I hate to do something like this to a review series that's so young, but I hadn't updated anything about it for an entire year and had barely made any meaningful headway into it. So! Opting to reboot the series, but this time majorly cutting down on the sheer amount of pages the thing will take.
In this new take on reviewing the monsters of Yu-Gi-Oh cards and said card art, I'm simply going to be going over an entire "set" or "booster" or "theme deck-exclusive cards" or promo cards or whatever the heck, just all in one go at a time rather than draw out the series like originally intended.
This IS going to mean this first article is going to be retreading mostly familiar ground, but I will opt to re-review them at the very least to give my freshest takes on each creature.
The first-ever creature in the first-ever pack of Yu-Gi-Oh cards is the Hitotsu-Me Giant, a very vanilla, but still cool take on a classic "cyclops". And when I say vanilla I mean "Normalized but not tasteless", unlike a lot of folks that seemed to have conflated "vanilla" as a synonym for "plain", "bland", or "boring." Vanilla became the "default" flavor of ice cream because it was just that good in the first place, guys!!!
Anyway, Hitotsu-Me Giant is a huge, hulked-out monster with big muscles and bluish-green skin, notably bald and also managing to look quite skeletal. Especially with the visible spine that its flesh seems to be hugging uncomfortably tight, and a very skull-like face, distinctly lacking any lips. And of course, it has a single eye. It's what you'd imagine when you hear the word "cyclops", but it stands out in a distinct way!
Yu-Gi-Oh also has its own "type" system, though it's easier to think of them as "archetypes". This being our first-ever "Beast-Warrior" card, which to my memory is a fairly nebulous type usually just referring to any humanoid monster. More like a Man-Beast type.
They also have "Attributes", which name off more elemental-sounding names, and there's only six of them between Earth, Dark, Light, Wind, Fire, and Water. Also a seventh special one that we'll get into when it comes up. But typically they're a lot more broad in their application.
Rating: 6.5/10
Here's a monster card that's one of the franchise mascots, basically by way of being the main protagonist's signature card. And also a monster who is quite distinctly not quite a "monster". I'll still review whatever humanoid monsters I feel like are noteworthy enough to cover, but don't be surprised if I personally elect to skip a few simply because. Yeah, some of the humanoid monsters are very. Just Some Guy.
But not Dark Magician though! He pretty distinctly has an iconic costume; the frankly quite ridiculous purple jumpsuit with the blue suggestion of a robe. It's a funny take on traditional wizard garb, even if the costuming looks a little silly for how self-serious he seems to be.
He's also our first "Spellcaster" type. Which, like the name implies, mainly features a lot of mages, wizards, and magicians. It breaks the mold now and then, but that seems par for the course with a card game that's lasted as long as YGO has.
I'm not going to thoroughly cover the history of reprints and the character of a particular card the moment I get to it like I did back then, but I'll at least look at this alt-art for Dark Magician since it kind of stands alongside the more "normal" purple one as one of the OG Dark Magicians.
What he loses in "wizard"-ness he picks up on feeling a bit more elven, with that pale green skin and bright yellow hair. The costuming is also a little more garish, but I still can't figure out if I like this coloring more than the other or not. It conveys "caster of dark magic" a bit better, but the purple-on-lighter-purple is a bit gentler on the eyes.
Rating: 8.5/10
Another card very iconic to early Yu-Gi-Oh is this ridiculous, dual-lance-wielding knight character with bright red and blue armor, atop the back of a purple horse with a blond mane wearing an adorably matching helmet.
The design, though, I find to be a bit too flagrantly ridiculous. To some point we love this blatantly 90s/2000s ham-and-cheese design of some knight covered in an impractical amount of spikes, but this dude atop his realistically rendered My Little Pony just has one too many colors going on. It'd probably be a bit easier to buy if the horse was a more natural color and they de-saturated his armor a bit.
