The plot centers around Jaden Yuki and his friends, and tells of their adventures at Duel Academy, a school that teaches students how to play the card game Duel Monsters. Toei's animation, however, is less on-model, but more expressive, and really sells the dark tone they were going for. Yu-Gi-Oh Duel Monsters GX (GX, Y-gi- Dyueru Monsutzu J Ekkusu) is the fourth addition to the Yu-Gi-Oh anime meta-series, as well as the first main spin-off series. As a result, Studio Gallop's animation is much stiffer, but no doubt they were able to save time and money by reusing animation between episodes. Studio Gallop on the other hand, due to characters being mostly static as they played a card game were free to put their resources instead into a consistent, well-polished style. Strangely enough, another reason Season 0 looks so weird is the animation itself - Toei clearly put a lot of work into the series, making the characters expressive and fluid whenever possible. Studio Gallop, however, in suiting with the more lighthearted themes of Duel Monsters, used less dramatic shadows and subtler color choices that were more accurate to the manga. Particularly noticeable on the boys' school uniforms, the dark shadows make the light areas appear even lighter, as well as sometimes containing a second shadow to further define the character's features. Not helping is the high-contrast shading that Season 0 loves so much. RELATED: Yu-Gi-Oh!'s Meaning in Japanese Makes Its Original Theme Song Even Funnier The scenes use a notably muted palette with dull colors, which, when juxtaposed next to the characters, makes them appear even brighter. Furthermore, the colors used for the characters are extremely saturated and bright, something that The Movie partially rectified, giving Kaiba back his brown hair, and blending the colors to appear less outlandish.Īnd the palette differences don't stop there either fitting with the fact that Yu-Gi-Oh! was originally intended to be a horror manga with game elements, the backgrounds of Season 0 are notably darker than Studio Gallop's Season 1 - and not just because they keep frequenting dark areas, like back alleys and lonely roads, either. Subtler changes were made as well, such as coloring the girls' school uniforms orange instead of pink. For unspecified reasons, the character designers decided to switch up some of the colors for the characters, notably giving Seto Kaiba green hair. This is further supported by the fact that Yu-Gi-Oh! The Movie, which was created after the series airing in 1999, much more closely matches the style that Studio Gallop ended up adapting for the screen.īut that doesn't account for the other changes that were made - particularly in the palette department. Unfortunately for them, mangaka Kazuki Takahashi had not yet settled into what fans now recognize as Yu-Gi-Oh!'s signature style early volumes showcase much softer curves with almost a wave-like effect to them as opposed to the now-famous hair-so-sharp-you-might-cut-yourself, and it was this style that Toei was trying to match.

Yugioh season 0 episode 5