Téa Gardner

Téa Gardner, known as Anzu Mazaki in the Japanese version, is the leading female protagonist of the Yu-Gi-Oh! anime.

Appearance
Téa Gardner has been noted by many characters in the series as being a very attractive young woman. She has brown hair and blue eyes. Her brown shoulder-length hair is sectioned into two layers, consisting of a darker shade of brown inner layer, with the outer layer of a lighter shade.

During the first season, her usual outfit is comprised of a yellow shirt, which flows like a skirt at her thighs, with a pink waistcoat over it, and a blue miniskirt. A pair of brown knee-high boots completed her ensemble. In the second and third season, her clothes consists of a light green sleeveless buttoned shirt with yellow collar, pink and blue bracelets, navy shorts with a light blue belt, white thigh-high socks, and blue platform sandals. She also wears a yellow tank-top with the word "SPIRIT" on it (which was removed from the dub) and a red skirt on occasion in the second season.

She also wears another outfit: a yellow tube-top, red choker, light pink shorts, black thigh-high socks, red platform sandals, and a pink jacket. In the fourth and fifth season she wears a black sleeveless shirt that reveals her belly button, a red skirt and a pair of white high-heeled boots. During the trip to Industrial Illusions, she wears a white jacket over a red tank top, a pleated yellow skirt, and tan boots and she also wears the same outfit at the KC Grand Championship.

In the 4th season, she wears a yellow jacket, blue shirt and short shorts. In the 4th episode of said season, she wears a black tank top which slightly covers her belly button, navy short shorts with a gray belt, and yellow wristbands.

Duelist Kingdom
Téa defeats Joey in Duel Monsters five times at school, with four of the Duels being offscreen.

Téa draws symbols on her, Yugi, Joey and Tristan's hands to symbolize their friendship before Yugi faces Kaiba, after Kaiba tears up Solomon Muto's "Blue-Eyes White Dragon".

Téa and Tristan sneak onto the boat to Duelist Kingdom to support Yugi and Joey in the tournament. Téa mostly stands on the sidelines giving the boys encouraging speeches.

Yugi and his friends faced Yami Bakura in a Shadow Game of Duel Monsters, where the players are trapped in cards similar to their Monster World pieces. Téa becomes the card "Magician of Faith" in the Duel. As she is upset over Joey's sacrifice, she uses her effect to return "Monster Reborn" to Yami Yugi's hand, which allows him to revive Joey.

As they approached Pegasus Castle, Tea wonders if there really are two Yugi's. She thinks back to when she first meets Yugi and Joey at Burgerpalooza. She then wonders what they are doing there and thinks they could get her in trouble since she had to be 18 to work at the restaurant and if they let it slip she is still in school, she'll get fired and won't have enough money to pay for her dance lessons. As she serves Joey and Yugi their food she gives a sinister glare and pours ketchup all over their food. She reveals she wants to study dance in New York but instead of laughing, Yugi and Joey support Téa. The next day Tea gets a letter from Yugi saying they found a warehouse in Spring St. for Téa to use as a dance studio. When she arrives a mugger holds her hostage and Yami Yugi saves her when she blacked out.

Kaiba defeats Yugi in the tournament by standing on the edge of the castle, so Yugi's last attack would knock him off. Yugi relinquishes the Duel to Kaiba. Téa then argues with Kaiba over his strategy. Kaiba explains how Duelists are given one chip and must use it in whatever way allows them to win. Téa argues back that Kaiba only won because he couldn't live without the chip and insists that Yugi won the Duel.

After losing to Kaiba, Yugi no longer has enough Star Chips to enter the tournament finals. Mai offers Yugi her excessive Star Chips. Yugi initially refuses, feeling unworthy. Téa Duels Mai for the Star Chips. Using a combination of Magic Cards, Téa makes her "Shining Friendship" card defeat Mai's "Harpie Lady". Although Mai is able to turn the Duel around, using "Harpie's Feather Duster", she is impressed by Téa's performance and wants to give Yugi the Chips, so she surrenders saying "Harpie Lady" was her best monster and Téa defeated it.

Kemo doesn't allow Téa, Tristan or Bakura to enter the castle, where the finals are held, as they are not finalists, but Mai distracts him long enough for them to sneak in.

