Yu-Gi-Oh! Season 5 Review

Yu-Gi-Oh! 5 

Ian Wolf’s Review

Warning: may contain spoilers

“Well, as L. P. Hartley said: ‘The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there.’ That was the opening of The Go-Between, which was a book. For anyone listing to a repeat of this show sometime in the near-future, a book was a kind of multi-layered Kindle thing.” – John Lloyd

In this final collection of the anime series whose original manga spawned the world’s biggest trading card game, there are many things worthy to note, but for me the most surprising thing is that – after having to go through quite a lot of stuff that has been poor – at the end of it all, I am glad to have watched it.

This fifth collection is split over three story arcs. The first, “Grand Championship” begins with Mokuba inviting Yugi, Joey and Rebecca to take part in the Kiba Corp. Grand Championship, which will see 16 of the world’s best Duel Monsters players take part in a knock-out tournament, where the winner will face the current world champion, who is Yugi. They all agree, so they and their friends travel to the venue, a new theme park constructed by the Kiba brothers, but things soon go wrong as it seems that one of the competitors is keen to sabotage the contest. Seto Kiba, who is too busy organising the event to take part in it, soon believes he has tracked down the culprit: the Germanic Zigfried Lloyd, who is actually taking part in the contest under a false name, and whose accent seems to be a cross between Maximillion Pegasus and a rejected extra from ‘Allo ‘Allo!

The second arc is more interesting, mainly because it never aired in Japan, even though it was animated by the same people. The “Capsule Monsters” arc begins with Yugi’s grandfather away on archaeological trip. Meanwhile Joey wins tickets to travel to India, so he, Yugi, Tristan and Tea come along for the trip. However, their small plane crash lands in the middle of the jungle. Everyone survives, and the gang bump into a man named Dr. Alex Brisbane, an archaeologist who was working with Yugi’s grandfather, who has mysteriously disappeared. Alex leads the gang to a pyramid that they were both excavating, and while inside it they come across a room with a strange map-like floor. When they step on it, they fall through the floor and into a fantasy world, with strange devices on their arms and belts with cylindrical holsters on them. As they journey through this land, they touch strange rocks that free monsters that contain creatures from Duel Monsters. They are able to capture these monsters in capsules and journey through the land in order to return home, guided by a masked man who claims to be Alexander the Great – who unlike Zigfried, doesn’t have an accent, even though we definitely know where he comes from. Even if they don’t know what a Macedonian accent sounds like, Greek would have probably done. Either do all the accents, or none of them.

Saving the best till last, the final arc, “Dawn of the Duel”, is not just the best arc of the collection, but probably the best of the whole series. Yugi, with all the Millennium Items and the three Egyptian God cards, plans to travel to Egypt to finally solve the mystery of the Pharaoh’s past. The night before he and the gang travel though, Yugi is burgled by Rex and Weevil, but they are in turn stopped by the evilly possessed Bakura, who takes back some of the items including the Millennium Ring and leaves the rest to Yugi. Bakura then tries to kidnap Mokuba, and has a duel with Seto which he quits before the end, leaving Seto the Millennium Eye and telling him to travel to Egypt too.

When Yugi and the gang arrive in Egypt they meet up with old friends, including Marek, who lead them to the Pharaoh’s tomb, with Bakura not far behind. Shadi, the guard of the Millennium Items, tells Yugi to hold up the Egyptian God cards to an old tablet depicting him. When he does, the Pharaoh’s spirit leaves him and returns to Ancient Egypt, where he finds himself having to relieve history; working with servants including a high priest who looks like and is named Seto, and having to deal with the original Bakura, who has also travelled back in time. In the past, he came from a village that was destroyed by the Pharaoh’s father, who created the Millennium Items, and wants revenge by enveloping the world in darkness. Yugi and his friends meanwhile, with Shadi’s help, enter the Pharaoh’s mind using the Millennium Key, and begin a journey that sees them travel to the past too. Soon afterwards, Kiba also arrives at the tomb, and using the Eye also travels back, where he learns about the origins of the Blue-Eyes White Dragon. While in the past, Yugi has to try and find the source that helped the Pharaoh save Ancient Egypt previously, namely the Pharaoh’s real name.

Finally, after all this, it is discovered how the Pharaoh can finally be laid to rest after 5,000 years trapped in the Millennium Puzzle: he must lose a duel against a worthy opponent. The series thus ends with one final duel against the Pharaoh’s toughest opponent, the person to whom he taught everything: Yugi.

Having reviewed all five seasons of the series, certain things have kept recurring and annoying me. The fact there are no extras at all, no subtitles, poorly placed scene selections, dodgy accents in the voice acting, characters overreacting to things that make the situations more unrealistic, and so on. More stuff came up in this collection, such as the addition of a US age rating at the top left-hand corner of the scene at the start of and during the second half of the episodes as of the “Capsule Monsters” arc onwards. It is not surprising perhaps, that I did end up thinking that it was better to watch Yu-Gi-Oh! while playing a drinking game, which I did again, drinking beer when certain key-words and phrases were uttered. I won’t list the full results this time around, save to say that terms such as “Millennium”, “Egyptian God” and “Dark Magician” are good ones to go for.

However, I’m still glad I watched this series. This is partly due to the final arc, where everything starts to fall into place concerning the Millennium Items and the Pharaoh’s past. For once, we can ignore the whole trading card game for the majority of the story, and even when it does come up, it is interesting as Yugi is forced to duel on his own, without the Pharaoh’s help. The final arc is surprisingly moving, in particular the final showdown between Yugi and the Pharaoh, as you witness how the series ends. Whether it is a happy or sad ending depends on how you react to the main characters.

Yu-Gi-Oh! is a series that has many faults, but when it stops being about the game itself, and you focus on the characters, in particular the friendships between the central gang, in a strange way, it seems worth it. At times joyous, at times sad, at times ridiculous, it is still understandable that this anime has had the unexpected impact that it had.

Score: 6 / 10

Anime Quick Information 

• Title:
• UK Publisher: Manga Entertainment
• Genre:
• Studio:
• Type: TV series
• Year: 2000
• Running time: 17 hours, 20 minutes
• Classification: PG