Nestled right between the ending of Season Zero and the beginning of the 2000 series, Toei released a Yu-Gi-Oh! movie based on Season Zero that would be released alongside two other short films for Dr. Slump and Digimon in Toei’s Anime Fair of 1999.
I purposefully never even watched LittleKuriboh’s abridged version of this movie because I wanted to go into it with fresh eyes. Now I’m kinda bummed I missed out on the abridged version for so long because this ‘movie’ is actually pretty lame.
Please forgive me for the poor quality screencaps. There just isn’t a high quality rip of this movie available.
The movie starts out in the most poorly lit quiet as hell game store in the world run by a creepy, but well-meaning old lady. A bunch of jerky kids bump into our main character of the movie, Shougo Aoyama. He’s a timid little boy whose dream is to become a great duelist, but he’s never won a game of Duel Monsters ever. After the jerks mock him and leave the store, Shougo buys a booster pack that, to his great shock, contains the incredibly rare Red-Eyes Black Dragon, said to be on the same level as the Blue-Eyes White Dragon.
Gotta say, I’ve always had a problem accepting the idea that Red-Eyes is ‘on the same level’ as Blue-Eyes. Maybe in regards to rarity (They never say how many Red-Eyes are in circulation in any version) but not in regards to power.
To make the comparison even iffier, the storeowner tells Shougo that the Blue-Eyes brings victory, but the Red-Eyes brings out the potential for victory in those with the courage to fight. That is such a confusing statement that doesn’t reflect very well on Red-Eyes.
First of all, Blue-Eyes brings victory? Uh, how many times has Kaiba lost with his Blue-Eyes? Not even just to Yugi, either.
Second of all, the “potential” for victory? Either that’s insulting to the holder as it implies the potential for victory wasn’t there in the first place, or that’s just a stupid facet of Red-Eyes’ lore. “Ah, that’s the legendary Red-Eyes Black Dragon! A card so rare and powerful that you MIGHT be able to win with it in your deck, maybe, I dunno.”
Don’t get me wrong, I love Red-Eyes, probably even more than Blue-Eyes, but the whole situation in regards to Blue-Eyes just never made sense to me.
Just getting this out of the way right now – Shougo is insanely annoying. He spends almost the entire movie moping about how he can’t duel and he can’t win. He doesn’t even try anymore. And he goes to the Duel Monsters Center to rub it in his bullies’ faces that it’s pointless to duel him because he’d win anyway because he has Red-Eyes and that assures his victory.
Everyone just gawks in awe of the rare card, but he’s totally asking for that thing to get stolen….I mean….it does get stolen later, but I mean by his bullies. In a real situation like that, the instant he flaunted that thing I guarantee one of them would just yoink it from him or knock him down and take it.
Trust me, I survived the initial wave of the Pokemon card chaos back in the day. People were getting scammed out of rare cards, myself included, their cards got stolen either directly or out of their backpacks when they weren’t watching them or something, a fight or two broke out because of them, people were crying because of them – no way in hell Shougo would keep that card more than a few days, especially since he’s being a dick about it.
Shougo could not look more unassuming and weak if he was a baby chipmunk. No one’s going to be stunned into submission by him just having a rare card.
However, the truth is he’s still afraid of actually dueling, now especially because he has Red-Eyes. He believes losing with Red-Eyes will be proof that he really doesn’t have what it takes to be a duelist.
I understand all too well the giant gaping black holes of low self-esteem, and I really wouldn’t have much of a problem with Shougo if he actually ended up doing anything to earn his character development. But we’ll get to that later. Until then, he’s just a pain to watch.
After this, we get our good ol’ theme song, which is slightly different from the theme song in Season Zero. It sounds like they used the same instrumental track but an alternate recording of the vocal track and also didn’t include the main vocals for the part where it says “Come along with me!” Instead, you hear just the faintest instance of this like they only kept the reverb.
During the credits, we see the gang at school, then them, sans Anzu, heading to the Duel Monsters Center, which…I guess is a cafe where they have tables set up for dueling, which is really dumb if you ask me. It wouldn’t be that dumb if they didn’t allow the food in the dueling areas, but they do. I can only imagine how many people ruined their cards by spilling drinks and food in there.
Anzu is working there because she needed to find a new job after she quit Burger World way back in episode two.
