anime, and explains strategy out. He would probably be far more successful and independent if not for the spirit of the ring, given that he successfully—if unwillingly—is able to live alone in his apartment, and run his own campaigns in Monster World as the “Dark Master” (It pretty much equates to a DM for a DnD game, let’s be real).
History: (Note that, because of how little is actually expressly stated about Ryou Bakura’s personal life, a lot of this is headcanoned, as it would be for a Fandom OC)
Ryou is the son of an archaeologist, a man who is infrequently around to see his son. The fact of the matter is that his father is the only immediate family Bakura has left. When first speaking to Yugi and friends about his circumstances, Ryou appears to be forthcoming with saying that his family no longer lives with him, and that his constant transferring has estranged him from living with them at all. The truth of this is that his mother and sister are deceased, passed away in a car accident years ago. He still writes letters to his sister Amane in a manner akin to diary entries, referring to both her and his mother as if they might just be living in an estranged environment. This isn’t the first time Bakura’s been untruthful with information, but it is one of the few times he gets away with it entirely. No one in the series really asks him much about his family anyway, so he doesn’t have to talk about it. Call it lying by omission.
Bakura’s mother was Japanese, but his father is English, which accounts for his being bilingual and for his English accent. He was born in Japan, but his father’s archaeology work naturally brought the family to many places, not the least of which was, conveniently enough, England itself. They lived there for a short period when Ryou was young in order for his father to pursue studies in the field of Egyptology, and it wasn’t a permanent settlement by any means, because Ryou’s mother had a tendency towards homesickness, and her husband could only indulge her. It was something he eventually came to regret, as it was in Japan that both wife and daughter were killed.
The years leading up to it were not nearly so bad, however. At least, not as bad as they could have been. Ryou and Amane were bright, happy children; perfect siblings who got along, took care of each other, and shared every moment they could. Even though Amane was some years younger, she was something of a support system to her older brother, who unfortunately had a very big physical difference from her and her father, yet something he shared with his mother.
Ryou was born with a degree of albinism. His hair is silvery white while his skin is pale, though his eyes are dark brown. His mother shared this trait with him. Amane however, turned out with black hair and brown eyes, albeit in a similar style to her brother’s. She was a full year younger than him and attended different classes than he did, so for the most part, Amane did not see how her brother was ostracized at first, and didn’t understand it. She just knew he was unhappy with himself, and chose to try and uplift him in any way she could. She would style her hair like his, clamor for his attention until he was too distracted to be upset…do anything to make him laugh. Ryou was ever so appreciative…it was quite endearing to him.
So when his family was broken apart…things became different. Radically different.
His father threw himself into his work more than ever, and they moved to a different part of Japan. Ryou drew into himself. There was a length of time that he wouldn’t speak at all, he’d just go along with his schoolwork. He was intelligent and answered when spoken to, but only at that time. And all of the bullies, all of the boys that would make fun of him for his white hair and pale skin…those boys that Amane never really understood she helped protect his feelings from…he could ignore them because he simply didn’t care anymore. His sister wasn’t there, why should he care?
His behavior was eventually noticed by a counselor in school, someone who realized the young boy was not presenting as happily as he should, nor socializing with his classmates like the other gradeschoolers should be doing at his age. And while she couldn’t get him to talk too much about the issue, she did get him to discuss a little bit about Amane, enough for the woman to discern what Ryou was feeling. She suggested a small exercise that might help him feel better—writing letters to his sister.
…Admittedly, Bakura never stopped. And honestly, there wasn’t much need to. He felt like he was able to socialize again, and it made him happy to talk to his sister again. Even if he couldn’t really speak to her, sending letters to a pen pal…it felt real. Even if they never wrote back. So he’d write diaries of letters to Amane. It was a habit he never disclosed to his father.
The older Ryou got, the more his father became estranged from him. And the older Ryou got, the more he began to feel that it had something to do with the way he looked. He harbored no illusions here: he had his father’s facial structure perhaps, his severe eyebrows if he ever got angry. But his eyes, the hair…and the smile. It was his mother’s. It probably hurt to see…and he didn’t fault his father for wanting to look away from that a bit. But the man seemed to feel neglectful of his only family, and while he would travel for his archaeology career, he would visit sometimes, spend days at home and ask Ryou how he was, what he was up to and his interests, how he was doing in school..and he would always bring a gift for Ryou’s birthday.
