Yu-Gi-Oh! voice actors Dan Green and Eric Stuart are hoping to pay tribute to the late mangaka Kazuki Takahashi in the most authentic way possible.
Green, who voices Yugi Mutou in the English dub, announced via Twitter that he and Stuart, the voice of Seto Kaiba, were "thinking about" narrating the manga chapters from Yu-Gi-Oh! in a project called Yu-Gi-Oh! The Manga-Verse. Green posted a short snippet of the two narrating Chapter 9 of the manga when Kaiba approaches Yugi and asks to see the legendary Blue-Eyes White Dragon card. Although Yugi hesitates, he decides to give Kaiba a chance and shows it to him. However, Kaiba has a devious plan to acquire the card he so covets.
Fans Are Excited About the Project
Green could not confirm whether this would happen or not, but fans were over the moon regardless. In reply to fans' comments, Green said, "As a tribute to Takahashi, I think it's perfect. We'd want it to feel like you're reading his work. A full cast would be the ultimate, all of "Season Zero," exactly as it is on the page. We'll see..." Later on he thanked fans for their enthusiasm and said, "We [are] looking into if that's possible, your desire for it helps."
Season 0 refers to the first anime adaptation of Yu-Gi-Oh! in 1998, which adapts the first 59 chapters of the manga. The season aired in Japan but did not come to western audiences due to the story's violence. Compared to Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters which aired from 2000 to 2004, Season 0 is much darker and instead of sending opponents to the "Shadow Realm," the games that Yugi's alter-ego played were much more deadly and dangerous. The games that Yami Yugi played didn't revolve around the card game so much as they were just regular games with dire consequences. In the original, Yami Yugi was a darkly complex character due to his seeming lack of constraints for mercy when it came to playing against his opponents.
In 1996, Takahashi created Yu-Gi-Oh! after initially wanting to write a horror manga. The card game series became a huge hit and sold 40 million copies. The series follows a shy boy named Yugi Mutou, who often finds himself bullied by his classmates. After solving an ancient Egyptian puzzle called the Millennium Puzzle, he releases a mysterious alter-ego known as the other Yugi, who often takes over his body to play card games. The story follows the two working together to fight enemies who seek to steal the Millennium Puzzle to use for their own nefarious purposes. They soon realize that Yugi's alter-ego is a mysterious pharaoh who has lost his memories, and Yugi and his friends embark on a journey to help the pharaoh regain his identity. The series spawned an enormous anime franchise with various spin-offs, a popular trading card game and video games.
Takahashi passed away on July 6, 2022, after the Japan Coast Guard discovered his body floating off the shores of Okinawa. An outpouring of messages from various manga creators and voice actors expressed their grief and paid respect to Takahashi. Reports later said that the mangaka had died a hero after he jumped into the waters to rescue three people from a riptide.
Source: Twitter