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A Brief History of Dreams and Illusions

By NeoArkadia — April 23, 2023  11 Comments

Or who are these oddballs anyways?

So, DUELIST NEXUS, the first Core Booster Set of Series 12for the Yu-Gi-Oh! O!cial
Card Game, introduces the new Type 幻想魔 (Gensouma), literally “Illusion Magic”,
that we’re tentatively translating as Illusionist.

Since it’s reveal, a number of people have complained this is a type that seems to be
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 the Diet Soda version of Spellcasters. Well. This isn’t entirely wrong, as the Type’s
history does call back to Spellcasters, all the way back to the 8th volume of the
original manga, from Chapter 62, near the back end of Yugi’s Duel with Pegasus via a
magic infused VHS Tape (for our younger readers, this is basically the ancestor of the
DVD or Blu-Ray), so let’s rundown where it actually showed up…

DAYS LONG AGO

It basically explains in this chapter that “Magic & Wizards”, what the card game played
in the original manga was called, was not a game where just your raw stats decided
things, but also what Attribute your monster or magical entity has can heavily dictate
the flow of the Duel.

The image above refers to the alignment chart of essentially magical entities, which
was arranged into an advantage wheel of:

黒魔族 Kuromazoku (Black Magic Type) which covered “Dark Magician”, “Saggi the
Dark Clown” and Dark Knight-Type that includes “Gaia the Fierce Knight”.

⽩魔族 Shiromazoku (White Magic Type) which covered “Mystical Elf”, “Rogue Doll”
and White Magicians.

悪魔族 Akumazoku (Wicked Magic Type) which covered the entirety of Undead
monsters (i.e. Zombies) as well as Summoned Skull.
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 And finally 幻想魔 Gensoumazoku (Illusion Magic Type) which covered Illusionist
Faceless Mage.

The basic advantage wheel is Black Magic beats White Magic beats Fiends beats
Illusion Magic beats Black Magic.

The main crux of the Duel is that Yugi specialized in Black Magic and Fiend monsters,
and to counter him on this attribute wheel, Pegasus used Illusion and White Magic
monsters to press the young hero and his alternate persona into a massive
disadvantage where he’d use the two to always have a strict advantage, along with
the fact he was hypnotizing Yugi via subluminals to play cards that Pegasus’ monsters
could easily defeat, turning it into ultimately a “I know you know that I know” battle
with a countdown timer.

Naturally to avoid getting too stuck into gotcha traps from the audience in later
chapters, this advantage wheel doesn’t get used in Yugi and Pegasus’ rematch. But
Pegasus’ monsters are still identified as Illusionists in the manga, and cards as such
as Dark Renewal in Battle City references the Black Magic Type. But, this wheel is and
was fundamental to a lot of the foundation of Yu-Gi-Oh!, helping sketch out the
identity of the game that would become Yu-Gi-Oh! beyond Yugi and Kaiba’s matches
in The Cards with Teeth two-parter and the Death-T arc.

ADAPTATION

However, Konami, after getting the rights to create Video Games and a physical card
game, would not forget this alignment wheel, as it came back in their second card
ダークデュエルストーリーズ

game video game, 遊戯王デュエルモンスターズＩＩ 闇 界 決 闘 記 (literally Yu-Gi-Oh!

Duel Monsters II: Dark Duel Stories) not to be confused with the international “Yu-Gi-
Oh! Dark Duel Stories”, a localization of 遊戯王デュエルモンスターズＩＩＩ
トライホーリーゴッドアドバント

三 聖 戦 神 降 臨 (literally Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters III: Tri-Holy God Advent).

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 In this game, 10 “Alignments” were introduced, that fit what we would know in the
O!cial Card Game and Trading Card Game as “Attributes”

These games came with two Alignment Wheels, the first is the four types of magical
entities, the second group belong to more natural monsters in the form of:

⽔ Sui (Water)
炎 Honoo (Fire)
森 Mori (Forest)
⾵ Kaze (Wind)
⼟ Tsuchi (Earth)
雷 Kaminari (Thunder)

This collection basically has Water beat Fire beat Forest beat Wind beat Earth beat
Thunder.

This collection of elements were basically derived from a mix of “The Cards with
Teeth”, Pegasus VS Yugi’s video tap battle and Duelist Kingdom.
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 One can ask why the video games and the O!cial Card Game had such a divergence
in such core elements, but it is probably more likely than not that the Video Game
team(s) and the team in charge of the O!cial Card Game had di#erent sta# with
di#erent opinions and it being the 90s/00s, there wasn’t as much strict oversight and
coordination, but as much of the business details of Yu-Gi-Oh! are a black box, all you
can do is speculate.

But to get back to the point, most fans who got Dark Duel Stories (the international
version) and future games will know the four Magical Alignments by another set of
names:

Shadow (Black Magic)

Light (White Magic)

Fiend (Demon)

Dreams (Illusion Magic)

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 And this usage would basically carry to The Sacred Cards and Reshef of
Destruction, the last games to use the old 10 Alignment Wheels, which were
essentially a last hurrah of the old free wheeling systems before Konami and likely its
business partners decided to buckle down and more strictly and rigidly codify and
enforce the identity of things in Yu-Gi-Oh! with Yu-Gi-Oh! GX onwards.

