#fuck this show for being the third in the series and being called 5D’s

[laquilasse]

As a 5Ds stan, I'm obliged to ask-

Do you plan on watching 5Ds? Because I highly, highly recommend it. Literally the peak of Yu-Gi-Oh insanity.

The 4kids dub was never completed, but I actually found the sub even funnier just from how much wilder the tonal whiplash gets lmao

(Jokes aside, the character interactions are very fun, the setting is refreshing and genuinely interesting, and it's just fun to see what happens in like the 40+ years since the end of the original)

I actually just started 5D’s! I’m finding the dub a little. Hard to watch. ONLY A LITTLE just mostly because I cannot separate Yusei’s dub voice from Tristan 😭 and I’m not. A Tristan fan. but I switched to sub for a few episodes and I really appreciate Yusei being a quieter character. They try and ham him up in the dub which doesn’t sit right with me, I like his silent intensity. He doesn’t say anything unless he needs to, he’s just kinda doing his own thing. And him being a mechanic is really fun and I love how that shows just subtly in his design. I think I would have been annoyed if he had like a giant belt of tools on him all the time in addition to the mechanic gloves.

That said I’m excited for this to pick up a bit, I’m still pretty early on (we just learned about the Aztec connection) and I want to see why people like it so much.

[pxiao]

5 reasons I love Arc-V

Today as I was bored, I kept reading metas of why some people loved Arc-V or their favorite moments of the show and I decided to analyze why Arc-V is my favorite Yu-Gi-Oh! show and honestly one of my favorite shows period(this honestly shocks me today still) Also in this piece I’ll generally talk about the previous series and I don’t mean to insult them(well most of them) but I’ll have to talk about what I found about them lacking and how Arc-V fixed that for me, sorry if anything I say is offensive.

Lessons

I’ll be blunt, most of the franchise’s “lessons” are generic lessons like believe in yourself and your friends will help you do anything stuff, especially when Yoshida is writing, that you can find in any show for kids. While yes it’s important for kids to learn this but when that’s the lesson for nearly everything it gets old fast, especially for a franchise that’s 2 decades old. That’s not to say there aren’t some good lessons in there as well like the past makes who you are and by trying to ignore it, you’re not doing yourself a favor but it’s soooo overwhelmed by the generic lessons. 

In comparison Arc-V gives some really unique and interesting lessons. Like when Yuya was scared of not being special because Reiji was cracking Pendulum monsters, instead of the generic “everyone is special” stuff, Shuzou gave Yuya a great goal, become the pioneer of Pendulum Summoning thus everyone will remember and look up to you. That’s not something you hear regularly if ever. 

The best example of this is how Jack continually called Yuya out on using his father’s dueling and we all expected this would be Yuya breaking free of his father’s influence and “be himself” whatever that means. But Jack gave a rather interesting spin on it, that people are influenced by others and you know what that’s FINE. To be yourself doesn’t mean everything has to be original but that you’re able to understand the influence that others had on you and use to it explain your will. And that craziest thing is, Jack’s right. People are ALWAYS influenced by others, no matter what you say, we always look up to others and use them as examples whether it be our parents, friends, celebrities or fictional characters. A strong example is writers, every writer will tell you that there are no more original stories, every possible story that can be told has been told, but if so why are some stories seems original while others feel bored and generic. Easy the writers of original stories take the story elements of well known stories/genres and put their own spin on it, they make it their own. While generic stories are the result of writers lazily copying what was done before and hoping it works. For example Game of Thrones takes the basic fantasy tropes and then takes out the part where the heroes somehow survive and actually face the consequences of their honorable but stupid actions  

Standing

I’ll admit watching people duel is fun and if I didn’t like that I wouldn’t like this franchise. But at the same time, you have to admit it gets OLD having two or more episodes, DM sometimes took FOUR episodes on 1 lousy duel, of two people yelling at each other, pointing and smirking. 

5D’s riding duels were an attempt to fix this by having the duelists and the monsters in motion and giving the characters something to do beside react. But if I have to be honest, Action Duels are the perfect way to fix this. By having Action Duels, we get to see the characters in motions and show off their agility or showing their monsters helping them. Who didn’t enjoy seeing how agile Sora and Shun was when they dueled in episode 34. It gives a sense of suspense and the previous series generally lacked cause if they were in trouble, we thought, oh they have an face-down, that’ll save them. 

