How Joey Wheeler Became One of the Most Popular Yu-Gi-Oh! Characters

Joey Wheeler is perhaps, when you look at it, one of the weakest characters in all of Yu-Gi-Oh!, largely because he doesn’t have a lot of money or any mystical help.

So if you approach this from the standpoint of what kind of help he has and what that might mean when it comes to his chances at winning anything, it seems that he would be out of luck before he ever started. But then you turn the corner and realize that since Joey managed to win a good deal of his matches, and WITHOUT an excessive fortune or mystical help backing him up, he is actually among the strongest players in the game. He’s the underdog that doesn’t need the added force behind him in order to win and the guy that can rely on his own skill and pluck simply because he’s that good. People love an underdog story and to be quite honest Joey is probably one of the biggest underdogs in the entire show and manga. Yet he conquers those that he seems to be so far beneath and largely because he believes in himself and because he has skills that others don’t seem to believe in until they’ve been beaten. That kind of underdog story is something that can inspire and push viewers to believe that Joey is worth their respect.

There are a few other reasons that Joey is so great as well.

He’s a bit of a gambler.

There wasn’t much on the books about Joey’s back story for a while or his relationship with his father. Apparently his mother and father split and his mother took his sister with her and left Joey with their father.  Unfortunately his dad was a degenerate gambler that only went after money when he gambled. During the matches Joey relied heavily on cards that dealt with chance in many different ways, which kind of showed that he too has a gambling spirit. Unlike his father however Joey wasn’t all about the money, he played to win and to feel the rush of it. Money was only a desire when there was something he needed to purchase with it.

He doesn’t accept charity.

There was a match during which Joey was cheated out of one of his best cards by an opponent, but rather than whine and moan about it he went on his way. Yugi however would go on to win this card from that same opponent and offered to give it back to Joey. In good form Joey refused the card and stated that he would only take it back if he won it. In later matches, after having gone against Yugi, Joey is seen using the same card he lost, which makes it easy to assume that he defeated Yugi for the card. You can say a lot of things about Joey but one thing is for certain, he doesn’t accept what he doesn’t win, and that’s pretty honorable when you think about it.

He doesn’t like to give up.

Few people ever like to give up but Joey is one of those special cases that will not give up even when good sense says to do so. He tends to stick around even when he seemingly has no business being where he’s at and could possibly go down fighting if he isn’t careful. Of course that’s what an underdog does and that’s why people tend to like them so much. The underdog will be the last person standing in the fight typically because they’re fighting for much more than themselves. The underdog is the person that fights because to do anything else isn’t acceptable and it’s usually the only way that they can affect any kind of change in their lives. Those that have mystical help, bags and bags of money to throw around, and those that have advantages that others don’t typically won’t understand why the underdog is fearless and doesn’t seem to understand the meaning of the odds being stacked against them. It takes a while sometimes for people to come around to why the underdog is so great, but once they refuse to give up more and more individuals start to rally behind them after realizing just how resolute that person is.

Joey was never a perfect character as he did have his flaws but he was still one of the best in the show if not the best according to the creator. His story arc was something that you wouldn’t have really expected to take off, but people started liking him and couldn’t help but find a way to really love the character after a while. In fact he even became more popular than Yugi since he was that character that was easy to relate to and could easily draw in people that were just like him.

Source: tvovermind