Seto Kaiba

Seto Kaiba (海馬 瀬人 Kaiba Seto), in the manga and anime series Yu-Gi-Oh!, is the main rival of Yugi Mutou (Yugi Moto in the English anime) in the trading card game Duel Monsters (originally Magic and Wizards). In the English Yu-Gi-Oh! Eternal Duelist's Soul video game, Kaiba's name is given in the wrong order and is rendered Kaiba Seto.

Kaiba is the majority shareholder and President of his own multi-national company, KaibaCorp. Arrogant, handsome, a total hottie and self-centered, Kaiba aims to become the world's greatest duelist; to do so he must defeat Yugi, who has humiliatingly defeated him repeated times.

One of Seto's recurring traits is his absolute refusal to believe in the powers of magic often used in the series; he convinces himself where necessary that it is all tricks and illusion. He also has a certain contempt for Yugi's group of friends: he refers to them constantly with derisive nicknames such as "the dweeb patrol".

In the first series anime, Kaiba has green hair, while in the manga, Toei's Yu-Gi-Oh! movie, and the second series, Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters, Kaiba has brown hair. The first series TV series has not been translated into English by 4Kids and therefore not shown on TV.

In the original Japanese version of Yu-Gi-Oh!, Kaiba omits honorifics and has a "rude" pattern of speech. Kaiba uses the word ore to mean "I" instead of the usual boku; ore is a boastful way to say "I" in Japanese. (See Wikibooks:Japanese:Pronouns) Kaiba usually calls Katsuya Jonouchi (Joey Wheeler) names, such as bonkotsu (mediocre), make inu (pathetic dog), and zako (small fry, weakling). This name calling was carried over to the English anime.

Biography

Kaiba is known for owning 3 of the 4 Blue-Eyes White Dragons in the world (the fourth belonging to Sugoroku Mutou (Solomon Moto in the English anime) which Kaiba later destroys), and later, in the Battle City Tournament, for owning an Egyptian God Card, known as The God of the Obelisk in the English manga, and known as Obelisk the Tormentor in the English anime (the card is known in Japan as Obelisk no Kyoshinhei). In the manga, the four Blue-Eyes White Dragon cards were possessed by an American, a German, a Hong Konger, and Sugoroku Mutou (Solomon Moto in the English anime) of Japan, Yugi's grandfather. Kaiba took the cards belonging to the former three using force: by either forcing the person into bankruptcy, by making deals with the mafia, or by forcing the person to commit suicide.

In the case of the fourth, Kaiba replaces the actual card with a copy after he asks Yugi to see it again. Yugi figures out that the card he received is a counterfeit, and Kaiba whacks him with his metal briefcase upon finding out that Yugi isn't fooled by the copy. Dark Yugi wins a game of Magic and Wizards and places a penalty game on Seto, causing Seto to feel the sensation of dying while he isn't really dying; Yugi gives his grandfather the real card back. Several chapters later, Kaiba kidnaps Mr. Mutou and forced him into a duel. When Sugoroku Mutou loses, Kaiba tears up the fourth card and forces him into a virtual reality torture. Sugoroku Mutou barely survives. Yugi agreed to go through the theme park of death, Death-T. Dark Yugi (Yami Yugi) later duels Seto and won. In revenge, Yugi places a penalty game on Seto, destroying the part of his heart with evil in it. The first and second series anime have similar plots at Death T. The first series has Jonouchi and Honda beaten up by Kaiba's suits when the two figure out that the card is a fake, and Kaiba manages to pull a draw against Dark Yugi instead of a loss, yet he still throws a fit over the draw. Kaiba then orders the four Gamemasters, Ledolly Sheldal, Ryuichi Fuha, Ailean Rao, and Daimon to defeat Dark Yugi, but they all fail, prompting Kaiba to activate the Death-T plans.

In the manga, at a young age, Kaiba and his younger brother Mokuba were orphaned (their actual surnames are unknown). Seto's mother died after Mokuba was born, and their father died in an accident when Seto was eight. Their relatives used up their inheritance and left them at the orphanage. When the former head of KaibaCorp, Gozaburo Kaiba, arrived at the orphanage to perform a publicity stunt, Kaiba saw the chance to challenge him to a game of chess, with Gozaburo forced to adopt Seto and Mokuba should he win. The different versions of the story differ on Seto's age: the manga and Japanese animated series states that Seto was ten years old, while the English animated series states that Seto was twelve.

Seto had won by studying Gozaburo's chess methods (or in the manga, by cheating). But Gozaburo forced Seto into a rigorous accelerated school program, forcing him to study several subjects, including economics, social studies, foreign languages, and game strategy. Six years later, Seto Kaiba took over his step-father's company by gaining the 51% that he needed to be in control. In the manga, Gozaburo, provoked by Seto taking over and becoming CEO, committed suicide by jumping out of his office window. Gozaburo's death occurred six months before Seto dueled Sugoroku Mutou.

In the first series, Seto electrocutes Gozaburo after Seto takes over the company.

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Seto Kaiba in the 1st series anime - different hair color: green (brown in 2nd series anime)

More Information on Seto Kaiba

Previous to Seto's control, KaibaCorp was a company specializing in the manufacture of weapons of mass destruction, but when Seto took control of KaibaCorp, KaibaCorp became a company that manufactured game equipment. One of Kaiba's dreams was to build an amusement park for orphaned and underprivileged children called KaibaLand. At the start of the series, only one KaibaLand had been built, in Domino (in the English anime, none of the parks had been built, and KaibaLand was touted as the KaibaCorp headquarters; in the first series Seto built a division of KaibaLand known as Death-T, where he tried to kill Yuugi, his friends and a stubborn baby by the use of: a serial killer known as the Chop Man, giant falling cubes, tazers and toy guns (which were actually real with 100,000 jolts) and virtual-simulated replicas of Yami no Yuugi's penalty games, where the loser would die, as the Pro-Kaiba audience cheered and Yuugi's friends were held at gunpoint).

Among one of the recurring plots in Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters is Seto being forced to deal with either people adversely affected by Gozaburo Kaiba's actions wanting to take their revenge on Seto, or people from wihin KaibaCorp attempting to take over the corporation.

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Seto Kaiba in the manga

Seto's Past Life

Seto's name is the Japanese phonetic equivalent of the ancient Egyptian deity Set, the god of chaos, war and storms in Egyptian mythology. That is for whom he is named.

Seto is the reincarnation of Seth (a.k.a. Set, and Priest Seto, but Seth is used so that Priest Seto and Seto Kaiba aren't mistaken for one another), the ancient Egyptian High Priest from the reign of the Pharaoh Atemu (Dark Yugi a.k.a. Yami Yugi or Yu-Gi-Oh). Back 3000 years ago (or 5000 as the brainless dubbers made it -_-) as the High Priest Seth, he and Pharaoh Atemu were friends/rivals who helped each other by testing their skills (just like now); as children their relationship was Atemu as a prince and Seth as a priest on training. Bakura, a.k.a Touzouku Ou ("Thief King") and Akifa, showed the royal court his Ka, Diabound's great power before running away. Seth decided that Bakura should be stopped and looked for a Ka that was stronger than Diabound. People could be tortured into revealing their Kas, so he decided to try rounding up and torturing citizens. During his quest to find a Ka greater than Diabound (Ka hunt), he found Kisara. Kisara was a foreigner from Europe who was being atacked by the people of her village because she was different. Seth rescued her twice (once when they were children from a raiders' camp, and when the townspeople were throwing rocks at her and calling her a demon <<this one is the one that matters) and found out that Kisara had the Blue Eyes White Dragon ka. Priest Akunadin, another priest (and Seth's father), wanted to use Kisara's ka to fight Diabound. Seth disagreed with him, because if a person's Ka was extracted, that person would die. Akunadin was the brother of Atemu's father (Akunumkanon)(which meant Seth was Atemu's cousin, but Seth believed his father died in battle so he didn't know Akunadin was his father), and he knew that if Atemu died, Seth would be Pharaoh. He extracted the Blue Eyes anyway, for Priest Seth to use against Atemu, resulting in the death of Kisara and a very emotional Seth (yes he cried; you'd never see Seto Kaiba cry). Later, Seth became influenced by evil (or possessed by the corrupted spirit of Akunadin, whom Seth had charged at with a sword, stabbed and killed) and dueled Atemu. He used the Blue Eyes White Dragon in this duel.

