REVIEW -- Yu-Gi-OH! The Dark Side of Dimensions

Yu-Gi-Oh! The Dark Side of Dimensions is a 2016 Japanese animated film, part of the Yu-Gi-Oh! franchise. The film is an original story and features Yugi Muto and Seto Kaiba as its main characters. The film's story is set six months after the events of the original Yu-Gi-Oh! manga in Japan. In English speaking countries, the film's story is set one year after the events of Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters. In celebration of the film and twenty years of the franchise in general, TV Tokyo began airing a remastered digital edition of the 2000–2004 Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters anime in Japan. The film was released in Japan on April 23, 2016 and was released on January 27, 2017 in the United States and Canada and will be released on February 2, 2017 in Australia. This will be the fourth theatrical release of a Yu-Gi-Oh! film after Yu-Gi-Oh! (1999), Yu-Gi-Oh! The Movie: Pyramid of Light, and Yu-Gi-Oh!: Bonds Beyond Time.

Creator Kazuki Takahashi published a new one-shot manga called TRANSCEND GAME in Weekly Shōnen Jump. The two-part prologue story is set between the end of the Yu-Gi-Oh! manga and the beginning of The Dark Side of Dimensions. Part 1 released in the 19th issue on April 11, 2016 and Part 2 released in the 20th issue on April 18, 2016. VIZ Media's digital Weekly Shōnen Jump announced that it will publish Yu-Gi-Oh!: Transcend Game. Part 1 released in the December 19, 2016 issue.Part 2 released in the January 2, 2017 issue.

Voice Cast: 

Character	Voice actor (Japanese)	Voice actor (English)
Yugi Mutou/Yugi Muto	Shunsuke Kazama	Dan Green
Seto Kaiba	Kenjiro Tsuda	Eric Stuart
Katsuya Jōnouchi/Joey Wheeler	Hiroki Takahashi	Wayne Grayson
Anzu Mazaki/Tea Gardner	Maki Saitō	Amy Birnbaum
Hiroto Honda/Tristan Taylor	Takayuki Kondo	Greg Abbey
Ryo Bakura/Bakura Ryou	Rica Matsumoto	Ted Lewis/Michael Crouch (Young)
Mokuba Kaiba	Junko Takeuchi	Tara Sands
Ryuji Otogi/Duke Devlin	Ryō Naitō	Marc Thompson
Aigami	Kento Hayashi	Daniel J. Edwards
Sugoroku Mutō/Solomon Muto	Tadashi Miyazawa	Wayne Grayson
Ryō Bakura's Father	Kazuhiro Yamaji	Marc Thompson
Sera	Kana Hanazawa	Laurie Hymes
Mani	Satoshi Hino	Tamir Cousins
Kudaragi	Kendo Kobayashi	Billy Bob Thompson
Shadi Shin	Nozomu Sasaki	Wayne Grayson

The Plot (FULL Spoilers)

In the opening, KaibaCorp is doing research on the Millennium Puzzle. Suddenly, a mysterious cloak man is at the underground as one of Kaiba's bodyguards Roland tells him that he is behind schedule and to start digging. A few years after the departure of the Pharaoh, Yugi Muto and his closest friends are in their final year of High School and are talking about what they will do in the future. Meanwhile, Seto Kaiba has commissioned an excavation to retrieve the disassembled Millennium Puzzle from the ruins of the Millennium chamber. The item had previously housed the soul of his rival, Atem, whom he hopes to revive in order to settle their score. The excavation is interrupted by Diva, who faces Kaiba in a game of Duel Monsters and steals two pieces of the recovered Puzzle. He keeps one fragment and gives the other to his sister Sera who passes it on to Yugi Muto, aware that he was the host of the Pharaoh.

Diva, under the alias "Aigami," forges a "friendship" with Yugi. He takes interest in Yugi's friend Ryo Bakura, whom he believes is responsible for the death of his father-like mentor, Shadi. Using his Quantum Cube, he transports Bakura to another dimension. Bakura apologizes and explains that the evil spirit of the Millennium Ring had been responsible. The two are interrupted by Mani, who has become warped by the evil energies of the Millennium Ring.

Kaiba has a computer rebuild the Millennium Puzzle and discovers the last two pieces are missing. He abducts Aigami and approaches Yugi, so he can have the two take part in the showcasing of his updated Duel Disk virtual reality technology. He intends to duel both Aigami and Yugi, while gambling their pieces of the puzzle. However, Yugi is furious with Aigami over what he did to Bakura and insists he duel him instead, which Kaiba agrees to.

Yugi defeats Aigami, resulting in Bakura's return to reality, and while dueling Kaiba, Yugi re-completes the Millennium Puzzle to demonstrate that the spirit of Atem is no longer inside it. Aigami becomes corrupted by the incredible evil powers of the Millennium Ring and duels both Yugi and Kaiba. Kaiba sacrifices himself during the Duel and makes a final plea for Yugi to call forth Atem. Yugi succeeds in doing so, and he and Atem defeat Aigami with ease. Atem and the Millennium Puzzle then fade away, and Kaiba and Bakura return to reality.

The film concludes with Yugi and his best friends seeing Tea off at the airport as she goes off to pursue her lifelong dream of becoming a professional ballet dancer in New York City while Kaiba uses his technology in conjunction with the Quantum Cube to transport his consciousness to the Netherworld, where he approaches Pharaoh Atem, sitting on his throne who responds with a confident smile.

