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Japanese manga maven Ryôsuke Takahashi’s franchise is a popular comic book, an animated TV show, and a card game that allows kids to wage make-believe battles with fantastic creatures like bug-eyed toons and fierce dragon-bots. Now, inevitably, it’s a movie. The premise: the soul of an Egyptian pharaoh inhabits the body of the young title hero (voiced by Dan Green in this English-language version), making him the Michael Jordan of monster dueling. That is, until his chief rival, Seto Kaiba (Eric Stuart), enlists the aide of Anubis (the Egyptian god of the dead), and the game spins from a virtual-reality shootout to a colosseum grudge match where the existence of the world hangs in the balance. The artwork by director Hatsuki Tsuji and his team of animators is sharp, but it pales before state-of-the-art CGI. The script packs some wit, though, with a beast whose attack mode is "sludge regurgitation" and a foppish game creator with a penchant for white-wine spritzers — which is about how this one goes down. (90 minutes)
BY TOM MEEK
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