*by Alan Tse*

Posted 03-30-2001

Did you watch the premiere of Yu-Gi-Oh on Kid'sWB! this morning? You didn't? GOOD! Because it was terrible! No, not terrible, HORRIBLE!! No, not horrible either. It was... MAN! I can't even say it! 

"Was it really that bad?" Let's just put it this way: YES. The first thing that I noticed wrong was the background information that they added before the introduction. The information os the story was completely rewritten. They made it seem as if the magic in the Millenium puzzled was dangerous, and was kept to save the world from destruction, or something classic like that. And it just so happens that a boy came across it, in what way we have no idea. 

"Well, the introduction was okay, wasn't it?" Absolutely not. One thing that surprised me about the introduction was how it didn't even have any real words. I mean, even other Kid'sWB! anime had dubbers that made an effort to give them decent introduction songs. Pokemon, Cardcaptors, and Cubix, although dubbed badly, all had introduction songs with real words. No other show that Kid'sWB has does. Yu-Gi-Oh had a bunch of action-packed scenes that are in no way related to each other in the introduction. The song itself was similar to Cardcaptors, in both mood and tone. That's means that it was meant to sound dark and strong in some way, definitely not the same as the original. The original had a lot more to do with showing all the characters and much less to do with showing them battle. The English introduction also had some people chanting "YU GI OH" in the background, which sounded completely wrong. Finally, as the end, they had Game Master shout "It's Time To Dual!" When he was about to say "duel", they repeated the scene in which he did that and made him stutter the last word, as if to put emphasis on it. Other than that, there were absolutely no other words at all. 

"At least they started on the first episode, right?" Wrong. This first episode that they showed wasn't the first episode at all. In fact, it wasn't even close. To be honest, at the time I wrote this letter, I've only seen the first 15 episodes of the show. It definitely wasn't one of the first 15, because I havn't seen this before. I'm not even sure that it was the first season. But my prediction was right. They started on an episode with a lot of action in it, and had a lot to do with card battling. Everything about it was messed up though. First of all, they barely introduced the characters. They just started with them battling, and very quickly added dialogue that explained the way the game is played. Originally, this was explained in the third episode, which this one wasn't. Not only that, but they also had to explain that Yugi's grandfather owns that game store and he gets all the rarest cards first. Obviously, this was originally explained in the very first episode. They even had to explain what a pro Yugi was at the game, when this is probably the most basic concept in the show. Also, I find it disturbing that they had to just jump into Seto being introduced like this as the villain, and then they rush to the card battle at the end of the episode, not explaining a single thing along the way. And what about Yugi's millenium puzzled? They never said a word about what it does, nor how Yugi got it. And who's game master? How can Yugi transform like that? What significance does this do? These things were never explained either. I also don't like how they just showed Seto's brother so suddenly, then forgot about him. If you watched, you can tell that 4Kids tried their hardest to make it seem like this is the first episode. They made Seto sound really stunned when he saw the card the Yugi's grandfather had, even though this really isn't the first time he saw it. Also, when they were about to battle, they had Seto say that they would start with 2000 points, as if this is some kind of rule that isn't widely known, or made up. I've already seen them battle lots of times, and starting with 2000 points is how it always was every time. But the Americans that they're trying to fool have never seen this before, so they just HAD to add this in. Sheesh... 

"But they used the original background music, right?" Considering how they left in most of the music in Pokemon, you would think that they would do the same for Yu-Gi-Oh. But this wasn't the case. For some odd reason, 4Kids just HAD to compose their own music for this show. And they did a pretty bad job too. The background music reflected that of the introduction song. Throughout the whole episode, there was music playing. And the music was, for the most part, unfit for the scene. Everything was repetitive and very dark and threatening. It was not at all like the real Yu-Gi-Oh music. But I'll give them credit for this: at least it wasn't as bad as the Cardcaptors music that Nelvana put in. 

"But there was still kanji in the logo. That's good, isn't it?" Actually, I understand now why they left the kanji in the logo. You see, with all the violent movies and other stuff that American kids see with any oriental form of words, they instantly come to see kanji as a sign of action, of violence, of blood. In my opinion, it's wrong to perceive a form of writing for an entire group of people like this. But that's how it is in America. Leaving in kanji in the logo, 4Kids want to make it seem as if this is that kind of show. Actually, if they're not doing this, then the reason for the kanji is to attract people who like violence to watch, and hopefully get hooked on it. Thus, they're just adding to the misconceptions that is already so popular. Whenever you see an oriental actors in movies, that person always does some fighting, and Americans come to think ORIENTAL + TV/MOVIES = MARTIAL ARTS. Yet another misconception of an entire race of people and an entire culture group. Haven't you always seen violent stuff on TV or movies with kanji in the logo, even though it has absolutely nothing to do with anything oriental? Americans obviously have disregard for anything oriental when they want to use it for this kind of stuff. That's the reason why TV people always get Chinese and Japanese language, culture, or customs mixed up, or why people on TV often say a whole bunch of gibberish and call it Chinese. I've also seen a lot of clothing with kanji on them, often in red, like in the new Yu-Gi-Oh logo. They have no ides what it means, but they wear it because it makes them look tough, and piece of clothing with kanji on it. That's why 4Kids used kanji in the logo. They know that American kids don't know what it means, and yet, they are still attracted to it. With 4Kids's new approach in the show, using kanji is genius. 