It was on Ryou’s fifteenth that his father brought him the Millennium Ring. Ryou thought it was extremely impressive, and it seemed to resonate with him. By this point in his life, he’d begun to take an interest in the occult, and his father had therefore bought him this ring in a merchant’s bazaar, hearing that it possessed some sort of link to Ancient Egyptian lore steeped in darkness, and that it was supposedly “cursed” or some such thing. He didn’t believe in such things, but it was an interesting piece of history, with an interesting shape at that. So he brought it to his son. Ryou took a very keen liking to the Ring, and wore it at all times. It was a very tangible and nice reminder that yes, he did have family, and yes, his family did still care about him, even if he wasn’t always around.
As far as his social life went after Amane and his mother’s passing, Ryou did suffer some stress and bullying. He was always accustomed to the bullying before, and now was no different. Writing letters helped to distract him, and just because he was different didn’t mean he couldn’t find a shared interest with others. His calling, it seemed, was in table top RPGs. A few years before he transferred to Domino High, he was introduced to Monster World, and took a liking to the concept. By the time he was in his freshman year, he was an accomplished Dark Master making his own campaigns, creating his own boards, and crafting his own pieces. He was quite good at it too. Of course…it was also around this time that strange things began to happen. Friends he made, the sparse few that took an interest in what he did…they began to fall into strange comas after playing with him. It became enough of a burden that even he couldn’t avoid the sheer discrimination and blame for it. He transferred many times, and while his father did pay for it…he was unhappy until he finally settled at Domino High. There, he met Yugi, Jonouchi, Anzu, and Honda. All of them seemed to accept him fairly well, and although he did have a nasty brush with the gym teacher that ended in a threat and an unfair order to cut his long, white hair…Bakura didn’t seem to mind.
It was that night, though…that he finally became aware of the spirit housed in his pendant. A spirit that insisted it only wanted to protect its “landlord,” and to “pay rent” for sharing a body with him. That was the first time he was aware that he’d been possessed, not that he knew what had happened. But the spirit hinted enough for him to infer previously that it was he who had hospitalized Ryou’s friends, by way of shadow games, and that he sought to steal Yugi’s Millenium Puzzle now.
Bakura does very little, and there isn’t much he can do, while his Yami steals his new friends’ souls and runs them through the Monster World gauntlet. Only through their luck are they able to injure the enemy boss, Zorc, enough to affect Yami Bakura, to whom he seems to have a connection. Severing Zorc’s hand seems to free Ryou to use it, and he sabotages the dark spirit several times before that very hand is impaled upon a castle spire. Through Zorc’s wound, his own NPC is willed into the game to help his friends, and by sheer force of will, he interrupts Yami Bakura’s soul sealing spell, which is meant to put a piece of the dark spirit’s soul into a set of “Doppleganger Dice” so that he will roll perfect for his last turn. Instead of using part of Yami Bakura’s soul, Ryou forces his own soul into the dice to destroy them.
This is the first time he’s foiled his Yami, showing great resolve and bravery, as well as self-sacrifice, but not the last. Throughout Duelist Kingdom, he’s fairly free of his Yami’s influence, though he does still, for whatever reason, wear the Millennium Ring. It proves helpful in leading the group through the caves they get trapped in by Bandit Keith Howard, though it is then that he is beseeched again by the supposedly-long-gone spirit to accept his help. The spirit offers to help Ryou solve the riddle that the Meikyuu brothers are subjecting Yugi and Jonouchi to, which he seems to accept, because the spirit does indeed speak out in assistance. Then he’s gone again, and Ryou seems not to notice.
The next time he appears…is to steal Pegasus’ Millennium Eye fresh from the socket, something Ryou once again seems unaware of. Just as he’s unaware of his spirit offering to “help” Yugi in Otogi’s game shop, when he’s faced with a maddened old man possessed with the thought of revenge against the Mutou line, and the subsequent sealing of the spirit’s soul—partially—into Yugi’s Puzzle.
