Yu-Gi-Oh’s dystopia is more like real life than ever

Franchising is a huge topic around the world. Every day, it seems that a new franchise game emerges. Brands are not there to make consumers, but rather to be consumed by audiences. Tech billionaires and acclaimed “geniuses” have become a new breed of celebrity and influence everything from entertainment to politics. Their creations can blur lines between reality and fantasy as they try to recreate it online in 3D interactive forms. Participants in the new reality may find a whole new life, and their choices seem limitless.

I’m talking about Yu-Gi-Oh!It is, however.

Kazuki Takahashi created it in 1996. Yu-Gi-Oh! began as a manga in the pages of Weekly Shōnen Jump, the famous anthology that’s also been home to series like Dragon Ball, One Piece, Demon Slayer. There you will find the following: Yu-Gi-Oh!It grew into an immensely popular trading card game and anime series, which was then treated as such in America. Pokémon’s heir apparent, and all manner of merchandising. To this day, there are new series in development and the release of the most recent. Yu-Gi-Oh! Yu-Gi-Oh!Within a matter of two weeks, the book was downloaded more than 10,000,000 times.

However, it’s the original story that most resembles modern life. The world Takahashi invented was definitely reflective of the late 1990s tidal wave of new toys and branding — one chapter takes place in a mega fast food chain, while another centers on the lust for a new pair of sneakers. You can also find ones about Tamagotchi-esque virtual pets, superhero comics and a monster-based game. Considering the plot typically dealt with young student Yugi Muto becoming “Yami Yugi” thanks to the Millennium Puzzle (and spirit of an ancient pharaoh) that he possesses, new trends provided new scenarios for Yugi to tackle unscrupulous people in “Shadow Games.” But it also felt meditative on the hyper-consumption of products, as a generation oohed and ahhed at the latest gadget before promptly forgetting it by the next chapter.

Image: Toei Animation

Image: Toei Animation

Takahashi’s manga was first known for the Duel Monsters card-battling game. It was chapter 9 that Takahashi revealed it. (It was originally called Magic & Wizards, a title that doesn’t quite have the same impact, especially in a world falling in love with critter collecting franchises like Pokémon Digimon. It’s a fairly simple formula for a game, akin to The Gathering: Magic and the GatheringIn its fundamental mechanics.

Yugi, his closest friends, and most of his family, are at least somewhat interested in anime. So is a large portion of people he meets. Duel Monsters would be the central focus of the story and its narrative currency for a long time.Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters would be the name of the popular anime in Japan, with a lesser-known “Season 0” having covered some of the earlier bits). It would not only remake the series, but also build on the foundations of a populace seemingly in a state of constant trance due to new devices and gadgets every week. The society that it would create seems similar to the one we have today.

Image: Toei Animation

Duel Monsters’ most direct connection to the real world can be seen in its collection. The trading card game, which is both popular in manga and anime, is loved by many people. It’s played by everyone from school children to the wealthy. There is a wide fanbase for this game in anime, making it almost a sign of the near-riots the trading card game will cause. The first episode shows an old man getting beaten up because he was playing with the cards. In recent years, rare card collectors have seen their prices rise to absurd levels, with celebrities more than ever displaying their collection for social media. Rare cards — Yu-Gi-Oh! or otherwise — have become a status symbol, and suddenly the image of fictional tech prodigy Seto Kaiba carrying around a shiny briefcase full of cards doesn’t look so outlandish.

Seto Kaiba is an anime-haired Silicon Valley God. Their presence pushes the boundaries of the universe more than any government can ever hope. Kaiba is an orphan and conglomerate leader who can not only develop games and electronics, but can also play them. And while I’d never compare him to a Zuckerberg, Musk, or Bezos — Kaiba is actually likable at times and charismatic — the fascination fictional people have with him and his wealth and talents is certainly reminiscent of what the tech elite commands today. His power is almost logic-skirting in size. For a bit, he’s able to turn an entire city into a haven for a card battle tournament, similar to how the Walt Disney Company can effectively own an entire district.

