Yu-Gi-Oh manga creator Kazuki Takahashi has died at the age of 60, leaving behind a lasting legacy in trading card games.

Manga Artist Kazuki Takahashi, known for creating the popular manga Yu-Gi-Oh! in 1996, died at the age of 60 in July 2022. He was found dead on July 6, 2022, about a thousand feet off the shore of Nago, Okinawa, by the Japanese Coast Guard, following a civilian report from a passing boat. He was found wearing snorkeling gear and is believed to have died days prior.

Kazuki Takahashi’s Legacy in the Field of Manga, Anime, Pop Culture, and Trading Card Games

Kazuki Takahashi started working as a manga artist in 1991, working on the manga Tennenshoku Danji Buray. However, he would make his breakthrough with Yu-Gi-Oh!, a manga about a boy named Yugi Mutou who awakened an alter-ego after solving an ancient puzzle known as the Millenium Puzzle, who then helps the boy solve his conflicts through various games. Among these games came the Magic & Wizards card game, which eventually evolved into the Yu-Gi-Oh! Card Game, known in-universe as Duel Monsters.

Yugi and his friends would later discover that the alter-ego is actually a long-lost Pharaoh spirit who has lost his memories. He and his friends then embarked on a journey to find the different Millenium Items, challenging their owners in dangerous Shadow Games, in a bid to regain the Pharaoh’s lost memories.

The Shadow Games initially represented different games – from card games, tabletop games, and dice games – with all of them involving gambling to some degree. The card game Magic & Wizards became so popular that it featured more prominently and was used as a game more often as the series progresses. The popularity of the card game led to various spin-offs that focused more on the card game, and even spawned multiple media, giving birth to one of the most popular trading card games in the world – Yu-Gi-Oh!.

Kazuki Takahashi’s creation of Yu-Gi-Oh! influenced pop culture for decades to come, with “Banishing people to the shadow realm” becoming a popular meme on the Internet. His manga made trading card games extremely popular in Japan. With the growing popularity of another trading card game during that time, Magic the Gathering, Yu-Gi-Oh! was able to carve its niche in the trading card game space, surviving over two decades of play and becoming one of the most recognizable trading card games in the world today.