I love the comments on this video about how card game-focused Yu-Gi-Oh’s worldbuilding became over time.
“Ironically, despite Kaiba’s attempt to redefine Kaiba Corp as a game company instead of arms manufacturing, he turned Duel Monsters into the world’s weapon.”
“Can we take a moment to appreciate how customer friendly Kaiba’s products are though? In the finale of GX Jaden dueled Yugi, who was wielding a duel disk that was roughly 10 years behind his own model and they were still compatible”
“This video doesn’t even mention the time in GX where Kaiba fired trading cards into space that were designed by children so they could be bombarded by space rays and gain superpowers. The more you follow this series the more you realize that it’s also the story where a supervillain successfully reshapes the world in his image, died beloved, successful, unrepentant, and accomplished all his goals, except for the only one that really mattered: beating someone in a card game.”
“Kaiba didn’t just change an entire city’s way of doing things, or even the entire world for that matter. He literally changed how villains try to conquer the world. He’s so influential that villains are still playing his game.”
“Something else that is both hilarious and terrifying in 5Ds: the cops play Duel Monsters to catch lawbreakers. In fact, the rules of Duel Monsters are so immutable to the law and order of Neo Domino City that the bikes called Duel Runners are able to remotely hacked by the police to force a duel, and losing that duel shuts down your bike. The rules of Duel Monsters sit above the police in terms of hierarchy, since if they could hack Duel Runners to force a duel, they could probably just shut down your bike remotely. I like to imagine Kaiba is sitting on his capitalist throne saying “If a criminal can beat you in a duel, then what authority do you have to catch them”, and just forces the police to adapt to his survival-of-the-duelist world that he made.“
“Without card games, people like dartz would be invincible“
