Yu-Gi-Oh (Manga)

Yu-Gi-Oh. One of the big three of TCGs. I used to play it back in elementary school, but haven’t kept up with it after that. I also played Magic the Gathering, but that was pretty limited to just my dad, who taught me how to play, and my sister, who I taught how to play, and I also haven’t kept up with it since about the same time. Recently though, my friend started reading the manga and got me to play some Master Duel with him, and after enjoying that, I started reading the manga as well and maybe got a little too into the card game? Buying a lot of structure decks and other accessories when I’m not even sure where to play locally. Right now I have a basic Fire Kings deck ready to go from getting three copies of that structure deck. I’m not even sure if it’s competitive or not, but I don’t care because I just like collecting the cards if nothing else. Maybe one day I’ll actually convince myself to go play either Yu-Gi-Oh or Magic and talk to / meet some new people for once.

Anyways, let’s stop talking about my antisocial behaviours and actually talk about the manga! The original Yu-Gi-Oh is kind of split into 5 different parts, so I’ll talk about them all separately.

First, there’s the start, simply titled Yu-Gi-Oh! This was made before the card game was even a thing, which I didn’t know before going into it. The start of the manga took on a more “villain of the week” type style where after introducing us to the millennium puzzle and Yami Yugi, there was some antagonist that he would deal with through various games, dealing out a punishment appropriate to their wrongdoings after they’d lose. It definitely wasn’t what I was expecting, but I really enjoyed it! I really like Yami Yugi’s initial appearance, with how short Yugi was drawn he just looked like an evil gremlin half the time. It also introduced basically all of the main characters that would be relevant throughout the rest of the series. I think my favorite parts were the very beginnings of Duel Monsters with Kaiba and the tabletop RPG with Yami Bakura.

After the original part, the series becomes much more focused on Duel Monsters, starting with Duelist, which can really be split up into two different parts, Duelist Kingdom and Battle City.

There was a brief interlude between those two that introduced Dungeon Dice Monsters, a game I wish got more attention because it seemed really fun based on what was in the manga, and I’d love to actually play it. I do believe both a board game and a GBA game based on it were made, so I’ll have to see if I can get my hands on either of those. Or maybe I’ll just have to make my own game inspired by the concept, who knows.

As for the real meat of Duelist, Duelist Kingdom and Battle City, I do like how Duel Monsters is recognizable as Yu-Gi-Oh and is played very similarly to how the actual game is played, but they don’t follow the rules exactly to a T, and that allows for crazy things you’d never actually see happen. Like sure, let Time Wizard age up Baby Dragon into Thousand Dragon and make all of Mai’s harpies old, who cares, it’s fun. That kept a lot of the duels fun and interesting to read through, you didn’t really know what kind of shenanigans people would pull to get an edge on their opponent.

If I had to pick which of the two arcs I liked more, I think I would probably choose Battle City since a lot of the duels had higher stakes and it introduced the god cards which I always thought were super cool as a kid.

Chronologically, R is the next arc, but I read it last since it wasn’t directly made by Takahashi, but rather by one of his assistants. It takes place between Battle City and Millenium World, being a short side story about one of Pegasus’ proteges attempting to resurrect his soul and get revenge on Yugi using his own set of evil god cards. It’s a pretty solid story arc and I liked the main two new characters, Yako and Gekko Tenma. The duels in it were more traditional I’d say, not really having any shenanigans you’d see in earlier arcs, featuring cards with clearly defined effects. It even showed the full text of cards off to the side when they were played, which was cool to see in my opinion.

Lastly is Millenium World. I liked the concept of this one, travelling into the Pharaoh’s memories to see the canonical origins of Duel Monsters and retroactively give lore to characters and cards previously seen in the series. I also really liked Bakura and how he stayed relevant from the original run all the way until the end, serving as the final antagonist. However, I didn’t care for the reveal that the whole time the characters were really just in another one of Bakura’s tabletop games instead of actually being inside the memories of Atem. I don’t feel like its inclusion particularly added anything to the arc and that the events pretty much could have played out the same regardless. I wouldn’t say it took away from my enjoyment of the arc, but it didn’t add any either. However, it still ended on a strong note with a satisfactory final duel between Atem and Yugi, showing how much they’ve both grown throughout the series.

All in all, Yu-Gi-Oh is a really enjoyable series and it’s an easy recommendation if you’ve played the card game or even have just been curious about it in general. I’m not sure how soon I’ll get to it because of other things currently on my radar, but I do plan on at least reading GX and 5D’s as well to see how the series evolves from here.

That’s all I have to say, thanks for reading and see you next time.