In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the 4Kids production company was on a roll with cranking out anime to US masses. Of course there were other companies dubbing anime as well but 4Kids had the most success with this despite some of the censoring issues. Pokemon was their top money maker but not far behind it was Kazuki Takahashi’s Yu-Gi-Oh!. Although the original first season was never aired in the United States, the following seasons were and it got many people’s attention. Majority of the interest was in the trading cards and game mechanics, but a lot of people enjoyed the storyline and characters that kicked off the whole craze. It’s a little strange but for most successful animes in Japan, a movie is created shortly after. However for this show, a movie wasn’t released until a few seasons in.
The story is about Seto Kaiba (Eric Stuart) still frustrated with not being able to defeat Yugi Moto and his alter ego Yami (Dan Green) in a duel monsters card game. Wanting to know of another way to become the top duelist, Kaiba resorts to his past enemy Max-A-Million Pegasus (Darren Dunstan) as he has some cards that’ll help make that happen. Little does Kaiba know that the cards Pegasus has are even more dangerous that he realizes, holding the ancient evil Egyptian God Anubis (Scott Rayow) waiting to be unlocked. Right off the bat, like many other anime series i.e. Pokemon – if the viewer hasn’t been watching the show from the beginning, this will already be a problem. In some ways this film plays like an extended episode. If the viewer came just to see a movie version of one card game, this might work for them.
The writers Matthew Drdek, Lloyd Goldfine, Norman J. Grossfeld and Michael Pecoriello all worked on the show so the consistency is there. That’s one of the good aspects to this. From a continuity standpoint, the story plays right into what happened after the Battle City Finals. Again though, only fans of the show would understand and get that when watching this. Otherwise any newbie will be completely lost and it would be difficult for them to become invested in anything else from that point on. It is still quite hilarious though when thinking about it. Seto Kaiba, a millionaire,…billionaire…maybe…is so dead set on beating someone else in a children’s card game. Spending thousands of dollars on electronic equipment and personnel just to be named the world’s best duelist. If only life was like that where that was the major issue in the world.
Kaiba could spend some of his time doing good for others,…but no. He’s just got to be number one in a card game. Directing was Hatsuki Tsuji who would later direct the Yu-Gi-Oh! GX series. That doesn’t mean the characters are changed in any way, and that’s because the voice cast remains exactly as they are for this film. All the regular characters return from the TV show who are usually seen. That even includes some of the minor ones too. That means Tristan (Gregory Abbey), Tea (Amy Birnbaum), Solomon Moto (Madeleine Blaustein), Joey (Wayne Grayson), Mokuba (Tara Sands) return, as well as Ted Lewis, Lisa Ortiz, Mike Pollock and Charles Rocket take part in voicing some characters too. These are seasoned voice actors who have taken part in and crossed over with each other in multiple shows produced by the same company so it’s no surprise they are all here.
From a visual perspective the movie looks good. Animation is crisp and has vibrant colors to it. Surprisingly there were four directors of photography on this project - Kang-Ok Kim, Tae Hee Heo, Hiroaki Edamitsu and Duk Gyu Choi. Absolutely no idea what they did that contributed to the film. Not even animation directors Hee Nam Cho or Koung Tae Kim have prior credits. They’re lucky everything turned out looking fine. Lastly the music was disappointing too unfortunately. For whatever reason, the production decided to incorporate a soundtrack and completely omit the film score composed by Elik Alvarez, Joel Douek, Freddy Sheinfeld and Shinkichi Mitsumune. The soundtrack is okay…sort of but it just dates the movie more than it already is. The fact that there is no film score release for the North American or Japanese markets is shocking and sad that that’s the case.
Like other films connected to anime series, the film’s story will only make sense to those who enjoy the property and are familiar with the show. The continuity is definitely kept in place. The animation and voice acting is great too. Don’t expect much for memorable music though, just a generic mid-2000s soundtrack.
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