Anzu Mazaki

Anzu Mazaki (真崎 杏子 Mazaki Anzu), known in the English anime and English video games as Téa Gardner, is a fictional character in the manga and anime series Yu-Gi-Oh!. In some English games, her name is incorrectly transliterated as Anzu Shinzaki or Kyoko Mazaki.

Anzu, who is in class 1-B at Domino High School, is the childhood friend of Yugi Mutou (Yugi Moto in the English anime). She is also good friends with Katsuya Jonouchi (Joey Wheeler) and Hiroto Honda (Tristan Taylor), though she is not fond of them at first. In the first series anime, Miho Nosaka is also one of Anzu's friends. Anzu does not usually play games with Yugi and his friends, but in the beginning of the show, she can beat Jonouchi in Magic and Wizards, also known as Duel Monsters, while she herself is not that strong a player.

In the manga, especially in the beginning, Anzu has a spunky personality, and in the first chapter, is able to scare away Honda and Jonouchi after they bully Yugi. In the Duel Monsters anime, she and Honda are basically cheerleaders for Yugi and Jonouchi. She is known among fans of the Duel Monsters anime for her "friendship speeches", as she makes one in nearly every episode she appears in. Some fans of the anime dislike her because the speeches irritate them, posssibly because they wish for the duels (and thus the story) to progress.

While Anzu is athletic, she holds jobs to save money in order to attend dance school in New York City. In the beginning of the series, she is revealed to be working at "Burger World" (in the English Duel Monsters anime, "Burgerpalooza"). By Volume 4 in the manga, Anzu is fired from that job for punching a customer who pinched her buttocks. She gets a job at KaibaCorp afterwards and encounters her friends at KaibaLand. In the Toei anime, Anzu, Honda, and Miho work at Burger World, with Miho and Honda working to support Anzu. Once Burger World closes down, Honda and Miho work for a beef bowl restaurant.

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Anzu Mazaki from Vol. 1 of the manga

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Anzu from the first series anime

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Anzu from Vol. 2 of the manga

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Anzu from the second series anime

In the original Japanese versions of the Yu-Gi-Oh! manga, Anzu's speech isn't that polite. Anzu omits honorific suffixes when talking to many people, including Jonouchi and Honda. In Toei's anime, she uses "kun" when referring to Honda and Jonouchi.

Anzu is in love with Dark Yugi (Yami Yugi) and slightly smitten with the regular Yugi. The story of how Anzu's affection for Dark Yugi differs from medium to medium.

In the manga and the first series anime, Anzu is held hostage at Burger World by Prisoner number 777, who demanded cigarettes and vodka. Dark Yugi challenges him to a shadow game, which stipulated that each person can move only one finger. Yugi tricks the prisoner into a situation where if he fired the gun at him, he would set himself on fire, allowing him to free Anzu. In the manga, the prisoner sets himself on fire anyway when his cigarette drops from his mouth; while in the anime, he drops the gun and removes the lighter from his hand, prompting Yugi to give him a penalty game; the prisoner imagines himself set on fire. Since the prisoner was the manager of the restaurant, Burger World was closed down afterwards. The manga has been translated into English but the first series of the anime has not been translated.

In the Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters anime (which was translated for a North American release), after Yugi's friends find out she worked at the restaurant, she receives a note in her locker. In the Japanese version of this anime, the note, written on the back of a photograph showing her working at the restaurant, threatened that the school will be told that she has an after school job (not allowed except in certain situations) if she doesn't come to the gym after school. When Anzu shows up, she finds the gym teacher with a camera videotaping her body; it is implied that he was the one who wrote the note.

In the English version, the note, which had a picture of dancing shoes, stated that the warehouse was a good place to take dancing lessons, and the man Téa encountered was a mugger instead of her gym teacher. Yugi appears and jumps the man. The girl bites the man's arm, and she is knocked unconscious against a wall. Dark Yugi a.k.a. Yami Yugi challenges the man to a game where whoever draws a better Duel Monsters card wins. Yugi's Dark Magician defeats the man's Curse of Dragon. In the Japanese version, the man is a victim to a Mind Crush, and in the English version, he is sent to the Shadow Realm.

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Anzu from Vol. 6 of the manga

In a manga chapter (Duel 45: 13 O'clock Terror!), Anzu makes Yugi fearful for her safety by going onto a ferris wheel when it was known that a bomber was in the park; she was "pretending" to be in danger so she could get Dark Yugi out, not knowing that she placed herself in danger of being blown up for real.

In Yu-Gi-Oh! R, Anzu is kidnapped and Yugi and Jonouchi have to rescue her from the hands of Yakou Tenma.

Many people who do not know the manga and anime well complain that Anzu is a "token girl", and there are certainly possible indications that way.

"Anzu" in Japanese is an apricot or apricot tree.

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