Loudly Do I Wonder

Yugioh GX 4Kids dub: Chillin’ out with the crew in the school yard

Me:

Atem:

i mean there’s like a bunch of posts making fun of this fricking card game colosseum with weird hologram people cheering on kaiba already, and rightfully so - and then he talks about gladiators and swords in all seriousness, jesus can you believe that kaiba and his cringeworthy level of extra

but then yami yugi not only does not register any level of ridiculousness here (of course he doesn’t), but he immediately goes 

without even missing a beat, he is so absolutely fucking into it, like DAMN RIGHT I’LL DRAW MY SWORD KAIBA U READY

there is NO REASON AT ALL for any of this overdramatic gladiator role play, this has nothing to do with the plot, everyone else just had a normal duel (with some added deadly shadow games, but you know, details) and this is not even the finale!! but OF COURSE they have to be like this, of course they are totally, 1000% here for this, proving once and for all that no one takes duels as ridiculously seriously as they do

i have no words

LORDY

U DO NOT KNOW ABOUT YUGIOH!!

YUGIOH WAS 100% ORIGINALLY… A HORROR MANGA, I AM HONESTLY NOT KIDDING YOU, it was intended to be a violent horror manga

GO ON, GO TRY AND READ IT ON MANGAFOX. IT’S FUCKED UP.

Before the concept of Duel Monsters was even introduced to the series, Yugioh was about Yami Yuugi basically being a murderous fuck who enjoyed punishing people with ‘shadow games’ that ended with losers being, uh, electrocuted to death, burnt alive, and a whole host of other horrific deaths. Other screwed up subplots include Kaiba being totally obsessed with murdering Yuugi/Yami and building an entire theme park to try to do so, Mokuba (Kaiba’s sweet lil brother) attempting to kill half the cast by forcing them to compete in a Russian Roulette with poisoned food, Anzu/Tea being drugged by a classmate with chloroform and almost assaulted, Jounouchi/Joey being kidnapped by a gang he’s been hanging out with and tortured with tasers before Yami electrocutes the gang and kills them all, quite happily, to save Jounouchi, multiple people getting set on fire, a man getting his head bitten off by Shadi’s pet crocodile Amet monster, the list goes on and on.  I’m not entirely sure if it’s included in the anime or not, but Bakura gouges out Pegasus’ eyeball.

I honestly ended up stopping reading the manga because it was getting to be too violent and morbid for even my tastes

So yeah, in the original Duel Monsters Yugioh anime, people die. Death is a real threat. Even though it’s significantly toned down from the original first few arcs of the manga, which are just bizarre. Almost every instance of characters being sent to the ‘shadow realm’ in the 4Kids dub is censored ‘I’m going to murder you’ plot points. Oh boy does 4 Kids tone down the violence.

Here’s a delightful episode from the anime some may remember; Yami Yuugi fights some weird stage magician guy and during the duel they’re both strapped into buzzsaws which slowly approach their feet as they lose life points. No biggy - the loser just gets sent to the shadow realm!

Except in the original, the threat is that the loser of the game is going to get their legs sawn off and bleed to death.

So, yknow, now you know that not only did they censor Kaiba’s gun, but just a whole bunch of brutal violence and murder as well!

A lesser known fact about Yugioh is that there’s a missing season - Season 0, aired in 1998, which follows the plot line of the original initial manga volumes before Yugioh became an anime and manga about playing card games. It’s still significantly toned down from the manga but is a little closer to theme and vibe.