Bishi Escape

Character Profile: Tsukishiro Yukito and Yue

Tsukishiro Yukito, Yue

sources: Card Captor Sakura manga

Name:
Yue (moon in Chinese, written in katakana (ユ エ) since it is not a Japanese name, or with the moon kanji (月) said with the Chinese pronunciation), and his human form is Tsukishiro Yukito.
月- “tsuki”, moon
城 – “shiro”, palace
雪 – “yuki”, snow
兎 – “to”, rabbit
This is why Yuki is somethimes called snow bunny or rabbit. If you change the kanji for “shiro” to 皓, it can read “bright moon”, an explanation I’ve seen, but with the kanji given for his name that translation isn’t right.

Species, Race, Nationality:
Magical. Yukito is presumably a Japanese citizen, but they were both created magically and are not even actually human, let alone have a human ethnicity.

Age:
Yuki: 16-18 (apparently, but has only existed for a few years). His birthday is December 25, Christmas Day.
Yue: the manga doesn’t say, but he was created by Clow Read when he was alive, and so a conservative estimate is a hundred years.

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Family:
None. Yukito said, and believed, that he lived with his grandparents, who liked to travel and explained his empty house, but he actually has no family, since he is the human face of Yue. Yue, likewise, was created, and can only count Cerberus as a sibling and Clow as his father with a stretch.

Friends and associates:
Yuki’s friends consist of Touya, and that’s about it. He’s friendly toward everyone and Sakura and Syaoran in particular, and he helps out with school clubs, but he isn’t a member of any of them and the only person he spends a lot of time with is Touya.

Yue’s ‘associates’ are Sakura, his master, and Cerberus. When Sakura doesn’t need him, he’s usually hibernating in his human form.

Occupation:
Yukito is a high school student, and has no job; Yue’s purpose is to be a guardian of the cards and his master.

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Hair:
Yuki has short hair that is grey in the anime, and the few colored manga pictures it could be light brown, grey, or white.
Yue’s hair is significantly longer than he is tall (at least seven feet long, but very possibly eight or more), white, loose to his waist, then caught and held in a twist for the next five feet or so, with a foot at the end loose again.

Eyes:
Yukito’s eyes are brown and large, and he wears glasses. Yue’s eyes are narrower, silver-violet colored, with slit pupils like a cat.

Height:
They aren’t very tall; aside from Yue’s wings, they both only come up to about Touya’s mouth. (As a side note, when Touya first sees Yue, I’m pretty sure he makes fun of him for being short with his “You two really do resemble each other”.)

Build:
They’re kind of thin. Presumably, the less mass Yue has, the less energy his master has to spend to support him. Moonlight is generally regarded as a very ephemeral and delicate thing, another explanation for his more delicate body.

Clothes:
Yuki is usually wearing his school uniform, but outside of school he wears normal clothes (jeans and sweaters, tee shirts, a yukata during the summer festival).

Yue’s clothes are much more elaborate. (See the picture above, and at left.) It’s hard to describe, but (very) vaguely resembles a tuxedo, actually, with long tails, complete with cummerbund. He is barefoot, but his pants end in a stirrup-like extension that circles under his foot. His long sleeves are tight and go all the way up to his knuckles. His right arm, over his sleeve, is covered with a loose material that comes from his belt and goes over his shoulder, and is loose behind him, at least ten feet long. The ‘tails’ frame his legs and go to the floor; there are four, the back two being longer, the front two ending with tassels.

Description:
The two of them have the same body, but three major differences: their face, hair, and wings.They are both fairly short, pale, and thin.

Yukito’s face is much happier and more open, and he wears glasses, whereas Yue doesn’t have to. Yue has much narrower eyes, which are purple-silver and have slit pupils, and does not show very much emotion on his face, while Yuki has big brown eyes and smiles often and easily – he’s never shown angry or very sad, however.

Yuki’s hair is shorter and darker than Yue’s; that isn’t a hard feat, since Yue’s is silver and at least seven feet long.

On the subject of wings, Yue has them, Yukito does not. His wings are enormous, and he generally transforms between forms by wrapping them around himself (or they appear around him as Yukito to become Yue). He can make them disappear when they get in his way, as they do when he’s indoors. They also seem to be decorative, rather than functional, since he’s fully capable of hovering in the air without moving them.

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Intelligence:
High. Yuki likes school and is good at basically everything he tries, and Yue is the quiet thoughtful type.

Likes:
Yukito loves to eat. He takes in huge amounts of food every day, and his least favorite food is “none”. This is actually a necessity, though, as his food intake supplies energy for Yue, to supplement the energy he draws from his master. Yue, on the other hand, has no need to eat at all. He also, obviously, likes Touya and Sakura, and seems to like school; his favorite class is math, and least favorite is “none”. His favorite color is white, and favorite flower is listed as yukiwariso.

Yue likes solitude and to sleep, and Clow and Sakura.

Dislikes:
Yue doesn’t like to be bothered; he states that when he transforms he has no choice but to protect his master, and Touya notes that he doesn’t like changing. Yuki however is basically agreeable and doesn’t seem to dislike anything except being hungry.

Goals, Desires:
Protecting his master, currently Sakura, is Yue’s reason for existing.

Yuki wants a new lunchbox. One would think that with all  the money he spends on food, he could spare a couple bucks to get one without too much trouble.

Personality:
Yuki is cheerful and kind; he smiles a lot, and when he’s worried he tends to hide it and act like nothing’s wrong. He is more open with his emotions, however, than Touya or Yue, if a touch oblivious to them. He didn’t recognize how important Touya was to him until just before Touya gave up his magic for him, though it was obviously to both Eriol and Kaho how they were going to end up.