The Verdict:

I went into this expecting that it was going to be either pretty average like the first Yu-Gi-OH! movie or being mere fan-service like Bonds Beyond Time was that brought Jaden (GX) and Yusei (5D's) together with Yugi and Yami against a common enemy. What I wasn't expecting that this was going to be full blown story arc crammed into a bit over two hours. I cannot rave about this Yu-Gi-OH! film enough for long-time fans. From a narrative standpoint, this manages to continue and expand upon the issues that weren't resolved at the end of the anime series, such as Seto Kaiba not being satisfied with never defeating Atem/Yami Yugi before he left this world forever or how Yugi Muto and his friends are coping with the departure of their long-time friend, Atem/Yami Yugi.

One obvious change here is that Yugi and roughly everyone has aged up slightly since quite some time has passed since the end of the anime. Yugi and his friends are on the verge of graduating high school (Hell, Yugi even looks more like The Pharoah now without transforming). Mokuba Kaiba looks a bit older than he was back during the course of the anime series, but other than those two, everyone else barely look much different.

I was a fan of Seto Kaiba during the anime but here, this film solidified him as my favorite character in the series now. He was always Yugi's "Vegeta" trope to challenge him at every opportunity where the story demanded it, but now Kaiba's obsession to finally even the score with his loss to Atem has driven him to create even more advanced dueling technology in hopes of bringing him back to our world. Kaiba's story of redemption is what drives this narrative to be such a compelling story for long-time Yu-Gi-OH! fans as it comes down to Kaiba truly respects Atem, despite their differences and would do anything to see him again. I love that Kaiba's character has gone full circle here instead of being the boring recurring villain trope that plagued him for the bulk of the series until the filler with the former corporate board members of his adopted family's company during the Battle City story arc. Here, Kaiba steals the show on multiple occasions with his impressive dueling prowess - even almost besting this film's feature villain prior to even Yugi's clash with him at the film's climax before their duel was rendered a draw.

One thing about the duels here in this film they are just as good if not better than every single of those exhibitions that the creators of the anime setup with the voice actors at official Yu-Gi-OH! tournaments. The new additions and upgrades to the Duel Monsters formula was a nice touch to see even the original series is getting a taste of the newest additions to the game. If I were to see the film again, I would watch to see it in a theater or on a proper home video format (instead of streamed on my laptop) just to see the improved visuals and designs to the Duel Monsters cards.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that they finally shown how the Millennium Ring first possessed Bakura. I honestly don't remember if they detailed that or not in the original anime, but that was something I wish they showed in the anime since he (the spirit within the ring) ended up being the series' biggest villain by the last story arc came around.

Joey Wheeler and Tristan Taylor are reduced to comedy relief here for the most part. I was completely fine with that as I laughed my ass off at Joey Wheeler throughout this, especially at that line where he demanded that Kaiba buy him a change of underwear after scaring the shit out of him - literally. Tea's merely around for moral support, but they never resolved the ordeal about Tea's feelings for Atem. Oh well... Yugi's grandfather is hanging around at the card shop as usual but doesn't do much here either. In his case, I can't complain too much as his role wasn't ever too significant in the original anime series anyway. One thing that did really surprise me was that Atem/The Pharoah didn't have not ONE speaking line in this entire film. It was kinda a bummer to have Dan Green do his young Yugi voice the entire film without any dramatic flair from the King of Games himself.

Oh well... this film does a better job of establishing Yugi Muto as the new hero to replace the Pharoah than how Gohan did in the follow-up seasons of Dragonball Z after the Cell Games. Yugi definitely held his own against the threats thrown his way in this film, but I couldn't help but feel that this film was painting the picture of Seto Kaiba being the new protagonist. There was that one point that he got an insanely lucky draw during his first encounter with Diva. It's so awesome that I don't even want to spoil it - it's that damn good. Then there were several points scattered throughout the film where Kaiba held his own and outsmarted everyone - including this new adversary - at every turn. Hell, Kaiba was even willing to sacrifice himself to give him Yugi the chance to bring back the Pharoah to deal the finishing blow to Diva at the film's climax. Previously, Kaiba would have done everything in his power to win on his own. Once again, I have to applaud the writers here with Kaiba's growth as a character whereas rivals like Goku and Vegeta in these Shonen Jump properties tend to rehash and recycle the same tropes over and over again in a boring fashion.

That being said, with the way how the movie ends with Kaiba confronting Atem once more, it seems like things have gone full circle back to the beginning of where this anime took place in terms of all of the ancient legends of the Pharoah facing his greatest rival, a mage who looked oddly similar to Seto Kaiba. Then again, the door is left wide open if the anime's creators would like to do another full blown season based on the original Yu-Gi-OH! anime and characters.

Watch It or Don't Bother?

For long time Yu-Gi-OH! fans, I highly recommend checking this out. This movie serves as an epilogue of sorts for the original Yu-Gi-OH! anime that follows the adventures of Yugi Muto, following the events of the end of that anime. If you haven't seen that anime from start to finish, there's going to be a few major spoilers, so I recommend that you finish watching that in its entirety first before jumping into this.