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Mar 30, 2025

Yu☆Gi☆Oh! 5D's (Manga) add

Not Recommended

Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D’s is widely regarded as the best anime in the franchise, tackling mature themes like class struggle and institutional corruption with a degree of sophistication unmatched by other entries. What most people don’t know, however, is that there’s a 5D’s manga that unfortunately falls short of this praise. This’ll be my third Yu-Gi-Oh! review, and it saddens me that with each iteration, the Duel Monsters legacy is dragged further through the mud. While the original manga still stands the test of time, proving not only to be the template for the franchise but an exceptionally well-crafted battle shonen in its own right, the GX ... and 5D’s manga are poor imitations, riddled with issues, only to be enjoyed by diehard fans. In fairness to GX, it wasn’t a particularly ambitious manga. With its humble setting, solid duels, and well-written protagonist, it could at least offer a net positive experience despite its shortcomings. Sadly, the same cannot be said of 5D’s. This manga was brimming with potential, whether through the new dueling format, creating the possibility for more nuanced duels, the futuristic setting, offering a unique environment never before seen in the franchise, or the strong cast of characters handed to it from the anime. There were lots of concepts at play that could genuinely innovate upon the franchise, but the manga fails to capitalize on any of them.

The manga opens with a duel between Yusei and his close friend, Sect. In typical Yu-Gi-Oh! fashion, Yusei emerges victorious. Immediately after, Sect performs the sunset salute, a superstitious ceremony to summon the skeleton knight, a mythical creature rumored to grant a rare card to those who encounter it. Yusei dismisses the legend as nonsense when, suddenly, a massive structure rises from the earth, and atop it, the skeleton knight, now holding Sect hostage. This forces Yusei into another duel, this time against the mythical knight. Although Yusei is able to squeeze out the victory, Sect is left in critical condition, forcing Yusei to rush him to the hospital. Suddenly, his journey is interrupted by none other than Jack Atlas, who was sent to the Satellite to duel Yusei by his adoptive father, Rex Godwin. For what it’s worth, this is a solid duel, both in terms of its composition and narrative function. On the one hand, it works as a good introduction to the concept of sense, as it doesn’t outright explain it but demonstrates its power, generating curiosity within the reader, and on the other hand, the outcome of this duel, Yusei’s defeat, serves as a defining moment in determining Yusei's motivations for the remainder of the series – to become strong enough to defeat Jack. On the whole, 5D’s has a decent start, bypassing many of the preliminary issues of GX’s manga by showing most duels in their entirety and advancing at a reasonable pace. It further borrows from GX by humbling its protagonist early on. Although Yusei is initially heralded as the strongest in the Satellite, his status as strongest is quickly revoked when Jack enters just four chapters in, setting a precedent for Yusei losing, and preventing duels from feeling one-sided.

With such a strong opening, one may question my initial remarks about the series’ quality. Unfortunately, my praise for this manga ends with the first volume. It certainly introduces a slew of new ideas that could make for a great manga, but as previously mentioned, it fails to capitalize on any of them. For example, with the advent of turbo duels, the manga introduces two new win-conditions. In addition to reducing your opponent’s life points to zero, you can now render your opponent’s duel runner immobile or reach the finish line first. One would think that with all these new conditions, Hikokubo could find more unique ways to keep duels interesting, perhaps by coming up with more interactions between cards and duel runners, or by integrating the futuristic environment into the racing aspect, allowing duelists to discover or even create shortcuts to the finish line. However, most of the duels simply play out as if the duel runners weren’t there. While there are a handful of instances in which one duelist will cut-off another or jump over some terrain, the turbo aspect is highly neglected.

