So "Invasion of Chaos" has the theme of Chaos, which, in Yu-Gi-Oh land, basically translates to a vague archetype or energy that involves both Light and Dark working together or something... and in the original manga and anime series, the primary member of the "Chaos" archetype was "Chaos Soldier"... which, of course the translators ended up translating as "Black Luster Soldier" because they couldn't have predicted that we'll be having like seven gajillion different chaos-themed monsters down the line, yeah?
Anyway, the two main monsters of this expansion seems to be Black Luster Soldier - Envoy of the Beginning and Chaos Emperor Dragon - Envoy of the End. The titles are pretty cool, and the cards are... they're pretty cool for what they are. The new Black Luster Soldier is basically a far more practical card to utilize and summon than the original, which was a complex ritual monster, but ultimately it's still the same cool anime knight, just in a different pose. Chaos Emperor Dragon... it's a cool dragon? I've never been one to really be super-excited about dragons with random bits and bobs of armour latched onto them, but Chaos Emperor Dragon keeps things relatively (as far as these things go) simple enough to look relatively pleasant.
Chaos Emperor Dragon, as my friends inform me, is also a very broken card that broke the game and is one of the very first cards to be straight-up banned in Yu-Gi-Oh. So good on you, you truly brought an apocalypse, Mr. Chaos Emperor Dragon.
Dark Magician of Chaos is basically, well, Dark Magician, but he swapped out his robes for bondage belts and let his hair grow out of his wacky little ridged hat. Like Black Luster Soldier redux above, Dark Magician of Chaos is a non-Ritual version of a previous card, Magician of Black Chaos, except with an actually useful effect.
Giga Gagagigo has a most wonderful name. He's also one of the longest-running recurring character in the TCG, and we're going to meet him a couple more times down the road. I don't think Giga Gagagigo has ever really shown up in any anime, I don't think, but he's got a neat little meta-story running through the various TCG artworks. For a franchise whose cards have all relatively been relatively standalone, it's pretty neat! Giga Gagagigo himself is a pretty cool cyborg lizard-man. It doesn't do anything much beyond that concept, but he's sure a cool cyborg lizard-man.
Also included in this expansion are the Ojamas, or at least two of them (we saw Green in the previous expansion) -- Ojama Yellow and Ojama Black, which are comical, super-duper gross little oni or goblin-creatures (classified as 'beasts') that are... uh... they just look utterly gross, relying on uncomfortable "hey, look at this nearly-naked pot-bellied gangly man", with Yellow having these gross slug-eyes and a disgusting, saliva-soaked large lips, while Black has a gross, huge nose dripping snot.
Y'know, I'm usually all for unconventional monster designs and I'm also all for comical monster designs, but the Ojamas are the sort of gross snot-and-saliva "comedy" that I'm just not that huge of a fan of. Yellow in particular looks pretty disgusting. They're, I think, the signature monsters of one of the main cast of Yu-Gi-Oh GX or something.
There isn't actually a whole ton of lore in Yu-Gi-Oh about many of these cards, but in "Invasion of Chaos", most of the monsters with "Chaos" in their name are Dark-type monsters? Witch Doctor of Chaos is a typical spooky evil sorcerer person, with a skull-head or a skull helmet or something. Chaos Necromancer is a pretty cool sorcerer-person doing some puppeteering with his magic on a couple of corpses, and the effect of the Chaos Necromancer fits the idea of a necromancer pretty well, with his stats scaling up relative to the number of monsters you have in your graveyard. I'm not sure if he's meant to be a gigantic demon-man controlling a bunch of human-sized undead, or if the artwork is just meant to be like, symbolic of the Chaos Necromancer's control.
Chaos Sorcerer is sure a dude channeling both light and dark magic. He's got a pretty decent design, if, like many Yu-Gi-Oh spellcasters, he also kind of looks like someone toying with BDSM.
Clearly the best chaos character is Chaosrider Gustaph, though, who isn't all about the generic all necromancy and sorcery and magic-slinging. He's just a crazy green-skinned orc or demon dude with all sorts of 90's spikes, and he's riding a pimped-out motorbike and swinging around a gigantic glaive. You got to respect Gustaph. Also, insert your obligatory "card games on motorcycles" joke here.