Yugi is having a duel with Jonouchi, and they start explaining the game to Miho, which is weird because she’s dueled before. In the first Shittenou episode, she had a duel with Yugi and lost, so she must not only have her own cards but she must also have a vague idea of how to play.
As far as I recall, Miho has never played or witnessed another Duel Monsters duel beyond that, though. I thought that had to be wrong given what series she’s in, but nope. That was the only instance of her seeing someone duel. Even in the Death T arc, she leaves before the duel between Yugi and Kaiba starts.
Obviously, this scene is meant to help the audience learn how to play, since the game was in its infancy at this point, so I’m not annoyed by the weirdness with Miho. It’s not like I should expect a great degree of consistency/continuity anyway.
Also, on that note, everyone say goodbye to Miho. Yup, she only appears here and in the end credits of the movie (Anzu and Honda are also only in this scene and the end credits, but they obviously come back in the 2000 series), so this is the last we ever see of Miho. I’m all torn up about it. By the way, did anyone notice the sun shining brighter and the birds singing along to your humming as you dance in a field of flowers and candy? That happened when I watched the final frame of her fade away. It was weird.
Yugi explains Shougo’s situation to the others because apparently they know each other.
You’ll be absolutely shocked to learn that Kaiba, whose head no longer looks like a fern, is the one who built the Duel Monsters Center. He built it specifically as a ‘trap’ to spy on local duelists to help him trick Yugi into a duel. I know this because one of his goons specifically said, to Kaiba himself, “You built this center on purpose to set your trap.”…..I’m very sure Kaiba loves it when people explain the things he did to him.
How this is really a ‘trap’ is beyond me. He knows where Yugi is, so it can’t be just to get him. He went into action when he heard someone there had a Red-Eyes, but surely he can’t give enough of a crap about Red-Eyes that he’d make a trap to get it. In the 2000 series, I don’t think he ever gives a single thought to Red-Eyes.
This tournament is essentially a very, very, very basic precursor to Battle City. Invitations are sent out to duelists who are either highly skilled or have very rare cards, and there is an ante rule. However, the tournament doesn’t seem to actually be a tournament. When we get to the duels, all it seems to be is the invited duelists dueling Kaiba and only Kaiba. Obviously, they all lose, so was Kaiba just doing this to ‘covertly’ take people’s rare cards?
The goal of Battle City, if this really was a very rough draft of that, was to find and collect all of the Egyptian God cards. Kaiba didn’t even really want to plan the tournament. Ishizu convinced him to do it.
Also, hello very brief miscolored Rex Raptor cameo!
By the way, if we’re following Season Zero continuity (and Kaiba does say Yugi is the only person to force him into a draw, which only happened in Season Zero) then….are they ignoring Death T? Because not only did Yugi beat him there but that should have made Kaiba a cabbage for several weeks/months.
Yugi is obviously invited, but so is Shougo despite not really dueling much and never having won a single match.
Jonouchi is upset because he didn’t get invited, but he’s not really any better than Shougo at this point. The main difference between the two of them is their spirits. Jonouchi knows he’s a beginner who only knows the basics and fights to improve while Shougo basically just rolls over and gives up.
I don’t say this to be mean to Shougo. Jonouchi is vocally annoyed by Shougo and his attitude. He knows he’s a beginner too, but he thinks Shougo flaunting his Red-Eyes and acting like that makes him a great duelist who doesn’t need to actually duel is pathetic.
Very shortly after Shougo gets invited, he’s spotted getting kidnapped by one of Kaiba’s goons. He’s trying to force him into partaking in the tournament since Shougo has seemingly declined attending. Jonouchi rushes in to attack the thug while Yugi and Shougo get away and hide in an alley.
After a heart-to-heart with Yugi, another of Kaiba’s thugs arrives and beats the crap out of Shougo and Yugi. He takes Shougo’s Red-Eyes card and Yugi’s Puzzle to hold them hostage to force them into attending the tournament.
Jonouchi finds them and runs off to find the thug to get their stuff back. When Yugi and Shougo catch up to Jonouchi, they find that he’s badly beaten. He managed to get Red-Eyes back, even though it has some blood stains on it now, but not Yugi’s Puzzle.