Ryou remains woefully unaware of anything his spirit does during Battle City for the most part too, including his escapades through the museum searching for the Millenium Necklace/Tauk, his deal with Malik, and he’s pretty clueless on the fact that it’s his Yami who had cut his arm open in the first place and hospitalized him through half of the tournament.
Hell, he hardly seems aware that he’s a finalist in the tournament because he never meant to participate. Of course…that’s how it usually is…and it wouldn’t be the last time he would be used.
[Canon OC] Ryou Bakura || Yu-Gi-Oh || Not Reserved || 2/?
Character Name: Ryou Bakura
Canon: Yu-Gi-Oh
Age: 16
Timeline: After the Yu-Gi-Oh: Duelist manga, but not the resolution of the Millennium World arc
If playing another character from the same canon, how will you deal with this?: The only time this would become relevant is in both Bakuras referencing each other, in which case I would be applying them both because they coexist with each other. They’re used to sharing headspace and talk to each other often, so it’s not so much playing another character as two sides of the same coin! I just thought it prudent to apply them both so as to show all sides of them. :3
Personality: Ryou Bakura is a most confusing young boy. For the most part, he’s identified mainly as a member of Yugi’s group of friends, the least mentioned one and of course, the owner of the Millenium Ring. He is most infamously known to house the soul of the dark entity of the Ring which goes by his name for brevity’s sake, and there is little more to him than that in the storyline, particularly the anime storyline.
Ryou, however, is more than just a host. The dark entity—his Yami—only has access to what he has access to as a student and as a citizen of Domino. As such, their deck is one they both share an interest in. Judging by the conversation that Ryou shares with Jonouchi around the start of the Battle City tournament, it can be inferred that he is interested in occult themes, and study of his overall Duel Monsters deck structure shows that this is very true. Necromancy, spiritualism, ghosts, and demonlike creatures are a part of the deck Yami Bakura uses against Yugi in the finals of Battle City.
Ryou also shows a deep interest in table-top RPG games, including “Monster World,” which is arguably a Yu-Gi-Oh variant of Dungeons and Dragons or something similar. He has admitted to spending an entire night awake thinking up a campaign, and he owns a great deal of table-top RPG paraphernalia.
More specifically to his personality…as stated, Ryou is usually considered in-canon as a side-character when he’s not possessed by his Yami. And this is true, as well as proven consistent by the way he is excluded from even joining Yugi, Anzu, Honda, and Jonouchi in viewing the Pharaoh’s memories for “containing evil in his heart.” It boils down to his unimportance without his Yami.
Because of this, and in part due to his penchant to dwell on the side of dark themes, he tends to take a fatalistic outlook on things concerning himself when the chips are down. And he can be very overemotional when pushed, as seen again, when he was banned from viewing the Pharaoh’s memories. He bolted from the room in tears. But just as he can express his sorrow openly, Bakura also has a strength of heart that cannot be dampened entirely. The very first time he met Yugi and friends, his Yami arranged for them to start a campaign of “Monster World,” and through cheating and use of the Millennium Ring, sealed all of the others’ souls into their lead figures…with the exception of Yugi’s alter-ego, Yami Yugi. Later in the game, Bakura makes his presence known by controlling the game's computer, influencing his own alter-ego’s rolls negatively, imposing his own NPC character into the game, and eventually sacrificing his soul to make sure his friends were safe.
Bakura has a very polite outward demeanor, which makes him easy to be taken advantage of, and leads to bullying. Karita, the gym teacher at his high school, even went so far as to demand he cut his hair, yanking on it and saying he was not to return without having gotten a crew cut by the next school day. Ryou doesn’t say anything to this, and just asks to be left alone by his peers once the teacher stops picking on him.
Another attribute that should be noted is that Bakura is quite smart. Being one of Yugi’s only friends short of Jonouchi who actually follows the game of Duel Monsters, he is the one who usually makes commentary on the matches in the anime, and explains strategy out. He would probably be far more successful and independent if not for the spirit of the ring, given that he successfully—if unwillingly—is able to live alone in his apartment, and run his own campaigns in Monster World as the “Dark Master” (It pretty much equates to a DM for a DnD game, let’s be real).