Manju of the Ten Thousand Hands is considered a "Fairy" (or an "angel", if we're going by original Japanese translations), and apparently he's some sort of deity that's like 90% hands by mass? It's a pretty cool artwork, and I do like that the hands seem to be formed out of some sort of slime or goop or sludge or something. He's got hands coming out of his ears!
Granadora could be just a regular dinosaur, but instead, he's... he's... what the fuck he that even supposed to be? Granadora is, I think, one of the spooky fucked-up-looking monsters owned by Dark Marik, and... I'm not even sure how to describe it. It's like a vague mixture of a tyrannosaurus and an insect, but the insect part has mutated so much that it's got scythes for hands, scythes jutting out the front half of its jaw, scythes jutting out from the back of its head, and like four pairs of bug eyes running down its head. It's a gloriously creepy-looking creature, I like it.
I definitely bought a couple of booster packs from this expansion, though, because I remembered owning some of these cards. Like Drillago, which is... on the surface, it's pretty cool, even if it's impractical. So it's this fancy robot where every single point is a drill, yeah? Its head is a drill, it's got a ring of drills as a necklace, it's got drill hands, drill feet, drill knees, drill shoulders... drill tits... a drill dick... yeah. That part always ended up being kind of something that I relentlessly mocked about Drillago. I still like him a lot, because the concept of a silly robot that's basically almost entirely made up of drills is still fun, but man, that drill dick is still ridiculous whatever age I'm looking at it.
Bowganian is another card used by Yami Marik (in fact, so are the next couple of cards), and it's the only one that doesn't look particularly creepy. In fact, it's honestly almost cute looking, just a little robot that's just a single eye and a pair of hands, and it's also holding a big-ass metal crossbow. There's just something extremely impractical about whatever civilization created the Bowganian -- they are able to make a floating eyeball robot, but still relies on crossbows?
Lekunga is a pretty cool sci-fi monster, being this little veiny orb with a bunch of tentacles that end in spiky bulbs, and it's got a single eyeball in the center. And of course it's a plant-monster instead of, like, a fiend or something. I guess it's like a giant spore or something? Lekunga's effect is basically banishing other Water-element monsters from your graveyard to make more Lekungas in the battlefield; presumably this is flavoured as the Lekunga using the corpses as fertilizer.
Even higher on the "I thought you were a fiend" is Lord Poison, who, like Lekunga, is also a plant monster! I love this. I love the fact that in Yu-Gi-Oh land, plant monsters get to become these completely terrifying abominations. Lord Poison's a pretty cool monster, this plant-vine-compost creature with spikes all over (which might actually just be spiky roots?) that has a pretty neat Casper-ghost body structure. He wouldn't be as cool if he was just a generic fiend from hell or something, but the fact that he's a plant monster gives him an extra bit of novelty that makes him extra interesting to me.
There are a bunch of very cool Water-element monsters themed after the beasts of the sea, too, and I actually remembered being gifted a structure deck that had Levia-Dragon - Daedalus in it (as well as its bigger cousin, Neo-Daedalus... but he's not in this expansion so we won't be covering him). Levia-Dragon Daedalus borrows his name from a Greek mythological hero that has absolutely nothing to do with sea serpents, but Daedalus is a pretty cool example of one. I am a huge fan of how grotesquely creepy that four-eyed mouth is beneath all the fancy scales and armour. Daedalus's effect is also pretty fun, and I think it's meant to represent it basically being such a mighty force of nature, because you can sacrifice an "Umi" field card (i.e. the sea itself) and then Deadalus just blows up everything on the field.
My favourite water-themed card on this set, though, has to be the Orca Mega-Fortress of Darkness. Even its name is delightful, sounding like something a six-year-old would come up with and think it's the coolest thing in the world, and that is definitely meant as a compliment. So the Orca Mega Fortress of Darkness is a goddamn battleship, but it's also a whale, so it's this gloriously toyetic creature that's basically just a gigantic Orca (compare it to the little Bugroth submarine in the foreground next to its flipper) but it has battleship parts glued to its forehead. There's like, even a crane and little drill-missiles, and those aren't actually drill missiles, but...
