Plot: Yugi is finally gaining some ground on the fake Kaiba thanks to the real Kaiba helping him out. Can the combined efforts of Yugi and Kaiba stop the fake, or will the Blue-Eyes prove too powerful for them to take on?
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When they recap the scene before the commercial break (when Kaiba says “Yugi!”) They impose another Millennium symbol on Yugi’s forehead. They didn’t do it before the commercial break….and they redubbed the scene for some reason after it, so I dunno. I guess the Millennium Puzzle mixed its powers with the heart of the cards and killed a virtual dragon.
Subbed:
Dubbed:
Like I mentioned in episode nine, the fake is not a ghost nor is it the ‘evil’ part of Kaiba. 4Kids injected a flashback of Yugi’s mind crush from episode one into this episode to push the concept of Kaiba’s evilness even further. Because making kids believe that evil can infect them is much better than an impostor dressing up as another person.
Also, why would Kaiba’s ‘evil’ part look like that? Wouldn’t it just look like Kaiba only evil, like he looked before? Or are we doing the tried, true and stupid ‘ugly=evil’ bullshit?
Side note – The music used for the fake when he reveals himself is hilarious in the original. It’s like some sort of Runescape music.
Whee, guns!
Subbed:
Dubbed:
I actually have to give them props for this edit because, if you didn’t know the original, you’d probably never know they had guns.
Pegasus threatens Croquet in the dub after he finds out Kaiba is still on the run. In the original, he says it’s not an issue and to just enjoy the duel.
When Kimo turns his head, he’s actually thinking to himself in the original. In the dub, they change it to Pegasus contacting Kimo on some radio telling him to not let Mokuba go no matter what happens. This makes what happens in the end much less of a surprise.
It’s not the first time they’ve dubbed in the radio thing either. The first time Pegasus talks to him over the radio is a dub insert as well. In the original, it’s silent.
They edit out a scene in which the fake Kaiba pulls his cape over his head and suddenly changes his face to look like Pegasus to mock him. I guess they thought this wouldn’t make any sense since the dub fake is Kaiba’s evil self and not a guy in a suit.
Mystical/Holy Elf doesn’t have any special abilities nor does the Book of Mystic Arts grant any abilities beyond increased attack strength. Thus, Mystical Elf couldn’t have transferred its attack power to the Blue-Eyes. Duelist Kingdom logic is fun.
4Kids edited out the wine on Pegasus’s hand after Yugi has that awesome speech. I guess they thought it looked like blood?
Subbed:
Dubbed:
This episode wasn’t as fun as the last because Kaiba quickly needs to run and doesn’t help Yugi anymore, so there’s no cool rival matchup after a short while. Without it, it’s kinda boring. Even with Kaiba’s deck, you know Yugi won’t lose to some goofy hired duelist. After all…not even Kaiba can beat Yugi with Kaiba’s deck.
Plot: A man moves into a new apartment when he notices his strange neighbor staring at him from her apartment across the street. He gets more and more unsettled from her staring as time goes on, and he’s even more frightened when o-fuda keep making their way into his house.
Breakdown: You didn’t think I’d forget about anime during Animating Halloween did ya? While it’s true that there really aren’t many Halloween specials or movies out there for anime, there is no shortage of horror anime, so let’s see what I can dig up this month.
Yami Shibai is a collection of shorts based on rumors and urban myths about monsters and ghosts animated in a style close to kamishibai, which is a public theater motif where paper dolls and scrolls are used to put on a puppet show. And I gotta say, the art is one of the reasons this caught my eye. I first caught wind of this show after looking for a new background pic for October. The rough hand-painted look really made the freaky imagery hit home. It’s fantastic.
These entries won’t be entirely long since the stories themselves are merely a few minutes long, so I’ve decided to bulk them up a bit by reviewing two episodes per entry. This episode was pretty damn creepy in its own right. The neighbor looks and acts much like any creepy neighbor in a horror film would act, and the one jump scare here actually got me a little, but I have to admit that I predicted the twist at the end.
