So I started with the series at a very young age. I was introduced to the series by my cousin during the late GX era and I didn’t start playing until the early 5DS era with my best friend with his Blackwings and Gravekeepers deck . I wouldn’t get my own deck until the start of Zexal series with the “V For Victory” starter deck and I would continue to play it until I started high school where I started a card game club with a bunch of my friends. While an unfortunate accident did stop me for playing for a bit, I would later get back into the game properly once we all started to dabble with the competitive scene with my Monarch deck. Jump forward to 2018, I now play Darklord and Ritual Beast somewhat competitively at my locals and I run the “An Idiot Plays YuGiOh” series on my YouTube channel (link in the sidebar and totally not a shameless plug) and while some of us has kind of drifted away for the game and started to play other card games such as Cardfight Vanguard (Bermuda Triangle for life), it’s still a massive part of my life because it helped me become the sort of person I am today. Now, you might be thinking what’s the point of all that backstory and I have two reasons. One, it’s my way of padding this review out and two, it’s my way of saying this review might be bias at times. As I explained, I have a very deep tie to this series and while I will try to keep a fair view, there might be times where the rose tinted glasses slip on. With that out of the way, let’s talk plot.
To summarise all three of the series as one, a high school boy known as Yugi (spelt with two Us in the original manga) solves a puzzle known as the Millennium Puzzle which holds the spirit of the Pharaoh (in the dub I believed he is called Yami Yugi with his real name later being revealed as Atem) who for the majority of the original series, is a complete dickhead. Granted, he is often being a dick to evil people such as Seto Kaiba but the way he does it is very dickish. I mean, first he makes them compete in a game of life and death and if they lose (which they always do), he will either penalty game them or outright kill them so either way, they are dead (unless your name is Shadi, Seto Kaiba or Ryo Baruka). This all happens within the context of the original series and while it does have like two whole duels done in the original run, Duelist is where it becomes the series as we know it now with an emphasis on the card game known as Duel Monsters in the manga (not be confused with Duel Masters). For the original run, it had more of a focus on just games in general from laser tag, tabletop RPGs and even a weird version of Ice Hockey during one chapter. The Pharaoh thankfully turns down his asshole levels by the end of the original series and just in time for the Duelist series.
So the Duelist series covers both Duelist Kingdom and Battle City within the original anime but there is a few changes made for the anime. To list some of them now real quick, the duel between Seto and Yugi was taken for the original run and used as the start for the anime which doesn’t end with Seto getting a good old mind crush which he gets during the Death Terminal arc in the original series. The original anime made these massive playing fields for dramatic effect while the Duelist series stuck with simple tables which I liked more and finally, the Pharaoh is mind crushing all the fools in the Duelist version. Like he pretty much mind crush anyone who didn’t matter or was going to return for Battle City but thankfully, Yugi has a lot more control over the Pharaoh during this run and make the Pharaoh more “human”. So, this series starts with the reintroduction of the duel monsters card game from the original series and after he gets a delivery from Pegasus, the campest (but not the gayest) villain around, he ends up dueling a video tape of Pegasus in a shadow game. After cheating/stalling for time with the help of his Millennium Eye, Pegasus does his own penalty game and traps Yugi-boy’s grandpa’s soul in the videotape (the anime had Pegasus straight up take the soul instead of keeping him in a tape). Yugi decides to go to the tournament Pegasus has set up on his own private island with the help of his pals, Joey (or Jounichi), Tristan (or Honda and voiced by Barney The Dinosaur) and Teá (or Anzu). Both Yugi (but it’s mainly the Pharaoh doing the work) and Joey do a bunch of dueling to get star chips to enter the castle and beat Pegasus so Yugi can put Grandpa’s soul back in his body and save the Kaiba brothers and Joey can win the money to pay for his sister’s eye surgery. Along the way, they have very memorable duels with such duelists as uhhh… I can’t remember. All I remember is that Mai Valentine is a shit duelist, we have a grudge match against Yami Bakura, Bandit Keith who is busying being Bandit Keith (and saying “In America”), Seto Kaiba is still being a dick after he recovered from his mind crush and also all the duels during this arc pretty much has no rules. There is no tribute summoning so you can outright summon your monsters, regardless of level, you can only set one spell/trap at a time and you somehow get field boosts if you duel in certain areas on top of other unfair advantages which is leads to a lot of “because plot” moments. I think out of all of these moments, the biggest case of “because plot” is during the duel between Yami Yugi and (I think) Mako Tsunami with a moment that was so iconic, they made it into a crap gimmicky card (that card is “Attack The Moon by the way). All in all, the Duelist Kingdom arc is pretty bad due to the lack of rules and the only redeemable part of this arc is the fact they killed off Bandit Keith and Pegasus in the Duelist version (thanks Bakura).