This is particularly disappointing, as these new win-conditions were the perfect opportunity for Hikokubo to return to what made the original Yu-Gi-Oh! manga so good. In a previous video, I talked about Takahashi’s use of a more flexible ruleset, with a certain level of interactivity among the cards and their environment. The classic example is Yugi attacking the moon. Though often the subject of ridicule, it’s paradigmatic of what made Duelist Kingdom great. Yugi wasn’t simply lucky enough to draw a card that did exactly what he needed, but rather, he was aware of his surroundings, recognized that the moon increased the tide of the sea field, giving his opponent’s water monsters an advantage, and figured out a way to remove that advantage with the resources available. Now, this is often ridiculed because, as we know, you cannot destroy a spell card by attacking it, but the point is once you divorce the manga from the strict rules of the TCG, you open up a whole new world of interesting narrative possibilities. After all, if I wanted to see a technically sound duel, I’d attend a YCS, but no one is reading a Yu-Gi-Oh! manga just for technically sound duels.

To return to my main point, I believe 5D’s missed a massive opportunity. It could have returned to this Duelist Kingdom style of gameplay while simultaneously avoiding its criticisms. Consider this: although the medium for these battles is duel monsters, they nevertheless occur during a race. It would seem natural, then, that duelists use their cards in service of winning the race. Unlike in Duelist Kingdom, where unconventional strategies may be criticized for violating the established ruleset, the context of 5D’s allows readers to re-interpret the duels as tools for winning races. Now, we have one instance that gets close to this. In Yusei’s duel against Hunter Pace, Hunter sabotages Yusei’s duel runner, then uses a stall deck to out speed Yusei while protecting his own life points. However, this is the bare minimum. Why not let Yusei use Turbo Synchron to give his runner a speed boost, or Fortress Warrior to create a ramp for him to jump off? Have a monster attack the duel runner, for Christ’s sake! There are so many opportunities to introduce a level of strategy that’s been missing from the franchise for so long and make duels less predictable. To make matters worse, the general quality of the duels is a cut below what was found in the GX manga, which should come as a surprise to anyone who followed the TCG, as the transition from GX to 5D’s came with an exponential leap in complexity for the real-life card game. Some may interpret this criticism as my personal dissatisfaction with the manga not meeting my expectations, but the issue is more complex than that. Genuinely ask yourself, what’s the purpose of introducing new win-conditions if they’re never used? What’s the point of the futuristic setting if the physical environment is hardly acknowledged by the artist? They’re gimmicks, creating the façade of something new and exciting to attract attention, only to reveal itself as yet another mediocre Yu-Gi-Oh! manga, a simple re-skin.

Another major issue with 5D’s is that following the initial set up with the skeleton knight, the manga continues into yet another tournament arc, the fifth in the overall manga continuity. Although there is nothing inherently wrong with using a tournament structure, the franchise has become oversaturated with them. Had 5D’s been more effective at utilizing its other win conditions, it would make the tournament somewhat engaging but forcing readers to experience another series of uninteresting duels between characters they don’t care about is criminal at this point. Moreover, the actual execution of the tournament is sloppy. The first rounds, for example, are just random duels. That’s right, there isn’t even a tournament bracket. Admittedly, the second stage becomes slightly more interesting, with duelists having to collect some number of star tickets whose levels add up to twelve. The problem, however, is that despite this more involved premise, the execution is practically the same. Duelists moving from location to location dueling one another, with little attention paid to the journey between locations, and the locus of attention focused on the mediocre duels.

The one aspect that 5D’s had going for it was the age of its cast. Unlike past Yu-Gi-Oh! series, 5D’s is not set in a school, but instead, features a cast of adults. In theory, this should allow Hikokubo to explore more mature themes through complex interpersonal drama, but in reality, the reader is met with relatively shallow motives and generic conclusions. In fact, three of the main character arcs can be reduced to, “I need to become stronger to defeat the person who hurt my pride,” including Sect, Akiza, and even Yusei. In each instance, the individual is humbled by another duelist, chases some external source of power, but ultimately discovers that “true power comes from within.” There are slight variations in how each individual comes to this conclusion, but the execution is very one-dimensional. This lack of depth amplifies the problems with the tournament structure, as by contrast with Battle City or GX, the reader is not invested in the duelists, and that, taken together with the generally less exciting duels, makes for a much less engaging experience.

