Yusei Fudo

Yusei Fudo is the 18 year old protagonist of Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's and one of the Signers. He is known for his genius style dueling, his considerable duel skill, and his cool and clever personality. He uses a Bike-themed Duel Disk called a Duel Runner.

In comparison to other series' protagonists, Yusei is entirely different to Jaden Yuki in personality, but has a small number of similarities to Yami Yugi. He has a far more calm and serious attitude than either of them, and is overall depicted as having having a no-nonsense personality, but is protective of his friends and shares a bond with his cards, like Yugi and Jaden. Unlike them, he has a tendency to act on his own more often. In the English version Yusei is an entomophobe.

Design
Yusei's character design was done by Shuji Maruyama. He has startling blue eyes and black hair with yellow highlights. The upper layer of his hair points upward while the lower layer points down. Yusei wears a long-sleeved blue jacket with a high collar and amber gems over a sleeveless black shirt with a red symbol. His lower body consists of jeans and a belt. After episode 5, he acquires a jagged criminal marker on the left side of his face. His dragon birthmark is a red outline of the tail, which is permanently burned onto his arm after the events concluding the Fortune Cup story arc.

Prior to the pilot
Yusei was born in the Tops area of New Domino City. His parents were lead developers for the first Enerdy system. After the Zero Reverse accident, they were killed and Yusei was sent to an orphanage in Satellite. His foster mother in Satellite is Martha.

Yusei grew up in Satellite, where he befriended Kyosuke Kiryu, Jack Atlas, Rally Dawson, Blitz, Nervin, Crow, and Tank. As residents of Satellite, they were made labor for the residents of New Domino City and denied many luxuries, often enjoyed in New Domino.

Yusei, along with Kiryu, Jack, and Crow, became part a group known as Team Satisfaction. Believing they could never leave Satellite, they tried to make the most of their lives there. They began taking over various regions. During their team dueling days while facing the final dueling gang, one tries to kill Yusei by throwing him off the roof. However as he's falling Kiryu intervenes and saves him, and with the final gang being defeated eventually, they have been able to conquer all the zones. Sometime later, for some unknown reason Kiryu committed the horrible act of taking the life of a Sector Security member.

Then Yusei acts against this murderous act by engaging in a fight against Kiryu, as the police arrives, Kiryu is arrested and presumed dead. The team broke up after Kiryu's apparent death.

Yusei was able to pick up TV signals from New Domino, allowing his friends to witness Turbo Duels. He fell out with Jack after a difference in goals, as Jack strived for power and to lead people. With his friends help Yusei was able to make his own Duel Runner. However Jack stole the Duel Runner and Yusei's ace card, "Stardust Dragon" in order to escape to New Domino and become the "Turbo Duel King." Yusei had considered these stolen items to be "bonds of friendship" belonging to him and his friends. After Jack stole them he vowed to get them back.

Escape from Satellite
After building a new Duel Runner with the help of Rally Dawson, Yusei ventures to New Domino City to recover Stardust Dragon from Jack. In the process, he runs into Trudge, a Public Order Security officer, who frames Rally with an acceleration chip (in the original, he wants to arrest him for stealing the chip). Trudge agrees to duel Yusei under the condition that if Yusei won, Trudge would forget the events of that day; if Trudge won, Yusei would give himself up to Trudge. After accepting the challenge and losing, Trudge swears to crush Yusei, but lets him go.

Yusei manages to find Jack, who tosses Stardust Dragon back to him, telling Yusei he can have it. Yusei refuses, saying that he would rather duel him for it to prove he can get it on his own. Jack agrees, but their Turbo Duel is interrupted by the appearance of a Crimson Dragon right before the winner is determined. The Dragon causes Jack's already permanent Birthmark to glow and burn as well as revealing Yusei's Mark, the Dragon's Tail. Yusei is arrested shortly after for trespassing into New Domino while Jack leaves safely. Rex Goodwin and Lazar, who had been monitoring the duel, reveal that if the Crimson Dragon hadn't appeared, Jack would have lost.

The Facility
After his arrest, Yusei got a marker, signifying his criminal record, and was sent to the Facility, where he met Yanagi Tenzen. He informs Yusei of the Crimson Dragon and the Signers, telling him that those who have the birthmarks were chosen by the People of the Stars. Yusei's birthmark is the Crimson Dragon's Tail, which appears on his arm when he fights alongside Stardust Dragon or encounters another Signer. He also learns of Bolt Tanner, a former Pro Duelist, from Tenzen who later duels him and loses. Yusei offers a rematch against himself using Tenzen's deck. Yusei wins the duel and Tanner offers his assistance to him after defeating the corrupt warden Mr. Armstrong and gaining their freedom. During his duel with Armstrong, Yusei was put in a pinch, using cards from different inmates. Although freed, Yusei retained his status as a criminal due to his marker, and therefore can be arrested by the authorities at any time.

