Yu☆Gi☆Oh! Duel Monsters (Yu-Gi-Oh!)

Yuugi Mutou is a naïve and lonely high school student who is fascinated by games. While staying with his grandfather, the owner of a game shop, he comes across an ancient Egyption relic known as the "Millennium Puzzle." Rumored to grant any wish to those who solve the Puzzle, Yuugi becomes determined to solve it to wish for some friends. After years of struggling, Yuugi manages to complete the puzzle and mysteriously finds that his wish has been fulfilled.

Meanwhile, a new card game known as "Duel Monsters" starts rising in popularity. In this game, players called duelists fight against each other with "monsters" by using magic and trap cards to foil their opponent's plans. Yuugi quickly becomes skilled at the game and lives a peaceful life with his newfound friends.

However, Yuugi's peace is short-lived. The undefeated duelist and egocentric billionaire Seto Kaiba suddenly abducts Yuugi's grandfather, forcing him to duel against the rare "Blue Eyes White Dragon'' card. Yuugi is thrown into a new world of fierce battles and the stakes continue to rise as dark forces interfere from the shadows. After unexpectedly defeating Kaiba with the help of his "other self"—the spirit of a nameless pharaoh—contained in the puzzle, he unofficially becomes the top duelist known as "The King of Games." However, this new title will attract covetousness and Yuugi will have to use all his intelligence and willpower in order to protect what he holds the dearest to him.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

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Background

Yu☆Gi☆Oh! Duel Monsters loosely adapts chapters 60-343 of the source manga while adding original events and characters not present in the manga.

Episode Videos

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Related Anime

Adaptation:	Yu☆Gi☆Oh!
Sequel:	Yu☆Gi☆Oh! Duel Monsters GX, Yu☆Gi☆Oh! The Dark Side of Dimensions
Prequel:	Yu☆Gi☆Oh!
Side story:	Yu☆Gi☆Oh! Hikari no Pyramid, Yu☆Gi☆Oh! Duel Monsters: Battle City Special, Yu☆Gi☆Oh! Movie: Chou Yuugou! Toki wo Koeta Kizuna
Other:	Yu☆Gi☆Oh! Zexal, Yu☆Gi☆Oh! Arc-V, Yu☆Gi☆Oh! VRAINS, Yu☆Gi☆Oh! Sevens, Yu☆Gi☆Oh! Go Rush!!, Yu-Gi-Oh! Card Game: The Chronicles
Summary:	Yu☆Gi☆Oh! The Dark Side of Dimensions Special: Eien no Rival - Yuugi to Kaiba!

More characters

Characters & Voice Actors

Yami Yuugi

Main

Kazama, Shunsuke
Japanese

Kaiba, Seto

Main

Tsuda, Kenjirou
Japanese

Jounouchi, Katsuya

Main

Takahashi, Hiroki
Japanese

Mutou, Yuugi

Main

Kazama, Shunsuke
Japanese

Mazaki, Anzu

Main

Saitou, Maki
Japanese

Honda, Hiroto

Main

Kondou, Takayuki
Japanese

Yami Bakura

Supporting

Matsumoto, Rica
Japanese

Bakura, Ryou

Supporting

Matsumoto, Rica
Japanese

Ishtar, Malik

Supporting

Kimura, Akiko
Japanese

Crawford, Pegasus J.

Supporting

Takasugi Jay, Jiro
Japanese

More staff

Staff

Kobayashi, Noriko

Producer

Sugishima, Kunihisa

Director

Hiramitsu, Takuya

Sound Director

Kasai, Kenichi

Episode Director, Storyboard

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Opening Theme

	1: "Voice" by CLOUD (eps 1-48)
	2: "Shuffle" by Masami Okui (eps 49-80)
	3: "WILD DRIVE" by Masato Nagai (eps 81-131)
	4: "Warriors" by Yuuichi Ikusawa (eps 132-189)
	5: "Overlap" by Kimeru (eps 190-224)

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Ending Theme

	1: "Genki no Shower" by Aki Maeda (eps 1-48)
	2: "Ano hi no Gogo" by Masami Okui (eps 49-80)
	3: "Rakuen" by CAVE (eps 81-131)
	4: "Afureru Kanjou ga Tomaranai" by Yuuichi Ikusawa (eps 132-189)
	5: "EYES" by Yuuichi Ikusawa (eps 190-224)

Reviews

Feb 21, 2023

Karaage-Kun

Recommended

I grew up on this like many people. The quality and writting of the show might not be the best. I have alot of nostalgia for the show and good memories of watching live episodes on tv after school. I've rewatched it many times over the last 16 years and its fun every time. It got me into the game as well that I played for many years and met manny friends playing together. The yugioh community is very strong and welcoming for the most part and as one of the first anime I've ever watched in sub it opened up that world for me ...

