Entry 002: The Many Modes of Dark Magician
Here's the first page where we're going to cover many versions of the same "character", because up next is good ol' Dark Magician, signature card of Yugi Moto himself. An iconic monster to say the least. While his garb seems a bit silly-looking to me, I don't think there's any denying how recognizable it's made him. He's covered in a robe with a big purple jumpsuit underneath, which are layered with swirly ridges. And of course, he has that biiiiiig pointed helmet reminiscent of a wizard's cap.
While it looks impractical... it somehow still works? It definitely feels like the kind of pseudo-armor a wizard would wear, and gets the point across that he's a wizard while still having a unique aesthetic that's unmistakably "him." It definitely says something that when "Dark Magician" eventually became an archetype of its own, a lot of them borrowed aesthetic cues from the original here because it's just that dang iconic.
I like the design of his scepter too. It obviously takes the same bullet points as the rest of his ensemble, but it's nonetheless kind of amusing that he carries a staff that also kind of looks like him.
There's also this, which I think is actually the original version of his design, while the purely purple look we know is a localized version. Personally, I think the purple one was the way to go, cause this one just has a little too many bright colors going on and it looks a little gaudy to me.
There's also this "evil" counterpart to Dark Magician, which is little more than Dark Magician but in a red suit instead. As a recolor, it works just as well, and while it was used by the character Arkana, I'm fairly certain this version of Dark Magician's similarities to the villain Marik is intentional. Granting, my memory is hazy.
Overall, Dark Magician is a pretty dang solid character design, and it's no wonder he went on to become one of the game's mascots.
Personal Score: 8/10
But of course that's not all the forms of Dark Magician, for we have this alternate form of his where he re-specs into a knight! This'll be our first instance of going out of order to cover the different versions of the same monster.
The "Knight's Title" card basically turned Dark Magician into a knight, granting him the same attack and defense, but at least you got to destroy a target. As a design though, I feel like he loses a little bit of his unique luster. He still has some of the swirling armor patterns, but that knight's helmet feels very out of place on him, its only real tie-back being the tall crest on it. As goofy as his old outfit looked, I simply don't like this one as much. It's still solid armor design I suppose, but not much else other than being purple.
Personal Score: 6/10
That's a bit of a hit and a bit of a miss, for me. That helmet design is closer to what I would've wanted out of "Dark Magician, but as a knight.", and the upper-torso armor is there. But the rest of his armor just goes notably more bland, just being very stereotypical knight's armor with very little to make it stand out. The swirls are on his knees, but that's it. His new dragon friend isn't even that terribly exciting of a dragon design, personally speaking. I like the huge tusk-like fangs but it's otherwise looking like fairly standard dragon fare.
Personal Score: 5.5/10
I probably could've lumped this in with the other "regular" Dark Magicians, but it's a separate card, so it's here instead. There's a "Toon" subcategory of card for more cutesy versions of certain monsters that come from or get transformed by the "Toon World"
And, it sure is Dark Magician but cutesy! I don't think the look suits him quite as well as other toon-ified monsters we'll be seeing later on, and I'm halfway convinced he only has a Toon version because of another card related to him that got a Toon version. But it's the same design we're all familiar with but chibified, so it's still nice.
Personal Score: 7/10
This somewhat more aged Dark Magician is a fairly decent update, the outfit isn't too bad and the robe design is honestly a bit cleaner. I think my only problem is his new scepter just feels a lot less unique, and doesn't even look that much like a straight upgrade from his old one.
Personal Score: 6/10
Then we have "Dark Sage", an older, wiser version of Dark Magician. I do think the direction I personally would've taken would be to make his armor look a little more worn out, rather than deck him out with gems, but it is still quite an effective follow-up to young-Dark Magician. I do like how his bigger robe and shoulder armor here is used to make his form a little more vague and undefined, which works for an old wizard design.
Personal Score: 7.5/10
This one is a bit of a merging between Dark Magician and another monster, Magician of Black Chaos, and more or less has Dark Magician used as a basis while applying some of Magician of Black Chaos's more belt-and-buckle-y look to his outfit design. Somehow, I think this makes the colors work out? I think the addition of the teal circles work, and the main outfit being a more subdued, dark-blueish-purple makes the outfit a little less gaudy.
Personal Score: 7/10
And finally, we get to Dark Paladin, who turns up the edginess up to 100 with the help of fusing with Buster Blader. Fusion cards are gonna be iffy with this format, but I just decided I'll just cover Dark Paladin here since he's pretty visibly Dark Magician. His outfit this time is absolutely ridiculous, with more edges than you can "ow" at. I still don't think it quite touches the level of OG Dark Magician, but this outfit of his is so ridiculously dumb-looking that it kind of just loops back around to kind of ruling, actually. I dunno if it's an intention of any means, but his fuck-off collar looks like the maw of a many-eyed bird monster with his pointy hat as the tongue and that's just real rad, even if it's not what they meant.
Personal Score: 7.5/10
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