#AND there's synchro summoning now

[omarwolaeth]

I think if people built Pend Magicians (with a side of Performapal, Odd Eyes, and whatever additions you think are funny i.e. Hallohallo for an additional tuner option) and duelled eachother in a race to get to Zarc first, I think they'd maybe enjoy Pendulum more.

[millenniumdueled]

I've been doing some research, Yugi...Some deep diving, if you will. I got together with the most elite informed members of my Tower on the subject of Duel Monsters (Billy Bonnie) and I was informed that I should look into...***Abyss Actors***.

:o !!!!! i'm not actually familiar with that archetype, i think some of you guys have more umm advanced versions of duel monsters?? which is really, really exciting!! i'm pretty good at picking up game mechanics fast, so i should still be able to help you learn to play it!!

[antihibikase-archive]

Difference between GX Duel Academy and WC2011 is that;

In GX Duel Academy, certain effects could occur in a stack (not chaining)- for example, upon summoning Mobius the Frost Monarch by tributing one Poison Draw Frog, you'll be able to activate one monster's effect (destroying 2 spell/traps) before the other (drawing a card)

In WC2011 that.. doesn't happen. Using Poison Draw Frog for a monster with effects that occur as soon as they're summoned will render Poison Draw Frog's ability useless, and it's attributed to "missed timing"- unlike the last game that prompts you which effect you'd like to have resolved first.

[cheemken]

I saw you reblog yugioh a while back so if you were in yugioh what deck would you have and who would be your ace card

Probs smth similar to Yuya's deck bc that's the deck I'm using in Duel Links rn, so like Odd-Eyes/Performapals/Magicians

I'm still trying to get Odd-Eyes Arc Pendulum Dragon really god the fucking chances of getting a UR is so shit cjmdnd either I get him through that or through the UR dream ticket but I only have one of those and I also wanna get Odd Eyes Rebellion Dragon and both of them are there so I decided to just try and get Arc Pendulum via the boosters and once I get him I'll exchange Odd Eyes Rebellion via the dream ticket

I might have to like,, redo my deck soon once I do get both of those, cause I have a few cards that aren't under the three archetypes above, I just kept them in bc they have dope effects like w Speedroid Passinglider that I can ss when there's no monsters on the field, and even Aether the Evil Empowering Dragon bc it's ability is when I ss it, it can banish one card so it's especially dope when I have that pendulum summoned when the opponent already has their own ss monster, that is ofc if I can pull it off lmfao

Some level four monsters I kept in my deck so I can summon out Dark Rebellion XYZ Dragon quick really, since the skill I have for Yuya there is Raging Pendulum, so I really don't need Xiangsheng Magician to summon out Odd Eyes Raging Dragon. Then again, I have like two Odd Eyes Pendulum and one Odd Eyes Dragon, plus Dragoncaller Magician too, so I can XYZ summon one more rank 7 XYZ monster so I can also summon out Odd Eyes Raging for its effect

Anyways yeah sorry I'm rambling ifkdhdk but yeah my ace monster in this deck is Odd Eyes Raging Dragon hahah

[greyhavensking]

I just discovered Master Duel as a game and I’m ecstatic to find out I can finally make the Elemental Hero deck of my dreams a reality

[ddd-lost-lady-del]

What Yugioh deck would ISAT characters play?

Welcome to a series that was inspired by the existence of multiple posts that crossover between two of my interests: ISAT and Yugioh. What comes of this? Why a thought of what currently released Yugioh TCG decks (as of January 2025) would each ISAT main character play. I do want to put a disclaimer that I do not know every deck and how it plays and a Pendulum fan so there may be some bias.

Also quite obviously there will be full game spoilers for In Stars And Time so be warned when reading.

Part 1: Siffrin

Starting with our lovely protagonist I want to start with what I feel closely aligns with Siffrin on multiple axes: Performapal Odd-Eyes.

The first argument for this is that this is the deck used by Yuya Sakaki, the protagonist of Arc-V which I know is a poor argument on its own but hear me out folks.

A lot of Siffrin that we see throughout the game is a character that does their best to hide the sadness that their life holds and ultimately doing their best to make the other party members, their family happy. Yuya's whole character schtick is using duelling as a means to spread happiness and smiles. Even when we see him pushed to his limits for the most part Yuya pushes himself to be happy and spread smiles through his entertainment duelling style. Both characters are a little goofy in their way they go about things, Siffrin with his puns and Yuya with his dorky actions with using his monsters in his duelling style, using Performapal Whip Snake as a rope to swing across gaps, riding on Performapal Hip Hippo to escape attacks,or jumping off of Performapal Trampolynx for extra height being examples of Yuya using his monsters in his duelling style.

Moving away from how Siffrin is similar to Yuya because it's a flimsy argument to justify a deck I now want to discuss Siffrin's playstyle and how it connects to a Peformapal Odd-Eyes deck. Firstly, versatility. Siffrin has access to every to every kind of skill except one, debuffs. I'm not looking to assign each extra summoning type to a skill but I do want to take the idea of not having every skill available to you to be relevant. Performapal Odd-Eyes also lacks a single in archetype summoning type (we are not including Gemini they're effectively normal or basic effect monsters with extra steps) in not having an in-archetype link monster. Most of the different summoning types come from the Odd-Eyes part of the deck examples being Odd-Eyes Pendulumgraph Dragon for Ritual, Odd-Eyes Vortex Dragon for Fusion, Odd-Eyes Absolute Dragon for XYZ, and Odd-Eyes Meteorburst Dragon for Synchro. However, some of these cards are accessible through Performapal cards like Performapal Odd-eyes Dissolver and Perfomapal Odd-eyes Synchron (Yes they're also Odd-Eyes but you get the point).

One thing that strongly connects the Performapal section of the deck with Siffrin is that the names would be a major part of what would influence his choice. Performapals include Camelump, Changeraffe, Elephammer, Friendonkey, Secondonkey, Drummerilla, guitartle, Gongato, Kaleidoscorp, Lizardraw, Monkeyboard, Parrotrio, Partnaga, Rain Goat, Swincobra, Trampolynx, and Trumpanda. There are a fair few that don't follow this naming scheme like Ladyange, Gentrude, Coin Dragon, and Celestial Magician but a fair few of the Performapal cards are cards that are a portmanteau of two different words and we all know how Siffrin likes their puns.

Finally I want to discuss another major part of Performapal that connects to Siffrin's playstyle. A fair part of the Performapal strategy focuses on modulating attack stats for your benefit. Usually this is in the form of buffs to attack with cards like Perfomapal Silver Claw, Performapal Pendulum Sorcerer, Performapal Gold Fang, Performapal Fire Mufferlion, or Yuya's anchor and resident mediocre card Smile World however there are cards that benefit from these buffs such as Performapal Smile Sorcerer which draws cards for each monster you control with attack higher than its original. This connects to Siffrin's own playstyle with the buffs of Make Up The Time (speed) and Done Heal (attack). Boosting others attack to assist in destroying the enemy and providing advantage with higher rate of turns with speed (which we can look at as more cards).

One final point I will make for this deck is how many working eyes Siffrin has. One, an odd amount of eyes. I rest my case.

Now I understand that there are other decks that could fit in to Siffrin at different moments of the story or have minor connections to Siffrin as either funny little nods or otherwise so I wanted to give a small talk about some of these decks.