He's still understandably iconic though; we'll be seeing Gaia here show up quite a few times over the card game's history. And at the very least, I can't say I've ever seen a neon sign of a knight riding atop of bright-violet horse in anything else.
He's also our first "Warrior" type, which to put in Pokemon terms, is basically this game's "Fighting" type, featuring mostly human or human-adjacent fighters, whether armed or simply fighting with their fists.
Rating: 6/10
Here we're getting into something lesser known and more obsoleted cards by today's standards. Mammoth Graveyard is a fairly straightforward monster; it's rather simply an animated mammoth skeleton. Perhaps the most stand-out feature being it has sharper, more dinosaurian claws, but that's about it.
It mainly differs in the shape of the skull, which puts the tusks behind the teeth, as opposed to in-front of the mouth, jutting out the "nose" double-barrel shotgun style.
As such there's little else to comment on Mammoth Graveyard on with regards to it being a monster design. Other than the fact that it's our first "Dinosaur" card. Which, it very much isn't?? Like for one thing, as an animated skeleton, SURELY it fits in more with YGO's undead archetype, "Zombie" cards, right? And mammoths aren't even dinosaurs! Not even close! Just because it's extinct doesn't make it a dinosaur, fellas! A dodo bird's closer to a dinosaur than this guy is!
This ain't even a lost-in-translation deal like a couple of future types. "恐竜", as it's referred to in original Japanese is just Japanese for "Dinosaur".
Rating: 6/10
Silver Fang is another rather plain monster; a white wolf with its one and only real fantastical feature being its evil yellow eyes. And the one other way it differs is that... its ears are bald? Like I only just noticed this, does its ears just not have fur on them? Okay then. Yeah, though, nothing else to see here, really.
It IS our first "Beast" type, an archetype that goes to any terrestrial animalistic monster. It gets more fun members to its family than this.
Rating: 4/10
Now we're REALLY getting into the weird, sometimes abstract creatures that attracted kid-me to the series in the first place. Some old, truly forgottens like Curtain of the Dark Ones here. I know the encroaching grip of power creep is basically inevitable for any card game that's lasted this long, and in fairness, it's not like CotDO here is particularly interesting mechanically. But it's still kinda sad a lot of cards from Yu-Gi-Oh's original run just aren't anywhere close to viable anymore.
But either way, we reach a monster that leaves a lot to the imagination with its card art, being a red, rippling cloth with two vaguely gremlin-like arms poking out from underneath it, but that's it. That's what constitutes a monster! It's so cool in how non-descript it is, to a point where its description doesn't even describe it particularly well.
"A curtain that a spellcaster made, it is said to raise a dark power." Okay sure, let's not address the arms at all. Unless that IS the spellcaster in question? Simply trapped within the confines of their own cloak? See what I mean?!? I LOVE cards like this because your imagination HAS to fill in the blanks.
Like for the various Yu-Gi-Oh video games, where they had to somehow translate cards like these to 3D. And this take from Duelist of the Roses is the neatest, making it out to be a literal curtain draped over a demonic doorway, with the hand occasionally poking out to either attack or beckon the viewer closer.
Rating: 8/10
What feels like a more fitting "first" Dinosaur card is Tomozaurus, a rather simple raptor or t-rex-like dino with, again, little else going on with it. Where pretty much the only major thing about it is how that blood got censored in the international release. Which almost looks better simply because that looks like that green dinosaur is just filled with ketchup more than it is blood.
Rating: 5/10
Dark Gray here is a goat-like creature, with a muted blue body, a poofy, long tail, and a pair of tiny demon wings. Its ears are also fairly understated, and it makes any other facial features other than a pair of glassy, green eyes.
It's a decently spooky creature, keeping minimalist on the features. It works as something that would be passable as a real-life cryptid, but given the "Duel Monsters" universe is a mish-mash of fantasy fiction tropes, it feels a little underwhelming if the intention is meant to be "mythical beast".
