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A review by millennial_dandy
Yu-Gi-Oh! R, Volume 1 by Akira Ito
4.0
3.5 rounded up to 4
Yu-Gi-Oh! content I haven't yet consumed? In the year of our Lord 2022?! Love that for me.
Granted, this spin-off series wasn't conceptualized or written by Kazuki Takahashi, but as an active member of the Yu-Gi-Oh! fandom on AO3 (and fanfiction.net before it) that's hardly new territory for this fan.
So it wasn't put together by the man himself, but was it good?
Yeah, I'd say so.
I, like many other reviewers starved for content, agree that the premise of this mini-series is its strength. The idea of wrapping an arc around the fallout from Pegasus's disappearance/death (pick your poison) at the end of Duelist Kingdom is a good one that was criminally under-explored in the Duke Devlin/Dungeon Dice Monsters filler arc. Having the 'big bad' be Pegasus's protegee is much more compelling, and such a person is much more likely to have a meaningful grudge and the skills to do something about it. I also like the continuity of Kaiba's 'Solid Vision' technology being at the center of another Pegasus adjacent plot as well as how having it be the center of another in-universe story bolsters the worldbuilding.
Speaking of bolstering world building, author Akira Ito made a couple of neat additions that build off of stuff we already know about the Yu-Gi-Oh! world:
1. Solid Vision, Plus
We know from the main series that as Kaiba continues to tinker with his own Solid Vision VR software it becomes more and more, well, solid, and harder to distinguish from reality, so the idea that Yugi and co. hadn't realized that Tea had already been kidnapped by the time they first encounter Tenma feels reasonable and honestly, pretty creepy.
2. Duel Professors
Given that Ito worked on Yu-Gi-Oh! GX he obviously knew where dueling was going in-universe, so it was a cute little nod to the idea of a duel academy in the future to have Tenma's henchmen be 'Card Professors', and it was also a little bit of retroactive ground laying.
3. Accessible Duel Disks
Maico Kato not only had the most aesthetically interesting deck of anyone in this volume, she was also the most fleshed-out as a character, and one of only a handful of older duelists we meet in the entire series that has an 'on-screen' duel. Moreover, she is (if memory serves) the only duelist we ever meet in DM that isn't able-bodied, and certainly the only duelist in a wheelchair. And she gets her own customized Duel Deck that sits on her lap.
I thought that was nice to include from a visibility standpoint, and also in-universe acknowledgement that you don't have to be able-bodied to be able to access Kaiba Corporation's technology. I like that this by extension means that their research and development department (if not Kaiba himself) cares enough about accessibility to have modified Duel Discs on the market.
However, despite having really good bones, I have to agree with a lot of other reviewers that the execution wasn't always the best. Other reviewers have pointed out the sloppiness of the writing of the duels themselves, which is a big problem if we're meant to read at least thirteen speed duels before returning for the final duel against Tenma.
Additionally, it was a big missed opportunity, since Tenma is supposed to be connected to Pegasus, not to have him feel more like Pegasus. Not necessarily derivative of Pegasus in terms of mannerisms, but give the man some type of theatricality and sense of fun. This guy takes himself way too seriously to be Pegasus's protegee. Hell, I'd buy that filler villain from Battle City, Arcana, being Pegasus's protegee before I'd buy it of hecking Tenma.
Finally, a lot of people seem to dislike that there's a sliding backwards in terms of character development when it comes to the main cast (Joey specifically), and that the Pharaoh feels a bit out of character, but full disclosure: I never cared enough about the Pharaoh as a character to notice anything ooc and given that this entire arc is plot rather than character-driven I don't really care if the character development from Battle City didn't carry over.
I do, however, care a great deal about Kaiba's characterization, so I'm going to need Ito to get that right when Kaiba makes his appearance in the story in volume 2 or else my review shall be nothing short of absolutely scathing.
Yu-Gi-Oh! content I haven't yet consumed? In the year of our Lord 2022?! Love that for me.
Granted, this spin-off series wasn't conceptualized or written by Kazuki Takahashi, but as an active member of the Yu-Gi-Oh! fandom on AO3 (and fanfiction.net before it) that's hardly new territory for this fan.
So it wasn't put together by the man himself, but was it good?
Yeah, I'd say so.
I, like many other reviewers starved for content, agree that the premise of this mini-series is its strength. The idea of wrapping an arc around the fallout from Pegasus's disappearance/death (pick your poison) at the end of Duelist Kingdom is a good one that was criminally under-explored in the Duke Devlin/Dungeon Dice Monsters filler arc. Having the 'big bad' be Pegasus's protegee is much more compelling, and such a person is much more likely to have a meaningful grudge and the skills to do something about it. I also like the continuity of Kaiba's 'Solid Vision' technology being at the center of another Pegasus adjacent plot as well as how having it be the center of another in-universe story bolsters the worldbuilding.
Speaking of bolstering world building, author Akira Ito made a couple of neat additions that build off of stuff we already know about the Yu-Gi-Oh! world:
1. Solid Vision, Plus
We know from the main series that as Kaiba continues to tinker with his own Solid Vision VR software it becomes more and more, well, solid, and harder to distinguish from reality, so the idea that Yugi and co. hadn't realized that Tea had already been kidnapped by the time they first encounter Tenma feels reasonable and honestly, pretty creepy.
2. Duel Professors
Given that Ito worked on Yu-Gi-Oh! GX he obviously knew where dueling was going in-universe, so it was a cute little nod to the idea of a duel academy in the future to have Tenma's henchmen be 'Card Professors', and it was also a little bit of retroactive ground laying.
3. Accessible Duel Disks
Maico Kato not only had the most aesthetically interesting deck of anyone in this volume, she was also the most fleshed-out as a character, and one of only a handful of older duelists we meet in the entire series that has an 'on-screen' duel. Moreover, she is (if memory serves) the only duelist we ever meet in DM that isn't able-bodied, and certainly the only duelist in a wheelchair. And she gets her own customized Duel Deck that sits on her lap.
I thought that was nice to include from a visibility standpoint, and also in-universe acknowledgement that you don't have to be able-bodied to be able to access Kaiba Corporation's technology. I like that this by extension means that their research and development department (if not Kaiba himself) cares enough about accessibility to have modified Duel Discs on the market.
However, despite having really good bones, I have to agree with a lot of other reviewers that the execution wasn't always the best. Other reviewers have pointed out the sloppiness of the writing of the duels themselves, which is a big problem if we're meant to read at least thirteen speed duels before returning for the final duel against Tenma.
Additionally, it was a big missed opportunity, since Tenma is supposed to be connected to Pegasus, not to have him feel more like Pegasus. Not necessarily derivative of Pegasus in terms of mannerisms, but give the man some type of theatricality and sense of fun. This guy takes himself way too seriously to be Pegasus's protegee. Hell, I'd buy that filler villain from Battle City, Arcana, being Pegasus's protegee before I'd buy it of hecking Tenma.
Finally, a lot of people seem to dislike that there's a sliding backwards in terms of character development when it comes to the main cast (Joey specifically), and that the Pharaoh feels a bit out of character, but full disclosure: I never cared enough about the Pharaoh as a character to notice anything ooc and given that this entire arc is plot rather than character-driven I don't really care if the character development from Battle City didn't carry over.
I do, however, care a great deal about Kaiba's characterization, so I'm going to need Ito to get that right when Kaiba makes his appearance in the story in volume 2 or else my review shall be nothing short of absolutely scathing.