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  • Locked thread
Arcade Rabbit
Nov 11, 2013

PMush Perfect posted:

This is getting very silly.

It's a Yugioh thread. It'd be wrong if it wasnt.

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AlphaKretin
Dec 25, 2014

A vase to face encounter.

...Vase to meet you?

...

GARVASE DAY!

GeneX posted:

oh my loving god

I agree, Vrains sounds amazing

Raserys
Aug 22, 2011

IT'S YA BOY

excellent post/av combo

Junpei Hyde
Mar 15, 2013




I'm glad this thread is realising what it takes to be TOADALLY AWESOME

Blueberry Pancakes
Aug 18, 2012

Jack in!! MegaMan, Execute!
Don't forget that the main character of VRAINS literally becomes a Super Saiyan while he duels.

Blaze Dragon
Aug 28, 2013
LOWTAX'S SPINE FUND

Hobgoblin2099 posted:

Don't forget that the main character of VRAINS literally becomes a Super Saiyan while he duels.

Yuma did it first.

Vandar
Sep 14, 2007

Isn't That Right, Chairman?



Blaze Dragon posted:

Yuma did it first.

Yusei went Super Saiyan first. :colbert:

mandatory lesbian
Dec 18, 2012
yami yugi is basically super saiyan yugi, if you get really loose with it

girl dick energy
Sep 30, 2009

You think you have the wherewithal to figure out my puzzle vagina?
If Yugi is Goku, and Kaiba is Vegeta, then Joey is Krillin, Tristan is Yamcha, obviously, and Tea is... Chi-Chi...?

Does that make Pegasus Frieza?

Ramos
Jul 3, 2012


Nah, he's more like Piccolo if Piccolo could actually beat Vegeta. He does turn out to be an alright dude after all.

Blueberry Pancakes
Aug 18, 2012

Jack in!! MegaMan, Execute!
Pretty sure Bakura is Freeza. Or Dark Marik.

Also, Iove how regular Bakura doesn't even show up in this game. The anime team really hated using him, from all indication, and now the games are cutting him out too.

Herr Tog
Jun 18, 2011

Grimey Drawer

Ephraim225 posted:

Oh, oh, would anyone like me to give a full review of Arc-V and why I think it's completely awful, with excruciating detail?!


Huh? Did I do something strange...?

Full review


Also this thread is amazing and these games are terrible

serefin99
Apr 15, 2016

Mikoooon~
Your lovely shrine maiden fox wife, Tamamo no Mae, is here to help!

Herr Tog posted:

Full review


Also this thread is amazing and these games are terrible

Rigged Death Trap
Feb 13, 2012

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP

Ephraim225 posted:

Oh, oh, would anyone like me to give a full review of Arc-V and why I think it's completely awful, with excruciating detail?!


Huh? Did I do something strange...?

But








YOULL STILL TAKE THE DAMAAAAAAGGEEEEEEEEEE

Ephraim225
Oct 28, 2010

Rigged Death Trap posted:

YOULL STILL TAKE THE DAMAAAAAAGGEEEEEEEEEE

I just watched the final duel and it ends with that exact quote.

So I guess I will be posting a review after all. Not in place of a regular update though.

Herr Tog
Jun 18, 2011

Grimey Drawer

Ephraim225 posted:

I just watched the final duel and it ends with that exact quote.

So I guess I will be posting a review after all. Not in place of a regular update though.
everyone still takes damage wins~

Ephraim225
Oct 28, 2010
You asked for it so here you go. Get comfy. It's long-winded and rant-y towards the end.

Well, it finally happened. Episode 148 aired. It's finally over. Yu-Gi-Oh! Arc-V, the biggest Rank 10 train wreck I've ever seen, has finally concluded. It was...not fun to watch the whole thing. It started out okay, had great character designs, and had plot ideas that could be great if executed well. However, about 50 episodes in, everything took a nosedive as the plot became so incredibly nonsensical it started to rival Kingdom Hearts, which is pretty impressive. I can barely even put into words why it was so bad, but I'm gonna try it anyways.

Episodes 1 and 2 begin with the setting. In Arc-V's universe, technology has allowed holograms to take physical presence, which means Duel Monsters is literally a whole new game. The new kind of duel is the "Action Duel" in which "Action Cards" are scattered around the field for the players to pick up and activate, which in author-ese means "We can rear end pull a save for a character in danger of losing any time we want". Watching characters ride their monsters is pretty cool regardless, though they don't seem to take any safety precautions to ensure people don't get hurt while they play. This technology will certainly not be weaponized in the future.

Our main character is Yuya Sakaki, a self-proclaimed "Entertainment Duelist", which means he has the worst deck in history, but the entertainment value means he wins all his duels anyways: a true anime protagonist. Yuya lives under a bit of a stigma because his father, the world-famous Yusho, was set to duel against the reigning champion duelist, Mr. "I'm not appearing in this show ever again after this duel", but Yusho never showed up to the duel, leading everyone to think he'd backed down out of cowardice. (Really? That's the first thing that came to everyone's mind?)