Inside they witness Kaiba and Pegasus Dueling. Pegasus was able to predict Kaiba's moves and easily win. Tristan suspects that Pegasus cheated, so that night he talks with Téa and Bakura on the subject. The three inspect the Duel arena and find a hole that shines moonlight directly at the Duel arena. Tristan spots a tower and the three head towards it. In the tower, they are confronted by Pegasus, who uses his Millennium Eye to transport them to another dimension. They wake up and enter a room, where a Shadow Game between two robed men is taking place while others are chanting. The winning man, Pegasus confronts the three and tries to take Bakura's Millennium Ring. Yami Bakura takes over Bakura's body and sends Téa and Tristan back to their rooms and erases their memories.

During the final rounds, Téa cheers on Yugi and Joey in their Duels. She is unable to watch the end of Yugi's Duel with Pegasus, as Pegasus takes the Duel to the Shadow Realm. Despite this Yugi feels his friends are with him in spirit and manages to defeat Pegasus.

Pegasus disappears after the Duel. The gang proceed to a tower, where they find Pegasus' diary, which Téa reads. She learns that Pegasus had a wife Cecelia, who died and Pegasus was trying to revive her using the Millennium Items and Kaiba Corporation technology.

Téa and her friends are taken home by Seto Kaiba in his helicopter.

Battle City
Yugi asks Téa to go out with Yami. After visiting many shops and attractions, they enter an arcade. Inside Téa beats Johnny Steps in a dance game. Not taking his loss too well, Johnny later catches up with Yami and Téa, and challenges Téa to another game with a condition: if she loses, she must become his girlfriend. Yami instead challenges Johnny to a game of Duel Monsters. If he wins, Johnny must leave Téa alone. If Johnny wins, Téa must go on a date with him. Yami reveals himself to be Yugi Muto, towards the end of the Duel Johnny recognizes Yugi Muto as the one who beat Pegasus, causing Johnny to surrender and run. Téa stops him to tell him how quitting isn't going to get him far, and he must keep trying to achieve his goals.

Afterwards Téa and Yami go to an Ancient Egyptian exhibition to find clues to Yami's past. Here they meet Ishizu Ishtar, who shows Yami some information about his past as a pharaoh and tells him he must enter the Battle City tournament to learn more.

During the preliminary rounds, Téa encourages Joey along the side lines for his Duels, before being captured by the Rare Hunters along with Joey. Téa is possessed by Marik, who turns her into one of his mind slaves to lure the Pharaoh into a Duel with Joey, who is also possessed by Marik Ishtar. The Duel is set up, so the loser would drown. In the anime, Téa is made to sit on a chair under a large crate. A push of a button would kill her, should anyone else interfere. Téa is then released from Marik's control after she explains the provisions to the Duel and helplessly tries to help Joey break free of Marik's control several times while also doing her best to remain brave and cheer Yugi on, despite the fact that her own life was in danger. Mokuba frees her after Joey and Yugi end the Duel in a Draw.

Téa, along with Tristan, Serenity and Duke Devlin proceed to the KaibaCorp blimp to cheer for Yugi, Joey and Mai in the finals. Roland initially refuses to let them board, as they aren't finalists, but Mokuba talks him into letting them on. Despite Joey's objections, all of them take residence in Joey's room for the finals.

Téa cheers for Yugi and Joey, during their quarter-final Duels. When Joey tells Mai, she wasn't in his dream, which his friends appeared in and jokes about it, Téa seizes him after Mai leaves and tells him off.

During this time, Téa is sometimes being controlled by Marik, since Yami Marik took over his body and he uses her to try to talk to Yami Marik and Ishizu.

