Yu☆Gi☆Oh! Arc-V

My last review of the anime was a fairly impressed 8/10, back when 47 episodes had been released. After 40 more episodes have been released though, I have to sadly admit that I was wrong and I had misjudged it.
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10/10

To say that Arc V skyrocketed the game's sales after the failure of Zexal would be an understatement. While every yugioh series until now focused on its own mechanic (rituals for original, fusions for gx, synchros for 5ds and exceeds for zexal), Arc V adds its own mechanic, Pendulums, but pays equal attention to ALL the others as well. Quite honestly I never imagined a day ... would come when I could play a deck that rituals/synchros/fuses/xyzes and possibly pendulums at the same time and NOT have balance issues with it. If you had told me something like that back when Zexal came out I would have called you a fool, since most decks back then couldn't even pull of a combination of TWO of these at the same time, let alone all of them together. But now here we are, in a golden, grand age for the game that rewards skilled players with incredible show-offing, that has successfully made me cut down on my food expenses to "barely surviving" so I could afford more cards. Kudos Konami.

But enough about the actual game. The anime takes place at first in Miami City (yes, the ACTUAL Miami, there are even black people in it) and later goes all over the place (literally). Our protagonist, Sakaki Yuya, is the son of the famous missing enternetainer Sakaki Yusho, and tries to become a professional entertainer duelist himself. As an entertainer duelist, he sees it his job and personal philosophy to bring smiles to everyone through his dueling, including the audience and his opponents. He is by all means a pacifist, and therefore a tragic figure in a world where dimensions collide, misusing the duel monsters game that Yuya loves as a weapon. Oh yeah, spoilers.

SPOILERS

And really, that's where the great writing of Arc V truly shines. The same game that Yuya wants to use as a means to bring happiness, is instead continuously used to bring pain and misery and loss of human life, which continuously sends the "clownish" Yuya to depression (he has gone through a lot of those already and we're not nearly halfway through the anime). To bring an end to conflict, Yuya is constantly forced to take part in the conflict himself, LITERALLY becoming consumed by his inner demons as the mayhem continues to intensify.

Apart from Yuya there are plenty of other characters, including the alternate versions of himself and his potential girlfriend Suzu, one pair from each dimension, the rest of the Lancers the "good mastermind" Akaba Reiji has gathered (imagine Kaiba from season one with Urahara leadership and manipulation qualities, simply epic), and then there are the various individuals from the other dimensions, my favourite of which is Sora. In general the character roster in ARC V is pretty impressive, with fairly diverse characters whose loyalties aren't always where they're supposed to be, and who can all get consumed by their own personal conflicts, burdening their individual missions. All in all, great writing for EVERYONE. Yes, I mean EVERYONE. Not just the protagonist and his nymphomaniac girlfriend. EVERYONE.

Now there are some minor issues I have with Arc V, and I mean other than spending too much money on the game. First, wanting to place equal power and interest in the girls to attract female audience, the writers have Yuzu dash off at the start of the series, away from the rest of the cast, essentially playing in her own anime as she goofs off/flirts with Yuya's alter egos from various worlds. It can even be said that she has a reverse harem: The pacifist emo one, the angry driven vengeful one, the goofy cool funny one and even the freaking YANDERE one. Now, I have no problem with the female claiming her own harem, but there does need to be someone for the protagonist to save like a princess... And that someone ended up being Sora, a 10 year old BOY. In fact, in light of Yuzu never being near him, the depressed clown of a protagonist does have a habit of gathering around him and "protecting" waaaaaay underage boys, with Sora obviously being the favourite, which at times raises a few eyebrows.

But that's all water under the bridge. As usual, Yugioh has perfected the art of doing character development through the duels themselves and the cards played in them, and by God, have they succeeded in Arc V. Even ignoring Yuya (whose main deck basically consists of a circus and fun and games when he's trying to be a pacifist and rampaging dragons when he goes all berserk), the vast majority of the characters' decks reflect their personalities, with my favourite, again, being Sora. His deck consists of the cutesy Fluffals that are basically stuffed animals, which reflect the cute kid he was pretending to be at the start of the series. He then combines these cute stuffed animals with saws, scissors, chains etc etc through fusion, creating terrifying 5 Nights at Freddie's monstrosities that reflect the true, twisted-self he was hiding beneath the cute bravado. And again of course, that's just an example. The vast majority of the characters work like that, and it's doing the series WONDERS.

