Manga Mondays: Yu-Gi-Oh! Duelist

Yu-Gi-Oh! Duelist by Kazuki Takahashi is the manga version of the anime everyone either loves or loves to hate, so I’m not going to waste your time explaining the plot all that much. Y’all should be a little familiar with it at least. This part of the series takes place after my previous Manga Monday.

So this series is basically the part where guys play card games. Oh, and there are two girls, both of whom lose. So if you are looking for a series that’s all ‘yay powerful women’ this is really not for you. On the surface, the two female duelists, Mai and Ishizu, seem really badass (especially Mai), but they’re really not. After Mai’s introduction, she is immediately made Jonouchi’s love interest and becomes quasi-dependent on Yugi and Co.’s friendship; I would have preferred if she had maintained her hard edge instead of softening up like every other female character in the series. Ishizu is rather mysterious, but she loses most of her appeal after the secret that she’s Marik’s sister is let out of the bag.

If I’m remembering the anime correctly, it does rather accurately reflect the manga. Granted, 4Kids dumbed it down extensively, but the core of it remains in the show. Of course 4Kids left out my favorite part (where Yami Bakura rips Pegasus’s Millennium Eye out of his eye socket and starts licking the blood off it), but I can’t really blame them for editing that part out.

In short, it really doesn’t matter whether or not you like this series. Similar to Bleach, Pokémon, and Naruto, it’s such a juggernaut that regardless of how much you love or hate it you must know what it is and respect its power. Yu-Gi-Oh! has introduced so many fans to the art of anime and manga; it’s a multi-million dollar franchise with who knows how many spin-offs that is still ongoing. And considering it started in 1996, it’s phenomenal.

So if you are uninformed, go get informed. It’s not that hard and you’ll feel much more in-the-know.