We're going to do something a little different today!
My project involved recreating every Magic & Wizards card Yugi was shown to have in the manga, limited only to the monsters that I could, in fact, recreate.
The two monsters that are the subject of this post are an interesting edge case to that mission statement, due to how they showed up on-panel. See for yourself below:
In chapter 146, "The Ancient Lithograph", Yugi is shown recovering after the fire that occurred at the end of the D.D.D. (short for Dragons, Dice, & Dungeons) arc. (This is known as the Dungeon Dice Monsters arc outside of Japan.)
While he's in the hospital, Jonouchi cheers him up by playing a few games of Magic & Wizards (which goes about as well for him as you'd expect!).
In this chapter, Yugi says that he's rebuilt his deck with Dark Yugi during his stay in the hospital. And we see proof of that with the two Monster Cards in the right panel, which are entirely new.
So what are these new cards, anyway? In-universe, they're pretty immaterial; just new monster cards that never appear again. Out-of-universe is a different story, though.
The cards are clearly meant to be two monsters original to Konami's game: Tyhone and Terra the Djinn (called "Terra the Terrible" here). It's the first time Konami cards appeared in the manga. And they would be followed by a scant few more Konami-original cards over the course of the Battle City arc (as I mentioned in my post on "Pot of Greed").
Since they were Yugi's cards, used by him on-panel, they fell under the parameters of my project. But the size of the art for these two was so small that no amount of reworking would make them look good.
For a while, I was stumped. I feared they would fall in the category of cards that I simply couldn't recreate. Then I realized: these cards were based on Konami's art to begin with. What if I changed Konami's art to look like Takahashi's renditions? Would that work?
This is how they turned out!
Here's "Tyhone"!
It was nice of Takahashi to include this particular monster in the manga. "Tyhone" was originally designed by a fan, Masanori Tanaka, who sent it in as part of a 'design-a-monster' contest held before the release of the first Yu-Gi-Oh! video game, "Yu-Gi-Oh! Monster Capsule Breed and Battle".
Courtesy of Yugipedia, here's what its original card face looked like when it was released as part of "Yu-Gi-Oh! Official Card Game Duel Monsters: Vol. 2" on 27 March 1999.
And here's "Terra the Djinn"! As you can see, Konami international's translators removed the 'djinn'/'genie' part of the name from their version of this card.
Again, courtesy of Yugipedia, here's a link to what its original card face looked like when it was released as part of "Yu-Gi-Oh! Official Card Game Duel Monsters: Vol. 2" on 27 March 1999.
The goal of this project was to present Takahashi's original cards, using Takahashi's original artwork, to the greatest extent that was realistically possible. On one hand, I couldn't preserve the original artist's art for these two. On the other hand, Takahashi wasn't necessarily the original artist of the illustrations in question! So I suppose it all balances out in the end.
Thanks for reading! Tomorrow we'll finally start on Yugi's Battle City cards proper. But don't forget- if there are any other Yugi manga cards you have questions about, fire away and I'd be glad to write up a little detour for ya here!
Sometimes, the powers of chaos alone are not enough.
Sometimes, you need something, or someone, that will see you in the darkness where you stand and grant you the clairvoyance you need to make that darkness bend to your will.
When sinister sorcerers of illusion and despair fill your heart with doubt and uncertainty, do not lose hope! Steel your nerves, muster up your determination, and prepare this, the "Chaos: Black Magic Ritual"!!
Call upon the one who will never fail to aid you and your friends in your most desperate hour!!
Call upon the one draped in shadows, with awe-inspiring arcane powers greater than the infinite phantasmagoric legions of Hell!!
Call upon the mysterious figure who can effortlessly command both the essences of the gods of chaos and the forbidden secrets of black magic with the merest wave of his staff!!
Call upon-
The Magician of Black Chaos!!
This is it! The end of the line, the last card in Yugi's Duelist Kingdom deck. And what a finisher it is!
