Kazuki Takahashi, best known as an inventor Yu-Gi-Ohwas an artist and creative with an innate talent, always looking for new ideas to develop in his works and able to transfer to others the tremendous passion he put into his work to make it limitless and possibly make forever.
The discovery of his body on the morning of July 6, 2022 on the coast of Nago, Okinawa Prefecture shocked the entire fan base. But even though the master has left us, His imagination continues to pervade various areas of entertainmentand for this reason we want to commemorate the importance of his work by tracing the fundamental stages of his career.
Born October 4, 1961 In Tokyo in the early 1980s, Takahashi began approaching the world of Japanese comics as a mangaka. In 1990 he published the one-shot short story Fighting Falcon on Weekly Shonen Jump, which returned the following year with Tennenshoku Danji Buray and was then released in two tanko copies. While achieving the Weekly Shonen Jump is an incredible milestone, Takahashi has always referred to his early works as “total letdown“.
1996 marks the turning point with the release of the first chapter of Yu-Gi-Ohwhich would remain on the pages of WSJ until 2004. Over the course of eight years, Takahashi was smashed with impressive success and became involved in many projects, which also prompted him to radically change the tones and themes of the series.
In the first 59 chapters The Yu-Gi-Oh manga was not about the card game, originally called Magic & Wizards, but also evolved around other games. It was only after countless requests from fans to WSJ that Takahashi was asked to learn more about the rules of this card game that had such interested readers. Because of this, the series of chapters moved focused on Adventure, sometimes even with horror tonesto a series of Duel Monsters battles and tournaments, such as the famous story arc of the Kingdom of Duelists.
Season 0 of Yu-Gi-Oh, which aired from April to October 1998, scrupulously proposed some of the manga’s opening chapters, and while it was hugely popular in Japan, it never crossed those boundaries due to the presence of violence and the lack of clues on the card game. However, in 2000 came the first historical series which created a real-world phenomenon that was followed by the production of subsequent seasons, and the immense popularity of Konami’s deck of cards.
According to data updated to January 2021, the Yu-Gi-Oh deck would have sold more than 35 billion cards worldwide, which also has excellent earnings thanks to video games like Duel Links and the latest Master Duel, as well as the competitive scene. A life full of successes that unfortunately ended prematurely and that we will always remember the amazing artistry and imagination of the great Takahashi.
