Yu-Gi-Oh: The Movie – Pyramid of Light

Yu-Gi-Oh was a manga series created in Kazuki Takahashi and serialized between 1996 and 2004. It later spawned into a media franchise, most prominently being its own card game, as well as an anime series originally created by Toei Animation in 1998 and then later by 4Kids in 2000, which also followed the premise of a card game that allowed people to ”duel” each other with mythical creatures based around Egyptian mythology, which was the differentiating element against other media franchises that focused on creatures commanded by people forced to fight like Digimon and Pokémon. While the show was generally liked by people and has become one of the highest grossing media franchises of all time, this didn’t seem to translate over to the movie space, as the 2004 animated film, Pyramid of Light decided to rush into theatres for one last cash grab and failed accordingly. Though it managed to earn back its budget of around $20 million domestically alone, fans with rose-tinted glasses weren’t able to see how much the movie didn’t work. Set in their card-obsessed world, a young boy named Yugi Moto (voiced by Dan Green) is known across the world as the strongest dueling champion and this has caused him to become somewhat of an unwanted celebrity as everyone wants to duel him, and therefore be the one to take his title. One of the main chaser of Yugi is a man named Seto Kaiba (voiced by Eric Stuart), a man who has constantly been defeated by Yugi and wants revenge. After getting two special cards from the creator of the game, Maximillian Pegasus (voiced by Darren Dunstan), Kaiba and Yugi plan to duel it out, but don’t realise that their fighting is helping the god of death, Anubis (voiced by Scott Rayow) resurrect himself and take over the world. While Yugi’s Pharaoh counterpart, Yami Yugi (also voiced by Dan Green) fights Kaiba on the outside, Yugi and his friends, Joey, Tristan and Téa (voiced by Wayne Grayson, Greg Abbey, and Amy Birnbaum) must stop Anubis from returning from the inside of the Pyramid of Light. Distributed by Warner Bros. in an attempt to relive the magical success that came from the Pokémon films released in cinemas, Yu-Gi-Oh! The Movie – Pyramid of Light did not reach the same levels. For an anime adaptation film that made it to theatres, the film doesn’t scream any passion or purpose of existing other than to continue selling the Yu-Gi-Oh line, failing to connect in the ways that theatrical movies from those previously listed franchised released (which were still poorly received from critics, but did well from fans and at the box office). It fails to introduce newcomers into their world with anything distinct or interesting, and fans of the show will appreciate the idea of the movie rather than the actual product presented.

The story itself is horribly generic, with nothing really unique within its narrative to separate it from any other example of a worldwide supernatural threat returning which the heroes have to stop with the only exception being that the tool to defeat it just so happens to be the very popular game that rules everything. With how minimal the threat is and how small they make the stakes and consequences; the film doesn’t have any tension building up to the final moments. Since the backstory is non-existent and the film is more focused on showing the fight than setting up a story, it just feels like an overly long tv episode of the show rather than a cinema-released film, which is fairly common in these kind of movies based on popular TV shows but considering its theatrical and not just a TV movie, you’d figure they would up the ante a little bit. People new to the show won’t get any help in figuring stuff out because nothing is re-established about the world or the characters, so it leaves them blind throughout. People who are familiar with the show may appreciate seeing the spectacle of Yu-Gi-Oh again since the show had recently finished when the movie came out, but the film seems to miss a lot of the interesting element that made up the show, so it doesn’t make sense as to why it would work them. The directing for this movie by Hatsuki Tsuji (who served as an animation director on a few episodes of the show and has directed and animated other anime properties) doesn’t feel like he’s bringing anything dramatic or fresh to the table and is just kind of going through the motion with this film, which doesn’t entirely feel like his fault as it very much is a product meant to exist as a final marketing tool rather than a desire to expand a franchise. Also, the film’s pacing is awfully balanced; as the film is only given about 20-25 mins of set-up and then a full hour of nothing but a duel, which will work fine for fans but not for anyone else.

