If you know enough anime, it’s pretty easy to play Kevin Bacon and link things arbitrarily. Yugioh 5Ds may be notable only for the “Card Games on Motorcycles” meme, but it’s ridiculously easy to connect (via the creators) to the most notable anime of a different decade. If you’re that much of a geek, anyway.

The Rules: For the most part, this is similar to the 6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon, which is also similar to wiki-racing except with anime instead of actors.

-Each Series, Manga Magazine, Anime Studio, Creator (Director, Scriptwriter, Mangaka, etc.), and Voice Actor/Actress counts as one link.

-License-holders (e.g. Funimation) and Publishers (e.g. Kadokawa, Kodansha) do not count. Too few of them own too many series for this to be a truly interesting game.

-6 links are the maximum number allowed.

-Anime-Manga versions of the same series don’t count as separate links.

So how can Neon Genesis Evangelion be tied to Yugioh 5Ds? There are multiple possible paths.

Path A (Institutional):

1. Neon Genesis Evangelion deconstructs the genre of giant robots piloted by people, which was invented by Mazinger Z
2. Which was published in Weekly Shonen Jump from 1972-1974
3. Which also ran the Yugioh manga from 1996-2004
4. Of which Yugioh 5Ds is a direct spin-off

Path B (Personal):

1. Yugioh 5Ds was directed by Katsumi Ono
2. Who also directed Hataraki Man
3. Which was originally written by Moyoco Anno
4. Who is married to Hideaki Anno
5. Who directed Neon Genesis Evangelion

For Cowboy Bebop, I managed to find only one path. Namely, the high road.

1. Cowboy Bebop was directed by Shinichiro Watanabe
2. Who also directed Kids on the Slope
3. Which ran on the noitaminA block, 6 years after Hataraki Man
4. Which was directed by Katsumi Ono
5. Who also directed Yugioh 5Ds

Revolutionary Girl Utena was also easy to connect using noitaminA. Unfortunately, all the ones I tried involving the Annos end at 7 links.

1. Revolutionary Girl Utena was made by J.C. Staff
2. Which made Honey and Clover
3. Which was the flagship anime of the noitaminA block that ran Hataraki Man
4. Which was directed by Katsumi Ono
5. Who directed Yugioh 5Ds

Does anyone have alternate routes to win the game? Or want to see the convoluted links between CGoM and any other particular series/person? I could do this all day.*

*Especially since Katsumi Ono directing Symphogear G puts a who’s who of famous voice actresses within 2 links of him (3 links of the show).