Last but certainly not least, Arc V is doing a FANTASTIC job technically, with very good art, well chosen camera angles, perfectly expressioned faces, and of course, epic sound. In fact the sound department is another of Arc V's highlights, with Yuya's beautifully painful screams, Reiji's wonderfully arrogant voice, Serena's cute tomboyish military-talk (among many, many others) being accompanied by a soundtrack that easily rivals 5ds', which will always get your blood bumping and ready for a duel.

All in all: A fantastic job. First time in a while you get the feeling Konami hired actual script writers instead of marketing advisers and it really shows. Excellent at everything, my only regret is that between arc V and Steam Sales, I will have to survive on campus food for a while (ew).

PROS:
-Everything.

Cons:
-...I guess the slightly yaoish feel when Yuya is near boys, if you're annoyed by that sort of thing.
-HOW?! HOW DID I SPEND SO MUCH MONEY...?!

(This will be my first so bear with me. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°))

Story: 8
The series start really slow at first, it made me wan't to drop the anime for the first 6 episodes, but as the series goes deeper, the pacing gets better. The story is pretty unique for the Yu-Gi-Oh! shows as Yuya wants to entertain people by dueling, just like how was his father. It also showed all of the real life summons (Fusion, XYZ, and Synchro) which was really cool, because the other shows just focused on one (because then, every deck in the show would be focused to do the featured ... summon). It also introduced a new type of summon, the Pendulum Summon.

Art: 7
It is great, but there are inconsistencies with the animations sometimes.

Sound: 9
The sound duels are getting better and better, which is great. Wonderful OP/EDs too that goes with the theme of the anime.

Character: 8
Well, there are interesting ones and there aren't, Yuya is a pretty decent character too, a pacifist who deeply cares for his friends.

Enjoyment: 10
The duels are well-scripted, which is the most enjoyable thing in the show. The art and sounds goes well with each other too, for more epicness.

Overall: 9
This show is the best among the Yu-Gi-Oh! shows that ever aired in my opinion.

I was about to drop the Yu-Gi-Oh anime series with Zexal. Seriously.
But Arc-V brought me back.
As a real life YGO player and an anime fan, I can say that this series satisfied me.

Story 7/10: The story is about a young boy named Yuya Sakaki trying to become as great as his father once was. It's pretty standard for a plot, but the way they developed it while including the three main card mechanic (Fusion/Synchro/XYZ) along with the new Pendulum Summon was good. It starts a bit slow and might not avoid confusion sometimes (even though it might just be intended).

Art 8/10: The animation ... is as good as Zexal's, maybe better. It is very fluid when some boss monsters are summoned.

Character 8/10: Yuya's dream is to become a professional entertainment duelist. This time around, we actually have a character with a set goal in mind, and somewhat better dueling skills (compared to Yuma). He had a few good development episodes as well. Other characters such as Yuzu and Shun were pretty nice as well, Yuzu also being a reminiscent of Akiza from 5D's as we actually got to see her duel a few times. In general, the characters seem less forced.

Enjoyment 9/10: While other series focused on their own main summoning ways (Fusion/Synchro/XYZ), this one brings all of them together, which somewhat makes me nostalgic (I'm a synchro player in real life, so I feel pumped every time I see a synchro summon in the anime).

Overall 8/10: This is Zexal done right. Nuff said.

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. It ... raise 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.