-Several Pictures of Seth-

http://tinyurl.com/d5ywp <<Seth and his Ka, Battle Ox (a.k.a Minotaurus)

http://tinyurl.com/dahhj <<Seth standing with the priest Mahaado

http://tinyurl.com/dhr8b

http://tinyurl.com/czxxe <<Seth with Atemu and Mana

The Life of Seto Kaiba, in his point of view, in chronological order

In the second series, Kaiba was bright and intelligent, which led to many prospective parents wanting to adopt him, Kaiba swore to protect his brother at all costs, and wanted Mokuba adopted with him, which all had refused. Gozaburo also had an ulterior motive: he wanted to adopt Seto because he was bright enough to be motivation for his own son, Noah Kaiba, to do better so that Noah could inherit KaibaCorp. With Noah's untimely death (his mind was placed into a virtual world), however, Gozaburo focused his energies to Seto. On Seto's birthday, he was given a 2% share of KaibaCorp (in the English anime, ten million dollars) and was told that although he could spend the money any way he wished, he must return one hundred times (in the English anime, ten times) the amount in one year. Not only did Seto accomplish this feat, but he did so in one day, and such ruthless business skills led to Kaiba's takeover of his father's company. Gozaburo tried to use Mokuba but that plan went down the drain too due to Mokuba's loyalty to his brother. Gozaburo downloaded his mind into Noah's virtual world. In the original Japanese version, Gozaburo committed suicide. In the English Duel Monsters anime, Gozaburo ran away and was never heard from again.

Duelist Kingdom

Kaiba Corp's board of directors (a.k.a Big Five) and Pegasus J. Crawford kidnapped Mokuba and tried to take over Kaiba Corp. Seto flew to Pegasus's island of Duelist Kingdom, where the man was holding a tournament, for the purpose of rescuing Mokuba, and defeating both Yuugi and Pegasus. During this time, Seto lost his soul for the first but not last time, when Pegasus took it with his Sennen Eye. Having both Seto's and Mokuba's soul trapped, Seto never saw Yuugi triumph over Pegasus. Afterward, Pegasus released his and Mokuba's soul (along with Yuugi's grandpa) and everyone returned to Domino.

Mini Virtual World

When a very enraged Seto returned to his company,

Battle City

Seto held his first tournament, after he met Ishizu Ishtar and recieved the god Obelisk from her at the Domino Museum. This tournament was held a short time after Duelist Kingdom. Seto met up with the other 7 finalists at an unfinished stadium: Yuugi, Jounouchi Katsuya, Kujaku Mai (and the rest of the gang), Yami No Bakura (posing as Ryou), Malik Ishtar (pretending to be someone named Namu), Rishid (posing as Malik) and Ishizu Ishtar. Then they all boarded his blimp (called KC 3), and the semi-finals started. Seto dueled Ishizu and won, beside her prediction that he would lose, and moved on to the finals.