Abyss Actor: This deck would definitely work with Siffrin's theatre background however I feel he wouldn't turn to this deck until he begins to heavily fall into the theatre speech circa act 3-5 and becomes the main dialogue of his character. Each Abyss Actor monster fills a role like Abyss Actor Sassy Rookie, Abyss Actor Trendy Understudy, Abyss Actor Evil Heel, and Abyss Actor Comic Relief. Much like the monsters there's the existence of the Abyss Scripts which are the spell cards for the archetype. With Siffrin's fall into seeing the world as a play that he is having to repeatedly participate in, a deck like the Abyss Actors would be a strong characteristics choice.

Time Thief: This one is just a funny nod to Siffrin's situation. It's a thief/rogue class that is stuck looping through time and can technically force the loop. They're a Time Thief lol. The only other close connection would be Time Thief Redoer's effect when detaching a monster from it to "Banish this card until the End Phase).

So yeah, that's the first part of my personal analysis of what Yugioh deck that the ISAT characters. If you have any other decks that Siffrin would play I would be happy to hear as I know I don't know every archetype that exists in Yugioh and I'm likely to have missed something that would fit.

Ta ta

(sources: All Yugioh Cards were taken from https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Yugipedia

Images of Siffrin from https://instarsandtime.wiki.gg/wiki/Siffrin/Gallery

Yuya Sakaki Goggles GIF

https://tenor.com/en-GB/view/yuya-sakaki-goggle-yugioh-arc-v-yu-gi-oh-anime-boy-gif-18010633?utm_source=share-button&utm_medium=Social&utm_content=pinterest)

[anthurak]

Help, my once-small-and-manageable 'What if Yugo got kidnapped instead and Rin got Clear Wing Synchro Dragon?' AU idea is rapidly snowballing into a whole-ass ARC-V rewrite with a growing list of goals/ideas/concepts including but not limited to:

Revamping the not-Clear-Wing Dimension Dragons with actually distinct elemental identities (I feel like Odd-Eyes should really be a FIRE monster...)

Making the Dimension Dragons actual CHARACTERS with arcs like Clear Wing and Rin having a whole 'past-life enemies to present-life lovers' story and Dark Rebellion turning out to be an older-brother figure to Yuto and becoming besties with fellow protective-big-brother Shun.

Revamping the entire collective arcs of the Yu-boys and Bracelet girls into a narrative that actually REJECTS the idea that they should be merged back together. Like a big part of Yuya's and Yuto's characters ends up being them fighting against merging.

NONE of the Bracelet Girls getting mind-controlled and/or fridged. And also playing key roles in the final battle dueling against Zarc.

A collective arc for the Dimension Dragons that ultimately has them rejecting Zarc and rebelling against him in various ways and siding with the Bracelet Girls and Yu-boys (that aren't Yuri).

My previously explored 'Alexis Rhodes gets a full Cyber Angel/Herald/Drytron deck and is the biggest fucking badass in the whole show' idea, which now also includes her teaching Yuya Ritual Summoning which ends up becoming one of the big secret weapons against Zarc.

Aki and Sherry are also present in the Synchro Dimension, are dating/married and utterly loaded with Revolutionary Girl Utena references.

Everything/everyone just being a whole lot gayer in general. I realize that is hardly a revolutionary take in this fandom, but I felt it was still worth mentioning XD

[zexalisliving]

@darlingasta-not and @pileofrocksjh, you both know what time it is.

“Jaden!” A voice called from in Slifer Red. 

“W…what is it, Sy?” 

Syrus rushed over to Jaden’s bed. “I’ve been trying to wake you up for 5 minutes, Jay! I thought you’d be awake by now, cuz today’s the day!”

Jaden sat up. “Today’s the day for what?” he asked.

“Dr. Crowler is gonna’ teach us something called… ‘Synchronized Summoning’?” Syrus said. 

Jaden chuckled as he recalled what Syrus was talking about. He got out of bed. “Synchro Summoning, Sy.” he said.

“My bad.” 

Jaden changed into his normal Slifer Red attire before leaving the dorm room. Syrus followed him out. 

“Aren’t you excited, Jay?” he asked. 

“Totally, Sy! It’s always sweet to learn new dueling stuff!... except that I have to sit through class to learn it!”Jaden chuckled, scratching the back of his head. 

He and Syrus arrived at Duel Academy’s entrance and went inside. 

Jaden waved at a variety of students, which included Chazz, who scoffed and rolled his eyes. 

“Typical Chazz!” Jaden said, walking past him and into the classroom.

Once everyone had sat down, Dr. Crowler began his teaching. 

“As you all know, well, maybe except for Jaden, today I’m supposed to teach you about Synchro Summoning. But there’s something else that you don’t know, and I’d like to keep it that way.”  

Bastion stood up. “Um, if you don’t mind, Dr. Crowler, why on earth would you bring that up if you weren’t going to tell us what it was in the first place?” he asked.

“Don’t defy your teacher, young man! I can say whatever I want!” Crowler snapped.

Bastion sat back down.

Jaden bumped Syrus’ side with his elbow. “Hey, Sy!” he said. “This ‘something else that we don’t know about’ sounds really cool, right?” 

Syrus nodded, but he was clearly worried about something. 

“Is everything alright?” Jaden asked. 

Syrus looked at him. “Well… what if this thing is something we don’t want to know? I mean… imagine it, Jay. Chancellor Shepherd could be quitting his job, or maybe Dorothy will quit making fried shrimp! Mm… fried shrimp… b-but that’s not the point! We could be in for something horrible, Jaden!”

Jaden patted Syrus’ back. “Oh, Sy, you worry too much. Everything’s gonna’ be fine!” he assured him. 

Dr. Crowler was anxiously biting his nails. The whole classroom filled with mutters and quiet discussions, likely due to his comment on the mysterious subject, which he didn’t like for a variety of reasons.

“Attention, class!” he said at last. 

Everyone stopped and turned to him. 

“Enough of your muttering! I’m the one who’s supposed to be speaking, not you!” he said. 

“Uh, why?” An Obelisk Blue asked. 

“Because I’m your teacher.” Crowler replied simply. “Now anyways,” he pointed to the chart behind him. “This is a Tuner monster. They can be used with other non-tuner monsters in order to synchro summon. This action is called ‘Tuning’.”

It was a long day in class. In fact, everytime Dr. Crowler taught it was. 

Jaden was talking to Syrus  and Alexis on his way back to Slifer Red. 

“Whew! At least that’s over!” he sighed. 

“Oh, please!”Alexis said. “You slept through most of it!” 

Syrus still wasn’t talking. He hadn’t since Crowler started teaching. 

“You okay, Sy?” Jaden asked him. 

“No, Jay,” Syrus answered.

“Then what’s wrong?” Alexis asked.

Syrus sniffled. “T… the friend shrimp. The poor, poor, helpless fried shrimp…” he began to cry.

“Woah, Sy! Calm down, dude! It’s just shrimp–” 

Syrus began bawling louder. 

“A-and I’m sure Dorothy won’t stop making it!” Jaden said, in hopes to cheer him up. 

And it worked. “Really? You’re sure?” Syrus asked. 

“Yep!” 

Syrus wiped the tears off his face with the sleeve of his Obelisk Blue jacket. “Man, that’s good to know,” he said. 

Alexis went back to Obelisk Blue a little while after talking with Jaden and Syrus, and a few minutes later, the two arrived at Slifer Red.

“Hey, soldiers!” Hassleberry said once they had entered their dorm room. 

