Yu-Gi-Oh! 3-in-1 Vol. 3

The volume that transitions the story from Shadow Games to card games. A most interesting read! 

By Urian Brown August 18, 2015

CoversmallIt’s time to r-r-r-r-roll! Your dice that is, in the exciting game of the Monster World role-playing board game! Right before the Yu-Gi-Oh! manga went “full card,” there were some other interesting games Yugi got himself involved with. And one of the more fleshed out ones was the Monster World game. Nearly a third of this chunky 3-in-1 is devoted to it! I’ll admit—I wasn't totally into this game in the beginning, because it’s not the cards we all know and love. But by the end of the game, I was totally hooked. I guess that’s the power of Takahashi Sensei’s incredible imagination and storytelling.

The goal of the game is to use four adventurers to defeat the Dark Master, the evil Bakura in this case. The adventurers have different abilities and work together, while the Dark Master controls monsters including the super-powerful Zorc. Two ten-sided dice are used to determine actions on the board. Of course, this being Yu-Gi-Oh!, the game is more than it seems and our heroes soon find themselves trapped inside the adventurer figurines playing for the lives! Luckily for them, the King of Games Yugi is rolling the dice! 

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It’s an exciting game with lots of surprises and do or die moments, but the extra entertainment comes from the nods to other games and over-the-top dice rolls. Yugi’s character is a Beast Tamer and has his own “Pokemon” named Pokii. It’s kind of rare to see a Pokemon reference this bold in an SJ manga. And surprise…Pokii’s really cute! The way it looks and talks is completely adorable. And it’s not just a joke, the monster takes on a life of its own in the battle and aids the heroes greatly. The other nod, and I’m guessing here, is Zorc is probably a reference to the old PC RPG text adventure game Zork. Takahashi Sensei is a self-professed tabletop game nerd so I bet he’s probably played it at some point. In the infancy of computers, it was very popular.

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The dice rolling takes on a whole subplot of its own as Bakura and Yugi trade highly improbably roll after roll. Bakura has “brainwashed” his dice, but Yugi is the King of Games and can seemingly roll a critical whenever he wants! A critical is anything from zero to nine. The chances of getting that with two ten-sided dice is not good, and Yugi rolls like a pro! As the game goes on the dice rolling just gets more and more absurd and eventually comes to a outrageous climax. 

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After this game, the series settles into the story we all know from the anime. Even if you’ve seen the anime 100 times, it’s still worth reading. For one, Takahashi Sensei’s art is fantastic. And he’s really gotten the characters down at this point. His creature art is second to none in the business and card after card will impress you with the details of the various fantasy monsters. And Pegasus! He looks great! Just as handsome and hilarious as he is in the anime! I think his hair actually looks better in the manga.

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In terms of the Duelist Kingdom arc, the story is very close to the anime. The main difference is the arenas where the duels take place, in the manga they do it in see-through cubes called Virtual Battle Simulation Boxes. Also, the last duel of the 3-in-1 pits Yugi against a creepy ventriloquist that’s been sent to kill him. The ventriloquist’s doll is a weird little Kaiba! That is somehow linked to the real Kaiba who still hasn't recovered from the duel in the Theme Park of Death. Not sure why the ventriloquist didn’t make it to the anime, I think he's cool.

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I’ve always wondered about the transition from the various Shadow Games in the early story to the Yu-Gi-Oh! card game based story the anime starts from. As an SJ fan who has an avid interest in the history of manga, it was fun to see how the story changed. And as a fan of the Yu-Gi-Oh! anime, it’s fun to see the differences. And as a fan of Kazuki Takahashi, it’s fun to read his manga! Even if you’ve only seen the anime, I’d give this 3-in-1 a chance. It’s a very different experience!

You can see some unbelievable dice rolling by picking up this volume here!

by Urian Brown