This card is central to the conclusion of Duelist Kingdom. A symbol of the bond between Yugi and his dark counterpart; after all, Yugi is the one who left this card to Dark Yugi! Without him, Pegasus would have been able to see this card coming thanks to the mind-reading powers of the Millennium Eye!
So let's shift focus to this card's name. It's 「カオス－黒魔術の儀式」, "Chaos: Black Magic Ritual". In my initial version of this card, I cut out the 'chaos' part of the name for the same reason I removed the 'holy barrier' from "Mirror Force"- I felt that the expanded title cluttered the top of the card too much. In time I came to regret that, because I did really want to keep the 'chaos' in this card's name. And eventually, I did just that! After all, this card's name is a reflection of the name of the monster it summons, the "Magician of Black Chaos"!
Panel from chapter 131, "Attack of Chaos!!".
In the official English translation of the manga, Viz called this "Dark Magic Ritual". This was its name in the 4Kids dub of the "Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters" anime as well. While it's never been officially commented on, it seems that the rights holders for Yu-Gi-Oh! in English-speaking territories were a little skittish on putting the words 'black magic' in any part of the series in the early '00s. I suspect this was due to fear of leftover sentiments of the 'satanic panic' fearmongering campaigns that were still known to occur when the series was first brought over. Of course, 'dark magic' is a close synonym for 'black magic', so ultimately the decision is still quite baffling.
At any rate: while this card debuted in English in 2002 via the anime, and the physical card itself debuted in Konami's game in 1999 in Japan, it took until 2007 for Konami to print an English version of this card! When it did, they called their version "Black Magic Ritual". There's a theory out there that the reason it took so long is because someone important at Konami (or, perhaps, Kazuki Takahashi himself) wouldn't let Konami's English division release the card unless a more faithful name than the one used in the 4Kids dub/Viz's translation was used for the card. Others say that "Black Magic Ritual" wasn't released early on simply because it would have been outdated almost immediately- the English set releases were released at an accelerated rate, and basic Ritual Magic Cards were outmoded even by the time this card debuted in the anime. Ultimately, we may never know for sure what happened there for sure.
This card also had a slightly different colorscheme during the manga's original run! On the cover of the "Yu-Gi-Oh!" volume 15 tankobon (released in English as "Yu-Gi-Oh! Duelist volume 8) released 4 October 1999 in Japan, "Chaos: Black Magic Ritual" looked like this:
Detail from the cover of "Yu-Gi-Oh! Duelist volume 8, provided for its greater resolution. Image slightly altered for ease of viewing.
The background was originally a blue gradient; the central floating fire was orange; the ceremonial torches were a sort of dull brown, with fire atop them and smoke pouring out of it (a detail that couldn't easily be discerned in the original black and white manga pages); and the magical summoning circle originally featured a hexagram, in line with the hexagram originally featured on "Binding Hexagram Curse" (Konami's "Spellbinding Circle") as well as the one on "Magician of Black Chao"'s headwear. (I'll go into detail on the hexagrams in my post on "Binding Hexagram Curse".)
Like "Chaos Ritual", I kept the first half of this card's wording very close to how it was rendered in the manga, right down to the vague "'The Magician of Black Chaos' descends." line (though I still added the second line for clarity). This makes it slightly less descriptive than even "Chaos Ritual", but make no mistake.
"Chaos: Black Magic Ritual" acts as a power-up for "Black Magician" in the same way that "Chaos Ritual" is a power-up for "Dark Knight Gaia".
We see this very clearly in the manga itself:
Panel from chapter 130, "Battle of Hearts!!".
"Black Magician" is unambiguously shown being affected by this card's ritual.
This is not so in the anime! For whatever reason, "Black Magician" and "Magician of Black Chaos" are depicted as two separate figures there. I could not begin to speculate why the writing team at Studio Gallop decided on this change.
Panel from chapter 130, "Battle of Hearts!!".
This is particularly confusing because Takahashi is even more clear than he is with "Chaos Soldier" that "Magician of Black Chaos"'s on-field representation is a combination of two cards, "Black Magician" and "Chaos: Black Magic Ritual".
