Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's

'''Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's''' is the latest Yu-Gi-Oh! anime series, that began airing in Japan on April 2, 2008, as the successor to the Yu-Gi-Oh! GX anime cartoon.

This series was acquired by 4Kids Entertainment for broadcasting in the United States on Saturday, September 13th 2008. On June 1st 2009, Cartoon Network began airing Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's episodes weekly. It is shown on CITV in the UK at weekends in the afternoon. It is also being shown on RTÉ Two in Ireland weekdays in the afternoon.

The world English Premiere of this series was shown at the San Diego Comic Con 2008, on Thursday, July 24th 2008, where the first English dubbed episode was shown.

The Duelist Genesis and Duel Terminals were designed to introduce this new anime series to Yu-Gi-Oh! card game players. This series uses newer game mechanics and mechanics known as the Master Rules. The new Synchro Summoning rule in particular is popular amongst some characters, who often feature their Synchro Monsters as the centerpiece of their Duels.

Characters

 * See Category:Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's characters

The main character designs are by Kazuki Takahashi.

Plot
Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's is set in New Domino City some time after the events concerning Yugi Muto and Jaden Yuki. A new form of dueling, "Turbo Duels", now take place on motorcycles called "Duel Runners". While regular dueling still exists, Turbo Duels have become a popular form of entertainment for spectators, who watch them in specially-designed stadiums.

Fortune Cup

 * Main article: Fortune Cup

Escape from Satellite Jack Atlas stole Yusei Fudo's card "Stardust Dragon" along with the first Duel Runner that Yusei made. He then leaves the poorer "Satellite" area of Domino City and becomes a "Duel King" in the richer area, called "New Domino City". Yusei tries to meet up with Jack to get back what was stolen from him, fighting the Securities, who try to keep Satellite residents from entering New Domino City. Yusei meets Jack in New Domino and has a Turbo Duel with him. After both players ace monsters "Stardust Dragon" and "Red Dragon Archfiend" clash, a mysterious dragon appears, causing the Duel to prematurely end. A group of Security guards then arrive to arrest Yusei.

The Facility Yusei is sent to the Facility. Here he learns the legend of the Signers. He also fights against unjust treatment of the inmates, particularly by dueling the warden Mr. Armstrong. After defeating Armstrong, Yusei is released. Yusei then takes time to retrieve his confiscated Deck and Duel Runner.

Fortune Cup The Yliaster group hold the Fortune Cup in the hopes of gathering the Signers. Yusei is forced to enter, for the safety of his captured friends from Satellite. After many twists and turns in the Cup, four Signers are finally gathered through Rex Goodwin and Lazar's plans.

During Yusei and Jack's Duel, the Crimson Dragon reappears. Through the Crimson Dragon their Duel is transported elsewhere along with Luna and Akiza, who are watching. The four of them are witness the past, when the Stairway to the Dragon Star existed. As they pass it, Yusei notices five individuals on top of the Stairway who on that time carried the same Marks of the Dragon and were Signers back then. And after that they witness the future, where Satellite is being destroyed by a strange force, where on its remains a Spider mark appears. Jack pushes an intense Duel on Yusei in order to win and keep his title, but Yusei once again wins settling his score and being declared as the new King of Turbo Duels.

Dark Signers

 * Main article: Dark Signers (arc)

After the Crimson Dragon is seen at the Fortune Cup the Dark Signers take action and begin preaching that its evil and asking the people of Satellite to join them if they want salvation. They intend to open a gate to the underworld in the B.A.D. area of Satellite.

Despite Yusei's distrust of Rex Goodwin, he accepts his help to receive more knowledge of the Dark Signers. Yusei returns to Satellite to save his friends from the new threat. He is then reunited with his friend Crow, who is willing to assist in fighting the Dark Signers.

The Dark Signers turn out to be people who came back from the dead for power, revenge or unfinished business. Their members include Yusei's former friend Kalin who believes Yusei betrayed him, Carly Carmine; a reporter who developed a crush on Jack Atlas, Misty Tredwell; a woman who believes Akiza Izinski is responsible for her brother's death, Devack; a man who unleashes the Zeman the Ape King to spread evil in the Duel Monsters Spirit World, Roman Goodwin; the brother of Rex Goodwin and Greiger who still seeks vengeance on Goodwin.

During their Shadow Duels, the Dark Signers sacrificed the souls of hundreds of people so they could unleash the Earthbound Immortals.

