Yup.

Today marks the 20th anniversary of Yu-Gi-Oh!'s first publishing in Japan, WAY back in 1996, the same month and year as Road Rovers.

20 years ago, Yugi Muto, a very short high school student of Domino City High with the oddest hair ever (spiky black hair with red highlights, with long blonde bangs), was given the Milliniem Puzzle as, an golden ancient Egyptian artifact forged from sacrificed souls of an entire village and rumored to be cursed, as a gift from his grandfather, a retired Indiana-Jones-Esque archeologist who runs his own game/toy shop. As soon as Yugi finished the puzzle, he gets possessed by the spirit of an nameless Pharaoh, who helps Yugi deal with the MANY bullies at school, some being teachers themselves, by challenging them to games (while sporting the scariest smile ever on his face), who if loses their game, he would either curse them to play a plenty game to break their minds... or set them fire.... all in the name of friendship...

Yeah, the manga is dark, (even Season 0 had to tone some things down)

But things change when Duel Monsters, a continually complex children's card game was introduce and became the main game of the show, which help play out the fate of the world in duels against clowns, puppeteers, and mimes.

And years later, Yugi's story comes to an end with himself and the Pharaoh dueling each other and Pharaoh was able to pass on to the next life... it was the end of Yugi's story, but the franchise continues with a student a school all about a children's card game, then a biker who plays the same children's card game, then another student who befriends with an dimensional alien to play that same card game, and currently, a circus performer who plays the same card game....

Yeah... thats YuGiOh! in a nutshell.

I remember when the dub of the anime started in the States, I wasn't too interested as it seem to be another wannabe show that ws trying to cash on the collectable monster/toy game that was going on... until an issue of my school's Weekly Reader talked about the show... I barely remember it, but I do recall how the article covered about it was about standing up to bullies... leaving out the part about the mental break downs Yugi imposes on them....

Either way, I started to watch the show when it was the Duelist Kingdom Arc... the part of the show where it was nonsensical and broken even BEFORE it was dub... but I hooked and watched it whenever I could. By High School, Viz began to publish the Manga translated, and it was amazing, how they stuck with the original names with everything... BEFORE they started using the dub names for the manga equivalent of the Duelist Kingdom/Battle City... but overall, I was more surprise by the all the dark themes and elements to it all. The manga itself help lead me to find other manga books too.


Anyway. Those are my memories on the franchise. One of the few fond things I enjoyed during the 2000s, fun when waiting for each episodes and just a laugh to look back on (Thank you, LittleKuriboh), And while the time with Yugi and the Pharaoh have passed, they will always be known as the original King of Games.

And FYI, I put in the "Bluebeard Attack" as it is the first game Yugi is playing when on screen, which might be a reference to the pirate theme hosts from the "Bonds Beyond Time" movie...

Yu-GiOh! is owned by Kazuki Takahashi, Shonen Jump, Viz Media, 4Kids, Konami,

Happy 20 years, and many more to come.