“Hey, Hassleberry!” both said in unison. 

Syrus sat at the desk. 

“Hey, did ya’ hear about the event that’s gonna’ happen tomorrow?” Hassleberry asked.

“No, what is it?” Jaden asked, changing into his nightshirt.

“The Duel Academy Boys are playing their new hit called “He’s In The Moonlight At Midday”. Apparently it’s gonna’ make millions world-wide!” 

Syrus gasped. “The Duel Academy Boys?! I love them!” he pulled out a poster from a stack of papers on the desk. It was of the three Duel Academy Boys dressed up as Duel Ghouls. “I even wrote an article on them!” he said proudly.

“Oh, really?” Hassleberry asked, a hint of sarcasm in his tone. 

Syrus didn’t pick up on that, however. “Yeah! I’ll show you!” he pulled out his Duel Academy-issued newspaper and passed it to him. It read:

“The Duel Academy Boys are  three guys from, as their name suggests, Duel Academy. They created a band 2 years ago after they were turned into Duel Ghouls. 

The idea originated when they sung ‘Duel Me’ when they were Duel Ghouls, but they actually created the band a week after that incident. 

Their first song, called “Duel Academy”, was a huge hit. The first person to buy a record of this song was Chazz Princeton, the same day it was released. 

Their members include–”

Hassleberry stopped reading, looking over the extremely long article. “I’ve always liked the Duel Academy Boys, but that’s a lot of info, Sy.” he said. 

Syrus nodded. “Yep!” he said. “Just how I like it!” he took the papers back. 

“So, Jaden,” Hassleberry began. “Where do ya’ think we can find some Synchro monsters?” 

Jaden thought about it. “Maybe Dorothy gives em’ out, or maybe they come in Duel Academy booster packs!” he said. 

“Or we could go to Mr. Muto’s game store!” Syrus added. 

“Yeah, but I suggest that we get some shut-eye before we go synchro huntin’.” Hassleberry said. 

“Say, you’re right,” Jaden yawned as he stretched. 

“Yeah. Goodnight, guys.” Syrus said, climbing into his bed. 

After a while, the three fell asleep.

The next day, about 10 minutes before class, Jaden and Syrus went to the card shop that Dorothy ran. Hassleberryhad already visited earlier that day.

“Hey, Miss Dorothy!” Jaden said. 

“Hello, boys!” Dorothy smiled. “So what brings you two here?” 

Jaden browsed the shelves, as did Syrus.

 “We came for some Synchro monsters.” Syrus said.

“Ooh, sorry boys, but we’re all out. We have been since 6:00!”

Jaden sighed. 

“Aw, man!” Syrus said.

Dorothy looked at them for a brief moment before digging around in a box on the counter. She pulled out two cards and held them out. “Well, here’s this.” she said, giving them to Jaden and Syrus. “Though they aren’t Synchro monsters, they sure are Tuners! I hope they make up for it.” 

Syrus flipped his card over. “Woah!” he said, looking at a new holographic “Roid” monster.

At the same time, Jaden gasped as he looked at his card as well. “Mr. Happy Kuriboh! I heard about his release last month!” he exclaimed.

Dorothy chuckled. “Now go on before you’re late!” she said. 

The two put their cards into their pockets and ran off. “Thanks, Miss Dorothy!” Jaden called behind him.

On the way to the classroom, Chazz stopped them in their tracks by stepping in front of them. “Hey dorks.” he said. He took a card out from within his pocket and held it, the back facing Jaden and Syrus. 

“Hey Chazz.” Syrus said.

“Can you move? We’re gonna’ be late!” Jaden said, running in place.

“Oh, what’s wrong? You in a hurry? That’s fine, cuz a quick guessing game with The Chazz won’t take long.” 

Jaden stopped and stood still. “Alright!” he said. “I’m always up for a challenge!” 

Chazz smiled. He was obviously up to no good. “What’s in my hand, Jay?” 

“Simple! A card!” Jaden said. 

“No, Jaden. Guess again.” 

“Um… A replica of a card…?” 

“No!” Chazz said angrily. Then he cleared his throat. “It’s a Synchro monster.” he flipped it around. “Do you want to know something?” 

“Sure, Chazz!” Jaden said.

“You don’t have one!” 

Chazz walked off, snobbishly laughing up a storm. 

Syrus started to cry loudly. “Oh, Jaden! He’s making fun of us!” he sobbed. 

“Come on, Sy! It’s alright. We’ll get synchro monsters some day…” 

This caused Syrus to sob further. “Oh, why Jaden, why?”

“Now let’s get to gettin’ otherwise we’ll be late!” Jaden grabbed Syrus’ hand and ran towards the classroom. 

Syrus was still sniffling by the time Dr. Crowler got ready to start teaching. 

Crowler smiled. ‘It seems the students forgot about my little mishap yesterday. That was a close one for sure! They nearly figured out about the Duel Academy Boys. Now that would be a disaster!”

Class continued as it normally did, but little did Crowler know, almost every student knew about the concert that was going to happen later that day. 

After class, most of the students went behind Obelisk Blue, where the Duel Academy Boys were going to be performing. 

And a couple of minutes after everyone had seated themselves, Crowler arrived. 

A shrill noise caught everyone’s attention. Turns out it was Crowler, who had screamed of anger. His plan was to keep the entire performance to himself, but obviously it didn’t work. 

“Hey, Dr. C!” Jaden said. 

Crowler stomped his foot. “How’d you all know about this?!” he demanded. 

“Well, Dr. Crowler, it’s kinda’ easy when they put up fliers all around,” Hassleberry said.

“But I took all of them down! You shouldn’t have known!” Crowler yelled.

A smug look on Hassleberry’s face made him think otherwise. 

“W-wait, huh?!” he looked around furiously, only to find many posters hung up on the walls.     

Hassleberry chuckled and then bursted out laughing, followed by many others.

It was then that Crowler left, stomping his feet and mumbling something.

Chazz, who was of the many people who laughed at Crowler’s outburst, closed his eyes and turned around. “What a loser.” 

The Duel Academy Boys arrived about a minute later to set up their equipment. 

Jaden sighed as he stretched out by his seat next to Syrus, who couldn’t shake the feeling that something… strange was going to happen. 

Jaden smiled. “Another typical day at Duel Academy.”

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thus concludes chapter 3.

Not to give anything away, but... next chapter it gets good!

And for those of you who may be wandering "who are the duel academy boys?" if any of you remember that episode in GX where everybody turns into duel ghouls and there are those three guys who pop out of the lockers or whatever and like sing something? That's who they are. I created the concept when i was naming music disks in Minecraft, (oh, do i have some great stories about minecraft) and that occurred to me. so there's the lore behind that.

But anyways, I hope you enjoyed this chapter!

[stag-beetle-and-skeleton-bloom]

Learning Yugioh right now and jesus christ, people complaining about all of the "complicated" and "difficult" special summon types were complaining about basic fucking addition/counting? Jesus christ, I was expecting pages of shit to go through but no, at their core it's just Synchros are addition, XYZ asks you to match numbers, Links are just fucking addition, PENDULUM ISN'T EVEN THAT COMPLICATED UPFRONT??? Were people just complaining about basic math?? In a card game???

[pokemonbattletournament]

The Roman Gladiator in yugioh terms, most likely a Level 4 Earth Warrior Normal Monster, on account of being just A Guy. Which means he has a ton of support to let him hit the field and stay there, while increasing his Attack Points.