The four Signers, with Mina, Trudge and Leo followed Goodwin's instructions and try to activate the control units of the Original Ener-D Reactor, to prevent that the King of the Underworld would appear in their world. The Signers, Leo and Crow faced off against the Dark Signers who were guarding their own unit. Although many of the Dark Signers had a change of hearts during their duels, they would then end up being controlled and possessed by the Envoy of the Underworld forcing them to complete their task of defeating the Signer. Still the Signers manage to defeat all of the existing Dark Signers along with their Earthbound Immortals, freeing the souls of those used to summon the Immortals. Each Dark Signer turned to dust after their defeat. Despite defeating all the current Dark Signers, the Signers were unable to activate all the control units on time, thus the King of the Underworld was resurrected. Rex Goodwin, who had been using both sides as his pawns, acquired the powers of both a Dark Signer and a Signer, through death and Roman's amputated arm bearing a Mark of the Dragon. Goodwin holds the ultimate Shadow Turbo Duel inside his Condor geoglyph as a ritual to welcome the King itself. Yusei, Jack and Crow accepted and engaged against him on a 3-on-1 Duel. Crow and Jack take damage, rendering them unable to continue, leaving Yusei finish the Duel. Goodwin's mark of the dragon relocates on Yusei's arm, while Crow takes Yusei's old Mark of the Dragon.

As Yusei claims victory, the Crimson Dragon destroys the King of the Underworld. With the exception of the Goodwin brothers, the Dark Signers are returned to life, with no recollection of their time as Dark Signers.

Pre-World Riding Grand Prix
At the beginning of season 2, a meteor in the shape of a giant tablet falls in the outskirts of the city. A group of servants of Yliaster arrive and manage to get Lazar to tow the tablet out of the crater.

Days after that, a mysterious Turbo Duelist named Ghost, appears and has been making other duelists crash after losing in a Turbo Duel. When Yusei duels him, he gets the upper hand only to have Ghost turn the tables and summon his Synchro Killer monster, "Machine Emperor Wisel". Ghost says to him that Synchro Monsters are proof of humanity's evolution and they are not needed on this world. After being pushed into a corner, Yusei comes out on top by summoning Majestic Star Dragon to defeat Ghost. After the duel, Yusei finds out that Ghost was actually a Riding Roid. Much later after their Duel, Yusei and his friends go on numerous adventures of their own.

Yusei duels Prof. Rudolph Heitmann, at Duel Academy so that Leo, Luna, and their other classmates don't get expelled.

Crow duels Tetsuzo Kuzuyama, in a junkyard and tries to get him to move in with Martha.

Jack duels Garome, who convinces poor people into taking loans by signing unfair contracts.

Luna is saved by Leo and Yusei from a boy´s spirit named Michel, who thinks that Leo has come to hurt his little sister, Claire.

Yusei gets kidnapped by a rival team from the World Riding Grand Prix. Later, after being rescued by Akiza, a female Turbo Duelist named Sherry Leblanc appears and duels against him. As direct result of it, Akiza Izinski makes a choice involving Turbo Dueling.

Yusei, who is looking for ways to defeat Wisel without Synchro Summon, is then challenged by the mysterious Dark Glass. During their duel, Dark Glass uses the new Accel Synchro Monsters.

Akiza Izinski takes the exam to get a Duel Runner Licence, and engages in her first Turbo Duel against Trudge.

Jack pursues and duels Syd, the leader of a gang of Duel Runner thieves, and gains a friend in Security officer Kazama, owner of Archfiend Chaos King.

Leo and Luna face off against Lucciano in a Turbo Duel, using a Duel Board.

Yusei reveals to both Crow and Jack, about Yliaster's involvement with the WRGP and about the Accel Synchro Monsters. Later, the 3 of them are in charge of taking care of an amnesiac young man named Bruno. Yusei spends time with him, as they share common skills and interest in mechanical engineering. As a result they are able to create an ultimate engine program. However Lazar steals it and the 4 of them go after him. At the end of the chase, Yusei ends up dueling against a Guard Robot, who has him and Lazar locked inside a warehouse.

Jack Turbo Duels against a Riding Roid who has taken his identity.

Crow duels against Zora's son, Leo, in an effort to help him fix a broken clock in the town and prove to Zora that he can fix clocks.