Noa's Virtual World

After the semi-finals had ended, the blimp was just about to touch down on Kaiba Island, when a kid mysterious force using a tracker beam pulled it off course and forced it to land on a floating fortress in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Then a seemingly adolencent hacker, named Noa, appeared on a screen and said that he had taken control of the airship. Everyone (who hadn't lost their souls) was forced to get off of the now docked blimp. Inside of the fortress, Seto and the gang found the Big Five waiting for them. The Big Five sent them in a virtual world. Though the truth was that they had all been knocked unconicous and put into copies of Seto's virtual-reality pods, meaning that their minds had been tricked into believing that the virtual-world was real. Seto and Mokuba were shown a virtual-simulation of their time at the orphange, and Mokuba was kidnapped once again. Then Seto met up with the gang, was attacked by a possessed Honda (a.k.a Tristan) with a sword, jumped on a motorcycle and sped off to find Mokuba. Seeing someone standing in the rode, he tried to stop the motorcycle, but it sped out of control, then he jumped off, the bike hit the wall and burst into flames. There Seto dueled one of the big five, then set off to find Noa once again. He found a virtual copy of Kaibaland, entered it by winning a quick game of chess, and caught a Blue Eyes themed train. It carried him into a lava filled area, where Noa was waiting. He dueled Noa, Mokuba (who was brain washed) stopped him from attacking Noa, Mokuba broke free of Noa's control and then both of them were turned to stone. Yuugi dueled Noa and won, thus once again Seto never saw Yuugi's triumph. Noa released their souls and then everyone found out who was really behind it all... Gozaburo. The Gozaburo in the digital world intended to use Noah to digitize the entire world. Gozaburo also wanted to defeat Seto at his own game using Exodia Necros. Gozaburo was defeated in the game and a missile was headed towards Noah's virtual headquarters. Gozaburo turned into a monstrous entity and tried to kill Kaiba, but Kaiba and Yugi escaped. Gozaburo tried to log himself out, but a changed Noah refused. Noah and Gozaburo were destroyed.

The Battle City Finals

After Noa's fortress was destroyed, Seto picked up where they left off and landed the blimp on Kaiba Corp island. After a few duels, Yuugi beat Seto once again and Seto left to destroy the island, as it no longer meant anything to him. After Yuugi beat Yami No Malik, Seto programed a KC satalite to destroy the island. With moments to spare, everyone got back on the blimp and took off (after the enine trouble was fixed), Seto and Mokuba flying off in their Blue Eyes Jet. Afterward, Seto and Mokuba set off to build another Kaibaland in the United States.

Doma Saga

A short time later, Mokuba told Seto that someone was buying off parts of the company and Seto saw on his laptop that that was indeed true. Just then, Pegasus J. Crawford contacted him by video-phone telling Seto that if he didn't come and duel him back at Duelist Kingdom then he would keep buying shares of Kaiba Corp and soon own the company. Growing frustarated and angry, Seto agreed to do as Pegasus wished. Deciding to put the plans of building the new Kaibaland on hold, he went into the company safe and took out his duel disk from one of the password-protected vaults. Then he and Mokuka flew to Duelist Kingdom on the Blue Eyes Jet, where that met what seemed like Pegasus. The two dueled and half way through the duel Seto and Mokuba found out that Pegasus was an imposter. The man's real name was Amelda (a.k.a Alistar) and he wanted revenge on Seto for what Gozaburo did to his brother. The duel finished with both of their life points hitting zero at the same time. Amelda fled. They flew to California to find the real Pegasus. Seto found the gang already there and told them that he wasn't going to work together with them no matter what. He dueled Amelda, again, on one of his planes and Amelda lost his soul. The plane almost crashed into the mountainside, but then landed safely. Seto and Mokuba met up everyone back in Domino and Yuugi and him dueled Dartz. Seto lost his soul, yet again, and Yami No Yuugi bet Dartz by himself, yet again, though this time he was really alone.

KC Grand Prix

Seto held his second tournament, right after the Doma Saga, as a way to bring back honor and good reputation to KaibaCorp. He didn't participate.

Seto experiences his past life

While in his office (shortly after KC Grand Prix), Seto Kaiba recieved a message from Yami No Bakura on his video-phone telling him that if he didn't come up to the top of the KC building, then the white-haired spirit would drop Seto's little brother Mokuba off of the building, to a quick death hundreds of feet below. Enraged that yet another individual had threatened his family, and fueled by his brotherly-instict to protect Mokuba, he went to the top of Kaiba Corp. He dueled Yami No Bakura, until the white-haired spirit grew bored and threw him the Sennen Eye (Millenium Eye), telling Seto to come and meet him in Egypt. This duel never finished and Yami No Bakura fled. Afterward, Seto paid no attention to the Sennen Item (Millenium Item) that had once belonged to and was used on him by Pegasus J. Crawford (a.k.a Maximillion Pegasus in the dub).

