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Battle City had: 1. Multiple evil threats 2. God Cards 3. Darker tone 4. Scary imagery 5. Epic duels 6. Long duels

In the manga Joey despises his father for being a drunk and a gambler who lost it all. I find it ironic that Joey relies heavily on “lucky cards” to win his duels, for example, time wizard, them dice cards, and a few more I can’t think of off the top my head.

Joey vs Marik remains one of my favorite duels because it’s probably the first time I ever saw a “side character” win against the main villain. It was so cool as a kid seeing him withstand Marik’s attack and seeing everyone’s shocked faces that Joey was still standing. He’ll always be the winner of that duel to me.

Joey had my respect in duelist kingdom even if he was the comic relief. Jumping overboard to retrieve the pieces of exodia is something only a true friend who really cares would do.

Battle City was it. Evil Egyptian Cult, God Cards that come alive, the antagonist having a personality change that makes him even more insane, what more could we ask?

Joey was Takahashi’s favorite character too. He even admitted Joey had the potential to be the strongest character because of his ability to grow. And he did actually canonically beat yugi albeit off screen. In the manga you see he got red eyes back when he uses it against zorc in millennium world. But in the anime we get to see him using it much earlier in the doma and KCGP arcs as well.

The only problem is that Ishizu dueled ONCE and faded to obscurity.

As disappointing as Joey losing against Marik on a technicality was, I think its what ended up turning him into a fan favorite I mean, working really hard and getting an inch away from your goal, only for it to just barely slip out of your grasp because of something out of your control is insanely relatable. It added to the idea of Joey being the underdog and why he's still loved as arguibly one if the best characters in the entire franchise

Battle city was the peak, absolutely!! I’m 30+ years old now I remember the popularity of Yu-Gi-Oh in the early 2000’s. Nothing has came close to surpassing the original series!!

what i remember in the battle city arc is that Yugi was the only one to duel the rare hunters while Joey duel regular duelists

The reason duelist kingdom doesn’t follow the rule book is because there wasn’t a rule book yet. The manga came out quite a bit before the card game and the rules weren’t set in stone yet. Kazuki takahashi was just trying to make an entertaining story

In all honesty the Battle City season defined the entire era. Dude this is literally the best Yu-Gi-Oh! documentary I've seen yet!!

Joey vs Marik was so impactful because je earned Kaiba's respect, made Marik vomit in fear and had the resolve to withstand Ra's full power. I personally think it was still an amazing moment, even if it didnt end in his favor

Joey and Yugi’s duel while he’s possessed by Marik is the most heart wrenching duel in the whole series

4kids really messed up a lot of things. The worst was removing yubel’s love of Jaden yuki and replacing it with “wanting a play mate” it pissed me off but I still love that series.

Joey only lost to Marik because of his cheating, not because of his lack of skills as a duelist. As such, he gained fans' respect.

Joey had a lot of untapped potential. Kinda seems like there was still something's to explore in his character growth.

I believed 100 percent that Kaiba was at his Breaking point in this season. He was Using Obelisk that most duelist were scared of using his Power. Kaiba was killing those Rare Hunters!

Yugioh will always be my favorite anime. The characters, duals, and yes the voice acting is what made my childhood. As for joey plot I like it for him able to dual on his own and with the cards that he gains(even if 3 out the 4 cards he won was unless).

I actually never realized that Joey subtly matured in the face of feeling coddled until you showed the clip of him rejecting Red Eyes Black Dragon. Right before he duels Mai in the first arc, he gets so frustrated with Tristan talking about how he's on a much lower level than her that he punches him to the ground. Here, he assesses that Yugi is genuinely trying to help him by giving him his card back, and calmly decides to break away so he can improve.

It's golden age of this whole franchise. Most popular the game ever was, every kid knew yugioh and this season is one of the reasons early battle city (part 1) is golden era of Yugioh as a whole. Show steadily dropped after that but not by much, however after 5D's ended it dropped a lot.