If you know what o-fuda are meant to do and take just a minute out to think of a semi-logical reason the neighbor would be putting so much attention on this place, you can see it coming when the second o-fuda is found. I also would’ve liked to have built a bit more on the ending, mostly on what the backstory is behind the apartment for such a thing to happen. Decent enough short, but somewhat predictable.
Music wise, I really enjoyed the ED. It’s very fitting for this type of show. It’s a somewhat typical upbeat anime ED, though the lyrics are just weird and the audio is purposely screwed with to create an uncomfortable feeling.
Episode 2 – Zanbai
Plot: A man on a business trip to a strange village suddenly wakes up in a hospital with a broken foot without remembering how he got there. The other patients are acting strange around him. What do they want?
Breakdown: This episode was a little confusing. I mean, like the problem with the previous story, the stories are just so short that you have no clue why this stuff is happening. The zanbai thing is pretty clever since you are somewhat mislead into believing that the men are doing the banzai cheer, just in an odd way. It’s not until the last second that you learn it wasn’t a cheer at all, and it’s not until you look up what the kanji in the term zanbai means (since I don’t think that’s a legit Japanese term. Every search I’ve done on it has come up with Yami Shibai links.) that you truly understand.
However, we don’t know what this village is about or why they’re so set on not letting outsiders leave. And if they really wanted him to stay, why not kidnap him or imprison him?
It was still a bit creepy, and the shot of zanbai was beautifully and creepily done.
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Really starting to pain me huh, Challenge? ‘Epic’ is such an iffy word in this context. There are so many scenes that are epic in anime but in different ways. Epic action, epic impact in visuals, epic in terms of emotion, epic romance, it’s such a difficult area to tread into. It’s also difficult because there’s an entirely different section for a badass scene.
I decided that ‘epic’ in this regard should mean a huge scene, likely a fight, that is just so ridiculously awesome yet over the top and overpowered and just overall fun….And I’m gonna make people mad because this is a scene from Yugioh. Trust me, it surprised even me because I had several fight scenes from awesome anime in mind.
I’m talking about Dragon Master Knight’s debut.
Should really be called ‘Blue Eye Ultimate Dragon Feat. Black Luster Soldier if you squint.’
Assuming you know of YGO, and most people do to some degree, this takes place during the virtual reality arc. Kaiba is trapped in a virtual Duel Monsters game of his creation by his board members called the Big Five. Yugi, Joey and Mokuba go in to save him and eventually (and randomly) see Mai there who decides to help too.
Yugi and the gang join up with Kaiba to take down the Big Five, who have manifested themselves into a giant five-headed multi-elemental dragon called the Mythic Dragon who has 5000 attack points. The group tries to fight the thing to no avail and they start dropping like flies to its power…..Literally. They start getting killed. (Well sorta) It’s down to Yugi and Kaiba who are forced to join forces and create one of the most overpowered and ridiculously difficult to create monsters I’ve ever seen.
Dragon Master Knight or it’s Japanese name Master of Dragon Soldier (is it me or do both of those names just sound like they have horrible grammar?) is created by making Blue Eyes Ultimate Dragon, which requires fusing three Blue Eyes together, and creating Black Luster Soldier, which requires pulling off a ritual. After that, you have to fuse those two monsters together. In any other situation, this would be near impossible, but the powers of Yugi and Kaiba’s insane luck as well as the power of the virtual reality game which basically allowed them to make these monsters without going through the proper channels in the first place came through for them. Hooray convenient shortcuts!
But believe it or not, even that ridiculous fusion is not enough to take down the Mythic Dragon. They have equal attack strengths, so they’d only end up destroying each other. Ultimate Dragon (4500 atk) + Black Luster Soldier (3000 atk) = 5000 atk? I know they don’t stack the attack, but a 500 point bump is a little disappointing is all. In hindsight, that’d be fine to have them stalemate as long as they beat the Mythic Dragon, but we have to totally kick its ass.
That’s achieved through its insane special ability that allows it to gain 500 extra attack points for every dragon ever played in the duel, of which there are eight, so Dragon Master Knight gets a point boost to 9000, almost twice as much as the Mythic Dragon.