Image: Toei Animation

Image: Toei Animation

Image: Toei Animation

Kaiba’s not alone: The Duelist Kingdom arc of the series introduces Maximillion Pegasus, the creator of the Duel Monsters game and a mythic figure. Though obviously more flamboyantly evil than moguls like Walt Disney (even as they share an obsession with “toons”), Pegasus also has the capabilities to turn his franchising dreams into whole realities for fans to lose themselves in. Pegasus owns an island on the Pacific that hosts Duelist Kingdom. It is a space for gamers to fantasize and to simply duel. Like The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, Galactic Starcruiser, or even the planned Super Mario theme park, it’s a place that thrives on escapism (“What if you didn’t have to worry about anything other than interacting with the brand you like?”). Just because it is big, doesn’t make it any less fun.

The way Duel Monsters can be played seemed like science fiction in the late ’90s, when the anime debuted, but now feels like something that we’re actively working toward. You can still play the card game, but the anime introduced huge boards which allow you summon 3D computer-generated monsters. These creatures move and attack at your will. These giant arenas were later taken mobile with Kaiba’s Duel Disk, a piece of equipment that you clip to your arm and place cards on (and, most important of all, it looks absolutely rad). That way, even when you’re on the go, you can summon your Dark Magician or Blue Eyes White Dragon for a quick game.

Image: Toei Animation

Image: Niantic/The Pokémon Company

All of these are not too distant from the successes in augmented reality as well as the metaverse arms races that seem both absurd and inevitable with more companies latching onto them. While we can’t yet bring Pokémon into the real world, the massive success of something like Pokémon GoThe market opens up for the introduction of computer-generated parts and spectacles into existing environments.Click Here’s developer is also working on a new digital pet game where you have to take care of and protect little critters. In the planned game, “every creature is unique,” meaning our relationship with augmented reality has the potential to change as it’s developed. Considering that people formed such intense connections with their Tamagotchi that they actually requested physical graveyards for them when the pets died, it’s not a leap to assume that many more will inevitably discover their “heart of the cards” in beasts formed through computerized inputs.

The last social aspect is the one found in Yu-Gi-Oh! It has become a dominant force in the lives of millions. It is not only that an industry exists to watch and obsess over the people who play in the imaginary world, but entire identities are created by your attitude towards the game. Characters like “Insector” Haga and “Dinosaur” Ryuzaki and “Bandit Keith” Howard all achieve varying levels of infamy because of their ability to win games and how they treat their opponents.

Sometimes their personalities can be irritating, and sometimes they are a bit smug. Yu-Gi-Oh!’s ethos, but in “no publicity is bad publicity” fashion, they fit in. Haga throwing Yugi’s Exodia cards off the side of a ship — a ship, by the way, full of hundreds of duelists that could very well see him — is barely different from the scandals fueling subscriber counts of internet celebrities. Even before Duel Monsters was introduced in the manga, the openly malicious behavior of the people Yugi ran into and the pride they took in other people’s bewilderment meant that it was a world that ran on the inherent idea that questionable people often did awful stuff for attention. However, because it’s a shōnen manga, a genre often built around the triumph of powerful good over evil, they get their karmic retribution. Real life is more complex and chaotic.

Yu-Gi-Oh! didn’t outright predict the future. It did occur at the time that many of the common features of modernity had been built. In a story about people latching onto an all-encompassing entertainment trend, one so massive that it influences how society itself functions, we find the roots of many of pop culture and the internet’s prime hubs. There will be no return to the world of before Facebook, YouTube, or Disney. These are all companies and brands which have changed how people consume media over the past 25 years.

Image: Toei Company

Yugi defeats the pharaoh he had once been friends with at the end of the manga. His victory eventually leads to him deciding that his own path could start because of this win. He’s spent the series facing off with industrial magnates, gaming fanatics, schoolyard bullies, and his spiritual other half, so it’s time to just do Yugi for a change. It’s an optimistic and humane ending befitting of its genre, but it also turns any kind of societal growth into a purely personal choice (at the end of the anime, Kaiba sets off in a wonderfully ludicrous jet shaped like his favorite card). It was just like the manga that it shared a house with. Yu-Gi-Oh! If one is able to persist and have the courage to face any obstacle, it doesn’t matter how big or complex. The systemic problems were rare, but there were many aberrant forms of stability that could be fixed with friendship and power.

But in real life, the monstrous forces that we’ve conjured require more than one person to defeat, and the Seto Kaibas on the hilltop show no signs of consistent good will to round out their emotional arcs. Everything we create, love, and require comes with the condition of feeding the pockets of the rich. Although we may not all collect Blue Eyes White Dragons at the same time, Yu-Gi-Oh!’s world is one we can’t escape.