Fortune Cup
Yusei is later given refuge by the twins Leo and Luna. In the Japanese version, he fears that he would only cause them trouble by staying, but they manage to talk him into a Duel and staying for the night. In the English version, Yusei has lost his memory after his Duel with Trudge and can't even remember his name. He duels Leo in the hopes of regaining his memory.

After leaving the twins, he is threatened into participating in the Fortune Cup by Lazar, who holds his Satellite friends hostage. Yusei is later given more incentive to participate when Jack gives "Stardust Dragon" back and personally demands that he face him. In the quarter-finals of the Fortune Cup, Yusei faced Hunter Pace, disguised as Shira, and won, moving to the semifinals. His opponent in the semifinals is Bommer.

After Yusei defeats Bommer, Bommer attempts to take revenge on Goodwin for what he did to his village, but Yusei manages to stop him. Before security takes Bommer away, he tells Yusei to fulfill his own mission.

Yusei faces Akiza in the finals. Previously he had thought that she only felt anger and rejection. But after Akiza's first move, he notices and points out, that she has a pleasure and joy for destruction. Akiza replies that that cannot be true, however later on the duel, after people insult her again, she accepts it all because of being the "Black Rose". According to her, this other side of her is the one who enjoys destruction all because of the powers caused by the dragon birthmark. He learns that after she was found by Divine), he told her to feel but not to think, to let him do that for her. But even still, she puts on her mask just to feel; this prompts Yusei to fight this duel to change her.

Which by the end of the Duel begins as he says that her pain which came from all the destruction she caused was turned into one that the other Signers shared. Yusei tells her that the birthmark may hold the answer for her pain, but in order to find out she must think and love herself. Akiza still intends to deny this by winning the duel without noticing, as pointed out by Yusei, who has seen through her, that she is crying. Thus he eventually wins, resulting in her mask cut in half due to Cosmic Blast and after she falls, Akiza tells him to "help her".

He faces Jack near the end of the Fortune Cup. Although he is pushed to a corner in the middle of the Duel, Yusei wins using various combos with "Stardust Dragon" to destroy Jack's "Red Dragon Archfiend" and becomes the new King of the Turbo Duel.

Dark Signers
Yusei spots another Signer and chases him to a construction site where he faces him in a duel. The opponent used a new kind of Synchro summoning called Dark Synchro Summon. Eventually, Yusei found out that he was a Dark Signer, who has a purple spider-shaped birthmark on his right arm, who wants to destroy the Signers. The Dark Signer claimed that soon all the signers birthmark will be dyed a pitch black color, but Yusei (who was a bit upset at the time about what the mysterious Duelist said) did not care and claimed that the bonds with his friends and cards will see him through until the very end.

He won the Duel and checked on his opponent. The birthmark disappeared and the duelist, who's name is Dick Pitt, recalled no memory of his duel with Yusei and there was no trace of the deck that he was using in the duel. Once Sector Security arrived on the scene, Yusei fled the scene. Once he got back to the hideout, Sector Security found him with Trudge leading them. Yusei walks out to meet them and requests to speak with Goodwin. While waiting for Goodwin, Yusei watches the event premiering Road of the King on a screen.

Trudge interrupts him, but Lazar has him dismissed and takes Yusei to meet with Rex near a portion of a bridge that leads to Satellite. Here Rex Goodwin tells him what he calls "the truth". With it Yusei eventually learns the truth behind the Nazca Lines being the site where the Five Dragons sealed an evil within the lands themselves. Along with the fact that the Signers have been battling their opposite rivals for 5,000 years. That their battle is destined to determine the fate of the world and that if they lose, it will change it into one that follows the laws of the Underworld.

Also he learns that the first Enerdy system to exist wasn't within Kaiba Corp., but instead on Satellite. Now that place is the door to the Underworld itself. In order to close it, they must defeat their long time rivals. After Yusei states to move the Satellite’s hometown residents to be safe, Goodwin says that he can’t because then the Dark Signers will just look for new victims. Rex also tells him that if he wants to save Satellite then Yusei must combine its power to that of the other 4 Signers. However, when he claims that there missing one, Rex tells him that it would eventually appear since the final Signer is destined to join them in the upcoming battle as well.

