#entirely disconnected from arguably the biggest part of the game and its reason for existing. just an odd creative choice

[thegreatyin]

deeply despise how the internet has made "i dislike these few aspects of a work i otherwise really enjoy" feel equal to "i hate everything about this work and it's the worst thing ive ever seen". having media literacy and the fundamental ability to criticize your darlings is good actually we all should do it always

[yugiohmangavsanime]

An introduction to the Yu-Gi-Oh! manga: Why the anime starts 60 chapters into the story

In getting started with comparing Yu-Gi-Oh!’s anime to its original manga, it’s important to first look at the early manga and why so much of the story is skipped over for the anime.

The manga Yu-Gi-Oh! premiered in Weekly Shonen Jump in September of 1996.  Unlike how the anime jumps us right into the action and explains things later, the manga gives us a proper introduction to Yugi & Friends (or, rather, the formation of Yugi’s group of friends) and the Millennium Puzzle being completed.  The early manga mostly follows a “villain of the week” episodic formula where a new character each chapter will wrong Yugi or his friends in some way, so Yugi’s “Other Me” (Yami Yugi/The Pharaoh) comes out to challenge and defeat the villain to a Shadow Game.  By my count, there are 20 of these types of stories in the first in the first 49 chapters of the manga, with 14 running a single chapter and 6 more being double length.

Interestingly, the first two-chapter story (chapters 9 and 10) had arguably the biggest impact on the future of the series, as it introduced both the Duel Monsters card game (or Magic & Wizards, as it was originally known) as well as the then-villain-of-the-week Seto Kaiba, who of course went on to be a major character.  Kaiba was also the first one-shot villain to make a second appearance, doing so in the manga’s “Death-T” arc where Kaiba attempts his revenge on Yugi only to be defeated again in a duel.  Fast forward to chapter 60, and Yugi’s defeat of Kaiba has reached the attention of the creator of Duel Monsters himself, who as we all know becomes the first real major villain in the series and the series then takes a hard turn from featuring various games to featuring a single now-iconic game.

I won’t cover each and every story from the early manga, but some of the highlights include the chapters involving Joey’s (Jonouchi) past gang (chapters 11-12 and 48-49), the entire Shadi arc (chapters 13-20), the aforementioned Death-T arc (chapters 26-40), and the Monster World arc that introduces Bakura and the spirit of the Millennium Ring (chapters 50-59).  The latter three have slight adaptations in the anime (albeit very trimmed down), but the Joey chapters are especially worth a read if you haven’t already checked them out.  The first story in particular is the first time that you really get a good look into Joey and Tristan’s (Honda) characters beyond just being the bullies who came around to becoming Yugi’s characters, and there’s no real equivalent in the Duel Monsters anime since the characters are introduced with most of their friendship building already done.

Speaking of the Duel Monsters anime, it’s important to note that what we know of as the “classic Yu-Gi-Oh!” anime is actually the second attempt at adapting the show.  The first attempt was produced by Toei animation and ran for 27 episodes from April to October of 1998, and it was only ever released in Japan.  This is the series that fans have dubbed “season 0″ despite it being completely disconnected from the series that followed.  This series follows the plot of the first 59 chapters, though they took a large amount of liberties (Kaiba has green hair for some reason and a very minor character from the manga is a main one in this show).  I could likely dedicate a blog to all the differences between the manga and the Toei anime, but I digress.  I’m not entirely sure if it was always planned to only adapt the pre-Duelist Kingdom chapters or if the show was cancelled as there’s very little information out there about the Toei anime.  To my understanding this show was never well-received, so it was likely cancelled.  This series concluded with a short film released in March of 1999, also released only in Japan.

Was the existence of the Toei anime the reason why the second series (titled Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters in Japan and produced by Nihon Ad Systems and Studio Gallop) started roughly where the first left off?  Maybe, but I think the bigger reason was because the Duelist Kingdom is where the plot of the series changed focus dramatically to being largely about the card game.  As the card game became the centerpiece of the series, the early part of the story suddenly feels a bit out of place, and I have to imagine Nihon Ad Systems wanted to avoid a dramatic shift in the anime knowing how much the card game would start to dominate the series.  So to make it easier on themselves, they just started right when the card game became the main part of every chapter.

But wait, there were still stories in the first 59 chapters that are important to the overall plot and are needed to understand future plot elements.  Surely they needed to address these plot points somehow, right?  Well, their plan to include these plot points into the anime is to find any point in the first season where there’s some down time and create what feels almost like a filler episode to show off these plot elements.  Approximately half of the pre-Duelist Kingdom manga is completely cut out of the Duel Monsters anime while the other half is heavily altered to appear at various places during the Duelist Kingdom arc in the anime.  Some of it is done reasonably fine given the situation (Shadi’s introduction in the anime seems to work fine enough) while others almost create more problems than they solve (the anime’s equivalent to the Monster World arc straight up creates plot holes).  I’ll cover these instances of plot catch-up as they appears.  And they pop up right away, as the very first episode of the series is completely based on pre-Duelist Kingdom events.

Like most of Yu-Gi-Oh!’s American fanbase, I was introduced to the anime first, so discovering the early manga later on was a real treat.  The early chapters are still probably some of my absolute favorite parts of the series.  And while I am a little disappointed now that they never received a proper anime adaptation, I get why things were done the way they were, though it did make adapting the series more complicated than it needed to be.  Join me in the next post, as we side-by-side discuss the iconic first episode battle between Yugi and Kaiba.  Hopefully it doesn’t take me a year to write it!