During the duel with Yugi, while Joey is there cheering for Yugi, Kaiba’s brother Mokuba comes in. There is an exception to this idea that Kaiba has no personal relationships though. Joey isn’t strong enough to be worth his time. When Kaiba comes into Yugi’s grandpa’s game shop, Joey offers for them to duel sometime because of their shared interest in Duel Monsters. At least, until Yugi mentions his grandpa’s rare card… But from his face, this appears to be out of a lack on interest rather than loneliness. Elsewhere in the class, other students are bunched together. Their best friends Téa and Tristan are hanging out next to them with a couple other classmates. There is the first scene after the opening, where Yugi and Joey are having a duel. His ideas on friendship, or any personal relationships, are never made so explicit, but we can read into quite a bit. And one way or another, his Blue Eyes White Dragon card will be mine." Kaiba says, "heart of the cards, ridiculous. An early example comes in the scene immediately after Yugi’s grandpa refuses to sell his Blue Eyes White Dragon. We see Kaiba scoff at the idea of faith as having anything to do with victory throughout the episode. In this search for power, Kaiba proves himself to not only be an antagonist to Yugi, but his mentality is shown to be the antithesis to the series main themes of faith and friendship (more on this later). He believes in power so strongly that his goal for the first half of the episode is to acquire the fourth and final Blue Eyes White Dragon card, just so it could never be used against him. In this first episode, Kaiba wholeheartedly believes that the most important element to winning is power, and more specifically, raw attack power from strong monsters. But rather than jump right into Exodia, I want to start with how these themes are demonstrated in with the first episode’s antagonist, Seto Kaiba. To get to the bottom of this, we’re going to have to talk about the themes of YuGiOh. In a series all about playing games, primarily Duel Monsters (the in-universe name of the YuGiOh card game), what’s purpose of this unbeatable monster showing up so early? While some series might build to a protagonist eventually getting the power of such cards, YuGiOh instead gives them to Yugi right in episode one (“The Heart of the Cards”). Exodia the Forbidden One is such a powerful set of cards that that just holding them all in your hand is enough to win a duel.
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