pokegirl

Yugioh Arc V is the 5th installment of the Yugioh franchise, it is not the best anime within the franchise. (This is my second review, it is just updated) The storyline starts a bit slow and repetitive sometimes near the beginning because it was meant to introduce to Pendulum Summoning as its main concept in dueling. The story does get interesting after episode 20 by how it introduced the darkness within Yuya and his counterparts. In addition, the story does become unpredictable and interesting as its strong points. Yet, it is not prefect on how the plot does feel rushed near the last couple episodes. Itraise questions without having answers on how it is important to the plot as one of flaws of this franchise. For instance, a duel occurs in one episode when it should be in two or three episodes. I mean some duels feel significant to the plot in character development or other aspects; yet, it does not happen which makes the plot feel rushed and flawed sometimes. For the characters, there is a variety of side characters that has a role in the plot, however, does not utilize their role at its fullest since some of them appear as the audience after fulfilling their role in Yuya's development. Even though, there are flaws in the side characters' roles, the development of the main characters was fleshed to its full potential which makes the story strong at some points. In the beginning, Yuya was seen as a cheerful and goofy boy, who focuses on entertainment dueling like his father. As the story progress, he experiences drastic changes within himself, learns about his counterparts and how it connects to his identity. I won't mention the details of his identity because I may spoil it for new viewers who are starting to watch this franchise. Similar to having a female lead in the franchise as the main character, Yuzu portrays her role in helping Yuya fulfill his by being his mentor throughout the story. On contrast, she has not given enough spotlight as the story progresses which makes her seen as a side character than as the main character. Akaba Reiji, the main rival of Yuya, was developed strongly in his character and role for Yuya's development. His role influence Yuya to face his inner struggles and his role of being an entertainment duelist which is one of the strong points of this franchise. The music was used greatly on how it utilized the duels and moments within emotional or comedic scenes. It is similar to the VA, who portray the characters well. The animation have its pros and cons because some episodes have good animation and opposite on other episodes. It was probably the quality of the animation was transferred to the movie, Dark Side of Dimension which cause the animation in Yugioh Arc V to drop. Overall, Yugioh Arc V have its strong and weak points, in terms of the plot of the story and characters' role and development. It is sad that Arc V have ended; but, I enjoyed watching it as a whole.

I--was

After the fall of western yugioh comunity caused by Zexal (which is a good show by the way), Arc V is known as the generation that united everyone one more time for a ride into a massive adventure. Rather, it tried, and failed miserably. I will try my best not to spoil too much here but there are some things I cannot review without spoiling so you'll be warned. I doubt anyone reading this haven't been spoiled already, but just in case. I believe Arc V is a series that should be rated in two times. One for how it looked at the beginning, and oneat the end.because the show really just sank while on its way to greatness. Let us now begin. ╰──➤⊱Story: 10/10 (beginning) - literally 2/10 (end) Oh boy where do I start. Arc V probably had the best introduction to the series of any yugioh shows. This is entirely due to its incredible mastery of mystery. I believe what makes a show entertaining resides in three aspects : it's sense of mystery making us invested in the story, it's build up making us invested and interested in what was going to happen next, and it's pay-off, also known as the actual story itself. Arc V did the first two elements better than you could imagine, in fact, probably even too good. Because in truth, it lacked the essential: an actually good story at all. What we slowly learned of it in the beginning was completely captivating. A world separated into four dimensions : one for each summoning method, with different versions of both Yuya and Yuzu in each that slowly seemed to attract one another in an almost Lovecraftian fate horror type of way. The xyz dimension had been entirely decimated by the fusion dimension lead by Leo Akaba, the father of Reiji Akaba aka the rival, for we don't what reason, and the latter was about to invade every other in a similar fashion. Why did Leo do this, why was the world separated into four, what would happen if the four yu boys truly did reunite with one another, and what was their connection to the Yuzu counterparts? And what even is pendulum summoning, this mystical summoning mechanic we have been introduced to in this series? And later on, we are introduced to what is known as legacy characters, characters that originated in different series before this one. This was hype, and we were all excited to know what their link with the original series were (that's