Yu☆Gi☆Oh! ★★☆☆☆
Duel Monsters doesn’t function like an actual trading card game, it functions like the half-understood schoolyard version of it. Rumours and speculation read from a magazine and spoken of like myth and prophecy from a holy tome. Except in this world that’s how everyone treats it, not just the small children. An old woman, more a fortune teller than the shopkeeper of a games shop, speaks of playing the Red-Eyes Black Dragon card with the tone usually reserved for speaking of the hero destined to save mankind from darkness.
Shōgo’s reaction to this hits the same register. He is terrified of playing and losing, terrified to put his life on the line, but he must learn that you need to face your fear and play a trading card game, even if that means losing at a trading card game. Of course he never actually has to face the prospect of losing in the film either as it’s actually Yugi who duels Kaiba and he wins so I am not really sure that Shōgo learnt the right lesson here.
Speaking of the duel, the version of the duel disc here makes Kaiba and Yugi’s match look like an actual wizard battle. It is honestly cool but also where do the actual cards go when they throw them to the air to create a hologram? Does Kaiba have some sort of big hoover in the ceiling sucking them up? Also why do the holographic projects support making the backs of cards? And it reacts to people in the audience shouting things? Makes about as much sense as anything in this series.
Kaiba being introduced still spying on Yugi directly with security cameras in the games shop he opened specifically to spy on duellists is also really funny, though it’s a shame that he doesn’t have green hair and pronouns any more.
