Tributes Pour In For Kazuki Takahashi, Creator Of 'Yu-Gi-Oh!,' Dead At 60
Kazuki Takahashi, creator of Yu-Gi-Oh!, was found dead yesterday at the age of 60. He was reportedly found in the water off Okinawa, Japan wearing snorkeling gear.
The news shocked fans of Takahashi's most popular work, which began in Shonen Jump in 1996 as a manga before becoming a global phenomenon. An anime for the series began airing in 1999 and was a crossover hit in the U.S., sitting alongside series like Dragon Ball and Pokémon as one of the rare series to truly breakthrough in the West in the pre-streaming days of anime. The series spawned several spin-offs and movies, as well as the popular trading card game.
Many modern anime fans cite Yu-Gi-Oh! as one of their gateways into the subculture, and as news of Takahashi's death spread online, tributes for his work poured out from the community all around the internet.
In addition to Yu-Gi-Oh!'s impact and influence in the world of anime, the series also helped craft the language of the internet, as some catchphrases and elements of the series defined the world of memes in the 2000s and early 2010s.
Phrases like You Activated My Trap Card and It's Time To Duel became massive memes, and concepts like "The Shadow Realm," essentially the series' version of hell, are still seen in memes today.
Additionally, Yu-Gi-Oh! inspired LittleKuriboh's classic early YouTube hit, Yu-Gi-Oh!: The Abridged Series, which helped inspire YouTube culture and media parodies for years to come.
Takahashi leaves behind an incredible legacy, one that helped shape the industry and introduce anime to the wider world.
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KoimanZX
This feels oddly reminiscent of how Steve Irwin died.
Autumn Able
More recent updates say that he was killed by a reef shark. If so, what a way to go.
Rynjin
I first heard about this via the Hajime no Ippo sub (Morikawa and Takahashi were close friends), and was sad to hear it. Loved Yu-Gi-Oh as a kid, and just recently got back into it with Master Duel.
Don't swim alone, people.
Quiet_boi
My brother and I were deep into the anime when we were kids and my brother in particular has played Forbidden Memories since at least 2001, for as nonesensical as it may have been sometimes, I'll always have some appriciation for Yu-Gi-Oh, even if I never got too deep into playing it.
May he rest.