Yu-Gi-Oh! is one of the greats of not only anime and manga, but also the Collectible Card Game genre, lasting for over 25 years and remaining both culturally relevant and financially lucrative for all this time with its many spin-offs it spawned.
So, how would one go about attempting to replicate this success? Many have tried to do so with varying levels of success, and this page will hopefully serve as a guide to those seeking this success.
Necessary Tropes
- Collectible Card Game: Obviously. The series (nowadays) is based around, and exists to promote the card game produced by Konami, and thus almost every conflict in the franchise is based around the game.
- Magic Poker Equation: Needed to some extent in order to let the story have tension which the real game often tends to lack.
- World of Ham: Yu-Gi-Oh! as a series can be very... theatrical for lack of a better term. This often applies doubly-so for the villains.
- Godlike Gamer: At least one character in your series will have to be at some point. This is usually the protagonist, but as Zexal showed, this isn't a hard rule.
- Personality Powers: A character's deck should be able to explain a bit about the character who uses it, with their ace cards encapsulating them the most as a person.
Choices, Choices
- The series for the most part tend to lean towards the fantastical, with gods, AI's, aliens and time-travel being important plot elements in the series in one form or another. But what if you were to make a more grounded setting? One where the conflicts are more realistic games with more relatable motivations.
- That said, if you still choose to make it looser with realism, you have the choice over whether or not you wish to make it either fantasy or sci-fi. Maybe both, perhaps? The original leans most into the fantasy end, while VRAINS is the hardest sci-fi series.
- The franchise has been all over the Sliding Scale of Free Will vs. Fate, with the original being the furthest on the "fate" side and 5D's furthest on the "free will" end.
- What cards will your characters use? How will their decks and their personalities overlap?
- On a similar note, will you use pre-existing cards already in the game, or will you make custom cards for your story? Or maybe an entirely different game?
- Since Yu-Gi-Oh! SEVENS introduced Rush Duels, you now have the choice between Master Duels (the standard format) or the new Rush Duel format.
Pitfalls
- The franchise has a bad problem with the Invincible Hero trope, with the protagonists piling up victory after victory, some of whom infamously haven't had a single on-screen loss to their names at all.
- Similarly, make sure your side-characters have something to do and have moments to shine, and not just glorified cheerleaders or walking Worf effects to make the main hero look cooler.
- Despite the show's Merchandise-Driven nature, always remember that the cards serve to enhance the story, not the other way around.
- Make sure to actually balance the cards. Making them too powerful will rob any tension there is and give said card a one-way trip to the banlist (assuming it isn't there already), while making it too weak will lead to the audience asking why anyone is still playing it.
- Power Creep is an unfortunate reality both the game and anime have found themselves in, so try to avoid it wherever possible by staying mindful of what cards you're adding.
- This is hard considering the very nature of the series, but try to keep Ass Pulls and New Powers as the Plot Demands to a minimum. They can detract from the tension when the one solution to defeating an opponent's strategy comes from a completely new card that was literally just introduced that moment.
Potential Subversions
- What if The Power of Friendship simply isn't enough?
- The main heroes from the series have all been male, so perhaps a female protagonist might do for your work.
- Someone interrupts a duel to simply physically assault a player.
- Don't introduce a Tournament Arc.
Writers' Lounge
Suggested Themes and Aesops
- The Power of Friendship: Every series plays with this to varying degrees, but the franchise as a whole has played this trope straighter than most and never looked back.
- Sliding Scale Of Fate Vs Free Will: Where your work will sit on this scale will depend on your choices, but each entry in the series sits somewhere on the spectrum.
Potential Motifs
Suggested Plots
Departments
Set Designer / Location Scout
Props Department
- Duel Disks are a requirement for people to play the game without having to find a projector room to play the game in or do so analogue.
Costume Designer
- Anime Hair: Perhaps one of the most famous (or infamous) aspects of the series. You can honestly just go nuts with the designs and people will accept it for the most part.
Casting Director
Stunt Department
Extra Credit
The Greats
- The original series is the most well-known of all the series for a reason. Its characters are top-notch, and laid the foundations of what would later come.
- Yu-Gi-Oh! The Dark Side of Dimensions: A beautiful send-off for the characters of the original series while expanding the lore of the franchise and introducing plenty of meta-defining cards.
- Yu-Gi-Oh! GX: A series remembered mostly for its lighter and more relaxed school setting before a series of brutal gut-punches hit in its superb third season.
- Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds: The first half of the series is considered an almost perfect way to make a Darker and Edgier adaptation of the brand despite not letting go of the franchise's core themes.
- Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL: Despite a rough start, ZEXAL rebounded around its second half to give us some of the best characters (particularly villains) in the franchise's history.
- Yu-Gi-Oh! SEVENS: A very funny Lighter and Softer Soft Reboot for a new generation that respects what came before while still doing its own thing.
- Cardfight!! Vanguard: Co-created by a man who studied under the late Kazuki Takahashi himself, the series started as a low-stakes series that captured the core essence of what made Yu-Gi-Oh! work with a strong, likable cast of characters.
The Epic Fails
- Yu-Gi-Oh! The Movie: Pyramid of Light: A dull anime movie commissioned by 4Kids that's remembered only for coming with impractical cards and starring a Generic Doomsday Villain as the central focus.
- Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds: Despite its strong first season, behind the scenes drama involving a voice actress being caught up in an actual cult, as well as little direction of where to go from there led to a mess of a second season filled with unnecessary retcons, Aborted Arcs and filler while desperately trying to get back on track.
- Yu Gi Oh ARCV: Much like 5D's, its first season was great. Borderline-perfect, even. However, a perfect storm of creative disagreements, Executive Meddling, overworking the animators, a meandering plot, inconsistent character development and the return of legacy characters taking focus away from the characters the show was supposed to be focusing on created one of the franchise's greatest train-wrecks that is regarded as a Creator Killer to director Katsumi Ono (despite very little of it actually being his fault).
- Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS: A series with little clear progression in its narrative with a flat and borderline-unlikeable Invincible Hero as the protagonist and Aborted Arcs everywhere you look.
