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Egyptian God Cards
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The Egyptian God cards, known in Japan as the , are a series of cards in Yu-Gi-Oh! that serve as a focal point in the series' manga, the second series anime, and video games based on the anime and manga. Introduced as the strongest of all Duel Monsters, the cards have heavy ties to the fictional history of Ancient Egypt within the series and become central plot devices. The cards inspire events in various spin-offs of the series as well and have inspired the creation other cards directly based on them.
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The Egyptian God cards, known in Japan as the , are a series of cards in Yu-Gi-Oh! that serve as a focal point in the series' manga, the second series anime, and video games based on the anime and manga. Introduced as the strongest of all Duel Monsters, the cards have heavy ties to the fictional history of Ancient Egypt within the series and become central plot devices. The cards inspire events in various spin-offs of the series as well and have inspired the creation other cards directly based on them. The real versions of the cards have become widely hunted collector's items, but are not legally playable in any sort of official tournament.
Egyptian god cards
The Egyptian god Cards are:
Anime history
The Egyptian Gods are one-of-a-kind all-powerful cards created by Maximillion Pegasus, the creator of Duel Monsters in the anime. Pegasus modeled the cards after three Ancient Egyptian beasts whose likenesses appear on the stone tablet said to hold the memories of the nameless Pharaoh. The wielder of the cards is able to acquire great power, but in the wrong hands they are capable of causing injury or even death.
The cards are used in the series as the key to unlocking the memory of the nameless Pharaoh. As such, Marik Ishtar, the main antagonist of the Battle City arc, seeks possession of the cards in an attempt to dethrone the Pharaoh and claim his title. He manages to acquire the Winged Dragon of Ra and Slifer the Sky Dragon, but his sister Ishizu manages to safeguard the final card. Isis gives the final card - Obelisk the Tormentor - to Seto Kaiba, whom she believes is destined to help the Pharaoh defeat Marik. Kaiba, eager to show off his new power at a tournament he is planning to throw, spreads news of his new card as Isis has hoped, luring Marik there with the promise of acquiring the final card and meeting the Pharaoh. Marik loses Slifer the Sky Dragon to the Pharaoh's vessel Yugi Mutou in a duel, but manages to retain The Winged Dragon of Ra. After Yugi defeats Kaiba and claims Obelisk from him, he uses Obelisk and Slifer in a final battle with Marik, winning and claiming the final God card.
Afterwards, the God cards are stolen in Season 4 by Dartz and his henchmen as part of a plan to revive a Leviathan to destroy the world, and are not retrieved until the end of the season and used to battle the Leviathan. The cards are used in Season 5 to send the Pharaoh into a world made up of his own sealed memories, allowing him to recover them and defeat the opponent he could not defeat in the past, the God of Darkness, Zorc. During the battle the Pharaoh learns his true name, Atem, and merges the Gods together into their ultimate form, The Creator of Light - Horakhty. He uses the God cards in his final duel with Yugi, and they are sent to the afterlife with him at the end of the series.
The God cards appear in the movie Yu-Gi-Oh! The Movie: Pyramid of Light, where the film villain Anubis uses the titular item in an attempt to destroy the God cards and revive the power of light using Kaiba's Blue-Eyes White Dragon. However, the film is not considered canon to the anime or manga. The God cards are featured prominently in the video games Yu-Gi-Oh! The Sacred Cards and Yu-Gi-Oh! Reshef of Destruction, both of which are alternate universe games based on the second season of the anime.
The Slifer and Ra cards re-appear in Yu-Gi-Oh! GX; the former is used by Yugi in the final duel against Jaden Yuki. The latter card is seen only as a copy which is stolen by a developer for Industrial Illusions.