Predictability

Yu-Gi-Oh! is many things but unpredictable it is not. We generally knew the result of every duel and every twist before it ever started. Sure there are some twists like Atem playing the seal, Kaito dying despite winning, Carly dying and the whole Supreme King thing in GX. But this was more of the a treat in a LONG, LONG WHILE. 

And lets face it, whatever you felt about Arc-V it was always unpredictable don’t try to deny it. In plot development, characters and even duel results. A great example is Yuya vs Yuri. We knew they were going to duel because of course they were, they were the counterparts that represented the greatest extremes. But when the episodes finally came out, NOBODY was sure if Yuya or Yuri was going to win, it was a literal toss up. We questioned, argued and were shocked that Yuya did win. The day when we have a duel with the protagonist and the fandom is literally split 50/50 on the result shows the writers were great at surprises.  

Main Characters 

Ok this is going to get me in the dog house but Yuya is a fucking breath of fresh air in modern anime. It’s so nice to have a sympathetic main character that gets continuous character development and has flaws, like HONEST to god flaws that aren’t there to make him look good. That’s not to say there aren’t good protagonists in recent anime like Kaneki from Tokyo Ghoul or Yato from Noragami just they’re more and more rare due to the many, many harems or how many shows are more or less power fantasies. And Yuya as a character is even more amazing especially this compared to Yu-Gi-Oh! protagonists, not to say I hate them, except one, but that Yuya just blows them out the water. 

For Atem got the short end of the stick as he did get character development but the anime started at the start of said development so we didn’t get to see how he changed. DM started at the end of the Death-T arc where Atem was starting to get more kind. His mind crush is literally the nicest punishment he’s given, he literally drove people crazy and set a man on fire before. And for Yugi, look the anime also shafted him, he rarely got focus and most of the time that was for exposition. By the time we saw his development, it had occurred off-screen and well that’s one of my pet peeves in terms of writing.

Judai, Ok I admit out of the protagonists before Yuya, he got the most development. But he got it in his third year and that’s it. He spent his first and second year more or less unbothered by the events around him and then said third year broken him into a million of pieces and tried to put him together in time. But at the same time, his development bothered me too, it most or less came down to this phrase, “Children card games aren’t all fun and games, it’s serious”. Yeah that’s ridiculous. 

Yusei, oh this is hard to admit as he’s either my second or third favorite protagonist(it’s tight race with Atem) but he has the least development of the protagonists or more than Atem in the anime. I admit, he rarely changes and that’s sad, especially when Yoshida got his hands on him. But luckily Yusei was interesting enough to work as a character but the issue remains he’s pretty static and a bit too perfect.  

Yuma ....... You know how I said Yusei’s issue is he’s a bit too perfect, yeah Yuma’s the exact opposite. And Yuma fans look away, I’m going on a fucking rant here. Yuma’s issue is that he does have flaws but his series continually pushes it’s head up it’s ass to convince us that said flaw is actually a strength despite showing yes it is flaw. And then there’s how he gets everyone to fall in love with him, the show bending it’s logic so he’s always right and the biggest annoyance is that he remains the fucking same. Just as stupid, just as naive and just as flawed and we’re supposed to support that. HELL NO.

While Yuya is this guy that wants everyone to be happy and well he has flaws that stop him from doing this. He can be selfish, stubborn, lacks self confidence and hesitates. And this just makes him all the better, Yuya has flaws like real people, he suffers like real people, he questions his ideals like more people should but he changes and we get to see it in front of us for three years. No matter what people say Yuya will always be one of the best characters Yu-Gi-Oh! has ever produced.   

Suspension of Disbelief   

Look I’m not going to mince words here to watch this franchise, you need to turn off your brain. This happens for every show where all conflicts can be solved by using consumer goods that are for some reason connected to magic. 

And the BIGGEST reason I love Arc-V is well they do a great job justifying everything. Why are card games dangerous, holograms with mass are awesome to kill people with. Why use holograms with mass, cause it’s awesome and people will pay to see it. Reiji’s being a dick, Yuya tries to punch him. Police lose a duel, they still try to catch the “criminal”. With Arc-V, you get the sense of what happens if you take Yu-Gi-Oh! and put in in the real world and watch the chaos as the rules we know and love are twisted by reality. 

And some of you reading this might wonder if I even like Yu-Gi-Oh! beside Arc-V and I do besides Zexal but I can admit that Yu-Gi-Oh! as a franchise has many problems, how it handles the female characters for example ..... and I can admit Arc-V has issues too, pacing and sadly how they treated female characters in the end too. But again just because you like something doesn’t mean you should believe it’s perfect.