30 Day Shipping Meme: Day 23

[aikaterini]

Day 23: Couple you only shipped after a long time

Yugi Mutou/Yami no Yugi (Yu-Gi-Oh):

http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRR2A0NxtWT6Vp9h-LK3zHuarda9-QfHZhu5c9kpreEQjf1uvEcqQ

Because I’m not normally a fan of slash. But two of my friends in high school were and, after hanging out with them in Anime Club for a while and after seeing a lot of fanart and reading a lot of fanfics around these two, I finally got around to shipping Yugi and Yami no Yugi. Yes, even though a lot of arguments against this couple make sense (Anzu is technically Yugi’s love interest/friend, Yami no Yugi is over a thousand years old, he has to leave in the end to go back to his old time, just because they’re close doesn’t mean that they’re romantically involved, etc.) and are usually the arguments that I use for not supporting this yaoi couple or that, I just like these two together. I don’t know what it is. Whether it’s fluffy, angsty, dark, etc., I just find this ship interesting.

Comments

[trinity-destler.livejournal.com]

They are the only slash couple I ship and I will ship them forever. There's so much sense of destiny and complementing each other and completeness to it. There's also a shocking amount of genuinely 'inappropriate for friends' kind of stuff in the manga. Anzu/Tea was never an impediment to their relationship, imo. It's been a long time, but I remember her having a fairly superficial crush on Yami who wasn't into it and not seeing Yuugi himself that way. Yuugi had pined after her, but also in a pretty superficial way.

[aikaterini.livejournal.com]

Oh, I didn't know that you were a fan of "Yu-Gi-Oh". Awesome! ^^

/There's so much sense of destiny and complementing each other and completeness to it. There's also a shocking amount of genuinely 'inappropriate for friends' kind of stuff in the manga./

I've only read parts of the manga, so which scenes are you referring to specifically?

Yugi and Yami (or Yuugi and Yami no Yuugi, but I'll refer to them as the former, because it's easier that way) have a relationship that's rather weird in how it's portrayed. Because in the beginning (at least in the manga), it's a sort of Jekyll and Hyde scenario, with Yugi being the innocent, kind-hearted victim of bullies and Yami being the darker side of him who does some really nasty stuff to those bullies in revenge. But then Yami is massively toned down (at least he is in the anime, but also, to an extent, in the manga if I'm not mistaken) and their relationship becomes more open and mutually supportive. They become less like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and more like best friends who happen to share the same body. Compared with the other yami-hikari pairs (Yami no Malik and Malik, Yami no Bakura and Bakura), they look downright normal.

I don't know, they just seemed like a really sweet ship, once you got past all of the weirdness. Or maybe it was just the fanfics I'd been reading and the fanart I'd seen.

/but I remember her having a fairly superficial crush on Yami who wasn't into it and not seeing Yuugi himself that way/

Yeah, it was pretty much like the Superman-Lois-Clark dynamic from the early comics. The pretty girl favoring the powerful hero over the average, geeky boy, not realizing (irony!) that they're the same person. (Only, in Yugi and Yami's case, not quite, because they share the same body, but Yami's a reincarnated spirit of someone else, so technically he's a different person, but...argh, this is confusing!)

Actually, to go off on a tangent, are there stories where it's the opposite? Where the female love interest adores the average, geeky boy and dislikes or is indifferent to his suave, powerful alter ego? I suppose one example would be Megamind/Roxanne/'Bernard' from "Megamind," but the reason why Roxanne didn't like Megamind was because he was a supervillain, so I'm not sure if that would fit. I wouldn't be surprised if there are more, but I can't think of any off the top of my head.

[trinity-destler.livejournal.com]

Pffft, oh yeah. I've written a bunch of fanfiction and everything.

I've only read parts of the manga, so which scenes are you referring to specifically?

Off the top of my head, there was a few panels about how it was Yami who convinced Yuugi to wear that all-leather bondage outfit and then he's telling him to put on more jewellery because he looks so amazing in it. It seriously felt like flirting. That's sort of tip of the iceberg stuff for them with all their marriedness, but it's one I remember being surprised to discover wasn't a doujinshi.

Yami had been a vengeful spirit, yeah. He wasn't ever really Yuugi's dark side in a consistent way- he's a distinctly external force. In the beginning Yuugi was/owned his vessel, so he protected him. He gets saner and less violent pretty quickly, his protection becomes more personal and less aggressive, and he ends up just as soft in the manga as he was in the anime. IIRC, the others are eventually a lot more aware of him as his own person in the manga, so he's a bit more social.

There did used to be arguments about whether they were actually the same person or Yuugi was Yami's reincarnation or wtf, but I think it's pretty clear by the end that they're individuals who are spiritually connected somehow. A lot of Yu-Gi-Oh! you have to not think about too hard.

Where the female love interest adores the average, geeky boy and dislikes or is indifferent to his suave, powerful alter ego?

There's The Nutty Professor (I've only seen the original, but I'm pretty sure the Eddie Murphy version has this too), and it happened to Daredevil at least once. I think this happened to Thor, too, though Donald Blake is actually a separate person, so it doesn't really count lol. I just know I'm forgetting an obvious one...