Everyone always states it was the best because of the Gods. But to me the best part about battle city was joey playing the tournament as intend, while also building a deck as intended. You know, collecting good cards, randomly building a deck with the best you can find and then creating new strategies with these cards, that originally weren't designed to be used together. It had the whole creativity and own personality thing going. But when GX aired that changed when all of a sudden all strategies and combos where predetermined by the theme you were playing

I love Joey for his insane character development during both the trading card arcs. However, I think having Joey win over Marik would be too far-fetched. The manga hinted many times that millennium artifacts all have their own will, their dark side that will always try to overwhelm opponents, unless it's another millennium artifact user. Usually, non-artifact users don't have sufficient mental will to battle artifact users in a shadow game.

me and my family grew with Yugi-oh and the best arc we watched was the battle city arc being the most consistent and most badass like seeing Kaiba obtain Oblesik and obliterate max CPU difficulty, seeing Joey play against all his different opponents and winning using his skills and almost beating Marik, Yugi battling all the egyptian god cards throughout the arc, we got established rules so we understood how the game worked unlike duelist kingdom, Marik is a legendery villain and the way he twists his friends against him is the most challenging and toughest challenges Yugi ever faced and finally Kaiba aknowledging that he must help Yugi in order to defeat Marik and save everyone it's honestly the best arc and most compelling

I think Original Yugioh need reboot. All of want Kaiba, Joey, Yugi summoning their's ace monster and all of previous faults in the anime get fixed with new storyline. If this is gonna happen it would be the greatest gift of all time that we get from Konami and rest Yugioh Creators 😌

Battle City was Yugioh at its peak and it is in my top arcs,Battle City,Noah's arc,Duelist Kingdom and good video dude.

I remember seeing the duel between possessed Joey and Yugi, and running into my mom's room every other episode to rant about how heart-wrenching it was and how worried I was. I adored Joey as a character, he was in my top 3 favorite characters at the time, and it was so crazy. I think Joey becoming KoG would be so awesome, actually.

Joey's emotion, and passion and sacrifice brought me to tears, every week. The true Kings of games.

Battle City is lowkey one of the greatest arcs in anime history for me. It's right up there with stuff like the Freeza Saga. It's impossible to not remember Yugioh and how important this arc was, probably the most important in all of the franchise.

Joey becoming the unofficial king of games, I really would of been okay with that. Joey should of beaten Marik but after the duel was unable to compete in the finals so So the final duel is Yugi/atem vs kiba. Yugi/atem wins then later Yugi & Joey have their off screen duel and boom Joey the unofficial king of games.

I was completely enthralled by the battle city arc as a kid, I was waking up to watch it at 8 AM on a Saturday so I wouldn’t miss an episode. Marik was my favorite Yu Gi Oh villain and the duels were so good. I even bought Ra because Marik used him 😅

Looking back at Duelist Kingdom it's clear it was playing by it's own set of rules even in universe and I feel like the dub especially did a very poor job of explaining that to the audience. There were hints about it, especially with no one calling Yugi/Yami out on some of the stunts pulled. I watched a video on another channel where he explained Duelist Kingdom as basically YGO meets DnD which looking at it with that mindset makes the whole thing make a lot more sense. XD

I find it sad how much fans praise battle city over everything else, considering its the one arc Takahashi was forced to write.

We would have had a Battle City Finals between Yugi VS Joey(with Winged Ra) had the writers went through the plan that Gearfield's direct attack would be succesful and a pissed off Kaiba in the audience flabbergasted how Joey was able to pull it off lol

The part about Joey becoming the King of Games and getting his Red Eyes back by defeating Yugi gave me goosebumps. How cool, love the idea :')

“Kaiba cooperating with other people” 😂 that made me chuckle

I never knew a Jump editor got the Chunin Exams to end in that weird way, it always felt so unexpected to me, and I don’t mean in a good way. It’s actually quite upsetting when you think about the times a Jump editor basically wrote off a great idea because they didn’t like it.

The cards themselves were also better for anime format since they weren't an incoherent chapter-length mess of text for the most part they were much simpler and shorter texts. And even when the texts were longer on a card it was usualy very singular in what it was doing, for example, relinquished had a long text but it was singular in what it did, it made the opponent monster its own body.

