There really is no other way to say it: Yu-Gi-Oh! The Movie is a piece of junk. For those who do not know, Yu-Gi-Oh is a Pokemon derivative. It is essentially a card game where kids battle each other for other cards. It is from Japan, transferred over here by dubbed cartoons (STOP DUBBING MOVIES) for the primary purpose of selling merchandise. The Yu-Gi-Oh series is more annoying than others, because unlike Pokemon, it plays its little game during each episode. Each player has a deck of cards, and there is a monster or a spell on each card. Players battle against each other, with the winner determined by who has more life points. Each monster has an assigned life point value, and spells can add to it or take it away. Got it? The primary fan base of Yu-Gi-Oh are young boys. Their parents may understand the concept. It will be pretty foreign to anybody else.
Especially since Yu-Gi-Oh makes no attempt to explain the concept to anybody watching the movie. It just jumps right into its dense, incomprehensible story. Actually, it doesn't really matter if people understand the story or not because it is much too inane to be worth caring about. The main thing that causes this film to royally suck is its insistence on explaining every single move by Yugi (voiced by Dan Green, Pokemon 4Ever, Pokemon 3: The Movie) and Seto (Pokemon Heroes, Pokemon 4Ever). Each time they play a card, they yell things like "his is my idiot card, which can defeat your moron card," or "I play my imbecile spell which saps the intelligence out of the audience!" A small ticker of how many life points each person has appears on screen, and projections of each animal appear above their head in order to duel. Moreover, players can sacrifice cards to play other cards, or combine their monsters to form other, better monsters. What's the problem? After ninety minutes of constant play-by-play, the game still makes no sense. The sad part is that there seem to be an endless supply of cards and few will know what all of them do, so the narration is almost necessary.
It probably made some more sense in Japanese. Director Hatsuki Tuji and American screenwriter Michael Pecoriello splice together some truly random things to form the story. Yugi is one of the better players of Duel Masters because he possesses three unbeatable God cards, and Seto is his nemesis. Yugi also has this weird puzzle that he finally pieces together, that awakens Anubis, the Ancient Egyptian God of Death. Duel Monsters apparently has some connection to ancient Egypt. Every time Yugi plays, a Pharaoh takes control of his body, and he seems to turn into an adult and his voice deepens, but nobody seems to say anything. Anubis was the archrival of this Pharaoh, and now is using Seto to battle Yugi, and every time they lose life points, it brings Anubis back to life. To further confuse things, Yugi and his friends are trapped in his puzzle, which looks like some M.C. Escher painting. Nothing happens for a long time, then there is one extended battle that plays way too long. And what's the point of the whole thing? To sell more cards.