Panel from chapter 131, "Attack of Chaos!!".
"Black Magician" is the card on Yugi's right; during the entire duel, the physical card never leaves its spot in front of the Yugis.
The card on Yugi's left is kept vague on-panel, but by all logic it appears to be "Chaos: Black Magic Ritual".
Those who remember the Yugis vs Pegasus duel may attempt to say that one of these cards may be "Kuriboh", who served a pivotal role in the battle against "Thousand-Eyes Sacrifice" ("Thousand-Eyes Restrict").
But, no: when it's summoned, "Kuriboh"'s card looks like this:
Panel from chapter 131, "Attack of Chaos!!".
It's in defense mode, and is consistently drawn that way.
Others may say that the other face-up card could be "Multiply", which is the card used to disable "Thosuand-Eyes Sacrifice"'s special ability. But that's the card placed behind "Kuriboh" in the image above, and we clearly see Dark Yugi pick it up and use/activate it, then get rid of it, over the course of the duel:
Panels from chapter 131, "Attack of Chaos!!".
Notice that this card is in the same position as the card behind "Kuriboh".
And when "Kuriboh" is destroyed after its special ability activates in response to "Thousand-Eyes Sacrifice"'s special ability:
Panels from chapter 131, "Attack of Chaos!!".
Both "Kuriboh" and "Multiply" are shown clear from the spot in front of Dark Yugi where they logically would be otherwise.
Panel from chapter 131, "Attack of Chaos!!".
I should also note that "Magician of Black Chaos" had minor changes between its original appearances in 1999 and its appearance in the 2016 color edition of the manga (which is based on Konami's card, naturally). Outside of the symbol on its head, the rings and straps on its outfit were different colors:
Detail from the cover of "Yu-Gi-Oh! Duelist" volume 8. Released in Japan on 4 October 1999.
It even showed up this way on the cover of "Yu-Gi-Oh! True Duel Monsters: Sealed Memories", released on 9 December 1999 in Japan.
Image sourced from Yugipedia. Notice "Magician of Black Chaos", on the left.
Thankfully, "Magician of Black Chaos"'s overall colorscheme has been kept fairly intact over the years!
(The blank card is intended to stand in for "Time Bomb" (Konami's "Jigen Bakudan"), which is not one of Yugi's cards.)
I could say more about "Chaos: Black Magic Ritual"...but instead I'll end the card talk with a final:
"Destruction Spell- Death Ultima!!"
Page from chapter 131, "Attack of Chaos!!".
Now, before I go, I promised one last thing yesterday.
What is the true origin of ritual Magic Cards?
Unlike many other manga cards, these cards are not based on Magic: the Gathering. Instead, they draw from another game: a Japan-only trading card game called Monster Collection, originally released in Japan in about September 1997.
In its heyday, this game was massively popular in Japan, falling behind only the Pocket Monsters (Pokemon) Card Game in popularity! It was also massively influential, as aspects like its 3x4 terrain-based gameplay focused on movement, ideas on resource points and item/equip mechanics, and more, would go on to pop up in many future Japanese card games.
The Yu-Gi-Oh! manga would also take many pointers from this game; in fact, the 'new rules' introduced during the Duelist Kingdom arc bear a strong resemblance to how this game is played!
I strongly recommend you watch these two videos by Japanese card game historian Touya/T0w0ya for a quick overview on Monster Collection, and its influence on Yu-Gi-Oh!.
Despite their short lengths, these videos go into great detail about the game and how it works. It's part of a series of videos covering the general history of '90s Japanese trading card games, which I also recommend you take a peek at as well! His coverage was a big inspiration to me in the early days of my own project's start.
Touya covers it better, but in brief: in Monster Collection, Ritual Spell Cards exist as a distinct card class. They're incredibly strong spells you can cast without having to go through the usual resource requirements. There were two tradeoffs to this. The first was that they were highly limited; you could only have 1 copy of any Ritual Spell Card in your deck, and you could only use 1 per turn.
