At an international conference.
At the third Sharjah Animation Conference, at the Expo Centre Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates, Hiromi Matsuhita and his wife Kazuko Tadano mentioned when hired to do character designs for Yu-Gi-Oh! SEVENS and Yu-Gi-Oh! GO RUSH!!, that Kazuki Takahashi himself requested the character designs be simplified and aged aged down, aesthetics in general be much less dark and card mechanics be streamlined to make the franchise appealing to elementary school age children.
A major item of prior experience for the couple is the Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon anime in the 90s and Mrs. Tadano doing the character designs for Eternal and Cosmos.
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Very cool!!
I see. An interesting last request from Kazuki. Well, results have been made.
ablaz andy moment
People can finally stop moaning about Go Rush and Sevens character designs.
Hell yeah! It doesn’t get more real YGO than being requested by Takahashi himself.
1 valid complaint i saw was it look like ape escape protag
https://www.reddit.com/r/DuelLinks/comments/1e0ys50/yuga_before_yugioh/
“Make go rush more kid friendly”
“Okay, Takahashi-sensei.”
“So in this scene, Yudias realizes that sometimes in life you are just born in a lose-lose situation with no chance of ever having it as good as others and develops anxieties about if his life is destined for inevitable failure since he cant 100% believe everything will work out anymore now that he has experienced that pain firsthand via astral projection.”
kid friendly doesn’t necessarily mean lacking complexity
I am pleased Takahashi personally asked for the characters to be aged down and his legacy and input were preserved in SEVENS and GO RUSH.
Now the community can finally shut up how “neither one is a real YGO.”
(That might also be a reason why we don’t have YGO9.)
There will still be people who will say that Rush’s Animes ruined Yu-Gi-Oh because of its childish approach (even though ZEXAL was the one who started this childish approach to Character Designs).
Anyway, aside from the Lore Archetypes’s Animated Shorts, it would be curious if the reason for not having another Anime is out of respect for Takahashi (although that doesn’t mean that many people continue to ask for a DM Reboot or something DM-related, despite the fact that that would ruin the essence that Takahashi put into DM)
Anyway, in July, we’ll know if Konami has other things planned (2025 has already been strange in terms of the Product and Package schedule)
Lack of YGO9 (for now) is probably more connected to Konami opening their own studio. While we only see bunch of shorts and lol GX Remaster, I’m pretty sure that in the background they are setting all up and working on new stuff.
They’re working on a Suikoden anime.
The studio is chiefly an internal support studio.
So it was the man himself who ordered the massacre.
Jokes aside, I’m really not sure what to think of this, I completely understand the need for them to target a younger audience (to refresh their base) but as a grown ass man trying to watch Go Rush and Sevens, I simply can’t help but feel that I’m indeed watching a kids show and that I’m growing out of this… something that I did not feel at all watching Arc V and Vrains (heck Vrains was extremely mature and edgy for a Yu-Gi-Oh show).
I guess I should just be thankful that the legacy lives on and that the franchise keeps getting new people interested in it, we had the luxury of having Yu-Gi-Oh grow up with us a bit and the chance to pass the flame to the younger ones, unlike ageless franchises like Pokemon or other physical-game-based things like BeyBlade that never really change their formulae.
You could say that Pokemon changed its focus by replacing Ash with a new MC (as well as pushing the use of OVAs to promote Pokemon in other media)
However, like Rush’s Animes, people can’t accept the change and the new offerings don’t end up being as popular as the original (there are people asking for Ash to return to the Anime even though his Arc has already ended and we’ve been with him for over 10 Seasons)
I think it’s more the shows aiming at a specific age range you’ve just grown out of. I don’t mean that in a bad way but think of some childhood show you watched as a 6 year old before school. Even if you still enjoy it as an adult it won’t be in the same way as when you were a kid.
Sevens and Go rush have some good writing with a couple mature moments but they’re still shows for younger audiences at the end of the day.
Yeah IDK if I buy that, sounds very much like corporate speak like when Marvel would use Stan Lee to say “Good Job” any time they made an unpopular decision.
Saying “Well ya know the creator of Yu-Gi-Oh himself said very specifically to do this!” is hyper corporate speak.
For the record I don’t even mind the new designs since it’s a different universe, and I think these series were a good idea for a younger crowd, I’m just saying this is BS.
Different universes in yugioh don’t exist.
If it was corpo speak, it would’ve been advertised way earlier and publicly. This is just an interview with one designer and their wife after Go Rush ended and most of the interview is about their experience with Sailor Moon.
Aha. This interview came about mainly because of the Designers’ experience with Sailor Moon’s Anime (in any case, the free publicity would be for Sailor Moon, not for Rush’s Animes)
Kazuki was also seemingly involved with the push for ZEXAL to be ‘simplified rules’, ‘simplified/brighter art’, ‘more soft and cute character designs’, so it seems like every 10 years he pushed the “Get kids back in” button, or at least heavily agreed with it.
Yeah, sure. Master duel flying too close to the sun and becoming perona non grata on tv tokyo and for 10-year olds, gallop feeling burn out, the challenge of a long-running series with complex character designs, etc., there are too many stakeholders to conveniently pin everything on Kaz.
Please keep in mind, that even the involvement of the original creator should not lead to an obligation to be fond of the idea. Personally, I’ll continue to not acknowledge any of the Rush Duel series as genuine parts of the YGO anime.
Forever a man baby
Yugioh boomers so afraid of change they’ll even disavow the guy that made it posthumously if it means they get to stay in their echo chamber…