Yu-Gi-Oh! Dark Side of Dimensions (Review)

By: BellaKaiba

After its intial screening during January and February through the US, UK and Canada, a re-run -on selected theaters- has been announced for April  (in the US), to match the Blue Ray release in North America, and the screening in Latin America and Australia. It's the 4th movie in the Yu-Gi-Oh! universe and it was released in 2016 in Japan to conmmemorate the 20th anniversary of the franchise. In USA and Canada it is licenced and distributed by Screenvision Media.

The movie features an original story written and produced by Kazuki Takahashi, which portrays Seto Kaiba and Yugi Muto as the main characters. The plot is a continuation of 2 party story one-shot manga that Takahashi wrote for Shonen Jump last year, called Trascend Game. This story is set right after the end of the original Yu-Gi-Oh! seires and the start of Dark Side of Dimension's plot.In this story we follow Kaiba's attempt to reunite with The Pharaoh. All hardcore Yu-Gi-Oh! fans are well aware of Kaiba's obsession with beating Yami and reuclaiming his spot as the number one duelist in the world. Meanwhile Yugi and the gang are getting prepared to graduate high school and go on with their lives... until they realize they have never paid much attention to their classmate Aigami (Diva) - who happensto be no ordinary high school kid. Bakura's character plays an important part and his past is strongly interwined with Aigami's.The movie has been beautiful animated, characters redesigned (Kaiba, Yugi and the Dark Magician to name a few), new monsters introduced (Lemon Dark Magician Girl for example). A brand new dueling system has been created for the movie (s if we didn't expect that) and dimension summoning makes its debut!For all hardcore Yu-Gi-Oh! fans it is a must see. Regardless of the background story provided by the franchise, watching the movie by itself is something doable for someone not familiar with the series; but of course it will be much more enjoyable having the whole picture.For both the Japanese and the American dubbed version, the original voice actors for Seto Kaiba (Kenjiro Tsuda,JP and Eric Stuart, USA) and Yugi Muto (Shunsuke Kazama, JP and Dan Green, USA) returned to play their iconic roles once again.Sadly that was not the case for the Latin American Spanish dubbed version, in which the studio decided to dub it without the original cast issue that has a lot of fans in Mexico, Colombia and Argentina very displeased. The movie will run for 2 consecutive weekends in selected teathers in Mexico during april. No further comments have been made about screening it in other Latin American countries.