There are certainly other grievances I could express, such as how the ancient past subplot is just a lazy re-skin of the original manga, or how underdeveloped the concept of sense is, but I believe I have expressed my main criticisms. 5D’s is not a bad manga in the strict sense, but it sets itself up to be something good and fumbles at every possible opportunity, leaving readers with the safest Yu-Gi-Oh! story imaginable. It’s this combination of lost potential, together with its generic execution, that makes reading this especially painful, even as a hardcore Yu-Gi-Oh! fan. For that reason, I think my final score of 5/10 is quite generous.

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Mar 30, 2025

Yu☆Gi☆Oh! GX (Manga) add

Mixed Feelings

Spoiler

Although the Yu-Gi-Oh! GX anime began airing in 2004, the manga would not start its publication in V-Jump until over a year later. Supervised by the franchise's original creator, Kazuki Takahashi, the manga was written and illustrated entirely by his former assistant, Naoyuki Kageyama. Despite his assistance in the original Yu-Gi-Oh! manga, Kageyama was not involved in the creation or production of the GX anime. As such, he makes it clear that the manga is wholly separate from the anime, explicitly stating that "this version [is] very different from the anime," and that "it's better if [readers] look at it as something completely separate" (volume ... one, page one). He borrows the basic premise of a dueling academy and uses many of the same characters, but how he interprets and develops these characters, as well as the direction in which he takes the story is strikingly different than the anime counterpart. Accordingly, this manga is better thought of as an independent spin-off of the original Yu-Gi-Oh! manga than an adaptation of the GX anime. For that reason, I will avoid comparisons to the anime where possible. I will, however, make frequent reference to the original manga, highlighting how GX handles the duels, the themes present in the original, and how it stacks up overall.

Yu-Gi-Oh! GX takes place on Duel Academy Island, an institute established by Seto Kaiba for prospective duelists to learn the ins-and-outs of both the card game and pro scene. Students are given a rank according to their performance on a series of theoretical and practical exams, and are expected to rank up over their tenure at the academy before eventually gradating and entering the pro scene. Although the idea of a dueling school has been the subject of much ridicule, it helps better situate the role of duel monsters within the world of the series. A good way of understanding this is by means of a real-world parallel, namely, eSports. While there is no 'gamer school' in the way GX has duel academy, they have both carved out their specific niches within their respective cultures: both are generally well-known by the masses, even if the majority do not compete in them, and there is a dedicated demographic of people whose lives are centered around them. The benefit of this set-up is that it requires much less suspension of one's beliefs to understand why duel monsters is so important the characters in the manga despite being set in an otherwise ordinary(-ish) world. In this way, I would argue that GX surpasses the original manga in this respect, as the original manga asks a lot of the reader in terms of suspending their beliefs: after all, the fate of the world being determined by the outcome of two middle-school students, possessed by the spirits of ancient Egypt, playing a children's card game can be a bit difficult to digest at first, but students enrolling in a school to professionally compete in a niche competition is not so much.