The tale of Battle City is the culmination of "What it is to be a Duelist" in *Yu-Gi-Oh: Duelist.* Manga is like an entirely different show. Yugi derailed from this, because he had to find the Pharaoh's memories Meanwhile, Joey actually kept the promise to be a True Duelist, dueling all present day duelists like Yugi did in Duelist Kingdom and understanding their souls. Souls plays a heavy role in Yu-Gi-Oh: Duelist, again like an entirely different show, because the "duel towers" are actually the card decks all the duelists have (how they stack up), and with the antee of BC? Each Tower holds many souls, for good or ill. This is why Yugi was able to save Joey, he strengthened his soul by having his Red-Eyes defeat Blue-Eyes, this is a throwback to how Yugi strengthened his Grandpa's soul to live by having Exodia destroy Blue-Eyes. By the end of Battle City, it is _implied_ that the strongest Duelist is Joey, able to take down even Marik without God Cards, this was meant to be the build up for the Yugi vs Joey battle at the end. However, like many things Kazuki Takahashi makes, he writes about a huge pay-off later, and it ends up being _the journey_ that's more fulfilling than his promises for the end, hence why he didn't write that ending. However, in the sequel *Yu-Gi-Oh: Millennium World,* it is heavily implied that Joey beat Yugi in that duel.

Never disagreed with a video so much. I thought this would be an analysis on Battle City but it just talks about Joey and Season 0. Battle City was amazing because the ante card rule was so much fun and a great way for us to see Joeys deck improve. The theme around modern day duels and Egyptian shadow games fit so well with the Egyptian Gods and seeing Yugi use Slifer for the first time was awe inspiring. It also had the most memorable characters and battles as we had the existing Season 1 duellists with upgraded decks and a sub plot with Bakura and Marik that became fan favourites as a villain. Joey losing to Marik was fitting as Yugi is the protagonist and Joey had no Egyptian background so could not have weilded a god card. It was such a powerful moment because we as an audience and the likes of Kaiba all had to recognise that Joey would have been the winner if the duel was played normally.

I think my favorite part of the Joey vs marik duel is that the ending could be summed up by the statement "the only thing stopping me from winning is God himself"

I like how he refers to Jonouchi and Honda with their english names but calls Anzu as she is.

As someone who's currently reading the manga, I discovered that the reason why the game in Duelist Kingdom is the way it is, is due to the new rules Pegasus made specifically for that tournament, which essentially turned the card game of Duel Monsters into a glorified PVP Tabletop RPG. Even the way the Duel Disk duel between Yugi and Kaiba worked wasn't considered "standard Duel Monsters" (each player could actually attack cards in their opponents' hand because of the format of the Duel Disk prototype). When you look at the manga the way it was at the time, Duelist Kingdom started shortly after the first encounter against Yami Bakura who had forced Yugi into a shadow game in the form of a Tabletop RPG. (Definitely my favorite story arc from that part of the manga), and with how much Takahashi loved Tabletop RPGs, it makes a whole lot of sense why he would want to write and draw more of those types of battles since ot clearly played to his strengths. I personally love Duelist Kingdom a whole lot from a writing perspective, but the anime and English Dub didn't do the best job of adapting the games in that arc.

Joey has always been my favorite character since the series began, made me want to collect all items with him on it including pre-Konami character cards/stickers and every print of REBD

Battle City was definitely the peak. I literally built my duel disk as a kid for my brother and me. Great times.

Tbh one of my favorite parts in Battle City is how Yami and Yugi relationship develops (talking about the Japanese version and the manga) Not only they became more close to each other but they also realize that someday they should separate, and that's truly difficult for both. Not bc they want to but bc it's the right thing to do. Both have to grow in order to do this, despite how much it would still hurts.