It ends up killing the Mythic Dragon with the most awesome attack name ever. Not the dumb dub name of ‘Dragon Sabre Blast’, the awesome Japanese name of Galaxy Crusher. Friggin’ Galaxy Crusher!
This entire arc is ridiculous and this battle is so over the top both in both the ‘dramatic’ (and usually unnecessary) deaths, the silly costumes the group has to wear because of the world they’re in, the speeches, the completely insane summoning of an insanely overpowered monster (Hell, Kaiba’s deck is loaded with dragons. Can you imagine how much more powerful that thing would be if he decided to chuck those in there?) it’s just ridiculous and silly epic fun that only one of the weirdest arcs in Yugioh could’ve delivered.
Bonus: For people who don’t like to partake in the silly awesomeness that is Yugioh sometimes, my other choice was going to be Levi’s attack on the female titan from Attack on Titan. I mean, he’s already built up like a titan killing god, but look at this;
He is going straight up Sonic the Hedgehog: Saw Edition on the most dangerous titan they’ve encountered so far. My views on Attack on Titan are mixed, but the concept of the maneuver gear and that battles that occur on it is by far one of the most interesting and epic parts the show, and Levi just flaunts it in that scene. That was just awesome.
Plot: Jonouchi is training with Grandpa to be in an upcoming tournament. He comes in eighth, but still has a lot to learn. After watching the finals of the tournament on TV, Yugi gets a mysterious package containing a glove, some stars and a videotape. As he pops the video in, he sees the creator of Duel Monsters, Pegasus Crawford, on the screen proposing a duel to Yugi.
He drags Yugi into a strange shadow world to play a Yami no Game, a game played with real monsters and real consequences. Whoever is ahead within fifteen minutes wins. If Yugi wins, he’s left alone. If he loses, he has to go to Duelist Kingdom for a tournament being held by Pegasus. Will Yugi win or will he lose something precious to him?
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Weevil and Rex have much better voices in the Japanese version. Rex’s voice in the dub is insanely nasally and it sounds like he has a throat infection. Weevil’s voice is horrid in the dub. He sounds like a cartoon weasel. Rex’s voice in the Japanese version is very plain, but much less grating than the dub. Weevil’s voice is incredibly fitting in the original. It’s a very soft and methodical voice that leads you to believe he’s hiding something. Weevil’s not a kind-hearted person, and you can tell he’s not trustworthy just by his eyes, but his voice adds some degree of mystery about his true intentions.
Name Changes: Dinosaur Ryuzaki is changed to Rex Raptor, and Insect Haga is changed to Weevil Underwood. I find no reason to prod 4Kids about this since they were just taking Japanese lame pun names and changing them into English lame pun names.
The poster for the upcoming Duel Monsters tournament is completely redone for the dub. However, the Japanese poster was incredibly lame IMO and the dub one is far superior. Congrats 4Kids. I complimented you.
Subbed:
Dubbed:
….HOWEVER, as you can see, there’s no text on the dubbed poster, so there’s no real reason why he’d be so entranced by it. It’s also an awful advertisement for the tournament. There’s no information written on it at all, so it doesn’t even really count as an advertisement for the tournament. Since 4Kids is so paint-edit hungry, you’ll eventually see that practically every sign and advertisement in their shows is useless.
There’s no real reason given in the dub as to why Joey wants to join that tournament. In the original version, it’s heavily hinted that it’s because there’s a three million (?) dollar reward. Grandpa says he wants to cleanse Joey of his impure intention of simply getting money from dueling by teaching him the heart of the cards. Then Joey screams as they fade out. In the dub, Grandpa basically starts grilling him about all sorts of Duel Monsters questions.
In the original version, Jonouchi makes it to the final eight in the aforementioned tournament and most of their conversion on the couch includes mentions of it. In the dub, they act as if he never even competed. I do have to say, it’s incredibly impressive that Jonouchi made it that far just by a few weeks of training. He really sucked at the game before. As for why this is changed from eighth place to never competing in the tournament at all, well, I really believe they wanted Joey to be almost a complete rookie out of the gate so they removed this small plot point.