He’s generally sensitive to the feelings of others and does what he can to make them feel better, and would never hurt them. He accepted the obvious attentions of both Sakura and Syaoran with aplomb and didn’t make either of them feel bad, even though they were just kids with crushes and he only liked them as kids. Touya has been known to shove food in his mouth to make him stop talking, however, when he didn’t want to hear it.

Yue is quiet and can be a bit harsh; he had no qualms about attacking Sakura in his role as Judge, determined as he was to defeat her and prove that no one but Clow would be the master of the cards. On related note, he’s very attached to (or obsessed with) his creator and former master Clow. It seems heavily implied that he is in love with Clow, and it was returned during the latter’s lifetime.

He is visibly cold, and usually his emotions have to be surprised out of him for him to show more than annoyance or devotion to his master. Around Eriol, whom he regards as Clow, he shows more emotion, notably intense sorrow and even pain. This goes back to his love for Clow.

This is speculation, but if Yue is depressed, it would explain his desire for isolation and sleep, as a way of dealing with his sorrow for Clow and how much he misses him. He likes Sakura in a way, as she does have a pure heart, and he serves and protects her of his own will, but she is not Clow.

He seems like his feelings could be easily hurt by careless words or actions, but he wouldn’t show it. The fact that he still pines for Clow long after his death and getting a new master proves that what emotions he feels are felt very, very deeply, if rarely shown.

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Strengths:
Both are intelligent. Yuki is sensitive and cheerful, and pretty much impossible not to like; Yue is strong, capable, and responsible.

Weaknesses:
Most notably, Yue relies on the power of his master to exist. If his master’s power isn’t strong enough, he would slowly fade away until he disappeared.

Powers, Abilities, Talents:
Yue’s power comes from the moon. The elements he controls directly are wind and water, and as such he controls any of the cards that are attributed to them. As his attribute is concealment and he is yang, that probably attributes darkness to him as well, and all the cards that belong to it. The cards (in the manga) that most likely belong to him are:

Dark
Windy
Watery
Woody
Fly
Shield
Illusion
Mirror
Erase
Shadow

Since there are 19 cards, either he or Cerberus have to have one more card than the other, and since it seems unlikely that any of these cards are attributed to earth, fire, or light, it looks like it’s Yue.

Aside from flying (it does not seem that he actually uses his wings for flying, since they rarely move much and he mostly levitates), the powers he’s demonstrated include making formidably barriers, creating a bow and arrow, and forming ice or crystal shards in his hand that he can ‘fire’ at opponents.

His role with the cards is firstly as the judge of the person chosen as their master by Cerberus, who must defeat him before they can be acknowledged as the cards’ master, and once they have been, as their second protector.

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History:
Yue was created by Clow Read as the second guardian of the cards at some point long ago. While his master was alive, Yue loved Clow, and it looks very much like the feelings were returned. However, aside from Yue’s reactions to Eriol and Cerberus’ babbling, his past isn’t explained.

Before Clow died, he sealed both Yue and Cerberus to the book that contained all of the cards, to protect them and keep them from escaping until their new master found them. They stayed that way for an indeterminate number of years.

Yue left the book first for an unknown reason, during Touya’s freshman year in high school, and Tsukishiro Yukito was created and joined the same class. Yue himself was still asleep, and Yukito had no idea he existed; he thought that he was exactly who he said he was: a sixteen year old high school student who lived with grandparents who traveled often. Perhaps on the direction from Yue’s subconscious, he befriended Touya and thus got close to Sakura, the cards’ future finder. She developed an enormous crush on him, and he treated her well. When Li Syaoran, a descendant of Clow’s family and another prospective card master, entered Sakura’s school, he too developed a crush on him, and Yukito treated him equally well.

Yue continued to sleep until Sakura captured all of the cards. As she captured the final one, Yukito transformed into Yue, revealing himself, and challenged her. He was determined that she would lose, and no one would replace Clow, but the strength of her heart and determination that her friends who had been affected by the cards would not lose their precious memories allowed her to use even the cards that fell under Yue’s domain against him, and she won. With her speech about friendship, Yue finally acknowledged her as his new master.

Shortly after she was accepted, a new student came to Sakura’s school, Eriol; at the same time, Yukito was becoming always tired, randomly falling asleep, and even literally fading, because Yue exists on the power of his master and Sakura’s power was not strong enough. On the occasion that Yukito saw Eriol, Yue immediately took over, recognizing him instantly as Clow’s spirit, but Eriol put him to sleep and made sure he didn’t remember the event, with some words of wisdom about Yue’s failing energy and the hearts of his two forms.

Although it took a while, Touya was able to eventually get past all of the interruptions that came constantly between them (including the intentional ones from Ruby Moon, who wanted to make Yue and Yuki suffer) and tell Yuki that he knew he wasn’t human. This allowed Yue to come out in his presence and they met, finally. After getting a promise that Yue would protect Sakura, and himself and thereby Yuki, Touya gave Yue his magic so that he would be able to support himself until Sakura’s power grew strong enough.

With that help, Yue was able to remain strong and whole until Sakura finished turning all of the cards from Clow cards into Sakura cards; this involved Eriol putting all of Tokyo into a false night and threatening to make them sleep forever, and revealing himself as Clow’s reincarnation. When she had turned the last cards and saved the city, they retired to Eriol’s mansion, and he explained everything, but Yue did not hear; he was outside in the gardens, apparently struggling with emotions. Eriol went and apologized to him for leaving him alone as he was, but also reminded him that he was not Clow. He also reminded him that he probably knew his human form’s heart better than anyone – impetus for Yukito and Touya to have a closer relationship. By the end of the series, Touya and Yuki are implied to be together.

Tags: Card Captors (series), spoilers, Yue, Yukito