Extremely minor spoilers ahead that really only increase the intrigue one might have in the series----->
This is my first review: Initially, I was just writing a comment on my anime list for Arc-V but it ended up being so long that I decided I might as well post it here as well. Be gentle :)
This was the Yu-Gi-Oh Arc thus far with the most story and depth of characters. The first 50 episodes or so are reminiscent of previous Yu-Gi-Oh seasons, introducing mechanics such as the new Pendulum summoning method, and contains classic scenarios like duel tournaments. Even then, the inter-dimensional aspects of the story ... still shine through the first 50 episodes, providing cryptic twists, betrayals and mysteries to be continued through the following Synchro, Xyz and Fusion dimensions. Unfortunately, the characters from previous seasons that do make reappearances in their respective dimension do not retain their memories from the events in the previous seasons, they still have the same personalities and the same decks, save the added pendulum cards or slight alterations. On top of the exciting story and likable characters, the show, unlike its predecessors focuses on more aspects of a duel than just introducing more and more examples of the season's highlighted summoning method. (I'm looking at you Zexal, where every battle was just a competition to see who could summon the biggest Xyz monster, from regular Xyz to rank up Xyz to chaos Xyz it gets tiring you know.) Another likable feature in Arc-V is that the main character (Yuya), is not tied down by one or two rivals. In shows like Zexal, the MC's rivals were well known and set and you could obviously tell which future battles would occur. In 5Ds, Yusei's rival was obviously and predictably Jack Atlas for the first 50 episodes and then shifted towards the leader of the evil duelers in that show, which provided very obvious storytelling and guiding. In Arc-V, Yuya ends up fighting the largest variety of opponents to date, some friends, some foes, some even friend turned foe. The end result of Arc-V is not even remotely possible to accurately guess until dozens of episodes have been watched and allows for suspenseful watching, unsure of the future of the series. Most of all, Arc-V focuses on the relationship between Yuya and his monsters, his amazing cast of friends and supporters, and his ideal to duel like his father does, with a smile.

At first with Zexal letdown I'm a little skeptical about this series. How boy it manage to surpass my expectation in every possible way.

Story - 9/10

As per YGO tradition the story start slow with first few episode focusing on character introduction and explaining new game mechanic Pendulum Summon. But over time the series took interesting turn of event and thing become more interesting. Lot of thing that seems to be insignificant at first turned into important foreshadowing for future episode.

Character - 10/10

This is the best part of Arc-V. Character are very dynamic and get great development. Usually female character is useless but not here. Yuzu ... is great duelist and she advance the plot further that many joking she is the real protagonist of the series. Many character that look like going to be one shot duelist give impact for plot later on.

Duel Choreography - 8.5/10

Unlike previous series Konami give a curve ball here. Instead of focusing only on new summoning mechanic Konami bring back many Extra Deck summon and not just that but it is also important plot point. Too bad that Ritual Summon didn't get focused here (so far). Duel here is also very meta like how real life duel will be. There is still downside though in form of Action Card that scattered on the field when Action Duel start.

Enjoyment - 10/10

Of course as long time YGO fan I'm enjoying this very much. There are many improvement here and there from previous series. Not only anime but TCG & OCG also get positive impact from the series.

Overall - 9.5/10

This is great series for YGO fans. Complex character and plot along with likable duel. Truly the best from franchise.

Dont watch this anime. I am a huge yugioh fan, ive seen every series, read every manga, play the card game, and by god, this is ....just the worst.

I will give that some episodes actually have some good animation, and on the whole i did like the music in this series, but thats the best thing i can say about it.

So lets start with the story. The first arc is not great, however in a stereotypical yugioh way. I mean, GX and Zexal didnt have strong starts either, right? In fact I would say Arc-V's start is better than Zexal's.It has your standard introducing characters ... through pretty low stakes duels, and the show introduces a pretty neat concept. Using all the summoning methods. Now, this is a brilliant idea, and theoretically should make the duels in the series very interesting. However the duels in this series are by far the worst, and thats because of the other dueling gimmick they introduced. Action Cards. Granted, in the first arc, action cards werent that bad. They had varying effects and hell there were sometimes action traps that actually hurt you. So well it did provide a convenient excuse for the good guy of the episode to get out of a jam, it wasnt that bad. More on that later.The plot of the first season gradually builds up into what would become the premise of the whole series. There are 4 dimensions that are at war with each other. Sounds interesting doesnt it. They proceed to introduce a few characters from each dimension who make very cool introductions, and then move on to the second arc, which involves them going into one of those other dimensions.

