Anime Review: Yu-Gi-Oh! Original Series

This is not your 8 year old brother's Pokemon Cartoon, at it's core.

Yu-Gi-Oh! is an anime series that got its beginnings over in 1996-1997 in Japan. A common misconception is that the show was designed for youngsters, and if you are talking about the 4kids Dubbed Version on the (old Kids WB) you are absoloutly right. The Japanese series, however leaves nothing cut out including blood, violence (especially in the first "Japanese" series) and torture devices (in an episode of battle city in the original, there are spike coffins, saw blades that will cut off the feet of trapped duelists) (in the 4kids version, coffin is removed and saws changed to "energy discs" that will send someone to the "shadow realm"). The dubbing also left out important details to the story line, and this is one of those animes I would recommend watching in the original language. The ONLY Dubs I find acceptable are both Yugi's and the voice of Yami Marik during Battle City.

Yu-Gi-Oh! did make its way into pop culture from about 2001-2004, and was/is generally frowned upon the "peer groups" as a kids cartoon and card game. The actual game has players worldwide, including Japan, Austrailia, the UK, Russia, USA, Korea, etc with people who know their game. The game is not easy and can be "VERY" complex. Up until my life got busy a few years ago, I used to play all the time at local shops. Players can still attend those tournaments today and regardless of winning, receive great cards just for playing. I never consider either someone who likes either series to be "frowned upon", however I say this because I never fitted into mainstream society.

The Anime was originally adapted from the manga, and the anime/manga conversion was actually pretty good with some filler stuff (but not much in the original series). The first few books of the manga will describe the story BEFORE Duelist Kingdom, usually called the violent episodes of the series. The manga is good stuff to read, and I would recommend picking it up if you have money lying around on your floor.

The creator (Takahashi Kazuki) did a pretty dang good job of making a manga into an anime, and then into a hit collectible card game. The card game is commonly compared to Pokemon, however none of the games really share any characteristics other than you are "summoning" monsters as substitutes for Poke-Balls. This is the only series, that I can confirm, that has an awesome manga/anime and can pull off a Collectible Card Game. Contrary to popular belief, the anime/manga was made BEFORE the card game in 1999. The series does nothing spectacular, but the series still has "good taste" if you watch the original. Not much to talk about in terms of a storyline, because it does span about 200 some episodes, and a lot of it is card battling (not to say we have story line stuff too!).