EFFORTPOST Yo guys I'm watching Yugioh Season 0 recently, and it's batshit

I gained uncapped interweb recently and watched a whole lot of garbage at night recently after work.

Additionally i've been Yugioh-maxxing Legacy of the Dualist (the link-shit one) past 3 weeks, and in like 3 weeks amassed 123 hours now granted about 30-40% of that time was just idling, but for me that's a lot of time gaymermaxxing, don't know about you strags

I one night suddenly got the urge to see how badly the original, by now 20 years old, show had aged after killing my brain with Yugioh memes and Abridged watching from LittleKuriboh

But then i remembered the insane asylum of the infamous Season zero

https://g*merant.com/yu-gi-oh-season-0

For those of u who dont know, before the famous nerd series aired in Burgerland at April 18, 2000, and permanently ensured a whole generation of neckbeards and weebcels, there existed another precurser show, which acted as a prototype to the Yu-gi-oh show we would later know as Season 1.

Way back two years prior, in April 4th, 1998 in Nipponland. This would be based on the same source material of Kazuki Takahashi (the guy who created the comic of Yugioh). But the original season 0 was based on Kazuki's earliest comic works, and consequently sold and was viewed poorly, the anime would have descended into obscurity forever like so many mediocre ones if it had not been due to the fictional game of Duel Monsters taking place within the anime of seazon zero.

Nippon fanbois were so impressed by the concept of duel monsters, that even though season zero sold badly, and didn't really attract a substantial following, a lot of his turbo fans begged him to expand upon the Phaoronic shadow games in which people had their minds r$ped and souls torn from their bodies when they played the prototype of the precerser to Dual Monsters.

Additionally Kazuki's original comic manuscripts was pretty dark and horror themed stuff. There was egyptian curses, body horror, and lots of violence. It was much darker than contemporary teenager marketed weebshit (like Dragonball, sailor moon, mewmew shit and once piece.

Thus the execs in Nippon didn't know how to market it, and by trying to turn it into kid friendly shit, they also kind off sand blasted much of the horror elements away.

But the anime and comic would also diverge (from article):

"What really started to hurt the anime was that by the time the series was airing the manga was evolving into a very different beast than what it had started out as. While Shadow Games were still played, Takahashi was leaning more into the card battle aspect. The manga was becoming more fun and less horror-fill compared to the TV series, which viewers were largely not responding well to."

" it became clear at one point that the Yu-Gi-Oh! anime had failed. To test the waters on future episodes, Toei produced what would today be known as a ‘soft reboot' with a thirty-minute movie produced for animation festivals. Unlike the TV series, it resembled the card centric stories of the later manga stories and had much better animation. The problem was the movie wasn't any better received by fans of the manga, and there were feelings by Toei management that the franchise was not salvageable."

"On the manga side Takahashi and his editors were retooling the series to launch a card game and needed a show that would sell it. Around this time Toei had signed on to create a new anime called One Piece, and with neither side happy with the results of Yu-Gi-Oh!, the two parties decided to mutually part ways. Yu-Gi-Oh! would be released on VHS but would never get a DVD release. It hasn't re-aired since 1999 and no attempt has been made to bring the series to other countries in a legal manner."

Like the transformers cartoon which sold buckets in conjunction with its associated cartoon, a media company called the infamous 4Kids would see the merchandise potential of Yugioh (the season 1 reboot), and port it over into burgerland, and more significantly into english, in which it would explode into popularity all over the anglospere speaking world.

"No one can blame anyone for the first attempt of adapting Yu-Gi-Oh! falling flat on its face. The studio was adapting material from a genre they weren't known for. The manga had not found its true voice yet. There was no way to know how much the priorities of the manga author and his editors would change. When all was said and done, it resulted in a series that certainly isn't bad, but it doesn't reflect what most people associate with Yu-Gi-Oh! So disconnected from everything that would come afterwards, this single season series has been dubbed ‘Season 0' by fans, for its lack of place in the larger universe of the Yu-Gi-Oh! franchise."

The tone difference between the season zero and what comes after it is pretty fricking stark, and it's not just the "kids friendly" nature of subsequent seasons.

THE ACTUAL PLOT OF SEASON ZERO:

Before I buzz off on the plot of Season zero, man do I have to comment on the shit quality of the animation

I haven't watched anime, the weebshit kind, in like over a year, and I've forgotten how utterly fricking lazy japs can be when it comes to cutting costs of animation compared to their western cartoon counterparts, holy heck

The show has the obnoxious and repulsive habit of have loooooong still frames, where the characters don't move and only talk, and by talking i mean only their lips are mobile, when monsters attack or people punch each other, the entire graphic just slides across the screen, with no limbs bending or anything, like a student slideshow.