Crash Town
Yusei receives a letter from a woman named Barbara. Her letter says that Kalin Kesler needs Yusei's help. He is in Crashtown, a town ruled by duels and is part of the Ramon gang, who send other duelists to slavery. Thus he is able to defeat him with the purpose of taking him away from that town. Unfortunately Kalin, Ramon and himself instead end up becoming slaves, due to Barbara´s plotted scheme with Malcolm. Later Yusei tries to escape from the excavation with Kalin, and end up encountering West and Nicko. However Lotten along with 2 other comrades appear too, therefore Yusei challenges him to a Turbo Duel, so that Kalin and the kids can escape. The duel ends inconclusively due to an underhanded action by Lotten, separating the kids from Kalin and Yusei and abducting them, thinking they met their demise when he saw them landing in a crevice. To his surprise, also doesn't really like when they return, challenging him to a Duel to free the town and retrieve the kids.

The duel rages on, with Lotten trying to defeat Kalin at all costs. However, Lotten is overpowered by Kalin and Yusei's tag team dueling. And as the duel progresses with Lotten about to lose, he and Barbara attempt to double-cross them again, but are stopped by Crow Hogan and Jack Atlas. In one last attempt, Lotten detonates explosives in the city creating a diversion. Kalin gives chase on Yusei's Duel Runner and catches him in order to finish his last turn. Kalin then ultimately defeats Lotten. After the duel finally ends, Lotten and Barbara are taken into custody by Sector Security. Yusei, Jack and Crow go back to New Domino City, while Kalin stays to restore the town, as well as for Niko and West. A close-up of the sign then shows that the town is now Satisfaction Town, in honor of Team Satisfaction.

World Riding Grand Prix
Yusei duels against Mizoguchi, who has broken into Sector Security´s HQ along with Sherry. When Sherry and Bruno try to scan the card Z-ONE, he, she and Yusei are momentarily transported to an odd area where a mysterious entity was.

Crow duels against Bolger in order to find out the truth about Robert Pearson´s death. During their duel, Crow obtains "Black-Winged Dragon", the same being his Signer Dragon.

Yusei Turbo Duels against Andore, the Ace player of Team Unicorn.

The WRGP finally commences, and the first duel of the preliminaries is Team 5D's against Team Unicorn. The duel is long and hard one for them, but in the end they end up victorious.

The second team they face off against is Team Catastrophe.

After Team 5D's officially wins the round and enter the finals, Placido unleashes an army of Ghost's which he calls "Diablo" to cause wreckage upon the city. During this events Bruno in his Dark Glass form helps Yusei achieve Clear Mind and obtain the "Shooting Star Dragon" card. Yusei later uses it against Placido to defeat him. However Jose and Lucciano later appears before him, Jack and Crow.

After this meeting, Jack and Yusei travel to Nazca summoned by Greiger. In there he duels against the Familiar of Scar-Red Nova and learns about "Burning Soul". With it he obtains the "Scar-Red Nova Dragon" card.

Later Yusei and company captures Lazar in order to obtain some clues about Yliaster. They ultimately learn about the groups contact with the Momentum Express Development Organization after having to beat Cup Ramen Man.

Yusei, Bruno and Sherry sneek into the company to find any clue to this group. There they learn about Infinity and experience its power as Yliaster to achieve Falsification of history.

Later Leo with the help from Yusei and Bruno help repair Team Taiyo's only Duel Runner. Meanwhile Crow, Akiza and Jack go to Team Ragnarok's Exhibition Duel.

The WRGP Finals commence with Team 5D´s dueling against Team Taiyo.

Development
Kazuki Takahashi had promised himself that Yu-Gi-Oh! GX would be the last Yu-Gi-Oh! series. However, he was approached at the end of 2006 with the idea for Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's. The production staff and TV board were long time associates and friends, who had spread Yu-Gi-Oh! to many people in the world, so Takahashi agreed, under the condition that this would be the last Yu-Gi-Oh! series.

With the intention of being different rather than repeat the same ideas, Takahashi prepared for criticism and decided how the setting would look, designed the main characters and the D-Wheel (Duel Runner). The story development was left to the writers.

The first episode aired in Japan on TV Tokyo on April 2, 2008, with subsequent episodes every week.

Differences in adaptations


In the Japanese anime, the class system between the upper class residents New Domino City and the often rejected residents of Satellite is a recurring theme throughout the series. While the class system exists in the English anime, it is not as severe and much less emphasized. Some dialogue referring to the class system such as "Satellite scum" is replaced. Nerve and Blitz also had their names switched, so now they are Blitz and Nervin respectively.

The English dub adds a card explanation when a certain card is played during a duel, usually once an episode. It displays the card's ATK and DEF, type, attribute and effect (if it's a monster). With Spells, Speed Spells, and Traps, it just explains their effect.

In the English version changes have been made to character names and personalities. Certain scenes and images have been altered and removed as well. The show's darker content also has been changed in order to give the show a more Western younger feel and make the show more marketable across non-English countries.

