Yu-Gi-Oh! Details, Meaning Yu-Gi-Oh! Article and Explanation Guide

Yu-Gi-Oh! Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description

Yu-Gi-Oh! (遊☆戯☆王, yūgiō in Romaji, Japanese for "King of Games") is a popular Japanese anime and manga franchise that involves characters who play a card game called Duel Monsters (originally called "Magic and Wizards" in the manga before it was changed to Duel Monsters; for continuity in this document the card game will be referred to as Duel Monsters) wherein each player purchases and assembles a deck of "monster, magic and trap cards" in order to defeat one another.

The Yu-Gi-Oh! manga was one of the most popular titles featured in Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump and ran from 1996 to 2004. A new series, called Yu-Gi-Oh! R, is now published in V-Jump, which has most of the same characters in a new plotline.

The Yu-Gi-Oh! A Shadow Game anime was first broadcast beginning in 1998 on TV Asahi. The Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters anime aired on TV Tokyo. In recent years, both the manga and anime have also been brought to the United States. The manga runs in Viz's Shonen Jump and the Duel Monsters anime is broadcast as part of Kids WB, on Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, and in syndication in many other places. There is also another new anime series in Japan called Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters GX, which has new characters. GX also airs on TV Tokyo.

The Yu-Gi-Oh! franchise has since grown to incorporate a real-life version of the card game featured in the anime and manga, a series of video games by Konami, toys, and many other products.

Original Japanese version

Manga

Original manga

The manga, which ran in Weekly Shonen Jump, was created in 1996 and ended on March 8, 2004. The manga originally focused on Yugi Mutou (Yugi Moto), Katsuya Jonouchi (Joey Wheeler), Anzu Mazaki (Téa Gardner), and Hiroto Honda (Tristan Taylor) as they play games and go into several misadventures. The plots start out as fairly episodic and there are only two instances of the card game Magic and Wizards a.k.a. Duel Monsters in the first seven volumes. Starting around the eighth volume, the Duelist Kingdom arc started and the plot shifted to a Duel Monsters-centered universe. In the manga, Duel Monsters is the hottest thing from the United States. Duel Monsters is a parody of Magic the Gathering.

Yu-Gi-Oh! R

Yu-Gi-Oh! R (遊戯王R), released on April 21, 2004, is published in V-Jump. The manga is drawn by Akira Itou and the story is done by Kazuki Takahashi. Yu-Gi-Oh! R is an alternate plotline which takes place after the defeat of Malik Ishtar.

In Yu-Gi-Oh! R, the brother of Pegasus J. Crawford (Maxamillion Pegasus), Yakou Tenma (Tenma Yakō) decides to avenge his brother's defeat at the hands of Yugi Mutou. Tenma takes over KaibaCorp while Seto Kaiba is in the United States. Tenma kidnaps Anzu Mazaki, prompting Yugi to face Tenma's RA Project and the thirteen duel professors.

Anime

Yu-Gi-Oh! A Shadow Game anime

The "first series" of the Japanese version of Yu-Gi-Oh! anime is based on the early manga. The 1st series was produced by Toei Animation.

The first series lasts for 27 episodes. Manga plots were re-written so that they could take up an entire episode time. Also the level of violence was reduced between the manga and the anime, and a minor character in the manga, Miho Nosaka, became a main character in the first series along with Yugi, Jonouchi, Anzu, and Honda.

New characters and plots, such as those relating to the four game masters, were added, and there are more occurrences of Seto Kaiba and Duel Monsters. The card game was not entirely the focus of the series in the series one anime. The last episodes of the series focus on the battle between Yugi and Dark Bakura (Yami Bakura). The first Japanese series had different voice actors and different character designs than the second series (e.g. Seto Kaiba's hair was green in the Japanese first season of the anime). The first Japanese season has not been translated into English.

After 27 episodes, the first series stopped production.

Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters anime

The second series of the anime was produced differently. TV Tokyo and NAS made the Duel Monsters series, and the Duel Monsters series became popular in Japan and other places around the world.

The series is titled Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (遊戯王デュエルモンスターズ) in Japan, and in North America it is simply Yu-Gi-Oh!. The fight between Yugi and Kaiba is redone, and Miho Nosaka doesn't appear in the Duel Monsters series. The second series more or less corresponds with the second fight between Yugi and Kaiba, and the Duelist Kingdom and Battle City plots and all of those onward in the manga. The Duel Monsters card game in the second season and beyond is now a central plot device. Some "filler" material such as the Doma arc and the KC Grand Prix was added in the second series.

Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters GX

Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters GX (遊戯王デュエルモンスターズGX) is an anime spinoff of the original Yu-Gi-Oh! franchise.

