The Dub’s Shadow Realm vs. The Japanese Version’s Limbo
Do you think a complete lack of existence is better than the shadow realm and backup of a virtual character in the dub? yubel-cakes
Okay so, for me to discuss my opinion on the dub’s concept of the Shadow Realm, I need to explain how it differs from the Japanese version. I also will outline the way that Shadow Games work so people can understand where I’m coming from on this topic. I feel like the fandom is very confused on the topic of the Shadow Realm and where its limits rest.
One thing I actually really like about the dub was the fact that they gave that purple/black inky place an actual name. In the Japanese version, they refer to it as various things but never gave it an official name.
When it’s initially introduced in Season Zero/Toei’s Yu-Gi-Oh! series, it’s just shown as this space where Shadow Games happen. Then, when people lose, Atem/Yami Yuugi performs a Penalty Game within that same realm. The characters don’t really comment on it because only Yami Yuugi and his opponent can see this space. His opponent is freaked out at times by the change in atmosphere, but they have no clue where they are. In the manga, the Shadow Games usually happen in the “normal world” and then the Penalty Games can take the loser into a different mental state. The manga places a large emphasis on Shadow Games being a mental illusion that tests Yami no Yuugi’s (who I shall refer to as Atem from here on out) opponent rather than making a physical “realm” so to speak.
Ushio: What the…?! It’s money! Money! Money! There’s money everywhere! This is great!
In the manga, Atem’s Penalty Games fit his opponent’s personality flaws. In Ushio’s case, his greed was his one major flaw. When he broke the rules and attempted to kill Atem, Atem’s given punishment was the “Illusion of Avarice.”
Atem: They say that money can be dazzling for one who sees it, but now the only thing in your head is the “Illusion of Avarice!”
Notice that while there is swirling darkness and money falling everywhere, Atem is clearly saying that it’s all inside of Ushio’s head. He was not placed in some limbo realm with his soul lost.
Ushio: Mine…mine… All of this money is mine! I won’t let anyone have it!
Student 1: Could it be that he thinks all of those leaves are money?
Student 2: Yuck! It’s not just leaves! There’s garbage in there too!
Student 1: But he looks happy…!
And here we see that everything is, indeed, only happening inside of Ushio’s head. Now, this is not to say that all of the Shadow Games in the series just made people go mentally insane. It entirely depends on the person wielding a Millennium Item. Atem’s Penalty Games were mental illusions that made a person lose their mind or in Seto Kaiba’s case, made him go into a six month coma via the “Mind Crush.”
All of the Millennium Items test a person’s soul and mind. It’s up to the bearer of an Item to determine how that test runs.
With all of this in mind, I’ll dive into the Duel Monsters series and the corresponding manga chapters.
The first duel where you really see the physical space of the “Shadow Realm” come into play is Yuugi’s duel against Pegasus.
Pegasus: Now… The Shadow Game begins…
As I said earlier, the bearer of the Millennium Item determines how a Shadow Game works. They can take the players into a different space within their minds or keep them in the “normal” world much like how Atem performed his Shadow Games. Atem’s Shadow Games largely did not tax on a person’s mind. He only punished them when they lost their game. Here, Pegasus created a separate space within their heads with the intention to ruin Yuugi and Atem’s “Mind Shuffle” technique.
Pegasus: Heh heh… From this point on, this is a battle that no normal human can endure! I wonder how long you can take the pressure, Yuugi-boy…
Yuugi: Guh… What’s going on? My chest hurts…!
Initiating a Shadow Game does not automatically place two players in that limbo space. Pegasus had the choice to keep them out of that world of illusion, but he knew that space would put strain on Yuugi’s (the vessel) heart. Only people who control the Millennium Items can withstand the strain of this space within a Shadow Game which is why Atem was largely unaffected.
Jonouchi: They said it was a Shadow Game but it looks the same as before! What the hell’s going on?!