Winged Kuriboh Level 10 on the other hand is a non-normal summonable unsearchable monster who can only be summoned by the effect of another unsearchable spell that requires 2 whole discards in order to summon it and Winged Kuriboh on field which is the EASY part.

Sure it can wipe the field but that requires getting it on the field in the first place which isn't happening and there are far better and easier ways to do the same thing. Dark Hole(or its dragon which now exists) Mirror Force(or its dragon) Synchro Summon Black Rose Dragon to get something from three Extra Deck without needing specific cards on field. Interrupted Kaiju Slumber to come out of it with a 3300 Atk point monster at the end of the turn.

[zakurarain]

“The King and Devil now merge here! Rugged soul! Give the roar that created heaven and earth! Synchro summon! Come, Scar Red Nova Dragon!”

Jack with glowing eyes is such a big fangasm moment XD

[inkblackorchid]

I watched this duel again yesterday and I honestly wish I had any sort of fresh take or unusual perspective on it, but I think the truth is that I just don't. This duel is three things for me:

Proof of concept for a very intriguing larger narrative (whose execution sadly doesn't land all the way for me)

The introduction of a character who has several interesting key aspects to them (and who could have, perhaps, been handled a bit better)

Emblematic of all the issues I have with the WRGP arc's writing.

As I said, I don't think I have any truly revolutionary things to say about this duel, but I feel like getting my thoughts out, so expect a fairly non-structured, stream-of-consciousness post below. There are multiple things here that bother me and I finally want to dissect them. Feel free to follow along if you also like examining stuff like this in more detail than it perhaps needs to be examined in. And I really mean examine them in unnecessary detail. Be warned, this post could count as a dissertation in terms of length. But I'm passionate and like analysing things, so no attempt to control its length was made.

So, I won't mince words here. The Team New World duel is absolutely where several major aspects of the time-travel-Iliaster plot completely fall apart for me. I want to make it clear that this isn't the fault of Aporia's character writing or what this duel is building up to, though. Nor do I think that the concept of a secret shadow organisation using time travel to influence world events is too out there. Lbr, this is yugioh. The time-travelling-cyborg-shadow-organisation is absolutely not the culprit of why I think some things don't work here. (And by here I mean specifically the WRGP arc.) Moreover, I'll be the first to admit that the finale this duel builds up to, with everything from the Ark Cradle beginning its descent to Yusei's final duel with Z-ONE, is stellar. So there are several things that do work here—but I think that may be exactly the reason why the other things piss me off all the more.

So what are the "other things", then?

Well, simply put, a lot of this arc's supposed setup and worldbuilding falls apart as soon as you start asking a few simple questions, first and foremost "why". And again, I will likely not be treading new ground here, but this just irks me to no end. However, so this post doesn't devolve entirely into unproductive whining about a part of the show I wish had been better than it was, I'll be doing another thing here: Trying to provide solutions for the things that irk me as I go along. As a kind of thought exercise, and because it's not hate motivating me here, merely extreme frustration about an arc that feels like it was fumbled like a hot potato. So, let's start digging through this mess.

The elephant in the room.

This whole arc (and in fact even the pre-WRGP arc before it) hinges on the concept of antagonists using monsters that can absorb synchro monsters, which is treated as such a monumental problem that we see Yusei, our protagonist, in downright anguish about it not one, but several times. Like, this eats at him.

(Pictured: A troubled boy brooding about his synchro summoning issues.)

And look, I know everyone and their mother has brought this up at this point, but this is already the first bit that falls apart under the weight of the question "why". Why is Yusei so hung up on the fact that duelling against Meklords means using synchro monsters becomes pretty risky? Why is this enough of a problem to supposedly drive the plot for a not insignificant stretch of episodes? Now, I know Yusei uses mainly synchro monsters as his heavy hitters, and I have seen someone bring up the fact before that even irl, completely altering the strategy of your entire deck is a pain in the ass, to say the least. And I do want to admit that this is a valid argument. If Yusei genuinely had to change his whole deck to accommodate the new circumstances, that would be a Herculean task, to say the least. However. While I can see the merit of that argument, I have to raise two counterpoints: One—who said he had to permanently change the entire structure of his deck? The show never gives us reason to believe that anyone other than the cyborgs will suddenly jump out of the woodwork and also use an anti-synchro strategy, and it doesn't show us anyone else who uses a strategy like that, either. And two—note the framing of this issue. The show never suggests that Yusei needs a new deck, or that all his old tricks are completely invalid now. It harps on and on about how he needs a new strategy, yes. But is that the same thing? In my opinion, nothing really demands that Yusei needs to restructure his deck completely. If anything, he only needs to keep in mind that this is now a possibility when duelling people, and thus start keeping a backup plan. And unfortunately, he kind of does, which is where I need to address the Dragon Knight Draco-Equiste-shaped elephant in the room, because it sadly undermines that sensible argument something fierce.

(Yeah, remember this thing? Because I do and sometimes wish I didn't just so I wouldn't have to get frustrated about it all over again.)

Listen. We're all not stupid. Even before the Team Unicorn match, the vast majority of people watching 5Ds would have been aware that tribute summoning, ritual summoning, and fusion summoning are very much methods to get around the dreaded synchro-killers that already exist in the card game and don't require any supernatural shenanigans to be acquired. But speaking only for myself for a moment, I was still at least a little bit willing to suspend my disbelief and accept that not being able to synchro summon would be a categorical impossibility for our beloved motorcycle family before this scene. Except, then Draco-Equiste comes out. And naturally, you're left to wonder "ah, so this is the solution to the synchro problem, then"? But no. No, it very much isn't. Because unfortunately, this is the one and only time Draco-Equiste even shows up. Immediately before and after this duel, this card is treated as though it never existed. Even though this thing could have posed a serious threat to the Meklords, what with being able to absorb the effect of a dragon synchro monster in the graveyard and being able to bounce back effect damage. (Can you imagine how differently the Team New World duel might have proceeded if Yusei had summoned this again?)

So, of course, we're left with the question: Why the fuck was this even here? And on the surface, the answer is super simple: To sell copies of Dragon Knight Draco-Equiste, naturally. But narratively? Narratively, this card's appearance is a disaster. It's a miscalculation of such insane proportions I can hardly find the words for it. Because it proves the assumption many viewers, especially TCG players, would have had from the start: Fusion, ritual, and tribute summoning are still a thing and would definitely work against Meklords. To say this takes the wind out of the sails of the central problem of "oh no, what are we going to do without synchro summoning" would be an understatement. And that's without addressing the fact that the actual "solution" the show provides against the Meklords, as cool as Shooting Star Dragon and Red Nova Dragon are, is, on paper, ludicrous: In a bind because your synchro monster gets absorbed? Just synchro summon harder! And I just. Please. We can agree that this is silly, right? Even if they're very cool dragons and I definitely appreciate them, this is almost looney tunes logic.