"Well..er..um..uh..but they had they characters voiced well, didn't they?" Well, er, um, uh, NO. The one I hated the most is Joey's voice (I prefer Jounouchi). It sounds like he's a new Yorker, with his accent and attitude and all. I hate Yugi's new voice too. I said before that his voice is supposed to sound childish and quiet, but American Yugi sounded not only too old, but also less wimpy. It instead sounds more dorky to me, because I think he sounds like a total dork. Anzu, or Tea, sounded like a high school girl with an attitude problem. She really seemed a lot more gentle originally, not to mention that her part in this episode was very minor, because she's a girl, and you can't have a girl playing a big part on an American cartoon meant for boys and marketing. Seto's voice seems to fit his personality perfectly, and if you know him, he's supposed to sound gentle and nice, but is really tough and mean. In the dub, not only is he tough and mean, but sounds that way too. If a 4Kids employee uses the excuse that they did this for character, I'm going to smack that guy right in the face. Tristam's (Honda's) voice was the only one that was tolerable. It wasn't bad, but it could have been a lot better. 

Actually, considering all that I wrote, 4Kids may have done something smart with this. Knowing the audience, they couldn't care less about what goes on, as long it has action. They don't care about the characters, as long as they fight. They probably actually like the new music, too. Typical. These people don't care for real shows, just ones that star a boy and have action. This was proven with DBZ. They only showed the first season of Dragonball, then skipped the rest and went straight to DBZ. I'm sure that this caused a lot of confusion at first. There were a lot of suddenly introduced characters that people have never seen before, lots of events that they don't remember happening, and even more. But this was soon forgotten, once all the fighting started. Once they got into all the fighting, the audience instantly forgot about all their confusions and watch. That's why when you hear people talking about Dragonball these days, 99 percent of the time it's really DBZ. That's also why I think it was dumb for Funimation to re-dub Dragonball, because every American DBZ fan had forgotten about that. All they want is more DBZ, and none of them are going to enjoy Dragonball. It's too "childish" for them now.

It still scares me that they would do this all for the sake of marketing. When 4Kids saw the falling ratings for Pokemon, the lower sales for the games, and people not watching the movies, they panicked, knowing that they could soon be bankrupted with the waning popularity of Pokemon in America. They need some other anime to get the kids hooked on, and fast. But where could they turn to? 

Then they saw the insane popularity of Yu-Gi-Oh! in Japan. The popularity of the show and the card game were extreme. The card game conventions were full of people lining up for the newest release, with even some riots at some cases. Trillions, and I mean trillions of dollars were made with the billions of cards sold. 

And when evil 4Kids saw how crazy people were over Yu-Gi-Oh, they turned to each other, looked at each other in the faces, and grinned, because they all knew that they were all thinking the same devilish plots, and they knew that they've found their new anime to market. I can picture it all now. They know that these days, kids are attracted to anime, since they often perceive them of being violent, or have a lot of action. This is the reason why I hate Toonami: they just fuel the idea that violence and action are what anime is all about, and lot of people are fooled by them, and they make money that way. It just outrages me whenever they use an anime in such a way. Kind of reminds me of an editorial I read a while back: http://www.asu.edu/studentprgms/orgs/them/Anime/Reviews/editorial01.html

This is a real dark day for Yu-Gi-Oh. Pokemon was ruined because of 4Kids and their stupid marketing plots. They went overboard marketing, and that's why so many people got tired of Pokemon so quickly, even though it started out good, but what goes around comes around. UPN and Kid'sWB! went over their heads showing it, especially Kid'sWB!. And with all the commercials and merchandise with Pokemon related stuff on them, being seen everywhere one turns, it's no wonder why people got annoyed by it, especially older kids who just want to see blood in anime. Even anime lovers in America hate it now. If they have never seen it on TV, but only through fansubs, I guarantee that kawaii fans would have loved it. But they don't. There's one person I know of that loves kawaii anime, but hates Pokemon. Her excuse was because "it went on too long". 4Kids may claim otherwise, but they treated what would have been a wonderful show like crap. 

And now, Yu-Gi-Oh may share the same fate. Not only will it be ruined like Pokemon, but it will also fuel the way that Americans view oriental culture, with the kanji left in and all. I just want you to know that they're not getting any support from me.