Yu☆Gi☆Oh! Zexal Second (Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal II)

After defeating a mysterious enemy, Yuuma Tsukumo, along with the help of Kaito Tenjou and Ryouga "Shark" Kamishiro, has thwarted the Barians' plans. However, Yuuma is still on a quest to retrieve the Number Cards to restore Astral's memories. The Seven Barian Emperors catch wind of Yuuma and Astral's endeavors and begin to collect the cards themselves to achieve their ultimate goal: destroying Astral's world in exchange for saving their own.

Though only five of the emperors are present, they unanimously decide on annihilating Astral and Yuuma once and for all. Elsewhere, with their newfound powers of ZEXAL, Astral and Yuuma work to eliminate the enemy force that threatens Earth and the rest of the universe.

Yu☆Gi☆Oh! Zexal Second unveils the mysteries and unpleasant surprises that lie in the wake of Yuuma's adversities. As Astral struggles to accept his past and the consequences it may have brought, will the gods continue to shower their fortune upon Yuuma on yet another perilous adventure?

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

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Prequel:	Yu☆Gi☆Oh! Zexal
Summary:	Yu☆Gi☆Oh! Zexal Second: Midokoro Tenkomori Special, Yu☆Gi☆Oh! Zexal Second: Iza! Saishuu Kessen e!! Special
Other:	Yu☆Gi☆Oh! Arc-V

Yamamoto, Shouma
Japanese

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Kuwabara, Satoshi

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Matsuoka, Hiroki

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Kodaira, Maki

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Habara, Kumiko

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Opening Theme

	1: "Orenai Heart (折れないハート)" by Hideaki Takatori (高取ヒデアキ) (eps 1-25)
	2: "Kagami no Dualism (鏡のデュアル・イズム)" by petit milady (Aoi Yuuki and Taketatsu Ayana) (eps 26-50)
	3: "Wonder Wings" by Diamond Yukai (ダイアモンド☆ユカイ) (eps 51-72)

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Ending Theme

	1: "Artist (アーティスト)" by Vistlip (eps 1-25)
	2: "GO WAY GO WAY" by FoZZtone (eps 26-50)
	3: "Challenge the GAME" by REDMAN (eps 51-72)
	4: "Masterpiece (マスターピース)" by mihimaru GT (eps 73)

Reviews

Mar 26, 2014

TheBlackCrow

Recommended

I'll get straight to the point, Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal II (subbed) is one of the best anime I have seen to date. With a top tier engaging story, detailed art that is stylistic yet still a homage to its predecessors former styles, and a truly lovable main cast that viewers will progressively get more attached towards, this second season reinforces the already good first season, and with it, genuinely breathes new life into this ever-changing franchise.

Story - 9
Revolving around the Barian's, Zexal II has arguably one of the eeriest and intriguing plots of the franchise to date. However, this does not come without flaws. ... Most find issues in the pacing and execution of this story, and complaints about it can be heard throughout fans of anime and Yu-Gi-Oh! alike. As the story progresses and the plot unravels you realize the series is a lot less predictable than anticipated, and instead, is actually presented quite well.
To put it into laymen's terms for readers of this review, think of Zexal I as Clannad, and Zexal II as the after-story. Simply put, it is essentially the pay off to the big build up that is Zexal's first season, and what a pay off it is.

Art - 9
The art is indeed "candy for the eyes" and furthermore is quite a "treat" to look at. Everything from the "Shonen-esk" characters to the background are well detailed and it results in an incredibly visually appealing animation style. The openings and endings are gorgeously pieced together and executed in such a remarkable fashion that they still remain some of my favorites. As mentioned before, the stylized dramatization, which is readily apparent to returning fans of the franchise, can seem off-putting at first, but rest assured as it serves to intensify suspenseful moments, create remember-able duels, and evidently be a stylistic take that is for the better.

Sound - 10
Zexal II added a completely new soundtrack that widens the large range they had originally, to an unfathomable degree. This, coupled with the appropriate use of Zexal I's OST, effectively puts a perspective on the growth of individual characters and to a larger degree, the change of Zexal II's overall tone. The soundtrack completely compliments every spectrum of mood in the series and is one of, if not the best, in the franchise to date.