Basically the end of the ‘Old West’, so to speak.

SO WHY NOT DREAMS?

So why not localize the Type as Dreams?

Basically, to be very upfront, Dreams is basically a compromise localization because

of the amount spaces to write Gensouma in Hiragana, one of the two languages you
could viably do on the Game Boy (the other being Katakana) is five: げんそうま, so
space limitations.

We took our translation from Viz’s o!cial translation of Yu-Gi-Oh! Duelist, the
portions of the Yu-Gi-Oh! manga that cover Duelist Kingdom and Battle City, which is
a more accurate translation:

SO WHO IS A 幻想魔 ANYWAYS

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 We’ve gone into the technical information of the name, its history, and its
localizations, we should be asking ourselves, just who counts as a member of the 幻
想魔 Type based on prior games and the manga. And what the Type’s classic ‘vibes’
would be.

We can break this down, using Reshef of Destruction, the last game to use the
Alignment Wheel, as well as the manga:

+ Spoiler

While as far as the manga goes, Pegasus was the only Duelist confirmed to use
Illusionists, and his monsters under this grouping consisted of “Illusionist Faceless
Mage” as well as the various monsters he used in the second half of his Duel with
Yugi after the Toons were destroyed. So what is the commonality of these monsters?
The powerful ability to control minds and deflect attacks, making it extremely di!cult
for Yugi to actually defeat them due to their hypnotic abilities. And ultimately in
Relinquished’s case, its ability to absorb the very flesh of the foes it absorbs.

(As a side note, Relinquished due to being a Ritual in the old games was listed as a
Divine alignment, an alignment that didn’t fall under either of the two wheels.)
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 “So it’s just a group of Spellcasters, Ark”.

Well, no, Konami expanded on that and it is far more relevant here as they’re using
both the Pegasus hypnosis and illusion aesthetics as well as throwbacks to the Dark
Duel Stores/Sacred Cards/Reshef of Destruction games.

Of what we can see, it basically encompasses flesh warped sorcerers (Helpoemer,

Relinquished, Thousand-Eyes Idol), hypnotists (Illusionist Faceless Mage, Genin,
Dream Clown), invaders from alternate universes and strange dimensions (Oscillo
Hero, Dimensional Warrior, Golgoil), mythical beasts (Gazelle, Chimera and
Ruklamba), shape shifting/illusion based demons (Wall of Illusion, Man-Eating
Treasure Chest and Talons of Shurilane) and reality warpers who alter the flow of
time (Necrolancer the Timelord and Time Wizard).

And as we’ll see with the cards from DUELIST NEXUS, Konami doesn’t seem to want
to stick to just “Spellcasters but to get away from existing” support, but to embrace
this old Alignment’s classic history from the video games.

And to basically summarize it, anything that falls under the new Type would probably
fit well under Weird Fiction and the most strange forms of fantasy a la Lord Dunsany,
some breeds of Sword & Sorcery or in general stories that just get fairly out there.

Also mirrors.

A LOOK AT THE MEMBERS AS OF DUELIST NEXUS

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 “So why did they pick Chimera to debut this Type?” is a question people have been
asking, and as the section before explains, Chimera and Gazelle were Illusion
Alignment monsters. We can probably ask ourselves to death why the new Level 6
Chimera isn’t an Illusion monster (though the likely reason is so Chimera Fusion
could interact with it to make open ended bosses), but the new Level 8 Chimera is
meant to be a nod to its Alignment in the video games.
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 So the next two are the Chimera support monsters… who are an actually interesting
case. They’re existing monsters from Dark Duel Stories, with a rather fascinating
reason why they might be connected to Chimera.

In Dark Duel Stories, you had a mechanic called Card Parts, where you would get two
halves of cards, and could use them to create monsters by combining parts together,
and some combinations were more ideal than others. “Cornfield Koator” and “Mirror
Swordsman” were two of these cases of ‘more ideal’ combinations.

(Of note, Koator was a Dreams Winged Beast, while Mirror Swordsman was a Dreams
Beast-Warrior).
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 Now why pair them with Chimera, though? Well, my personal speculation is the Card
Parts gimmick is at play here. Because they’re monsters made from combining two
card pieces together, they’re e#ectively… Chimeras.

Basically, it’s a bit of in-joke that might be lost if you weren’t around in the early 00s
and are a hardcore Yu-Gi-Oh! geek.

Lastly is Nightmare Magician, who besides having oddly enough, the stats you’d
expect of a main character’s ace monster in the Yu-Gi-Oh! anime or manga, seems
like it’s mostly here to rep that yes, 幻想魔 will be nodding to the old Pegasus strain of
hypnotist wizards and horrific spellcasters.
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 That said, all four of the members of the Type released as of DUELIST NEXUS feature
The Eye of Wdjat, the golden eye used on a lot of Egyptian and Millennium Item
related iconography from the original Yu-Gi-Oh!, heavily associated with hypnosis,
mind control, illusions and mystery within the franchise.

