#yugioh fleurdelis

[anthurak]

So one fun thing I've noticed on my latest big dive into Yugioh Card Lore:

The girls and ladies in the Albaz storyline have the notable distinction of being treated with more respect/development/generally better than basically every female character in ANY mainline Yugioh anime.

I mean Ecclesia gets to be a proper deuteragonist, and possibly even the actual main character depending on adaptation and framing.

Kitt gets to be the main character of the story's major B-plot and gets to lead the big 'show up with the cavalry to save the day' moment during the final battle.*

Fleurdelis gets to be kind of the biggest badass in the whole story, to the point of straight up killing the final boss herself.

And Aegirine and Mo Ye both get a good old fashioned, no strings attached REVENGE arc.

It's like if Tea was the one to get the Millennium Puzzle, Alexis got to lead all of Duel Academy into battle, all four bracelet girls got to team up to take down Zarc together instead of all getting fridged, and Aki and Sherry got to have a whole revenge rampage on Arcadia and Yliaster.

And yeah, I am fully aware that this notable distinction ALSO applies to plenty of other girls across Yugioh card lore like the Sky Strikers, Diabellstar, the Shiranui/Mayakashi, the Evil/Live Twins and more. It just feels a bit more notable in the Albaz lore given that it's probably the most fully realized storyline in Yugioh card lore (not counting manga adaptations of Sky Strikers) and that it has, at least what APPEARS to be, a pretty standard fantasy-hero-guy protagonist.

*Also this is completely unrelated, but I would like it to be know that the original name for 'Rindbrumm the Striking Dragon' before localization USED to be Lindwyrm the GUN-HAMMER Dragon. I swear that is the biggest localization fuck-up since Mekk-Knight 'Check THIS out!' Avram.

[bradsmindbrain]

Shoutout to Fleur for Having Some of the Least Sexualized Female Armor I’ve Seen

[your-fave-is-christian]

Ecclesia and Fleur-de-lis/Iris from Yu-Gi-Oh Abyss Lore pls!

Ecclesia and Fleur-de-lis from Yu-Gi-Oh Abyss Lore are Christian!

[fyeahygocardart]

The Iris Swordsoul

[yugiohcardsdaily]

Dogmatika Fleurdelis, the Knighted

“During your Main Phase, if a monster Special Summoned from the Extra Deck is on the field (Quick Effect): You can Special Summon this card from your hand, then, if you control another ‘Dogmatika’ monster, you can negate the effects of 1 face-up monster on the field, until the end of this turn. When your ‘Dogmatika’ monster declares an attack: You can make all ‘Dogmatika’ monsters you currently control gain 500 ATK. You can only use each effect of ‘Dogmatika Fleurdelis, the Knighted’ once per turn.”

[deusvervewrites]

How your card game blorbos doing?

Well my Yugioh Blorbos are doing great, surprisingly. They won the final battle against Aluber, and while there are enough loose threads that there's probably more to this storyline, this particular arc has ended with Albaz and Eclessia reunited and off on more adventures and Fleurdelis apparently survived being sacrificed.

Sure, Aluber's still alive and licking his wounds, the mysterious Quem is running around, and according to the concept art Albaz and Ecclessia stumbled upon the sentient eyeball of the 317th Dogmatika Saint just wandering around but it was an overall total victory.

All in all it was a happy ending!

Also I fucking love their new outfits

[anthurak]

So I’ve finally read up/through the Abyss/Albaz/Branded/White Yu-Gi-Oh Card Lore series in preparation for the anime mini-series coming out in April.

And HOLY SHIT, it is so fucking FUNNY what they do with story ‘protagonist’, Fallen of Albaz.

Like on paper, Albaz looks like your pretty standard fantasy-hero-protagonist. A cool-looking, brooding dragon boy with amnesia who meets a cute girl and the pair go off on this big, grand adventure together.

Plus he’s got a really cool, special and very ‘main-character’ power in that he can transform into a number of awesome, badass dragon forms. Again, pretty standard ‘fantasy-hero’ with a sides of ‘self-insert power-fantasy’ stuff.

Except that in practice, this whole setup turns out to have a bit of a wrinkle in that Albaz just CANNOT win a fight to save his life. As in, this guy is just CONSTANTLY needing help from others to win fights, or just getting his shit wrecked.

Seriously, across all of the Abyss Lore we’ve gotten so far, EVERY fight Albaz is involved in has him getting/needing a powerup/help from friends and allies, and then getting a brutal ass-kicking.

Note that I didn’t use ‘or’ there. Because even with powerups from allies, Albaz still just CANNOT actually win a fight himself and is constantly getting his shit wrecked, generally smacked around, losing his girlfriend, and/or getting all his power stolen by his evil theater-kid clone/brother/possible ex-boyfriend.

It’s fucking HILARIOUS.

Like the only real, actual ‘win’ Albaz gets across the entire story is when he’s able to save his corrupted, mind-controlled girlfriend Ecclesia via their mutual bond and fusing into their new ultimate dragon form and go off to fight the final boss of the arc together. Which you know is actually legitimately pretty interesting, poignant and cute.

That for as much as Albaz might get smacked around and just generally can’t win ‘traditional’ fights, the actual victory that is truly his is when he SAVES someone he cares about.

It’s still REALLY fucking funny looking at it through the hypothetical lens of anyone going in hoping for some standard power-fantasy shonen-protag and getting someone who just constantly gets their ass handed to them.

In fact, it gets even funnier when considering anyone expecting Albaz to be some standard shonen-protag self-insert power-fantasy guy, because he’s also kind of being constantly upstaged by some seriously BADASS ladies in both plot relevance or just generally ‘doing awesome shit’.

For example, this is Fleurdelis, aka The Iris Swordsoul, the mentor and older-sister-figure of Ecclesia, the other main character of the story and Albaz’s partner.

This is her kicking Albaz’s ass in his first dragon form at the start of the story.

This is her utterly OBLITERATING a city-sized sandworm and also smacking Albaz around again in the crossfire. For reference, that little winged-guy in the lower left getting zapped by one of the smaller lightning bolts is Albaz in one of his dragon forms.

This is her and two of her buddies taking on the entire evil cult/religion that she and Ecclesia used to serve and 1v1ing the evil pope and utterly wrecking his shit. Though sadly it didn’t stick and she ended up getting captured, corrupted, mind-controlled and implanted with the 663 souls of her and Ecclesia’s predecessor ‘saints’ of this cult.

This is Fleur after overpowering that corruption and mind-control through sheer willpower and drive to protect her sister.

And then wresting control from all 663 of those souls and channeling their power along with her own in order to absolutely annihilate the evil pope in his new godlike, dimension-warping dragon form.

Yeah, Fleur is kind of the biggest badass in the entire setting XD

And this is Tri-brigade/Springans Kitt, who ends up being kind of the real hero of the story thanks to spending the entire B-plot of the narrative assembling and recruiting an army of various technology and explosive-possessing fae and mecha space gladiators and a shitload of magitek weaponry before showing up to save the day at the final battle.

So yeah, all in all Albaz actually feels like this fun little subversive take on the typical ‘fantasy-hero self-insert power-fantasy shonen-protagonist’ mold where the hero actually loses all the fights he takes on alone and has to get help from others and all the real victories are won through teamwork and the power of love and friendship and also there are some seriously badass ladies kicking ass.

And I am REALLY looking forward to seeing it all animated XD

[fyeahygocardart]

Icejade Cradle

[fyeahygocardart]

Nadir Servant

[fyeahygocardart]

Dogmatika Fleurdelis, the Knighted