Character - 10
This show is packed full of them. From the cameo occurrences of certain disliked characters, to disliked reoccurring ones, it's odd to see so much hate geared towards main and side characters alike. Here's why I think the characters are not just good, but great:
The show relies on a typical trope for Shōnen in that the protagonist starts off as a beginner and slowly but surely get's stronger. No problems there, it only adds to the experience as one notices Yuma not only developing as a character, but also getting better at playing the game. Additionally, they wrote in some of the greatest antagonists ever, which is more than enough reason to deal with certain characters that you inevitably detest, like the ever loved Tokunosuke. Jokes aside, this is no understatement, the characters are all well developed throughout the 73 episode, this makes even Tokunosuke tolerable to a certain degree.

Enjoyment - 10, Overall - 10
Admittedly, the first couple of episodes are quite formulaic and tedious, but as the show passes through its exposition, I began to find myself eagerly waiting on a weekly basis for the next episode as it was that enveloping as a show. If you're a fan of the franchise, I suggest you give it a hearty try, even If you dropped it before. If you're not a fan, I still suggest you give Zexal II a chance as its story is fantastic.

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Apr 27, 2014

Ambidex999

Mixed Feelings

Preliminary (66/73 eps)

Alright, here goes my first review. I never really felt the urge to do anything like this, but somehow, Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal seemed like a good show to give an opinion on.

First off, I have watched all the other Yu-Gi-Oh! series and right from the get go, I can safely say that Zexal is the worst of them all up to this point. The reason for this mostly lies within the other three series having been really, really great (in my opinion anyway), and Zexal simply hasn't been convincing enough to keep the high quality of the franchise going. It is not a completely terrible show, ... but it has some major flaws that take away from the enjoyment, which will be explained in a moment.

One should always start with the good traits. Since we're talking the second half of the series here, let's get right into the part that has improved the most from before: the story. Unlike before, Zexal now has an actual story beyond a happy-go-lucky Yuma randomly helping people after proclaiming they're his friends (although this particular trait of his hasn't exactly changed). It revolves around a group of people from the Barian World who serve as the new antagonists, as they take turns trying to duel Yuma and his friends into submission. While at first this only serves as an introduction to each seperate Barian, every one of them eventually gets their own back story. Explaining why this is so important would start spoiling things, so I'll keep it at that. The story is not not exactly the most interesting thing on the planet, but it's the kind of story you can expect from an anime like Yu-Gi-Oh!, which is fine.

Next up, the art is very decent. However, big parts of it are being so over-the-top that it drifts off into being plain ridiculous. Someone called Zexal the show of people with two-colored hairdo and they're completely right. Now, of course strange to ridiculous hairdo is not at all unheard of in the world of anime - especially not Yu-Gi-Oh! - but I feel like this show has taken things a step too far, art-wise. From the aforementioned hairdo to the general character design (Zexal in particular) to, yes, sometimes even the duel monsters. I'm not saying that things look bad or gross or anything like that, it's just, well, over the top. Just watch Yumas ace monster, Hope, attack with increasingly ridiculous sword slashes as it grows in power, along with increasingly ridiculous names for said attacks, and perhaps you'll realize how amazingly overdone everything is. Every new monster summon is accompanied by massive amounts of bling and fairy dust, and rarely does all of this actually match the greatness of the respective summoned monster. It's meant to be cool, and perhaps it is to the target audience (it is a shonen after all), but slightly older people might cringe at all the forced coolness. Still, once again, stuff looks very good in general, I might be taking things too seriously here, since everything written in this paragraph can pretty much be applied to all the other Yu-Gi-Oh! series as well.

On to the not-so-good stuff then. The music. Ergh.... I don't know man. Rarely have I listened to a soundtrack as unmemorable as Zexal's. Of course, musical taste is one of the most individual things in the world, and it's not like the tracks are completely terrible. Surely the people involved must have put a lot of effort into creating them, but for some reason, none of the opening or ending songs really clicked. I found myself constantly skipping them while watching this series, there was literally no joy involved in listening to them. The music playing during the episodes is also so unmemorable that I can honestly not even remember a single one of them at this point, whereas I could play half of the tracks from 5D's on a bag pipe. Backwards. Underwater. It is just such a huge letdown after the huge explosion of awesomeness that was the 5D's soundtrack.

Moving right along, we have the characters. And to be fair, things have really improved here compared to the first half of Zexal. We get a new cast of antagonists who get developed in time for them to actually matter to the plot in general. We also get to see some of the more superfluous characters eventually removed, while other, memorable characters, like the Tron Bros., make a (really small) comeback. What has not changed however, is our main character, Tsukumo "Let's be friends" Yuma. He is slightly less of a happy-go-lucky doofus here, as the situations he constantly finds himself in don't leave room for it. However, he still has this stunningly annoying habit of forcibly befriending people who never, ever asked for it. Even people he should rationally hate or at least dislike, he simply cannot leave behind. Also, he still uses his tired, lame-ass "Kattobingu" shtick to the point where you actually want to know what the heck that's even supposed to mean.

