Kazuki Takahashi's 1996 manga gained enough popularity that Toei produced a 27 episode anime series. It loosely follows the episodic events of the early manga, though lightening up certain situations that the manga portrayed a lot darker such as side characters becoming seriously injured or outright dying.

It follows the story of Yuugi Mutou, a sixteen year old, shy high school boy who loves games. He lives with his grandpa who owns a game shop and collects various games from around the world. he obtains an Egyptian item referred to as the Millennium Puzzle in his collection and Yuugi comes to own it. Solving the puzzle while wishing for a friend, he gets more than he asked for - the puzzle is haunted by an ancient Egyptian spirit who posesses him to play various games of chance and protect him and his friends from dangerous-minded people around them. Eventually he meets a couple other people in posession of items such as his puzzle - a ghost named Shadi who owns the Millennium Scales and Millennium Key, and a classmate named Bakura Ryou who owns the Millennium Ring.

It's a very engaging concept, and as much as I (quite obviously) LOVE the franchise and its spinoff shows, I wish the story had stayed focused on the ghosts, horror, and games of chance aspects. Kazuki Takahashi obviously had fun inventing new games for each month's chapters, though one above all else had an impact on readers who wanted more.

"Magic and Wizards", as it was originally called in the manga, was meant to be a one-off game of the month (albeit a two-parter) about a snobby kid in Yuugi's class claiming to be better at the game. Yuugi (as the ancient spirit) bests him at the game in the end and traps him inside one of the game's cards, supposedly forever - but this bully-of-the-week type ended up being Yuugi's main rival of the whole series - Kaiba Seto.

The card game was brought back, rules added and enhanced, and the card game became a merchandised, tangible product to play that continues to be developed and added to three decades later. Obviously, it no longer kept the name Magic and Wizards for copyright reasons, becoming "Duel Monsters" in the anime continuity and "Yu-Gi-Oh!" to us in the physical world.

The rest of the 1998 anime continues to be a mix between the games-of-the-week and a revamping of Kaiba's grudge against Yuugi, going so far as to build an amusement park to kill him. As the manga was still coming out while this anime was in production, it does just kind of... end.

This is the series most people think of when you mention Yu-Gi-Oh. Completely different animation studio and voice actors than the 1998 series, this is NOT a continuation at all - they speedrun Yuugi's first meeting and card battle with Kaiba Seto, then continue on much later in the manga with Duel Monsters' creator, a wealthy (and somewhat insane) man named Pegasus J. Crawford.

Pegasus is also in posession of one of the Millennium Items, an Eye that can read peoples' minds. He set up a Duel Monsters tournament to try to obtain other Millennium Items. Yuugi being posessed, is able to circumvent this and beat Pegasus at his game, tricking him into being unable to read the other occupant's mind.

Following this, other duel tournaments are set up, but who really cares. I'm done pretending I care about the card game. I skip almost every duel unless I'm rewatching the show as background noise. There are a couple decent filler arcs while the original manga was being finished, and the anime itself does have a satisfying ending.

The soundtrack is a lot more orchestrated with a lot more care put into it. Animation in the first season is excellent looking and has a nice vibe to it - unfortunately in my taste the art quality doesn't look as nice as the show goes on. A lot of anime from this time period have the same issue as this is approximately when all studios were switching from hand-drawn to digital animation.

In all, it's a show filled with iconic characters, iconic monsters, and is beloved and nostalgic to many. Even if it's not one of the greatest, I think it's a must-watch show when it comes to understanding popular anime and especially in terms of understanding early internet culture - as much as it pains me to say it, the English dub is iconic and Youtube user LittleKuriboh's comedic take on the dub's version of the characters and story has stayed relevant across the internet even in the most minuscule ways.

This is the other series most people think of when you mention Yu-Gi-Oh. It follows the story of Yuuki Judai, a fifteen year old enrolling at Duel Academy ten years after the end of Yuugi's story. His happy-go-lucky attitude gets him involved in some weird stuff such as cults and alternate dimensions, as well as being occasionally haunted by a teacher he inadvertantly kills.