Ryou: They’re in a world that only they can see. That is a Shadow Game…
Something interesting to note. In the manga, Yuugi’s friends only see Pegasus and Yuugi at the table and not the black clouds around them. In the anime, Yuugi’s friends can see the limbo space but just can’t see what’s going on inside of it. In both cases, the emphasis is that Yuugi’s suffering can only be experienced within his heart and mind. Pegasus’s illusion separates Yuugi from his friends.
Now, compared to the dub, this match is surprisingly not very different from the Japanese version. When the limbo space shows up, the dub refers to it as the “Shadow Realm.” In the Japanese version, there is no name given; it’s just the space where a Shadow Game takes place.
In the dub, When Yugi passes out, Pegasus says that Yugi’s mind is overloaded and implies that his soul is gone. In the Japanese version, Pegasus just outright claims that Yuugi is dead. Honestly, it has the same connotation. The dub just didn’t outright say “death” here.
Okay, so where does the dub version’s of the “Shadow Realm” begin to veer off course?
Episode 60 - The Black Magician User, Pandora / The Master of Magicians, Part 1
This is the duel where Atem faces off against Pandora (known as Arkana in the dub). I would like to remind people that only people with Millennium Items can initiate Shadow Games. Going by the dub’s original concept in Pegasus’s duel, a Shadow Game needs to be in place to conjure up the Shadow Realm.
However, in the duel against Arkana, Arkana mentions that the discs by Atem’s feet are “Dark Energy Discs” that can send the loser’s mind to the Shadow Realm.
In the Japanese version/manga, the “Dark Energy Discs” aren’t dark energy at all. They’re chainsaws. Pandora wants to outright cut off Atem’s legs.
Furthermore, with the legs cut off, Atem would basically die from blood loss. Pandora is basically waging a death match in this duel.
The issue here is Arkana is claiming that he has the ability to send Atem’s mind to the Shadow Realm without needing a Shadow Game. Now, obviously, this is the dub’s way of censoring the notion of death. This way, if Atem loses, he’s not technically “dead;” his mind will just be sent to limbo. This, in turn, expands the dub’s notion of the Shadow Realm to mean that any villain, regardless of if they have a Millennium Item, has access to this realm. One of the most evil things a villain can do is send someone’s mind/soul into limbo rather than outright kill them. By virtue of having direct access to the Shadow Realm, a person is now a villain.
In the Japanese version, there is death. The worst a villain can do is kill someone. Though, this also means that their space of limbo during a Shadow Game is kept entirely separate from the notion of death. There is death and punishment that can lead to death/mental insanity. If we used the term “Shadow Realm” for the Japanese version’s illusion space during a Shadow Game, it would only apply to that limbo void and would not be applied to the Penalty Game.
Though, I will say one curious thing about the dub with its regards to death. While the Arkana duel uses the Shadow Realm, the duel that pins Joey and Yugi against each other still uses the threat of drowning which does allude to death. To me, this implies that Marik is worse than a “normal” level villain since he’s resorting to drowning his enemies in the ocean rather than just simply attacking someone’s mind. It does make me wonder why the Arkana duel even needed any mention of the Shadow Realm though. Maybe the notion of chopping off legs implied too much gore so the writers decided that mental torture would be much safer on the children?
Now we get to another mention of the Shadow Realm in the dub:
Episode 79 - Ghost Deck vs. Occult Deck / Shadow of a Duel
Here, the dub goes back to Shadow Games leading to souls being sent to the Shadow Realm. Though, because the Arkana duel, this would mean that, technically, by mere virtue of being evil, Yami Bakura is able to conjure up the Shadow Realm space around himself and his opponent.
When Bonz (Ghost Kotsuzuka in the Japanese version) loses, he and his group are all sent to the Shadow Realm.
With the Japanese version, Yami no Bakura outright states that Ghost Kotsuzuka and his group will be sent directly to Hell if they lose. Basically, when Kotsuzuka’s Life Points reach zero, the entire group dies. We could take this to mean that Yami no Bakura is claiming their souls. Yami no Bakura most likely created that space around the group in order to place strain on their minds since he was in a rush to make it to the semi-finals before the deadline.
