How I Watched Yu-Gi-Oh!

I remember really being into Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters and GX when I was growing up watching it on 4Kids showing it every Saturday morning. It was the kind of show that was always in the back of my mind whenever the question "what's your first anime" came up. Before I came to watching Yu-Gi-Oh as an adult I thought it was the easy answer out much like Pokemon and Digimon were and didn't count as answers. However, as an adult I honestly respect and love the Yu-Gi-Oh anime series that I've completed (which is up to 5D's and currently watching Zexal). It wasn't easy, but with dedicated friends and time set for it we were able to watch all of DM, GX, and 5D's.

I mainly grew up watching the anime, but didn't buy into the card game when I was younger. I didn't want to pull some monster, spell, or trap card I was never going to use and have a huge stack of it (I was more into collecting Pokemon cards). My thoughts on the show when I was a kid was pretty premature (as expected), but I think one of my fondest opinion was that I was very much into Yugi and his other self's inner dialogues and how they BOTH were able to push through any duel that came to them. The moments I remember fondly of were mostly moments in Duelist Kingdom, Battle City, and some of Millennium World. I didn't know much of Orrichalcos and the other filler arcs I wasn't too big into. Orrichalcos is pretty hype though. Time passed and GX was airing, but I was still into Yu-Gi-Oh back then mainly because I enjoyed DM as well. I always found Tyranno Hasselberry (please call him Tyranno Kenzan) funny and I did like dinosaurs back then so that was pretty cool to watch during GX. While it was airing on 4Kids I always remember that the entire school was in this different dimension, and didn't think too much back then other then the duels. Now its easily one of the best GX arcs and go as far as even calling it one of the best Yu-Gi-Oh arcs of all time. Aside from all that I didn't have much retention about the show as I thought I did revisiting it. 5D's was an unfortunate case because I was in middle school when that show was airing on 4Kids and didn't really see much of it. Probably for the better because I now already watched it at its best version :^). To summarize this segment started with DM watched a good chunk of it, GX watched a bit of it, and 5D's not much of it. Even with its bad dubs I still found enjoyment out of these shows as a kid, and thought monsters fighting and characters screaming were enough for little Quano to laugh and find fun in.

Let's go from 2005 to 2021 when my friends on Discord and I started this behemoth of a task. We ALL thought "yeah this is never gonna work," until it actually happened. It was funny because we all had some interest in watching Yu-Gi-Oh at some point in time and space, but none of us started. This wasn't until we brought up in a conversation one day that if we were going to watch it we'd watch it together. We had to set our times during the afternoons because 2 of our friends lived in Europe while my other 2 friends lived in the US. It was surprisingly ok with how we set up our time because most of us were in school and classes will vary in time and not just a set 8-4 high school time or a 9-5 job. Although time moves on and we eventually had to switch days, but they were mostly during the afternoons still. We also factored in the episodes we watched on our own, because we were not going to watch every single thing all together. If we wanted to make this simulcast work, we had to make it at least a little realistic about it. Obviously it was not always sunshine and rainbows as people had to dip out and weeks where we were struggling to get back into the grove, but it wouldn't be life without it. My biggest takeaway from this simul was that if we wanted it we got it. I remember some of my past simuls were hard to get through because of time constraints and people were just not interested in the simuls anymore (including me). We felt like we were in such a huge rabbit hole that we decided to go almost all the way through to 5D's, and now almost all of us want to get into Zexal at least.

To this very day I find it really hard for me to watch an anime or TV show that exceeds 100 episodes, because I don't have the time for it. This wasn't a solo watch either I watched it with a group of friends on Discord. Honestly watching Yu-Gi-Oh with friends on Discord was one of the biggest highlights of my life. I mainly wanted to talk about HOW I watched Yu-Gi-Oh as a kid and now as an adult. I know it may seem like a daunting task, but if you have the interest and are willing to put into the time of watching a show that you watched during your childhood I will indefinitely believe in you. The best part is that you could probably watch any Yu-Gi-Oh series you please. Whether it'd be DM itself, GX, 5D's, Zexal, Arc-V, Vrains, Sevens, and Go Rush you have a lot to choose from when it comes to Yu-Gi-Oh much like Gundam itself. I just want to share my experiences from how me and my friends decided to watch Yu-Gi-Oh and got through 3 whole seasons of the anime. I hope everyone reading this blog can takeaway at least one thing from it. If you think you're alone I'm still watching the very early parts of Zexal with almost the same friends that joined me since DM and honestly its a lot of fun so far. So start a long series, if you don't like it drop it, but if you do its 100% worth it.