Yugi’s English dub voice actor also speaks out regarding meme-style video.
On February 28, the United States and Israel launched a series of airstrikes on Iran, with targets including the compound of Iranian leader Ali Khamenei, who was killed. Iran then responded with missile attacks of its own on a number of countries within the Middle East, creating chaos in a part of the world not exactly known for stability in the first place.
With many American citizens calling for their government to explain its specific objectives for the military operation and to provide some sort of timeline for its conclusion, the official White House Twitter account instead on March 6 posted a video along with the message “Justice the American way” and an emoji of the American flag and a burning fire. The video consists of a series of war/fight scenes from a number of movies interspersed with footage of airstrike targets being struck. While most of the movie clips are from mainstream blockbusters, including The Avengers, Top Gun: Maverick, John Wick, and The Transformers, the very last clip isn’t from a Hollywood hit, but from the Yu-Gi-Oh anime.
On Wednesday, the official Japanese Yu-Gi-Oh anime Twitter account addressed the use of the clip in a post of its own.
“It has come to our attention that a post on the White House’s official X account used footage from the anime series Yu-Gi-Oh!,” says the English portion of the bilingual Japanese/English tweet. “This was made without any authorization from the rights holder. Regarding this matter, no one associated with the manga or anime had any involvement, and no permission was granted for the use of this intellectual property.” The tweet’s Japanese statement is almost identical, but gets to the crux of the matter even more quickly, with an additional mention that “video of the Yu-Gi-Oh anime series was used without permission from the rights holders” in the very first sentence.
Since the White House’s post, a number of actors from the works from which the clips were taken have spoken out against their use, including Dan Green, Yugi’s English dub actor, whose voice can be heard in the White House’s post.
The fact that the post came from the Japanese Yu-Gi-Oh account, and the statement made in Japanese as well, shows that the rights holders are concerned not with just how the White House’s use of the clip could affect perceptions of the franchise overseas, but also in its country of origin.
As with other times the current U.S. administration has incorporated pop culture in its messaging, there’s likely little legal action that the Yu-Gi-Oh rights holders can take, leaving publicly and strongly saying that they don’t endorse the White House’s post and was not involved in its creation as apparently their only viable option at the moment.
Source: Twitter/@ yugioh_anime, Twitter/@White House, Yahoo! News
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