Yu-Gi-Oh!: The Dark Side of Dimensions (2016).Yu-Gi-Oh! The Movie: Pyramid of Light (2004).Yu-Gi-Oh! SEVENS Luke! Explosive Supremacy Legend!! (2020- present).Yu-Gi-Oh! Sevens: Boku no Road Gakuen (2020- present).While the basic game-playing formula remains the same, many manga and anime spin-offs don’t involve Yugi. In North America, 4Kids Entertainment imported the series, with all of the usual complaints about cuts, edits, translations, etc.įrom here, the story gets complicated as titles and plots start to proliferate. Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters, created by Studio Gallop, jumps right into the card battles. It’s the second anime adaptation in 2000 that you probably remember. However, the story was unique for concentrating more on the characters, and less on the deadly serious card battles.
Judging from what little I’ve been able to find, the TOEI series clearly wasn’t on the same level as Cardcaptor Sakura, Cowboy Bebop, Trigun, or other anime from the same era. It is sometimes called ‘Season Zero,’ or a ‘Lost Season,’ although it’s technically not related to the second, more popular anime series. This TOEI series did not get wide release outside of Japan, and it only lasted 27 episodes. The first anime adaptation came out in 1998. There’s also the mystery of Atem, the Pharaoh whose amnesiac spirit becomes Yami Yugi. Naturally, these rivals will battle in tournaments and card duels with lives and souls on the line. Many of Yugi’s rivals carry Millennium items, six ancient and powerful artifacts which are counterparts to the Millennium Puzzle. Hyde personality.Īfter a dark beginning, most of the rest of the story revolves around the card game Magic & Wizards (heavily influenced by Magic: The Gathering), which later becomes Duel Monsters. In fact, manga-version Dark Yugi is downright creepy and cruel at first with a Dr. In the manga, Yugio’s first act is using a Shadow Game and subsequent Penalty Game to get much-deserved revenge on one of the bullies who had tormented Yugi earlier. When Yugi completes the ancient Egyptian pyramid-shaped Millennium Puzzle, he gets possessed by Yami Yugi (Dark Yugi), otherwise known as the Game King, Yugio. The end result is a shonen story with some dark, horror elements about a wimpy kid, Yugi Mutou. Takahashi initially wanted to create a horror story, but he switched gears. Weekly Shonen Jump released the first chapter of Kazuki Takahashi’s Yu-Gi-Oh! manga in September 1996. Let’s piece together the complicated history of this franchise: Ancient Egyptian Manga History Unlike Pokémon, which has Ash in pretty much all anime versions, the Yu-Gi-Oh! universe is extremely loosely knit together. Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG didn’t exist in Japan until 1999 (and North America got a translation in 2002).Īnd while Yu-Gi-Oh! main characters tend to be named ‘Yu’-something (and have wild hair, even by anime standards), they all aren’t Yugi. Oh, and the first anime isn’t the version that most people associate with being ‘first.’ It shows up in the third episode of the first anime adaptation. In fact, the whole ‘You just activated my trap card’ Duel Monsters card battle concept doesn’t get introduced until the second volume of the manga. The franchise didn’t start with the trading card game, but with a 1996 manga. If you want to learn about the history of the Yu-Gi-Oh!anime series, we need to clear up some misconceptions first.