Now, here is where you start to see the signs of the show getting bad. The first dozen or so episodes in this arc are a complete stall for time with no real plot development.They introduce some more characters and include some fanservicey ones in order to draw in those 5Ds fans. Now having characters from 5Ds show up would be quite cool...if they were actually them. These are jsut characters with the same names and designs however, the Jack you meet isnt the one who fought the dark signers with yusei. its someone completely different. But back to the actual plot. Now youd think that , with interdimensional war happening, things would be pretty intense right? Nope! Most of this arc is taken up by a very slow tournament arc, that ends up doing nothing to help the cause of the heroes or the villains.Oh and all those cool characters who you wanted to see interact and develop with each other? Too bad, theyre locked in their rooms for most of hte arc.However there was a couple good episodes towards the end of this arc that really hyped up the overarching mysteries and seemed to really be leading somewhere, so i continued. Oh and the villain of this arc was a complete pushover who was so incompetent im surprised he managed to get his evil plan as far as he did.

Now the third arc. Where it starts to get really terrible. So the cast gets separated again, jsut like at the start of the second arc! And of course most of the focus goes to the less interesting of the cast. They also introduce two GX legacy characters, who , if you love GX like i do are just....sad to watch in this series. They never get a proper win and , in fact, do more harm than good. This is where the series starts pushing the "smile" message way too hard. In a situation dealing with people living in a war zone and have gone through essentially genocide, and a group doing the genociding who believe that what they are doing is for the best, the solution is to have a really fun duel to solve it. And it works. All the problems there literally go away because of that.

The fourth and final arc. What a mess. They finally give resolution to the mystery arc thats been building up and is very,very interesting in concept. However it is executed in the worst way possible. Its also around this time Action cards become unbearable. By this point you only see 3 different action cards.Evasion:negates an attack, Miracle:monster isnt destroyed and No Action:cancel another action card. Every . Single . Time. Well, now since theyve bothered hyping up these action cards as the tools of the main heroes so often, surely they will be useful in defeating the big bad? No. The big bad prevents action cards from being used at all, which was nice to not have that annoyance for a few episodes but by god it made it so pointless. Now the duel against the big bad...just,so,so awful. He just defeats all of the cast and then an insanely minor character shows up with the mother of all deus ex machinas and defeats him in one turn. The most unsatisfying final villain defeat ive ever seen in anime. They then spend the remaining 8 episodes getting a baby to smile. Not a joke, thats actually what happens and its as stupid as it sounds.

Now on to the characters. The main character, Yuya, is insufferable. He starts off just eh, but with lots of room for development.However, he never actually develops. I would even argue he regresses. In a show that centered itself around a very serious conflict, youd think he would develop out of his naivete a little bit, or maybe not cling onto his childish ideals so hard. Hell ,even just have a few episodes where he gives up on them. But nope, if anything ,his stance on "bring smiles through dueling" only gets stronger every episode, and he goes around sequentially making everyone believe in it too.He learns nothing throughout the entire show, he doesnt even become a better duelist, he jsut gets more and more situational cards, which he wouldnt even need if he just played his deck well.

The main female characters. So the main female character at the start is Yuzu and she starts it off pretty well, she gets a win against Yuya and actually does get some development. Then she gets kidnapped at the end of the arc and spends the rest of the show as a damsel in distress. Well, she does have about 7 episodes where she isnt lol. However, then they introduce Serena! Serena starts off even better than Yuzu and also gets some really good development. However after the second arc, she gets captured and also becomes a plot device. The other two girls, Rin and Ruri, are kidnapped before the show even starts and generally do nothing.

Other characters. while a lot fo them start off strong and get a good 2 or 3 episodes focused on them, theyre generally dropped off and just spout the same smile rhetoric as Yuya, dont get their arcs resolved, or both! Mostly both. Hell 6 of them end up dead at the end of the show and nobody really makes that much of a mention of it and they all act like its a happy ending.

