YGO is, in the end, a story about fathers.
I mean, not really, but. Honestly? I feel like you could make a strong case for it.
I'm kind of surprised I never wrote an essay on it in college.
.
Whenever Ryo wasn't at home, he could be found at one of two places: Turtle Game, where he picked up supplies for his Monster World campaigns (and kept in touch with his friends); or Galloway Park, where he liked to sit on his favorite bench and watch people go about their various doings. Sometimes, he would bring a book to read; sometimes, a notebook to work. Most days he spent at the park, though, were spent with his hands in his lap and his eyes wandering.
Ryo always looked like he was up to absolutely nothing while he did this, but he wasn't nearly as much of an airhead as he'd often been accused of being back in high school. When he watched people, he was working through a puzzle in his mind. He watched people to work people.
He sent letters to his father twice a month, so as to keep him up to date on things in Domino.
Roma Bakura rarely sent more than a postcard in reply, but that was often enough for his son. Ryo didn't mind, not really. It was hard to blame the man for losing himself in his work. He was running from his grief, certainly, but Ryo couldn't really blame his father for that. He was no stranger to ghosts himself, after all, and he'd been haunted for years. He couldn't expect Roma to handle the tragedies of his past as well as he did.
Ryo, after all, had a support network.
What did his father have?
He could count on one hand the number of times he'd heard about another person in Roma's own letters to his son. He worked with other people, to be sure; it wasn't possible to deal in antiquities in solitude, after all; especially considering that most of the Bakura family's income came from sales. Roma was good at it, too; perhaps one of the best salesmen Ryo had ever seen.
But Ryo had long believed that being a good salesman meant being a bad friend.
Attachments, after all, only caused complications.
These thoughts all swirled around the central problem Ryo had been wrestling with, which was that it was nearing time for another letter, and he couldn't for the life of him decide whether he should mention Noa Kaiba or not.
They'd been growing closer. It wasn't official, or anything; neither Ryo nor Noa had any experience in dating, and they'd both decided independently that it was best to take things slowly, but surely that didn't mean Ryo couldn't tell his own father that he had a boyfriend. Did it? Couldn't he say that? Noa surely wouldn't begrudge him that.
But Ryo had come to understand, over several days, that the real problem wasn't anything to do with Noa at all.
Not really.
It was the notion that Ryo might spend two, three, perhaps six pages talking about how much his life had changed in the past months, all thanks to one eccentric, bombastic whirlwind of a man; the idea that he might, in other words, lay out his entire heart for examination.
And get something like a postcard in return.