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Jun 20, 2018

Duckielover151

Mixed Feelings

Yugioh! has always held an interesting place amongst my childhood anime. It wasn't one of the ones that stuck fast once I found it, but it wasn't that I was disinterested or that it completely passed me by either. Yugioh! was one of those shows that I came back to periodically throughout my younger years and which I loved each time. After rewatching it now, I was surprised at just how much of it was familiar; I must have seen nearly all of it in bits and pieces throughout my childhood. I liked how high the stakes were. I prefer that in kids shows-- the ... heroes having to save the world from some great threat or something equally dramatic. It makes it feel like the writers are taking their audience seriously, which earns it a lot of points with me. There's nothing I hate more than seeing a work of fiction underestimate a young audience.

In that sense, I feel like Yugioh! was balanced very nicely. The stakes were high enough to keep its audience engaged, but it was still extremely heavy handed with the power of friendship and that aspect of the story. (In fact, it was only that side of the story that kept me from being totally convinced that Yugioh! wasn't supposed to be a kids show at all. That and the very marketable card game it was centered around.)

Yugioh! feels like a show that had a lot of really good ideas... that just weren't executed very well most of the time. Ancient Egyptian spirits occupying the bodies and minds of modern day teenagers? Great. The card game could have been interesting. And personally, I've always liked stories about prophecies and destiny and the power of friendship, cheesy as they can be. Unfortunately, as I've seen pointed out plenty of times before, the card game isn't handled all that well. Forget just strictly following the rules-- which I suspect they don't do, but which I never really paid close attention to anyway. The strategy involved just never felt all that impressive. I got the definite impression they were inventing cards as they went along-- not to mention all the special effects that always did exactly whatever the heroes needed to escape teh sticky situation at hand. It was just a little too deus ex machina-y. (And this is coming from someone who was willing to accept that the bond of their friendship could overcome just about anything, dark magic included.) Maybe these moments were especially a slap in the face because when they did rely on actual strategy, it was usually executed pretty well.

At the end of it all, I think my favorite duel is still Yugi vs. Pegasus. They couldn't rely on some all-powerful or perfectly-timed card to get around Pegasus's mind-reading. Yugi and Atem had to instead finally use their connection and continuously switch out who was in control without sharing their individual strategies-- Pegasus's abilities were of no use to him if the mind in control didn't know what card the other had just played. Not to mention, this was also the culmination of Yugi's personal struggles this season-- finally realizing there was another spirit inside of him and learning to trust it. In fact, season one was a really good introduction in general, considering the entire show would come to be about uncovering the pharaoh's lost memories.

So sometimes this show was really on point. Unfortunately, it derailed into filler a little too often for my liking. About once a season or so, Yugioh! would decide it didn't want to be about a card game after all, and the characters would get sucked into an alternate (or virtual) universe that usually held no bearing on the actual story. I actually liked the little arc about Noa and Gozaburo. I think that one was really important to understanding Kaiba's character and why he's so desperate to maintain his power and control. (Of course, I would have liked it a lot more if it hadn't interrupted that season's tournament right before the final duel, but I did say there were problems with the story's execution.)

Long story short, Yugioh! was one of the better shows from my childhood. (I've just realized that I've given it the same score I gave the original seasons of Pokemon, which doesn't feel quite right... I suppose it goes back to Yugioh! often feeling like it wasn't exactly a kids show. I try to judge shows based at least a little on their intentions. Yugioh! felt like it was trying to be something more... it just didn't always succeed.) Yeah, the dub could get a little ridiculous sometimes. It's often remembered as one of those shows that got the worst of the localization/absolutely-no-violence-allowed treatment from 4Kids. But it had one of the better, more complex stories out there. Unless you're a neurotic completionist like me, you really only need to see (most of) seasons 1-3 and the last 1/3 of season five. But it is worth seeing if you missed it during your own childhood.

(Fair warning, though, the first episode is bad. Llike, really bad. Everywhere I looked, it said that watching season zero-- the original Yugioh!-- was unnecessary because the stories weren't connected, but I got the definite impression that you were expected to be familiar with the characters and game already. So much of the rest of this show is dependent on Yugi defeating Kaiba in episode one. But someone watching Yugioh! for the first time with no prior knowledge of the story and characters probably wouldn't understand why this was such a big deal. Also, the pacing is just really bad.)

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Dec 23, 2016

ggultra2764

Not Recommended

Yu-gi-oh: Duel Monsters was one of the very first anime titles I got hooked on in high school and the trading card game that it promoted was also something that I was a casual player of during my time in college. Focused on teenager Yugi Moto possessing an Egyptian artifact called the Millennium Puzzle that lets an ancient spirit possess him to take on enemy threats in Duel Monsters games, I mainly was hooked on the series since it offered a more darker alternative to the more popular and light-hearted Pokemon franchise. Looking back on it now though, I have come to realize that Yu-gi-oh ... has many issues that plague it throughout its 224-episode run.

The most obvious issue that comes with the series is that it mostly exists as a promotion for said mentioned trading card game. Before I go into more depth with this issue, I should provide some quick history. Before the card game took off, the Yu-gi-oh manga source material created by Kazuki Takahashi was more focused on the ancient spirit of the Millennium Puzzle punishing evil characters encountered by Yugi and his friends with Penalty Games that inflicted ironic and often lethal punishments on the mentioned evil-doers. There is even a late-1990s anime adaptation of said series that Toei created covering these early parts of the manga. The card game end of the series came about in some episode arcs where Yugi and his friends got into the card game craze and crossed paths with diehard collector and game champion Seto Kaiba. This part of the series grew so popular that Konami started up their own version of the trading card game that continues to be popular to this day and said popularity led Konami to persuade Kazuki Takahashi to change up his title's story direction to focus more on the trading card game.

