Yu-Gi-Oh: Duel Links Review

Before I named myself the Shonen Otaku, I grew up on a lot of the shonen anime for the younger audience in the 90s and 2000s with 4Kids and Saban dubs.  The Pokemon anime in particular took the world by storm and while I was definitely a big fan of that for a while, the series that stuck with me the most was the original Yu-Gi-Oh, or at least the original for America, since season 0 wasn’t dubbed.

I loved the fun dubbed dialogue, the monsters battling each other through the finesse of a card game (even though rules were loose in the anime), the way each character’s deck reflected their personalities and the high stakes with the magic and sci-fi elements that kept me wanting to see what happened next.  Even today I can watch it and enjoy it and I highly recommend giving it a watch either on the official Yu-Gi-Oh website or Netflix.

Why Kids Should be Watching Mr. Pickles

TV shows for kids these days are not of the quality they once were.  I don’t mean TVY-7 shows for slightly older kids like Adventure Time, Steven Universe , Avatar: The Last Airbender or the Amazing World of Gumball.  Those are all thriving and practically in a golden age.  Shows for the younger audiences, on the other hand, are not doing so well in my eyes.  Most shows for the younger audiences are cheap computer generated fluff like Sofia the First, Blaze and the Monster Machines and Doc McStuffins.  Although that last one has Choji Akimichi’s actor Robbie Rist, who seems to like it so maybe there’s something I’m not seeing there.

In an age where kids are being given expensive glass electronics to keep them quiet, it’s nice to have a show that harkens back to the good old days, before the internet took over in the first place and when hand-drawn animation was the norm.  That show is Mr. Pickles.