Chronicles of Yugoha Chapter 1 Review

Warning! The following review contains minor spoilers for the Dark Side of Dimensions

As I expressed before, I am so happy to finally be writing this series. It took a lot to get me to this point, but I’m finally here. And as it was the Dark Side of Dimensions that inspired me to finally begin this series, it only seemed fitting to have the first chapter tie into the movie. When I left the theater after watching the movie, my head was abuzz with ways I could tie it in with Yu-Gi-Oh! Millennium. The most obvious point was that Kaiba’s special Duel Disk easily could have been a prototype for the Duel Gauntlet, it even replaced the traditional physical deck of cards with a virtual version and connected straight to the users mind. Looks like Kaiba may have been 5,000 years ahead of his time. Anyways, one of things that intrigued me the most was the Plana. Despite being so important to the plot of them movie, we were left knowing so very little of it. All we knew was it was some sort of magical power that could be used to change reality itself. I realized while watching the movie that the Yugohans were no strangers to reality altering powers, as Versal, their greatest god/creation had the very same powers. And of course, it has been a trend so far that what is traditionally considered magic in the world of Yu-Gi-Oh is actually forgotten Yugohan technology, so the Plana would be the same. One of the most interesting things about the Plana, at least in my mind, was that it seemed to exist as a network between all of the students of Shadi. The Plana linked them together, and as a whole they would manipulate reality. I quickly realized how reminiscent of a computer network this was. That’s what the inspiration was for making the source of the Plana a system of quantum computers linked to a network of human (or Yugohan, in this case) minds. Of course, the Plana we see in this chapter is not yet exactly what we see in the movie. Among other things, this chapter did not have any hint of Diva’s “Millennium Cube.” I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what else Yugoha has in store for the Plana. On one last movie-related note, I also wanted to point out a potentially missed character trait, the character Shadu was meant to be the Yugohan incarnation of Shadi and Shada, hence the name and similar descriptions. This was done because of Shadi’s link to the Plana.

Spoilers end here.

Aside from just connect to the movie, this chapter was designed to serve as a crux for much the following series. It served as an introduction to Yugoha for new readers and a reintroduction for returning readers. It brought in several familiar faces from Millennium, such as Thoth and Xenox, showing both of them as they were before we knew them 16 years later, during the Yugohan Civil War. In both cases they had yet to reach their true potential, but were well on their way. This chapter also served as a basis for the series, as it was our first in-depth look at Yugohan life, especially before the war.

Episodes 137-140 Review

Wow…this is really it. Even several days later, I’m still having trouble excepting it.

Anyways, it should be obvious to most that, just as most of the structure of this series was based upon that of the original series, so too was the finale arc. In the original series, the finale of the season took place when Atem battled and defeated Zorc, and then the finale of the series was Yugi’s ceremonial duel with Atem. Similarly, the battle with Ottiuk was meant to be treated as the season finale, and then the extra duel, Yu-Gi-Oh vs. Seto, was meant to be the series finale. As a child, I always remembered thinking that Kaiba got treated a little unfairly in the final season of the show. Ge barely did anything important at all. When he suggested that it should be him who faces Atem in the ceremonial duel, I actually agreed with him. He was Atem’s greatest rival, and it would tie up the series nicely, as the first episode was Yugi/Atem dueling with Kaiba (That being said, I do realize why it had to be Yugi, but still…). When I started thinking of my plot, I realized that not only could I put things right, but it would work out perfectly for the story if I did. This also, at least in my mind, helped make up for the fact that the incarnations of Prince Seto had little to do during the final duel with Ottiuk. This helped remind the reader that they’re important too.

The first episode was designed to be Yuni’s finale, as it was his final appearance in the series. It was all about tying up loose ends. The whole thing with his grandpa is actually something I’ve had planned since the beginning. I’ve always portrayed him as a carefree man that will let Yuni do anything he wants and be happy, as long as he has his recliner chair and a holovision. On the surface, this was an excuse for why Yuni could go off on a moment’s notice to save the world without his grandpa caring, but I figured that it would be more interesting in the end if there actually was a reason for this. As for Ma’at, it has been my intention all along to have him end up as the Lord of Chaos. His entire character arc had been leading up to that one discussion the two of them had.