Yuya is offered the chance to duel the champion in order to redeem his family, so he takes the opportunity. Yuya puts up a good fight in the duel but finds himself cornered, until his pendulum necklace glows suddenly and transforms some of his monster cards into the new Pendulum Monsters, enabling him to pull off a Pendulum Summon and come back from behind.

Yup, he rear end pulled an entire game mechanic! Joking aside, however, the crowd actually has a surprisingly realistic reaction: As far as they know, Pendulum Monsters are Yuya's invention, so he must have cheated. Yuya then realizes he can't actually remember the tail end of the duel at all, so he and his "Yes I am, no I'm not" girlfriend, Yuzu Hiragi, duel each other to figure out the new summoning method.

Okay, so so far, there's nothing completely awful or stupid yet, in fact this is actually a pretty good setup. You have the main character obtaining an entire mechanic nobody else can use, and the next four episodes deal with other characters who are interested in Pendulum Monsters, whether to steal them, outright copy them, or just to see how they work, meanwhile you have to wonder how they were even created and why they're compatible with everyone's duel disks. Unfortunately, these questions aren't answered for over ONE HUNDRED episodes, and it's a bit of a cheap handwave, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

Episode 7 onwards is where the plot really gets going. A mysterious "Dark Duelist" and his comrade, Shun Kurosaki, begin attacking students of the "Leo Duel School" and at one point even start...turning them into playing cards...ulp. People initially think it's Yuya committing the attacks, because when the Dark Duelist takes his mask off, his face is revealed to look just like Yuya...except it absolutely does not and they look nothing alike but I'll let it slide for the sake of the plot.

Yuzu encounters the Dark Duelist later on, and he reveals his name to be "Yuto". He also seems to recognize Yuzu because she has the "same" face as HIS girlfriend, Ruri, who has been kidnapped. However, they're cut off when Yuya appears, Yuzu's bracelet shines and suddenly teleports Yuto away for some reason. These are very mysterious occurances, so naturally the characters should be trying to figure out these mysteries, right?

Nope, because it's time for a TOURNAMENT ARC. See this is my first big issue with Arc-V: They frequently delay any plot or character development in favor of just showing more duels even if they don't impact the plot, and even writing in more duels just to fill airtime, because they've got to sell more cards, and where do those get shown?...Don't get me wrong, I'm aware that to Konami, Yu-Gi-Oh is a commercial first and a story second. At least, that's what I'm thinking, considering some of the dumb ideas they come up with.

So Yuya and friends enter a Duel Monsters tournament, during which Yuto and Shun make the big reveal that they come from another dimension entirely. In fact, there are THREE other dimensions: The Fusion Dimension, the Synchro Dimension, and the XYZ Dimension. Yes, they're divided by monster type! And these dimensions also very closely resemble past Yu-Gi-Oh settings: Duel Academy, Neo Domino City, and Heartland City, respectively.

Yuto also reveals that every dimension has a boy in it who looks like Yuya, a girl who looks like Yuzu with a weird bracelet, and for whatever reason the Fusion Dimension, led by a guy named Leo Akaba (who also founded the Leo Duel School, hence Yuto and Shun attacking them at first) led the Fusion Dimension on a grand-scale invasion of their home, the XYZ Dimension, using the physical holograms as weapons. (Told you they wouldn't weaponize that tech!...oh wait. Also, insert Avatar: The Last Airbender joke here.) Yuya and Yuto duel each other, and find that their strongest dragon monsters seem unusually...attracted to one another. Then after they duel, Yuya and Yuto fuse together. Somehow.

The tournament gets interrupted by the Fusion Dimension invading Yuya's Dimension (just called "Standard" because they couldn't think of anything else). They aim to capture Yuzu like they did with Ruri, but Yuzu escapes into the Synchro Dimension with another Yuya-lookalike. The tournament's organizer and son of Leo Akaba, Reiji, decides the best course of action is to take the top winners in the tournament and assemble them into a team of TEENAGERS WITH ATTITUDE and search the Synchro Dimension for Yuzu.

So I just described Season 1 (out of 3) to you. You might be thinking, "well there's a few speed bumps but it sounds kind of okay so far", and really, it was, but Season 2 is where things take a nosedive for a lot of people, because this is the Synchro Arc. Yuya and his team travel to the Synchro Dimension, which is basically a giant clone of the setting of Yu-Gi-Oh 5Ds in several, SEVERAL ways. From the caste system, to card games on motorcycles, to Synchro monsters...

Oh, and they also brought back Jack Atlas and Crow Hogan for no reason! Well there's a reason for it, of course: they wanted to sell more cards those characters are famous for using. It's about as subtle as a bunker on a Golf course, and they do it with three other characters later on: Aster Phoenix and Alexis Rhodes from GX, and Kite from ZeXal. Besides marketing, there's not a lot of good reason to include them, especially with the character cast already very much bloated.

Speaking of marketing, the most blatant "buy our cards" moment was one duel later on in which the winning player used an actual structure deck that was released just recently at the time, just in case anyone thinks I'm crazy about the whole marketing thing.