We also see Joey vs Kaiba for the 2nd place finish of Battle City, and despite that fact he lost, he had fun dueling. His attitude was exactly the embodiment of playing for the love of game, regardless of whether he won/lost

remember that scene where marik shuffles the deck and laughs like a crazy person? i think about that a lot

There's a few issues with your idea of making Jonouchi King of Games: 1. Atem still needed the 3 God cards to unlock his past, so even if Jonouchi had defeated Malik and gotten Ra, he would still need to lose to Yugi in the finals for him to get it. And far as I understood, you *have* to win a God card, else it won't obey you, so the idea they would duel to get back Red-Eyes in the finals is out of the question, that was always meant to be an off screen duel. 2. Yugi and Jonouchi were the finalist of Duelist Kingdom and in the manga, he immediately gave up because he didn't want to be an obstacle to his friend's goal. I'd assume that the same would hold true if they were the finalist of Battle City and Jonouchi would end up holding back for most of the duel. Edit: Also, another thing worth noting is that, while everyones likes to point out Jonouchi technically defeated Malik no one seems to remember that Mai also did the same, she only lost that duel because she couldn’t read Ra’s Egyptian text. For all intents and purposes, she won that duel fair and square too. There even is an official rule in the TCG that says if you’re using a card in a foreign language, you must provide a translation to your opponent.

Having Joey vs Yugi as the final battle would have fallen a bit flat as a season finale, the stakes were joey winning his card back, whereas Yugi vs Marik the stakes were the fate of the world, I think they made the right choice in the end.

From beating off high school bullies to the very real threat of CARD GAMES ON MOTORCYCLES

When I was a kid, when we played the card game we had to say if we were playing kaiba rules or pegasus rules.

Battle city rose the stakes, made characters that were from a different manga and series completely unique and different, and took risks. I also liked the ancient Egyptian thing going more indepth. Oh, and ishizu is hot af. Marik got a good looking sister. Oh, and can I say that Marik was BADASS? He literally was super intimidating. I literally thought his darker self was gonna completely win And I agree. Joey/Jounouchi is my favorite. He literally was my favorite. Had a shirt with him on it, and all of that

Couldn’t agree with the title more. The series continues the chase of that high that was the battle city tournament.

When I was in elementary school, the battle city saga made yugioh blow up even more.

"We can turn our eyes to the real highlight of Battle City" "SETO KAI-" "The narrative." "Oh."

Battle city was my favorite arc when I was a kid. Back then I use to loose a lot until I saw Yami Bakura’s deck and copied it, then I started to see wins. Good times

It would've been hilarious seeing Joey win all the god cards from Yugi and Yami getting flustered from being beaten, because he can't out-strategize Joey's insane luck cards.

Flashbacks to my job at a wireless company where me and my coworker would yell, in our best Boston accent, “JOHWEEEEEE WHEEEELAHHHHH” throughout the day

Extremely well composed video and editing. I was baffled to see that you only had less than 3000 subscribers! I hope your channel blows up in popularity soon!

I like the way Joey's arc ended, because his last duel wasn't with Marik, it was with Kaiba for third place and he lost. But more importantly he was happy after the duel because he had fun; as mentioned a true duelist plays not for the outcome but for the love of the game. And nothing shows that better than being happy after a loss because it was fun. That's why he was able to get his Red-Eyes back, because in the end he was able to face Yugi as a true duelist.

another good example of jump editors interfering was when toriyama was going to kill goku off at the cell saga but jump told him to write him back in for the buu arc

I posted this in another comments reply but I want to share this idea here too. I find Joey's relationship with luck in the card game interesting. During Duelist Kingdom he went from pure mindless brawl to honing his skills, learning to combo Spells and Traps into his style. Nothing luck-based of his own volition, and Yugi's Time Wizard being a last minute gift he put in because of his trust in Yugi. Time Wizard ends up pulling Joey though during his first duel in DK. It didn't always pull through but it turned the tables on scenarios where he probably had no other way to do so. I recall Joey dueling mostly this way until his duel against the rare hunter that took his Red-Eyes. His skills had grown but the world is big and you are bound to bump into people with better technical skills, or people that might even play dirty, so keeping the door open for a "leap of faith" of sorts was probably the way he decided to evolve from that point on. After all some say "luck is part of one's skill". Though Joey is still growing at the stage in his life we see him at. His father has issues with drinking and gambling, and Joey has used luck in unwise ways as well.... Before Duelist Kingdom, Joey's shoes are the product of him gambling with a store-owner that told him to get one feet in. Either he'd be fine and the expensive shoes would be his, or he'd find the scorpion and possibly die to the venom (needless to say this was extremely reckless and ill adviced). Also in the anime's fillers, Joeys worst performances and most unimportant duels are the ones where he over uses his die roll and coin flip effects (against the Judgman's hacking the dice results or against Grandpa's Ancient Dragon or Ziegfried's Valkyries). On the other hand, Joey's best performances are where he displays mostly non-luck based plays dressed with a tiny bit of a luck-based card to pull things through. It is not the gambling element itself that'd be painted badly but the excessive reliance on it. The "addiction" part of "gambling addiction" that his father has. No total rejection or getting totally lost into it.