As the show goes on, he and his friends get involved deeper and deeper in weird stuff. Idk I literally just finished watching this show like two weeks ago and yet I don't remember a single thing about it but I actually had a lot of fun watching it. This is also the only series where I am OBSESSED with a yaoi ship from it............ Ryou Marufuji and Edo Phoenix hooked up nasty in that mansion in episode 141. I know this in my heart.

The OST was good but I watched the whole show at 2x speed and I'm afraid to say I never heard any of the songs normally. The art was... very much not to my taste in the first two seasons and it really put me off from watching the show in the first place. I don't know why, but it really bothered me. By the third season it looks a lot nicer, the opposite of the previous series' track record with its animation.

All in all, while this series isn't as iconic as the preceding one and very much likes to exist in its shadow, it's the other fan favourite and holds a lot of nostalgia value for many. It's a fun series with engaging characters. Hell Kaiser Ryou i am free on tuesday night

Don't @ me because I haven't actually finished this show yet I'm stuck watching boring Vrains first for god knows why. I'm on episode 80 though so over halfway teehee

The soundtrack and overall vibe of it makes it the only Yu-Gi-Oh series to come close to the vibe of the 1998 show - ironically, the very first bully-of-the-week in the 1998 series ends up being a prominent side character in 5D's.

This is the first spinoff show with absolutely no continuity with the other shows aside from the card game. It takes a more colourful and childish spin, and in spite of its pile of plot holes it may be one of the most fun.

Yuuma Tsukumo is a thirteen year old in middle school. His parents disappeared when he was a kid, and all he has left is photos and their old adventuring souvenirs from around the world. His favourite is a triangle shaped key on a pendant his father left him - and inside the key rests a spirit that changes his life completely.

Astral, the spirit inside the key, is an alien ghost who upon being freed by Yuuma has lost all of his memories, contained in ninety-nine numbered cards that scattered all over the world when he entered the human dimension. Two other factions are alerted to it and competing to collect these Numbers: the Tenjou family - to heal their sickly youngest child, and the Arclight family - to (presumably) kill off the Tenjous.

Yuuma's overall positive atmosphere and never-give-up attitude changes those around him for the better - although in my interpretation of the series Astral isn't as neutral as he's made out to be, Yuuma is a hero to those around him becuase it's what's right to do.

Being incredibly honest, this show is incredibly mediocre early 2010's timeslot filler. The plot likes to forget about random stuff that seems important, or just change its mind on other things. The animation often looks nice but some batches of episodes have a weird overly childish art style (episodes 26 and 50, I'm looking at you), however the music is excellent and probably some of the best in the Yu-Gi-Oh franchise. I highlighted the Arclight battle theme above, however Haruto Tenjou's haunting motif and some of the various incidental music is worth a listen outside of the show.

But being me, with my experiences, thoughts, and feelings... I happened to watch this show just for kicks at 2x speed within a span of eight days. And it accidentally completely changed me forever. Tron is a character I didn't know I needed in my life and I go into more detail about that in my article about him linked in the sidebar.

The other most beautiful thing about this show in my eyes is the first opening song - about how we all have our differences but that's what makes the world so interesting. Dance and create the universe.

This show promises to wrap up some of the plot holes and threads left open in the previous Zexal. Does it do that? Well... kind of.

A new, annoying, and overly enthusiastic boy transfers to Yuuma's school. He seems like a good kid. As luck would have it he's actually an evil and sexy buff winged alien from the Barian World and is trying to kill Astral. He is the main culprit who gave powers to both the Tenjou and the Arclight families and essentially drove them crazy and pitted them against each other. He thrives off chaos, as all Barians do.

As the show goes on, you can ABSOLUTELY tell they rewrote the entire plot halfway through because it starts being about how the Barian people were reincarnated humans from thousands of years ago that had all died gruesome and unfair deaths, and none of it really makes sense. But here and now, they're aliens, and their existence is hinging on the destruction of Astral and his world and race of people.

So... this show wants you to believe Astral, as Yuuma's companion, is the good guy. Narratively this appears to be true. In my interpretation... it's all but stated Astral's number one goal once he obtains his 99 memories is to commit genocide against the Barians. His end goal is to obtain the seed of the universe and rewrite its code so that the Barians no longer exist.

