CXIX: "Duel Masters" series

I spoke of Yu-Gi-Oh! a good while ago, with the movie of the original series, and a bit of Pokemon not only in terms of voice actors from various shows, but also posts of the games on my other blog. Today I'll be speaking of Duel Masters. At first I thought it was a joke series, but it has a setting of its own, as well as media and cards of its own.

Duel Masters centers in on Shobu Kirafuda, a boy with a positive spirit. He aspires to become a great duelist like his father before him. From then on, he ventures to various duels, making friends, and becoming an apprentice under Knight, who is wise, but rarely able to assist Shobu in his duels very much. From then on, he duels while upgrading his deck, which started as a Fire Civilization Deck, and competes against skilled foes of different cards.

Mock the sayings all you wish, but despite of the commercial products sold (which might not be around anymore), the anime has been deemed a parody of sorts. In fact, let's talk about the anime itself for a little bit. Apparently, there's a lot of anime under this title, which falls in the similar fashion that Beyblade, Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, and Bakugan as a metaseries (Chaotic only had one series, albeit a large one.) However, in comparison to the others, only 3.5 animated series were shown in the US. Not only that, but the second one onward heavily deviated from one another. Duel Masters' first season was loosely derived from the manga, while the succeeding 2nd season for US was entirely original, and the same was true for the third season. The .5 comes in where the Japanese 2nd season, Duel Masters Charge, was localized, but only half of the season was aired as Duel Masters 2.0. The rest was never seen here as a US release.

Next, what's in the anime. To deviate itself from the other card shows, mainly Yu-Gi-Oh!, Duel Masters had more of a comedy element seen in the Americanized version. You can say that the comedy portion was just as prominent, maybe more, as the action it had in it. On top of adding things unseen from the original version, typical anime cliches were joked about, and plenty of pop culture references and  fourth wall breaking moments are recurring. In spite of the comedy, the storyline is technically dramatic, just flooded in humor and puns. Sonic X, a anime made as the 4th TV adaption of Sonic the Hedgehog, was also guilty of this somewhat, but not in the sense Duel Masters was.

Duel Masters ran for a total of 65 episodes, airing from late 2002-2006. It was under different productions with different actors, so it's hard to call who exactly voiced what overall. In fact, doing so given this would be a pain, so I'll omit it this time. Just know that voice actors such as Wendee Lee, Liam O'Brien, and Derek Stephen Prince had roles in the series overall, at least what was shown in the US/Latin American versions. While the anime here is pretty much finished, as with the card game itself, the series is still ongoing in Japan.

Duel Masters I won't say it's the butt of all jokes, but the comedy seen in it was just too much. I respect them trying to be different, but it more or less hurts them so, 5.8 of 10 for this title overall.