Yugi is enraged by what Kaiba has done, so he decides to take Kaiba’s bait and go duel him. Jonouchi convinces Shougo to go watch the duel with him because it’s the least he can do considering Yugi is partially dueling for his sake.
When Yugi enters the arena, Kaiba gives him his Puzzle back so he can bring out Yami, and brought out he shall be.
Jonouchi also knows of Yugi’s “other face” so…..they’re not ignoring the Death T arc? I’m so confused.
Kaiba also reveals that they’re going to be dueling with holograms again, but with what look like proto-duel disks. And these are somehow even more nonsensical than the very first ‘frisbee’ duel disks you see in the 2000 series.
They do attach disks to their arms, but they really just seem to have the purpose of holding their decks. In order to create the holograms…..they…throw their cards up in the air and they come down as giant holograms?….
What’s even weirder is, when they want to add a card to the hand already displayed in front of them, they throw them to the floor. How? Why? What even?
Also, their Life Points are displayed as green bars behind them. I would LOVE some numbers, but screw me right? You never ever get a numerical LP count in this entire duel. Enjoy.
There are ten bars, but how much is each bar worth? 100? 200? 300? What? 100 wouldn’t make sense given how much they’d seemingly lose over the duel without losing entirely. Maybe 200 to make 2000, which is a common baseline for early YGO? It’s impossible to tell, though.
The duel starts, and Yami’s up first. He summons Curse of Dragon.
Kaiba responds by playing Dark Zoora in defense mode with 2100 DEF.
Yugi plays Pulse of the Land, which gives Curse of Dragon 300 ATK points – enough to defeat Dark Zoora.
Kaiba summons Battle Ox in attack mode because he’s a moron, and Yugi attacks and destroys it, which should mean Kaiba’s at 1400 LP if they started with 2000 LP. Kaiba actually says “How dare you damage my Life Points?” How dare you be a champion when you make plays a toddler wouldn’t make?
Anyway, it’s Blue-Eyes time, and Curse of Dragon gets destroyed, which should mean Yugi’s now at 1300 LP if they started with 2000.
Yugi summons Dark Magician, which kinda already accentuates the whole “Red-Eyes isn’t terribly powerful” thing I was talking about earlier. Dark Magician obviously can’t beat Blue-Eyes, but he does have a trick up his sleeve (heheh). He uses the Magical Hats to conceal Dark Magician and a trap card.
Kaiba attacks the rightmost hat and hits the trap card. The trap card in question is Curse of the Dark Cross Star, which I THINK is a precursor to Spellbinding Circle? If it is, then Blue-Eyes’ ATK points get reduced by 700. Dark Magician attacks, which should leave Kaiba with 1200 LP.
He reminds Yugi that he has three Blue-Eyes and somehow always manages to have at least one on-hand, so yeah, bye Dark Magician. Yugi’s LP now should be 800.
Yugi throws out a defense monster, and Kaiba reveals he has the other two Blue-Eyes and a Monster Reborn card to bring the three dragons back out together. But that’s not all. He uses the magic card Evil Chains to chain all of the Blue-Eyes together to increase their ATK power. By how much? Are you asking for numbers? *slap* That’s not allowed in Season Zero world! TO THE BRIG WITH YOU!
Yugi keeps throwing out monsters in defense mode to stall while he tries to come up with a plan. On one of his turns, he draws the Red-Eyes Black Dragon. Jonouchi had slipped it into his deck when he and Shougo spilled all of their cards on the ground right before Yugi went to duel Kaiba. He did that because he couldn’t bear to watch Shougo act like he’s a duelist without actually fighting.
Yeah, Shougo’s big character development moment is basically just cheering on Yugi to use his card because that somehow means he’s fighting. I really don’t get it. Is the logic that believing in Yugi is equivalent to believing in himself? That’s pretty weak. I really have to wonder if the Death T arc really did happen because that was very public, and Yugi defeated Kaiba back then even without Red-Eyes. It’d actually be very easy to believe in Yugi if you knew he won Death T, but the continuity is messing with my head.
I get that Yugi overcoming such terrible odds and managing to pull out a win is inspiring, but it’s still not something Shougo is doing nor is it something we haven’t see Yugi do before.
