Nico Smiley

Nico Smiley (ニコ・スマイリー Niko Sumairī) is a character of Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V. He is the manager of Strong Ishijima.

History
Nico approached Shūzō Hīragi at the behest of the Leo Duel School, who wished to have the champion Strong Ishijima Duel You Show Duel School student Yūya Sakaki, as Strong Ishijima never got the oppurtunity to Duel the boy's father, who had no-showed at their championship match. Leo Duel School agreed to give You Show Duel School their new Solid Vision with mass system free of charge in exchange. Yūya eventually agreed. On the day of the Duel, Nico functioned as a commentator.

After Strong Ishijima lost to Yūya, he stepped down as champion and went overseas to train, leaving Smiley without a Duelist to manage. He eventually approached Yūya, offering a free entrance to the Junior Youth Championship if Yūya agreed to take him on as manager. Yūya refused, insisting that he wanted to enter the tournament through the usual means. He instead asked Nico to aid him in finding opponents to defeat, as he needed four more wins to qualify, to which Nico agreed.

Nico arranged Yūya to duel Four different opponents including his best friend Noboru Gongenzaka. Each duel was designed to train Yūya to become a professional duelist in a different way. Yūya defeated all of them and surpassed Nico's expectations, much to his pleasure. During the Maiami Championship inauguration ceremony, he requested Yūya to give a speech as part of his training.

Before Yūya left to the Synchro Dimension with the rest of the Lancers, Nico revealed he had very high hopes for Yūya and expected him to take over the pro dueling world, yet he said that he was still proud of him.