Manga Entertainment to release first season of Yu-Gi-Oh!

Ian Wolf

Ian Wolf

Mushi-shi
AUKN Staff
Manga Entertainment has listed "The Official First Season" of <em>Yu-Gi-Oh!</em>, the gaming manga and anime which spawned one of the biggest trading card games, for a DVD release on 17th November.

The Manga Entertainment website is using the same DVD cover art as the American release. If this is the case, it would appear that this release would be of the 2000 series, known as <em>Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters</em>, which is actually the second series based on the original manga. The first series of 27 episodes was released in 1998 and has never been given an English-language release. The US DVD release of "The Official First Season" was available as a dub only.



<em>Synopsis</em>

<em>Yu-Gi-Oh! follows the adventures of a boy named Yugi and his friends who love the newest card game that is sweeping the nation! In this game, players pit monster against monster in high intensity duels. But there's more to this game than meets the eye. Yugi solves an old Egyptian puzzle that infuses him with the energy of an ancient spirit. Their forces unite to form a stronger, more confident duelist, for Yugi needs all the help he can get!</em>

Sources: Manga UK and Anime News Network.
 
My immediate thoughts aside from 'will definitely be buying this' are:

1) This is nicely timed to fill the whole that'll be left by DBZ (and then Bleach) ending.

2) Hopefully this opens the door for Pokemon and Digimon releases.

3) Just glad that finally there's a UK alternative to those silly old single volumes that came out ages ago and are long out of print.
 
Sadly I already have the US releases of season's 1-3. I hope these are popular enough to get all 5 seasons released in the UK. I'm worried they won't though as I'd imagine, like me, quite a few people bought the US releases.

Hope they officially announce it soon and it gets some attention.
 
Lutga said:
2) Hopefully this opens the door for Pokemon and Digimon releases.
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Pokémon is sadly, a whole different kettle of fish. Jerome has noted in the past that they have tried to get the license to the series, but the licensor (who I assume is The Pokémon Company International?) had "different plans" (which judging from what has happened since, was most likely referring to things like Netflix, iTunes and Pokémon TV).

I still find it odd that nowhere outside of Australia and Japan either seems willing or is able to release the more recent movies on blu-ray.
 
:evil: does this HAVE to happen to me every year? I prefer to buy from the UK as I rarely find the limited editions of most anime worth the purchase anyway but last year Manga spent days and weeks back pedalling and telling me they didn't acquire the license for DBZ so I buy some American sets and bam, they release the UK ones. Now I buy Yugioh cos it's getting close to christmas so I figured they'd be smart enough to announce this stuff early so people can keep it in mind and bam, back to the double dipping if I want a UK set for my girlfriend since she prefers the UK ones :? Not that I double dipped on DBZ but with just one season of Yugioh bought I might just rebuy the first season in UK and carry on from there. Really disappointed they couldn't give us a heads up a bit sooner, there's barely a month until release. If manga do this again I'll just import the aussie stuff of attack on titan too, how hard is it to give your customers a heads up? Maybe I'm just out of the loop as I don't listen to all the rumours or anything.

I like manga but they are losing some of my respect with there lack of special editions for the UK, slow and poorly communicated releases etc.
 
Ian Wolf said:
Somewhat annoyed that this looks like it will be a dub-only release, but any release is better than none.
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An English Dub and Subtitle release of Yu-Gi-Oh! (the original 224 episode series) is near impossible to do as 'so-much' was altered, cut or edited out during the English Dub of the series. (Thats why this release is English only).

It's also why 4Kids/FUNimation (in America at least) began re-dubbing the series and re-released the first 12 episodes (or so) in uncut format, but it was latter canned due to not enough interest.

You'd think that not much would be cut from a series like this but infact a lot of changes were made, such as monster appearence, card layout and even weapons were altered.
 
Speaking of Yu Gi Oh, did 5Ds or Zexal ever make it over to UK telly? I remember when GX was showing on CITV around 2008/2009 and I tuned in religiously at 6am in the mornings to catch it.
 
Lutga said:
Speaking of Yu Gi Oh, did 5Ds or Zexal ever make it over to UK telly? I remember when GX was showing on CITV around 2008/2009 and I tuned in religiously at 6am in the mornings to catch it.
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Pretty sure the first two arcs of 5Ds did as I remember watching bits of it before watching it subbed. No idea about anything after that or Zexal.
Speaking of Yugioh, it might be because it's the only one I watched subbed, but 5ds is the only one that I thought was actually any good.
 