History: (Note that, because of how little is actually expressly stated about Ryou Bakura’s personal life, a lot of this is headcanoned, as it would be for a Fandom OC)
Ryou is the son of an archaeologist, a man who is infrequently around to see his son. The fact of the matter is that his father is the only immediate family Bakura has left. When first speaking to Yugi and friends about his circumstances, Ryou appears to be forthcoming with saying that his family no longer lives with him, and that his constant transferring has estranged him from living with them at all. The truth of this is that his mother and sister are deceased, passed away in a car accident years ago. He still writes letters to his sister Amane in a manner akin to diary entries, referring to both her and his mother as if they might just be living in an estranged environment. This isn’t the first time Bakura’s been untruthful with information, but it is one of the few times he gets away with it entirely. No one in the series really asks him much about his family anyway, so he doesn’t have to talk about it. Call it lying by omission.
Bakura’s mother was Japanese, but his father is English, which accounts for his being bilingual and for his English accent. He was born in Japan, but his father’s archaeology work naturally brought the family to many places, not the least of which was, conveniently enough, England itself. They lived there for a short period when Ryou was young in order for his father to pursue studies in the field of Egyptology, and it wasn’t a permanent settlement by any means, because Ryou’s mother had a tendency towards homesickness, and her husband could only indulge her. It was something he eventually came to regret, as it was in Japan that both wife and daughter were killed.
The years leading up to it were not nearly so bad, however. At least, not as bad as they could have been. Ryou and Amane were bright, happy children; perfect siblings who got along, took care of each other, and shared every moment they could. Even though Amane was some years younger, she was something of a support system to her older brother, who unfortunately had a very big physical difference from her and her father, yet something he shared with his mother.
Ryou was born with a degree of albinism. His hair is silvery white while his skin is pale, though his eyes are dark brown. His mother shared this trait with him. Amane however, turned out with black hair and brown eyes, albeit in a similar style to her brother’s. She was a full year younger than him and attended different classes than he did, so for the most part, Amane did not see how her brother was ostracized at first, and didn’t understand it. She just knew he was unhappy with himself, and chose to try and uplift him in any way she could. She would style her hair like his, clamor for his attention until he was too distracted to be upset…do anything to make him laugh. Ryou was ever so appreciative…it was quite endearing to him.
So when his family was broken apart…things became different. Radically different.
His father threw himself into his work more than ever, and they moved to a different part of Japan. Ryou drew into himself. There was a length of time that he wouldn’t speak at all, he’d just go along with his schoolwork. He was intelligent and answered when spoken to, but only at that time. And all of the bullies, all of the boys that would make fun of him for his white hair and pale skin…those boys that Amane never really understood she helped protect his feelings from…he could ignore them because he simply didn’t care anymore. His sister wasn’t there, why should he care?
His behavior was eventually noticed by a counselor in school, someone who realized the young boy was not presenting as happily as he should, nor socializing with his classmates like the other gradeschoolers should be doing at his age. And while she couldn’t get him to talk too much about the issue, she did get him to discuss a little bit about Amane, enough for the woman to discern what Ryou was feeling. She suggested a small exercise that might help him feel better—writing letters to his sister.
…Admittedly, Bakura never stopped. And honestly, there wasn’t much need to. He felt like he was able to socialize again, and it made him happy to talk to his sister again. Even if he couldn’t really speak to her, sending letters to a pen pal…it felt real. Even if they never wrote back. So he’d write diaries of letters to Amane. It was a habit he never disclosed to his father.
The older Ryou got, the more his father became estranged from him. And the older Ryou got, the more he began to feel that it had something to do with the way he looked. He harbored no illusions here: he had his father’s facial structure perhaps, his severe eyebrows if he ever got angry. But his eyes, the hair…and the smile. It was his mother’s. It probably hurt to see…and he didn’t fault his father for wanting to look away from that a bit. But the man seemed to feel neglectful of his only family, and while he would travel for his archaeology career, he would visit sometimes, spend days at home and ask Ryou how he was, what he was up to and his interests, how he was doing in school..and he would always bring a gift for Ryou’s birthday.