On to the duel itself. There was a purposeful duality to this duel. Yu-Gi-Oh was using a deck based on Evolution Summoning, the newest way to summon a monster, while Seto was using a Tribute Summon deck, the most classic way (save straight up Normal Summoning) to summon a monster. Yu-Gi-Oh’s deck also served another purpose. It allowed me to showcase my original intentions for Evolution Monsters. My original concept was that Evolution was fairly versatile, and that the Evolution Base could vary, and the effect and/or power of the Evolution Monster would vary depending on the Evolution Base used. In order to best write duels though, I ended up focusing more on Evolution Monsters with set Evolution Base requirements. The Stellamancer deck was a way to better showcase my original idea.

I have always seen Yu-Gi-Oh! Millennium as being a potential grand finale for the Yu-Gi-Oh franchise as a whole. Because of that, I knew it had to end with a bang. The previous record for highest finite Attack Points ever achieved was done in Zexal, during Yuma’s duel with Don Thousand. He managed to boost Utopia up to 204,000 ATK. I decided that not only did I want to break that record, but I wanted to smash it. Hence we have two monster with over a million Attack Points battling it out in the end. Being the end of the franchise is also the inspiration behind Yu-Gi-Oh’s final line, a quote of Yugi’s final line in the original series. It’s also worth pointing out that the mention of fireworks occurring at the end of the speech is actual an joke. Right before Yugi says his final line, Joey asks in disbelief if this is really how it ends. Kaiba then asks sarcastically, “What were you expecting? Fireworks?” So, I decided to make fireworks happen.

And that concludes the final episode review Yu-Gi-Oh! Millennium. With that said though, don’t think this website is dead. I have some plans for the future, so stay tuned. Also, the Episode Guide, Yu-Gi-Oh! Timeline, and Card Database/Reader’s Companion pages have all reached their final form.

Duel on, always…

Episode 134: Endgame Part 1

It’s the beginning of the end! Episode 134 is here!

With all eight incarnations of Prince Yu-Gi-Oh and Prince Seto, Yuni, Seto, Yugi, Kaiba, Atem, Priest Seto, Timaeus, and Critias return to Earth at long last, ready to fight and defeat Ottiuk once and for all. But without the power of Another Hope, are they really ready?

Until next time, duel on!

Episode 127 Review

Let’s start off talking about the duel. To tell the truth, it was very much cut down in scope from the vision I originally had for it. As Kaiba was my favorite character of the original show, and Blue-Eyes was my second favorite monster (next to only Red-Eyes), I had some grand plans for this duel. Sadly, the story proved to take to long to tell to fit an intricate duel. The reason for the duel taking place over the course of two episodes, but not being a two-part episode is because the story told both before and after the duel was to long and important. I had no choice but to shorten the duel and split it up across two episodes. Originally I wanted to create an entire Blue-Eyes archetype (something that the real card game has refused to do for some reason). You can see the remains of the archetype in the two Blue-Eyes monsters I did make, as well as a couple of Spell and Trap Cards Kaiba used. I still liked the way the duel turned out, it just wasn’t as fun or as much as a celebration of Blue-Eyes as I wanted it to be.

Onto the second part of the episode. I’m sure some of you are wondering “why bring back Capsule Monsters of all things?” the answer is simple. Despite getting an entire mini-series devoted to it, Capsule Monster has a fairly undeveloped story. I want to develop further, just like I did with Atlantis and the Pyramid of Light. I was originally inspired to do Capsule Monster when I was thinking about possibly having Yugi use the Duel Armor as a way to increase his power. I thought that would be weird without Capsule Monsters. Then I realized that I could base the entire story off of Capsule Monsters and it would work perfectly. I have a few other reasons too, but you’ll have to wait for those. And yes, I did have the gall to kill Yugi off.

Until next time, duel on!

Episode 127: Return of the King

Episode 127 is out now. Read it here.

After Seto and Kaiba conclude their duel, it’s time to locate Yugi. However, it quickly learned that Yugi could be in grave danger, potentially turning Yuni’s awaited reunion with Yugi from a joyous occasion to one of despair.

Until next time, duel on!