Villains. arc v only really has 4 villains, and im going to go through them all, so this section will be a bit spoilery.

Roger:Huge idiot. His entire , very flawed, plan is to kidnap Reiji in order to use it as leverage to become more powerful than Reiji's father. However the audience already knows this is a futile endeavor as Shun tried this very early on , and it was made clear that Reiji's father didnt give a fuck about him.His dueling skills are also atrocious. He wouldve lost to two minor characters if it werent for this ridiculous system he set up where he got to try again and again if he lost.

Leo:what a joke. This guy is built up as the villain for most of the series, and he is just an insane idiot. He had every single opportunity to stop the heroes from winning, and to succeed, but he makes the stupidest decisions possible. He nearly gets defeated by Yuya and Reiji and only doesnt lose because the duel gets stopped. Then he goes on to duel against the real big bad of the series, and loses in one turn. he doesnt even get to play a card.

Zarc: The real big bad. This is where lots of spoilers come in. So hes the combined "original" form of Yuya, Yuto,Yugo and Yuri. Sounds cool in concept. Having someone with aspects of each of them would be interesting. However hes just an omnicidal maniac who stomps everyone he duels, until he gets defeated by a huge deus ex machina.

Yuri:The only actually good villain. He was fun to watch, had an interesting deck, and was all around a troll. Sadly he was heavily underused.

The duels themselves were just...so boring. Even putting aside action cards, no real interesting strategies were used, and everything just went on the ol' "bring out ace monster, sit on it until you win". The mosnter designs were not very good.The only deck i can say has interesting designs is Shun's.they were either waaaay too "cute" and childish,or were weird mashes of stuff together.

So, to recap, dont watch this anime.

So far 18 episode in and I am thoroughly enjoying this series of Yugioh, Arc-V has a very interesting story created through a variety of mysterious characters. I hope we will get to see more of the currently mysterious characters such as the user of the Rank 4 XYZ dark rebellion Dragon, and another rank 4 XYZ monster has been confirmed but little is known about it and that's very interesting.

This series starts slow, but now we are getting to see more interesting duels and duellists so there should be plenty to look forward too in this series. For anyone who hasn't seen this ... series but is a fan of the Yugioh series I would say at least give this series a chance, I know Pendulum summoning is not liked by everyone but the supporting characters make up for the Yuya's repeated summoning method. (Gongenzaka my favourite for his passionate reluctance to use any spells or traps, Love that guy= Episodes 10-12 I think was a fantastic duel from him)

I also enjoy the main female character, she actually Duels which is a Nice change from Tori in Zexal but she isn't bad ass like Akiza and Alexis, Yuzuki tries, she isn't great but I still love her style.

I don't know if anyone would enjoy this series if they are not already familiar with the Yugioh series, I guess you could try it but it starts slow so it is difficult to get into. over time the plot becomes more interesting you can give it a go if you want.

Personally I found Zexal 2 to be my favourite series and 5Ds was a close second.

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 one ... at 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.

Story 10
Art 8
Sound 8
Character 10
Enjoyment 10
Overall 9.5 out of 10.

My first review here, so I apologize if the set up is not to your liking. However, I thought that a lot more people needed to give this anime a try, especially since many people have given up on the series. If you want to know, there is a brief comparison of this and the other yugioh series down near the bottom. It explains each of their weaknesses, and how Arc V has overcome them.

Going to start with the overall rating, which you can use as a quick review. So, overall, despite the lower art and ... sound values, this series gets a 10 out of 10. The story subtly introduces important plot points from very early on, and brings everything together in a timely and well thought out manner. The art was amazing for yugioh, good for anime. Sound: it had some catchy tunes, and was a bit better than a lot of anime, but other than the super catchy ones, was pretty average. Enjoyment: it kept me hooked and on the edge of my seat. Actually still is, and I can't wait to see more!