something that never was revealed though). And when all of this finally got revealed, I think we all regretted asking ourselves in the first place. The problem with arc v is that it tried to do too much out of something that wasn't even that good to begin with, and thus lead to the worst feeling anyone could experience while watching or reading something : disappointment. Had the series not made a whole lot about all of this, surely we wouldn't have been that interested in the story, but at least we wouldn't have been disappointed because we didn't expect much to begin with, and as such could have seen the good in this otherwise mediocre story. I will spoil everything from this point on, so skip to the next part if you don't want to know the answer to all these questions. Basically, the world once was whole, with every summoning methods in one place. Its link to previous generations in unknown and there probably isn't even any. An important aspect of this world however is real solid vision, a device that allowed duel monsters to appear physically in the world and interact with people. Zarc, a random boy who was good at dueling, got pushed to act brutal with his opponents by the crowd, and thus began to act violent. And one day he tried destroying the universe, blaming on the crowd for pushing him this far (I'll get to zarc when talking about the characters, don't worry...). The daughter of Leo Akaba, the inventor of real solid vision, takes on four cards invented specifically to defeat Zarc and goes to face him, and beats him, and separates the world into four. How, we don't know, why, we don't know. Thus Zarc is split into the four yu boys ans Ray is split into the four yu girls because why not. Leo Akaba is the only one who remembers the world as it once was (we dunno why) and thus invents real solid vison ONCE Again, as a pretext to save the world. Well that's a smart move, now we can be sure Zarc will kill us all once he gets reunited. Leo Akaba then gets convinced that to prevent the imminent end of the world, he must bring his daughter back to life, as if she was the only one capable of defeating Zarc, and then goes to kidnap all four yu girls, causing the four yu boys to chase after them and thus meet each other, and he also kills an entire dimension as sacrifice for his machine, thus causing the yu boys there to act to defeat him and thus, meet each other. Man if only you hadn't done all of this to prevent the revival of Zarc, Zarc would have never been reborned. And that's prettyuch the story of arc V, just a mix of lazy to bad writing, dumb characters and poorly used elements that could have been great. The story isn't even well reparted, because the writers tried to infuse too much of what is known as "nostalgia" in the main plot. Legacy characters didn't even need to be there, in my humble opinion they shouldn't even have been there, I'll get to that, but they were to make nostalgic fans scream in hype. This also meant the story was going to be spent 50 episodes in the Synchro dimension, an arc that was almost filler seeing how little it brought to the story, but only to only be spent 10ish episodes in the xyz dimension, the arc that was built up since episode 8 of this show, because 5D's was more popular than Zexal. Arc V tried to do too much out of nothing really interesting or even worth developing this far, and it ended up as anyone could imagine : a disaster. The end of this show is the worst end I have ever witnessed in fiction. Zarc and Leo Akaba are forgiven without a single consequence to their war-crimes, half the cast is dead but nobody seems to care and everybody is happy in the horrifying drug that has become "smiles" at this point, and nothing even makes sense. Frankly this isn't even worth mentioning. Everything would have been better than this. ╰──➤⊱Art: 9/10⊰ If there is something Arc V did right though, it's artistic direction. Both in music, designs and animations. It went back to the "yugioh" style people missed in zexal, it had very pretty color schemes and character designs worth talking about, and perhaps the best animated series alongside the best animated 5D's and Zexal episodes. Maybe there was one or two questionable episodes, like every series has, but it was mostly consistent. But again, its color scheme is what made all it's charm. A colorful, well utilized and eye candy visualled Anime like we all like to see. ╰──➤⊱sound: 10/10⊰ Same here, nothing to say about the sound duels. While I prefer the type of soundtracks found in 5D's and Zexal, one just cannot deny the music in this series was phenomenal and perfectly utilized. Just for my zexal review, I will link a few tracks worth the listen, so hope YouTube doesn't strike them down. https://youtu.be/9RaztTuTKs8 https://youtu.be/DlGcoV6rvJA https://youtu.be/OWRLNmCy-Yg https://youtu.be/Re033lZPVFE https://youtu.be/KwIW8dlP8yA https://youtu.be/VFBCZlcjIDA https://youtu.be/3E97qxUGJ6U (especially this one... Chills) https://youtu.be/qdikLQTyDpc https://youtu.be/zdjEu7Ab5m0 It had an electronic, almost alternative way to it that fit, I think. ╰──➤⊱dueling action: 10/10 (beginning) - 7/10 (end) ⊰ The dueling is an aspect of Arc V done right too, or at least it was in the beginning. The fact they constantly use all four summoning