The other tradeoff was that, to even play a Ritual Spell Card, you first had to set down a special kind of territory, a card called Stone Circle, and protect it from your opponent's cards until you could play a Ritual Spell Card on it.
Takahashi very well could have played this game and taken the mystique of its Ritual Spell Cards to heart. With a little bit of creative inspiration, you can easily draw a line from these Monster Collection cards to the the idea he implemented in his manga!
In fact, the hexagram on "Chaos: Black Magic Ritual" bears a strong resemblance to the hexagram shown in promotional materials for Monster Collection, as well as the hexagram on its card backs:
Frame from an early commercial for the Monster Collection Trading Card Game.
An example of Monster Collection booster packs. Image sourced from a semi-anonymous Yahoo! Japan auction.
An example of the Monster Collection card back. Image sourced from the Monster Collection TCG wiki.
Well, that's enough for one post! I hope you now find these ritual cards as fascinating as I do. Thanks so much for reading!
Tomorrow, we'll have a quick detour before we start off on Yugi's Battle City arc cards!
Are you a creature of light, or darkness...or perhaps both? Do you wish to channel the powers of the legendary warriors of ages past, whose awe-inspiring feats have long since passed into myth?
Then perhaps you need a ritual. But not the one you might be thinking of; a "Black Luster Ritual" will not serve you. Get ready to enact the original ritual, the only one that will bring about the reincarnation of a certain soldier: the "Chaos Ritual"!
We're finally here! These rituals are the last cards introduced in the Duelist Kingdom arc, and the ones associated with some of the most exciting moments, and monsters, in the original manga!
Because of that, I've taken care to preserve many aspects of these cards to keep their original feel intact. The name, for instance: both this and "Chaos: Black Magic Ritual" specifically have "chaos" in their names, a word that Konami and 4Kids strangely removed. Their version replaced "chaos" with the words "black luster", and they did something similar for the unrelated card "Chaos Shield", called "Yellow Luster Shield" here.
I also wanted to keep the feel/style of the original wording of the cards. Now, this does slightly work against my goal of rendering these cards as if they were usable game pieces. The text is slightly less descriptive than other cards in terms of detailing card function. The basic gist of what you need to do to perform the Ritual Summon is still there, though, so ultimately it works out.
More details below the cut.
"Chaos Ritual" being activated. Panel from chapter 118, "The Legendary Swordsman"
There's only one minor revision I made to this card. Originally, I thought the "Dark Knight" in this card's test referred to a Dark Knight-type monster. This is a monster type that's said to exist early on in the Duelist Kingdom arc.
However, this part of the card's text refers to the kind of monster you can use with this card. And the manga is very clear that this compatible monster is "Dark Knight Gaia", who in the Death-T arc is specifically stated to be a Magical Knight-type monster (in the original Japanese text), and not a Dark Knight-type.
Thus I was forced to conclude that the "Dark Knight" in this text refers to part of "Dark Knight Gaia"'s name, and not its type, in the same manner that cards like "Magical Silk Hats" and "Magic Cylinder" refer to a card like "Black Magician" or "Black Magician Girl" with only part of its name (as just "Magician") in their card text.
And, of course- in Konami's game, rituals have their own special card subtype, which is neat! The manga, though, doesn't seem to make a distinction, sadly. In fact, Magic Card subtypes don't get fully established until the Battle City arc starts.
"Chaos Ritual", mid-use, showing "Kuriboh" and "Griffore" being sacrificed to bring about "Chaos Soldier" through "Dark Knight Gaia". Panel shown is from chapter 118, "The Legendary Swordsman".
The other interesting thing of note here is that, in the manga, ritual monsters like "Chaos Soldier" (in Konami's game, "Black Luster Soldier") don't have their own card to represent them. As far as I can tell, they're represented on-field by a specific monster called out in that card's text.