...they are actually Cannonball Spear Shellfish! Which is just so cool. The Cannonball Spear Shellfish are basically little shellfishes and marine snails that stick onto the Orca Mega-Fortress of Darknesss, and the flavour, of course, is that the Orca Mega-Fortress of Darkness weaponize these symbiotic/parasitic organisms as weapons. The Torpedo Fish is another one of the Orca Mega-Fortress of Darkness's ammunition, being held underneath the Orca, and it's basically a very Digimon-esque missile cobbled together from spare metal plates, but there's clearly something organic beneath.
Both the Spear Shellfish and Torpedo Fish have a similar effect -- they're basically just cheap monsters that are immune to spell cards as long as the "Umi" field card (i.e. the sea itself) is active, but if Orca Mega-Fortress of Darkness is summoned, then he'll start launching these buggers as missiles, going full on Battleship on the enemy board and sacrificing these cheap little monsters to wipe out the enemy board. In practice, of course, it's way too hard to expect that everything will line up perfectly that you'll have Umi, an army of Shellfishes and Torpedo Fishes on board, and successfully summon Orca Mega-Fortress of Darkness, but the concept is pretty dang cool.
These two are here because I own their cards, and I find them to be pretty dang memorable. Amphibious Bugroth MK-3 is apparently a submarine, but a really fancy sci-fi one. I do like that it's got two different sets of hands -- one pair of humanoid ones, and a pair of monstrous claws, and it just looks pretty cool. I could totally see one of these hanging around with the mecha cast of something like Gundam or Ghost in the Shell or something.
Hyper Hammerhead really isn't that notable, it's just a theropodal dinosaur whose upper jaw is also a hammer. But I own the card, and I've always loved how gangly and crooked those dinosaur arms looked, and... I dunno, sometimes monsters like these are kind of cool just to sprinkle in an expansion, y'know? Sometimes you just have a dinosaur whose head is also a hammer. (Also, none of these really relate to the whole "Invasion of Chaos" theme, but early Yu-Gi-Oh has never been good at making themed expansions)
Oh, hey, apparently there is a little Spirit of the Pot of Greed hanging out inside the Pot of Greed! It's a little fairy whose face is identical to the Pot of Greed. And it's not to be confused with the other true form of the Pot of Greed, the Avatar of the Pot. I can totally buy that the Pot of Greed is just that greedy that it's got multiple spirits and 'true forms' hiding within it.
Ryu Kokki is sure one hell of an undead, being this giant... worm-creature-demon thing that's made entirely out of skulls. It's arms are made out of skulls, its worm-like body made out of skulls, and there's this bizarre little orange-and-blue orb just under his chin like some sort of frog neck pouch or something. Apparently, Ryu Kokki is based on the bosses of one of Konami's many games, many of which made it into Yu-Gi-Oh as cameos. It's a pretty cool giant undead skeleton abomination, I like it.
These two are notable for me only for the fact that I own both of these cards. Gale Lizard has always baffled me why it's a Water-element monster instead of, y'know, Wind, since the whole point is that this is a wyvern-dragon-creature with gigantic wings that unleashes a small typhoon. BUt oh well. It's a fun little design, nothing overtly complex, looking badass enough as a draconic creature while also not looking too over-the-top, just perfect for a 4-star monster. It's also a reptile, because the lines between what counts as a 'reptile', a 'dragon' and a 'dinosaur' in Yu-Gi-Oh is really blurry.
Neo Bug is actually a pretty cool insect creature, and unfortunately, it's a crappy little normal monster and if you know anything about Yu-Gi-Oh, it's that monsters with no effects are completely worthless. Neo Bug is a pretty cool critter, though, being a vague mixture of dragonflies and earwigs, but instead of having normal scythe-insect-legs like a praying mantis, the scythes are part of its face, acting like a pair of mandibles. Apparently it's an alien bug. Alien bugs are allowed to have metallic parts.