Virtual World
As the blimp traveled to the Duel Tower, it was sucked into an underground lair, by Noah Kaiba. Téa along with Yugi, Joey, Tristan, Duke Devlin, Serenity, Mokuba and Seto Kaiba emerge from the blimp to investigate. Here they are sucked into the Virtual World. The gang encounter Noah and the Big Five, all of whom seek revenge on Seto Kaiba and require a body to return to the real world. They then get separated, and Téa ends up being teleported to a huge barren gorge in the middle of a desert. With her friends no where to be found, she wanders through the gorge hoping to find someone. However, someone, or rather something, finds her first. While walking down the gorge’s path, Téa notices a strange creature watching her from a cliff, before it disappears after seeing that she has spotted it. Startled, Téa has time to think as she soon finds herself surrounded by a gang of Hitotsu-Me Giants wearing animal skin robes and wielding Stone Age weapons. When she attempts to leave, the giants attack with one of them throwing a huge a wooden at her. While the axe misses Téa, the force of its impact behind her flings several sharp little rocks into the air. One of these rocks hits Téa’s face leaving a small cut under her left eye. She has little time to recover however, as the giants continue their assault, causing her to flee. With the giants in hot pursuit, Téa screams out desperate pleas for someone to rescue her but no one comes. As three of the giants gain closer and closer towards her, Téa’s escape comes to an abrupt halt when the fourth one blocks her path. Having hidden himself behind the rocks she was fleeing towards, the fourth Hitotsu-Me Giant blocks her path of escape and corners her. Realizing that she has no chance of escape, all Téa can do is look up in horror as the Hitotsu-Me Giant lunges at her with its claws. The giant’s attack forces Téa down as she lies unconscious on the ground. Soon after, one of the giants, the one with the axe that gave Téa her scratch, takes her off the ground and throws her over his right shoulder, before walking with its breathers down the gorge’s path. As the giants march down the path, they are absorbed by Noah Kaiba, who is watching from his virtual command center. Laughing, Noah watches in amusement as the unconscious Téa is carried off through the canyon, please that she has “met” his Hitotsu-Me Giants. Eventually, the giants arrive at their lair, a huge hole on top of a hill, which leads to an underground cavern. Once inside, the giant carrying Téa brings her on a stone shelf overlooking the pit where the giants have made their den. The beast then unceremoniously drops her off his shoulder, causing her fall down onto the stone floor of the shelf. The fall causes Téa moan in pain as her body squirms, much to the amusement of her cyclops captors who stand over her. Sometime later, Téa finally awakens on top of shelf. She soon finds herself trapped on top while her cyclops captors linger in the pit below. As she watches them from above, the giants ready are large pot filled with boiling water. Téa realizes that the they intent in using that to cook her and turn her into “Téa soup”. Using a loose vine, she manages to climb out of the pit, but the giants notice this when she is half way through. Though Téa reaches the top, she has no time to rest as the giants climb after her, causing her to run away once again. When the giants reach the top, one of them (the one that incapacitated her), throws an axe Téa but it just barley misses her. With the giants in hot pursuit, Téa manages to outrun them for a time, but is stopped when she comes to a gorge with a river below. seeing that her only escape is an old rope bridge, she attempts to cross it despite how unstable it seems to be. Unfortunately the giants start to cross the bridge as well and quickly catch up to her. Then, due to the combined wait of Téa and the giants, the bridge gives out and breaks in half. While the giants fall into the ravine below and drown in the river, Téa is able to hold onto the remainder of the bridge that is left hanging. She manages to climb up to the top but passes out from exhaustion.

While she's unconscious, Téa has a dream where she and Yugi went to see a show about Dark Magician Girl, where she is chosen as a member of the audience and gets dressed up in Dark Magician Girl's outfit. She is woken up by a penguin, who leads her across the Virtual World to a temple. Inside she meets Crump of the Big Five, who has taken the form of Nightmare Penguin.

Crump imposes a Duel and takes her to an icy region, where both players stand on opposite icebergs in freezing water. Téa is made to assemble a Deck, by selecting from a monitor of cards appearing before her. Remembering her dream she chooses "Dark Magician Girl" as her own Deck Master, while "Nightmare Penguin" is Crump's.

As Téa's Life Points lower, she becomes engulfed in ice. Dark Magician Girl helps her during the Duel. Towards the end of the Duel, Téa was almost completely engulfed in ice. Using her Deck Master's effect and "Sage's Stone" to Special Summon "Dark Magician" from Yugi's Deck, Téa is able to defeat Crump as she attacks him with both Magicians.

After the Duel, Téa is released from the ice and passes out. Yugi, who had witnessed the last few moments of the Duel, helps her to regain consciousness and after Téa hugs him out of relief offers her his coat to keep her warm. The two proceed to the courtroom, where Joey is Dueling Johnson.