The plot of the Synchro Arc is equally as bad. It starts with Yuya and his team getting captured and thrown in jail. Then they escape and get re-captured again and again and then get forced into another tournament. Nothing of major value happens or gets accomplished throughout the entire season, no new information is revealed other than the Fusion Dimension really wants to capture Yuzu and the three girls that look like her for some reason.

The issue here is that aside from making allies out of Jack and Crow eventually, nothing that happens in the Synchro Dimension ever really sticks with the characters, so you could just skip to season 3 and you probably wouldn't have missed very much at all. And that's fifty whole episodes you'd be skipping, so it's rather unfortunate, to say the least. One of the episodes is even devoted to nothing but flashbacks!

Season 3 gave me a little bit of hope before swiftly shattering it. It starts with Yuya and co. going to the XYZ Dimension, where they witness the damage the Fusion Dimension left after their invasion, and they discover their ultimate plan: Leo Akaba intends to merge all four dimensions together, using the life energy of people turned into cards to do so, and he needs Yuzu and her lookalikes for some reason. Yusho found out and wanted to stop him - that's why he left home before his scheduled duel. And now...the FUN part.

While in the XYZ Dimension, Yuya frequently gets attacked by the Fusion Dimension. In just about every ONE of his duels, Yuya manages to get his opponents to defect to his side by putting on a circus performance with his monsters. I'm dead serious. Everyone just starts joining his side after they're taken in by the children's entertainment. Now, WE know that would never ever work in real life, and I'm pretty sure the writers do too, but this is Yu-Gi-Oh. It's children's entertainment anyhow, so nobody cares if the writing is actually good, right?

After getting Aster Phoenix to defect from the Fusion Dimension, he takes Yuya and co. there himself so they can all take the fight to Leo Akaba directly. More filler duels follow, there's a stupid subplot involving the kidnapped girls getting "physical-holograph" parasites stuck in their brains to brainwash them, Yuya confronts the remaining two boys, who have merged together as well and later force Yuya to merge with them. Then Leo, some ONE HUNDRED THIRTY EPISODES into this series, finally decides to do a plot dump. And if you thought things were stupid up until now, get ready.

First of all, there weren't originally four dimensions, there used to be just one. It was in this dimension that Leo Akaba invented physical hologram technology and used it to truly revolutionize the way Duel Monsters was played. Unfortunately, there's one thing Leo didn't account for: Duel Monsters HAVE SOULS.

Okay, I know this is something the other Yu-Gi-Oh anime all have, but you can't just drop such a big bombshell on us this late in the series! It's barely even foreshadowed aside from Yuya and Yuto's dragons roaring at each other.

sigh Okay so monsters have souls, and they use their newfound physical holograms as bodies, which means they can lash out at people whenever they get angry, and when you're constantly summoned for the sake of killing each other in a card game, you tend to get more than a little angry. Oh, and because the holograms can't be destroyed and evidently have no emergency kill switch, this leads to lots and lots of rampaging monsters. Great job, Leo!

What's more is that the champion duelist, Zarc (Like Zorc from the original series?! Do ya get it?!) is...he, uh...okay so he has four dragon monsters that apparently can make him do whatever they want so they make him turn into a giant evil dragon. Or something. Leo then...he...okay listen to me a moment. This is normally where I'd go on TVTropes to make sure I have all this right, but I'm pretty sure even THEY don't get it one tiny little bit.

So I'll tell you what Leo does to the best of my ability. Take a deep breath. Are you ready? Okay.

Leo Akaba........CREATES FOUR SPELL CARDS WITH THE ABILITY TO SPLIT ZARC AND THE ENTIRE DIMENSION INTO FOUR PIECES.

How? HOW is that even PHYSICALLY POSSIBLE?! Let me reiterate. He created four spell cards that can SPLIT THE GIANT MONSTER IN FOUR. I knew he could make physical holograms, I didn't know he could loving ALTER REALITY ITSELF. What is he, a God or something?! Did a monster give him this power? The hell is this?!

Leo doesn't cast the spells them himself - his daughter, Ray, does it instead, splitting Zarc, the dimension, and herself into four pieces. Ray gets divided into Yuzu and her lookalikes, Zarc gets divided into Yuya and his lookalikes, and presumably every family from the original dimension gets sent to a random dimension, and of course they all lose their memories except Leo for some reason. He figures out what happened, and is now trying to put the world and his daughter back together despite the fact that doing so risks Zarc coming back and hurts a hell of a lot of other people. Guess what happens.

I mean, there's nothing WRONG with one dimension becoming four, and it's rather interesting to think that your main character and his ace monster is actually part of a greater evil villain (Pendulum Monsters are even stated to be Zarc's creation at the time of the split) but there's just so much wrong with how it was executed. Leo Akaba also never gets any real punishment for his stupid decisions, as even though Zarc is revived and spends about ten episodes blowing everyone up in duels, Ray eventually comes back to split him into four AGAIN. Then they spend the few remaining episodes, ah, "purifying Zarc" with "smiles". Then it just ends. Yuya and Yuzu also remain fused with their counterparts, meaning that the other six are basically dead. Doesn't that suck! Hey Shun, your SISTER is dead, does that mean NOTHING to you?!