methods helps to make largely diverse duels, and the action dueling on itself might have been the best addition to the dueling side of things in yugioh. But as most things, this kind of got scrapped. As time went on, everything that made it interesting kind of got lost. Action traps were lost, the action fields were always the same, and "evade" and "miracle" were the only action cards there seemed to exist. I don't mind Yuya basing his dueling style solely on action cards, because it's what his entire duel philosophy revolves around, but at least make it good. There wasn't any tension anymore. And the dueling quality on itself even worsened as time went on. One just looks at the infinite final duel against the vilain to realize how poor it was in the end. Now this doesn't mean there wasn't any good fights in the end, far from that, but the quality definitely went downhill after the Synchro dimension arc. And Yuya's smile ideology being forced stuff-fed to his opponents each duel was not only redundant, but also not very morally right, I feel. ╰──➤⊱characters: 9/10 (beginning) - 2 or 3/10(end) ⊰ ⚠️End of spoiler free zone. You have been warned. ⚠️ Oh boy where do I start... There was WAY too many characters. With Zexal, I could only concentrate on a few to illustrate the themes and overall idea, here, I can't, cause the themes aren't really well illustrated. So let's go bit by bit, and this will be long. o͟r͟i͟g͟i͟n͟a͟l͟ s͟u͟p͟p͟o͟r͟t͟i͟n͟g͟ c͟a͟s͟t͟: – Gongenzaka was a fun character in his beginning, and I liked his dueling style using defense for attacks kind of like a sumo. Whereas Sawatari was the "rival" of the first half, kind of like Manjoume but not as good. And their relationship with Yuya was a wholesome, entertaining one. However as the show progressed and became darker and darker, and more and more characters got introduced, they quickly found struggling to appear relevant. Gongenzaka was never supposed to react to drama, and he got Shafter for Crow in the friend archetype. Whereas Sawatari kept a small leading role, but didn't have any meaning, and never even won once onscreen. He could and should have been respected better in order to appear as relevant. – Sora was fantastic in the first 50 episodes. He was introduced as a cute, likable little boy who admired Yuya for his way of dueling, bug there... Something off about him, and, we could feel it. Alnd for once, the building up payed off like a train reck. His duel against Shin was the best in arc v, without a doubt. In it, his friendly person slowly falls off to reveal the insane and blood thirsty psychopath that he really was, trained by academia to invade and kill everyone in the xyz dimension. The animation, emotions passed, and characters here were... Beyond genius not only by yugioh standards, but by Anime standards in general. However he kinda faltered after that. Soon after his loss, he duels Yuya and starts to reconsider his ideals. Slowly he turns nice and that's it. His arc wasn't really emotional nor was it relaly focused on and appeared more bland than anything, as we didn't even got to see it in its entirety. After his flip in persona, he doesn't get much screentime either and sometimes gets replaced by Edo as the fusion user of the gang. – Shun was the best character in arc V, no question. He was badass ever since his introduction until the end, and played a big role until the end. As member of the resistence of the xyz dimension, he first held a grudge against every fusion summoner, even trying to attack Yuzu for it once. But soon he grows bonds with everyone and opens up more, ready to take down academia alongside his companions in a more reasonable way. He was even the only one to see through the absurdity that was the ending of this show, staying the most realistic until the end. However even he was a bit mistreated. He quickly became fodder to lose to show how strong a new character was, like against Crow, against Kaito, against Zarc, even against Sora in their rematch. And I think it toned his cool attitude a bit. But still, let's give credit where credit is due, he was amazing. Next up is T͟h͟e͟ Y͟u͟ g͟i͟r͟l͟s͟: – Yuzu was part of the main group at first,and even played the role of a secondary protagonist during the first arc. She had an arc to get better at dueling where she faced against Masumi to show how much she had improved, and had a lot of personal story with Yuya and Yuto. She was promising, and represented the chance of a finally well treated female lead. And then she got screwed. She lost to Dennis, got ridiculed acting as a damsel in distress againts Yuri, lost to Sergey and got captured, and became a damsel in distress until the end. That's right, she did not duel once, nor did she really appear much of the last 70 or so episodes of this show. She became a MacGuffin for the characters to rescue, nothing more than an object to make the plot advance. I'm sorry, but this was the most disappointing aspect of this story. – Serena was perhaps the better utilized one, however she, like Yuzu, didn't appear after the 70 episode mark as herself. The only relevance she had later on was by being controlled, which is a Gimmick I absolutely hate in fiction. As for Ruri and Rin? They are, and I weight my words, non existent. Okay, Rin