This doesn't happen all the time, and the animation quality does improve from time to time, especially in climactic scenes, but holy heck is it noticible if you guys ever watch this directly after something like a 2D disney movie or something.

anyways the actual plot: basically Yugi is total fricking psychopath Or rather the Pharoah spirit which takes hold of yugi's body after a crisis moment, and alters his personality from an squeecky toy into a giga chad overflowing with confidence.

After the pilot episode begins in much the same way as it would in the reboot of season 1 - where Yugi unlocks the pharoah alternate personality from the Millennium Puzzle, the show takes a divergence by having a schooby-Doo monster-of-the-week format, in which Yugi basically super-sentai power ranger transforms into the Pharoah alternate personality to deal with criminals and bullies, by challenging them to games.

But not just any games!! Specifically SHADOW GAMES!!

They call it in the extremely badly translated unofficial subs, the Yami-games of rather the Shadow-games, where it's basically a prototype of the duals in which the loser gets his souls sent to the shadowrealm

You guys remember the Shadowrealm? In the 4Kids dub of the Season 1 onwards Yugioh, they censored the living shit out of the anime meant for fragile amerifats living in the puritan land of Florida. In the original Jap anime people losing Shadowgames basically just died then and there, but since all death was in Burgerland translations, our moron friends replaced the translation of people losing the Shadowgames in dualmonsters, by basically having their FRICKING SOULS SENT TO THE SHADOW REALM FOR ALL ETERNITY!

!macacos

Talk about creating an eternal fate worse than death, and a meme still inhabiting the internet today

Right anyways back to Season Zero In the monster/bully/criminal of the week episode, some douchebag accosts the friend circle of Yugi by beating them up or literally waving guns to their heads, and the anti-hero-like Pharoah spirit takes over Yugi's mind/body/actions (show is never clear on this)

and effectively challenges the culprit of the episode to a Dual-....I mean to a Shadowgame!

The game is different per episode, where basically Yugi goes full daredevil by challenging the douchebag from weird games of cards, to dice, to to something extreme like chicken against a gun toting badguy of the day.

When Yugi-Paroah inevitably wins the Shadowgame, the loser gets MINDRAPED by the pharaoh by suffering an extremely painful fate, like BURNING ALIVE , or being eaten alive by worms.

Or at least in their minds, as Yugi-Pharaoh appears to have the magic power of MINDRPING the badguy into believing a terrible fate has befallen then if they lose the magic shadowgame. Usually the dudes are physically unharmed, but are afterwards so terribly traumitized by the MINDRPING, that they have to go to mental hospitals, or bullies have to be transferred ect. Basically Yugi Season Zero has zero fricking chill

Anyways on episode 3 is when legends are born. This is the 1st instance of the reoccuring villain Seto Kaiba is introduced, and remarkably would be the only villain to escape from Yugi's MINDR*PING, because they end their 1st Shadowgame in a draw.

Additionally the fictional game of Dualmonsters are introduced in this episode, and basically the fans in their fanletters would constantly b-word to Kazuki (the creator), to forget this shadowgames crap and go back to the Dualmonsters cardgame bro

The episode 3 begins with Kaiba and goons beating the shit out of random peeps to take their rare cards

Our friends learn about the dualmonsters game

and meet kaiba who for some fricking reason has green hair

The same basic plot points as in the reboot; kaiba learns of the super special awesome Blue-Eyes r*pe-dragon which Yugi's grandpa owns, offers to guy it, but gramps tells him to GTFO.

stuff happens, and kaiba steals yugi's card, and beats up his useless friends

Kaiba's goons try to beat up Yugi, which activates the Super Sentai Power Ranger transformation, into Chad-Yugi,

with his balls dropped, and his voice having breached puberty Yugi then gets ready for some MINDR*PING. He beats up the goons and challenges Kaiba to the 1st ever aired on TV Dual monster game!

Kaiba is shocked that the cards come to life and actually physically fight to death in from of them. Stuff happens and the game ends in a draw, which will be the only shadowgame where the badguy avoids a good old MINDR*PING, and ensuring that Kaiba is a recurring badguy.

Anyways I have no idea if it's worth reccomending. Many episodes are on youtube. But man this season has aged badly compared to the reboot, the characters are ugly, the animation is stilted, and the colouring is just plain weird.

7/10