While GX begins with a strong premise that helps ease readers into the world its presenting, the execution of the first chapter is riddled with problems that will continue to plague the series as a whole. For one, GX has major pacing issues. In the opening pages of chapter one alone, the reader is presented with (1) Jaden defeating some random opponent and being congratulated by Syrus; (2) a brief, unrelated exchange between Jaden and Alexis; (3) Syrus being defeated by a prospective instructor, Mr. Ryuga; and (4) Jaden talking to Syrus after the match. Four interactions, two duels, across four different locations – all within the span of five pages. Because of how little screen-time each interaction is given, they come across as hollow, as if they are doing the most generic thing just to move the plot along. This issue crops up regularly and can make a lot of the dialogue feel stock and boring. Related to this is a second major issue: that a significant amount of the dueling happens off-screen. Not only are the two opening duels only given a page each, but the final duel of the opening chapter – the climax – starts in the middle of the fifth turn. What makes this issue particularly pressing is that GX is a manga that especially focuses on dueling, more so than even Yu-Gi-Oh! Duelist. Given that, one would expect the manga to slowly build up the duels, carefully creating the momentum necessary to engage readers and deliver a huge climax, but this is often not the case. To make matters worse, this problem is not only limited to less important duels between one-off characters, but extends to major duels between main characters. In chapter eight, for example, Jaden and Syrus are forced into a high stakes duel, where, if Syrus loses, he is expelled from the academy, and if Jaden loses, his deck is confiscated. Surely something of this magnitude would be treated with the upmost care, right? Wrong. Not only does the duel start half-way through, but the chapter begins with the two dueling before any context is given as to why. This in media res approach simply does not work for this style of manga because a duel can only deliver on its excitement if the action is slowly built up, so thrusting readers into the middle of the action is an inefficient means of creating intrigue. Further, the whole point of starting in medias res is to promise the reader that there is plenty of excitement to come, often because a slower start is necessary to set it up, but given GX's breakneck pacing, there is no reason Kageyama could not have simply built up to the duel after just a few pages.

There is no questioning the overall rockiness of GX's opening chapters, but there are certain aspects that are either improved upon or utilized to create more opportunities for genuinely enjoyable moments. The first aspect is that by the fourth volume (chapter 27 onwards), the manga switches from 21-pages to 31-pages. This may seem like a minor change, but by giving Kageyama more space, he no longer has to resort to starting duels halfway through and can use the extra space to show the duel in its entirety. This suggests that the earlier issues were the result of the limitations surrounding the manga's publication, something completely out of his hands. While there may have been alternative ways of dealing with the previous page limit, and so Kageyama does not totally escape the previous criticism, one can see that having more pages simply dissolves this issue entirely. The second aspect is that Kageyama's heavy focus on dueling translates into more dynamic and complex duels than anything in the original manga. Just like in Battle City, GX's duels are set within an established ruleset, but with more improved rules to help bring the card game in line with the real life TCG (for example, fusion and tribute monsters can now attack the turn they are summoned, which was not the case previously). While this type of dueling is still subject to same criticisms as Battle City – namely, battles often feel determined by luck (for example, drawing the right card at the right time) as opposed to the duelist's own merit – it at least offers higher quality and more exciting duels than ever before.

The other aspect which works to GX's advantage is the nature of its protagonist, Jaden. In the original series, Yugi is presented as 'the good guy who always triumphs over evil.' The consequence of this is that in most of his duels, the reader expects him to win. The problem, then, especially in Battle City, was that some of these victories did not feel justified: they were not a result of his own autonomy but of luck, which can feel cheap and undeserving. This, however, is not the case in GX. Although the manga actively choses to begin with a scene of Jaden winning, invoking the memory of the undefeatable Yugi, GX quickly subverts this expectation by having Jaden lose several important duels. Not only does this come as a shock to the reader, but it fundamentally changes how they perceive the duels: no longer will they expect Jaden to simply steamroll every opponent because he is the protagonist. Moreover, because of the large cast of exceptionally strong duelists, Jaden does not always play the role of 'the hero who saves the day.' These two features humble Jaden in a way that allows duels to be unpredictable, which helps keep the reader engaged.

Among the original Yu-Gi-Oh! trilogy, GX is best known for its characters, and more specifically, Jaden's development across the four seasons. Given that, the question naturally arises, how does the GX manga fair in light of this? Well, much like its anime counterpart, Jaden is given a fair amount of development. Early on, the manga establishes that Jaden's deck is valuable to him, and in volume two, readers find out why: it was a dying gift from a mentor-like figure from his past, Koyo Hibiki. This backstory was actually fairly moving and casts Jaden in a whole new light. Unlike his journey in the anime, manga Jaden is principally concerned with establishing his own identity. For the first half of the manga, he essentially wants to be Koyo, but by the second half, he comes into his own identity, which is beautifully represented by him putting aside the deck given to him by Koyo and using his own cards. This journey of self-discovery has an incredible conclusion, which perfectly wraps up the manga as a whole. Now, while I have nothing but praise for Jaden's character arc in the manga, my praise ends with him. The manga is unfortunately bloated with characters that are given little to no background and have zero personality; the most the reader will remember about the majority of the cast is the type of deck they play, as it is only when dueling that any of these characters distinguish themselves from one another in any meaningful way. Perhaps the worst example of this are with the five American duelists introduced in the second half. They exist solely to provide the main cast with the opportunity to face strong duelists in a tournament setting. At the very least, the duels are generally well done, with a lot of dynamic action, complex back-and-forthes, and unique new monsters.

