(risky trope) A show changes genres mid way

[u/ErlikHan6]

The 100: the show starts as a somewhat grounded post apocalypse where humans who have taken refuge in a space station return to earth after it has become inhabitable again and resources on the space station run out. At first the show is about survival in a hostile environment. It slowly introduces more and more sci fi elements. At first, it's an Aİ that wants control over humanity. Towards the end of the show, the main characters have traveled throughout the galaxy, met humans from other planets, some of which have settled among ruins of ancient alien species, where they try to contact more advanced alien species in order to achieve "transcendence": rid humans of their physical bodies and become a more advanced lifeform.

AOT: this one is less gradual than the 100 and the change comes after a massive plot twist. The first 3 seasons of the show are about a relatively primitive society of humans who live inside humongous walls. Outside the walls are titans: giant monstrous creatures which hunt and devour humans. After a big plot twist and reveal, the society finds out that there is a whole bigger world out there, and the rest of the world is plotting to genocide them. They quickly industrialize after this discovery and wage war against other countries.

[u/13-Penguins]

The Yugioh manga run, the first 7 volumes are an episodic horror, slice of life series with Yugi’s evil alter ego taking revenge on bullies through challenging them to different games of the week then punishing them when they lose. At least 3 cases of someone getting set on fire. But after that, it switches to a battle shounen/sports series centered around the duel monsters card game (the power of friendship is still a major theme in both halves of the series). Duel Monsters had appeared before intending to be a one off MtG parody, but readers were sending letters asking to play, so they made it into an irl card game.

[u/Deosarian → u/13-Penguins]

Hwhat

[u/OhItsAcer → u/Deosarian]

My favorite is when they play "ice hockey" which was nitro glycerin frozen in ice played on a hot grill

[u/screenwatch3441 → u/OhItsAcer]

That one was always my favorite because the stakes was so low without yugi escalating it. Like, classes competing for locations in a school fair somehow escalated to gunpowder ice hockey.

[u/PaperLaur → u/screenwatch3441]

It was also the first time Yami's impulsiveness almost ruined a plan, because he wasn't expecting a guy built like a brick shithouse to just try and hit the puck hard enough to give him a concussion

[u/13-Penguins → u/screenwatch3441]

It was very high stakes! That guy made Tea cry!/s

[u/kaimcdragonfist → u/OhItsAcer]

I think my favorite is Bakura’s TTRPG. Seriously the amount of work Bakura put into his death game, including actual tabletop props and character pieces resembling the gang and the people whose souls he’d just stolen throughout the arc just makes me laugh

[u/screenwatch3441 → u/kaimcdragonfist]

If I’m going to play DnD with my friend’s captured souls, I’m going to do it right!

[u/JACC_Opi → u/OhItsAcer]

I was thinking that nitroglycerin would require an extremely cold temperature to freeze, but just checked and it actually takes 13 °C (55 °F) for it to freeze.

[u/versusChou → u/JACC_Opi]

The nitroglycerin isn't frozen. It's a short cylinder of regular ice with a test tube of nitroglycerin sticking out of the top of it. They play air hockey on a hot griddle so the ice is constantly melting with the idea being that whoever's side it's on when the ice fully melts will explode. But the bully is way stronger than Yami, so Yami uses his paddle to crack the ice and the next time the bully tries to send it back the ice breaks in two.

[u/thenerfviking → u/Deosarian]

The games get pretty lazy too. One is just called “Fire maze” and it’s just him setting a warehouse on fire.

[u/Kilroy0497 → u/thenerfviking]

Funny thing is, it wasn’t even the first time he did exactly that. Early on he also just lit a lighter on an inmate that was drinking vodka, he left the lighter on the inmate’s hand, grabbed Anzu, and let nature take its course.

[u/AzureValkyrie → u/thenerfviking]

While the initial premise sounds better, things like that makes me think that it was better for the long run to focus on the card game.

Like, realistically how many interesting games could the author come up with until YamiYugi says "We are playing the SharkJumping game, we will jump sharks with jetskis until one of us wipes out!"

