Faithshipping

Faithshipping is the het ship between Yusei Fudo and Aki Izayoi from the Yu-Gi-Oh! fandom.

Canon
Yusei and Aki are the main protagonist and one of the main characters of 5D's respectively. They both have troubled childhoods. When Aki was young, she awakened her psychic powers and accidentally attacked her father, leading to her parents eventually abandoning her and Aki becoming ostracized by her peers, as well as turning into a spiteful and unstable girl. When she grew up, she ended up becoming part of the Arcadia Movement cult through their leader Divine, who in turn took advatange of her powers and manipulated her. Meanwhile Yusei grew up in an orphanage in the Satellite area, and although he had friends, he was forced to face discrimination and was denied from doing many things and enjoying many luxuries due to his status as a Satellite resident.

While Rua is trying to challenge the infamous "Black Rose Witch" (a disguised Aki) to a duel, Aki forces the opponents she was fighting prior to run away. She then notices that Yusei also has a Dragon Birthmark. She uses her psychic powers to leave from the situation and eerily tells him to leave her alone. He sees her again in the Fortune Cup and they (mainly Aki) glare at each other as Aki walks towards the dueling grounds for her first duel.

During her duels, Aki hurts her opponents, causing her to turn into the heel and the audience yelling at her whenever she's onstage. When she finally gets to duel Yusei during the tournament's finals, the audience begrudgingly cheers that they're rooting for the "Satellite scum" to beat the witch. During their duel, Yusei also gets to feel the brunt of her powers and manages to come to the conclusion that Aki has another personality that sadistically takes joy in torturing her opponents and causing destruction.

Aki madly denies his claim and keeps attacking him relentlessly, but long before admits her personality was twisted into what it currently is due to people driving her into solitude in the past. Yusei thinks to himself how he wants to reach out to Aki through their duel. Yusei tries convincing her that she still can change but she shuts his attempts down and puts on her mask. Yusei then keeps talking to help her realize what he had attempted to convey, and he manages to win the Duel, leading to Aki's mask breaks and leaving her in tears. Divine then takes her away after complimenting her.

Later on, the cult is destroyed by the Dark Signers, and Aki is left in a coma. When she comes to, she felt that she has no place, and her psychic powers rage out of control. Yusei duels her, feeling that it is the only way to reach her. During the duel, her father, who had feared her when she was a child, steps in the way of the duel, and she learns to control her power to stop herself from hurting him. She joins the Signers from this point on.

During the duel with the Dark Signer Misty, Aki is blamed for the death of Misty's younger brother. Divine shows up and manipulates her again, causing her to regress back to her unstable state. Yusei manages to trick Divine into confessing the truth that he was actually responsible for the death of Misty's younger brother. Aki regains control of herself and wins the duel, while Divine gets eaten by Misty's Ccarayhua.

Aki later takes an interest in Riding Duels and Yusei teaches her. During the World Riding Duel Grand Prix, she serves as the team's substitute duelist.

In the epilogue, Aki decides to become a doctor while Yusei was staying in Neo Domino City. She thanked Yusei and was about to tell him that she loves him, but ended up stopping midway and instead said that she was glad to have met him. She decided against saying goodbye and promises to return someday.

Other Content
In Tag Force 4, after Aki goes berserk and decides to duel the player character only to lose against him, she is approached by Yusei who says he was looking for her. When she asks for a reason, Yusei mentions that he had heard everything about Arcadia Movement's downfall and Aki's breakdown. Aki chides him for eavesdropping and goes on a rant about her not having friends and drifting further and further apart from people due to her psychic powers, but Yusei assures that she has many friends including him and the player character.

Fanon
Faithshipping is a popular pairing in the ''Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's'' fandom. Fans felt that the two grew together and that Yusei helped Aki throughout the series.

Fandom
FAN FICTION
 * Yusei/Aki on FanFiction.Net
 * Yusei/Aki on FanFiction.Net

FAN ART

TUMBLR

TWITTER

Trivia

 * The ship's name comes from Yusei and Aki putting faith into each other to defeat the Dark Signers.
 * Out of all the 5D's protagonists, Yusei and Aki have the most synergy between their decks, to the point where the Plant Synchron deck archetype is named "Yusei-hime" (Princess Yusei).
 * , an evolved form of Aki's Black Rose Dragon first released in , has a destruction-negation effect nearly identical to that of Yusei's Stardust Dragon - tributing itself to negate before coming back to the field (albiet as Black Rose Dragon).