--- SPOILERS ---

The final aspect I must discuss is the antagonist. Recall that one of GX's greatest virtues is how it situates duel monsters within the world of the series. While I maintain that this is still generally positive, it does work against itself in the latter half, and this has to do with Kageyama's attempt at introducing a supernatural element into the manga. It is important to note that the events of the manga are entirely motivated by the antagonist, a spirit from ancient Egypt trying to resurrect itself, who is drawn to Duel Academy out of a necessity to complete the resurrection. While the Yu-Gi-Oh! franchise is no stranger to ancient Egyptian antagonists, the problem in GX is that it is set in an otherwise ordinary world, so the first few mentions of Shadow Games can break the readers' immersion and come off as jarring. This could be forgiven if the antagonist was executed well enough to justify this shift in tone, but unfortunately, that is not the case. Readers are given a couple pages worth of backstory in the first half, but otherwise, the antagonist does not make any significant appearances until the last two volumes: he was the evil spirit of a criminal in ancient Egypt who was sealed into a stone tablet, which was then destroyed. Some 3000 years later, said spirit somehow – unbeknownst to the reader – gains control of the American Duel Academy and uses its students in an attempt to resurrect itself. Not a particularly unique backstory as far as Yu-Gi-Oh! is concerned, but what absolutely ruins any semblance of intrigue around this character is shattered in the final volume. Straight up, the final antagonist, Tragoedia, explicitly states that his motivation for coming back and killing humans is because (and I quote) "[he] was bored [and] nothing more." I cannot begin to describe how disappointing of an ending this was to read. Not only are we, as readers, deprived of any real background and motivations for the main antagonist's actions, but it just makes the inclusion of this supernatural element feel like Kageyama's half-hearted attempt at connecting GX with the original series. I genuinely believe that GX could have been a better written manga without the supernatural elements, There was so much more Kageyama could have worked with, such as Jaden and Chazz's shared past and present rivalry, or the dynamic between the American and Japanese academies. Literally anything else would have been better.

--- END ---

In short, Yu-Gi-Oh! GX is – at best – a series of semi-interesting duels with a well-written protagonist strung together by a horrible ancient Egyptian sub-plot, and at worst, a shallow attempt at continuing the duel monsters legacy that we could otherwise do without. As a Yu-Gi-Oh! fan, I am willing to extend the series some charity and focus on the good more than the bad, but giving this series anything higher than a 7/10 would be unreasonably generous.

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Mar 30, 2025

Yu☆Gi☆Oh! (Manga) add

Recommended

Yu-Gi-Oh! is a franchise that, despite its overwhelming popularity, is often subject to unfair criticism. In general, there is an unwillingness to take the series seriously because “it’s just for kids,” and thus, for many, any positive sentiment about the series is reduced to nostalgia. While there is some truth to these claims, they do not justify writing off the series as a whole and undermining the feats it does accomplish. After all, a series can be an object of nostalgia while simultaneously achieving a certain level of quality (think Cowboy Bebop or Princess Mononoke); likewise, one could argue that the whole shonen demographic is ... “just for kids,” yet this ‘criticism’ fails to come up amid discussions of One Piece or Hunter x Hunter – two manga that ran alongside Yu-Gi-Oh! in Weekly Shonen Jump. I suspect that this misconception is rooted in a common experience with the franchise: most people have only been exposed to the 4Kids’ dub of the Yu-Gi-Oh! anime, a highly censored version of an already questionable adaptation. What’s more, most people have only experienced the series as a child, a time in which one’s interpretive faculties are the least developed. It is only natural, then, that for those whose only experience with the franchise is of a censored dub of a questionable adaptation at a time when their interpretive faculties are the least developed that they struggle to entertain the idea that Yu-Gi-Oh! could actually be a well written battle shonen – but that is precisely what it is.

