Original Yu-Gi-Oh Movie Getting Blu-ray Rerelease

The adventures of Yugi Moto and his card slinging friends spanned numerous anime episodes and several feature length films. To play up on the dueling franchise, a re-release of the original animated film will drop this October that came out in 2004. Dubbed simply Yu-Gi-Oh! The Movie in the states, the original title was Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters: Pyramid of Light in Japan and followed protagonist Yugi as he battled against the return of Anubis, God of Death.

Twitter User WTK found the notification that the movie was being re-released this October through Amazon’s marketplace:

The movie was originally released into domestic theaters with slight success, making a $29 million USD profit on a $20 million USD budget. It marked the first time that the popular card game franchise had ventured into the game of feature length anime movies, with the follow up films being Dark Dimensions and Bonds Beyond Time.

The story of the anime held the appeal of “bringing the monsters of Duel Monsters! to life” for the first time, with Anubis having the ability to bring any of the monsters that were played into the characters’ reality. The first anime outing of the Yu-Gi-Oh! franchise was heavily rooted in the lore of Egyptian myth, with most of the conflicts and characters having some stake when it came to the ancient culture. Though future series tended to leave this behind just a tad, it was always clear that the cards were heavily influenced by ancient Egypt.

Will you be picking up this Yu-Gi-Oh! blu ray when it drops this October? Which was your favorite movie of the Duel Monsters franchise? Feel free to let us know in the comments or hit me up directly on Twitter @EVComedy to talk all things comics, anime, and duel monsters!

Yu-Gi-Oh! was originally created by Kazuki Takahashi for Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump magazine, and ran from September 1996 to March 2004. The series follows Yugi Mutou, a young boy who solves an ancient puzzle and is possessed by the spirit of the Egyptian pharoah. Being skilled at deadly games, the Pharoah goes on to create and solve problems for Yugi based on deadly games of chance.

Two anime adaptations were created for the series, but the one most fans will recognize is Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters. Duel Monsters was the first arc in the story to focus on the “Duel Monsters” card game and was the first season licensed for an English language release by 4Kids Entertainment. The first season of the series, which fans often dub as “Season 0,” has such deadly games of chance with horrible consequences that fans could not believe it was a part of this series at first.