Yesterday, we introduced you to the new rising star of Japanese animated cartoons, Yu-Gi-Oh!. Today we want to tell you a little more about this challenger to the Dragonball throne.

Yu-Gi-Oh! (yes, the exclamation point is part of the title) was introduced as a Japanese comic book in 1996 before becoming an animated TV show in 2000. The show arrived in the U.S. in September on the WB Kids network, Saturday mornings. It was so popular that the network recently expanded the show from one day to six days a week.

That move had a lot to do with the recent explosion in Yu-Gi-Oh! interest online, but there's more. Video games and action figures based on the show finally hit U.S. toy store shelves this month. The searches for Yu-Gi-Oh! had been slowly rising for months but in the last two weeks they have more than doubled, with the topic entering the Lycos 50 this week at #47.

The most popular part of the Yu-Gi-Oh! media juggernaut is the collectible card game, similar to Pokemon or the earlier craze Magic: The Gathering. That's because the card game is so much a part of the Yu-Gi-Oh! sales pitch: the TV show is about kids playing the card game. Except on the show, when the kids play, the monsters actually appear to fight based on what the cards say.

It is the logical conclusion of kids' television, I suppose. Instead of kids playing a card game so they can identify with kids who fight monsters, kids now play a card game so they can identify with kids playing a card game that simulates fighting monsters.

According to the story, the lead character Yugi and his friends share a love for the newest card game fad, Duel Monsters. Little do they know that five thousand years ago, ancient Egyptian Pharaoahs used to play a similar game that could magically divine the future (and clear out your allowance lickety-split). Somehow, in a complicated story involving Yugi's grandfather, an ancient Egyptian puzzle, and spiky hair, Yugi receives magical powers and begins to play the game in the fantastical ancient Egyptian fashion.

This brings up three fundamental questions.

1) What kind of a name for a boy is "Yugi"?

2) Monsters -- will they ever just get along?

3) Can Yu-Gi-Oh! become a fad of Dragonball/Pokemon proportions? Or will it flame out like other Japanese anime runners-up? (Outlaw Star and Escaflowne, for example.)

TOMORROW: Fun with the lottery.