Episode 118 Review

So normally I’ll only do one review per two part episode, but I decided that since this was a two part episode featuring two different duels (which is something I’ve never done before), I’d just go ahead an review them as two separate episodes. Perhaps most important about this episode is it ends the five episode duel drought that’s been going on since episode 113. As I said before, I’d never gone more than a single episode without a duel before, so this definitely was an interesting experience. If you look back to the Dawn of the Duel arc, there was only three duels the entire time, Kaiba vs. Bakura, Yugi vs. Bakura, and Yugi vs. Atem, the rest was all ancient Egyptian shadow games. I’m somewhat modeling off of that by not having the focus on dueling, but I just couldn’t cut it out as completely as was done then. The inspiration for Timaeus’ deck should be obvious, as it was meant to synergize with the Eye of Timaeus card, but I also made it the way I did because despite being five seasons and 118 episodes into the series, I had yet to make a true Fusion-based deck. Sure, a couple of duelists had Fusions as their ace monsters, but no one used a deck that had the central strategy of Fusion Summoning.

Until next time, duel on!

Episode 114 Review

Believe it or not, the most important part of this episode was probably not the time travel, but the exposition before it. The part where Cosmo explained how Yu-Gi-Oh and Seto came to be reincarnated. That explanation is the very reason for the existence of Yu-Gi-Oh! Millennium. The first seeds of an idea for the series came to me back when I first watched the Waking the Dragons arc (which was only a couple of years ago, since I never saw it or the Dawn of the Duel arc as a child). When the Legendary Dragons where revealed to actually be knights who look like Yugi, Kaiba, and Joey, that got me thinking. Timaeus existed 10,000 years ago, and Atem existed 5,000 years ago (since I watch the English version, not the Japanese). That means that Timaeus existed 5,000 years before Atem. This seemed like too big of a coincidence. The original series never explained why there just happened to be yet another incarnation of Yugi and Kaiba, before even Ancient Egypt. So years later, I decided to take a crack at explaining this odd coincidence, and Yu-Gi-Oh! Millennium was born. Speaking of the origin of the series, originally, the story arc we’re in now included no time travel at all. It would have just been duels with each of the incarnations. Time travel allows for a much better plot though. It’s also worth noting that this is the first time I’ve ever done more than one episode without a duel in it in a row. Of course, Yu-Gi-Oh is all about dueling, but the story I’m telling now require less dueling than normal (don’t worry though, there will be more dueling than there was in Dawn of the Duel).

Until next time, duel on!

Episodes 105-107 Review

Sorry it’s been so long, writing the movie took quite a while.

These episodes were obviously inspired by the finale of Season 4 of original Yu-Gi-Oh, the duel with Dartz, just as this season was based off of that season. It’s always bugged me that in those episodes that it’s Yugi and Kaiba fighting Dartz. They spent the entire season building up Yugi, Kaiba, and Joey as being the three heroes, and yet Joey gets completely ignored. I made sure not to make the same mistake. Perhaps the biggest take out from these episodes were the new Yugohan Lord(s), and the new effect to Another Hope. When I initially planned the series, Versal was to appear back in season 3, just as Ra did in the original series, but I just couldn’t think of a way to make it work. Once I decided that season 4 would be based on an alien invasion, I thought that it would be the perfect opportunity to introduce Versal. Empyrean was another odd case. Obviously it is inspired by Horakhty, which didn’t appear until the series finale of the original series. I needed a replacement for the Knight of Destiny and had different plans for the finale, so I decided it would be best to premier Empyrean here.

Episodes 72 and 73 Review

First off, for anyone who didn’t get yesterday’s post, April Fools! That card sucks.

***Spoiler Alert***

These episodes featured yet another one of the first duels that I planned. Seto’s fall to Darkness and Yuni’s ascension to being the Lord of Chaos came partly due to my plans for these episode. These episodes also harkened back to the original Yu-Gi-Oh, when Yugi and Kaiba dueled in the Battle City Finals and fought their Egyptian God Cards against each other. Then to the mighty monsters destroyed each others, and the two rivals were forced into using both their ace cards and their upgrades.

***End Spoiler Alert***

Until next time, duel on!