Dartz

For other versions of this character, see Dartz (disambiguation).

Dartz
Names
English	Dartz
Other	Gozaburo Kaiba (assumed identity)
Japanese	ダーツ
Arabic	دارتز
Personal
Age	10,000+
Gender	Male
Relatives	Ironheart (father) Chris (daughter) Iona (wife; deceased)
Allegiance
Royal title	King of Atlantis
Reign	circa. 8000 B.C.
Predecessor	Ironheart
Career
Previous occupation	King of Atlantis President of Paradius/Doma Possible president of Industrial Illusions Possible president of KaibaCorp
Previous organization	Doma Paradius Industrial Illusions KaibaCorp
Duelist
Anime Deck	Orichalcos
Appearances
Anime debut	Yu-Gi-Oh! episode 145: "A New Evil - Part 1"
Anime	Yu-Gi-Oh! (second series)
Voice actors
English	Wayne Grayson
Japanese	Yū Emao
Arabic	Ouday Raad
German	Björn Schalla
Tagalog	Louie Paraboles

Dartz was the main antagonist in the Waking the Dragons story arc of the Second Series Anime. Dartz was the last potentate of the city of Atlantis, and his history was tied to the lost city.

Design

Appearance

Dartz's usual outfit consisted of closed white and blue robes. His outfit also included a foot length cloak which trailed behind him, padded shoulders, cuffed wrists, a raised collar and a stone that bore the symbol of the Orichalcos around his neck. Dartz wore piercings on his left ear. He wore a fragment of the Orichalcos Stone in a chain on his forehead. His light blue hair featured a two locked fringe and trailed to near knee length and was tied at waist length. Dartz originally had gold irises, but after he was corrupted by the Orichalcos, he had Heterochromic irises; his right iris was green and his left was gold. His right eye returned to its original gold color after he was defeated by Yami Yugi. During his Duel with Yami Yugi and Seto Kaiba, he wore a Chaos Duel Disk. When he was at Paradius Inc., Dartz wore a periwinkle colored suit with a red tie and white shoes.

After he gave his soul to the Great Leviathan, Dartz's physical body became glassy, shattering into powder at a touch. His consciousness inhabited a tiny section of the Leviathan, taking the form of his upper torso messily merged at the wrists and waist into the Leviathan's head (the dub obscures the points where Dartz is merged with the Leviathan). His skin became purple, and his eyes fully yellow, while his face became mouthless.

Abilities

Full view of Dartz in his business clothes.

As the master of the Orichalcos, Dartz was granted powerful magical abilities that rivaled those of the Millennium Items, like materializing Duel Monsters, summoning his Orichalcos Soldiers all over the world and also recalling them, and also the power to brainwash others. Dartz also demonstrated the ability to cause weather storms, rain lightning blasts from the sky, conjure a sword from nothing, communicate with people telepathically, remote viewing, show visions, and using telekinesis. The Orichalcos also seemingly granted Dartz eternal youth, as 10,000 years had passed since he ruled Atlantis and he didn't age at all.

Dartz is also shown to have an extremely strong fighting spirit. It was so strong that when he manifested his fighting spirit during his Duel with Kaiba and Yami Yugi, they noted he was no ordinary person. Outside observers like Tristian, Tea, and Mokuba noted outside observers shouldn't be able to sense a Duelist's fighting spirit, but they clearly felt his.

Biography

History

Ten thousand years ago, Atlantis, an island that was isolated from the rest of the world, was a perfect civilization. One day, however, meteors rained down upon the kingdom. Those meteorites were mysterious and powerful Stones of the Orichalcos, and glowed a bright greenish blue. Those stones imbued the people of Atlantis with ultimate knowledge and power. In just a few years, Atlantis became the most advanced civilization on the planet, and was even more advanced than the modern world. However, with power came corruption and greed.

Ironheart, the King of Atlantis, gave his throne to his son, Dartz. Soon, the stones of the Orichalcos began to expose the evil in people, and turned those with darkness on the inside into monsters on the outside. Dartz witnessed his own wife, Iona, become a horrid, ugly beast. (In the Japanese version, she attacked him and he was forced to kill her with his sword.)

Confused and frightened, Dartz consulted a stone of the Orichalcos for guidance. The Orichalcos granted Dartz great power and lent him the Orichalcos Soldiers to do his bidding. It told him to resurrect an ancient mystical beast known as the Great Leviathan, which would help him to destroy the world and create a new one that would be free of evil. Dartz became corrupted and misguided.

Ironheart and Chris, (Dartz's daughter) fled and called upon the world of Duel Monsters and its guardians, the three Legendary Dragons (in actuality, three soldiers whom Dartz had transformed into dragons) for help against the corrupted Dartz. One day, an army of benevolent magical creatures—including the three dragons—led by Ironheart, met with Dartz’s Army of the Orichalcos Soldiers and the Great Leviathan, and the Battle of Atlantis took place. The battle concluded with neither side victorious: The three dragons were frozen in ice, the magical creatures were sent back to their own world, the Soldiers of the Orichalcos were destroyed, the Great Leviathan was sealed away from the world, and Atlantis sank beneath the sea.

The corruption of the Orichalcos made Dartz believe that the world was a wicked place, and that humans had an inherent malice in their hearts. The transformation that the Orichalcos had inflicted on his fellow Atlanteans was, he believed, the punishment for being evil, as the outside of man became as twisted as their inside. Dartz was driven to revive the Great Leviathan to raze the world, so that he may reconstruct it in the image of glorious Atlantis. To do so, Dartz required souls of humans.

