![]() ![]() This means that many English TCG-only sets, such as Maze of Memories, are not available in the country, although Japan-only sets released after 2008 - such as the recently-released Rarity Collection Quarter Century Edition - have been released. Once Daewon had rushed through many of the earliest TCG sets and reached parity with the English-language game in 2007/2008, releasing new booster sets just a few months after Japan, Daewon chose to instead follow the Japanese release cycle in subsequent years. The card pool within the Korean region is unique, in part due to this unusual release pattern. Watch on YouTube A beginner gets to grips with Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel In the following 17 months, nine booster packs, six promotional packs and four starter decks blitzed onto shelves, on top of exclusive regional releases - such as a special Yugi + Kaiba starter deck release that included an instructional DVD teaching the rules of the game. Following the initial December 2003 launch of the first two starter decks with the Blue-Eyes booster pack, Metal Raiders hit Korean shelves in March 2004. Rather than directly emulating the set lists and packs of Japan, many of the early sets from Legend of Blue-Eyes White Dragon until Ancient Sanctuary were released in quick succession. As a result, the early years of Yu-Gi-Oh! in Korea saw a rapid-fire localisation of many of the early structure decks and booster packs on a near-monthly basis. The later launch of the series in the region meant that by the time the game was being localised into Korean, the series was already many years behind its counterparts in both Japan and English-speaking regions. ![]() Prior to the official localisation of Yu-Gi-Oh! into Korean, a small dedicated community had begun to import many of the cards from other regions, such as nearby Japan. In 20 they took control of the Yu-Gi-Oh! IP in the region, localising the anime and releasing the first Yugi and Kaiba structure decks in December 2003.ĭaewon's distribution of the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG in South Korea saw the rapid release of decks and sets in just a couple of years to catch up with its Japanese schedule. ![]() Having been founded in the 1970s as a production studio assisting on everything from Toei’s Galaxy Express 999 to Hanna Barbera cartoons, it moved into comic and product distribution in the 1990s and took advantage of a normalisation in post-World War II relations between Japan and Korea and the legalisation of cultural imports from Japan to successfully localise and transform franchises like Pokémon and Crayon Shin-Chan into household names. In South Korea, this responsibility was handed to Daewon. In the West, this came in the form of a short-lived and tumultuous partnership with Upper Deck Entertainment that ran until 2008 when the company regained control of the licence and directly distributed the title in English markets. The early years of Yu-Gi-Oh! in Korea saw a rapid-fire localisation of many of the early structure decks and booster packs on a near-monthly basis.Ĭonfident with its domestic success, Konami sought partners for global expansion. In this time Bandai unsuccessfully attempted to adapt the card game into real life, before Konami turned it into a phenomenon with its own take in 1999. Early chapters of Kazuo Takahashi’s manga don’t even centre on anything similar to the ubiquitous trading card game, and the first anime in the series based on these chapters has remained mostly a relic and curio of a possible future that never came to be after the Duelist Kingdom arc and newer anime transformed the series. Yu-Gi-Oh! as a franchise evolved heavily from its origins as a brooding psychological thriller in the pages of comic magazine Shonen Jump to a card game fighting manga to the multi-billion dollar franchise we know today. So I went to Korea to understand this regional game for myself.Ī look out over Seoul. Yet, in spite of a passionate fanbase, and a healthy competitive scene both online and in the card stores that hide amidst the highrise buildings of Seoul and other cities across South Korea, it’s a region whose players and history remain broadly under-explored. The result of this is a unique community: a strong niche within a region dominated by imported card game giants like Magic: The Gathering and Pokémon, alongside a mix of domestic TCGs and more niche franchises like Cardfight Vanguard. ![]() It’s the only region outside of China with official localisation support not handled in-house by publisher Konami, while the release schedule and pricing of its booster packs also differs to those found elsewhere. The circumstances surrounding Yu-Gi-Oh! in Korea are a fascinating one, in part because its history isn’t a mirror to the understood narrative found elsewhere in the world. ![]()
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