Anyhow, I've skimmed over a lot of other problems and could probably go into way more detail, but my bottom line here is: we have too many characters that don't have much of an impact on the plot, a villain who's made to look sympathetic yet is also a complete idiot, a generic evil monster that's kind of just there, too many filler duels, too many actions likely taken solely to sell cards, a completely nonsensical "make it up as you go" plot...and worst of all, the missed potential. I could probably go on even longer describing what I'd change to fix the problems. Not that any of my fixes would make Konami more money, but I'm sure we'd at least wind up with something resembling a better product.

I suppose as long as Yu-Gi-Oh makes big bucks for Konami we can expect the franchise to not get destroyed by this mess...but THEY STILL TAKE BATTLE DAMAGE!

rannum
Nov 3, 2012

Honestly the whole "souls" business and splitting the dimensions up didn't phase me. It's just yeah ok, that checks out with the rest of the ygo series. Use the power of birds, flowers, the moon, yeah ok ok cool cool. And carding people as a stand in for death is wonderful, love it.

I'd say the biggest problem goes back to what you mentioned about squandering the characters that were there and continually adding mroe that are then further squandered. The girl characters in particular are hit hard, being kidnapped, made useless, and mind controlled such that they need to be rescued by their male brother/lover/friend. Also 4/5 of them cease to exist so thats. Great. Yuzu in particular had like a character arc and everything in the first season and then woops.

Synchro was dire because half of it was inside a hotel and Yuya learned the same exact lesson 4 or 5 times.

And the zarc series of fights is just....awful. He just reveals increasingly nonsensical layers of bullshit to stop anyone from doing anything and despite burning through 12 duelists the vast majority of them do nothing but make him stronger. Had Sawatari just challenged him to a duel rather than continue the earlier duel he would have won (he got through every other established layer protecting Zarc and then Zarc reveals ANOTHER layer). The Shun part of the duel was remarkable for doing absolutely nothing (did no damage to zarc, destroyed no monsters, did not give zarc any lp) other than giving the greatest exchange of all yugioh

Zarc: Monsters on my field are not affected by the effects of other Fusion, Synchro, or XYZ monsters!
Shun: That's stupid!

But otherwise it was just stalling to pad out the series, followed by ANOTHER arc to pad out the ending so they could stall until the next series.

Junpei Hyde
Mar 15, 2013




Ephraim225 posted:

You asked for it so here you go. Get comfy. It's long-winded and rant-y towards the end.

Well, it finally happened. Episode 148 aired. It's finally over. Yu-Gi-Oh! Arc-V, the biggest Rank 10 train wreck I've ever seen, has finally concluded. It was...not fun to watch the whole thing. It started out okay, had great character designs, and had plot ideas that could be great if executed well. However, about 50 episodes in, everything took a nosedive as the plot became so incredibly nonsensical it started to rival Kingdom Hearts, which is pretty impressive. I can barely even put into words why it was so bad, but I'm gonna try it anyways.

Episodes 1 and 2 begin with the setting. In Arc-V's universe, technology has allowed holograms to take physical presence, which means Duel Monsters is literally a whole new game. The new kind of duel is the "Action Duel" in which "Action Cards" are scattered around the field for the players to pick up and activate, which in author-ese means "We can rear end pull a save for a character in danger of losing any time we want". Watching characters ride their monsters is pretty cool regardless, though they don't seem to take any safety precautions to ensure people don't get hurt while they play. This technology will certainly not be weaponized in the future.

Our main character is Yuya Sakaki, a self-proclaimed "Entertainment Duelist", which means he has the worst deck in history, but the entertainment value means he wins all his duels anyways: a true anime protagonist. Yuya lives under a bit of a stigma because his father, the world-famous Yusho, was set to duel against the reigning champion duelist, Mr. "I'm not appearing in this show ever again after this duel", but Yusho never showed up to the duel, leading everyone to think he'd backed down out of cowardice. (Really? That's the first thing that came to everyone's mind?)

Yuya is offered the chance to duel the champion in order to redeem his family, so he takes the opportunity. Yuya puts up a good fight in the duel but finds himself cornered, until his pendulum necklace glows suddenly and transforms some of his monster cards into the new Pendulum Monsters, enabling him to pull off a Pendulum Summon and come back from behind.

Yup, he rear end pulled an entire game mechanic! Joking aside, however, the crowd actually has a surprisingly realistic reaction: As far as they know, Pendulum Monsters are Yuya's invention, so he must have cheated. Yuya then realizes he can't actually remember the tail end of the duel at all, so he and his "Yes I am, no I'm not" girlfriend, Yuzu Hiragi, duel each other to figure out the new summoning method.