The characters feel like they have decent characterization for the show and would work if they were given enough time to flesh out and see what they were really like, but in a movie like this with an overly quick pace, zero care for development and growth and almost nothing within the story that would allow for interesting or different interactions, it doesn’t feel like they stand much of a chance. For show-watchers, it works fine but for newcomers the set-up in this movie doesn’t really illustrate their personality or what separates them from every typical anime heroes. With that said, Yugi himself has a memorable designs, the ability to switch between two sides of himself is pretty cool and even allows him to have somewhat of a split personality, his voice actor does wonderfully at switching between the high-pitched kid voice and the booming Egyptian Pharaoh voice seamlessly, and despite being a little generic on the personality spectrum, he is decently likeable enough and makes for a serviceable main character for this kind of series. His friend group seem to be pretty lacking in the character department (when the most defining element about one of them is a thick New York accent, it says a lot), but their friendship with Yugi is pretty nice and with more time to flesh them out, it feels like they would make for a watchable group of characters. Most of the other actors are also good in their parts, as many of them fit in right at home in 4Kids as they are familiar voices from other shows on the channel, so they’re allowed to do their usual impressions and voices and they do them fine. What doesn’t work as well are the villains. Kaiba himself could be a better villain elsewhere, but here he feels like every stereotypical rich jerky anime rival, that and his voice actor is not very good. Anubis actually does have a pretty cool voice and a fitting design, but with no backstory or effect motivation, he’s just a plot device to try and squeeze in a bigger threat to an otherwise meaningless fight.

Even for a anime shown on 4Kids, the animation isn’t the best, especially for something that’s supposed to be movie quality. It’s not necessarily that the animation is technically bad, as it does have some bright colors, one or two of the monster designs are okay, and is has nice enough looking backgrounds, but the characters can sometimes look a bit too overdrawn with the extreme predominant black outlines which mixed with the stilted expressions and low energy makes them feel less alive and more like the cards that they’re playing. It also fails in showing off the action as well. The dueling in this movie is incredibly slow and boring. At least with the other shows like Pokémon when they do action set-pieces, they were at least fast-paced and energetic, they felt like an actual battle whilst here the action consists of a lot of explaining rules and watching very slow animation of monsters attacking one by one, which isn’t interesting or fun to watch. The rules of the card game are too complicated to understand without spelling it out to the audience, which leaves less time for the monsters to go all out on each other, and instead leaves a lot of gaps between the blows and instead just waiting for the next player to make a move, much like the card game itself. The writing is also pretty bad; the strange thing about this series (which was a factor for most anime of the time) is that it had different writers between the Japanese and the American versions (with Junki Takegami and Yoshihiko Masahiro Kubo acting as the Japanese writers, and Michael Pecerlello and Norman J. Grossfeld acting as the American writers). The tones were drastically different between versions of the show, with 4Kids censoring a lot of the more disturbing and even intense contend to be lighter and child-friendly, which goes to explain the lame lines and dumb comedy present in this film. Most of the script doesn’t do a good job detailing their complicated background into movie format as well as setting up a new story that could feel movie worthy. The movie also some a few forced in rock songs from people like Jean Rodriguez and even The Black-Eyed Peas, which don’t fit at all in the tone of the movie, coming off as more of a ‘product of the times’ deals instead. Sometimes there’s a cool musical piece, like a chant of Egyptian choirs whenever a grand monster appears or something connected to the villain, but other than that it’s pretty forgettable.

At the end of the day, Yu-Gi-Oh: Pyramid of Light isn’t a movie for any random moviegoer looking for something anime-like to watch, it’s meant for the people that grew up with the show and would love anything related to it no matter what. On that front, it’s completely fine to like it, but as a movie, it does fail quite a bit. The story is incredibly generic and lacking in any sense of urgency and build-up, the characters feel like they could work if given more time but aren’t put in a situation where they can be interesting, the animation is average at best but definitely not film worthy, the fights are long and dull, the soundtrack is dated, and it doesn’t feel like it does the show justice. It’s not an awful movie, but rather a boring and lackluster one. When watching a movie about watching fantasy Egyptian related magical beast fighting each other is as drawn out and wordy as actually playing the card game in real life, it’s not worth the time.