Rating: 6.5/10
One of Volume 1's more off-the-wall concepts is this card. It's presented as a babyish child creature, sucking its thumb and everything. Just everything other than its face and arms is a strange, serpentine body coiled around it, as if it's resting within it like was wrapped up in a sleeping bag.
Strangely cute and innocent? Albeit the card text implies it'll send you into an eternal slumber. Though it says it does this by controlling a "sleep fiend", whatever that means. Is that tail it has a "fiend"? Who knows.
Rating: 6.5/10
Another more abstract creature featuring creepy hands, oh boy! Fiends hand, as far as the card art is concerned, is nothing but a few hands emerging from a pool of some kind of sludge, or potentially even blood. Though the card description implies it's some sort of swamp that the hands dragged the damned into.
It's conceptually still pretty simple, but quite creepy indeed! It's also our first Zombie monster! And a fitting start, because all zombies start out as arms emerging from the ground, huh? "Zombie" ends up being a catch-all for any "beyond the dead" or any vaguely spectral creature, whether they be the actual undead, ghosts, vampires, or skeletons. (Unless you're Mammoth Graveyard)
Another monster where 3D games have to take more creative liberties to imagine them up, so here's a fairly undeniably gorey take on the concept, being pretty unambiguously a glob of flesh and blood, complete with creepy mouths and eyes emerging from the fleshy mass. Even more fitting for the "Zombie" moniker!
Compare that though, to the more recent games which backpedal on the concept a bit, turning them into grey-skinned hands emerging from a green, swamp-like water. A bit more befitting the English description, at least, but it does kinda chop the legs off the idea a bit. Which is impressive, given it already didn't have legs.
Rating: 8/10
See? Skeleton! Hard to go wrong with a simple little skeleguy. This one is in a cloak, much like the grim reaper most are familiar with, but instead of having a scythe, he has a flaming bow and arrow. A mix-up to be sure, but one that just has him dip into another skeleton archetype in the skeleton-archer.
Rating: 6/10
Firegrass is a strange-faced plant with a big brow and lips, a body that looks very made of roots, like a beat or carrot. Which stands true, as it has two smaller stems growing out of its head! With the funny, lethargic faces and big megaphone-shaped mouths. This kind of has the energy of a classic N64 Zelda enemy.
It's our first Plant type, too, a surprsingly rare type from what I remember, but maybe this journey of (re)discovery will surprise me. Though as usual with monster-based media that has a typing system, "plant" tends to get fungus creatures lumped in with it as well, despite fungi being their own kingdom of organism, absolutely not plants themselves.
Rating: 7.5/10
See what I mean about Beast-Warrior being a bit nebulous? Here we have a creature that is very clearly not human, right down to having a tail, yet it's put in the regular "Warrior" category. Odd.
Eyearmor is exactly as it says on the tin; an armored little guy with a single, giant eye peeking out of its armored body. It's strangely cute, kind of sharing the same kind of appeal that those mages with voids for faces with nothing but dot-eyes peering out from the darkness that everybody loves so much, but this time displayed with a single, big eye.
Rating: 6.5/10
I'm just going to assume there's some foreign language shenanigans going on here for the name, cause it otherwise sounds a little silly for a creature meant to be a floating, angry storm cloud. It almost lost looks a little brain-like in appearance, but has a pair of featureless eyes peering from the bottom's shadows. Plus a pair of lightning bolt-shaped antennea on top that, again, look perhaps a little sillier than intended.
Appropriately, this is our first Thunder type monster, which I remember being a bit on the rare and fairly uninteresting side. And sometimes, their niche feels hijacked by machines and dragons a little. Or the other way around. Yu-Gi-Oh doesn't do dual-types, just duel types.
Rating: 6.5/10
Now behold, the happiest winged reptile in the universe. Petit Dragon is simply a little, babyish serpentine dragon with wings and an extremely happy face. But a couple of its stand-out features is how puppy-like it is, especially between the mammalian nose and ears. Can't say I dig it, personally, but it's fine for what it is.
