Yu-Gi-Oh! (Franchise) – TV Tropes

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Franchise/YuGiOh

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Yu-Gi-Oh! (Japanese for “King of Games”) is a multimedia franchise that includes multiple Anime and Manga series, a Collectible Card Game, a line of Video Games, and more.

The original manga series, written and illustrated by Kazuki Takahashi and serialized in Weekly Shonen Jump from 1996 to 2004, tells the story of Yugi Mutou, a put-upon teenager who is pulled into a world of intrigue and high-stakes gaming after solving the mysterious and ancient Millennium Puzzle. The puzzle, an artifact from ancient Egypt, grants Yugi a mysterious alter ego, an ancient gambler who spends much of the early series facing evildoers who threaten his friends in “Shadow Games,” where mystic forces punish the wicked if they lose.

Slowly, the game used as an important plot device turned towards the trading card game Duel Monsters, eventually revealed to be loosely based on an ancient Egyptian Shadow Game played by the previous owners of the Millennium Items. Yugi and his friends discover that his alternate personality was the spirit of a Pharaoh from those times, who had forgotten his memories. From then on, Yugi and his friends find themselves fighting for their lives in their search to uncover the Pharaoh’s name and memories.

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In 1998, it received an anime adaptation by Toei, which ended after 27 episodes and a 30-minute movie. A second anime adaptation, originally titled ”Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters” in Japan, launched in 2000. Headed by NAS and Konami, and adapted into English by 4Kids Entertainment, this anime series multiplied the card game aspect by ten and its success gave the franchise immense popularity worldwide.

Yugi’s story was eventually completed, but the franchise continued in Spin Offs with new spiky-haired protagonists. The Shadow Games may be gone, but Duel Monsters still has a knack for channeling supernatural or scientific forces beyond comprehension.

Of course, that’s only half of the franchise. The other big moneymaker for this series is the companion card game. In a fun bit of Defictionalization, Yu-Gi-Oh! eventually produced a real card game to go alongside the manga following fan outcry. Konami purchased the license and handled production, which was then brought over to the west a few years later by Upper Deck. The impact of the card game on the franchise has been notable- while the manga was initially written with the conceit of a new game being played every few weeks, the Duel Monsters card game quickly eclipsed the other concepts in popularity. Now, the Yu-Gi-Oh! anime acts as a way to promote new cards for the game and show off potential strategies that are, for the most part, replicable in-game. These days, Yu-Gi-Oh! is pretty much entirely focused around the trading card game.

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Moving away from the manga’s flexible and non-committal ruleset, the Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Game has a defined tournament rulebook with lots of room for strategy. Each new season of the anime brings in more cards to the game, and many arcs introduced entire new mechanics like Synchro Summoning and Pendulum Summoning. It, alongside Pokémon and Magic: The Gathering, define the “Big Three” of the trading card world.

The works in this franchise so far are:

    open/close all folders 

    Anime and Manga 

    Card Game 

    Literature 

• Yu Gi Oh: A novel written by Katsuhiko Chiba and released on September 3, 1999. Based on the original manga, it first covers Yugi solving the Millennium Puzzle, then his conflict with Seto Kaiba, then a duel between Yugi and a doppelganger of Kaiba called Cyber Kaiba.

    Other Real Life Games 

• Yu-Gi-Oh! (Carddas Version): the card game based on the Yu-Gi-Oh! (first anime series), released by Bandai.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!: Dungeon Dice Monsters
• Yu Gi Oh Capsule Monsters: A short-lived board game released by Mattel, very loosely based on the Capsule Monster Chess game from the manga.
• Konami’s early promotional card bundled with their video games and starter boxes, made to be more accurate to the manga cards than the Carddas version, in an attempt to conquer the Duel Monsters license (it succeeded). This first group of cards resemble the manga version of the card game more than their finalized version of the TCG/OCG (right up to the card backings◊), and their starter box◊ included six Star Chips and a deck holder to compete with Bandai’s promotional movie set.
• Various other companies were known to have produced their own versions of the Duel Monsters card game while the Toei anime was still airing. They didn’t do as well compared to Bandai and Konami.

    Video Games 

There’s also a drinking game. This is the same Yu-Gi-Oh! that spawned Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series.

The entire franchise, or multiple entries, contain examples of: