[Yugioh] Marik is a pathetic loser and I can only assume that's the point.

Yugioh is a pretty trash series in general, but the one thing it consistently does well is villains. I don't know how it manages to be mid at best in almost every aspect, but somehow almost never misses with the villains. In a single series, we have:

• Seto Kaiba, the dictionary definition of a hater. This is a man who is so extra he makes Lex Luthor look lackadaisical by comparison. This is a guy who built a murder theme park to kill a guy who got the upper hand on him once, then built a portal into the afterlife for a rematch, all while using advanced military technology to build more realistic card games and a dragon-shaped jet. Every single thing he does is two steps more than everyone else, for absolutely no reason.
• Pegasus, the trillionaire man child with psychic powers. The trauma loss of his lover left him stuck in perpetual childhood, so he buys a giant private island with his own castle so that he can watch cartoons with more style. He still manages to be a threatening villain, effortlessly beating his opponents without dropping his foppish demeanor. And when you do manage to push him into a corner, he drops the Looney Toons cards and still has more tricks up his sleeve.
• Noah Kaiba, a child locked in a virtual realm yearning for freedom. He doesn't have much of a presence in the show since seasons 3, 4, and the first part of 5 we all anime-exclusive filler, but the concept behind Noah is so interesting it carries the season. A child who cheats and whines when he's not winning, but has ultimate power and a weirdly biblical deck, makes for a terrifying combination.
• Dartz is fine I guess, and Zigfried is just Pegasus again but he's a cheating hacker now. But Pegasus was so good the first time I can't complain about them just doing the same character design again.
• Bakura isn't that great when you just look at his character. He's a good enough villain archetype, being an ancient evil reviving once again to bring about 1000 years of darkness, but it's nothing special in either the concept or exection. Mostly what's fun is that he always uses interesting strategies in the actual duels. Not once in his duels is he trying to attack with a big monster like everyone else, he uses a completely different strategy every time. This means every time he shows up you're always wondering what he's going to do next.

And then we have Marik. He's a constant presence throughout a few seasons, and since he's actually from the manga he gets all sorts of cameos later on and in the video games, unlike most of the other villains. If you only saw the promotional material, you'd probably think he's the main villain of the entire series. And yet, he basically doesn't do anything. He has no skills, no unique goals, no personality, and not even a functioning deck strategy. His minions are even less competent than the other minions, and Marik himself just piggybacks Kaiba's tournament, not actually doing anything the entire season.

Let's discuss Marik's goals and success rate. Marik was an egyptian tombkeeper with an abusive father, kept locked away for his entire childhood until he develops a split personality that kills his father. Weirdly, there's no ancient egyptian magic here, no spirit of the millennium rod or whatever, Marik literally just...invented a fake personality that has its own soul and can eject the original soul from his body, because he was abused. Marik then assumes that the pharaoh killed his dad because he doesn't remember it (what) and decides to steal the god cards for the power to free his family (what?) and/or take over the world(what‽).

At this point his only goal is to defeat Yugi as efficiently as possible, and he gets an army of mind controlled minions to use every strategy in the book to defeat him. They are explicitly minions who have all the best cards in the game and are specifically developing strategies to defeat one specific guy, and they do worse than the random filler minions all the other villains cooked up. Marik and his minions do literally nothing in the series other than take constant Ls:

• Marik mind controls a champion duelist and separates Yugi from the Millennium Puzzle, preventing him from using the pharaoh's knowledge, and loses.
• A minion uses fake copies of Exodia to win by using the most powerful strategy in the game, and loses.
• A minion studies Yugi's deck and makes a perfect counter to his strategies, and loses.
• Marik gets tired of this bullshit and gives his exact deck and directly mind controls the exact actions of a puppet, including his god card, and loses.
• The final set of minions force a tag duel with Kaiba despite him constantly sabotaging Yugi's strategy, and lose.
• Marik again steps in directly mind controlling someone again using his own cards, but this time forces Yugi to kill his best friend to win, and Yugi manages to win the duel and save them both anyway.
• Someone actually competent manages to effectively beat Joey in the finals and potentially beat Yugi, but then Marik tells him what to do and he loses anyway.
• Marik duels against Mai, who has already lost to Joey and Yugi and other filler characters, and yet Mai wins anyway. Then Marik pulls some bullshit new rule out of his ass to cheat out a victory.
• Marik duels against Bakura, who has already lost to Yugi twice, and Bakura would have won but he took advice from the split personality not in Marik's body right now, so Marik cheats out a victory again. This time, against himself.
• Marik fights in a four way duel to determine the semifinals, and comes in last.
• Marik duels Joey, and loses. Then the plot makes Joey randomly fall unconscious so Marik goes to the finals.
• Marik duels Yugi again, for the fourth time and loses.

Marik's strategy amounts to having the strongest card, whose effect is just "can't be affected by any other cards, even other gods" so even if he's worse at the game he can win, and he still effectively loses all nine(!) duels he's a part of, one of which he's on both sides of. This can't be a coincidence, there's no reason to write even his advice being such a negative influence if you're actually trying to make him scary. By the time the battle city finals roll around, what response can anyone have other than rolling your eyes and going "This guy again? Why won't you die already?".

And that's why I think this was all deliberate. I think there was a clear goal behind Marik, but more and more of it kept being lost in translation. Here's my theory: Marik was originally written as a fake boss, someone who was built up to be this big arc villain but ended up being a disappointment. He was going to show up in the Battle City finals, and immediately lose to Bakura, who would then use The Winged Dragon of Ra to win the entire tournament and get all three god cards, thus triggering the final arc. In the manga, that ended up happening anyway. Marik was going to be revealed as a tragic figure in over his head, playing villain but completely incapable of standing up to actual villains. Once the arc started going, though, the editors or anime adaptation team wanted Marik to be more impressive and evil so the plot shifted to him actually being this huge threat.

To a degree, we already saw this change happen. In the English dub, Marik basically has no reason for doing anything, and he constantly talks about taking over the world, instead of caring about freedom and revenge. The anime adaptation also changes Marik's duels a lot from the manga, making him do worse against most of his opponents to lengthen the duels. This doesn't exactly support the idea of him being made more threatening, but it does mean we can see the differences in adaptations affecting how we see a character. And we definitely have enough stories of manga authors changing their arcs because of an annoying editor to know it could have happened here. Even in this version, maybe all the hype around him being this big bad guy is anime-exclusive.