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| “ | All right Yugi! | „ |
| ~ Hiroto Honda |
Hiroto Honda or Tristan Taylor (4Kids dub) is one of the two tritagonists (alongside Téa Gardner) of the Yu-Gi-Oh! franchise. He is one of Yugi's close friends and the oldest friend of Joey Wheeler. Despite his looks, he has shown to be the weakest duellist out of the bunch.
He was voiced by Sam Riegel and later, currently voiced by Greg Abbey in the English Version, both of them voiced Donatello and Raphael in the 2003 incarnation of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Yusei Fudo in Yu-Gi-Oh! 5DS. He was voiced by Ryōtarō Okiayu, Hidehiro Kikuchi and Takayuki Kondō in the Japanese version.
Background
Honda, along with his friend Katsuya Jonouchi were originally schoolyard bullies of Yugi Muto. Like Jonouchi, Honda was one of the more trouble-making delinquents at his school. At first, Honda was willing to help put the more soft-spoken students like Yugi in their place, however, Honda and Jonouchi both objected to the lengths Yugi was persecuted by others and soon found themselves standing up for him to prevent things from going too far. Once Yugi demonstrated his skills in the Duel Monsters card game, the two became outright impressed with Yugi and quickly decided to start hanging out with him to pick-up what seemed like a fun game to them. Before long, Honda was regular to Sugoroku Muto's hobby shack and spending their free time with the boy they once ridiculed as best friends. Honda may be the least skilled duelist of Yugi's immediate group of friends, but he is physically the strongest and more than willing to throw-caution-to-the-wind and solve a problem with his muscles if he sees and opportunity. Honda finds himself not only developing into Yugi's guardian but also Anzu Mazaki's, Ryou Bakura's and Mokuba Kaiba's as well. Though Honda is more or less out-classed by those around him when it comes to playing Duel Monsters, his time to shine tends to come when real-world harm tends to come after him or his friends.
Personality
While similar to Jonouchi as his school's resident trouble-maker, Honda was much more emphasized as having had to deal with street violence, social gangs and cliques looking to cause trouble. As a result of his background with gangs and punks, Honda is initially much more cynical than even Jonouchi. Honda is also far more suspicious of any given situation than his friends.He is never willing to trust Seto Kaiba even if he down-plays his feelings. Honda is the only one who has been able to pick Yami Bakura out over that of Bakura before the spirit's reveal of the situation.