With the manga version, Yami no Bakura’s Shadow Game didn’t even need the limbo space. Ghost Kotsuzuka just died when his Life Points reached zero since that was the set condition for the Shadow Game.
Ghost Kotsuzuka: I…I lost…!
Yami no Bakura: Ha ha ha! After you die, your Puzzle Card is mine!
The last example I’d like to point to is the duel between Yami no Malik no Jinkaku and Mai.
In the manga, this is the very first instance where people other than the opponent and the person initiating the Shadow Game can feel/see the limbo space.
Honda: What the…?! There’s a dark fog gathering around the dueling platform! It’s getting hard to breathe too! At first I thought the air was thin because we’re so high up… It’s like there’s a fog cork down our throats…
Jonouchi: If it gets any thicker, we won’t even be able to see them!
As seen in these panels, the group is talking about how it’s very hard to breathe. It’s similar to Yuugi’s inability to breathe when he dueled against Pegasus. This means that the space of illusion is spreading out to everyone on the top of the Battle Ship.
Yami Malik: That’s right, Yuugi. So you figured it out… What’s gathering around us is hatred… A hatred darker than the darkest night…
Yami Malik: This dark cloud is nothing less than my own hate… My desire for revenge… It will never lift until I kill Yuugi and drag him down into it… into the dark…
In these two above panels, Yami no Malik no Jinkaku is explaining that the dark clouds can be seen because he allows the group to see them. Hatred and a corrupted heart gives added power to a Shadow Game because the Millennium Items are inherently objects that feed off of negative energy. Yami no Malik no Jinkaku is obviously referring to his hatred of the Pharaoh because Malik blames Atem for the suffering of the Ishtar Clan and for the death of his father.
Now, the line “drag him down into the dark” could be misconstrued to mean that Yami no Malik no Jinjaku wants to drag Yuugi into the limbo space as part of death (aka the Shadow Realm), but I read it as something different. Since he’s referring to revenge, Yami no Malik no Jinjaku is alluding to the suffering that Malik and his people experienced in the tombs (in darkness). He means that he wants Atem to suffer in the same way that Malik’s family suffered.
Yami no Malik no Jinkaku’s Shadow Game is much more potent than Pegasus’s duel against Yuugi and has a farther reaching range. He wants everyone around him to experience the hatred he feels so he projects that negativity around the entire Battle Ship.
This duel gives us two definite conclusions regarding Shadow Games. The first being that in the manga/Japanese anime, the Millennium Items give their bearers the freedom to set up rules and penalties for Shadow Games. The second conclusion is that the more hatred you harbor in your heart, the stronger the Shadow Game will become because the Millennium Items feeds off of that darkness. With this logic in mind, Yami no Malik no Jinkaku’s Penalty Game is ultimately crueler and stronger than other Millennium Item bearers because of his hatred. We can see this played out when he locks Mai into a torturous coma where her mind is slowly being eaten away.
With regards to the dub and the Japanese version of the anime, they are very similar with how the duel plays out. Both versions downplay the explanation of the limbo space being visible to the others and just chalks it up to “it’s a Shadow Game.”
Now that I’ve talked through the major instances of the dub and sub/manga with regards to the “Shadow Realm,” I can get back to answering this question.
Do you think a complete lack of existence is better than the shadow realm and backup of a virtual character in the dub?
Saying a “complete lack of existence” is not entirely accurate. While the space of mental illusion can allude to the feeling of being in the middle of nowhere (limbo), the loss of a Shadow Game can lead to death. With the dub, the Shadow Realm not just a limbo space for games, but also a mental prison where losers are sent as punishment.
I personally prefer the Japanese version mainly because there are limits on the mental illusion (i.e. only Millennium Item bearers can conjure up the limbo space) and the penalty can cost a person their actual life. There is immediate risk there. Meanwhile, the Shadow Realm in the dub version became a confusing mess of any villain being able to send the loser to the realm without even needing a Millennium Item or a Shadow Game.
However, what I will say is that the dub’s actual term of the “Shadow Realm” is a very good one. It is a very appropriate name for that space. It’s just a shame that their own concept of it became muddled over time for the sake of censorship.
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