[u/thenerfviking → u/AzureValkyrie]

That’s 100% why they switched. The gimmick was he’s the King of Games (that’s literally what Yu Gi Oh means, it’s like if you had an American character who was good at Bowling and his name was Roland Balls) and each issue is a different game but there’s only so many games you can make into a cool magical Shonen anime thing. Especially when it’s a serialized thing and you have to introduce the game every issue which is naturally going to eat up a lot of print space so you’re even more constrained.

[u/Lansha2009 → u/thenerfviking]

Ah yes a maze…a warehouse which would have a like maybe a turn to get to the exit.

[u/thenerfviking → u/Lansha2009]

In his defense iirc (it’s been like 25 years since I read this) it’s like an evil gang warehouse full of stolen goods and 80s action movie style piles of boxes.

[u/13-Penguins → u/Deosarian]

The beginning of the manga before the card game took over also has an anime adaptation, sometimes called “season 0”. It was made by a different studio than the main anime.

[u/Kafanski_Filozof → u/Deosarian]

Yami is called a king of games for a reason. Not king of card games. There is a episode where they play DnD

[u/4862skrrt2684 → u/Deosarian]

Honestly, the first volumes are the best. Big recommendation from here. Kaiba locks Yugi and his friends in a room with a famous serial killer in a theme park he built just to torment yugi, because yugi won over him in a game.

[u/Arbusc → u/Deosarian]

Dudes so surprised he’s starting to recite the opening of Beowulf.

[u/Kilroy0497 → u/13-Penguins]

Honestly to me that’s a lot of the reason why the original is still by and far the best Yu-Gi-Oh series. Like the original series, even once it swaps over to the card game is very much a horror manga(I mean even after they swapped to the card game you still have PANIK being hanged, Keith losing a game of Russian Roulette with his own hand, the Dungeon Dice Monsters arc, Pandora/Arkana nearly getting his legs chopped off and Bakura straight up murdering the zombie kid for his locator cards) and the monster designs from around that time very much has that occult and eldritch feel to them.

[u/Regon2005 → u/13-Penguins]

Now the card game is far more popular than any other card game, even MtG, at least here in Asia. We know one and only one card game, it's YugiOh

[u/charlie987987 → u/Regon2005]

Where in Asia? It’s certainly not true in Japan at least, Pokemon crushes everything there.

[u/Regon2005 → u/charlie987987]

Yeah but do the Japanese actually play with pokemon card or they just mostly collect them? I feel like the Pokemon TCG is most for collecting

[u/charlie987987 → u/Regon2005]

Honestly not sure on play rates but duel masters and one piece also outsell yugioh in Japan. I wasn’t really trying to prove you wrong though, I was more curious about what part of Asia you’re from where yugioh is the dominant game. Asia is really big lol

[u/Regon2005 → u/charlie987987]

I'm from Vietnam. There are only 2 TCG that have actual foothold here. YugiOh for playing and Pokemon for collecting. From my experience that applies to the vast majority of Southeast Asia thanks to the anime being fairly prevalent. Figured other anime TCG would sold well too. But even my mom knows what YugiOh is, it's that famous.

[u/AlwaysTired97 → u/Regon2005]

That's a fair point. The actual Pokemon Trading Card GAME might not be as popular as other TCGs. A lot of people just collect the cards because they're big Pokemon fans without actually wanting to play the actual game with them(which is totally fine).

However, even ignoring Pokemon, I'm not sure it's #1, even in Asia. I couldn't find stats for Asia as a whole, but in Japan 2026 apparently Duel Masters and the One Piece TCGs outsold it. The TCG market in Japan is surprisingly competitive.

It's almost definitely top 3 in the west, but in addition Pokemon, Magic: The Gathering also likely outsells it as well.

[u/kagenohikari → u/AlwaysTired97]

TIL that the Pokemon cards are actually for playing and not just collecting. I never see anyone play Pokemon TCG ever.

