I shortened Yu-Gi-Oh!’s 1st season down to about an hour ★★★★☆

I have a great fondness for Yu-Gi-Oh! but I don’t think I could ever revisit it. Much the prospect of replaying Pokémon I just don’t think I have the patience as an adult to put up with how long it is and how little happens. Cutting down each episode into a rapid-fire barrage of plot beats, memorable moments and gags is a fun and efficient way to bask in some nostalgia without having to actually watch a hundred hours of playing a card game.

What is fun about coming back as an adult, is seeing the ridiculous way Duel Monsters is treated in-universe. I don’t even mean how deathly serious everyone takes it, I mean how unseriously they take it as an actual competitive game. None of the top players in this game know how any of the cards work! They are continuously surprised by their opponents decks and don’t know what anything does (though, in fairness, none of how any of the cards work in the first series makes any sense whatsoever). Everyone is so incredibly bad at it. Yugi is apparently using the exact same deck that his grandfather used to play with years (decades?) ago and he wins the biggest tournament in the world! Pegasus being able to read his opponents’ minds wouldn’t be half a good as a cheat in a real competitive card game where you probably know what your opponent’s strategy is, but obviously here everyone is making it up as they go along.

Speaking of Pegasus: While everyone drawing the exact cards they need at a given moment and always drawing convenient combos together is table stakes for the whole show, the fact that his deck goes through a full JRPG boss phase transition and obligingly starts giving him creepy cards instead of cartoon-themed ones once he evokes the Shadow Realm is amazing. Does not make any sense if you think about it at all but it’s all in service of the atmosphere.

Bing Bong’s editing is also very funny itself, with the overly abrupt responses, fixing Monster Reborn and the friendship (friendship. Friendship, friendship) episode.

Other random observations: Kaiba’s theme fucks immensely and Joey being forced to be a dog happens earlier and more persistently that I remembered.