By: Jiahao Chen
A body dressed completely in snorkeling gear was found drifting off the southern Japanese coast of Nago, the nation’s coast guard and local broadcaster NHK claims. This body was then identified as the body of Kazuki Takahashi, 60, the one and only creator of “Yu-Gi-Oh!” Due to his early death, fans are saddened by the death of their favorite manga, anime, and card game creator.
The exact time of the death of “Yu-Gi-Oh’s!” creator was not identified, but his body was found Wednesday. Kazuki died at the age of 60, with one tweet saying, “[y]ou were gone too soon, but rest in peace.”
Kazuki began his job working in the manga industry in 1980, and created “Yu-Gi-Oh!” a decade later. The famous manga’s main character is a spiky-haired outsider in his high school, but he goes on solving an ancient puzzle, becoming a stronger version of himself in “Yu-Gi-Oh, the King of Games and champion battler of evildoers.”
Throughout the years from 1996 to 2004, “Yu-Gi-Oh!” was put in Weekly Shonen Jump, a popular magazine in Japan. The manga became a billion-dollar global project, and in 2011, it was named the biggest card-trading game by Guinness World Records. An estimated 25 billion cards were sold, game maker Konami said.
What made “Yu-Gi-Oh!” so famous and well-known was the main idea. The main idea was Kazuki’s thoughts on how we overcome our fears and become friends with our “monsters” and interact with others. Dockery, the author of the upcoming “Monster Kids: How Pokémon Taught a Generation to Catch Them All” was the first to input this thinking out in public.
The monsters in “Yu-Gi-Oh!” change, too. They first appear as a scary creature but then they become kind and you become attached with a “oh my God, that looks so rad” feeling. The monsters appeal to us because they come from a world fairly similar to us, making them close to us, and tying our deeper feelings to them.
Many friends and fans of Kazuki have shared their feelings about him with Jason Thompson, editor of the English versions of some of the “Yu-Gi-Oh!” mangas sharing his own thoughts. He said “[a]s one of his fans, who also had the privilege to work on the English adaptations of his comics, I’m deeply sad to hear that Takahashi died so young. He was a gracious man who loved games and American comics and was a pleasure to work with.”
Fans have also shared their thoughts in various ways, one being posting on twitter. One fan tweeted, “Yu-gi-oh! defined my taste in anime when I was a kid, and the game got me out of the house and my own head when I needed it most as an adult.” Another soon followed-up this post, saying that “Yu-Gi-Oh!” made a huge impact on our world, saying that it helped stress that we should always face evil boldly and fight for what is right.