Dartz wandered the Earth for 10,000 years, presumably kept alive by the power of the Orichalcos. He knew that he had found one of the powerful souls that he required when he encountered the Pharaoh Atem in ancient Egypt, and witnessed his control of the powers of darkness and his ability to command Duel Monsters. He also witnessed the Pharaoh, with Slifer the Sky Dragon pursuing Thief King Bakura and Diabound. However, Dartz could not capture the Pharaoh's soul because Bakura and Zorc Necrophades were in his way (though Dartz seems to not have any fear of Zorc and when he showed the past of the Pharaoh (his first battle with Bakura); Dartz never saw Zorc as a threat to the Great Leviathan, likely believing the powers of the Leviathan were greater than those of Zorc). He therefore had to wait another 5000 years (3000 in the Japanese version) to capture the Pharaoh's soul.

It was unclear precisely when Dartz began to collect souls, but eventually, he established a multinational conglomerate that was named Paradius, which became a well-known, yet mysterious force in the business world. But that was not the only organization that Dartz had formed. Dartz also controlled the Doma Organization (Paradius in the English version), a group formed to gather souls to feed the Great Leviathan by challenging unsuspecting male players to games of Duel Monsters only to have their souls taken by "The Seal of Orichalcos", a card that he had suffused with the Orichalcos' power.

For ten thousand years, Dartz collected souls in order to ensure the return of the Great Leviathan into the world. With time, the number of souls that Dartz had stolen stretched into the millions, thanks in part to his underlings.

Waking the Dragons

Dartz's family aiding his enemies.

Dartz's underlings, Rafael, Valon, and Alister, a trio of Duel Monsters players (called Doma's Three Swordsmen in Japan) had their lives manipulated by him to make them feel only hatred, and molded them to be ideal servants to his cause. Dartz gave them each a small fragment of the Orichalcos, which could be used to break the "Seal of Orichalcos" from outside in case of emergency, and gave them magical abilities that rivaled the Millennium Items.

Once aware of the fact that the Pharaoh had been reincarnated and his spirit revived in the present day, Dartz began his agenda to take his soul by freezing over the Tablet of Memories, and prevented the Pharaoh from remembering his own past. Later, he ordered his minions to steal the Egyptian God Cards. Subsequently, Yugi Muto, Seto Kaiba, and Joey Wheeler released and joined forces with the Legendary Dragons as the souls of both them and their friends came under threat. Dartz's surviving family, Ironheart and Chris assisted Yami in recovering his self-confidence and the trust of "Timaeus". Events gradually converged on a Duel between Yami Yugi, Kaiba, and Dartz, in which Yami Yugi claimed victory by releasing the power of the Legendary Dragons and returned them to their human forms. Kaiba, Joey, and Yugi's souls were emancipated from the clutches of the Leviathan.

However, Dartz sacrificed his own soul, and his human body was reduced to dust, to give Leviathan enough power to fully resurrect and raised Atlantis once more with himself combined with the Great Beast. In the ensuing battle, Yami Yugi called the Egyptian Gods and together they destroyed it, and discharged all of the souls of boys and men. However, a trace of its darkness remained, and revealed the Leviathan's original form, along with Dartz's soul, which Yami Yugi was able to banish, released Dartz from the influence of the Orichalcos, allowed him to be reunited with the spirits of his family, and entered the afterlife as Atlantis sank back beneath the sea.

Other appearances

Dartz (Legacy of the Duelist)

Deck

Dartz played an "Orichalcos" Deck, which centered on "The Seal of Orichalcos" and its upgraded forms, "Orichalcos Deuteros" and "Orichalcos Tritos", both of which added an additional ring to the glyph around the field. Much of his attack force was provided by "Mirror Knight Calling", who generated "Mirror Knight Tokens" (who copied the ATK of whichever monster they battled and protected themselves from destruction by removing their Shield Counters instead) and Shield Counters for those Tokens that were unprotected. However, Dartz's actual strategy involved "Orichalcos Kyutora", who reduced all Battle Damage that he took to 0. The Negated damage was what fueled the ATK of "Orichalcos Shunoros". However, "Orichalcos Shunoros" weakened itself very quickly (because it lost ATK after it battled a monster, or if either "Orichalcos Aristeros" or "Orichalcos Dexia" battled an opposing monster), so as a very last resort, if "Shunoros" was destroyed, Dartz Summoned his infinitely strong "Divine Serpent Geh", but if that monster was destroyed, he automatically lost.

Deck

Monsters

Effect Monsters

• Divine Serpent Geh
• Orichalcos Aristeros
• Orichalcos Dexia
• Orichalcos Gigas
• Orichalcos Kyutora
• Orichalcos Malevolence
• Orichalcos Shunoros
• Timeater

Ritual Monsters

• Mirror Knight Calling

Spells & Traps

Spells

• Impact Revive
• Orichalcos Deuteros
• Orichalcos Mirror
• Orichalcos Tritos
• The Seal of Orichalcos
• Twin Bow Centaur

Traps

• Martyr Curse

Duels

Opponent(s)	Episode(s)	Outcome(s)
Seto Kaiba and Yami Yugi	177-182	Win (Kaiba), Lose (Yami)

Trivia

• The symbol did not appear on Dartz's forehead when "The Seal of Orichalcos" was activated, unlike anyone else who used it.
• Dartz originally held the title of having the highest ever total life point value (20,000 LP) out of any character in the entire Yu-Gi-Oh! series anime franchise for 7 years until being superseded by Charlie McCay (100,000 LP) and then by Don Thousand (102,900 LP) from Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL respectively.
  • Coincidentally, both Dartz and Yami Yugi both held the lowest possible Life Point value (0 LP) in a Duel without automatically losing due to the protection of cards placed in effect by the respective Duelists.