Mai Valentine

Mai Valentine, known as Mai Kujaku in the manga and Japanese anime. She is a recurring and supporting character in Yu-Gi-Oh! Duelist Manga and the Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters series.

Appearance
Mai's character design was overseen by Kazuki Takahashi. In the anime, in Duelist Kingdom, Mai wore a short-sleeved purple coat over her white tube top,which shows her stomach, along with recurring purple high-heeled boots. From Battle City on, she changed to a sleeveless light purple vest and a white tank top and wore long white fingerless gloves. She wears a dark purple mini-skirt and a deck holder strapped to her thigh in the Duelist Kingdom and Battle City arcs, but in Waking the Dragons, she wears dark purple shorts and now wears purple gloves.

In the 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 corset. 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.

In the English anime, her cleavage and lines of cleavage are digitally reduced or erased and her skirt is lengthened.

Personality
At the beginning of the series, Mai is a self-absorbed woman who is only set out for prize money, personal satisfaction and power. She was also very arrogant and prideful of her dueling skills and looks.

At first, Mai often used her beauty to seduce men into giving her what she wants and making them her tools. She used her beauty to easily steal Rex Raptor's luxury room on the cruise to Duelist Kingdom by offering him a kiss if he could beat her in a duel, and later manipulated him into dueling Joey for her as revenge on Joey for defeating her in an earlier duel.

Mai is extremely lonely and at first, is convinced that she doesn't need friends. At one point, she believed her "Harpie Lady" cards were the closest she would ever have to friends.

Mai's selfish attitude and outlook on life continues until she meets and finds meaning with Yugi Muto and his three best friends. After she meets them and Yugi fought Panik for her to regain her Star Chips, Mai begins seeing Yugi, Joey, Tristan, and Tea as her friends. She even offered Yugi her extra Star Chips so he could enter the Duelist Kingdom's Finals and rescue his grandfather after Yugi lost to Kaiba, and gave Joey her entry fee card for the finals when his was stolen by Bandit Keith. From there, she continued meeting up with the four on occassions and helping them out from time to time on their adventures.

Mai's feelings of loneliness and emptiness return when she is forced to face Marik in the Battle City finals. Marik enters her into a Shadow Game, where with each of her monsters destroyed she begins losing the memory of a former friend. In the end, Marik defeats her and leaves her mind trapped in the Shadow Realm for a long time while she continues feeling more and more alone, miserable, and isolated every minute, until Yugi finally defeats Marik in the final round and frees her.

After being freed from the Shadow Realm and gone separate ways from her friends for a while, Mai's wins become empty to her and her feelings of loneliness return even more. Eventually, she is unable to cope with the mental anguish and turns against her friends, joining the evil Dartz to assist him in his quest for power. However, Joey seems to eventually bring her back to her old self and she regains her self-esteem and pride as a true duelist, but was unable to face her former friends again after what she had done to them.

In the Japanese version; Mai typically uses a quite informal manner of speech. She commonly omits honorifics when speaking with others, but addresses Tea and Serenity as "-chan." She uses the informal and potentially condescending "anta", a contraction of the more formal "anata" (similar to the English "honey"). She uses the personal pronoun "atakushi", which tends to be a more elegant, if not older, form of self-reference.

Background
Mai was orphaned at a young age and spent much of her time alone (in the dub, she instead recounts that her parents were always busy and were away from home to work).[3 ]

Mai once worked as a card dealer on a ship-board casino, where she first discovered the "Harpie Lady" cards. A lot of men, who she described as boring, would pay money to get with her. Using her "aroma tactics", she pretended she had psychic powers, as she could tell what her cards were without looking at them, since they were sprayed with different perfumes. With these tactics she defeated such men, winning their money. Although she made a lot of money, she got bored and quit.

She met Jean-Claude Magnum while working there. The two Dueled, ending in the actor's defeat. Magnum proposed to her, to which she refused and told him to come back when he became a good duelist.[4 ]

Duelist Kingdom Saga
Mai was invited to participate in the Duelist Kingdom tournament.

On the boat to the tournament, she meets Yugi Muto and Joey Wheeler and challenges Rex Raptor to a Duel. She wins using her aroma tactics, and evicts Rex from his luxury room.

At the Duelist Kingdom island, Mai watches Yugi's Duel with Weevil Underwood and comments on how Yugi doesn't stand a chance - criticism that was clearly in contrast with Yugi's friends' encouragement. She later duels Joey Wheeler, psyching him out with her aroma tactics while powering up her "Harpie Lady". Joey wins after exposing her "psychic powers" as a fraud.

She wins a few off-screen Duels, and is later challenged to a rematch by Rex Raptor. She didn't want to face Rex since she had already defeated him, but still wanted to beat Joey. She thought it would be immature to challenge Joey again, so she offered to duel Rex, provided he defeated Joey first. If she could beat Rex after he beat Joey, that would be like beating both of them, she thought.

She caught up with Joey and his friends and got Joey to face Rex. She got mad when Rex made a bet to try to win Joey's "Time Wizard", as he would be able to use it against her later. However, Joey managed to win.

She shared her food with Yugi, Joey and their friends, saying they could be friends tonight, but enemies tomorrow.

That night, she was targeted by Pegasus' eliminator, PaniK. Yugi and his friends heard her scream and rushed to help her, finding that she had lost all her Star Chips to PaniK. Yugi defeated PaniK and returned Mai's Star Chips.

After Yugi loses to Kaiba, Mai offers him some of her extra Star Chips claiming she owed him them. Yugi cannot accept them, so Téa duels Mai for the Star Chips. Mai begins to greatly outplay Téa. But after Téa makes a comeback, Mai, impressed by Téa's spirit and eager to repay her debt to Yugi, surrenders so Yugi can take the Star Chips.

&lt;img alt="Maivalentineandharpies" src="http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120410105753/yugioh/images/thumb/5/51/Maivalentineandharpies.jpg/180px-Maivalentineandharpies.jpg" width="180" height="242" class="thumbimage" data-image-name="Maivalentineandharpies.jpg" data-image-key="Maivalentineandharpies.jpg" /&gt;

Mai and her Harpies Added by Asuka Tenjoin

In the finals, she is paired against Yugi in the first match. Yami Yugi was distracted by the prospect of Dueling Pegasus to win back the souls of Yugi's grandfather and the Kaiba brothers, and was not taking Mai seriously as an opponent, forcing Yugi and Mai to help convince him to face Mai out of principle. In the English version, Yugi was afraid of what happened in his Duel with Kaiba and wouldn't let Yami Duel. Mai initially dominates Yugi, but helps him face his own fears, allowing Yami to make a comeback that leaves Mai at a complete disadvantage. With her strongest monster destroyed, Mai chooses to surrender rather than see the rest of her "Harpie" monsters destroyed as well. With Bandit Keith's disqualification from the tournament, Mai's final placing in the Duelist Kingdom Tournament is 3rd.

After her loss, she gives Joey one of her entry cards, to prevent him being disqualified.

Yu-Gi-Oh! Pyramid of Light
Mai was seen in a restruanment driking juice,and sees kids outside trying to find Yugi in order to duel him.

Knownable Relatives

 * Joey Wheeler (boyfriend)

Trivia

 * "Kujaku Mai" means "peacock dance" in Japanese. Her name in the English anime is a pun of "My Valentine".

Voice Actresses
Japanese :

English :