Alrighty, today we're gonna be starting something I've been wanting to start for a while now but, bwah. Real life kept getting in the way, I remembered I wanted to do a "151 animals that I want as Pokemon" list, and of course I've been busy with re-uploading and re-reviewing one Pokemon review per day over on this new blog. Well, I'm gonna take a bit of a break from the daily Pokemon uploads, cause I've been itching to get into Yu-Gi-Oh. Don't fret through! I'll probably want to take a break from this at some point too and I'll get back to Pokemon.
A lot more than just Pokemon had a big influence on me as a child and got me to love the art of monster design like I do today! Another one of those things is early Yu-Gi-Oh, a card game and anime I used to play and watch a lot, but have fallen off way hard at this point. One of the big factors I'll get into in a second, but I'm gonna nostalgia trip for a bit.
Like I said, like a lot of Yu-Gi-Oh kids at the time, the anime and card game used to be my jam way back when, to a point where I would probably have thousands of dollars worth of cards if dumb KID-ME knew to take better care of those things!!! But the aspect I was easily the most into for the series was how cool all the monsters looked. I loved Blue-Eyes, Dark Magician, Relinquished, and a number of other monsters that have become iconic to the series. But you know what other aspect of Yu-Gi-Oh I also used to be really big into?
Naturally, with Konami being a video game company, the YGO brand also got quite a number of video games, a lot of them being weird little one-offs that didn't really happen in the same continuity as the anime or even each other all that much. But one thing these games had that our TCG didn't was...
A ton, TON of weird monsters I didn't even know existed! These cards were either exclusive to the Japanese "OCG" or had very limited releases in the American "TCG", but because of the video game, I got to be introduced to a ton of these absolute weirdos and I really got engrossed with them. THESE things were more specifically the kinds of Yu-Gi-Oh monsters I grew up with. These were cards you couldn't just simply HAVE! Even if these days I'm sure some of these cards are notably more accessible, but still.
It's these weirdos especially that I'd like to revisit with this review series, though I'll keep going on from there! In what order exactly is an anomaly, which is why I'd merely call this series "Vixi reviews as many Yu-Gi-Oh monsters as she can get ahold of" rather than promise every single one. In fact, there might be some monsters I intentionally skip just because I sincerely don't have anything to say about them (ei. the monsters that are sort of just... regular human warriors or what-have-you.)
One big reason I fell out of love with this series is because of its shift in overall design style. It felt like weird, bizarre creatures were taking a backseat to a lot more conventionally "rule of cool" monsters which felt like they were designed to sell merch above anything else, which is fine if that's your thing. I just personally find Fungi of the Musk here a lot more interesting than Nova Master. But who knows! Maybe I'll have a change of heart as I get closer to Yu-Gi-Oh's "modern" era. There's still some newer designs I catch a look at and think they're neat, so it can't all be bad. Maybe I only see the "marketable" ones because that's all they friggin show.
How I'm gonna handle this is... oh jesus christ
As I'm writing this I'm still not 100% certain on a "gameplan" for what order to tackle this in. I'm gonna start with the OCG's "Volume 1" and go from there, since that's where all the weird monsters I thought were video-game exclusive for a while are, and possibly EVENTUALLY transfer over to TCG order at some point. But otherwise, hell if I know. There's probably thousands of these damn critters at this point, so there's probably no easy way I'm gonna be able to keep ALL of it orderly. It's very much a build-the-plane-while-flying-it sort of deal.
And also seeing how Yu-Gi-Oh is both a long-running card game series, AND is still chugging along fairly well to this very day, I dunno if this series will ever hit a point where it'll "end" like how I am with *new* Pokemon reviews until Gen 9 happens. Like, unless I just get outright bored, Yu-Gi-Oh will probably just be an evergreen review series on here that I'll always fall back on during a dry spell or in-between more major projects.
As for the reviews themselves, I'll tackle at least one monster at a time, sometimes more if there's an overall theme going on with the monsters within a given pack, which from what I gather, is something that happens more often later on.
And of course, some cards have huge, long-running lines of variations and evolutions on the same concept, so I'll cover those all in one review as I see fit. And as many as I can find that also fit in. Again, I'm an outsider looking in these days, so there's a good chance I might just miss a version of Blue-Eyes or something.
Also like, I'm just here to look at the art, just FYI. I'm not really here to comment on meta relevance or anything like that, simply because even as a kid I didn't pay a ton of attention to that stuff. Though I will comment on a monster's effect if it plays into its design theme!
And of course, this will be our rating system, out of 10 as usual.
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