[Kiwami]

When it comes to Yu-Gi-Oh I always found the very early chapters of the manga fascinating, when there were new games and challenges each chapter, before the series focused solely on the card game. It was a bit simpler, a smaller scale, yet interesting IMO. Yugi's second personality was rather terrifying back then, almost evil. It was a bit gruesome and gory sometimes too, although even later chapters were like that sometimes.

The mystery behind it all was also rather cool, the Egyptian themes were a bit less obvious so when it came into play it expanded the world nicely. I don’t dislike the direction the franchise went into, even the later stories are sill interesting and even the card game was a bit more fun in the manga as it was almost a proper role-playing game with the amount of rules and stuff. Like how flying monsters can't fall into pits or machines are immune to magic. Won’t make sense in a balanced TCG but for having fun in a fictional world? Pretty cool stuff.

Sometimes I re-read the manga, never really got into the anime.