Trivia / Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS

• Acting for Two:
  • In the original Japanese airing:
    • Tomokazu Seki voices Frog, Pigeon, and Eagle.
    • IKKAN voices both Bishop and the MC.
    • Masaaki Yano voices both Knight and Boot.
    • Minami Takahashi voices Roboppy and a young Ryoken Kogami.
  • In the dub:
    • Varis (Revolver) and Gore (GO) are both voiced by Daniel J. Edwards. Daniel even joked that he can't wait to kick his own butt, making a reference to episode 39-40.
    • Kolter (Kusanagi), Roboppi, Bohman, and Knight are all voiced by Sam Black.
    • Pigeon, Earth, and Specter are voiced by Billy Bob Thompson.
• Actor Existence Limbo: Specter has no lines in Season 3 (until the last three minutes of the final episode) because his voice actor was unavailable at the time to record.
• All-Star Cast: While the voice cast usually involves an abundance of Amateur Casting in the franchise, VRAINS is composed of seasoned voice actors except for Yusaku, Spectre, Bohman, Emma, and Aoi's voice actors, who are newcomers in the VA scene. The most notable famous voice actors are:
  • Takahiro Sakurai, who voices Ai, Yusaku's partner and one of the main characters in the series
  • Shunsuke Takeuchi, who voices Ryoken Kogami/Revolver, the main rival of the series.
  • Subaru Kimura, who voices Shoichi Kusanagi, one of the main supporting characters and Yusaku's close ally.
  • Yūki Kaji, who joins the main cast in Season 2 and provides the voice of Takeru Homura/Soulburner.
  • Ami Koshimizu, who voices Kyoko Taki/Baira, one of the generals of the Knights of Hanoi.
  • Ayako Kawasumi, who voices Aqua the water Ignis.
  • Tomokazu Seki, who voices two comic relief side characters, Frog and Pigeon.
• Amateur Cast:
  • Shouya Ishige is an actor with no major voice acting roles to his name prior to his casting as Yusaku.
  • Yuna Kamakura makes her voice acting debut in VRAINS as Emma.
  • Aoi Zaizen is Yuki Nakashima's first major voice acting role before her role as Lisa Imai in BanG Dream! Girls Band Party!.
  • Daiki Kaijimoto is a drama actor with no other voice acting roles prior to Specter.
• Anime First: Like with previous spinoffs (except ZEXAL), VRAINS is not based on an existing manga series.
• Blooper: During Soulburner and GO's Duel, Soulburner shuffles "Falco" and "Jack Jaguar" from his GY to his deck by the effect of "Rise of the Salamangreat". However, the only monsters with levels in Soulburner's GY at the time were "Jack Jaguar" and "Meer", as "Falco" was shuffled into the deck due to "Jack Jaguar's" effect, and thus Ritual Summoning "Emerald Eagle" should've been impossible as Soulburner technically doesn't meet the requirements based on the levels of his GY's monsters.
• Celebrity Voice Actor: Shouya Ishige, voice of Yusaku, was a Japanese stage actor whose biggest credit at the time was starring in a major Japanese musical production of The Lion King in 2014. He had a few minor voice roles before he was cast in VRAINS. Like KENN before him, he seems to be transitioning to a regular voice acting career.
• Crossdressing Voices
  • Haru is voiced by Ryōko Shiraishi.
  • For that matter, all of the male child or child-looking characters in the show have female voice actors, including Roboppi and any of the characters in flashbacks as children.
• Defictionalization: Cospa Japan announced their VRAINS merchandise lineup and reveals that Revolver's bullet earrings and Ai's earrings, of all things, are available for purchase.
• No Export for You: While North America and Europe were able to watch the Japanese simulcast via Crunchyroll, the English version was only broadcast in Canada and Australia at first. As of writing, only the first season is available for legal streaming in the UK. The dub eventually began streaming on Pluto TV's newly-launched, dedicated Yu-Gi-Oh! channel, three full years after the Canadian premiere.
• Promoted Fanboy:
  • Shunsuke Takeuchi, best known for his voicework on THE iDOLM@STER: Cinderella Girls' Producer, has followed the Yu-Gi-Oh! franchise since his younger days.
  • Yūki Kaji, who provides the voicework for Takeru Homura/Soulburner, reveals in an interview that he got into Yu-Gi-Oh! since the original series manga commenced serialization, and is honoured to be given the opportunity to contribute his voicework to the franchise's anime series.
  • Miku Kobato of Band-Maid considers it an honour that the band was chosen to perform ED4, "glory", as someone who personally has been a fan of Shueisha's Jump since her childhood.
• Schedule Slip: VRAINS was originally scheduled to begin airing on April 2017 after the conclusion of ARC-V, but was delayed to May 2017.
• Star-Making Role:
  • Yusaku Fujiki is Shouya Ishige's first major voice acting role. A few years down the road, he would be known as the voice of the mild-mannered Wakana Gojou from My Dress-Up Darling.
  • Emma Bessho is Yuna Kamakura's first major voice acting role.
• The Other Marty: In the first episode preview of the dub shown alongside the re-release of Yu-Gi-Oh! The Movie: Pyramid of Light in theatres in March of 2018, the voice in Yusaku's dream is voiced by Emily Cramer, who also plays Blue Angel. However, when the dub began airing on TV later that year, the voice was instead voiced by Daniel J. Edwards, who also plays Varis. This is likely because the dubbers were not aware when the preview came out that Varis was also the identity of the voice from Yusaku's past, as the Japanese version had a female voice actor playing him as a child and the episode revealing this only aired in Japan just a few days after the preview was released.
• Trolling Creator: Alyson Leigh Rosenfield revealed that she was joining the dub in Season 2 on Twitter. When she was quizzed on who she was voicing, she quickly explained that she couldn't reveal who it was yet, but proceeded to troll the bajebaz out of the commenters.
• Troubled Production:
  • The Schedule Slip with the series' debut, occasional Previously on… clips composed of clips from previous episodes, and the unusual amount of Recap Episodes during its run led some to speculate production issues. The second director of the series, Katsuya Asano, eventually confirmed this (alongside a third apology after the airing of the fourth recap episode). This was hinted at with the first director of the series being Masahiro Hosoda, famous in Japan to be the man capable of working under the most extreme pressure in the anime industry, the guy that animation studios usually called for when there's a production issue so serious, the animation project is in the risk of being outright cancelled. Katsuya Asano didn't step in until after the situation has calmed down a bit.
  • The series' primary duel composer, Hikokubo Masahiro reportedly found it difficult to script duels for Soulburner due to how overpowered Salamangreats are.
• What Could Have Been:
  • VRAINS had a different concept at first as revealed in the 2017 Jump Festa event. Yusaku was supposed to be a newbie to Duel Monsters who meets many different people through dueling, and the story is about him taking the step forward and try. Hence the tag "Take a step forward and try!". But thanks to the ARC-V ending fiasco and the above-mentioned production issues, it was changed last minute, turning Yusaku to a revenge-driven Experienced Protagonist.
  • According to this article, the Bad Future implied to be the one that Ai saw in the third season, was actually going to happen.

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