The first seven volumes take on a largely episodic structure: each week, a new villain appears doing something villainous, Yugi challenges them to some sort of game, beats them, then saves the day. Generally, this sort of formula grows tired quickly, but that is not the case here. Takahashi's original intention was to write a manga about "a weak and childish boy who becomes a hero when he plays games." In this way, the manga was Takahashi's means of exploring his love for games, using them as a vehicle through which an average Japanese schoolboy could mature and establish their own identity. To what extent he accomplishes this in the first part is questionable, but what is clear is how this love for games translates into each chapter, keeping readers engaged during the entirety of the first part. Each week, Takahashi creates a unique game for Yugi and company to participate in. The episodic structure works because each game is given an appropriate amount of screen time: no one game overstays its welcome, and if one game does not interest you, it will be gone in the following week. What's more is many of these early games have surprisingly high stakes. In chapter four, for example, an escaped prisoner holds Anzu at gun point. Yugi challenges said prisoner to a game, wherein each participant may only move one finger – a seemingly simple and benign 'game' (if you can call it that). The prisoner chooses his index finger, so that he may pull the trigger on his gun, while Yugi chooses his thumb. The reason for this is not clear until the next page: the prisoner has an unlit cigarette in his mouth. Yugi offers to light it for him, and as he reaches over the table, he places the lighter on the other hand of the prisoner, which is pouring a glass of alcohol. The situation is thus: the prisoner cannot fire the gun, as the recoil would knock the lighter into the alcohol, setting him aflame. This creates an opportunity for Yugi to escape with Anzu, leaving the prisoner to eventually drop the lighter, burning him to death.

The beauty of this scene is twofold. For one, Takahashi has proven that every move in the manga is calculated. Earlier scenes of the prisoner drinking and smoking were not only to establish certain character traits, but calculated steps that would later be integrated into the game / conclusion of the story. This sort of situational awareness is one of Takahashi's greatest virtues, as it allows him to unify various, seemingly arbitrary elements of a chapter into a cohesive ending. For another, this also demonstrates that Yu-Gi-Oh! is not merely some manga about a children's card game with no stakes: many of these games end in the death / near death of a character, which Takahashi is not afraid to depict (unlike the anime counterpart).

Despite my seemingly endless sea of praises for the first part of the manga, there are a couple of issues I would like to highlight, above all being the character writing. While some earlier dynamics are done with a great level of care (for example, Honda's transition from Yugi's bully to his friend, and his hesitancy to fully commit to the friend group because of his fear that Yugi holds a grudge against him), much of the characters are fairly stock. I am willing to forgive this, as Takahashi himself intended on creating a "normal Japanese schoolboy," which we will see developed in subsequent parts, but as they exist in isolation in part one, apart from the rest of the story, they can come off as generic, especially to a more modern reader who has been overexposed to many of these archetypes. The other major issue (and one that will plague the series as a whole) is that Yugi constantly feels undefeatable. Again, this is not a problem in-and-of-itself; rather, it is only when these victories do not feel justified, and at least in part one, Takahashi takes great care to come up with unique solutions to the games he creates, giving the reader the impression that Yugi genuinely had to think his way out of the game, and hence, that the victory is deserved. This is not always the case, but I would like to think that in part one, it is not as big of an issue as it will become.

