Anime 481 Yu%e2%98%86gi%e2%98%86oh Duel Monsters

Alternative Titles

Synonyms: Yugioh, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Yu-Gi-Oh!: Duel Monsters, Yugioh: Duel Monsters, Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters

Japanese: 遊☆戯☆王　デュエルモンスターズ

Information

Type: TV

Episodes: 224

Status: Finished Airing

Aired: Apr 18, 2000 to Sep 29, 2004

Premiered: Spring 2000

Broadcast: Tuesdays at 19:28 (JST)

Producers: Nihon Ad Systems, Shueisha

Licensors: Konami

Studios: Gallop

Source: Manga

Genres: Action, Adventure, Fantasy

Theme: Strategy Game

Demographic: Shounen

Duration: 23 min. per ep.

Rating: PG-13 - Teens 13 or older

Statistics

Score: 7.49¹ (scored by 252,795 users)

¹ indicates a .

Ranked: #1978²

² based on the top anime page. Please note that 'Not yet aired' and 'R18+' titles are excluded.

Popularity: #576

Members: 398,151

Favorites: 4,874

Available At

Official Site

Resources

AniDB

ANN

7.49

Ranked #1978Popularity #576Members 398,151

Spring 2000TVGallop

Synopsis

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]

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.

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

Producer

Director

Sound Director

Episode Director, Storyboard

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)

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

Aug 2, 2013

Kyuutoryuu

Recommended

I think the fact that YuGiOh (along with Pokemon) was the first anime I ever watched is enough to give this series a 10. That and the fact that this is one of the very few solid English dubs out there.

Great story, plot, ingenius card game (think about it, Kazuki pulled the entire YuGiOh ruleset out of his ass and it's incredible!), along with enjoyable dialogue make this series a 10/10. Honestly, if you've never seen YuGiOh and you're on AnimeNew to decide if you should watch it, then go ahead and do it. You've been missing out.

May 7, 2013

Waldy565

Mixed Feelings

I think I'm on the right season, but apologies if not. Another mini review by Waldy565 :D - just two more shows to review now, Pani Poni Dash and Gurren Lagann.
So, I went into this anime with expectations set low, after all, I'd grown up in a generation where you were a Pokemon fan, a Yu-Gi-Oh fan or a Digimon fan, and me and my friends were massive Pokemon fans. (And still are). I did have a friend however who was in to Yu-Gi-Oh, so I had dabbled in the game, but all the stats flew by me when I was a kid, I ...

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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Collection Anime Archetypes Dragon Ball Sailor Moon

Anime 481 Yu%e2%98%86gi%e2%98%86oh Duel Monsters

Alternative Titles

Information

Statistics

Available At

Resources

Synopsis

Background

Related Anime

Characters & Voice Actors

Yami Yuugi

Kaiba, Seto

Jounouchi, Katsuya

Mutou, Yuugi

Mazaki, Anzu

Honda, Hiroto

Yami Bakura

Bakura, Ryou

Ishtar, Malik

Crawford, Pegasus J.

Staff

Opening Theme

Ending Theme

Reviews

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