Yeah, it would have been so cool to see Joey vs Yugi in the final round. It would be a very interesting match. I can see Kaiba finally acknowledging Joey as an exceptional duelist (After Kaiba loses to Yugi) and then minutes before Joey's duel with Yugi begins, Kaiba has Joey accompany him to his super computer that deciphered Ra's text to let Joey read the powers of Ra for his duel against Yugi. Joey takes that information, thanks Kaiba and before Joey leaves, Kaiba says some slick comment about not losing to Yugi. The duel starts off small but as it progress, we move into the Egyptain God cards. Joey creates a plan to tribute summon Ra to fight against Slifer and then eventually, Ra does get destroyed, but Joey remembers how Marik dueled against Mai, he uses his Monster Reborn to bring back Ra from the grave to fight against Obelisk. As the duel wines down, Yugi summons Red Eyes against Joey, and then they have a heart to heart about their journey through the tournament with Joey telling Yugi that he has learned so much and now it's time to put it to work to end the duel, he then summons Jinzo, combine it with some other cards then through a gamble, he summons Time Wizard for a final spin. Luck goes in Joey's favor and he wins the duel by attacking directly with Jinzo.

These are actually pretty good points. But for me, peak yugioh was the dark signers arc in 5d‘s. The duels used nice combos but none of those „use your whole deck in turn 1“ combos you see today. And the Storytelling is pretty good because you can see how people with negative emotions are easily manipulated by Roman etc. (For example Kalin wanting revenge on Yusei or Carly being heartbroken because of Jack).And the plot twist at the end with the final villain as well as the very good ending makes this the peak of yugioh atleast for me. I know there is the whole cardgames on motorcycles meme and yes the random traps sometimes can be a bit annoying to some people but all in all this was IT. Maybe nostalgia is speaking out of me rn but this is my opinion lol.

I saw 5ds recently and I think 5ds stands up as the best yugioh anime and even a good anime in its own right. OG yugioh is fun but you have to be a yugioh fan to enjoy it, 5ds holds up for anyone.

very interesting take on this! I was a big fan of the show as a kid and also loved the battle city arc it always stayed in my mind as one of the best in the series

Battle City is probably the arc I rewatch the most of any show. Watching Joey stand on his own and win against guys that gave Yugi trouble was so cool to see. Watching him lose against Marik was heartbreaking. His growth was really handled so well.

I agree. During 2003-2005 where the DM anime was on tv, every kid at school and I mean EVERY kid was playing the game, and indeed while the Battle city tournament arc was airing, the yugimania was everywhere. I lived that and honestly if I could go back in time for 1 day, I'll go back to those years 100% Ive been playing the game since 2002, and the peak popularity of the anime and the game was on those years

Battle City is amazing but for me Dark signers from 5ds will always be the peak.

Really good deep thought on yugioh. I like how you tied it together with Joey at the end, battle city really was the greatest part of it. Everyone had their cards as kids and the the best ones were coming out love those times

