Post number 11 takes us back to anime as we look at not one but two Yu-Gi-Oh films.
Pyramid of Light
Okay, okay since this is Yu-Gi-Oh, any special or movie is going to boil down to defeat the bad guy in a card game, there's not much else to say on plot on this film or the other one. Pyramid of Light's villain is Anubis, an Egyptian god who seeks revenge on the Pharaoh for his imprisonment so his plan is to implant a card in the deck of Pegasus, Duel Monsters Creator designed to combat the Egyptian God Cards so when sore loser Seto Kaiba comes to collect this card he will use it against Yugi, but said card steals the souls of his friends leaving Atemu to duel Kaiba and eventually Anubis who takes over the battle, Yugi then uses the actual card Pegasus created to fight the Egyptian God Cards to defeat Anubis.
This film is cheesy, but that's only because 4Kids is so over the top with it's voice acting, everything else has been done to death before, Seto Kaiba vs Yugi? This has happened several times already and it's tiresome, it also barely gives any substance to the villain apart from look like an imposing figure so overall this is pretty bad and it's far too long of a film for what is essentially an extended anime episode.
Bonds Beyond Time
Again it's another defeat the villain in a card game but this time it features the leads of all three of the current Yu-Gi-Oh series at time of release. The villain this time is the unoriginally named Paradox who's causing havoc across time by stealing cards and trying to eliminate the game of duel monsters by killing the original creator thereby erasing the future. There are so many plot holes in this so lets list them.
1. I'm pretty sure Pegasus would train successors or at the very least foresaw something like this happening so he could at least keep his company going long after retirement or the possibility of another incident like with the Millenium Eye being stolen which so nearly killed him.
2. It's implied that there was meant to be more to Paradox's mission if Yusei's nightmare was anything to go by, may have given the villain more credit.
3. Judai doesn't recognize Yugi in person despite meeting him at the start of the GX series even though both he and Yusei have at least heard of him or know of him by reputation.
4. This is Yusei's story more than the others.
5. Yusei could've won that duel on his own, there's enough bull**** going on in the actual duel to pull off that kind of stunt.
6. Since when could Yusei time travel?
7. Since all Paradox's cards were stolen shouldn't Yugi have worried about what happened to Joey and Kaiba when Blue Eyes and Red Eyes were summoned by him?
You can tell this film was a rush job and a quick cash in, again I state that Yusei could've duelled Paradox on his own, having Judai and Yugi alongside him was basically fan bait. Also Paradox is one of those hypocritical villains. He wants Duel Monsters destroyed for good but is using Duel Monsters to accomplish that, much like a certain Pokemon villain team.
To the movie's credit it sets the right tone but it's still executed poorly much like the rest of the film.
Final Verdict: Yu-Gi-Oh doesn't hold up well in film format as the concept of the story in most episodes is character A duelling character B and having a slightly bigger earth shattering duel fit into such a small time frame doesn't make the film any bigger compared to the series. Pyramid of Light is cheesy with a tired plot that's been done a thousand times already while Bonds Beyond Time is a hack job littered with plot holes and too short of a feature to make the great big duel between Paradox and the Protagonists effective.
So overall both films are crap.