The procedure goes like this. You play/activate a ritual card, like "Chaos Ritual". Every ritual card has its own special qualifications. In this case, "Chaos Ritual" requires its player to have 2 different monsters, each with 1500 or less ATK, PLUS another monster, a "Dark Knight", to 'channel the power of chaos', so to speak. (Dark Yugi proclaims that he offers the two monsters to the light and to the darkness. This has no bearing on the function of the card, though Konami refers to this idea in a lot of remake versions of "Chaos Ritual".) Here, Dark Yugi uses "Dark Knight Gaia" as his venue for chaos energy- who, as I said before, qualifies for this card because he's, well, a dark knight.
Mai speculates that Yugi has so many weaker monsters in his deck specifically to make using the ritual cards easier!
It makes sense; Takahashi here is saying that Yugi's entire deck is specifically built around these ritual Magic Cards. They're sort of the true centerpiece of his Duelist Kingdom deck build!
Once the two weaker monsters are sacrificed, your dark knight fulfills the ritual and becomes the "Chaos Soldier"!
As I said before, while "Chaos Soldier" is a distinct game entity from "Dark Knight Gaia", with its own name and stats, the physical card that's on the table is still Gaia. (In fact, one panel here suggests that "Chaos Ritual" is still on the table as well, though it's hard to tell; most panels with "Chaos Soldier" in them focus on the monsters and not on the table's contents, naturally.)
We never see what would happen to these on-field cards if a ritually-summoned monster is destroyed, but presumably the card that's 'channeling the powers of chaos', Gaia, would go to the Graveyard in "Chaos Solder"'s stead.
Outside of the manga's story, this monster is also notable for being one of the first times a monster was made by Takahashi specifically to tie in with Konami's games.
Note that, in Japan, the chapter where this card and monster debuted was released on 15 February 1999.
The Game Boy game "Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters", from Konami's handhelds division, was released two months before this on 16 December 1998, and featured a few monsters designed by Takahashi himself.
How are the two related? You see, on 21st February 1999, an official tournament for the "Duel Monsters" video game was held. And the top prize for that tournament was a digital and early physical version of "Chaos Soldier"!
This may not seem special, given that these days video games get updates to change their code all the time. But this was not easily done in 1999, considering that the game was printed onto a Game Boy cartridge ROM, and Konami may not have possessed the tools necessary to alter that. Instead, they simply programmed the card into the game before its release in December! The only way to unlock it was to input a special code that only Konami's employees knew! So "Chaos Soldier" was lying in wait in every copy of "Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters", before readers/players even knew it existed.
Additionally, a special "Chaos Soldier" 'card', printed on metal, was given out there as well, and this 'card' was made in the style of the Official Card Game that Konami had just debuted back on 4 February 1999- a few weeks before the tournament happened! Yugipedia has an article that goes into more detail on this. "Chaos Soldier" was quickly turned into a cross-promotional tool, of sorts, for the company that now had a firm grip on the series.
Takahashi acknowledged this in a special section at the back of the Yu-Gi-Oh! volume 18 tankobon, released 28 April 2000. Here, "Chaos Soldier" is present in a gallery of monsters he says are associated specifically with Konami's various games, digital and physical.
You could say, then, that "Chaos Soldier" was more than just a herald of chaos. It was also a sign of things to come in the real world, where Konami would become increasingly involved, or perhaps entangled, into the workings of the Yu-Gi-Oh! series as a whole, for better and for worse.
There's more to reveal about the nature and origin of ritual Magic Cards. But I'll share that tomorrow. One last legendary figure has yet to make its appearance...
Better find some cover! We've got a real complex head-scratcher of a card aimed at us today: the "Magic Effect Arrow".
Among fans, this is THE most poorly-understood card in Yugi's Duelist Kingdom deck. There's a lot of people out there who are unsure about what specifically this card does. Admittedly, Takahashi didn't make it easy for us- he's pretty loose with the details, as you'll soon see!