Rating: 6/10
Archfiend Marmot of Nefariousness
Here's probably one of the sillier monsters of this set in particular, if nothing else for that completely extra name that has a lot to unpack. "Archfiend" is such a heavy term, carrying demonic connotations up there with Mr. Lucifer D. Satan himself. But then it follows that up with "Marmot", a rodent with a vaguely amusing name. Then follows that up further by saying it is "of Nefariousness". Being nefarious is no laughing matter of course! But "Nefariousness" as a word coming after all that just sounds so silly. Like this is a demon rodent that digs up your flowerbeds or something.
And yeah, it's a cartoon marmot with a demon horn and imp-like wings, perpetually clutching a giant acorn. Because most of my exposure to this card was through the Yu-Gi-Oh video games, and this back when the image quality on said cards wasn't the greatest, but for a good long while I thought that acorn was just its overgrown belly, and that it was just an especially fat marmot.
Gets a letter grade for that name alone.
Rating: 7/10
Here's an interesting little one. Not necessarily for the design itself... it's a simple little chibi angel thing, having the general Kirby body plan, but add a couple of wings and a halo. It works for how simple it is. But then comes the censored American version...
The American print of the card removed the halo from its card art, leaving an awkwardly empty space there, aww! Seemingly all because this was a game doing its best to avoid the 90s-2000s "Satanic Panic" where just about every kid's media under the sun was getting labeled as promoting Satanism by Christian parents. So they TRY to avoid having any Christian imagery at all, but this hardly stopped them from trying to ban a card game where the main draw was summoning monsters to do your bidding.
It goes right down to how "Fairy" type here is actually "Angel" type in Japanese, which will make even more sense when we get to stronger "Fairy" cards later on. Similarly, the "Fiend" type that we'll be seeing a little later is "Demon" type in Japan.
Rating: 6/10
FINALLY our first insect!! I feel like along with Pokemon and Pikmin, I owe Yu-Gi-Oh in big part for why I developed such a fascination with insects as a kid. And our first-ever one in this card game is a simple giant wasp, and you would think "Wasp with a scythe" would be an idea that translates to giving it a sickle for a stinger. Instead though, this one is a run-of-the-mill giant wasp, but one of its legs ends with a huge, bladed appendage. Which is a look that actually kinda works, if a little impractical looking. Neat, for how simple it is!
Rating: 7/10
Thunder *Kid* feels like a funny misnomer, but it suits it well enough as a mischievous electric lizard thing. And given the combination of zig-zag tail, two "ears", similar stature, and a color scheme of largely yellow, orange-ish brown, and red, I can't help but wonder if this is a deliberate reference to none other than Pikachu.
I'm a bit less of a fan of this thing's design though. It's largely fine, but then it has those HUGE sultry lips and just. Eugh. It's very much a me-thing that I just dislike huge, pronounced and over-exaggerated lips like this, but in on a blog where we're talking about me-things, that means this guy gets the "No thank you."
Rating: 4/10
What self-respecting monster series is satisfied with merely just ONE cyclops?! You gotta have a pair of them! To make up for the lack of eyes, you see. Meotoko is another cycloptic guy, this time given a Hitmonlee-esque figure where it has no true "head", or that its torso doubles as its head, with a single big eye across its chest. This plus the demon horns and the buzz-cut top makes it a funny-looking guy. Bit of a classical oni feel to it.
Rating: 6/10
Kagemusha of the Blue Flame ...And this is what I mean when I say I'm granting myself the liberty to maybe skip some of these guys. Because some of these monsters really do just have a "just some guy" energy to them.
Rating: 2/10
Our first "Aqua" creature is this giant, monstrous starfish! And what a gnarly one it is! Between its lumpy hide, and a central mouth that looks more like a sea anemone with a radial mouth inside of it, it's a simple but very effective creature!