Yu-Gi-Oh! Duelist takes up the majority of the series, constituting almost two thirds of the manga. It should come as no surprise, then, that it contains both the highest highs and lowest lows of the series. This section begins with the famous Duelist Kingdom, spanning chapters 60 to 133. This is, for all intents and purposes, the pinnacle of Yu-Gi-Oh! as a battle shonen. To understand why, a brief summary is in order. Duel monsters (the game) starts as a collaboration between Industrial Illusions (an American company headed by Pegasus) and Kaiba Corporation (a Japanese tech company headed by Kaiba). When Kaiba enters into a coma (in part one), Pegasus plots to take over the company by going to the five biggest shareholders and convincing them to let him assume the role of CEO. The issue, however, is that the value of the company is contingent on Kaiba being the king of games, but since his defeat to Yugi in part one, their value has plummeted. As such, Pegasus suggests holding a tournament with the intentions of defeating Yugi, making him (Pegasus) the new king of games. These "big five" would then accept him as their CEO, as it would allow them to restore their value as a company. While this context is laid out in the anime, the manga emphasizes it in a way that better structures the arc, giving all the actions within it more purpose. By contrast, the anime can often come across as a mere series of duels with individual characters having their own motives but no significant overarching meaning.

The real virtue of Duelist Kingdom, however, is its approach to duel monsters. The game officially debuted in chapter 9 of part one, where it took on a fairly privative form: using a variety of monster and spell cards, reduce your opponents life points to zero. When the game returns in Yu-Gi-Oh! Duelist, it is largely under this same privative guise, but now with even more cards and longer duels. What makes Duelist Kingdom great, however, is that unlike the real life card game, with its standardized rules, the manga featured a much more flexible ruleset. The advantage of this is that Takahashi could focus on creating more unique card interactions that make duels both interesting and unpredictable. For instance, in Yugi's duel against Ryota Kajiki, the ocean field spell gave Ryota's water-based monsters a huge advantage; however, Yugi – in a move that can only be described as pure genius – decides to attack not any one of Ryota's monsters but the moon. As a result, the tide of the ocean drops, revealing and weakening Ryota's monsters, allowing Yugi to win. It's this kind of situational awareness that Takahashi excels at: taking otherwise mundane details from a chapter, like the location of a duel or the time of day it occurs, and incorporating that into a strategy for the duelists to use. These unique card interactions introduce more nuance into the battles; unlike the actual card game, where the outcome of a battle is determined by the monster with the higher attack, the manga utilizes these unique interactions, which introduce the possibility of a weaker monster winning – with a bit of strategy. While such examples might seem like an 'ass pull' from the perspective of a modern reader whose familiarity is limited to the real life card game, this flexibility is precisely what makes the earlier duels much more exciting.

On the whole, I have very little to complain about with regards to Duelist Kingdom. Here, we start to see some of the characters breakaway from the shackles of their earlier, generic selves, and we are given a whole host of interesting duels, all packaged within this corporate-political drama. It begins to foreshadow a lot of future developments, especially with respect to the ancient lore behind the game and how Yami Yugi is connected to it all, and overall, it is a pleasure to read. However, it is not perfect. As previously mentioned, Yugi still feels unbeatable. While there are many instances in which his victories are well earned, here we start to see Takahashi employ the 'power of friendship' troupe at a much higher frequency than before. While this is not inherently bad, it becomes quite repetitive and can leave readers with a bad taste in their mouth (especially seeing Jonouchi win his millionth duel through the power of friendship).

Duelist Kingdom is then followed by a brief (albeit fun) arc, Dungeon Dice Monsters, which covers chapters 134 to 145. While this arc has no real significance outside of introducing a new member of the cast, Ryuji Otogi, it is a nice detour for both Takahashi – who likely desired a break from drawing just duel monsters and wanted to further explore his passion for all-things-games – and the reader – who, likewise, could use a palate cleanser from all the card games.