Anime god cards
The God Cards are unaffected by all spell cards, trap cards, and the effects of monsters.The God cards are only capable of being summoned by offering three of the player's own monsters as sacrifices. When summoned from the discard pile, the God card remains on the field for only one turn. The God cards also have an unofficial effect that states only someone with a Millennium Item, like Yugi Mutou, or a connection to a Millennium Item, like Seto Kaiba, can wield them. Anyone else is punished with death or near-fatal injury, but this is only seen happening on limited occasions. This is seen in the show season episode 94 Ishizu vs. Kaiba, proving "Blast held by Tribute" & "Widespread Ruin" as cards fullwith capable of taking down a God Card and that specific cards can affect them.
Obelisk the Tormentor
Obelisk the Tormentor is the first of the cards to appear in the anime (it cannot be used in a duel). Obelisk is the only card Marik could not acquire, and his sister Ishizu gives the card to Seto Kaiba in the hopes he will use the card in his upcoming tournament and lure Marik out of hiding to claim it during the preliminaries, but loses to Yugi Mutou in the semi-finals and thus hands the card to him. Yugi goes on to use Obelisk against Marik in the tournament finals.
Obelisk makes sporadic appearances after the Battle City arc. It is used by Gurimo in season four of the anime, and takes part in the battle against the Leviathan. It is used to battle Bakura's Diabound in the final season; it defeats Diabound in the manga, while it is a draw in the anime against the power of the Blue-Eyes White Dragon that Diabound had absorbed. In the manga, it is the only God card that Atem uses in his duel with Yugi (in the anime, he uses all three Gods).
Obelisk's attack and defense scores are 4000, and its effect allows a player to offer two monsters as sacrifices in order to destroy all the monsters on the foes field and inflict 4000 direct damage to your opponent. When used by Seto Kaiba, Obelisk was used multiple times to achieve a victory in a single turn by this effect, as in the anime and manga a duelist only has four thousand life points at the start of the game. It is also shown that Obelisk is able to achieve an infinite attack strength for a single turn if two monsters are sacrificed as a tribute. in Yu-Gi-Oh! The Movie: Pyramid of Light Yugi Sacrificed Ra and Slifer to use this effect., and a single time in the canon series which was then explained as "a miracle of Obelisk's anger" and not confirmed as an actual effect.
In the anime Yu-Gi-Oh! GX the most elite dorm is Obelisk Blue, despite The Winged Dragon of Ra being the most powerful. This could be because Seto Kaiba is the owner and founder of Duel Academy.
Slifer the Sky Dragon
Slifer the Sky Dragon is the second God card revealed. It was one of the two God cards owned by Marik, who gives it to one of his mind slaves in an attempt to defeat Yugi. Yugi defeats the slave, however, and claims Slifer as his prize. Although reluctant to use Slifer due to its vast power, Yugi places it in his deck during the finals of the tournament due to the threat presented by Kaiba and Marik's own God cards.
Slifer makes sporadic appearances after the Battle City arc. It is used in season four of the anime to battle the Leviathan, and in the final season it battles Bakura's Diabound, but Bakura is able to weaken and destroy it by having a brainwashed priest attack the stone tablet housing Slifer's spirit. During Atem's final duel with Yugi, Slifer is Atem's final summoned monster before the duel ends.
Slifer's attack and defense scores are equal to the number of cards in its owner's hand times 1000. Whenever the opponent summons a monster when Slifer is on the field, Slifer's 'second mouth' can lower the Summoned monster's attack by 2000; if the attack consequently becomes zero the monster is instantly destroyed.
This English dub adaptiation of the card has the name "Slifer", which comes from Roger Slifer, the co-producer of 4kids. The original name of the card in Japan is "Osiris".
Slifer made a brief cameo appearance along with Yugi in Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo
The Winged Dragon of Ra
The Winged Dragon of Ra is the final and strongest of the God cards. It is the key card of Marik Ishtar during the Battle City arc of the series, and is described as being so powerful even the other two God cards combined cannot defeat it. To contain this power, an extra level of protection exists on the card; besides the above mentioned qualification of possessing a Millennium Item, a special text on the card referred to as the "Hieratic Text" (??????, ???????????) prevents anyone who does not recite this text from using it. The text is described in the series as a secret code known only to the highest ranking members of the Pharaoh's court. Atem's version of the chant is: "Almighty protector of the sun, sky / I beg of thee, please heed my cry, / Transform thyself from orb of light, and bring me victory in this fight, / I beg of thee, grace our humble game, / But first I shall call out thy name, Winged Dragon of Ra!"