was heavily characterized thanks to Yugo, and even though she did so while being possessed, she still managed to beat Yugo in the endgame... So fair enough, she didn't appear once before that but still. But Ruri didn't even have a character design until the 100 episode mark, after which she only appeared while being possessed, and that's it. The girl treatment in this show is terrible. They are the key to defeating Zarc, so you'd think they'd be at least a little bit respected at least, but the show preferred to use them as driving forces and ideas (being damsels in distress) than as actual characters, and I hate it deeply. But before we continue, a quick thought for all those characters forgotten by the show itself. – The LDS trio was one of the major moving forces to the main characters of the first arc. Yaiba learning Synchro summoning to Gongenzaka, Masumi being a rival and eventually good friend to Yuzu in the first arc of the series, and Hokuto being a kind of Rival to Yuya, and was a great comic relief with an incredible deck. Moreover, they all had great chemistry with the characters we knew and had an ever lasting conflict with shun for cruelly carding members of their school. And you know how they got treated? Hokuto got killed by Serena offscreen, And the two others got forgotten never to make a single appearance ever again. Man, this was. Really. Disappointing. – a lot of characters introduced in the Synchro arc were, like, Shinji was a cool character introduced that served as an ideological conflict to Yuya, preferring to care about the problems in his own dimension than of what was happening outside. But he and others from the Synchro dimensions like Chojiro are left behind, and same goes for the vilain. Jean-Michel Roget was the antagonist of the Synchro dimension, and he wasn't anything deep or even likable, in fact he was deeply hatable, and intentionally so. Most people will agree on the fact they hated this character, but that he played a great antagonistic force overall and were glad he was the vilain of this part. At the end of the arc, he is absorbed by a random dimension and is said to have appeared somewhere else, hyping up for an eventual return, return that obviously never happened. – most characters from the maiami championship, like Mieru, Yuu, and dozens of others, are either killed or forgotten. That's a lot. A lot from the xyz dimension too. T͟h͟e͟ l͟e͟g͟a͟c͟y͟ c͟h͟a͟r͟a͟c͟t͟e͟r͟s͟: I think I have expressed my disappointment and disdain in these quite a few times here already, but I think I gotta do it again. They introduced them as a way for older fans to get reinvested in the franchise, and surprisingly it worked, but that also meant the show was now only working because of nostalgia reasons and close to nothing more,so they had to make these guys as relevant as possible in order not to lose their newly acquired audiance. What's even worst is that they aren't even remotely similar, for the most part, to the characters they were based on and is therefore a very unbalanced reason for people to stay, a reason that could break at any moment. These characters ruined the show. – Jack and Crow were the only legitimately good,who made the show progress. Jack was introduced as a badass, Trashing Yuya's ideal and making him understand nothing about it was his, but both His father's ideal and duel style rather than his own. Plus, he had a very interesting story in the Synchro arc and had something no other legacy characters had: relevance. Even so, that didn't prevent him from replacing Yugo at the last moment in the duel against Sergey, a guy he had no reason for fighting other than "signers vs dark signers is nostalgic", and eventually replacing Yugo in the finals of the tournament which would have been great for both characters. Crow was just exactly the same as his 5D's counterpart, and he is quite literally the only character who can be proud of that. He was cool, even if he replaced Gongenzaka and Sawatari somewhat... Before he gets carded out of nowhere. But still, they were two very good characters that served the plot in their own way. – Edo was the top duelist of Academia, and he fell to the egao propaganda after losing to Yuya. He was fine, but he didn't need to be Edo nor did he need to exist at all. He wasn't even treated well despite his existed being shoved in our throats for no good reason. As for Asuka, she was there, then she wasn't, then she died. Moving on. – Kaito... Was introduced way too late to even feel like he deserved in this story. Since the beginning, when shun or Yuto talked about the xyz dimension, they were always a group of 3: Yuto, Shun and Ruri. Then they introduce Kaito and expect us to believe he was there since the beginning because "he's Kaito, and people love some Kaito". His existence only meant less screentime for actually relevant characters like Shun, and this doesn't work. He took the place of Yusho in the very expected Yusho vs Dennis duel hyped up for a very long time... When he didn't even know the first thing about Dennis as a person, and then he interrupted the EXTREMELY built up and awaited duel between Yugo and Yuri, and effectively made it terrible, making it one of the most disappointing duels there was. Then he fights Zarc, loses, and