3.5 rounded up to 4
"A Castle for a kingdom...It's like the Middle Ages. How Bourgeois!"

Yu-Gi-Oh! Duelist, Volume 1: where the anime meets the manga (not counting the 'Season 0' anime adaptation).

So many iconic moments for someone who grew up on the 4Kids dub: we meet Pegasus and have the VHS Shadow Game duel, we get the ship and Weevil Underwood throwing Exodia overboard, we kick off Duelist Kingdom, Yugi defeats Weevil...you know. All that, but...a little different.

Some of the differences between the manga and anime are a bit baffling. And not in the direction you think. For all that the pilot of the Season 1 anime is a mess, they definitely do some cleanup on aisle 7 when it comes to beginning the Duelist Kingdom arc.

First of all, in the manga, Pegasus sends a tape of himself through which he's able to duel Yugi in a Shadow Game. This surprises the hell out of 'Yami' Yugi who has at this point been Shadow Game-d by Shadi and 'Yami' Bakura. That's fine; it may not be his first rodeo, but no one expects the Spanish Inquisition a Shadow Game to come bursting out of their T.V.

However, for reasons known only to him that are certainly in-character but knock the sails out of this otherwise tense moment, Pegasus doesn't actually use his Millennium Eye at first to predict Yugi's moves, instead he uses subliminal messaging (?) just to screw with him for...reasons (???) before revealing the Millennium Eye. But it's like, my guy, you're talking to this lad through a TV in a pre-Skype, pre-Zoom world, so like, I think he knows there's some magical tomfoolery.

And speaking of magical tomfoolery, instead of sealing Grandpa's soul away in a card or in his castle or wherever he trapped Grandpa's soul in the anime, he literally traps it on the tape...that Yugi still has. So after making a big point of how Yugi can only rescue his grandfather's soul if he participates in the Duelist Kingdom Tournament, Yugi just... pops the VHS tape into a portable player and talks to his Grandpa on that. So like... ok. So then what's the real urgency to go to Duelist Kingdom?

But oh well, whatever. So off we go.

They get to Duelist Kingdom, and in the manga, we don't get duel arenas, we get the duel boxes from the Death-T arc. Honestly, I think it was smart visually to go with the arenas for the anime, since the boxes would have felt clunky in a film medium, but they actually kind of work in the manga and keep everything a bit more contained and feel like a more logical stepping stone towards the Duel Disks.

And speaking of Duel Disks and such, we get kind of a cute Kaiba shout out in this volume when Yugi initially tells his friends he wouldn't want to compete in a tournament unless Kaiba was participating. We also learn that Yugi's visited him in the hospital at least once since he’s still in a coma post-Mind Crush. This is very in-character for Yugi, and a connection between them we don't get in the anime. Obviously, both manga and anime Kaiba would hate that Yugi did this (but also probably secretly kind of like it), but it adds an interesting layer to their relationship that gets lost when, in the anime, the next time they see each other is for like 2 seconds of exposition and the premier of the Duel Disk prototypes where he's mostly talking to Joey/Jonouchi, not Yugi. Anyway, I think that's a cute detail and helps differentiate Yugi from 'Yami' Yugi.

One difference that only makes sense because of the timeline weirdness caused by cutting everything that happened in 'Season 0' is not having Ryou Bakura be part of Yugi's friend group until partway through Duelist Kingdom. As Little Kuriboh loves pointing out in YGOTAS, Bakura (both Ryou and Yami) get done the dirtiest in the anime in terms of omitted plotlines and character development.

Justice! For! Bakura!

Other than that, everything else is pretty much the same, although for some strange reason, instead of putting up his rarest card against Weevil's second starchip as in the anime, manga 'Yami' Yugi blurts out that he'll bet his life (???) and Weevil's just like: "Well! Now that's a new twist!"
A little bit of a rocky start, but now we're off and running. I wonder if Joey/Jonouchi will be able to defeat Mai in Volume 2...