Recently i decided to search for more interviews about Yugioh in Japanese, and found one that's really enlightening... and also kinda wild
It's with a man called Yoshiro Kataoka, who worked for quite a few TV stations, especially in anime production. The interview is separated in different topics... including one about his work on the second Yu-Gi-oh adaptation, Duel Monsters
I'll be explaining some of what it said here. Note that i translated it with Google Translate, so I'll be warning that it might be somewhat inaccurate:
It starts with him talking about Japanese TV stations, highlighting TV Asahi, where the Toei Yugioh anime (Season 0) was broadcasted on before getting cancelled, because it wasn't getting good ratings.
Then, he explains that, one day, Kazuhiko Torishima (at that time editor in chief of Shonen Jump, well known for being Akira Toriyama's editor for a good while) came in and said: "The Yu-Gi-Oh! anime is ending, but the Jump surveys are doing great, so it's unthinkable to stop the anime broadcast at this time. So, I don't care what you do, Kataoka, please make it into an anime and broadcast it"
It was proposed to try to make an new show to air on TV Tokyo, since they could get Konami and Bandai to sponsor it...the problem was that TV Asahi and Toei Animation had the rights to rebroadcast and use Yugioh at that moment, so this wouldn't be allowed.
Torishima told Kataoka to go get a time slot with TV Tokyo while he dealt with the rest. He went to talk to Toei, they obviously refused....
Then, Torishima aparently said "Are you sure you want to say that to me? I could halt all the secondary rights for Dragon Ball."
He also threatened TV Asahi, saying that they would pull the plug in popular adaptations of Shueisha series of that time, like Jigoku Sensei Nube....
And aparently that's how Yu-Gi-Oh Duel Monsters was born!
Torishima is known for being a little dramatic, so maybe this could be slightly exagerated? But i imagine it's probably a little true at least, and if so, this explains a lot how a second adaptation happened so soon, and also why Season 0 is in such a weird legal limbo....
It was also nice to get official confirmation that Season 0 got cancelled? I don't find a lot of interviews even talking about it, but here, Kataoka speculates that they started adapting it too soon, as it only got really popular with readers on Duelist Kingdom
There's some other cool things in that interview, like Kazuki Takahashi initially having rather negative opinions on Yugi's VA on Duel Monsters, and other things not related to Yugioh, but this is what i have for today!
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