'Yu-Gi-Oh!' Twitch Channel Grows Again, With 'Pyramid of Light' Movie, 'Zexal' Series
Nothing will bring me down that deep deep deep for something always on
Are you feeling the flow of the Yu-Gi-Oh! library into Twitch? Immediately after just one run-through of Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D’s, which finished early Tuesday evening the franchise’s official channel took a chance and ran 2004’s Yu-Gi-Oh! The Movie: Pyramid of Light, the first movie in the franchise. Known without its subtitle in the States, the film sees an evil sorcerer named Anubis is released from the artifact called the Pyramid of Light, thanks to Kaiba. Yugi must defeat this new foe, who seeks to destroy the world, without his Egyptian God Cards are removed from the game by the Pyramid in this film set after his Battle City victory that ended season 3 and thus is before season 4. Once the film ended, halfway to forever made it to the Eternity Stream with the addition of the fourth series Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal.
Zexal is the series starring Yuma Tsukumo who has great Duel Monsters championship aspirations. He meets a spirit named Astral who lost his memories. To retrieve them, they search for 99 special Number cards that once gathered will restore them. They take part in all the duels necessary to make it happen. In the States, the series aired on The CW in its Toonzai and Vortexx era for its Saturday mornings as well as Nicktoons, however it apparently became Hulu-forward after Vortexx closed. Notably, Zexal was the first series to stop the shenanigans that befell GX and 5D’s of the English dubs never being finished, as all 146 episodes were dubbed and aired, and there hasn’t been any series hobbled dub-wise like its two predecessors since.
To recap, the channel started with three seasons of Duel Monsters and the first season of GX, which run through the reflections on the Battle City Tournament and Zane’s graduation duel. It was only around November 18 that it was then expanded to the full five seasons of Duel Monsters and three dubbed seasons of GX. Sunday’s 5D’s addition was preceded by the channel’s first Bonds Beyond Time movie airing. “Movies” had been added to the stream title with Zexal, so my inquiry also included Dark Side of Dimensions, which takes place six months or a year after the end of the original series (depending on the language) and was released in 2016, ostensibly for the 20th anniversary of the franchise. The Twitch user that answered me said it was just Pyramid of Light, so while it’s not here yet, it should be expected to join quickly at this rate.
Prime is missing Zexal, Tubi is missing Arc-V, the next series. But they both have all three movies and Vrains, the series after that. However it’s also notable that 5D’s and Zexal are also available in full on the franchise (English) YouTube channel. Even with how available the franchise is to stream, it’s interesting to observe the speed at which the channel will reach full strength, or at least as full as they’ll currently allow themselves to be. After all the Pokémon Twitch channel hasn’t streamed Journeys.
On a more personal note, I didn’t see Pyramid of Light until earlier this year, and I would still use it as an ur-example of movies based on ongoing cartoons that have absolutely zero impact on the main series. It is largely the reason I couldn’t stand the idea of a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie for the first Nickelodeon series that used a throwaway villain that could bring high enough stakes to eclipse what the series had managed to accomplish even just in “Showdown”, so much that it helped reconcile the existence of the Michael Bay-produced films. Now we’ve had a movie serve as a story-wrapping series finale for Rise and the Mutant Mayhem turtles get two movies bridged by a series. Pokémon would vary movie to movie but there was still defiance. Plopper has cameoed several times on The Simpsons and other references to The Simpsons Movie have been made on the series over the years. It’s just doable! It is!