The animation is overall better and more consistent than the previous Zexal. The OST is just as good. The writing just unfortunately got worse and more convoluted, and the show suffers from that. As someone who actually thinks the franchise would benefit from the meaningful permanence of major character death, in episode 62 a main character outright suffocates and freezes to death on the moon in what was actually an extremely traumatizing scene to watch. Thanks, Zexal 2!

I like to pretend this show doesn't exist.

Arc-V starts out fresh, promising, fun, with a large cast of cute characters and nice animation. The story is laced with intrigue, about a boy named Yuuya Sakaki and his connection to a new Duel Monsters mechanic - Pendulum Summoning.

So I didn't go into it in detail in my other reviews but each show invents a new major mechanic for the card game - GX had Fusion, 5D's had Synchro, and Zexal had XYZ summoning of monsters. Does this matter? Not particularly. But it is somewhat of a key part to Arc-V's storyline.

Yuuya's father opened a school for dueling some time before his disappearance, and it's not doing super well in comparison to the Leo Corporation's Leo Duel School. (quite unfortunately, it is abbreviated as LDS.) The Leo Corporation's wealthy genuis NEET heir, Reiji Akaba, is investigating his own father's obsession with what seems to be a dimension split involving four young girls from each dimension. He puts together a team of strong Duelists to hop dimensions and stop his father from trying to re-combine the dimensions and possibly erasing everyone in them from existence.

The plot sounds intriguing enough, but unfortunately the writers completely fumbled it. The first dimension they go to is the "Synchro" (5D's) dimension which is an alternate universe of the 5D's setting, and they stay here to compete in a tournament. For a third of the series' total runtime. It was engaging, it was fun, but it barely had much to do with the actual plot that was set up and it feels incredibly frustrating knowing what was to come after.

After the writers remembered they had a show to wrap up, they rushed into the XYZ (Zexal) dimension where the city is in ruins and everyone is pointing fingers at each other. The Fusion (GX) dimension was sent to destroy the XYZ dimension and kidnap its key girl, Ruri Kurosaki. The plot continues to lose its way and the characters eventually do make it to the Fusion dimension to stop Reiji's bad dad, but Yuuya himself also has a secret even he doesn't know a whole lot about - he's part of a four-person split as well.

The animation had its scenes where some things weren't... great looking, but overall it was really nice and consistent and character designs are beautiful. The OST is fun and charming, and this is the only Yu-Gi-Oh series where I personally really like every single one of the six opening songs. The characters are fun, charming, and play off of each other nicely, however I think this show would have been infinitely improved if the main character was someone else.

Yuuya is my favourite Yu-Gi-Oh protagonist. He's an aspiring professional entertainer, he's a sweetheart, and he's just fun to be around. However, I stand by my belief that the protagonist should have been Reiji's baby sister, Layla Akaba.

She's a quiet, shy tomboy who in the end has a lot more to do with the plot than she seems. Had they fleshed out her character more I think the show could have felt a lot more impactful even if they stayed with some of the awful plot decisions they'd made. Had they written her as the main character from the beginning, quietly following her brother and mother's orders to developing her own likes and wants and eventually culminating in her saving the day (which she very much does)... it would feel like a much different show. Yuuya would narratively still have to be a main character, but with Layla at the front and center it could've been everything.

One detail that often gets brought up is that Reiji, Layla (Reira), and another character intrinsically related to their plot named Rei, all have the "Rei" element in their names, meaning zero. However, at least between Reiji and Layla, Reiji's name can also be read as "midnight" while Layla is the Arabic word for "night" - which is intriguing themeing as these characters seem to work behind the scenes, in the shadows more than in broad daylight.

VRAINS was not good. Let's make that clear right away. After the egregious failure of Arc-V's ending, you can absolutely tell everyone working on VRAINS didn't care anymore. The world feels empty, the plot wanders around, the characters are extremely uninteresting. The music isn't even really that good.

However... the last fifteen episodes or so try to save it. Unfortunately they also made it the saddest Yu-Gi-Oh series and I'm still not ready to talk about it. Life really is all about the bonds we make with other people and it's good to stay alive for that.

You might recall how in my Zexal 2 review I stated "the franchise would benefit from the meaningful permanence of major character death". Well I take it back