Viz's translators called this card "Living Arrow", and Konami international's English translators call it "Spell Shattering Arrow". Both are deviations from the original card's name, 「魔法効果の矢」, though at least in Konami's case the change has to do with how they modified the card's function (I'll get to that in a moment). Even I was thrown off at first; I'd initially gone by the most common fan interpretation, before removing the hyphen for my version in a later revision. In fact, I was very tempted to rename it "Magical Effect Arrow" before deciding that "Magic Effect Arrow" works fine.
(Why change it to "Magical Effect Arrow"? I'll get into this more on my entry for "De-Magic", but in brief: in the manga, non-Monster Cards are put into two classes, cards with magical effects and cards without magical effects. These two classes of card supertypes interact with various card effects and monster special abilities in different ways.
This particular card refers to that mechanic by name in its text, but ultimately the intent of "Magic Effect Arrow"'s name comes across whether or not the '-al' part of 'magical' is present.)
Time to dig into this card's effect. Let's find out just what it is about this thing that caused Konami to turn their version into what's basically a completely different card! Beware, we're going super in-depth for this one!
From chapter 104, "True Crisis!!". Image edited for the sake of presentation.
In the manga, this card's text says something like "A magical effect affecting your team is given to your opponent's monsters".
It sounds simple enough when phrased like that. But this doesn't really cover the full scope of what this card is used for. So I once again turned to how the card was actually used in the story itself.
In its first usage, in chapter 104, this is how Dark Yugi uses this card:
Here, during his original Duel Disk battle with Kaiba, Dark Yugi activates three cards at once.
Complicating this card's usage is the fact that this battle uses the Magic & Wizards "Expert" ruleset, which has different rules for activating cards compared to other duels in this arc.
In this ruleset, players have 1 "Main Card Stage" that holds one active monster, and 4 "Sub Card Stages" that hold four other cards of any type. During a turn, these 4 "sub cards" are effectively considered both part of a player's hand and treated as if they were face-down on-field at the same time. Thus, a player can activate them during a turn at any time they might normally be able to activate a face-down card.
Here, Dark Yugi is activating "Magic Effect Arrow", "Fusion", and turning "Mammoth Graveyard" face-up simultaneously. This is important- "Fusion" is not affecting "Mammoth Graveyard" before this point.
(Note that the translation's text is slightly inaccurate here; Dark Yugi is merely elaborating on what "Magic Effect Arrow" can do. This should probably say something like "Magic Effect Arrow lets me use my magical effects on your monsters!".)
The other thing to note here is that "Fusion" doesn't work the way the modern Konami card does. The early manga version doesn't have any requirements that you must have specific valid monsters, plural, on-field; you can use this to try and fuse any monsters, without any qualifications on number or where they are on the field, with the general rule limitation that you'd normally be limited to your monsters (otherwise Dark Yugi wouldn't need to use "Magic Effect Arrow" in the first place, of course).
Famously, the card works. "Magic Effect Arrow" causes "Fusion" to work on both Dark Yugi's own "Mammoth Graveyard" and Kaiba's "Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragom", and the process of the "Attribute Repulsion" mechanic (again, see here) starts.
So in this particular case, the text on the "Magic Effect Arrow" card seems largely correct- with the exception that the magical effect you want to transfer doesn't necessarily have to already be affecting one of your monsters. It can also be about to affect one of your monsters, and "Magic Effect Arrow" will still transfer the effect that will soon happen.
Compare this to the card's usage in chapter 128, "Toon World's Defeat!!".
First, some important context. This is the Yugis vs. Pegasus duel. Pegasus has "Toon World" and a few toon monsters on the board; while he controls "Toon World", the Yugis cannot declare attacks/use Magic and Trap Cards on Pegasus's toon monsters.
Dark Yugi has "Black Magician" on-field, and is attempting to stall Pegasus's attacks by playing "Magical Silk Hats":
After some goading by Dark Yugi, Pegasus chooses to play a card that will suppress Dark Yugi's "Hats":
This is a card called "Magic-Negating Barrier". It's a card that functions strangely in its own right, since it can be played on the opponent's side of the field instead of your own. But the important part is this:
"Magic-Negating Barrier" stops a player from being able to have any continuing magical effects on their side of the field. In this case, it means that Dark Yugi's "Magical Silk Hats" will no longer be active while "Magic-Negating Barrier" is on his side of the field.