The original music and sound effects are completely replaced in the English version. Much of the 4Kids dub sound effects are made from the original Japanese sound effects or are made sounding like the sound effects from the original Japanese version, though much quieter. But this is the first of the Yu-Gi-Oh! anime dubs to have some of the sound effects from the original Japanese version used along with the music completely replaced.

Things such as blood, weapons, killing, and death are censored in the English version.

Life Points, ATK, DEF, and Level meters are redesigned in the English version.

Due to FCC regulations as well as to make the show more marketable to non-English speaking countries and even for the purposes of cultural streamlining, intended to make the show more understandable or palatable to Western audiences, instances of Japanese and English text are airbrushed out or replaced with meaningless symbols in the English version. Not only that but this is the first of 4Kids anime adaptations to ever show Japanese and English changed to languages similar to Latin. The text on the Duel Runners are edited out or replaced with some kinds of symbols. When the players' Life Points reach 0, the screens on the Duel Runners have the word "DEFEAT" replaced with a big X.

In a similar vein as airbrushing Japanese text, the setting of the country in the anime is changed from Japan to the western United States. The characters have their ethnic origins and nationalities changed to American.

The show is one of 4Kids' anime dubs to still be close captioned by the National Captioning Institute.

The English dub excluded episodes 36 - 41 from their original television run; however, 4Kids has since put the missing episodes on the 4Kids website. The television broadcast continued from episode 42 onwards. Cartoon Network has started to air the episodes.

Even though 4Kids did not air any continuing episodes on TV, the rest of season 1 (51-64) have been uploaded onto their website.

According to 4Kids' website, the dub for the second season is set to air sometime in 2010. The first season of the dub will be returning to the CW4Kids on May 29th, 2010 at 11:00 AM. The episodes set to air are episode 42 and episode 43. The original Yu-Gi-Oh! is set to return August 14, 2010.

Episodes

 * Episode listing (season 1)
 * Episode listing (season 2)
 * Evolving Duel! Stardust VS Red Demons (OVA)

DVD release

 * See: Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's DVD listing

A 28 minute DVD, containing the special episode is included in the Yu-Gi-Oh! OCG - Duelist Box.

Music
Japanese opening theme: Kizuna
 * Performer: Kra
 * Album: Kizuna
 * Episodes: 01-26

Japanese ending theme: START
 * Performer: Nakagauchi Masataka
 * Album: START / Sun will shine away
 * Episodes: 01-26

Japanese opening theme 2: Last Train - The New Morning
 * Performer: Knotlamp
 * Episodes: 27-64

Japanese ending theme 2: CROSS GAME
 * Performer: アリス九號 (Alice Nine)
 * Episodes: 27-64

Japanese opening theme 3: FREEDOM
 * Performer: La-Vie
 * Episodes: 65-104

Japanese ending theme 3: -OZONE-
 * Performer: Vistlip
 * Episodes: 65-104

Japanese opening theme 4: BELIEVE IN NEXUS
 * Performer: Masaaki Endoh
 * Episodes: 104-???

Japanese ending theme 4: Close to you
 * Performer: ALvino～Alchemy vision normal～
 * Episodes: 104-???

Japanese insert song: You Say ~Ashita e~ ("You say... to tomorrow")
 * Performer: La-Vie
 * Episodes: 72, 90, 92

Japanese insert song:  Clear Mind
 * Performer: Masaaki Endoh
 * Episodes: 109, 110

The first soundtrack, Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's Sound Duel Vol I features music from the Fortune Cup. The second soundtrack, Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's Sound Duel Vol II features music from the Dark Signers arc, as well as music from Season 2 of the anime.

The 4Kids TV website held an open vote for what should be the theme of the English dubbed version of Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's. Eight one minute songs were playable. The song with the most votes would be chosen to be featured when the dub premiered on CW4Kids on September 13th. The voting was only open to those who had registered an account on the 4Kids.tv website.

Users could vote for one of the following songs.
 * Better be Better than Best
 * Hyper Drive
 * Let's Ride, Let's Go
 * Need for Speed
 * Rev it Up
 * Secret of Five‎
 * We are the Ones
 * We Ride to Survive

English opening theme: Hyper Drive
 * Episodes: All episodes

The Italian version of the series, although based on the English adaptation, uses a different theme song.

Italian opening theme: Yu Gi Oh Duel Runner
 * Episodes: All episodes

Manga

 * Main article: Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's (manga)

The Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's manga is published in V Jump. It maintains the characters and settings from the anime, but uses a different storyline and characters are given different cards.