In the quarter-finals of Battle City, Marik has his servant and adopted brother Rishid use a counterfeit copy of the card to impersonate him, but when Rishid loses, Marik reveals himself before being consumed by his evil alter-personality. Marik uses the card in his duels with Mai Kujaku (Mai Valentine in the English version) and Katsuya Jonouchi (Joey Weeler in the English version) during the finals as well as against Ryo Bakura in an unofficial duel, exploiting Ra's various powers during the duels to easily claim victory. During his duel with Yugi, Marik's evil side merges with Ra using one of its powers, and Yugi takes the chance to destroy Marik's evil side by destroying Ra and him together. Afterwards, a reformed Marik surrenders and hands the card to Yugi.
Ra makes sporadic appearances after the Battle City arc. It is used in season four of the anime to battle the Leviathan, and in the final season it battles Bakura's Diabound. Unlike Slifer and Obelisk, it is able to destroy Diabound, but Bakura reverses time to prevent Ra's summoning and avoid defeat. In the anime, it also takes part in the final battle between Atem and Yugi, although Atem does not use the full extent of its power in the battle. It is not used in Atem's final duel against Yugi in the manga. Ra appears in Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, when a counterfeit version of the card is stolen from Maximillion Pegasus by a rogue card designer, Frantz. By using a card of his own design, Mound of the Bound Creator, Frantz is able to enslave Ra and avoid having to fulfill any of the requirements to using it. He is defeated in a duel by Jaden Yuki, and the card is returned.
When summoned by sacrificing three monsters, Ra's attack and defense points become the combined attack and defense points of the sacrificed monsters. Ra also has several additional powers; its owner can sacrifice a number of life points to increase Ra's attack points by the same amount, and sacrifice other monster(s) to increase Ra's attack points by the sacrificed card(s) attack. Ra's final effect is to turn into a Phoenix by paying 1000 life points, causing immunity to destruction and the ability to instantly destroy all monsters on the opponent's field - basically identical to the effect of the card 'Raigeki'. Unless the owner keeps paying the additional 1000 during each of his/her following turns, 'Phoenix mode' only lasts until the end of the turn it is activated in. However, the exact manner in which any of these powers activates varies from duel to duel in the series, and because Ra's card text is written in the unreadable Hieratic Text, its true effects cannot be determined.
The first version of the God Cards was released by Ubisoft as a privilege for those who made a pre-order of the Japanese Game Boy Color game Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters 4: Battle of Great Duelist released on December 7, 2000. The second set was released by Konami on April 17, 2003 as special pack-in cards in the Game Boy Advance game Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters International — Worldwide Edition, the Japanese version of the English-language Yu-Gi-Oh! Worldwide Edition: Stairway to the Destined Duel.
Unlike previous versions, the third version of the God Cards was not released simultaneously. The Winged Dragon of Ra was included as a limited edition card in the Yu-Gi-Oh! The Dawn of Destiny game for Xbox, released March 23, 2004. Slifer the Sky Dragon was released as a special pack-in card for the ani-manga of Yu-Gi-Oh! The Movie: The Pyramid of Light, published November 23, 2004 by VIZ Media. Obelisk the Tormentor, finally, was released as a free gift to subscribers of United States Shonen Jump in May 2005.
Obtaining the God Cards once demanded high prices on the secondary market. This was prior to their current widespread availability. During this time, countless counterfeit copies were made and distributed primarily throughout Iraq, causing widespread warning articles on the internet and in card price guides on how to avoid paying for counterfeits and ensuring authenticity.
See also
External links
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