by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

Empires, religious sects, technological advances - tracing the trajectory of such things is a fascinating endeavour. Mind you, it's an endeavour that requires not only more space than I have here, but also fancy book-learnin' degrees. So I'm gonna plot the arc of a simpler, more focused and finite matter - the Japanese kiddie card game (a massive moneymaker in recent years) and its offshoot monster merch and marketing.

The dawn of the damn thing was Pokémon, the word a Japanese contraction of "pocket monster." I don't care to comment on the card game itself, a controversial topic ("It's crack for kids!"), or the so-so anime shows and feature films that attended it. What grabbed me was the simple, graphic bonhommes, or at least Pikachu, Pokémon's repellently cute little yellow mascot. First time I saw the lil' wretch, I thought, "Sayonara, Snoopy - that pipsqueak is gonna be huge." He was.

The High Classical period was Digimon. The vast assortment of supercool monsters was blessed by a magnificent and engaging design sensibility. Then I saw Digimon: The Movie and was floored. Not only was it a genuinely inventive and wonderfully executed anime, vastly superior to the TV show, it was also completely fucking nuts.

The Decline period is now upon us, and it is called Yu-Gi-Oh!, which actually began as a manga in '96 (the name translates to "king of games"). It dominates the kiddie card market of late, but it sucks in every respect. Its animated spinoffs, the TV show and now feature film, are long, loud, tiresome ads for the base product. Not that I'm even all that opposed to that idea. But Yu-Gi-Oh! The Movie breaks some fundamental rules. One, if it's the feature film, I want to see most if not all of the game's monsters, not just the same fucking Blue Eyes White Dragon resurrected over and over. Besides, Yu-Gi-Oh!'s monsters are ugly and badly drawn. And two, I expect an exponentially better anime than what's coughed up on TV. Yu-Gi-Oh! The Movie delivers neither. In fact, all it delivers are a headache, a bad mood and the conviction that the sun is quickly setting on this whole Japanese kiddie card game racket.

Yu-Gi-Oh! The Movie opens Friday, Aug. 13

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