Yu-Gi-Oh! 10 Changes Made To Yugi In The Dub That Make No Sense

The dub of Yu-Gi-Oh! made a lot of both necessary and unnecessary changes to the anime. To be able to broadcast as a kids' show in the West, much of the violence was toned down, and anything that seemed adult was either cut or shifted to take on a different tone. Many characters were affected by this, including the main character, Yugi Muto.

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Luckily, most of the changes weren't all that bad for Yugi. His Yami alter ego, the Pharaoh, was another story, however. Yugi didn't escape unscathed, suffering greatly by the fact the dub condensed much of the series and started things off near the Duelist Kingdom arc.

10 His Voice

In the Japanese version, they helped differ the voices between Yami Yugi and Yugi Muto with the level of sternness and respect they held. That was a little too subtle for the younger audience that the dubbed version was aiming for, so they made it so Yugi sounded like an eight-year-old girl to help differentiate him from the far deeper voice of Yami.

In theory, it's not that bad a decision, but it made Yugi's voice insufferable to listen to in spots, especially when it started to strain in more emotional moments.

9 Changing The Surname

It's a small change, which makes it fairly harmless, but that doesn't mean it makes any more sense. Yugi's name is originally Mutou, something that isn't that hard to pronounce, even for American audiences. Instead of just sticking with that, they dropped the U and changed the pronunciation to Moto. There's no real reason for it as it didn't Americanize the name as Joey Wheeler did, nor did it make it any easier to say.

8 Best Buddies

The dub skips over all of the character progression that Joey and Tristan had towards Yugi, mostly ignoring that they used to be his bullies. While the dub shied away from the darker themes of Yu-Gi-Oh!, you'd think they'd jump at the opportunity to show that bullying is bad, considering it was retooled as a little kid's show.

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That wasn't the case though, as they, along with Téa, are just Yugi's friends and nothing more than that. It's one of many things that gets hurt by the fact it starts near the Duelist Kingdom arc.

7 Mind Crushing Everyone

This is an issue with the anime in general, but to get around some of the more intense scenes, Mind Crush is used, and far too liberally. It felt like after every duel, Yami would Mind Crush his opponent for reasons that aren't entirely clue. More often than not, it just made him seem like a very unlikable character. Granted, Mind Crush in the anime didn't have quite as big an impact on characters as it did in the manga. But it still doesn't excuse how often it was used.

6 The Battle With Mai

The concept was more or less the same in the two versions: Mai gave the Yugis the pep talk that they needed to realize that they were at their best when working together. It's how they got there that's strange. Rather than the revelation being given to the Yugi Yami— the character that actually needed it— they had her speech fall on Yugis ears since he wouldn't allow Yami to duel her out of fear. It's such a strange change that wasn't necessary at all.

5 Taking Away Yugi's Feelings For Téa

This is another one of those head-scratching moments that is hard to figure out the motivation behind. Even if the dub was meant for small children, why did they have to shy away from Yugi having completely harmless and innocent feelings for Téa as long as they did?

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It wasn't as if things went erotic in the original anime, yet the dub felt the need to completely remove scenes where Yami is teasing Yugi about her and promising that he could get her to like him. It's as if kids wouldn't have been able to handle Yugi having a crush.

4 Cutting Character Development Scenes For Yami

It only makes sense for the show to continue humanizing Yami Yugi after Battle City, but that didn't seem to be the case. During the Doma arc, Yami took over Yugi's body to go see Eygptian God Cards in a museum, hoping it'd uncover more of his past.

When asked why they had to go alone, Yami admitted it was too hard to say goodbye to his friends. The dub felt that brief back and forth was unnecessary, just having the two alone because the cards pulled Yami there.

3 Darkness Of Yami's Heart

Yugi and Yami's duel was handled pretty well by the dub as it was treated with more seriousness than others had been in the show. The dub did leave out an exchange between the two that further ramped up the stakes, with Yugi calling out Yami's weakness of pride and arrogance, and that he's incapable of feeling other people's pain.

It's another moment that could have been hard-hitting for Yami as he came to terms with who he was and is, but it was cut for unknown reasons.

2 Screwing The Rules

Both Yugi and Yami are easily the biggest cheaters in the entire series, even more so than a man who literally used a Millennium item to read his opponent's mind. It felt like they just made up the rules as they went, and the second something could stop them from winning, it was hand-waved away. Part of this is due to the rules of the card game not linking up with anime, leaving the dub to try to figure out ways to make it work. They never really did so, though.

1 Catchphrase

This is something that comes with dubbed anime. Not even properly dubbed anime can avoid it: just look at Naruto with "Believe It!," which he spouts incessantly through the first part of the series.

Yugi and Yami are no different, often always working the phrase, "It's Your Move!" at least once into each duel. Even at the very end of the series, Yugi says it to Yami when he's moving on to the spirit world. Catchphrases are just inherently an Americanized thing that people who dub anime can't help but to shoehorn in even when it wasn't present in the original version.

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