do u think the original yu-gi-oh!...

[Fantastische Hure]

...deserves to be seen in a better light than just "l0l card-games"? i think in the manga, the author seemed to try & tell a story & not just do it for merchandising purposes (as can be seen in the millennium-world arc, where i heard there are no cards in the end, despite some being turned into cards like the god-cards fusion). he even gave a back-story as how the card-game came to be & why they were like they were in the series, at-least making it not seem quite as meme-like as it might seem when you hear abt a series were ppl try to play cards to decide the fate of the world.

the anime might be partly to blame for this bcoz all they seemed to care abt was the cards & selling them, turning everything into card-related conflicts.

on another note, do u think the manga did too much of a 180 on yami yugi's personality? it almost seemed like they reset his character, comparing him from the beginning of the manga to the end? like how was the pharao so crazy when he first came-out of the puzzle?

 

[Papasmurf]

Yu-Gi-Oh! chose to be all about the cards when they depicted Kaiba renting an entire city just to hold a card game tournament for a day. There also was basically no indication of the cards having an Egyptian origin except for Monster Reborn's art being an ankh (and that can be attributed to the Egyptian theme of the series in general), until the end of the Pegasus arc retconned it.

As for Atem being crazy when he was first released from the Puzzle, it was explained that was due to being sealed in the Puzzle alongside the spirit of Atem in one of the Bunkobans.

 

[Fantastische Hure]

true abt that

so maybe u could even say duelist-kingdom didn't rly advance the story to the finale in some-ways. it did develop the characters tho & their relationships.

& ye some of it maybe was ridiculous, but i think that at-least in the end it was all kind-of explained with the orgin of the card-game.