Meanwhile, these two aren't from a Konami game, but from the Yu-Gi-Oh manga! As I may or may not have mentioned before, one of the few Yu-Gi-Oh volumes I owned was the one that, ironically enough, did not focus on the Yu-Gi-Oh card game, but rather is a full-on battle of this miniature game called "Dungeon, Dice, Monsters", where Yugi faces off against Ryuji (Duke Devlin) in this game of transforming dice that summon little monster miniatures. In the anime, however, they kind of needed to promote the card game a bit more, so with the power of additional scenes and filler arcs, Duke/Ryuji is given a deck with monsters based on Dungeon, Dice, Monsters monsters, one of which being Strike Ninja. He sure is a ninja person.
Chopman, the Desperate Outlaw, also comes from the manga, but he's a straight-up real human person in the manga -- specifically, the parts of the manga prior to the whole "Duel Monsters" card game that was adapted into the anime, where everything is just about Yugi being possessed by the dark spirit of a pharaoh who mind-crushes people after getting them to play karmic games. Chopman was a serial killer hired by Kaiba and stationed in his amusement park to attack Yugi's buddies in a parody of the Saw franchise. Manga!Kaiba was a hardcore psychopath.
Gren Maju Da Eiza sure has a name that I'm sure lost something in translation. It's apparently yet another counterpart of a long-running demon we've seen a couple of times, Maju Garzett. ("Maju", of course, means demon beast). As Gren Maju Da Eiza, it's... it's sure a huge demon-man whose lower body has been turned into a huge serpentine body, and also it has dragon wings now. I think Da Eiza lost his mouth, though, and I'm not sure if that's something that's worth it.
ANTI-AIRCRAFT FLOWER. Y'know, sometimes you don't need any commentary from me. Sometimes you just have to appreciate that in a series with demons, dragons, dark magicians and whatnot, you have a monster that's basically just a goddamn tulip with an anti-aircraft cannon instead of stamen and pistils.
TERRORKING SALMON! Yes, that is completely what I think about when I think about the title "Terrorking", a terrifying mutant salmon with spikes and metal plates and a big-ass scary beak. According to its bio, it's simultaneously the master of the Sea of Darkness, but also a delicacy among the demons of the World of Darkness. Poor Terrorking Salmon, you may be a king of terrors, but you're still a salmon. Its Japanese name is even more hilarious -- "GENOCIDE KING SALMON". Glorious.
Blazing Inpachi is poor Inpachi, but on fire! The card text notes how it's so much more powerful (since it's on fire), but it'll soon burn out and be nothing but ashes. Poor Inpachi! I really don't know what else to say here, I just kind of enjoy the design of Inpachi.
Somehow one of the cards in this set is just a Big Koala, which is apparently a species of "huge Des Koala", which we know translates to "Death Koala". It's a gigantic koala eating trees like humans eat broccoli. I don't know -- I just find this hilarious. Apparently one of the characters in Yu-Gi-Oh GX uses the Des Koala cards a lot. I have the feeling that Yu-Gi-Oh GX is kind of a crazy show.
Des Kangaroo is... we all know that this basically means "Death Kangaroo", and apparently Death Kangaroo is a puke-green kangaroo with boxing gloves and a purple shirt and he punches things real fast he makes afterimages. Okay, lay off the acid, card-makers.
Balloon Lizard is another card I own from this expansion and I've always thought looked gloriously ridiculous. It's a weird monitor lizard that has puffed up like a goddamn balloon, and I think it's meant to be flying? The concept of this Balloon Lizard that it continually puffs up every turn it's on the battlefield, and when it dies, the concentrated amount of gas explodes and damages your enemy. It's neat.
Burning Algae is a fun little fire-plant monster. It sure isn't an algae by any means, and it's a tree with a face, but the name "Burning Algae" is sure far more memorable than "Burning Tree". There's just something about the term "algae" that makes things a fair bit more memorable, y'know? Maybe it's because it's so fun to say. Other than that, there's not much to say here.
Click below the break where I rapid-fire through the rest of the expansion.
Freed the Brave Wanderer is a card of Freed! Which is going to be another recurring character in many other Yu-Gi-Oh cards. He might have already appeared before? He just looks so generic, though, just a knight-man with long hair, and is nowhere as memorable as Gigagagigagogo the cyborg lizard-man.
