Episode 2: Illusionist No-Face Trap

Joey is playing Duel Monsters with Téa and getting his butt kicked. When Joey asks for advice, Yugi looks at his deck and tells him, these are all monster cards! You can't win with just monsters, you need magic cards, too. Yugi takes him home to his Grandpa's game shop, named Turtle (Kame in Japanese). In the American version, the Japanese characters have been deleted from the sign in front of the shop. The characters are katakana (used for foreign words or to give special emphasis) and spell "Game."

Inside the shop, Grandpa's putting up a poster. In the Japanese version, it's an advertisement for an upcoming National Duel Monsters Tournament with a 300,000 yen cash prize. The poster features Celtic Guardian (Elf Swordsman in Japanese) and Hercules Beetle. Jounouchi's all excited about the tournament, and wants to enter it and win the money.

In the American version, the bit about the tournament is left out. Joey just wants Grandpa to teach him to be a better duelist. The dialog about the tournament is replaced with some schtick about Yugi using reverse psychology on Grandpa to get him to take Joey on as a student. The American version of the poster features Black Lustre Soldier (Chaos Soldier in Japanese) and Harpie's Pet Dragon.

Anyway, Grandpa agrees to teach Joey to play Duel Monsters.

Cut to the Regional Duel Monsters Championship (National Championship in the Japanese). The announcer introduces the finalists, Weevil Underwood (Insector Haga) and Rex Raptor (Dinosaur Ryuzaki). Yugi, Joey, Tristan, and Téa are all at Yugi's place, watching the tournament on television. They talk about Joey's lessons, and there's a brief flashback of Grandpa standing over an exhausted Joey, beating the table in front of him with a stick to drive his lessons home. (In the Japanese version, we find out that Jounouchi reached the first level of the tournament.) Joey's disappointed that he didn't do better, and gets all teary-eyed when Grandpa comes in and says he's proud of him. (Japanese Grandpa doesn't tease Jounouchi about getting back to work, either, just tells him he's worked hard and done well.)

Grandpa has a package for Yugi from Industrial Illusions, the company that makes the Duel Monsters game. Yugi wonders if they heard about his defeat of Kaiba, which made Kaiba drop out of the current tournament. (In the Japanese, Jounouchi asks Yugi why he didn't enter the tournament. Yugi says he only wants a rematch with Kaiba, after Kaiba's learned the true meaning of Duel Monsters.) They watch as Weevil trounces Rex Raptor to win the tournament, during which we come to my Wacky Subtitle of the Episode:

to which I can only say, "Huh?" The trophy is presented by Maximillion Pegasus (Pegasus J. Crawford), President of Industrial Illusions, and the creator of Duel Monsters. Pegasus invites Weevil to compete in the upcoming tournament at his Duelist Kingdom.

Yugi opens his package to find a videotape, a glove, and two stars. On the tape, Pegasus greets Yugi and challenges him to a duel with a strict time limit of 15 minutes. The player with the higher Life Points at the end of the time limit will win. Using the magic of his Millennium Eye, Pegasus takes Yugi into the Shadow Realm and they begin to duel. Yugi is shocked to find that Pegasus can read his cards and anticipate his moves. Pegasus tells him that Duel Monsters originated in ancient Egypt, and that the Millennium Items possess powerful magic. (There's no Egypt recap in the Japanese version. I imagine they expect everyone's read the manga and already knows the story.)

After a few preliminary skirmishes, Yugi plays Dark Magician against Pegasus's Faceless Mage (Illusionist No-Face in Japanese). Pegasus has powered up Faceless Mage with the Eye of Illusion, and Dark Magician can't destroy it. Yugi plays Celtic Guardian, but it's destroyed by Dark Magician—Pegasus has used Eye of Illusion to make Yugi's monsters attack each other. But now the Faceless Mage is unprotected, so Yugi attacks it with Summoned Skull (Demon Summon in Japanese). But it's too late—time's up, and Pegasus wins.

Pegasus uses the power of his Millennium Eye to capture Grandpa's soul. The Shadow Realm fades, and Yugi's left clutching the TV screen, calling out for his Grandpa.