Shougo’s fighting spirit is also the only thing on the line with this duel. Yugi has Red-Eyes and the Puzzle back. There’s really no reason, besides teaching Kaiba a lesson, for this duel to even need to be won. I guess he kinda has to if the ante rule is in effect (Kaiba was not shown taking anyone’s cards after they lost earlier so I dunno) so he doesn’t lose any rare cards (Is Exodia still in his deck? Is he still using his grandpa’s cards?) but nothing is mentioned about it during the battle.
Yugi calls upon Summoned Skull, another more-powerful-than-Red-Eyes card, in defense mode, which….makes it less powerful than Red-Eyes, admittedly, and obviously gets blown away.
Yugi is actively refusing to play Red-Eyes until Shougo fights for it. Jonouchi tells Shougo that he’s a lot like that card right now. He has his back to the enemy, and he needs to have courage to face the enemy and find victory.
Yugi summons Meteor Dragon in defense mode, but Kaiba decides to finally put Yugi’s string of defense to an end by using Stop Defense, forcing Meteor Dragon into attack mode. For some reason, this means Kaiba has to forfeit attacking for one turn, so Yugi has one turn to figure out what to do or else he’ll lose.
Shougo finally proclaims that he’ll fight, making Jonouchi gasp because, my word, it sure is shocking to get up the courage to cheer.
Shougo yells “Go my Red-Eyes Black Dragon!” which gives Yugi the go-ahead to complete his plan. He summons Red-Eyes and uses Polymerization, our first glimpse of it in the series, with Meteor Dragon (So, wait, his plan relied on Meteor Dragon? But he put him in defense mode and summoned him, leaving him vulnerable to being destroyed?) to create Meteor Black Dragon, even though they never say what it is.
They also never give the attack power, which should be 3500, which IS enough to defeat one Blue-Eyes, but we don’t know what this chained up Blue-Eyes thing’s power is. You’d think if three Blue-Eyes were interlocked together they’d get quite a few attack points. I mean, Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon has 4500 ATK points. You’re saying combining the three of them this way doesn’t even go above 3500? That’s lame.
The Evil Chains’ card text is not helpful at all, by the way. All it says is “The bodies of 3 monsters are connected, increasing their Attack Strength through wicked power.” That sounds really powerful, but I guess it’s not.
To make matters even more confusing, because they weren’t already, one attack by Meteor Black Dragon wipes out the rest of Kaiba’s 1200 (??) remaining LP. Does that mean MBD has like 4500 ATK+? The Blue-Eyes had to be powered up by a little. What is even happening?
Kaiba loses and leaves…..Uhm, Kaiba?…Ante rule, sweetie. Give Yugi a goddamn Blue-Eyes! Don’t try to sneak out of this! Give him a Blue-Eyes and watch Yugi channel manga!Yami Yugi who will rip up the Blue-Eyes in front of you in revenge for manga!Grandpa’s Blue-Eyes. Come back, you coward!
Also, yeah, Blue-Eyes sure ‘brings victory’ alright….
As the credits roll, we see that Shougo’s back to dueling again happy and courageous with Yugi and the others. He’s even inviting his bullies over to duel with them. How nice.
And that’s it.
…..Yes, really, that’s it.
That’s the ‘story.’
If there’s one thing I can really give to this movie it’s that it looks pretty good. It still has some Season Zero blech to the overall colors, but the animation is miles above what we got in Season Zero. It actually looks better, animation-wise, than a lot of things that have come out of this franchise.
Other than that, it’s a very plain bagel. Even before the 2000 series got off the ground, it was starting to be a less exciting concept for Yugi to duel Kaiba. He always manages to win somehow, and Kaiba always relies on his Blue-Eyes to give him victory in some way while Yugi is always coming up with creative ways to win, even if some of them are bullshit.
Honestly, if I peel back the layers here, this kinda does come off like they were trying to hype Duel Monsters before the 2000 series came out. But, then again, maybe that’s just me being cynical. I don’t know if they knew they’d be getting a series for Yu-Gi-Oh Duelist once the manga shifted, so maybe it’s just a coincidence.
And that, finally, officially closes out all of Yu-Gi-Oh Season Zero.
I’ll be sharing my final thoughts on the series as a whole soon. But for now I have to go watch Yu-Gi-Oh the Other Abridged Movie.
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