It was on Ryou’s fifteenth that his father brought him the Millennium Ring. Ryou thought it was extremely impressive, and it seemed to resonate with him. By this point in his life, he’d begun to take an interest in the occult, and his father had therefore bought him this ring in a merchant’s bazaar, hearing that it possessed some sort of link to Ancient Egyptian lore steeped in darkness, and that it was supposedly “cursed” or some such thing. He didn’t believe in such things, but it was an interesting piece of history, with an interesting shape at that. So he brought it to his son. Ryou took a very keen liking to the Ring, and wore it at all times. It was a very tangible and nice reminder that yes, he did have family, and yes, his family did still care about him, even if he wasn’t always around.
As far as his social life went after Amane and his mother’s passing, Ryou did suffer some stress and bullying. He was always accustomed to the bullying before, and now was no different. Writing letters helped to distract him, and just because he was different didn’t mean he couldn’t find a shared interest with others. His calling, it seemed, was in table top RPGs. A few years before he transferred to Domino High, he was introduced to Monster World, and took a liking to the concept. By the time he was in his freshman year, he was an accomplished Dark Master making his own campaigns, creating his own boards, and crafting his own pieces. He was quite good at it too. Of course…it was also around this time that strange things began to happen. Friends he made, the sparse few that took an interest in what he did…they began to fall into strange comas after playing with him. It became enough of a burden that even he couldn’t avoid the sheer discrimination and blame for it. He transferred many times, and while his father did pay for it…he was unhappy until he finally settled at Domino High. There, he met Yugi, Jonouchi, Anzu, and Honda. All of them seemed to accept him fairly well, and although he did have a nasty brush with the gym teacher that ended in a threat and an unfair order to cut his long, white hair…Bakura didn’t seem to mind.
It was that night, though…that he finally became aware of the spirit housed in his pendant. A spirit that insisted it only wanted to protect its “landlord,” and to “pay rent” for sharing a body with him. That was the first time he was aware that he’d been possessed, not that he knew what had happened. But the spirit hinted enough for him to infer previously that it was he who had hospitalized Ryou’s friends, by way of shadow games, and that he sought to steal Yugi’s Millenium Puzzle now.
Bakura does very little, and there isn’t much he can do, while his Yami steals his new friends’ souls and runs them through the Monster World gauntlet. Only through their luck are they able to injure the enemy boss, Zorc, enough to affect Yami Bakura, to whom he seems to have a connection. Severing Zorc’s hand seems to free Ryou to use it, and he sabotages the dark spirit several times before that very hand is impaled upon a castle spire. Through Zorc’s wound, his own NPC is willed into the game to help his friends, and by sheer force of will, he interrupts Yami Bakura’s soul sealing spell, which is meant to put a piece of the dark spirit’s soul into a set of “Doppleganger Dice” so that he will roll perfect for his last turn. Instead of using part of Yami Bakura’s soul, Ryou forces his own soul into the dice to destroy them.
This is the first time he’s foiled his Yami, showing great resolve and bravery, as well as self-sacrifice, but not the last. Throughout Duelist Kingdom, he’s fairly free of his Yami’s influence, though he does still, for whatever reason, wear the Millennium Ring. It proves helpful in leading the group through the caves they get trapped in by Bandit Keith Howard, though it is then that he is beseeched again by the supposedly-long-gone spirit to accept his help. The spirit offers to help Ryou solve the riddle that the Meikyuu brothers are subjecting Yugi and Jonouchi to, which he seems to accept, because the spirit does indeed speak out in assistance. Then he’s gone again, and Ryou seems not to notice.
The next time he appears…is to steal Pegasus’ Millennium Eye fresh from the socket, something Ryou once again seems unaware of. Just as he’s unaware of his spirit offering to “help” Yugi in Otogi’s game shop, when he’s faced with a maddened old man possessed with the thought of revenge against the Mutou line, and the subsequent sealing of the spirit’s soul—partially—into Yugi’s Puzzle.
Ryou remains woefully unaware of anything his spirit does during Battle City for the most part too, including his escapades through the museum searching for the Millenium Necklace/Tauk, his deal with Malik, and he’s pretty clueless on the fact that it’s his Yami who had cut his arm open in the first place and hospitalized him through half of the tournament.
Hell, he hardly seems aware that he’s a finalist in the tournament because he never meant to participate. Of course…that’s how it usually is…and it wouldn’t be the last time he would be used.