Swinging around to a more productive discussion, could they have done their "uh oh, synchro summoning is now impossible"-bit in a better, more coherent and less silly way? Probably, but depending on how they might have handled it, they would have probably needed to sacrifice some other things. The issue here is the thematic element. Synchro summoning is hated, and thus punished, by the emperors of Iliaster because to them, it's a symbol of humanity's greed and subsequent destruction. And originally, the show ends up vindicating its use despite their warnings about the destroyed future in a sort of awkward "with great power comes great responsibility"-way. As in, synchro summoning still has the potential to ruin humanity by the end of the show, but Yusei and the others "earn" their right to use it anyway because they and humanity as a whole learn the lesson not to overdo it. Supposedly. The metaphor is, frankly, a bit wonky, which might be another problem in and of itself. But what's relevant here is that any attempt to fix this conundrum would thus have to keep the thematic element intact. To do that, our protagonists would therefore have to rely on synchro summoning at the start of the arc, as they did before, and would also have to rely on it by the end of the arc (again). The in between is, I think, where more interesting things could have been done with the concept, though—moreover, it's where I think the plothole of "hey why doesn't anyone tribute/fusion/ritual summon" could have been addressed. Say the gang learns that synchro summoning might now get dangerous and actually tries to shift gears. Say they do try out fusion, ritual, and tribute monsters to account for that—only to run into an in-universe meta wall and realise that sure, these monsters might not get absorbed by Meklords, but their effects and strength can't keep up with the synchros their opponents use, or that they're flat out too cumbersome to summon! It could have been as simple as showing scenes where trying to get tribute fodder onto the field or play a fusion or ritual spell card would have been too slow, too inefficient in a duel. They could have also gone an even simpler route and flat out made it so that Meklords could have absorbed any extra deck monster. Would this have made them stupidly overpowered? Sure. But wasn't that kind of the point, anyway? The Meklords were supposed to be a nigh insurmountable obstacle that ultimately required discovering not one, but two new, unique ways to synchro summon—and even then, the solutions still weren't perfect because Shooting Star and Red Nova can still get absorbed under especially tricky circumstances. So I doubt making them that much more powerful would have mattered. (And they had to be heavily adjusted for the irl TCG as is, so there's not really a need to factor in that concern, either.) Finally, and I admit this pains me a little to say, I think that any version of the synchro dilemma that wanted to make sense should have flat out removed Draco-Equiste. The card does nothing except open plotholes, and especially if we want to keep the themes intact without opening the can of worms that is alternative forms of summoning possibly being a better solution than Accel Synchro or Burning Soul, its presence just becomes a hindrance. Sorry, Dragon Knight Draco-Equiste.

So much for the synchro dilemma, then. But unfortunately, this is not the last aspect of the worldbuilding surrounding the three emperors of Iliaster and especially their Meklords that's built on a shaky foundation, to say the least. Onto the next one.

2. The Meklord genocide and the many questions it asks (and never answers).

I'm gonna roll several points into one here because they're all related to the Meklord genocide—that being the supposedly unavoidable catastrophe in the future where Aporia received all his trauma from. And I want to preface this with two statements, one good and one bad. Firstly, Aporia and the way his backstory gets exposed, quickly getting us intimately acquainted with the utter devastation of the Meklord genocide, is extremely compelling. You really get a sense of the terror at play and it gives him a perfect, understandable motivation for wanting to avert that future at all costs, even if human lives have to be sacrificed along the way.

(Ahhh, the lovely smell of childhood trauma in the making.)

Secondly... The Meklord genocide makes zero sense, and it has everything to do with the fact that once again, several major aspects of it buckle under the weight of a few simple questions. But let me roll that back first and examine what those major aspects, which the Team New World duel introduces us to, are.

Number one: I went back and checked, and this is the first time in the series that we are introduced to the concept of synchro summoning resonating with Moment reactors. Previously, the reactor itself, through the concept of planetary particles, and, by extension, the Moment energy itself was only implied to be something like a perpetuum mobile, infinitely producing its own energy.

Number two: Now, we have heard of Moment rotating backwards and exploding in the show before. But there are two new things here, one being that the Iliaster trio explains that in this instance, it caused a chain reaction, and that, for some reason, all the Moment reactors began exploding one after the other. The other, more crucial part being that they claim the Moment reactors responded to people's hearts. This ties in with another small thing introduced much earlier, where Bruno/Antinomy explains that Clear Mind, Yusei's accel synchro technique, is a way of "controlling Moment". Both link the reactor and its energy, which are pillars of 5Ds' worldbuilding, to human emotions. And I already need to say this here: This doesn't make lick of sense. But more on that later.

Number three: We don't get an outright explanation for this in this duel, as in, it's not stated verbally, but right after Moment supposedly "responds to people's hearts", the Meklords show up, heavily implying that the reactor, for some reason, summoned a robot army to destroy humanity.

Now, I'm going to give you the quick-fire round of questions these three concepts immediately sparked in my mind when I saw these scenes, because I think that will illustrate just fine why I have such a problem with all this: Since when is synchro summoning linked to Moment and how? If humanity already knew through the Zero Reverse incident, which is the foundation for 5Ds' canon, that Moment reactors could spin too fast, gain a negative rotation, and subsequently explode, why on earth did nobody think to install safeguards against that? Why are the Moment reactor and its energy linked to people's hearts now? How does that even work? And how is a human supposed to "control" a sodding energy reactor that was implied to stay in perpetual motion through a set of gears, which famously know how to read hearts, through achieving a clear mind? And why, oh why did the reactor—independently of its human creators, apparently—have a killer robot army at its disposal to let loose on humanity when it grew sick of their shit?

This plot has so many holes, it may as well be a net instead. And you know what the worst part is? The show answers none of the questions above. Moreover, the implications behind the concepts introduced for the sake of setting up the Meklord genocide are buckwild, to say the least. Let me run with this real quick to highlight the absurdity here.

Taking the idea that an energy reactor can respond to people's hearts and summon an on-demand murder robot army of apocalyptic proportions when humans around it grow too evil at face value honestly makes me wonder how the Moment reactor in NDC hasn't exploded five times over since its creation. You mean to tell me that between Goodwin's Iliaster goons, the Arcadia Movement, the corrupt security forces, and all the duel gangs in Satellite, there weren't enough evil people there to make the reactor go crazy? Plus, all of these people were already synchro summoning as if their life depended on it! Synchro summoning is basically ubiquitous from the moment the show starts, to the point where it's more unusual to see a duellist who doesn't synchro summon than one who does. But somehow, that wasn't enough to affect the reactor yet? Or is the implication here supposed to be that the part where the man-made machine meant to produce limitless energy can suddenly see into people's hearts was added later into the reactor's development? That humans for some reason decided, "yeah, that's what our new energy source needs! A way to shame and punish us with violence on an unimaginable scale for our transgressions!" And that's without addressing the robot army. Who built these things? And who decided it was a good idea to put them at the disposal of the very reactor itself? Do you mean to tell me some team of utterly cracked up scientists decided that the best entity to put in charge of the robot army that was constructed for some reason was the reactor system supplying the world with energy, "computers can't be blinded by human error and would thus never deploy this army for selfish reasons"-style? (Honestly, I almost wish that had been the idea here, but I'm absolutely certain it wasn't.)

I can already hear two major criticisms to the above, purposefuly hyperbolic extrapolation in the back of my head here. Allow me to talk about them for a moment.

One—"Okay, so the WRGP arc has plotholes. Didn't the dark signers arc have those too, though? It's not like they explained everything about all that stuff."