Rating: 8/10
This monster is little else than an hourglass with angel wings and an emblem of a moon atop it. And that's kinda neato for our second-ever "Angel" monster? From the amount of Yu-Gi-Oh monsters I'm aware if, this isn't the norm for Fairy types, but I always eat up when angels are in and of themselves depicted as not just monsters, but faceless, cold-looking things.
The term "Biblically accurate angel" gets thrown around and memed a lot lately, but this kind of thing IS true to Christianity; all residents of heaven are meant to be mindless servants to the big man himself, that will ONLY ever act with his will in mind, shedding any sense of individuality said being may have once had. And representing that as beings that look more like objects than people goes hard as hell.
Rating: 8/10
First Rock monster is a little rounded stone guy with a black void beneath the carving suggestion of a worried face, with little yellow dots peering from said void. It also has odd little noodle limbs, and even a limb of the same type wrapped around its feet. Is it a type of skirting? Or a tail? Or is this just how Hinawa sits? Questions only I would care enough to ask, probably. Otherwise, their face reminds me of Clancers from "Mischief Makers" quite a bit. Whether Haniwa is a deliberate reference to it, or if they're just both based on the same thing is something I can't clarify, nor can I find anything that clarifies it, but. It's a thing!
Rating: 7/10
Finally, our first "Fiend!" As stated earlier, "Fiend" is the localization stand-in for a "Demon" type, and WHAT a demon to start with. This beast is the severed foot of a bird, or claw of a demon (either or, barely a difference) with an eye stalk growing out of it. And I don't mean like, a snail's eye stalk either. I mean the actual stalk of a humanoid eye. It's even brutal enough to just have little veins dangle off of it like eyelashes.
It's a beast that goes HELLA hard, with such an absurd and actually kinda gory monster. This is exactly what I mean when I said I miss older Yu-Gi-Oh monster designs. Because it feels like so few of them actively go out of their way to be outright GROSS. And gross is always a brave design decision, since, y'know. Being unapologetically unappealing is kinda the point.
Rating: 9/10
This almost feels like a Fiend counterpart to Hourglass of Life. But Hand of Fate is a simple design: A hand made of wax with the wick burning at the fingertip, all sitting on a candle holder. It's simple, but still very visually striking in a bit of an esoteric kinda way. Like the sorta visual you'd remember from one of those dreams that was just blobby nonsense, and the best your mere mortal brain can piece together this. Whatever.
Rating: 8/10
An almost Metroidian creature, Archfiend Mirror is a strange, serpentine reptilian with a bird-like visage. Add onto that some scratchy, scaly skin and an unfeeling face, and some fun little wings on the side, that it's a starful beast, even without its prop.
So then throw in the mirror that it grasps onto, and it makes for something decently striking. The mirror seems a little understated, but maybe that can be owed to the Archfiend itself having a lot of the design complexity real-estate.
Rating: 8/10
This cartoonishly muscular dude just doesn't do it for us. He seems fairly typical for a design of a not-entirely-humanoid merfolk, even down to replacing hair with big fish fins and wielding a trident. But I think the ultimate crime is that he feels so unremarkable for someone who's meant to be the "King" of something. Especially since he just looks like the lowly mook of a merman army, even with his cape.
Rating: 5/10
Second-to-last monster of this set is a strange cultist-looking type of dude, one that perhaps understandably wound up with a Star of David on his forehead being removed from international releases. Other than that, while neat on his own, he feels a bit like a less cool version of Curtain of the Dark Ones. He has a single creepy hand emerging from his robed body, from a very unfortunately drawn opening, and things like the clawed hand and the sneering eyes planted on the robe itself just feels like it's trying too hard to be scary.
Rating: 6/10
Our last monster for now is a crow-like beast, but anthropomorphized with talony hands and legs. It doesn't have wings on its arms, rather it does the strange fantasy thing of having the humanoid bird monster have wings on its back instead, making it feel a bit more imp-like. BUT it does have a whip-like tail, apparently! Okay, that's nothing magical, but it's minor intrigue for an otherwise simple design like this one.
Rating: 6/10
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