English adaptations

English anime

Like many anime shows originally created for the Japanese market, a number of changes were made when the Yu-Gi-Oh! television show was released in the United States. These changes are frequently done to make the series more understandable, and to remove material which might be considered inappropriate for the target audience - young children. The changes to Yu-Gi-Oh! include:

Americanization of character names (e.g. Yugi Mutou, Katsuya Jonouchi, Hiroto Honda, and Anzu Mazaki became Yugi Moto, Joey Wheeler, Tristan Taylor, and Téa Gardner, respectively)
removing all instances of weapons (like guns and knives, which are often prevalent)
removing scenes where two or more characters are fighting
removing or obfuscating many references to religion, such as the pentagram
removing or rewriting scenes where characters are in real danger of death (In the English anime, characters are instead threatened with the possibility of going to the Shadow Realm)
removing or editing scenes where monsters undergo some form of violent death (such as being eaten or being stabbed)
removing scenes where characters make obscene gestures
editing scenes where a character or duel monster appears nude
removing assorted sexual innuendo
removing much writing in Japanese and English (this resulted in the unusual design of the Duel Monsters cards in the English version of the series)

4Kids Entertainment has not translated the 27 episodes that make up Toei's series (e.g. the first series). The English version only consists of the second series made by TV Tokyo and NAS.

4Kids and FUNimation since began to issue an uncut version of the Duel Monsters series on DVD. The uncut DVDs show episodes in their entirity without editing, use an English script that is much more faithful to the original Japanese, and include a Japanese-language track.

English manga

The English manga is published in its original right-to-left format by Viz Communications in both the Shonen Jump magazine and in individual graphic novels. The original Japanese character names are kept, while the English names for the Duel Monsters cards are used. The manga is largely unedited, especially compared to the English anime. Viz released volumes 1 through 7 under the name Yu-Gi-Oh! Volume 8 will be released as Yu-Gi-Oh! Duelist.

Characters

Important Terms

Millennium Items - Seven magical items originating in ancient Egypt. The items include the Millennium Puzzle, Eye, Ring, Key (Ankh), Rod, Tauk and Scales. Each one has its own special powers, but some (which are more important to the storyline) are known for one or two powers.
Monster Cards - A type of card in the game Duel Monsters, this represents a creature or warrior which is summoned during a duel to attack the opposing player and his monsters.
Magic Cards (also known as Spell Cards) - A type of card that is basically a magic spell, which have various effects, from reviving a monster with Monster Reborn/Raise Dead or to cancel a spell in effect such as De-Spell.
Trap Cards - A type of card that is usually triggered by an event, such as Negate Attack which is activated during an attack, and as the name implies, negates it.
God Cards aka Egyptian God Cards - Three all-powerful Duel Monsters cards created by Pegasus J. Crawford, after the mysterious Shadi shows him an ancient stone carving of the Unnamed Pharaoh (the same one whose spirit is in the Millennium Puzzle) facing an Seto, one of the six priests that guarded the pharaoh, but dueled him as a foe, and a friend, though he seemingly has been both good and evil. They are the God of Obelisk/Obelisk the Tormentor/Oberisuku no Kyo Shin Hei (Immense Divine Soldier of Obelisk), Saint Dragon - God of Osiris/Slifer the Sky Dragon/Oshirisu no Tenkūryū (Saint Dragon of Osiris) and the Sun of God Dragon/Winged Dragon of Ra/Rā no Yoku Shin Ryū (The Winged Divine Dragon Of Ra) (thought to be the most powerful because of all its effects). When the cards were being made, and the stone carving was being investigated, the three men with Pegasus met with some rather unfortunate fates. When Dark Yugi's name is unlocked from depths of his memory (A.T.E.M.U), it acts as sort of a Magic Card, fusing the three god monsters together, creating "Hokarhati, The Creator of Light". Hokarhati means "Horus", an Egyptian god. The Eye on the Millennium Items is known as the "Eye of (Horus)". Hokarhati's power is infinite, therefore making it virtually invincible. Hokarhati makes his appearance in the duel between Thief Bakura and Atemu in Pharaoh's Memory. These God Cards become a focal point later in the series, for they and the Millennium Puzzle unlock the Pharaoh's Memory.
Duelist Kingdom - The second story arc of the manga and the first of Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters
Battle City - The third arc of the manga and the second in Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters
Shadow Realm - In the English anime, the Shadow Realm is a place of eternal suffering and darkness, used to write out the possibility of serious injury or death. The Shadow Realm does not exist in the manga and the original Japanese anime.

Merchandise

The real-life Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Game is based on the fictional Duel Monsters game played by the primary characters. Unlike other television shows, books, games and films which have spawned card games (such as those for Pokémon;, The Lord of the Rings, Star Trek and Star Wars), the Yu-Gi-Oh! TV shows features the game, and viewers of the show learn how to play the game along with the characters. A key thing to keep in mind is that the behavior of some cards in the real-life game are not the same as the behavior of the card in the TV show. Related starter decks include Yugi Moto Starter Deck, Seto Kaiba Starter Deck, Pegasus Starter Deck, and Joey Starter Deck.

Other collectible games that were originally created as fictitious games for the series but were later turned into real games include Capsule Monster Chess, a sort of pre-Mage Knight collectible miniatures game, and Dungeon Dice Monsters, a dungeon crawl boardgame where the tiles are created by unfolding the faces of 6-sided dice, and which is a variant on an earlier, non-collectible Japanese game called simply Dungeon Dice.

The merchandising of Yu-Gi-Oh! products and games has drawn criticism from adults and anime fans. The original manga did not include Duel Monsters as a regular plot vehicle for the first seven volumes. In those seven volumes, which were released in the American Shonen Jump, there are only two instances of the game Duel Monsters. After Yu-Gi-Oh! become popular, Kazuki Takahashi was asked to modify the storyline to feature more of the card game.