Afterwards, everyone meets up with each other, while Tristan is trapped as a robot monkey because he lost a Duel. A few Duels happens between Kaiba and Lector, Yugi (Yami) and Joey between all the Big 5 members, Kaiba and Noah which changes to Yugi (Yami) and Noah. After this Duel Gozaburo shows up. Then, they all try to escape with Noah's help but he tricks them eventually taking over Mokuba's body and getting out into the real world, first wanting to trap their minds in the virtual world. However he then had a change of heart and realized he was wrong and helped them out instead. When they were all out, they got back to Battle City.

Back to Battle City
Battle City continues right after the Virtual World. They arrive at KaibaCorp Island where the Battle City finals begin at Duel Tower. Téa supports Yugi and Joey in the battle royal to determine who faces who in the semi-finals.

Téa cheers for Joey in his semi-final against Marik and rushes to his aid after he collapses.

As Yugi prepares to face Kaiba, Téa informs Yami that she would rather he didn't Duel, as she is afraid of what might happen to him, but Yami tells her he need to Duel Kaiba to Duel Marik so he can save the world and she understands and lets him go. She stays back with everyone to try and help Joey but is still cheering Yugi on.

Near the end of Yugi and Kaiba's Duel Joey wakes up and at first doesn't remember anything but slowly does. Then he asks Téa if Yugi started the Duel yet.She tells him he did and Joey wants to go immediately. Just then the doctors show up,but Joey demands to go and Téa tells him not to because so many people got hurt and he was just in critical condition. Joey says he made a promise to Yugi and he has to be there for him which reminds her of what Yami told her before his Duel. Then Joey, Téa, Duke and Tristan go to the Duel Tower just in time to see the ending of Yugi's Duel.

Since Yugi won he moves onto the finals to Duel Yami Marik but first Joey challenges Kaiba to a Duel to see who gets third place. Before the Duel starts Marik takes over Téa's body so he can go talk to Ishizu. He then tells Ishizu that he needs to confront Yami Marik and runs off to the Duel Tower to do so. Yami Marik is already up there trying to figure out what happened during Yugi and Kaiba's Duel then he gets annoyed and throws the rod, which lands near Téa. She picks it up and is holding it up at Yami Marik while Marik is talking to him. Yami Marik ends up getting the rod back, and he tries to get rid of Marik with the rod. Then Ishizu comes up just in time to stop him. Marik then tells Ishizu to forget about him and stops taking control of Téa. She is knocked out for a while, and Yami comes up to find out what happened to Téa and starts talking to Yami Marik, and he eventually leaves. Yami then talks to Ishizu about what was going on, and Téa wakes up, not knowing what happened. Yugi decides not to tell her about how Marik was taking control of her. They go back down to see how Joey's Duel was going, and they tell her that he lost, so they get ready for Yugi's Duel with Marik.

Yami's Duel with Yami Marik begins, and everyone is worried about how this Duel will turn out. Téa is cheering Yugi on the whole time but is worried because Yami Marik was able to stop Slifer the Sky Dragon and make a copy of Obelisk the Tormentor. Also, every time Yami loses life points Yugi is slowly being sent to the Shadow Realm and the same with the good Marik every time Yami Marik loses life points. During the Duel, Marik took over Téa again, this time so he could try and help Yami win the Duel, but he eventually went back into his own body, leaving Téa confused about what just happened, although she quickly got over that and focused on the Duel. Then Odion shows up, which gives Marik the strength to take over Yami Marik for a little while so Yami could win the Duel. Even though the Duel was finally over, Kaiba said they should get off the island because he was going to blow it up. Everyone went on the blimp, Mai was awake and they found Bakura but they noticed Kaiba and Mokuba weren't there so they went to go look for them but couldn't find them. So all of them went on the helicopter to go, and they all see Kaiba and Mokuba leave on a jet of their own.

They got back to Domino City and said goodbye to Marik, Ishizu, Odion, Duke, and Mai. The following day Téa was showing Serenity around town and remembering everything that happened during Battle City. Serenity eventually has to leave. Téa is sad at first, but Serenity tells her that it's ok and that they will always be friends. After Serenity leaves Téa is thinking about how she's not ready to say goodbye to Yugi and realizes that she should just enjoy the time she has left with him. Then she catches up with Yami.