You're right! It did! As much as I love the dark signers arc, it hardly has the most tightly-written worldbuilding of all time, either. There are lots of things, some small (why was Rudger/Roman somehow a signer and a dark signer at the same time), some not so small (why on earth did Rex' plan to summon the king of the underworld and remake the world seemingly hinge on one of the signers failing to seal their tower, which he could have never guaranteed in a million years) that the DS arc never properly takes the time to explain. But even so, the dark signers arc doesn't fall apart under questions such as "why" and "how" nearly as easily as the WRGP arc for a reason that is as simple as it is stupid: The DS arc has a much less ambitious premise, and though its antagonists are cool, they don't actually pose a greater, moral dilemma. Think about it. The premise of the DS arc is a run-of-the-mill prophecy thing. You've got your chosen heroes, your destined enemies, and a battle for the world using supernatural shenanigans. And a lot of questions of "why" or "how" are relatively quick to be brushed aside with "magic" (or rather, Crimson Dragon/Earthbound Immortal shenanigans). Moreover, the dark signers themselves, while having interesting stories relating to the heroes on a personal level, are still, fundamentally, pure evil. They're not fighting to prevent a devastating, apocalyptic future, they just deadass want to get revenge and destroy the world. And all the more complicated, major themes the arc has (class discrimination, police brutality, how societal alienation can lead teenagers to join cults, poverty, etc.) are actually not really tied in with the Earthbound Immortals, instead happening on the sidelines or only being tangentially related to the dark signers (such as when Kiryu becomes a dark signer through the abuse suffered in prison). The only major theme that ties in with the dark signers is destiny VS. freedom of choice, which also gets resolved in the battle with Rex Goodwin. (Interestingly enough, all the more complicated themes on the side were also dropped after this arc, but that's a rant for another time...) Perhaps the arc still has some inconsistencies here and there, but largely, it stays fully coherent. Thus, the DS arc makes it way easier to suspend one's disbelief, making the unexplained parts seem much less egregious.

Two—"Calm down, this show was made for twelve year-old Japanese boys. They don't need to explain any of this."

If you honestly think children don't deserve well-made entertainment whose concepts and worldbuilding can hold up to scrutiny, I have nothing to discuss with you. Sure, children will swallow some concepts much easier and will suspend their disbelief much longer and more artfully than any adult on average, but that doesn't mean "kids are dumb anyway so why bother putting as much effort into worldbuilding for their shows as for adult shows" is the hot take you think it is. I am fully congnisant of the target audience for this show—that doesn't make me any less convinced that said target audience deserved a show where things made sense while they were watching it and where things could still make sense if they decided to rewatch it years later. Because, you know, that's what I think a good show should be able to do.

And with that, I can come back to the WRGP arc and an issue that ties in with both things I just addressed: The WRGP arc's actual story premise, buried beneath the well-known, equally beloved and beloathed tournament arc format, is a lot more ambitious than the DS arc and has several, fairly heavy, core themes that it sets up and tries to resolve by the end, among them: learning how to cooperate as a team (during the WRGP) and learning how to be independent (by the end of the show), destiny VS. forging your own path (round two), and, most importantly, taking responsibility and fighting for one's future. That last one especially is not only a good topic to address in a show specifically made for 5Ds' target audience, it is also represented by both Team 5Ds and Team New World in-story. Spicier yet, both teams are actually fighting for the same thing. Team New World, having seen the supposedly unavoidable, tragic future and thus decided to take action against it, is fighting for a future that doesn't have to be marred by such tragedy, by whatever means necessary. And Team 5Ds, young, hopeful, and trusting in their connection to one another and humanity as a whole, is fighting for a better future because they believe that tragedy can be avoided. The future these two teams want is almost the same—the only, crucial difference is that Team New World has embraced the use of drastic measures to bring that future about, while Team 5Ds hasn't. To Team New World, the future presents something like a trolley problem, if you will: They think doing nothing will lead to that inevitable tragedy and erase humanity, whereas sacrificing New Domino City in the present will still kill people, but preserve humanity in the long run. And they have firmly decided pull the lever and set the course so the trolley runs over just one person instead of many. Team 5Ds, meanwhile, isn't even thinking about the lever, instead insisting there has to be another way, and that even thinking about getting anyone killed for this is stupid. The whole conflict is, on paper, wonderfully compelling, because you can see where both sides are coming from. Sure, Team New World's members still act like absolute dickheads in true yugioh-tournament-opponent fashion, but ultimately, their goals make sense. Viewers can put themselves in their shoes and perhaps think that, faced with a horrible dilemma like theirs, they would make the same, awful choice to set the course and cause suffering now to avoid greater suffering later. For the greater good.

Unfortunately, the questions I listed above undermine all this somewhat, because as good as these antagonists are on a character level, it's incredibly easy to poke holes into their backstory and especially the circumstances surrounding the horrible, distant future they want to avoid so desperately—which, in turn, undermines that terrible future somewhat, because this is a narrative that demands weight (in my opinion). But if the supposed threat at the end, the terrible thing even our protagonists briefly aren't sure they'll be able to avoid, begins falling apart at the seams in terms of logic when you think about it for more than two minutes, where is that weight supposed to come from? There is also another question to be answered here that I need to discuss so I can touch on a central aspect that hampers the plot in this arc somewhat later:

Why are they so convinced that horrible, destroyed future is utterly unavoidable?

I want you to really think about this question, with me. Canon... never really gives us any direct proof that they're justified in being this certain. However, that doesn't mean we don't get an answer, per se, though the answer is a bit vague.

The implications here are... something, to say the least. First, as our basis, we have to assume that every "correction" Iliaster has made has been to avoid humanity's destruction in the future. Because frankly, that's all we get as far as Jose, Placido, and Luciano's definition of the "correct path" goes. Then there's the second bit. Apparently, they've been merrily "repairing" history for a good while already, yet, for some reason, they always get the same outcome: The Meklord genocide. This, in turn, has led them to take more and more drsatic measures to try and avoid it. And I want to point out the very obvious, mind-boggling implication that comes with this: Apparently, after every "correction" they made, these three have either let history run its course to see where it ends up this time, or have quickly zipped over to their own time to check whether things were still shit. Meaning Iliaster's whole deal of fixing history to make sure the Meklord genocide never occurs has been a very, very long run of trial and error. (I want you to think of all the possible "fixes" this could have included for a moment. We know from BBT that killing Pegasus was one of the ideas they had, for example. Did they also try to kill the presumed Industrial Illusions employee who came up with synchro monsters? Did they try to kill Yusei's dad so Moment would never be invented? Could they not have tried to simply inhibit the creation of the robot army, then? Or made sure someone installed some bloody safeguards on the reactors, as Yusei later does in-canon, which somehow works when he does it? The list goes on.) Now, we know that in canon, their newest idea is that the future can be fixed if they just destroy New Domino City altogether.

Here, the questions begin again (you may sense a running theme): If Moment is already invented and internationally known, why would destroying its place of invention do anything? If synchro summons are already a thing, doesn't that mean destroying NDC would only slow the catastrophe down, at best? And most importantly: Why are these guys so utterly convinced that this "repair", of all the ones they've already done, will save their future? How can they know that this particular plan will work when they've supposedly already tried everything?

(There is, of course, the tragic possibility to consider that perhaps, they know that there's no guarantee this will work. They've tried everything, after all. So maybe they know this won't fix things, either. But we know that Aporia, like Paradox, like Antinomy, and like Z-ONE is, somewhere at the bottom of his despairing heart, still desperate for a shimmer of hope. And maybe, just maybe, he has reached such a point of desperation that he'll watch an entire city getting destroyed if it has even the faintest chance of succeeding. But unfortunately, this is purely speculative—the show never states this, and so, I can only leave it in the realm of fan interpretation.)