Okay, so so far, there's nothing completely awful or stupid yet, in fact this is actually a pretty good setup. You have the main character obtaining an entire mechanic nobody else can use, and the next four episodes deal with other characters who are interested in Pendulum Monsters, whether to steal them, outright copy them, or just to see how they work, meanwhile you have to wonder how they were even created and why they're compatible with everyone's duel disks. Unfortunately, these questions aren't answered for over ONE HUNDRED episodes, and it's a bit of a cheap handwave, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

Episode 7 onwards is where the plot really gets going. A mysterious "Dark Duelist" and his comrade, Shun Kurosaki, begin attacking students of the "Leo Duel School" and at one point even start...turning them into playing cards...ulp. People initially think it's Yuya committing the attacks, because when the Dark Duelist takes his mask off, his face is revealed to look just like Yuya...except it absolutely does not and they look nothing alike but I'll let it slide for the sake of the plot.

Yuzu encounters the Dark Duelist later on, and he reveals his name to be "Yuto". He also seems to recognize Yuzu because she has the "same" face as HIS girlfriend, Ruri, who has been kidnapped. However, they're cut off when Yuya appears, Yuzu's bracelet shines and suddenly teleports Yuto away for some reason. These are very mysterious occurances, so naturally the characters should be trying to figure out these mysteries, right?

Nope, because it's time for a TOURNAMENT ARC. See this is my first big issue with Arc-V: They frequently delay any plot or character development in favor of just showing more duels even if they don't impact the plot, and even writing in more duels just to fill airtime, because they've got to sell more cards, and where do those get shown?...Don't get me wrong, I'm aware that to Konami, Yu-Gi-Oh is a commercial first and a story second. At least, that's what I'm thinking, considering some of the dumb ideas they come up with.

So Yuya and friends enter a Duel Monsters tournament, during which Yuto and Shun make the big reveal that they come from another dimension entirely. In fact, there are THREE other dimensions: The Fusion Dimension, the Synchro Dimension, and the XYZ Dimension. Yes, they're divided by monster type! And these dimensions also very closely resemble past Yu-Gi-Oh settings: Duel Academy, Neo Domino City, and Heartland City, respectively.

Yuto also reveals that every dimension has a boy in it who looks like Yuya, a girl who looks like Yuzu with a weird bracelet, and for whatever reason the Fusion Dimension, led by a guy named Leo Akaba (who also founded the Leo Duel School, hence Yuto and Shun attacking them at first) led the Fusion Dimension on a grand-scale invasion of their home, the XYZ Dimension, using the physical holograms as weapons. (Told you they wouldn't weaponize that tech!...oh wait. Also, insert Avatar: The Last Airbender joke here.) Yuya and Yuto duel each other, and find that their strongest dragon monsters seem unusually...attracted to one another. Then after they duel, Yuya and Yuto fuse together. Somehow.

The tournament gets interrupted by the Fusion Dimension invading Yuya's Dimension (just called "Standard" because they couldn't think of anything else). They aim to capture Yuzu like they did with Ruri, but Yuzu escapes into the Synchro Dimension with another Yuya-lookalike. The tournament's organizer and son of Leo Akaba, Reiji, decides the best course of action is to take the top winners in the tournament and assemble them into a team of TEENAGERS WITH ATTITUDE and search the Synchro Dimension for Yuzu.

So I just described Season 1 (out of 3) to you. You might be thinking, "well there's a few speed bumps but it sounds kind of okay so far", and really, it was, but Season 2 is where things take a nosedive for a lot of people, because this is the Synchro Arc. Yuya and his team travel to the Synchro Dimension, which is basically a giant clone of the setting of Yu-Gi-Oh 5Ds in several, SEVERAL ways. From the caste system, to card games on motorcycles, to Synchro monsters...

Oh, and they also brought back Jack Atlas and Crow Hogan for no reason! Well there's a reason for it, of course: they wanted to sell more cards those characters are famous for using. It's about as subtle as a bunker on a Golf course, and they do it with three other characters later on: Aster Phoenix and Alexis Rhodes from GX, and Kite from ZeXal. Besides marketing, there's not a lot of good reason to include them, especially with the character cast already very much bloated.

Speaking of marketing, the most blatant "buy our cards" moment was one duel later on in which the winning player used an actual structure deck that was released just recently at the time, just in case anyone thinks I'm crazy about the whole marketing thing.

The plot of the Synchro Arc is equally as bad. It starts with Yuya and his team getting captured and thrown in jail. Then they escape and get re-captured again and again and then get forced into another tournament. Nothing of major value happens or gets accomplished throughout the entire season, no new information is revealed other than the Fusion Dimension really wants to capture Yuzu and the three girls that look like her for some reason.

The issue here is that aside from making allies out of Jack and Crow eventually, nothing that happens in the Synchro Dimension ever really sticks with the characters, so you could just skip to season 3 and you probably wouldn't have missed very much at all. And that's fifty whole episodes you'd be skipping, so it's rather unfortunate, to say the least. One of the episodes is even devoted to nothing but flashbacks!

Season 3 gave me a little bit of hope before swiftly shattering it. It starts with Yuya and co. going to the XYZ Dimension, where they witness the damage the Fusion Dimension left after their invasion, and they discover their ultimate plan: Leo Akaba intends to merge all four dimensions together, using the life energy of people turned into cards to do so, and he needs Yuzu and her lookalikes for some reason. Yusho found out and wanted to stop him - that's why he left home before his scheduled duel. And now...the FUN part.