As well, they also all share a “Cannot destroy or be destroyed by battle” e#ect, likely
to connect the Type early on by a common identity that basically harkens to the fact
this Type is chiefly illusionists and hypnotists and things that half-way don’t exist in
this world, they’re not masters of combat or their ability to a#ect the world as we
know is limited due to a questionable state of quasi-unreality.

But it more explicitly ties to Yugi’s Dark Magician battling with Illusionist Facelsss
Mage (souped up with Eye of Illusion)

Most of this is to establish a clear identity of this Type o# the bat and what you
should expect from them in the future, though not necessarily every future member
has to have this e#ect.

SO WHY DOES IT EXIST

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 So, ultimately, this goes back to “So why does this exist”, if Spellcaster, Fiend and the
Beast trinity could su!ce?

Well, it has been essentially 3 years since Yu-Gi-Oh! did any major innovations of new
mechanics or Types, having paused after the Pendulum and Link eras of Yu-Gi-Oh!
(with the previous ‘innovation’ in 2020 being literally back-walking summoning
restrictions enforced during the Link era) to basically regain the trust of the player
base after several years of severe criticism and backlash.

The game, and really any game, needs to expand design space occasionally, and this
doesn’t always mean a new mechanic. New Types allow Konami to design with new
aesthetics and focus on certain mechanics, without being religiously tied to old
support cards (and to be free of the design restrictions required by those support
cards, see how much of Reptiles have to be designed with Snake Rain in mind, is
probably the easiest way to explain this).

That and it is the 25th Anniversary, so the likely reason is it’s to celebrate an old
characteristic associated with certain classic monsters.

Ultimately it comes down to:

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 Celebrating the history of the card game by drawing on an old aesthetic from the
very beginning of the game.

If you don’t add new features to a card game, they die. They’re like Sharks, they
need to keep moving or su#er death.

And bringing back a piece of deep old nostalgia is hardly the worst thing they could
do to celebrate the 25th anniversary and to innovate design space for the game.

Now, someone might ask, why not the types from Yu-Gi-Oh! Rush Duel, such as
Galaxy or Cyborg? Most likely, for the time being, Konami and its business partners
such as Shueisha, would rather prefer the two games not intermingle that closely, for
reasons we are not privy to.

That and with the 25th Anniversary, it is incredibly sensible to go back to basics, and
this group of Illusions and Illusionists essentially allows them to go back to the near
beginning of the franchise.

And there are quite a number of people who probably would not mind Yu-Gi-Oh!
returning to Duel Monsters tendency to the grotesque, horrific and eerie, something
many of this Type from the old video games do share as a commonality.

dreams illusion illusion magic illusionist

  

NeoArkadia
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 NeoArkadia is the 2nd Number of "The Organization" and a primary article writer.
They are also an administrator for the forum Neo Ark Cradle. You can also follow
them at @neoarkadia24 on Twitter.

11 COMMENTS

Henry on April 23, 2023 11:54 am

Very nice article!

David on April 23, 2023 12:00 pm

Plus this could mean we get Shadow type Monsters at some point in the future.
I’m all for it if it happens

Nightmare Magician on April 23, 2023 12:43 pm

As someone is already really digging the new type, thank you for such an amazing
insight into its creation & what it represents!

OneEyeTwoEyesRedEyesBlueEyes on April 23, 2023 1:23 pm

When Illusionist-type was revealed, I knew that it must be based on cards used by
Pegasus, but I definitely wouldn’t have known the exact origins of each aspect of
the new monsters. Thanks so much for delving into the history of the game!

Sol on April 23, 2023 2:54 pm

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 That was a great history lesson. Can’t wait to see what new archetypes we’ll get
with Illusionist type monsters.

yamimillenium on April 23, 2023 8:55 pm

They will certainly reprint old monsters with new names, e#ects and artworks but
with that new type. Like an “Illusionist Faceless Illusionist” (based on “Illusionist
Faceless Mage”).

Impendio on April 24, 2023 6:41 am

Great article, part of me wants the whole Relinquished series to be Errata’d as

Illusionists for peak lore, but it would honestly be an unwarranted nerf, with the
whole losing on the existing spellcaster support.

NeoArkadia on April 24, 2023 6:57 am

That and they can either weave in Illusionists into Relinquished or do

something similar like they did with Chimera with new Illusionist bosses using
the OG Relinquished set.

Eto on April 24, 2023 7:42 am

Concise and a great summary of the questions I had about the new type! Ty!

Shan on April 24, 2023 8:37 am

Great article!
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 That list from Reshef caught my eye, mostly because of Time Wizard lol. I think
everyone’s expecting Pegasus will be getting new Illusionist support soon, but it’s
nice to see Joey could be next as well.

thebaseddd2 on April 24, 2023 9:31 am

I’m less irked because it’s a canon type just sad that there still isn’t an Air/Air
Elemental type to go with WIND. Interesting that Jou had Mimic Illusionist aka
Copycat in his deck that was changed to LIGHT for some reason. Bandai’s
Chimera also creates illusions, hmm. Might also be noteworthy that none of
Espa’s monsters were remade as psychics.

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