kanna-chan's cafe

Hey guys, kanna here! I haven't had a ton of filming time as of late, but things are slowly and surely starting to wind down, so that reaction to the subtitled Bonds Beyond Trailer is on the way! I did a few test runs on other trailers, and learned that my mic was acting a little weird, so I might need to get a new mic or just speak loud enough to actually be heard.

But enough about that! You guys came to my cafe for a review of Yu-Gi-Oh: Capsule Monsters, and that's what you're going to get! Let's get to it!

For starters, in terms of continuity, I'm honestly not sure where this takes place. I heard it was a spin-off miniseries, but I'm not a hundred percent sure I buy that. But given it's hard to place this in terms of continuity, especially when you consider all we know is that it takes place after Season 0. It can't take place after the fifth season, because...I'm overthinking this, and I don't want to spoil anything. I've heard from some people it takes place between episodes 198 and 199 of Duel Monsters, but...no! I'm overthinking this again! MUST! STOP! OVERTHINKING! *sigh*

Anyway, the interesting thing about this miniseries is that it was 100% 4Kids. This is the only Yu-Gi-Oh animated series to not be released in Japan prior to an American release. Pretty interesting, right?

Anyway, we have all our usual characters. Yugi, Joey, Tea, Tristan, Grandpa Muto, and...that's actually it. No Bakura, no Kaiba, no Mokuba, just Yugi and the gang on an excellent adventure.

So it all starts when Yugi is having this strange dream about Yami fighting against something that isn't very clear to Yugi, or us for that matter. Yugi wakes up to find it was only a dream, and we learn through a flashback that his grandpa was going on some trip and should have been back by now, but wasn't.

We then cut to Joey, who seems to be on his way to school, before he spots some sort of contest going on where the winner gets a trip to India. So Joey enters the contest, and big shock, he wins. Turns out, it's a trip for four to India. Meanwhile, Yugi is teaching Tea how to play the game that everyone's talking about, Capsule Monsters. However, when Joey gets to school, he tells everyone about the trip he won and invites them. So everyone gets excited, and the next day (at least, I think it's the next day...it's a little hard to tell how much time has passed), they're off to India.

Too bad for them that their plane crashes in the middle of nowhere on the way to India. While the pilots try to radio for help, Yugi and co. decide to have a look around the area, before they find a colleague of Yugi's grandpa's named Dr. Alex Brisbane. He explains that Yugi's grandpa disappeared inside of a pyramid, which didn't belong in a forest-like area. Dr. Brisbane takes Yugi and the others to where he last saw Yugi's grandpa, which appears to be some sort of 3-D model map.

Joey steps on the map and suddenly disappears. Knowing they have to find Joey, Yugi, Tea, and Tristan all step on the map and find strange devices strapped to their arms along with some kind of belt.

Tea, Tristan, and Yugi are in some kind of forest, when they're suddenly ambushed by Kamakiriman and Gokibore. Yugi gets separated from Tristan and Tea as they're running away, and as he runs, he trips over something that looks suspiciously like a capsule. Upon touching it, Celtic Guardian appears and quickly takes care of Kamakiriman. Yugi then realizes that he and his friends have all somehow been transported into a live version of the Capsule Monsters board game...with no way out in sight.

So...what do I give this: um...honestly, I don't know. Let's just go with 4 out of 10.

Why: As much as I want to give this series credit for being entirely produced by 4kids, and I do give them a lot of credit, there just isn't anything that really stands out about this spin-off. It's pretty much Duel Monsters, just with a different game and shortened down to twelve episodes. We don't know where in the series it takes place, the characters haven't really changed much, and the writing is pretty average.

I have nothing to compare this to, so that's part of the reason why it gets 4 out of 10. It kinda stands on its own.

The one thing, if anything, that I really didn't like about this series was that Yami Yugi did LITERALLY all the fighting. Yugi did nothing. Abso-freaking-lutely nothing. Sure, it's the same in Duel Monsters, but at least there, Yugi made SOME contribution and the series revolved around him. Here, Yugi doesn't really do anything other than realize important stuff and act as the "leader" of the group. It's kinda...what's the word I'm looking for...wimpy on his part.

We all know that Yugi is the King of Games, and should be able to handle this stuff on his own. But no, Yami Yugi has to step in and solve all the problems. Heck, Yami Yugi even gets most of the freaking DIALOG compared to Yugi! It's pretty sad when you think about it. Hm...I wonder how Dan Green felt when he saw the script for this. Or how Eric Stuart felt when he heard that Kaiba wasn't going to be in this. Curios, don't you think?

The music is the same theme and ending as the English dub of Duel Monsters, so there's really nothing new there. There isn't even much of a soundtrack to go with this. And as we all know, I am a sucker for a good soundtrack.

Well, that's it for Capsule Monsters. Stay tuned for next Anime Monday (which will hopefully be up on a Monday) when I review Yu-Gi-Oh The Movie: Pyramid of Light! See you then! ~k