Lutga said:
Speaking of Yu Gi Oh, did 5Ds or Zexal ever make it over to UK telly? I remember when GX was showing on CITV around 2008/2009 and I tuned in religiously at 6am in the mornings to catch it.
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All versions of Yu-Gi-Oh have been shown on UK TV at some point; whether or not they were shown to completion is another story.

Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's was shown on CITV at one point (believe it was first two seasons as well) but then later pulled
Yu-Gi-Oh! GX (the first two seasons) is getting shown on Kix! (Sky 627, Freesat 606)
Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal (entire first season) is currently shown on Kix! (Sky 627, Freesat 606) and Pop! (Sky 622?)

Both Pop and Kix are owned by the same company.

Also Kix! shows a fair amount of anime-related shows (albeit edited) as over the past year they have shown Dragon Ball Z Kai, Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal, Inazuma Eleven... it's always interesting to see what they show next.

Also all of the channels are free-to-air/free-to-view, meaning as long as you have a Sky Box (or a freesat box) with a satellite dish connected you'll be ale to view the channels.
 
If I remember correctly, 4Kids didn't actually dub the last seasons of GX or 5D's, due to the timings and wanting to push out the new series' to correspond to their TCG sets.
 
Emo185 said:
An English Dub and Subtitle release of Yu-Gi-Oh! (the original 224 episode series) is near impossible to do as 'so-much' was altered, cut or edited out during the English Dub of the series. (Thats why this release is English only).

It's also why 4Kids/FUNimation (in America at least) began re-dubbing the series and re-released the first 12 episodes (or so) in uncut format, but it was latter canned due to not enough interest.

You'd think that not much would be cut from a series like this but infact a lot of changes were made, such as monster appearence, card layout and even weapons were altered.
Click to expand...

Why was the card layout changed? :?

Anyway, I am BANG on this! Pretty much ever since I can remember I've been a repressed and ashamed secret Yu Gi Oh fan. I used to wake up on Saturdays or Sundays or whatever day it was, and hope that nobody was around so I could indulge in watching some Yu Gi. Yu Gi Oh always appealed to me for me some inexplicable reason, maybe it was the fact it was based on a baffling intensely convoluted card game aimed at children, the kind of game which could and would never be popular with poor western children who lack a Kumon education. Maybe it was Yu Gi's hair, which in my opinion is probably the second o third most iconic anime haircut ever. Or maybe it was dat dub, my gosh, that guy who voiced Yu Gi had set of pipes didn't he. I used to feel so smug sitting in front of the TV pretending like I had a clue what the rules of the game were, chuckling and praising Yu Gi on another well played move. I even bought some GBA Yu Gi Oh game and spent hours feeling smug playing it, despite having absolutely no clue how to play it.

Does Yu Gi Oh still have much of a presence in Japan, at least among youngsters, like Pokemon does? I hope so.
 
Back when I was at school, I was an avid Yu-Gi-Oh! player, but when people around me stopped playing, that basically forced me to as well. I still find it funny that when I was at school and even today, people notice that I shuffle cards like Yugi did.

@vashdaman - The original Japanese version of all Yu-Gi-Oh! anime series' have shown the cards as they are in real life - complete with card text. The dubs however, have always trimmed the appearance of cards so that only the card's illustration, type (Monster/Spell/Trap etc), level, attack points and defence points are shown. I'm guessing that the reason for this was that 4Kids didn't want to have to translate and edit in the text for every single card shown in an episode. The only exception I can remember, was Yu-Gi-Oh! The Movie (it might have also been the case in Bonds Beyond Time, but I haven't seen it)

For example, this is how "Slifer the Sky Dragon" looked in 4Kids' dub of the TV anime:
slifer_the_sky_dragon_anime_by_epicravel12-d3ge7wk.png


Compared to it in the movie (the Japanese TV airings look just like this, but with the card text in Japanese)
SlifertheSkyDragon-EN-Anime-MOV.png


Emo185 said:
It's also why 4Kids/FUNimation (in America at least) began re-dubbing the series and re-released the first 12 episodes (or so) in uncut format, but it was latter canned due to not enough interest.
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Which is still a huge shame to be honest. They were also giving Shaman King that same treatment and I would have loved to see it happen.
 
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