Pegasus in the original is very entertaining to listen to. He constantly switches back and forth between English and Japanese. I don’t mind Pegasus’s dubbed voice at all. In fact, it’s pretty fitting, but he does sound immensely creepy sometimes.
I understand Pegasus’s power to see other people’s cards and read their strategies, but he can’t always have the right card in his hand to counter whatever the other player is planning.
The duel between Pegasus and Yugi is heavily changed, at least dialogue wise. In the dub, Pegasus takes this opportunity to tell Yugi all about the story of Duel Monsters. He explains that they’re in a Shadow Game in the Shadow Realm and how the game was made using real monsters in ancient Egypt blah blah blah. They even put the final winning attack in the Pegasus vs. Yugi battle in there for no good reason besides it’s the one in the first season that looked the most Egyptian-y.
In the original, they only talk about Pegasus’s upcoming tournament and how he’s using his Millennium Eye to win.
In the original, Yugi seems very honorable in that he wants to destroy his controlled Devil Dragon instead of the Piper, which has lower attack points, thus would suffer the most damage. He wants to destroy the dragon first because he has a duty to his cards to not allow them to be under the control of a malicious being. In the dub, Yugi just gloats and mentions nothing about duty. He just attacks the Koumori Dragon and moves on.
Yugi mentions that he could win if he stalls until the time runs out when he’s ahead in life points. However, he doesn’t want to because that wouldn’t be a legit win to him. Dub!Yugi makes no mention of this ‘loophole’.
Permanent marker smiley faces create a bond that not even the forces of darkness can break!…..Literally..But that’s later.
Plot: Yugi and his friends love playing the card game Duel Monsters, but when the world champ, Seto Kaiba, overhears that Yugi’s grandpa has a super rare card at his game shop, he believes it to be the card he’s been searching for for ages. When he arrives, lo and behold, it’s the Blue Eyes White Dragon he’s been looking for. However, Yugi’s grandpa, Solomon, won’t sell it or trade for it because it’s so precious to him.
Kaiba later kidnaps Yugi’s grandpa (because logical reactions) and duels him for the card. Solomon falls ill after losing to Kaiba, and Yugi goes to save him. Kaiba rips up the Blue-Eyes to prevent it from ever being used against him since Kaiba already has three Blue Eyes, and Duel Monsters’ decks can only have three copies of one card in a deck. He challenges Yugi to a duel as his grandpa goes to the hospital. Yugi struggles with Kaiba for a long time, believing he’ll lose. Will one card be the difference between triumph and defeat?
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I don’t completely understand Kaiba’s reasoning for kidnapping Yugi’s grandpa. I know he wanted the Blue Eyes, but why did he want it so badly?
1) It’s pretty clear his Grandpa was never going to sell it to anyone or trade it.
2) He also didn’t show a desire to use it in a duel.
3) Even if it was ever used against him, he has three Blue-Eyes – he has a huge advantage. In addition, tearing up a card doesn’t mean it can’t be used in anymore duels. I mean, maybe in duels using the holograms (because the system probably couldn’t ‘read’ the card that way) but it’s still usable. If you wanted it gone so badly, you should’ve burned it.
4) Why destroy it anyway? Free backup Blue-Eyes in case anything happens to the three he has.
Why does Joey mention that Yugi has the Millennium Puzzle when he’s listing off reasons as to why he can win? He doesn’t know at this point that that thing has magical powers to help him win duels, so basically he’s saying “Hey Yugi, you can win this card game because you have a giant necklace!” In the original version he just talks about how Yugi helped change him from a fight-loving thug.
In order to make it a surprise that Kaiba has the other three Blue-Eyes, they omit the part of Kaiba’s speech before the duel where he mentions that a deck can only have three copies of the same card, and he destroyed the fourth because he couldn’t use it and didn’t want it used against him.
This season is well-known for the utmost disregard of the rules of the game. In the Yu-Gi-Oh game, each player starts out with 8000 life points. What you can summon depends on how many stars the monster has. If a monster has four stars or below, it can instantly be summoned. If it has five to six stars, it requires one monster to be sacrificed from the field. If a monster has seven or more stars, it requires two sacrifices. In this season, incredibly powerful monsters can be summoned from the start and each duel requires only 2000 life points on each player. You’d think this would make duels go faster…..Silly you! :3
To be honest, though, I like this season. Sure the rules are used as toilet paper and a lot of the moves make no sense, but that makes duels kinda exciting and more fun.