It wasn't until he picked up the Eye and it gave him a vision of his past (and dropped the Item) that he suddenly had the interest to take Yami No Bakura's advice and go to Egypt. After a long flight in his Blue Eyes Jet, he met Ishizu Ishtar, Malik Ishtar (a.k.a Marik) and Rishid (a.k.a Odion) at the underground temple, where Yuugi and his friends had entered not too long before, went do into it and was sucked into the ancient tablet, to join everyone in the Memory World.

While he was there, he met Kisara while walking through an alley way (where he had woken up) and remembered that she was the woman from all of his visions about the Blue Eyes White Dragon. But before he could ask her who she was, she ran off saying that he wasn't her "Seto-sama", and went off to find Seth. Seto went wandering through the Memory World looking for anyone that he knew for quite some time, until he saw Atemu standing/watching Seth who was holding a dead Kisara in his arms (and kneeling in front of the tablet that Akunadin had sealed her Ka in) and crying for her. He stood there for a while just watching from behind a pillar, until Atemu saw him and they spoke. It was then that Seto realised that the High Priest Seth was real, whether if he wanted to believe it or not.

After the Memory World ended, everyone went to another underground chamber for the Ceromonial Battle. For the first time, Seto saw Yami No Yuugi (who had just learned his real name, Atemu) and Yuugi split into two different bodies, thus realising that Yami No Yuugi was real. After the Ceremonial Battle ended, he returned to Domino with Mokuba in his Blue Eyes Jet (and the series ended).

GX

Sometime later, Seto opened up his first dueling academy, in Domino, thus becoming both the CEO of Kaiba Corp and Headmaster of the academy. The academy was split into 3 houses: Osiris Red, Obelisk Blue, and Ra Yellow (named after the three god-monsters).

Notable Dueling Cards

Although Kaiba is best known for his three Blue-Eyes White Dragons and the fusion monster formed from the three dragons, the Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon, other Duel Monsters Cards have been prominently featured in his deck. Kaiba appears to favor the "Beatdown" type of strategy, meaning using cards and monsters that completely overpower his opponents. They include:

Monster Cards

• Blue Eyes White Dragon
• Blue Eyes Shining Dragon (Only seen in the movie "Pyramid of Light")
• Blue Eyes Ultimate Dragon
• Paladin of White Dragon
• Twin Headed Thunder Dragon
• Kaiser Glider
• Spear Dragon
• X-Head Cannon
• Y-Dragon Head
• Z-Metal Tank
• XY-Dragon Cannon
• XZ-Tank Cannon
• YZ-Tank Dragon
• XYZ-Dragon Cannon
• Different Dimension Dragon
• Battle Ox
• La Jinn the Mystical Genie of the Lamp
• Vorse Raider
• Swordstalker
• Saggi the Dark Clown (often used with Crush Card Virus)
• Lord of Dragons

Magic Cards

• Critias (from the fifth season "Waking the Dragons", (Was only his in the Doma Saga; a.k.a Fang of Critias in the dub))
• Virus Cannon
• Ring of Destruction
• Ring of Safety
• Soul Exchange
• Cost Down
• Flute of Summoning Dragon

Trap Cards

• Crush Card Virus
• Hope of Desperation
• Shadow Spell
• Mesmeric Control
• Shrink

Trivia

• Kaiba is seen in the first episode of the Duel Monsters series reading Friedrich Nietzsche's Also sprach Zarathustra in the original Japanese version.

Reference

• Kazuki Takahashi (2002). Yu-Gi-Oh! Characters Guide Book - The Gospel of Truth (遊戯王キャラクターズガイドブック―真理の福音―). Shueisha. ISBN 4-08-873363-0