Television Summary VI (Yu-Gi-Oh!: The Heart of the Cards)

So a little context as to why I decided to watch this thing. Me and a friend we're doing a bit of casual shopping at a dollar store. When we stumbled upon playing cards. They had your typical 54 deck of cards they had hockey cards baseball and a few other weird things as well. And then I noticed out of the corner of my eye that they had Yu-Gi-Oh cards. Well that got My Imagination Running as I remember collecting these things 17 years ago back when Yo-gi was the big hot craze of the time.

So we decided to pick up a few cards for fun. It was only a dollar for a pack of 10 which is still a rip-off compared to a pack of playing cards but considering it used to cost 5 to $7 for a pack of the same size so many years ago it's unfortunately considered a bargain.

Now neither She nor I had any idea of how exactly to play the Yu-Gi-Oh game. We just like to stare at the pretty cards and find the most amusing ones in the random packs.
Usually it was either stuff that was shiny or cute. That was what we considered best.
But after buying a pack of 2 we decided that over the months we should pick up an occasional pack from time to time until we have enough cards to build owr own little deck. Then we could attempt to play the game even though neither one of us has any idea of what exactly the rules are.

Part of me wants to know the rules of the game. But another part of me wants to play the game completely blind; Because it's far more comedic to try and attempt to game with somebody when neither one of you have any idea of what's going on and what's supposed to be an incredibly structured game.
So I went with the second option. Watch the silly TV show instead.
I figure five or six episodes work should give me enough info to be able to play the game on the most basic level.
Which now leads to me actually sitting down to watch the show.

I feel super bad about all the negative things I said about Hamtaro. That show is a golden trophy of Excellence compared to this thing.
I had no idea just how awful the Yu-Gi-Oh show was.

It's pacing is bad, it's animation is bad, the voice acting is atrocious and the story is both boring and sappy at the same time.

Now In fairness. One or two of these problems isn't that bad for a show. Most cartoons have fairly bad animation and their stories can be kind of annoying too. But that heart of the cards crap.
That's all this entire episode is about. Also that weird kid who supposedly owns millions of dollars and yet does everything in his power to acquire a single card from some guy despite the fact that he could probably phone up the manufacturer and just have another one made.
Or just not sweat it and not give a darn about the thing, because you're never going to use the card anyways.
I don't know.
It's really difficult to want to care about the story in the show. You watch it more for the stupid outcomes. As a bunch of kids over react to a tabletop game that has way too much money invested into it. Or is Will discover later on a bunch of Egyptian mythology and glorified magic that somehow destroy your soul?

All I know is that this pilot is a horrible introduction to the show. It's weird it's badly paste and they just introduced random crap in the middle of the episode about giving any context to it. Like the Yu-Gi-Oh kid is about to duel Kaiba so we can get back his grandfather's card which was stolen from him earlier. And it's only now that he finally looks down and says oh yeah I have this magic puzzle that will transform me into a different dude. Before all of this there was no magic in the show we have no idea what's going on. Why does this kid have a magic puzzle?

I guess you could argue that the show raises so many questions that it entices people to want answers by tuning into the next episode.
But if that's your goal than you really want to cut down on the friendship and loving of the cards gibberish that they keep throwing around.
It's just so darn sappy.
Especially given that we don't know about any of the magical inklings of this world yet. At least later on you can make up some excuse and claimed that everybody's friendship is interlinked into some hive-mind mentality coalescing in hypnotic powers given form by mystical artifacts and the fact the entire game is supposedly based on actual Magic from the past.

I just want to reiterate that Hamtaro at this point is far better than this. I owe the ham-hams so much apology.