The show never answers this question, either, instead relying on the audience to suspend their disbelief some more and assume that Iliaster has put in the work and is 100% certain that the future can and will absolutely end in disaster unless they destroy NDC now. It almost acts like they have some sort of supernatural foresight; they know things nobody else in the show's world does, and due to this (and their non-human status) they label themselves as superior to the "foolish humans", who, without their guiding hands, will only bring about the apocalypse. But their superiority and the internal consistency of their actions is already wobbling under the weight of all the half-assed worldbuilding I mentioned above, which is an extra big problem due to another, major difference between the WRGP and the DS arc: While the DS arc stylised itself as a sort of funky genre mix between cyberpunk dystopia and urban fantasy (in a very broad sense, given that ancient Inca gods are very much real and their prophecies come to fruition in the modern day, yet we are not presented with any sort of magic outside of the conflict with the dark signers), the WRGP arc, aside from its tournament format, stylises itself much more as science fiction. The antagonists are no longer ancient, evil shadow gods, they're cyborgs from a destroyed future. Their motivation isn't as simple as wanting to destroy the world, either! In fact, they want to save the future! And they don't pose a threat to our antagonists through shadow duels in rings of fire and giant, magical monsters that sacrifice human souls to be summoned. No, they have advanced technology like high-tech robots that cut our protagonists off from one of their go-to tactical options, and they send out duel robot armies, and they travel through time by means of sophisticated wormhole-technology.

...But do they?

Now, I said I don't just want to complain here, I also want to provide solutions—and I intend to stick to that. But first, because these two things are so intrinsically tied together, let me address the final aspect that puts Team New World as antagonists and the WRGP arc on such shaky ground from a writing perspective.

3. Wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey, magic-science cyborg nonsense.

So, I've talked about the strongly differing methods the Iliaster trio uses in comparison to the dark signers. Sci-fi is the name of the game now, so we've got robots, cyborgs, advanced tech and... time travel. But amidst all this, you may have noticed something. Even though our plot is supposedly decided by futuristic tech now, the magical/occult element that was there in the first half of the show doesn't actually get dropped. Why? Because it can't be. Because the signers, our protagonists, are defined by their status as a group of magical chosen ones, hand-picked by an ancient Incan deity. Regardless of what the writers of the show wanted here (and my personal guess, based on hearsay and what I've read on forums, is that they wanted to hardcore-pivot to sci-fi because they hoped it would engage audiences more), this was an element they couldn't erase. (Or, well, technically, they could. The signers do lose their marks at the end of the show, after all. But perhaps they thought doing that earlier was too risky.) So genre-wise, we've got a bit of a situation here. From the pre-WRGP arc on, 5Ds is more of a sci-fi show, yet, we've still got all this occult stuff wandering around that can't be cut out of the narrative and still influences it because it's too intrinsically tied to our main actors not to. And you might have noticed that this actually doesn't just extend to the signers. As in, they're not the only ones where sci-fi and magic elements mix. This happens for the Iliaster trio, too. Placido gets a sword that can randomly cut a hole in space-time (and it's never explained how). The Meklords can cause real damage in duels even though they're supposedly not supernatural. Moment reactors can suddenly read people's hearts. Not one, but multiple cyborgs get a magical girl transformation where they change clothes and runners, or even combine from three people into one. And for some reason, the Crimson Dragon, even though its "own", central enemies, the dark signers, are already defeated, doesn't take its marks away from our heroes until after the cyborgs are taken care of, suggesting that the ancient, magical entity recognises the robots from the future as a supernatural threat of some sort. None of this is presented with any sort of attempt to get it to make sense, yet, we're supposed to believe it isn't magic, because we're all about robots and time travel now.

(Insert the magical girl transformation song of your choice.)

And I want to make one thing clear: I'm not saying this weird genre-mix couldn't have worked. In fact, I think it's hilarious and low-key brilliant even in the wonky state we got. Sure, let's make the antagonists robots from the future while keeping our protagonists the agents of an ancient Incan god on the mortal plane! If nothing else, you absolutely can't argue the idea wasn't original.

However, even with all the love I have for the show, I can't help but feel like there's an issue here, and the only way I could put it into words would be genre dissonance. We are supposedly in a sci-fi show now, yet the central antagonists, who are also the fundamental reason for this genre shift, seemingly can't decide whether they're actually using technology or magic for their schemes. And this becomes a problem insofar as that seemingly no effort to meaningfully fuse the fantastical elements with the pseudo-scientific ones is made, yet at the same time, they aren't properly separated, either. Specifically the latter might be harming the show even more than the former. Let me explain what I mean.

I'm no stranger to the fact that sci-fi sometimes likes to use technology that's supposed to be so advanced that to an outsider, it begins looking indistinguishable from magic. And in all fairness, that is probably what the 5Ds writers were gunning for. What hampers this a little, though, is that we're just coming from an arc that had actual magic in it, which leads to the allegedly scientific elements sending some mixed messages. Especially because they're never explained. And I'm not saying we needed super hardcore, internally fully consistent sci-fi worldbuilding here. Frankly, with all the weird nonsense 5Ds has already mostly handwaved by the start of the pre-WRGP arc, that would have been absurd. But I think a few explanations here and there, hell, even just the occasional off-handed remark, could have done a world of good for this arc, and especially for the Meklord dilemma and the setup of the ruined future. I don't need a whole breakdown on how exactly a reactor knows about the greed in people's hearts, but a remark somewhere on the side about how, for example, the particles that are the central player in that reactor also happen to be copious within the human heart (which would be impossible to prove, but ignore that) would have been nice. And I don't need a full breakdown of how the robot army was built; a throwaway remark that humanity created it as weapons in their supposedly endless, petty wars could have been cool, though.

My point is, fundamentally, that unlike the occult nonsense, which can skirt by on prophecies and simple, black-and-white, good VS evil stuff, the sci-fi elements feel like they demand a surface-level justification for their existence, at least. A surface-level justification they didn't get. And this is without addressing the much, much bigger problem that may actually be the root cause of most, if not all the things I've listed above so far: The time travel.

I don't think it's any sort of new, groundbreaking opinion to say that time travel is a notoriously finicky worldbuilding element that many writers, regardless of medium and/or skill, have already massively shot themselves in the foot with. And unfortunately, I feel like this has happened in 5Ds, too. Specifically because the time travel has seemingly absolutely no limits. The Iliaster trio (and even Paradox) can seemingly be everywhere they want, in any time period, and do whatever they want/deem necessary. Worse yet, the time travel is actively shown to have massive consequences more than once. And I think it's under the weight of this massive, utterly uncontrollable element that the plot really begins to collapse. Because frankly, with the implications we're given, things just really don't look good in a universe where limitless time travel can be used! Let me circle back to two questions from above to really emphasise this: Why are these guys so utterly convinced that this "repair", of all the ones they've already done, will save their future? How can they know that this particular plan will work when they've supposedly already tried everything? In a universe with limitless time travel, these questions become an absolute mess to deal with. And the real problem is that canon never even entertains the idea of answering them. Sure, you can begin to fill in the gaps for yourself if you feel like it. Maybe it's not that all the previous "repairs" Iliaster did truly didn't work, maybe they brought about even worse futures and that was the reason why they were discarded. Or maybe there's a hidden in-universe rule that people from the future who go back to the past actually don't have the power to change anything, as in, no matter what they change, it will never affect their present, because their actions will always loop back around to causing the same things they already know. But there. Precisely there is the problem. I'm not getting this from canon, I'm making it up from scratch. And sure, all stories have gaps—that's where a lot of fanfiction lives, after all. But when you reach the point where you have so many gaps that the audience can no longer suspend its disbelief over these gaps, that's when there's a problem. And the WRGP arc, for all that its antagonists are extremely compelling, pose genuine, moral dilemmas, and for all that it resolves in one of the best arcs of 5Ds, has precisely this problem for me. The worldbuilding is stretched too thin, and my suspension of disbelief breaks and leaves me wondering why so many good themes have to be buried in an arc that is this frustrating to watch sometimes.