Honestly, your version of events with Joey becoming the Duel Monsters champion and the next King of Games sounds amazing, and a part of me now really wishes we’d gotten it that way, but with that said, I’m probably one of the few fans of the anime that’s honestly okay with how things went down. I won’t pretend I’m not at least a little salty about Joey losing to Yami Marik on a technicality for BS plot reasons, but I also have to say I will NEVER forget the moment where Joey was still standing after Ra’s attack. Nor will I forget the way Marik was SWEATING when he saw Joey still on his feet. Our golden boy literally took on the full concentrated power of the Sun, and was still on his feet. I don’t think Yami Marik was that scared again until his life was literally ending. Joey may not have brought him down, but DAMN did he humble him, and prove that even a God can bleed. A similar character moment I think is at the end of Dragon Ball when Krillin fights Piccolo. Krillin fought the demon king, and pushed him further than anyone, including the audience, thought was possible, even earning Piccolo’s respect as a warrior. Joey, like Krillin, knows he’s not “The One” but he also doesn’t care, cause he’ll stand up to just about anyone if it means fighting for what he believes in, or for his friends. Joey is the OG.

Honestly it would’ve been sick to see Joey wield the Wing Dragon of Ra. Though I wouldn’t be surprised if Jaden’s/Judai character took inspiration from Joey as a means to make up for not elevating Joey to the deuteragonist position he earned in DM.

Honestly, Joey's best character development happens in the Orichalcos arc

My absolute favorite part of battle city (and possibly all of the original Yu-Gi-Oh series) was Yugi vs Kaiba (Clash in the Colliseum) in the semi-finals. I love it because Yugi and Kaiba were fiercely going at it pushing eachother to the limit. Both were kept mentally on their toes ready to react to the other and trying to stay one step ahead. And neither could let up for even a second. I still find myself going back to those episodes from time to time. That was just a great duel overall.👍👌

that transition was clean 5:21 👌

yes it was the best arc

I completely agree about the original plan seemingly being for Joey to duel Yugi. At that point in the story Marik already knows the pharaoh didn’t kill his father so the personal stakes in that conflict have diminished and it no longer feels like yugi MUST duel Marik for narrative reasons. Also the whole arc is clearly building up to a duel between yugi and Joey and the fact that it happens off screen will forever be one of my biggest yugioh disappointments.

I will say that the whole story of Yugi needing to have all 3 egyptian god cards to access his memories would have been made more difficult if Joey had beaten Marik and took Ra. At that point because of how Ra worked Joey wouldnt be able to use it unless someone like Kaiba gave him a translation of the text to activate the card (which was never needed again just so Mai couldnt use it) and then we would be in the position where Yugi would have to beat Joey for Ra but Joey has to beat Yugi for Red Eyes. Either one winning would get in the way of the other and story wise it was more important for Yugi to actually beat Ra and obtain the card. Its a lot more important to the story that Yugi receive Ra on screen rather than Joey getting Red Eyes on screen and Yugi just showing up with Ra next season with no explanation.

crazy idea, but a Joey spinoff instead of GX would of been way more interesting, from a manga standpoint there is still a lot of depth to this character I feel Takahashi did not exploit . That series could of been his King of games moment.

i disagree on the argument that joey should be the the new king of games his hair is not crazy enough

If Joey ended up as the KOG he would have needed to face off against Kaiba to cement it too because he never got a W against him

Joey being kimg of games would be good but hearing "in death, i accept you as a true duelist" from seto is damn good

Holy shit I also loved Joey and the alternative timeline you suggest at the end would've been so crazy I dig it. Awesome video man, I went in expecting a video about Malik and the 3 god cards and stayed for the argument Joey is GOAT.

Il never understand why joey got insect queen from weevil surely perfectly ultimate great moth is more rare But then again you need 2 other cards to help you get it out But then again it's the animie they could have done some BS with time wizard or somthing

Joey has always been my fav character from the show. As a kid, even I could see I related a lot more to him than the other characters. Thanks for the video!

No lie, I didn't read card effects when I was a kid. I specifically remember not reading the virus trap card, because I know what it did in the show. Then my friend actually read it, cause hadn't see that episode, and we found out it didn't do what happened in the show. That was a wake up call.

Joey couldn't be the one to beat marik cause marik would have still been possessed. It had to be someone who could send yami marik to the shadow realm.

