How did the Yu-Gi-Oh anime differ from the manga?

Question

I was wondering, how does the Yu-Gi-Oh manga differ from the anime? If someone enjoyed the anime would they like the manga?

And were there ever any Yu-Gi-Oh movies?

Answer 1

The manga starts with Yugi and the soul inhabiting the enigma being involved in many different disputes on many different kinds of games: from card games, tabletop games, electronic games, video games, lots of gambling and small crimes too.

Then, the card game created for the manga starts being the center piece of the story, with clear rules being developed and all.

The story centered on the card game is the one they adapted into the anime, after removing and altering much of the content at the beginning of the manga.

Also, there are "filler" arcs in the anime - original stories not present in the manga medium.

It is still mostly the same story, so you would like the manga if you enjoyed the anime.

Three animated movies based on Yu-Gi-Oh have been released at the time of writing, according to Wikipedia, with one more to be released in 2016. There are no live action movies, though.

Answer 2

To clarify before I proceed, I am referring to "Yu-Gi-Oh!" as the story from Duelist Kingdom up until and including the Millenium World arc (including anime fillers in between although my answer does not discuss it). I will not consider the original 7 volumes of the manga, Season 0 of the anime or GX/5D's/Zexal/Arc-V. Basically most the story that involves Yugi and his friends.

In addition to everything Sigfried666 said, a noticeable difference is the maturity levels of the different medium. The manga was intended for an older teenage audience, whereas the anime was made for a younger elementary school audience. So you will see a fair amount of censorship and/or omission in the anime. Depending on your tastes, you may or may not enjoy that. Also the English version, should you decide to watch it, was dubbed by 4Kids Entertainment, so you would see even more censorship in the dub than the sub.

Here are some examples of the changes made in the anime to accommodate the younger audience:

• There is blood in the manga, but not the anime.

• Some characters die in the manga, but they live in the anime (but the overall story line of the anime stays true to the manga despite this)

• (In the english dub) Some names were changed to be less dark/disturbing. For example, they renamed "Player Killer" in the manga to "PaniK" and they renamed "Pandora" to "Arcana". On a slightly related note to that, many names were changed for the dub too, mainly "Jonouchi", "Honda", and "Anzu" were renamed to "Joey", "Tristan", and "Tea" respectively.
• Characters wear more suitable clothing for a young audience.

  (Mai Valentine especially)

• There is A LOT of emphasis on the power of friendship and whatnot, so that may bother some people, especially older watchers, as they will quickly notice how much they abuse friendship in the anime (much like Fairy Tail if you are familiar with that). The manga does use the concept of friendship a fair amount, but nowhere near to the extent that the anime does.