D.D. Scout Plane is another card from the "D.D." (Different Dimension) series of cards, which is this eclectic mixture of cards that represent a bunch of adventurers from fantasy land landing in a weird different dimension with weird beasts and machines... that don't look too much different from the rest of Yu-Gi-Oh's output. This one's a cool spherical robot, though. I like spherical robots.
Two cool beasts that are just cool beasts! Soul Tiger and Fenrir aren't quite as memorable as something like Gale Lizard or Big Koala, though,which is why they don't make it up above. Fenrir borrows his name from one of the more memorable giant beasts from Norse myth. It's cool.
We have Crimson Ninja and Getsu Fuhma, two ninja/samurai people. They look cool (Crimson Ninja in particular), but I don't have much to say here.
We also have a bunch of turtles, and they look pretty wacky! Gora Turtle of Illusion is classified as an "aqua" creature that's apparently able to, like, zoom around and genjutsu his shit with psychedelic illusions? Meanwhile, Don Turtle is a turtle hiding in its shell, which has like a huge kanji writing on it and a bunch of prayer beads wrapped around it, and it also has this Wartortle-esque feathery tail billowing out. Don Turtle is considered a "Reptile", because, hey, why not? Both are pretty cool turtles, either way.
A pair of bugs! These... these really aren't super-duper exciting, and from a bunch of Yu-Gi-Oh insect monsters, I kind of expected more? Pinch Hopper is just a funny-looking locust and Skull-Mark Ladybug is just a scary Japanese-anime beetle with a skull and crossbones on its wings. Presumably it erupts like a bomb, judging on its name and effect.
We have Stealth Bird and Sacred Crane. They sure are pretty birds!
Berserk Gorilla is angry, it's breathing fire and shit! Sometimes all you need as a monster is just to make them breathe fire.
Inferno is a pretty interesting fire monster, it's just this giant grinning cartoony face made out of flames, but inside its mouth are the skulls of its victims, and I do find the contrast to be interestingly jarring.
Mad Dog of Darkness has... really strange proportions, but apparently it's a random normal dog that got corrupted by the powers of darkness when playing in the park. Closer inspection of that little doggy name-tag it has tells us that this Mad Dog of Darkness used to be the Outstanding Dog Marron. Don't worry, Marron, you're still a good boy.
Silpheed is a pretty cool-looking fairy warrior dude that spins around a sword real fast. Nothing much to say here.
Ehhhh, not much to say here. Gigantes is a pretty cool giant oni monster, and apparently it's considered a "Rock" creature? Neat, I suppose. Invader of Darkness is a generic demon warrior dude with sharp claws, metal armour, black cloak and stuff.
Sea Serpent, Warrior of Darkness is a fish-man dude that apparently patrols the Sea of Darkness. Despite clearly not being a serpent, apparently calling himself "Sea Serpent" makes him be classified as one. Presumably, he hunts Terrorking Salmon. The fiend!
I used to own The Thing in the Crater, and I remembered some of my friends being really freaked out by the artwork of a little black skinny person with glowing eyes just hiding in a grove in this molten caldera. Sometimes not really explaining anything is a whole lot more scarier than just over-designing a monster, y'know?
Oh yeah flex those muscles, Beast-Warriors. Manticore of Darkness really looks like he belongs in a JoJo manga or something, look at those hilraous amounts of abs and muscles. Enraged Battle Ox is basically good ol' Battle Ox from the original Yu-Gi-Oh sets, but he's now enraged that he used to be a normal monster with no effect, and now he's posing and showing off his muscles and he's gained an additional effect. His weird little upside-down-knife-with-an-ax-head-glued-on-to-it still looks dumb, though.
We have a bunch more dinosaurs! Black Tyranno is pretty scaly and creepy, and Dark Driceratops is... it's like a Triceratops, but if you really play up the bird part of it, giving it a real bird's beak and swapping out its bony frill for a feathery one. I like the fact that the plant it's eating actually has a screaming demonic face.
Molten Zombie is sure a molten zombie. It's neat. Sasuke Samurai #3 is straight-up piercing Yu-Gi-Oh cards. It's got a ball with drawn eyes for a head. I am pretty sure we've seen the other Sasuke Samurais in previous expansions, and I think they're supposed to be like, Bomberman style protagonists of a game or something?