doesn't have anything more to do until the end. Nothing about him justified the first thing about his existence in this show. And lastly, T͟h͟e͟ Y͟u͟ b͟o͟y͟s͟: They're the driving force of this series, so you'd expect them to be at least well integrated, but... That's not really true either. Yuto was a good character, but he gets introduced in episode 8, and doesn't do much until he dies in episode 32 never to be Reborn for the rest of the show, Narrowing his appearances to short interactions in yuya's mind 50 episodes later onward. Yugo was a fun character, but he really does not get a lot. He doesn't have his built up duel against Sergey to avenge yuzu, he loses to Rin and fails to bring her back, his most important duel against Yuri is constantly interrupted and never really reaches the level it should have, then he dies and never returns. Yuri was an imposing and charismatic vilain, but we never really get to know why he's evil outside of "professor told me so". I think it would have been way more interesting to see his actual psychology behind, and to see if he's actually evil or not... And he becomes all nice and is forgiven by everyone at the end anyway so it doesn't even matter. And then... Comes Yuya. – Yuya was a great character until the ending came, being a very anxious and negative boy who forced himself to act joyful and full of excitement just to entertain like his father told him, but this also meant he had lost all idea of personal identity and of uniqueness. This made him go through intense period of depression and doubt, trying to get better. And in a world where four versions of him existed, you guess how hard it must have been. It fits in Arc V's messages and themes perfectly. And his slow decent into madness as he gradually lost control to Zarc was amazing, crazily entertaining. But then the ending happened, and he gets fused with the four other versions of himself and forgets about depression, wanting to forgive anyone because egao. And I'll repeat this to you: where is the originality here. what in this ending, makes Yuya "unique"? When he shares his body with four other versions of himself, where he continues to use the toxic goals his father ungulfed into his own existence, when he continues to use cards, dueling style and summoning conditions that aren't even his? Nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing would have been worse for his character than this ending the show gave us. His character is burnt to ashes, never to be completed and instead is waisted and thrown away for no reason at all. And even then, he is built on an idea of toxic positivity that I really don't agree with: to try to be happy and smile even when you are sad and going through hard time. This is extremely unhealthy, as sadness is very useful and you shouldn't try to bury your feelings under a fake smile. And the way he forcingly ingulfed his flawed ideology to others through the whole show... Made it hard for me to like him. – And... Zarc, the original version of them four. Zarc is the worst vilain in yugioh, no content. He was built up and showed in mystery for more than 60% of the show, appearing as a kind of Lovecraftian horror monster, driving all the yu boys to him and pulling the strings from behind. And then his backstory got revealed in an awful exposition moment. So basically, he used to be a good guy, pro dueling for fun, but the crowd wanted more violence. They cheered for him to hurt his opponents more, and it twisted his mind... So he fused with his four dragons, attempted to destroy the universe, blamed it on humans and got stopped by Reira. The fact he actually blames it on people is what makes him so terrible to me... If your mom told you to break a glass of water, would you burn the whole house down because he told you to be violent? If you do so, then you better not blame her for that. That's Zarc, and the show actually wants us to care, and even better, to feel bad for him. I won't, because he's hatable. He also has the worst presence as a vilain... He is terribly ugly, very standard and unoriginal in personality, and has the worst, most boring conclusion duel to any series. Then he gets trapped in the body of a baby, and the end, moving on. Berserk Yuya was a better antagonist than him... It's quite possibly the most disappointing turn of events in any yugioh shows ever. And this truly impacts the series... How can I care about a story centered entirely around a character and a story that I personally hate? ╰──➤⊱Conclusion: 3/10 Arc V is a show I desperately wanted to like, but I ultimately cannot. It is built around a story that doesn't make sense based on a character I hate, on an ideology I find to be wrong in all sense of the terms, on a story with awful pacing and a conclusion worst than anything I saw so far, and on characters that get disrespected through the whole show... It's an anime built around nostalgia, and it really prevents it from developing as it should. The more I think about it, the more I became disappointed in arc v and it's very promising introduction... And I feel very bad about that. In conclusion, I wanted to like this show, but it really isn't possible for me. Feel free to like it if you find elements to like in it... But I can't, and I promise you, I tried.