While in the XYZ Dimension, Yuya frequently gets attacked by the Fusion Dimension. In just about every ONE of his duels, Yuya manages to get his opponents to defect to his side by putting on a circus performance with his monsters. I'm dead serious. Everyone just starts joining his side after they're taken in by the children's entertainment. Now, WE know that would never ever work in real life, and I'm pretty sure the writers do too, but this is Yu-Gi-Oh. It's children's entertainment anyhow, so nobody cares if the writing is actually good, right?

After getting Aster Phoenix to defect from the Fusion Dimension, he takes Yuya and co. there himself so they can all take the fight to Leo Akaba directly. More filler duels follow, there's a stupid subplot involving the kidnapped girls getting "physical-holograph" parasites stuck in their brains to brainwash them, Yuya confronts the remaining two boys, who have merged together as well and later force Yuya to merge with them. Then Leo, some ONE HUNDRED THIRTY EPISODES into this series, finally decides to do a plot dump. And if you thought things were stupid up until now, get ready.

First of all, there weren't originally four dimensions, there used to be just one. It was in this dimension that Leo Akaba invented physical hologram technology and used it to truly revolutionize the way Duel Monsters was played. Unfortunately, there's one thing Leo didn't account for: Duel Monsters HAVE SOULS.

Okay, I know this is something the other Yu-Gi-Oh anime all have, but you can't just drop such a big bombshell on us this late in the series! It's barely even foreshadowed aside from Yuya and Yuto's dragons roaring at each other.

sigh Okay so monsters have souls, and they use their newfound physical holograms as bodies, which means they can lash out at people whenever they get angry, and when you're constantly summoned for the sake of killing each other in a card game, you tend to get more than a little angry. Oh, and because the holograms can't be destroyed and evidently have no emergency kill switch, this leads to lots and lots of rampaging monsters. Great job, Leo!

What's more is that the champion duelist, Zarc (Like Zorc from the original series?! Do ya get it?!) is...he, uh...okay so he has four dragon monsters that apparently can make him do whatever they want so they make him turn into a giant evil dragon. Or something. Leo then...he...okay listen to me a moment. This is normally where I'd go on TVTropes to make sure I have all this right, but I'm pretty sure even THEY don't get it one tiny little bit.

So I'll tell you what Leo does to the best of my ability. Take a deep breath. Are you ready? Okay.

Leo Akaba........CREATES FOUR SPELL CARDS WITH THE ABILITY TO SPLIT ZARC AND THE ENTIRE DIMENSION INTO FOUR PIECES.

How? HOW is that even PHYSICALLY POSSIBLE?! Let me reiterate. He created four spell cards that can SPLIT THE GIANT MONSTER IN FOUR. I knew he could make physical holograms, I didn't know he could loving ALTER REALITY ITSELF. What is he, a God or something?! Did a monster give him this power? The hell is this?!

Leo doesn't cast the spells them himself - his daughter, Ray, does it instead, splitting Zarc, the dimension, and herself into four pieces. Ray gets divided into Yuzu and her lookalikes, Zarc gets divided into Yuya and his lookalikes, and presumably every family from the original dimension gets sent to a random dimension, and of course they all lose their memories except Leo for some reason. He figures out what happened, and is now trying to put the world and his daughter back together despite the fact that doing so risks Zarc coming back and hurts a hell of a lot of other people. Guess what happens.

I mean, there's nothing WRONG with one dimension becoming four, and it's rather interesting to think that your main character and his ace monster is actually part of a greater evil villain (Pendulum Monsters are even stated to be Zarc's creation at the time of the split) but there's just so much wrong with how it was executed. Leo Akaba also never gets any real punishment for his stupid decisions, as even though Zarc is revived and spends about ten episodes blowing everyone up in duels, Ray eventually comes back to split him into four AGAIN. Then they spend the few remaining episodes, ah, "purifying Zarc" with "smiles". Then it just ends. Yuya and Yuzu also remain fused with their counterparts, meaning that the other six are basically dead. Doesn't that suck! Hey Shun, your SISTER is dead, does that mean NOTHING to you?!

Anyhow, I've skimmed over a lot of other problems and could probably go into way more detail, but my bottom line here is: we have too many characters that don't have much of an impact on the plot, a villain who's made to look sympathetic yet is also a complete idiot, a generic evil monster that's kind of just there, too many filler duels, too many actions likely taken solely to sell cards, a completely nonsensical "make it up as you go" plot...and worst of all, the missed potential. I could probably go on even longer describing what I'd change to fix the problems. Not that any of my fixes would make Konami more money, but I'm sure we'd at least wind up with something resembling a better product.

I suppose as long as Yu-Gi-Oh makes big bucks for Konami we can expect the franchise to not get destroyed by this mess...but THEY STILL TAKE BATTLE DAMAGE!

OK, but consider this:

Naaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah

Kinu Nishimura
Apr 24, 2008

SICK LOOT!

looks like someone still took the damage

Vandar
Sep 14, 2007

Isn't That Right, Chairman?



