Confession time: I initially wrote up this story mainly to deride Duel Masters Rev as a very unappealing sequel to Yu-Gi-Oh!, because its character designs - shown above - were not nearly as wild as in the original. It's as if Yu-Gi-Oh had suddenly decided to tone it down or something.

Sadly, that angle kind of died on the vine when I found out that Shonen Sunday's newest children's card game manga, Duel Masters Rev, is not related to Yu-Gi-Oh!, whose fictional children's card game is called "Duel Monsters". 

That said, apparently Duel Masters is itself a respectable children's card game on its own, with a lengthy Toonami run and even its own western-published comic series from Dreamwave. And the hook for Duel Masters Rev is as ridiculous as anything, featuring a lead who was a lapsed children's card game player who takes up arms cards to save the universe from time-travelers. 

If only the character designs looked wilder!