*deep breath*

Okay. So now I've aired all my grievances and laid out all the problems that make me shake my fists in frustration at this arc, at the Meklords, and at the Team New World duel. What about the productive part, then, you might ask. I did say I wanted to provide solutions, as far as I can, anyway. How would I try to solve this mess?

Well, honestly, I think the solution here, at least to me, would be fairly basic: More consistency. Make it make sense. The genre mashup can stay exactly the way it is, but maybe tone down the magic on the cyborgs a bit. Make them actual cyborgs. Even if their tech is justified through bullshit, at least justify it. Why does Placido have a reality-splitting sword? Oh, it's actually the Moment Express wormhole technology in miniature. Why can Moment reactors see into people's hearts? Well, duh, they contain the same, special particles as human hearts. Why is there an army of robots in the future to begin with? Humans built it. For war. Like they did so much else. And why did the reactor use it against them? Because it was just responding to their own negativity. Their own, constant desire for strife and petty conflicts amongst one another made them actually turn the weapons against themselves (or rather, against the people they personally didn't like, which ends up being everyone when everyone has a grudge against someone) through the reactor. (The show almost does this one, but not quite.) How do the three emperors of Iliaster know destroying NDC, specifically, will fix the future? They don't! They're doing this on trial and error, and more importantly—and I think this would work best if it was introduced purposefully late—they can't actually save the future by changing the past, because they're not from the past. They just don't actually know that this is a rule of time travel.

None of these fixes would have to be big, episode-spanning things. Off-handed remarks would have been enough. But I think just that could have saved many points from becoming the plotholes they did.

And with that, I think I'll finally leave you be, I've rambled quite enough. To anyone who has made it all the way to the end, I can only give a sincere, heartfelt thank you. I realise this is a LOT of words. Moreover, I'd like to leave you with one more statement: Though I can absolutely understand if this post comes off as me getting on a soapbox and cupping my hands around my mouth before yelling, it's not meant to be. I absolutely invite discussion about the the handling of, the themes behind, and all the arguments I gave regarding the Meklord worldbuilding and the Team New World duel. So, feel every bit as free as I did to yell about this. This post encourages yelling.

[kannakakimari]

.... The news was very disappointing

I'm gonna have to say it, the only news I heard was Yugioh Gx remastered, I was hoping for a new Yugioh with a female protagonist, but this was disappointing, I'm more into Link and Pendulum Summon now, I'm not entirely into Yugioh Gx because of not very strong Female monsters, it was when the Lunalight monsters When the strong Female fusion monsters came, I'm just going to say this, I got more into Yugioh when Synchro monsters came into play, I wasn't into Xyz monsters since they were hard to Summon, especially too many high ranking Xyz monsters, plus the swimsuit at school of Yugioh Zexal was just pathetic, plus my character Kanna has a trademark of Big hair and midriff outfits, so Yugioh Zexal was against my trademark, so I'm disappointed with the Jump Fest news right now, also hardly any strong Female Number Xyz monsters that was easy to Summon is there ether, so I'm disappointed with the news, sorry guys, also in Yugioh Gx too many low attack points monsters, and too many show only monsters, that's the big reason why I'm not much into GX

[stormcr0w]

Raine - my Yu-Gi-Oh! Arc V OC - Xyz Dimension

Raine is a citizen of Heartland who lost his home when the Fusion Dimension invaded. Now a member of the resistance alongside his friends, Kaito, Shun, and Yuto, Raine seeks revenge on those who destroyed his home. His priorities shift slightly when he learns of the kidnapping of Ruri - his friend and Shun's younger sister. After interrogating one of the invaders - a boy named Endymion - Raine gains the ability to travel across the dimensions, eventually meeting the Lancers and joining them in Synchro. Raine uses a Tellarknight Deck full of powerful Xyz monsters and eventually learns to Pendulum summon using the mysterious Zefra monsters that have begun appearing.

[secretoreimo]

Hang on I'm onto something else now. So Oreimo characters and Yugioh decks. Nothing too in-depth because I can not be bothered to learn anything past fusion summoning (synchro and xyz and, god forbid, link, just begone my brain is too small). We can call it an aged outlook, say they were playing during a time when all that didn't exist yet fdkjfdkjd

Kirino would just have a deck full of cute girls, I think the magician girls (Berry Magician Girl, Apple, Lemon, Chocolate, etc), and her strategy would be poor, she'd spend more time excitedly using effects to add girls to her hand than properly setting traps, so literally anybody who played more than occasionally would beat her. Also no Dark Magician actually in her deck, which would cut into Dark Magician Girl herself's usefulness

Kuroneko would prioritize the card's aesthetic while finding ways to keep it balanced and playable. Picture cards like "Magician of Faith" and "Witch of the Black Forest". She wouldn't have like a deck that's made to be a particular set, it would all be very personal and unique. I do also think she'd have Dark Magician... maybe I'm biased because he's my favorite. But she'd play Kirino and they'd squabble over how Kirino is playing the soulless inferiors of the Magician and how Kuroneko just likes creepy/evil-looking cards. She also genuinely plays with ritual spells

Saori's got a much broader sense for media and characters so I think hers would vary more, but she'd happily add cards to her deck that remind her of characters she loves while keeping a good grip on her strategy. It's not as intricate as Kuroneko's, but she's got a solid understanding of the game and how best to utilize her own beloved cards. She's also probably kept in several of her very first ones, or the first ones she ever traded for, things like that, out of nostalgia.

Kyousuke, of course, is just dragged into the fray, so his deck is a mishmash of boosters and whatever else he'd get out of random packs, some traps/spells gifted to him by Saori and Kuroneko, and also a few cute girls that Kirino had bestowed upon him out of the kindness of her heart. "This one doesn't work in my deck, I don't have room... but here, I'll let you have it. You'd better use it." kind of thing. He doesn't understand the rules at all, why is Duel Monsters so damn convoluted?

[xsoulxsilencex]

Well, the episode did deliever a big reveal in the end...

Kuaidul apparently confirmed that we don't just deal with time travel shit in GR but with a whole multiverse??

Also he Ritual summoned? From the Extra Deck?? Might be the big thing in ygo 9 instead of Synchro... (and Kuaidul said "ritual" in English so another way to make a difference to regular Ritual Summon I guess)

Ngl, I did feel bad for Yudias in this episode because damn, experience those weird worlds... It felt like an acid trip...

And man, Kuaidul's Ritual monster was already foreshadowed by the opening? We saw the same crescent moon in the background when the monster was about to attack Oblivion...

In the end, they managed to separate Kuaidul from Yudias. I wonder if they will just let Yudias go now or someone frees him considering he has to duel for the arc final...