After that, a plane appears with his Duel Runner and transports Yusei back to Satellite where another one of his friends, that being Crow, is apparently waiting for him. After the two reunite, they head to the hideout, where he is reunited with Rally and the others. Security had been following Crow, so Yusei and Crow team up to get rid of them, winning the Tag Ride. After the duel (ending with Yusei and Crow winning), Yusei and Crow finally meet up with Rally and his other Satellite friends over Daedalus Bridge, where he tells them about the disastrous vision shown by the Red Dragon and the story told by Goodwin.

He listens along with the others the story about the man who made the bridge. Thus later during the night both he and Crow had now gone to the B.A.D., on where one of the Dark Signers has appeared. As it waiting for him, not only did Yusei's birthmark begin to glow, but the other 3 Signers react as well. As now Yusei's new opponent appears before him and Crow sitting on its Duel Runner, he finally reveals himself as their old former friend Kyosuke Kiryu. He then separates them by creating the image of the Giant birthmark on the field, in order to engage in a Shadow Turbo Duel with Yusei.

However he shows great hatred towards his old friends and especially over him. As Yusei doesn't understand how he is still alive and worst that a Dark Signer. Their duel goes underway with Kiryu pushing him to a corner due to his revengeful attacks. As the duel unfolds Kiryu summons his ace Dark Synchro monster One-Hundred Eye Dragon. Thus without having cards in his Hand at all, this powerful cards is still deadly due its effect. As Yusei is inflicted more damage Kiryu continues telling him to suffer, however he tells him to stop.

However Kiryu turns the tables on him once again by summoning his Earthbound God - Ccapac Apu. However, before Yusei can be defeated, his Duel Runner breaks down and the duel is canceled. However, a large shard impales his stomach and Crow takes him to Martha's refuge facility, in order to receive the required surgery. As Crow, Rally and the others are waiting outside, Yusei is being operated on by Dr. Schmitt who assisted by Martha. Eventually, Yusei's life is saved and recovers from the surgery, and after waking up he notices that Rally and the others brought his Duel Runner all the way from the B.A.D Area.

Though he's gets scolded by Martha for putting himself in danger, without asking his fellow friends for help. She also reminds Yusei's his ideal of "believing in friends" as they will always be there supporting and helping him out. As he recovers, he checks his Duel Runner. He also thinks that Kiryu is too powerful for Yusei to defeat.

As Akiza is about to duel against Misty his birthmark reacts along with that of Jack and as he watches the sky, Yusei notices both hummingbird and lizard marks. He becomes aware that another duel between a Signer and Dark Signer is about to begin.

Jack heads towards the Arcadia Movement's Headquarters. However by the time he arrives, Akiza's duel against Misty has already ended, finding her in an unconscious state. As Akiza is taken to the hospital and admitted her parents appear, however because of their disastrous relationship with their daughter they turn to Yusei for help. But, when Akiza awakes and sees Yusei, she pushes him away, not wanting his help.

Deck
Yusei's Deck uses many speed themed cards and revolves around the Synchro Summoning of the "Warrior" Synchro Monsters, "Junk", "Nitro" and "Turbo", while keeping his ace card, "Stardust Dragon," in reserve for special occasions(and sometimes uses his Stardust Dragon/Assault Mode when possible). Most of his non-Synchro Monsters are low in Level, giving him more fine control over which Synchro Monster he is able to summon at a given time. His basic strategy usually entails either swarming the field with many low-level monsters all at once for a high-level Synchro Summon or else using his lower-level Synchro monsters as a bridge to summon the higher-level ones (example:Junk Warrior+Nitro Synchron=Nitro Warrior).

Thematically, many of Yusei's cards tend towards being either Warrior or Machine-type monsters, and even his non-Machine cards tend to have a Machine-like appearance (such as his Warrior Synchro Monsters) or are similarly themed, like "Scrap-Iron Scarecrow" or "Junk Barrage". Some of his cards also focus on Burn effects, such as Armory Arm, Junk Barrage, Cosmic Blast, and Meteor Stream.

Also, some of Yusei's cards focus on changing the levels of his monsters to better suit his use of Synchro Summoning.

Yusei uses 2 Decks, one for Turbo Duels and one for normal Duels. His Turbo Deck strongly focuses on Trap Cards to bypass the limitations Speed Spells contain.

In his Lightning Deathmatch against Mr. Armstrong, Yusei used a Deck made of cards given to him by inmates at the Facility. Many of the monsters in this Deck are outlaws or otherwise unsavory.(take note that most of the cards listed below are seen but never used)