Yu-Gi-Oh! has always been a show revolving around the characters forging bonds of friendship between each other through dueling, and eventually using those bonds in order to overcome the odds and beat whatever evil person dares threaten their world. Zexal on the other hand has Yuma and his cast of pre-existing friends (who were quickly discarded as being the most annoying bunch of people to ever cheer on a duelist), which he is constantly trying to expand by boldly proclaiming that, no matter who he is dueling, they're his friends. Even the bad guys. ESPECIALLY the bad guys. He couldn't possibly let Tron die, even after all the crap he's put Yuma and his friends through. He couldn't help but try to save Dr. Faker. Heck, even before that, he befriended Shark and Kaito basically against their will, just by repeating over and over that they're his friends until they finally gave in. That is not how friendships come into being at all. That is not what forging bonds between people is like. All this does is make the interaction between Yuma and his "friends" seem completely unnatural and it ultimately takes away from the enjoyment of the anime.

Right from the start, Zexal has always had this big problem known as an acute lack of likeable characters. Some of them, who were initially pretty cool (Shark, Kaito most prominently) have been watered down after forcibly becoming Yumas "friends". Most of the others were absolutely annoying from the beginning, without any signs of change ahead. The second half of Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal of course adds new characters, like the aforementioned Barians. Whether you're going to like them or not is entirely up to you. Personally, I have found a liking to one specific character appearing in this second half of the series, who I'm obviously not going to write about, since, you know, no spoilers and stuff. Suffice it to say, he takes the series into a different direction all on his own and, by doing that, makes watching it so much more enjoyable.

Speaking of enjoyment, here's our next category to cover. Yu-Gi-Oh! has always and will always revolve around the card game, which of course is no different for Zexal. While the duels themselves are generally enjoyable, there are certain things that bother me here. Once again, these things aren't going to be anything new, as they've all happened in previous Yu-Gi-Oh!s, it's just the degree to which Zexal applies them that makes it stupid. Yeah, I feel like the degree is where Zexal went wrong on so many ends.

What I am talking about here is the general course of the duels. Remember the old times, when people would start summoning weak monsters at the start of a duel, to eventually tribute summon for something stronger or do whatever the heck else they could think of? You do? Well, good, because all of that is gone now. In what could possibly be an attempt to shorten the anime as a whole, the duelists _always_ summon their ace monster in their first, or at most their second turn. No matter how ridiculous the summoning conditions are, they just keep pulling stunningly overpowered cards out of their arses, to the point where it makes the actual card game look balanced. People who don't actually play the card game may not question any of this, but real-life players will wish that some of these cards never, ever see the light of day.

The point about all of this is, that there's virtually no build-up during the duels. People get dueling and instantly whip out their strongest monsters, after which it's just a matter of who has the more broken effects or spells/traps. It doesn't result in a character winning because of their willpower or their endurance or skill, but rather because they're using cheap card effects. It's almost as bad as in the original series, where people would just make up rules on the spot to the point where you could reasonably accuse them of cheating. Only change here is that this time, the players are actually sticking to the rules while using their ridiculous effects. Winning a duel here has virtually nothing to do with determination or willpower, it's just cheap effects stacked on top of each other, and it's mind-boggling to watch.

With all that being said, I am probably being too harsh on the show as a whole. It is honestly not as horrible as it might sound during parts of this review, and if you've accepted some of the more strange parts of previous Yu-Gi-Oh!s (like the style of certain characters and the way the duels go), Zexal might ultimately not be that bad of a watch. Fans of the franchise will most likely have their share of fun with this, and even though you're not exactly going to be glued to the edge of your seat, Zexal is sure to keep you checking in every once in a while.

Total Score: 6/10

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Sep 29, 2015

ap1001

Not Recommended

Yugioh series review - zexal

Oh boy, Zexal, if there is one series in the Yu-gi-oh franchise that nearly everyone love to rip on or mock it is Zexal. And after completing it and looking back, it was highly understandable.

I think the best phrase to describe Zexal was, it was a average kid show (better budgeted than most), but sadly in the entirety of the Yu-gi-oh franchise that just isn't good enough.

Story - 5
Many say that Astral and Yuma are a rehash of Atem and Yugi (the pro and the noob), and that is completely true, with the magic trinket, the final duel and the ...

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