The influence of Duel Monsters' product promotional influence is rather obvious with the good majority of its title focus. In the same vain as Dragon Ball Z does for shounen battle anime, many of Yu-gi-oh's trademark card game duels often drag out for several episodes at a time and characters often get in the annoying habit of shouting out their moves, what the effects of their cards are, bragging that their strategies are flawless, and our heroic characters lucksacking (for non-card game players, lucksacking means luckily drawing the right card needed by chance) far too often when it appears they are down for the count. The mentioned lucksacking often involves the enemy duelist having some overpowered card or strategy that makes whatever our heroic characters are doing having them struggle to stay in the game until the hero conveniently draws just the card(s) they need to turn the tide of the duel.

Even with the card game promotion it does, the Yu-gi-oh anime also obviously does not properly follow the rules of the game that you would follow in real life. I will avoid getting into a long-winded rant about what rules are bent by the anime since it is not relevant for the sake of this review. But obviously, the anime will bend things with the rules of the actual game for the sake of plot convenience and advancement. A number of the overpowered cards from the anime when released in a physical format often have their effects altered or nerfed for the sake of gameplay balance in the real-life trading card game. Also, the rules used for playing the game in the anime are often quite different from the actual game and makes the following the anime not the most reliable means of learning to play the card game, especially with the rampant lucksacking and many of the character decks not being tournament caliber. Western players of the card game will obviously notice this with the Duelist Kingdom arc with gimmicks like land stat boosts and no tributes needed to summon higher-level monsters, while anything from Battle City arc and later is played more closely to the current card game rules albeit with lesser Life Points and some additional rules not found in the real-life game. However for those unaware, Duelist Kingdom arc follows an older version of the card game in Japan that is based on gimmicks following similar rules that the arc plays by.

Now let us move on to plot and characters. The gist of the plot involves the adventures of Yugi and his friends as they learn more of the origins of the seven Millennium Items, powerful Egyptian artifacts that possess various magical effects, and the ancient spirit that possesses Yugi's Millennium Puzzle. While the anime offers exploration of these story elements at points throughout the series, they are mostly overshadowed at points by the show's large focus on the card game duels and mostly feels like a backdrop to have a reason for the card games to exist at all. The characters do not get much fleshing out either as they mostly follow standard anime archetypes and exist either as cheerleaders supporting Yugi or other characters during their duels or as opponents built up to be threats until they are inevitably defeated by any major character in the series. Pretty much, plot and characters in this series are nothing but a hollow shell for this series to have its trading card game matches.

Many Western audiences will also be familiar with the infamous heavy editing done to the series by 4Kids. Obviously, many of the changes done to the series were done to make Yu-gi-oh appropriate and accessible to younger American audiences with character name changes, objectionable content such as violence and nudity being edited or removed, additional spoken lines of dialogue added that are not found in the original Japanese version, and removing any trace of Japanese dialogue found onscreen. Yet at the same time, these changes can make the series even more of a chore to watch through as they can be insulting to the intelligence of viewers. Mentions of the Shadow Realm are, in many instances, used for the series to get around cases where characters are in life-threatening situations or just got killed. Removing all traces of Japanese onscreen dialogue makes things ridiculous during the card game duels since the original version of the series had all the card text for the cards on them, while the 4Kids version only has the card graphics, stats, and level of each card played thus leaving some to wonder how characters could even know the effects of their own cards. But perhaps the most annoying addition to the series was its incessant habit of talking about friendship constantly throughout the series (the Japanese version also did this to a degree, but not as rampant) and made the character of Yugi's gal pal, Anzu (or Tea for viewers of the 4Kids version), a very hated character among many of the show's fanbase since she was the biggest offender of being so needlessly preachy with discussing friendship.

Overall, Yu-gi-oh: Duel Monsters pretty much has all the typical flaws you can find with an anime title being a source of product placement with its plot and characters being thinly veiled excuses to promote the trading card game that is a regular sight throughout the series. Unless you are a younger fan who also enjoys the trading card game, I wouldn't even recommend watching through the 224 episodes of this series as there is little memorable to get out of it beyond the game duels.

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Favorite "Duel Monsters" saga? And why? Matthappy - Mar 26	16 replies	by Matthappy »» Apr 6, 12:37 PM
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Yu☆Gi☆Oh! Duel Monsters

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Characters & Voice Actors

Yami Yuugi

Kaiba, Seto

Jounouchi, Katsuya

Mutou, Yuugi

Mazaki, Anzu

Honda, Hiroto

Yami Bakura

Bakura, Ryou

Ishtar, Malik

Crawford, Pegasus J.

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Yu☆Gi☆Oh! Duel Monsters

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Episode Videos

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Characters & Voice Actors

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