You also hardly ever see direct attacks in this season. In the game, if you have no monsters on the field but your opponent does, they can attack your life points directly causing damage equal to the number of attack points a monster has.
Take the duel in this episode for example. Surely Kaiba has other monsters that he can summon from his hand when Saggi is on the field. If he did, Yugi’s one monster per turn defense would fail, and he’d win in a matter of a couple of turns, yet he doesn’t. In addition, it doesn’t seem to matter if you have more than one monster out. If your opponent has one defense monster, I guess you’re barred from using the other monster to attack.
Kaiba states that the Swords of Revealing Light card only affects monsters that are currently on the field during activation. A new monster won’t be under the same spell. This is entirely wrong – new monsters are just as affected by Swords as the others.
Subbed, dubbed, that friendship marker smiley face thing is still insanely cheesy.
Exodia comes out of a pentagram in the original. They added more lines in the dubbed version to avoid controversy, though it makes more sense to use the regular star design since it has five points and Exodia uses five cards/parts….Also, technically, that’s far from a Satanic pentagram, but whatever.
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Dubbed:
Name Changes: I honestly don’t understand why they chose to change only some of their names. 4Kids changes names a lot in order to Americanize their shows, but only a handful are changed in Yu-Gi-Oh.
Katsuya Jonouchi is changed to Joey Wheeler, Hiroto Honda is Tristan Taylor and Anzu Mazaki is Te’a Gardner. Yugi’s last name is altered in a weird way. His last name is Muto, but it’s ‘changed’ to Moto for the dub, for some reason.
Pegasus also had a slight name change. In the original, he’s Pegasus J. Crawford. In the dub he’s Maximillion Pegasus. This is yet another name change I just don’t get. Why change it so that his first name is his last name? Either way, both the original and dub characters call him Pegasus. Though, I do have to say, at least the dub makes Pegasus’s parents look better. Max is a fairly normal first name and you can’t do much about your surname. His Mom and Dad must’ve hated his guts to name him Pegasus….
Entire Show Edit: The dubbed version never shows the title cards.
Entire Show Edit: The opening and ending themes have been replaced for the entire run and the next episode previews have been removed……Though, to be completely honest, I prefer the dub version’s better, at least for this season. Later seasons get better themes.
Entire Show Edit: All of the cards had to be edited for the American release to not look like the TCG cards (Trying to avoid product placement in kid’s shows and whatnot, though I could never make heads or tails of the actual rules involved with that.) Instead of showing them as they look as the real-life TCG cards, they only show the picture, color, attack and defense points. This causes a lot of confusion during the series as the characters seem to read cards several times, but there’s no text to read. It also makes you wonder how anyone knows what these cards do.
Entire Show Edit: Though Kaiba is still an asshole in the series, he’s is much more respectful in the original version. Dub!Kaiba slings insults and treats people like crap while original!Kaiba is more subtly condescending and uses honorifics.
Entire Show Edit: As typical 4Kids fashion, a lot of the music is replaced and there is hardly ever any silence.
I’ve brought this up before and I might as well do it again, dubbed Yugi never sat well with me. I can partly understand if his friends don’t realize his eyes, demeanor and height change when he duels, kinda….But Yami’s voice is so deep compared to Yugi’s in the dub that it’s completely unbelievable that they wouldn’t notice that.
In the Japanese version, Yami sounds just like Yugi only using a deeper, smoother voice. It’s a very subtle change.
Don’t get me wrong, Dan Green does an incredible job as Yami, and I commend him in his range because he does not sound like Yugi at all, but the change is too drastic for me …Also, why is it they all seem to notice when Yugi gets encompassed by light but no one bothers building on that?
Next episode, Pegasus and Yami have a showdown through a video tape. Will the tracking need to be adjusted during the duel!? Tune in and find out!
The Anime Madhouse 