A couple of pretty cool fairies that aren't actually fairies! Prickle Fairy is a lady made entirely out of vines, and is considered a plant, and Insect Princess is a straight-up insect that just happens to have humanoid features. I almost wished that the shadow in the background of Insect Princess was actually a bit more monstrous to go for the trope of "the shadows reveal your true form", y'know? Regardless, a pretty fine duo of fairy ladies.
Mataza the Zapper is a samurai dude. He's about to cut some fool, I think. Guardian Angel Joan is an angel lady. She's about to do angelic stuff, I guess.
Coach Goblin is... he looks a lot more hideous than a goblin, and no wonder, he's classified as a "fiend". Apparently he goes around coaching someone in a boxing game? Is that what fiends in hell do in their spare time? Do they re-enact Rocky IV, but in hell?
I own the spell card Reload, and I absolutely love the sheer hilarity of whoever designed this pyramid-themed ancient-egyptian gun. It took me a while to realize that this is meant to be someone reloading an ammo clip onto a submachine gun, but an ancient-Egyptian themed gun. It's so ridiculous, I love it.
As usual, I'm not about to talk a whole ton about the spell cards. Heart of the Underdog features Jonuichi/Joey Wheeler, except slightly altered, and it's always weird to see characters that play the card game in the anime/manga actually show up in the card. It's bizarre. Ojama Delta Hurricane depicts the three Ojama bros unleashing a combination attack, and that, for a while, was the only motivation of running the Ojamas -- have all three and you get to use this spell card.
Stray Lambs has those adorable little sleeping baby sheep tokens that show up every now and then.
Oh, hey, it's Gagagagigogo the lizard-man in Stumbling! We also have a bunch of Chaos-themed spell cards in Chaos End and Chaos Greed. I owned Chaos Greed, but remembered not really finding a way to utilize it because I don't own a lot of 'banish' cards. We're starting to see a fair bit of cards that actually feature Yu-Gi-Oh cards inside a Yu-Gi-Oh card art, and that's kind of interesting.
A bunch of D.D. (different dimension) themed cards. They're not super-duper exciting, though, and I' not even sure what part of D.D. Designator ties into the whole dimensional travel thing. I guess she's the same lady that shows up in Dimension Fusion, and that's about it?
So if a dinosaur eats Ultra Evolution Pill, they turn into a chicken or something? Yu-Gi-Oh spells always tends to be ridiculous, but "Multiplication of Ants" is such a ridiculous name in a setting where you summon world-ending dragons and demons.
Oh hey, that's Orca Mega-Fortress of Darkness pulling out poor Amphibious Bugroth MK-3 in Salvage! It's
I own Yellow Luster Shield! And Dark Mirror Force. That's about all I got, though, neither one of them are very interesting cards. Begone, Knave is a very funny card name, and that poor critter in DNA Transplant!
I am 90% sure that Robbin' Zombie is a reference to a different card. It's always kinda weird when a trap card is just straight-up a monster creature.
Tower of Babel! I own that card, and it's a pretty neat artwork. Chain Disappearance features Man-Eater Bugs, no, those poor Zaku-bugs!
It's so weird to have a very fantasy-inspired card like Fiend's Hand Mirror in the same expansion where you get random sci-fi stuff like Zero Gravity and Self-Destruct Button.
Destruction Ring is just a fucking ring with a bomb glued on to it. It's hilarious. I think that's Giga Gagagigo escaping from the Compulsory Evacuation Device? Or is he being deployed to attack enemies or something? One of these days I have to read up on Giga Gagagigo lore .
And that's about it for Invasion of Chaos! I'm not sure if/when I will continue on to the next couple of expansions, or if I'll instead go and talk about random non-expansion cards. Yu-Gi-Oh is notorious for releasing a lot of random cards as part of random mini-expansions as part of promotions or whatever, and these often include cards that might be prominent in the anime, manga and games. That sounds like a whole lot of work, though, and I might just continue on with, like, the next expansion or two.
If you look up Ojama stuff, prepare to read about XYZ and Armed Dragons as well
ReplyDeleteIt's been a long while since I did this. One of the few physical decks I had back when I was a kid is an Armed Dragon deck!
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