So Battle City. I do think it’s the better half of the two since it introduces the first ever master rule (or second, I’m unsure) but it’s only a slight improvement at best. So the Pharaoh has stopped being an ass and became a respectable duelist, Yugi grows as a duelist during this arc (unfortunately not in height) since he gets more screen time when it comes to duels even if it’s mainly the Yami Yugi show. Seto Kaiba also starts to slowly drop his egotistical asshole act during the run as well but that’s only because he has zero presence during Millennium World (his ancient Egypt counterpart doesn’t count). Battle City also sees more of a shift in plot since it starts to introduce more interesting plot points such as the Pharaoh’s lost memories but unfortunately for us, we have to wait until the last duel for any closure on this plot point. We get the set up at the beginning of the arc and then we get some information at the end which is only used to set up Millennium World. The whole middle of this is just dueling in the tournament so they get on a massive blimp to have more duels while also having very little character growth from anyone. On the bright side, I do think the duels are far more memorable during this arc with my personal favourites being the “Yugi Vs Arkana” Dark Magician face off, “Yugi And Kaiba Vs The Masked” skyscraper deathmatch and the “Yugi Vs Kaiba” grudge match and yes, this does mean Joey is completely forgettable. While he does have a very tense fight against Yugi while he is brainwashed, his duels during the tournament and the semifinals just doesn’t compare to Yugi and Seto’s duels since they are using the series newest gimmick at the time, the god cards. Yugi spends most of his time getting his god card and while Kaiba has one on screen duel before the semi finals since he is given his card by Ishizu before the tournament started. Joey just ends up dueling old duelists from Duelist Kingdom (you know, the ones who didn’t get mind crushed/killed) and getting new boss monsters to put into his crap deck since his Red Eyes gets taken at the start of the arc by Marik’s rare hunters (called Ghouls in the manga) and while we are on the topic of Marik, can we talk about how bad he is at being a villain. I feel like his presence in the Battle City arc was to have a reason for the Millennium Rod to be there and have some set up for Millennium World because Bakura could of easily replaced his role as villain because Marik is so bad. His reasoning for wanting to kill the Pharaoh is poor at best, as a villain he is not even threatening even when he becomes Melvin- I mean Yami Marik, he is still a poor excuse for a villain. Even after Yami Marik takes over, he suddenly turns good for some reason. His character is poorly written and I’m surprised that anyone likes him outside of his god card which is easily the worst of the three (Sphere Mode doesn’t count). Thankfully, he pretty much disappears until the end of Millennium World after Duelist and speaking about Millennium World, let’s jump boat to that since this review is getting a bit lengthy.
The final part for the original YuGiOh series, we have Millennium World where we finally get the pay off for the whole Millennium Items set up and finally get to see the origin of everything in the series, from the Pharaoh history, his ties with Yami Bakura, the origin of Duel Monsters and other miscellaneous stuff like where Kaiba gets his hard on for the Blue Eyes White Dragon and how Yami Yugi got his Dark Magician. What I like about the first half of this arc is the fact it focus less on Yugi and more on Yami Yugi and it’s not being done through the medium of card games. Yes, we do have Yugi and pals running around in his memory world looking for his name and yes, we sort of have duels but no one cares about Yugi until the pile of mess at the end of the memory world arc and the duels we have play more like traditional battles rather then the card game sort. Unfortunately that doesn’t last since it does get messy and I’m not just talking about the amount of blood spilt during this part. While the start is very nice and clean, the end of the memory world arc gets really messed up. First, they reveal the whole world the arc is taking place in is just an elaborate table top RPG of a shadow game which Yami Bakura made to versus Yami Yugi (and maybe also as a callback to the original manga’s final arc) and then they reveal that Priest Seto’s father is Zorc who Yami Bakura serves so the Pharaoh was going to have none of that shit so he banished that fool after his true name of Atem gets revealed. In short, Memory World is a mess and I’m somewhat glad that shit didn’t go any further and the payoff for memory world is worth it since the final duel is pretty good. I love the final duel between Atem and Yugi because you not only see how far Yugi has grown as a duelist but it’s also a fitting send off for Yami Yugi, even if Dark Side Of The Dimension ruins it a bit and talking about ruining stuff, Transcend Game.
