IXC: "Yu-Gi-Oh! The Movie"

What do we know about Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters? Let's see, it has an ongoing anime series, an endless sea of cards created, as well as a few movies. Yu-Gi-Oh! The Movie is the first among those, and was introduced before the Yu-Gi-Oh! GX series. Criticized badly for being the worst of the 4Kids films, you really had to be into the franchise to get anything from it, or so they say. I guess that, somehow, that applied to me.

Fed up with getting beaten every time by the King of Games and titular character Yugi Moto, Seto Kaiba devises a strategy that defeats Yugi by rendering his Egyptian God Cards useless. To this degree, he flies to and challenges former antagonist Maximillion Pegasus. He figures that since he was the creator of the Egyptian God cards, then he would have a card to use against them. After defeating him in a card duel, he takes the said card, as well as a card that was never there before. Later, we see Yugi and Co. taking refuge from the other duelists, to find the Pyramid of Light Exhibit, just before getting stolen suddenly. After a brief while, Mokuba Kaiba finds Yugi, and tells him that Seto awaits him. Yugi and Yami, the pharaoh spirit, suspect something is amiss, and it becomes true when Seto plays a certain card in the duel. Danger is rearing its head, and someone from Yami's past is pulling the strings. How will the heroes get out of it?

The movie featured unique monsters and cards never saw before, while retuning cards carry the design similar to those released as part of the Trading Card Game. The same people who voiced for the Yu-Gi-Oh! anime reprise their roles for the film. Among which are Dan Green (Asuma Shinohara of the original Patlabor series) as Yugi, and Eric Stuart (Gourry Gabriev of the Slayers series) as Seto.

I will admit that as a small-time fan I kinda expected a bit more, but it's not to say that it was horrible. I grade Yu-Gi-Oh! The Movie a 6.5 of 10. Not bad in my opinion, but I can sort of see why they stressed about having to be a fan to enjoy it.