That's way too many words to type to complain about a children's card game anime, especially when many of those complaints can be used for any of the five main shows in the franchise.

Blueberry Pancakes
Aug 18, 2012

Jack in!! MegaMan, Execute!
I'm not sure what I just read, but I think I made a good choice stopping at 5Ds' Dark Signers arc.

Onmi
Jul 12, 2013

If someone says it one more time I'm having Florina show up as a corpse. I'm not even kidding, I was pissed off with people doing that shit back in 2010, and I'm not dealing with it now in 2016.

Hobgoblin2099 posted:

I'm not sure what I just read, but I think I made a good choice stopping at 5Ds' Dark Signers arc.

To be quite frank? Ephraim just said a lot of poo poo that applies to literally all of Yugioh, and I don't think this is the franchise for him.

If you wish to know Arc-V's actual problems, that's really simple. It's a slower paced show in the beginning which allowed for a lot of slow development for its core cast and watching their growth, had a good ramp into a dramatic season finale... That they failed to capitalize on and basically spun their wheels with for the rest of the series. It has the same issue that a lot of anniversary shows tend to have. Bringing old characters back and not really giving the new ones a chance to shine. I mean when it comes down to it. It's no different than all of the GX cast besides Judai sitting on their thumbs and not doing anything outside of a few duels but well what can you do.

The duels did have a habit of becoming "But you still take the damage" affairs, presumably because someone decided that they'd rather not spend time making fake cards for archetypes that wouldn't exist, and thus kept them to a bare minimum and the final boss was poo poo, no surprise their, that's most Yugioh final bosses. 'Scept Godwin.

Honestly it was an upsetting show that started with high potential and wasted it. Probably like the 3rd best in the franchise after 5Ds (to Dark Signers) and GX (To the end of Society of Light). Zexal is still worse, DM only stands up on its manga interpretation and is otherwise a loving mess in its anime, and yeah. Hear's hoping Vrains is better.

I mean... complaining about cards having souls? Yeah no poo poo, the very first time Duel Monsters was a thing in Yugioh was about the Cards having spirits not to mention God cards that were literal Gods. GX's entire premise was about monster spirits, 5Ds had the reoccurring theme of the 5 Dragons, the Earthbound Gods, and Literally Everything To Do With Ruka. And basically everything to do with Zexal handled Card spirits.

So yeah. Ephraim's basically bitching about... Yugioh the franchise.

Vandar
Sep 14, 2007

Isn't That Right, Chairman?



Fionordequester
Dec 27, 2012

Actually, I respectfully disagree with you there. For as obviously flawed as this game is, there ARE a lot of really good things about it. The presentation and atmosphere, for example, are the most immediate things. No other Yu-Gi-Oh game goes out of the way to really make

Onmi posted:

So yeah. Ephraim's basically bitching about... Yugioh the franchise.

To be fair, I think most of his complaints were more about HOW these concepts were introduced. Duel Monsters was pretty consistent about the Heart of the Cards thing from beginning to end, so it wasn't as shocking when that got more and more overblown; whereas Arc-V seems like it dumped it all at once, before the viewer would've been able to process everything. And I never watched past Duel Monsters Season 4, but, I don't remember anyone creating dimensions with just their playing cards, so...that's a shock to me as well.

Kinu Nishimura
Apr 24, 2008

SICK LOOT!
Your memory is bad.

Raserys
Aug 22, 2011

IT'S YA BOY
ARC V is bad, y'all

Vandar
Sep 14, 2007

Isn't That Right, Chairman?



So is every Yu-Gi-Oh series.

Doesn't change that he's complaining about plot elements that are in most or all of the other shows.

AlphaKretin
Dec 25, 2014

A vase to face encounter.

...Vase to meet you?

...

GARVASE DAY!

Arc V is bad for pacing issues and dropped plot points, not because it shares supernatural elements in common with the entire rest of the goddamn IP.

mandatory lesbian
Dec 18, 2012

Dexie posted:

So is every Yu-Gi-Oh series.

Doesn't change that he's complaining about plot elements that are in most or all of the other shows.

season 0 ruled, or at least the manga did. yami burns a guy alive, cool as heck

mandatory lesbian
Dec 18, 2012
somehow anzu doesn't get hurt despite being right beside him but whatever, magic egypt powers saved her or something

Raserys
Aug 22, 2011

IT'S YA BOY
Hell I'd watch Yugioh Kai, give me duel monsters Death T

Blueberry Pancakes
Aug 18, 2012

Jack in!! MegaMan, Execute!

Fionordequester posted:

I don't remember anyone creating dimensions with just their playing cards, so...that's a shock to me as well.

Well, it wasn't a dimension, but that was the final arc of the original series in a sense.

Vandar
Sep 14, 2007

Isn't That Right, Chairman?



GX was all about alternate dimensions.

Onmi
Jul 12, 2013

If someone says it one more time I'm having Florina show up as a corpse. I'm not even kidding, I was pissed off with people doing that shit back in 2010, and I'm not dealing with it now in 2016.