I’m tacking this on real quick but Transcend Game is a two part OVA of sorts which was written and tacked onto the end of Millennium World much later as a way to promote and set up the Dark Side Of The Dimension movie which I hate. I will get to that movie one day because I have shit to say about that movie but Transcend Game is pretty bad in its own right. First, it retcons Kaiba’s changes he made during Battle City which I hate. You see, at the end of Battle City, he finally becomes a more respectable duelist with some ego issues and if his one panel appearance during the final chapter of Millennium World is anything to go by, he has accepted the lost of the Pharaoh who was his greatest rival and friend. Transcend Game pretty much retcons that because he is not only back to being an egomaniac, it reveals that he has not moved past the lost of Atem and now is using VR to recreate Atem so he can finally beat him. Now while the movie shits on this fact far more than this trash, I still can’t forgive it for helping in the set up of trashing Kaiba but that’s enough ranting so let’s cut to the end.
Now, I do realise this retrospective of sorts is a massive mess but I enjoyed writing this more than I have when I’m doing proper review plus YuGiOh is a big part of my childhood so I thought it deserves the treatment plus I’m quite clearly not the only one who feels like this, YuGiOh is a landmark in our culture since it’s not only still a staple part in Sunday morning cartoons and inspiring countless continuations (for better or worst), it’s real life card game adaption is the biggest of its kind in the world with it only being rivaled by Magic The Gathering and Pokémon and Yami Yugi is in that nostalgic wankfest of a game “Jump Force” even though he should get his ass handed to him by anyone else in the game. Clearly, YuGiOh has became a cultural landmark for our generation and I heavily recommend getting into the series, either by the manga or the anime if you have the time and I will be covering more YuGiOh in the future, especially the manga versions since they have kept with the trend of being darker than their anime counterparts which I love. If I was to score the whole original series, subjectively I would give it a 6/10 just due to how much of a mess Duelist and Millennium World is at times but if I was to score it objectively, it’s an easy 8/10. You cannot deny the fact that it’s a classic, amongst both Jump titles and manga in general. I’m starting to run low on stuff to review here since I have zero access to games here, I rarely get enough internet to watch a single episode of an anime and there is nothing good in the cinemas right now so don’t blame me if there is an over saturation of manga reviews.
I’m tacking this on real quick but Transcend Game is a two part OVA of sorts which was written and tacked onto the end of Millennium World much later as a way to promote and set up the Dark Side Of The Dimension movie which I hate. I will get to that movie one day because I have shit to say about that movie but Transcend Game is pretty bad in its own right. First, it retcons Kaiba’s changes he made during Battle City which I hate. You see, at the end of Battle City, he finally becomes a more respectable duelist with some ego issues and if his one panel appearance during the final chapter of Millennium World is anything to go by, he has accepted the lost of the Pharaoh who was his greatest rival and friend. Transcend Game pretty much retcons that because he is not only back to being an egomaniac, it reveals that he has not moved past the lost of Atem and now is using VR to recreate Atem so he can finally beat him. Now while the movie shits on this fact far more than this trash, I still can’t forgive it for helping in the set up of trashing Kaiba but that’s enough ranting so let’s cut to the end.
Now, I do realise this retrospective of sorts is a massive mess but I enjoyed writing this more than I have when I’m doing proper review plus YuGiOh is a big part of my childhood so I thought it deserves the treatment plus I’m quite clearly not the only one who feels like this, YuGiOh is a landmark in our culture since it’s not only still a staple part in Sunday morning cartoons and inspiring countless continuations (for better or worst), it’s real life card game adaption is the biggest of its kind in the world with it only being rivaled by Magic The Gathering and Pokémon and Yami Yugi is in that nostalgic wankfest of a game “Jump Force” even though he should get his ass handed to him by anyone else in the game. Clearly, YuGiOh has became a cultural landmark for our generation and I heavily recommend getting into the series, either by the manga or the anime if you have the time and I will be covering more YuGiOh in the future, especially the manga versions since they have kept with the trend of being darker than their anime counterparts which I love. If I was to score the whole original series, subjectively I would give it a 6/10 just due to how much of a mess Duelist and Millennium World is at times but if I was to score it objectively, it’s an easy 8/10. You cannot deny the fact that it’s a classic, amongst both Jump titles and manga in general. I’m starting to run low on stuff to review here since I have zero access to games here, I rarely get enough internet to watch a single episode of an anime and there is nothing good in the cinemas right now so don’t blame me if there is an over saturation of manga reviews.
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