Joey was the representation for never giving up he should’ve been given more shine it’s too bad he peaked after battle city

Just want to first start off by saying that this was a great video. Please keep up with content like this, you've earnt my sub. Yu-Gi-Oh's Battle City will be my favourite arc in Yu-Gi-Oh, and I can go as far as to say that this may have been the best tournament arc I've seen in my time of watching anime. Everything about it made sense and was so enjoyable to me when I watched it that it has forever earned a place for itself in my heart as something to be respected and admired in the long run. To me, Battle City wasn't just some tournament for an anime to use for plot reasons, it is the starting ground of Duel Monsters' importance in the YGO universe. I mean, we get jokes about people caring so much about card games, but it would really make sense for said card game to have a city-wide tournament because that's what it is all about here, the joy of playing this game. To see a large magnitude of people participating in the tournament is like the ultimate nerd dream (as YGO Abridged put it iirc), all to try to win their opponents' best cards too, back when the game was in its simple times when people didn't spend 10 mins searching through their decks for that one card (idk how it works these days lol). There was a lot at stake with every duel and seeing wild strategies and techniques come in left and right was nothing short of a joy to see. Of course, all the better with some characters having their own motives whilst playing in the event to keep the story alive. There wasn't much here to frown upon, it was a great addition to the series and truly the hype for sure. I watched the arc when I was about 13-14, but it didn't once occur to me that Joey would have actually been the king of games had jump editors not said anything. To me, that's kinda crazy to process but I think it would have been an interesting turn of events to see Joey outmatch Yugi during Battle City. Then again, it probably would have been very controversial due to his deck being based on luck. Regardless, I probably may have found more happiness than not because one of the things that really annoyed me about YGO was how many of the characters didn't have a particularly strong presence in the game of Duel Monsters, characters like Tea and Tristan were just, as you put it, cheering Yugi on. In a world literally based on one game, it feels kinda wild to know that the main characters weren't exactly even at the very least decent at the game. If Joey became king, at least that would have been a breakthrough to know one of the characters is as good, hell, even better than Yami was. Joey is still very much a respectable guy though with what he has given. And yeah, Joey losing to Marik is still annoying to this day. I want to go on about your words on Joey as a character though. I feel as if, if anything works as being relatable to YGO characters, they would stem from GX. GX was a series about people taking duelling seriously, for the lovers of the game who would literally go to a boarding school for the game. Someone like Jaden who has been shown to be super into the game when he was younger, making drawings and whatnot of monster cards would be more relatable than Joey, or so, I'd imagine. Anyway, that's all I have to say. I liked the reference to the metaphor of Exodia that Yugi's friends are. I've never looked at it that way but it fits so well. Hopefully what I have said makes some sense lol.

Very surprised to see myself at 2:33 thanks for the feature in this excellent video!

It got corny during battle city. “Im going to take over the world with pieces of cardboard!”

Whoah, this video ended abruptly. At the end of the battle city arc, Joey battles Yugi. In the next season, we see him use Red-Eyes again, meaning he won against Yugi and got his Red-Eyes back!

I think people who can make video essays on yugioh anime are on another level

4kids dub of this arc didn’t seem bad until the motivation of Joey is changed in the dub.

Loved Battle City, but Orichalcos arc was probably my favorite. Joey, Yugi, Kaiba each had their own antagonist and all three rivalries felt very personal so the duels had a lot of weight behind them. Tourney arcs are fun and early battle city had some entertaining duels like yugi vs strings, arkana, lumis & umbra, etc but its hard to get THAT emotionally invested in the duels with a villain-of-the-week format. Battle City didnt get great until the semifinals imo

I hate 4kids so much😡. Ive also seen a lot of episodes from pokemon. Also 4kids had to nerf a lot of stuff from pokemon.

A buddy and I discussed Battle City awhile back, and we came up with swapping when Joey gets possessed. instead of it happening earlier, as it did, it happens after Joey beats Marik. The evil in Marik, desperate not to get destroyed, jumps into the heavily weakened Joey's body and pilots him against Yugi. Hell, we can even have Joey throw off the spirit with the help of Yugi part way through the Duel and then they can both finish it properly.

Ah Jump Editors, sometimes they get you Perfect Cell (and more importantly the resolution to the storyline of Goku & Gohan), other times it’s the Yami Malik vs Yami Yugi duel.