Mai Kujaku

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Mai in the second series anime
Appears in	manga: Yu-Gi-Oh! (Original manga) anime: Yu-Gi-Oh! (Duel Monsters) (2nd series anime) movie: Yu-Gi-Oh! The Movie: Pyramid of Light
Debut	Yu-Gi-Oh! Duelist Volume 1, Duel 5 Original Japanese manga Volume 8, Duel 64
Birthday	November 20
Deck	Harpie Lady
Sign	Scorpio
Age	24
Height	175 cm (about 5 feet and 9 inches)
Weight	52 kg (114.4 pounds)
Blood type	O
Favorite food	Penne all'arrabbiata
Least favorite food	Durian
Status at debut	N/A
Relations	N/A
Seiyū	Haruhi Terada
Voice actor(s)	Megan Hollingshead (Season 1-3, US) Bella Hudson (Season 4, US) Alyson Johnson (Uncut DVDs, US) Alison Lester (Singapore)

Mai Kujaku (孔雀舞, Kujaku Mai^?), known as Mai Valentine in the English anime and English video games, is a fictional character in the manga Yu-Gi-Oh! and the anime Yu-Gi-Oh! (known as Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters in Asia).

1 Profile
2 Translation changes
3 Anime
4 Manga
5 Deck
6 References

[edit] Profile

In the beginning, Mai is a self-absorbed woman who seeks prize money. She believed that life was all about money, because it gave her everything she wanted. Her childhood was lonely and she was raised in a wealthy household. Mai once worked as a card dealer on a ship-board casino, which she discovered duel monsters and therefore challenged rich men into dueling her. Mai felt she was lost in life because of her loneliness, until she joined Duelist Kingdom hosted by Pegasus, to seek the 3 million dollar prize money.

In her trip, she met Yugi Mutou (Yugi Muto in the English anime) and his friends. After she meets them, she seems to start caring more for her friends and the deeper meanings of the game, as her wins become empty to her later in the series. Mai first appears in the Duelist Kingdom arc of the manga. She lost the first duel she is seen participating in to Katsuya Jonouchi (Joey Wheeler in the English anime). In the semi-finals, she loses to Yugi. In Battle City, she loses to Marik Ishtar. In the English anime, she is sent to the Shadow Realm after she loses to Marik, but she is later pulled out by Yugi.

Her best friend is Katsuya Jonouchi (Joey Wheeler). Kazuki Takahashi, the author of Yu-Gi-Oh!, deemed their situation as purely platonic. although even in the original manga, he dropped some rather strong hints that Mai actually does harbor deeper feelings for him.

In the Waking the Dragons series (Doma) Mai finds Valon, one of Dartz's men, who develops romantic feelings for her which she slightly reciprocates. Mai is also a role model to Shizuka Kawai (Serenity Wheeler in the English anime, Shizuka Jonouchi in the first series anime), Jounouchi's sister, who admires her beauty and strength and takes care of Mai after losing to Marik and having her soul sent to the Shadow Realm.

Mai's deck mainly consists of Harpie Ladies. In the anime, her deck also has Amazons.

In the Waking the Dragons (Doma) arc of the second series anime, Mai apparently turns evil and joins Dartz's group (Doma in the Japanese version). Reeling from her defeat from Marik in Battle City (and in the English anime, her torment from the Shadow Realm), Mai is once again in fear of defeat, and now fears that she cannot rely on herself. Even though she enters and wins many tournaments, without her friends to show her the way again, her fear of defeat still persists. The worst of it however has to do with her recurring nightmares of Marik (In the English anime, Mai dreams of Marik trapping her permanently in the Shadow Realm) that persist throughout most of the arc. At the end of her rope and with no one to help her, Valon finds her and convinces her that what she needs is not friendship, and that what she needs can be found with Dartz and the power of the Seal of Orichalcos.

Dartz fools her into believing that it was Yugi, Joey, as well as her other friends that abandoned her, and, after being infused with the Seal of Orichalcos and all of its atrocity inducing power, she not only believes it, but she intends to defeat them, starting with Joey. It isn't until she sees Joey ready to pass out from their second duel during the story arc that she finally sees through all of the deception and remembers everything that they went through that she overcomes the power of the Orichalcos. In an attempt to pay back Joey and Valon, both of whom lost their souls to the Orichalcos trying to help her in their own ways, she attempts to take on Dartz but is ambushed and defeated by Rafael and lost her own soul.

Following Doma, she spends the rest of the series alone and out of the picture reevaluating her life and trying to rediscover her passion for dueling. She promises to return one day to both Joey and Valon, however, in the US version, Mai and Valon's relationship seems to end, and she doesn't say whether she will go back to Joey. She is on the invitation list to participate in the KC Grand Prix but disappears. She is seen in passing a few times, including the ending credits in the final episode of the Japanese version, where she is dueling alongside Vivian Wong against the Meikyū Brothers (Paradox Brothers) on top of the Great Wall of China.

"Kujaku" means "peahen". In the English anime, Mai calls Joey by his given name, while almost everyone in the manga and the original Japanese anime calls Jonouchi by his family name. Her name in the English anime is a pun of "My Valentine".

[edit] Translation changes

Due to the rather risqué nature of Mai's deck and dress, her appearances and cards are edited in the English anime. This includes:

Digitally reducing her cleavage by removing cleavage marks
Lengthening her skirt
Filling the Harpie Ladies' clothes in so that they reveal no skin as opposed to covering little skin.
Renaming sexually named cards (IE Cyber Bondage to Cyber Shield)
Removing the sexually suggestive spikes from Cyber Bondage/Shield

[edit] Anime

In Duelist Kingdom, Mai wore a shortsleeve purple coat over her white tube top. From Battle City on, she changed to a sleeveless lavender vest and a white tank top. She wears a dark purple mini-skirt in the Duelist Kingdom and Battle City arcs, but in Waking the Dragons, she wears dark purple shorts as well as a dark purple vest, a black tank top and long, fingerless black gloves.

[edit] Manga

In Duelist Kingdom, she largely wore the same outfit as the anime, but her top was open, revealing the middle of her chest and held together using strings, like a corsette. In Battle City, she changed to wearing a black leather vest and mini-skirt, and wore a similar tube top as her Duelist Kingdom self, but with the front closed.

[edit] Deck

Mai runs a Harpie Lady deck, based around Harpie Lady and her variants. Her signature move is to split the single monster in three via Elegant Egotist, although she also uses Nightmare Tri-Mirror to the same effect under the influence of the Orichalcos. While Harpie Lady is generally a weaker card in terms of power, Mai uses Cyber Shield and Rose Whip to increase its strength. She also includes Amazoness cards during the Battle City tournament, with various female Warriors based on the legendary Amazon warriors.