Raserys posted:

Hell I'd watch Yugioh Kai, give me duel monsters Death T

I for one wish to watch the Dragon Card game that leads to Yugi losing his soul to a dweeb, and then locking that dweebs soul in a jar, killing him.

Ephraim225
Oct 28, 2010

Dexie posted:

Doesn't change that he's complaining about plot elements that are in most or all of the other shows.

It's not that this plot element is present, it's that it's handled much more poorly.

MissileWaster
Jul 2, 2007

Remember that one time you totally botched that snap?

mandatory lesbian posted:

season 0 ruled, or at least the manga did. yami burns a guy alive, cool as heck

Yami burns one dude alive, Yugi has Joey burn another dude alive. But to be fair that guy was basically leatherface and Kaiba locked Joey in a room with the two of them handcuffed together. Yami also burned some bullies but they lived.

Also Yami gives Kaiba recurring nightmares to the point where Kaiba builds a theme park based around torturing if not outright killing Yugi, and when Yami beats him again he puts Kaiba in a coma. The English dub of the anime kinda glosses over the coma from what I remember but it's been a while since I watched it.

He electrocutes, like, a LOT of people, poisons Mokuba, blinds a jackass TV producer, chloroforms a rapist, steals a guy's soul, etc. Season 0 (Yu-Gi-Oh volumes 1-7) is awesome. The way the anime needed to use plot points from the early manga to make filler to explain some things also works pretty well, and is why the filler in the Duelist Kingdom arc doesn't really feel like 'true' filler.

CharlestheHammer
Jun 26, 2011

YOU SAY MY POSTS ARE THE RAVINGS OF THE DUMBEST PERSON ON GOD'S GREEN EARTH BUT YOU YOURSELF ARE READING THEM. CURIOUS!

Ephraim225 posted:

It's not that this plot element is present, it's that it's handled much more poorly.

Much like your argument really, as you don't really explain how it's handled poorly just that it exists.

Blueberry Pancakes
Aug 18, 2012

Jack in!! MegaMan, Execute!
The manga has Atem destroy Kaiba's mind which leaves him catatonic for nearly a year. This results in the Big 5 deciding to make a power play to take KaibaCorp away from the Kaiba Bros., planning on merging with Industrial Illusions and having Pegasus take over the company. But only if he can beat Yugi in a duel since Yugi's public embarrassing of Kaiba caused their stocks to go down.

The anime has Atem just instantly purge Kaiba of evil (which really makes me question what happens to PaniK and the Mimic of Doom when he Mind Crushes them) and Kaiba leaves to go do soul searching because... reasons. The Big 5 proceed to try to take over with Pegasus during this time as well.

Noticeably, this leads to some differing scenarios between the two mediums, particularly in the Ghost Kaiba section. In the manga, this guy named the Puppeteer of Doom shows up with a doll he claims to hold the soul of Kaiba in it, while the anime has the "Ghost of Seto Kaiba" who is actually the evil side of Kaiba's heart that was sent to the Shadow Realm and revived as a gay clown a gay clown that happens to be a skilled disguise artist and not some silly 4Kids edit. In the latter, Kaiba goes to the Kaiba Cave and hacks the duel to destroy the hologram with a virus; in the former, Kaiba comes out of his catatonic state which causes the Blue Eyes on the field to destroy itself because Kisara really hates it when people other than Seto use her.

Really, Duelist Kingdom as a whole is better in the manga I'd say (especially Pegasus), though the anime does a lot better with Battle City. Yugi vs. Exodia Ghoul, for instance, is pretty underwhelming in the manga with no LP damage occurring at all and Exodia Ghoul immediately surrenders upon Lightforce Sword destroying his Exodia strategy as opposed to the anime actually making that a duel.

Blueberry Pancakes fucked around with this message at 06:16 on Mar 28, 2017

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MissileWaster
Jul 2, 2007

Remember that one time you totally botched that snap?
Also the Duel Boxes make way more sense and are just better in general than the stupid Duel Arenas.

Making them Duel Arenas in the anime only screwed things up, like Mokuba grabbing Yugi's star chips (he had to get down from the arena, run around it, climb up Yugi's side, and steal Yugi's star chips without Atem realizing what's going on. He successfully does this) or Kaiba's main reason for wanting to use the Duel Disk against Pegasus (he knows Pegasus can read your mind, he just theorizes that Pegasus needs to be in close proximity with a clear line of sight, so the duel disk lets you stand further away from your opponent and 'expert mode' makes the holograms of the cards in your hand for you to stand behind. With the Duel Arena, you're probably further away from your opponent than when using the duel disk, rather than the duel box where you're across a small table from them).

And I don't think the anime (at least the english dub) showed why losing a duel to Kaiba put Yugi's grandpa in the hospital, but in the manga it's because Kaiba subjected Yugi's grandpa to the same 'shadow game' Atem originally put him through that gave him nightmares for months.


I'm winding down reading the Duelist Kingdom arc, so I don't really remember too well how the Battle City arc reads. I thought it was pretty similar (with some minor filler here and there in the anime), but I'll see in a few days!

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