The second major saga in Duelist is Battle City, which covers chapters 146 to 201 (or 278 if you include the Tournament Finals). For many, this arc is paradigmatic of what Yu-Gi-Oh! is all about, and understandably so: it maintains a healthy balance of all the dueling fun from Duelist Kingdom, with the stakes of part one, and the Egyptian lore of Millennium World. Here, we also start to see some major developments in the rules of the card game: monsters above level four require tributes, fusion monsters cannot attack on the turn they were summoned, and so on. This brings the manga's card game more in line with the real life card game (admittedly, not by much). More importantly, however, it also helps mitigate a pressing issue for all battle shonen, namely, power creep. In Duelist Kingdom, players could summon their most powerful monsters for free: Dark Magician, Blue-Eyes White Dragon, and Red-Eyes Black Dragon, despite their enormous strength, required zero sacrifice. This was not a huge issue then, as the difference between the weakest and strongest monsters was not so great, and further, because of Takahashi's approach to the game, there was always the opportunity for a weaker monster to defeat a stronger one through some clever strategy. However, this is not the case in Battle City, where the difference between a God card and even the previous strongest monsters is monumental. Hence, tribute summoning presents such monsters with a much needed check.

On the topic of duels in Battle City, something else must be said: unlike Duelist Kingdom, where duels were largely settled by unique card interactions, Battle City attempts to situate most of its duels within the bounds of the established ruleset. As a result, there is much more spell and trap card play than in Duelist Kingdom, but much less outside strategy. The difference between the two is perhaps best explained through a hypothetical example: in Duelist Kingdom, Yugi attacked the literal moon, but in Battle City, he would have activated a spell card that destroys the moon card. While the outcome is similar, the Duelist Kingdom style presents itself as a sort of outside-the-box thinking: Yugi had to figure out that the moon was affecting the tide, giving Ryota an advantage, and that destroying the moon would reverse this effect, allowing him to win; conversely, the Battle City style already tells Yugi that the moon is giving Ryota an advantage, and he has to hope that he can draw a card capable of destroying it. While he still has to come up with the idea himself, it often feels like he is simply lucky enough to draw the exact cards necessary to complete the combo. The reason I mention this difference in style is because of how it amplifies a previously established problem: Yugi's undefeatable-ness. Although Yugi is not literally undefeated, he has this presence of "I am the protagonist, so I will ultimately win at the end of the day." As previously mentioned, it is not inherently problematic if it feels like he earns the win, which in Duelist Kingdom, he often did through his on-the-fly thinking, but now in Battle City, where luck plays a much larger role, some of his wins can feel less justified.

While the quality of dueling starts to tapper in Battle City, a greater emphasis is placed on developing individual characters to new heights. Of particular significance is the dynamic between Yugi and Yami Yugi. While the two have co-existed in unity over the course of the story, Yami Yugi is slowly confronted with the reality of his past life, forcing Yugi to wrestle with the reality of his difference from Yami. Here we find the seeds of Takahashi's original intention start to blossom: Yugi, as an average Japanese schoolboy, begins to wrestle with his identity as distinct from Yami's for the first time in a serious way. We will not see the resolution of this internal tension until the end of the series, but it is clear that the longer Yu-Gi-Oh! goes on, the more of a character-based drama it becomes.

Yu-Gi-Oh! Millennium World is the part for which I have the least to say. As I have mentioned, the trajectory of the manga, especially post-Duelist Kingdom, is to focus less on the duels and more on developing individual characters, and in particular, Yugi and his relationship to Yami. That is not to say that the duels are somehow less important in Millennium World – after all, the arc is perhaps best understood as a history of duel monsters – but rather, it is clear that Takahashi's emphasis is now on finishing the character arc he started all the way back in part one. Millennium World picks up with Yugi's identity crisis in Battle City, and amplifies it tenfold by literally splitting Yugi and Yami apart, forcing the two to grapple with who they are as an individual. Their journey to uncover the truth of Yami's past and where that journey takes them is handled with the same level of sophistication one would expect from Takahashi at this point. However, because this is the climax of the series, and a climax which differs in meaningful ways from the anime adaptation, I have opted to keep my remarks here practically non-existent; instead, I hope that what I have said up until this point has convinced you to read the series, so that once you get here, you, too, will be able to understand what makes Yu-Gi-Oh! special.

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