[u/swordgon → u/Regon2005]

The world champs for this year were from Japan I think? They’re fairly dominant as well and at least have some strong showings. I think the whole collector part and scalper noise overrides that it’s still a popular and strong option for competitive play. 

[u/Next-Visual-3513 → u/Regon2005]

We just forgetting about duel masters? It beats yugioh sometimes too

[u/Regon2005 → u/Next-Visual-3513]

Ok, what is Duel Masters

[u/shibakevin → u/Next-Visual-3513]

Duel Masters flopped so hard in the West. I was playing a play-by-mail game called Duel Masters and Hasbro bought their naming rights so they could launch the card game in the West. I think it was dead in 2 months.

[u/GreasyPeter → u/Regon2005]

Yugioh is relegated to second place behind MtG in most of America, but still has a loyal following. I can't say I necessarily like the 30-step card combos that the game seems to have devolved into currently but they'll throw a wrench in it again somehow and it'll change, again.

[u/Boring_Shoulder5236 → u/GreasyPeter]

i summon pot of greed!

[u/D0MSBrOtHeR → u/Boring_Shoulder5236]

I summon my whole deck!

[u/CassiusPolybius → u/13-Penguins]

Horror Manga up until the main character gained a Special Interest

[u/itsjuxtagame → u/13-Penguins]

TIL

I had known forever the manga/anime came before the TCG, did not know i was missing out on sociopathic prequel knowledge

[u/cpMetis → u/itsjuxtagame]

Yeah the anime of more or less uses episode 1 to skip like the entire first part of the series. It was made assuming people would have watched the previous anime (sometimes called season 0) and more or less get that they were skipping ahead to the new stuff.

And that's part of why the anime has so much filler near the end of Battle City and between that and the start of the final arc in ancient Egypt. And why the excellent movie Dark Side of Dimensions, the only cannon one, seems to pretend Kaiba just forgot the end of the anime.

I'm the manga, Battle City is like the third quarter instead of the second and Kaiba basically leaves the story after the end of Battle City having finished his character arc. So he never recognized Yugi as the true king of games at the final duel then existentially freaked out learning that Atem had left for the afterlife. Hence why he ends the movie with the sentiment that Yugi is the true king - the same thing he acknowledged in the anime version where he was there for the end.

[u/A-Random-Storyteller → u/cpMetis]

Sorry but the movie is absolute trash. The game in the movie doesn't even make any sense. They play monsters like pokemon. The main antagonist is attrosiously generic. Towards the end when the "moment we all have been waiting for" happened, a card was pulled out of Yugi's ass that insta-won the duel. Kaiba built an impossible space-machine to go after Yami/Atem/Pharaoh. Trash CGI for monsters (see: Obelisk). The anime's ending steamrolls the movie's, it's not even a competition.

I am sure if I re-watch it I will find more perversions that I have forgotten.

[u/B2blackhawk → u/itsjuxtagame]

Yeah, there is an entire arc where the game is “only move one finger, any other and you lose.” The antagonist is pointing a gun at Yugi

[u/GreasyPeter → u/13-Penguins]

The way the card game has evolved makes it very clear they were, and still are, entirely winging it.

[u/CurmudgeonLife → u/13-Penguins]

It was crazy seeing Yugi just straight up torture and execute people after watching the anime as a kid.

[u/13-Penguins → u/CurmudgeonLife]

The DOMA arc got flack for being filler, but anime watchers really needed the Berserker Soul scene to see how Yami was moving without Yugi as his moral center.

[u/CurmudgeonLife → u/13-Penguins]

I never saw that tbh. My interest in it waned throughout the GX era as I got older.

[u/SpedKeyFire → u/13-Penguins]

Those early mangas are so so cool. You’d never know as an American anime viewer

[u/Nuns_In_Crocs → u/13-Penguins]

The anime we all know just starts from the duellist kingdom arc, that’s why it just drops randomly to them playing the game.

There were entire stories of Kaiba (and why he’s at the school) Bakura and Mokuba before the DM story begins. There’s reason why the gang hates kaiba before the first episode.