Pegasus then goes on to declare an attack with his "Toon Demon". In response to that attack, Yugi activates this card, which was set prior to Pegasus's turn:
Yugi uses "Magic Effect Arrow" to affect the "Magic-Negating Barrier" that is currently suppressing his "Magical Silk Hats":
And now "Magic-Negating Barrier" will suppress all continuing magical effects on Pegasus's side of the field...
...which is to say, Pegasus's "Toon World" will no longer be in effect, and so Yugi's "Holy Barrier: Mirror Force" can now be used on "Toon Demon"'s attack.
So let's back up a minute here. "Magic Effect Arrow" is doing something different than it did before!
In this duel, Yugi uses "Magic Effect Arrow" to cause a magical effect currently affecting one of his Magic Cards; and he then transfers that magical effect to one of Pegasus's Magic Cards in turn.
So what do I make of this? How do I rectify the two usages? What does "Magic Effect Arrow" really do??
Well, you already saw my wording at the start of this post! What these two chapters share in common is...I'll break it down point by point.
-"Magic Effect Arrow" 'notices' when a card its controller has is affected by or will be affected by a magical effect of any kind. This can be a magical effect the player themselves uses (Dark Yugi's "Fusion") or that their opponent uses (Pegasus's "Magic-Negating Barrier").
-That affected card can be at least a monster/Monster Card ("Mammoth Graveyard") or a Magic Card ("Magical Silk Hats"). Based on this functionality, though, I suspect that a player's affected card can also be, say, a Trap Card, or an Equip Card or so on; it's probably meant to be 'monsters and cards'.
-This next part was a little hard to determine, but: "Magic Effect Arrow" causes both its player's target and their opponent's target to both be affected by the same card. In chapter 104, "Fusion" affected BOTH Dark Yugi's 'Mammoth Graveyard" AND Kaiba's "Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon". Similarly, in chapter 128, "Magic-Negating Barrier" affected BOTH Yugi's "Magical Silk Hats" AND Pegasus's "Toon World" (neither card continued to function after the "Barrier" was made to affect Pegasus).
-Lastly, the opponent's target that "Magic Effect Arrow" can affect can be both an on-field card (like Pegasus's "Toon World") or a more general monster (Kaiba's "Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon" is, in the manga, not a single card, but a set of 3 Monster Cards connected by 1 copy of "Fusion" that together acted as a single entity). Again, it's easiest to think that this is 'monsters and cards'.
There! Though it doesn't exactly match the on-panel wording "Magic Effect Arrow" has, the card really DOES have some kind of internal logic that's followed in both circumstances. It might seem like an asspull (and I admit, Takahashi was really fudging things the second time he wrote this card's into the story), but it ultimately makes some sense if you put some thought into it.
With all of that said, I don't blame people for getting confused with how this card is used in both the manga and the '00s anime. This card is so deeply tied to the manga's specific rules and logic that presenting it outside of that context can be a little bit of a system shock to casual viewers. (Especially given that the '00s anime had a strange ruleset that was stuck halfway between the manga and Konami's card game!)
And this is one case where Konami was probably justified in changing the effect of a card. A faithful-enough rendition of "Magic Effect Arrow" in their game would be an absolute rulings nightmare; their ruleset can't account for all the possible strange interactions this card would cause.
So "Magic Effect Arrow" is one of those card that's best suited to be preserved in a form like this. A testament to the power of fiction, to things you can dream in a story that wouldn't really hold form in the rigid confines of reality, for better and for worse.
Whew! Thanks for sticking it out this long. I hope this one gave you some good brain fuel, eh?
We've only got a few more cards left in the Duelist Kingdom set! Next time: get ready for a ritual!
remember the yugioh s0 episode where yugi's grandpa lets him and anzu (both are 10th grade high school kids) go unaccompanied to some random celebrities house 💀