Next: You probably want to know about the new dueling gimmicks, and if they are stupid or not. Well I can tell you that they aren't, although you will probably think so at first. With the invention of "real solid vision", the fields and the monsters become real when playing the game(think of duels of darkness). Spread across these fields are weapons called "action cards" which are basically quick play spell cards that you don't have to draw to get. However, you have to find the action cards first(which can be hard at times), and even then you can only have one in your hand at a time. Action cards make the duels a lot more interesting, because characters will move around on the field(sometimes with the aid of their monsters), looking for these cards, and characters other than the main character can and will use them. Because the monsters and the field are real, Dueling has evolved more into the show business side of entertainment, unlike the rest of the series. So characters will often legitimately be in the spotlight, and they always do their best to put on a good show. Which is why it seems a little stupid at first (kinda like "omg why are you saying cheesy stuff like that") but once you realize that they are in show business, you stop feeling that it's stupid, realize it makes more sense than the rest of the series, and then might(like me) find the old style duels a little more boring(although I still love them)

Alright, so first off, the story. Now, at the time of writing this, they have released 64 episodes, 63 of which I have seen(the 64th episode wasn't subbed when I had the chance to watch it). I really, really don't want to give the plot away, since that is half the fun, but a quick one sentence summary is: it starts off happy and kinda silly, with deeper plot points introduced early on, and as those plot points are revealed, the story progressively gets darker and edgier. Not too dark though-this series does a wonderful job of balancing the happy and darker episodes. It never really goes too far for you in either direction, and they never have either the dark or the happy/funny scenes come completely out of nowhere. Oh and when I said plot points are introduced early on-they hint at some things as early as episode 2, and most of the major plot points are hinted at by episode 20, although they aren't really elaborated on until about the 30's.

If there were any flaws it might have to be that the story starts out a little slow. However, the story gains speed quickly, and when everything starts going down, it goes down fast. At some point you are like "all this happened in 10 episodes??" or "wow things are a lot different now". But not different in a bad way.

Anyway, I am a sucker for the stories which have a lot of plot introduced seemingly randomly, or introduce plot without you realizing it, and then piece it together for you and make you go "oh! Wow! So that's why....". And this series does that well. You can tell that they had planned everything out from the beginning, and that really makes the story shine.

Next we have the art. It's really good for Yugioh standards (especially the pendulum summons), but the currently running anime it's about average. So it gets a 7. Although the art and animation have places where they really since, you can sometimes pinpoint episodes where the art is of lesser quality(although it usually means they saved their budget for the next episode), and they have a few stock clips, like all yugioh series. Although they try their best to change up the stock clips(sometimes changing what characters are saying when they use an extra deck related summon).

Sound. It got an 8 ‘cause even though it has a few tracks that are really catchy and I notice(especially the first opening and the 3rd ending theme), most of the time I don't notice the sound. Which is perfectly fine, since you don't and the sound to detract from the series, and I didn't notice any unfitting out background music I didn't like, it's just not too outstanding from most of the other anime I have watched. Still, that first opening is really, really catchy. So is some of the background music...

Character gets a perfect 10 out of 10. Although there is one character hated by the fandom(Futoshi, the "shivers" kid), he ends up growing on you a little, gets pretty good character development, and has a great deck. Besides him, I have found all of the other characters to be really likeable, and most characters(even characters introduced for only an episode) get some kind of background and/or character development. What really made me happy though is that there are few one-time characters/enemies, and many of them come back to be important characters later, getting character development in the process. Of course, there are still a few one-time only characters, but they choose well. And I have got to admit, while I didn't necessarily like all of the one-time characters, they are all memorable. Which is good. And the main group gets so much character development, it's almost like season 3 of gx-but longer.

Enjoyment is a perfect 10 out of 10. It drew me in from the start and keeps me wanting more. There were 2 nights I could hardly sleep I was so excited to watch the next episode. It has great rewatch value too- after you catch up, you can go back to watch from the beginning, and notice a lot of the subtle hints towards the overall direction of the plot.


So if you want to know how this compares to the other Yugioh anime(from what I have seen and heard about them), for me it goes:

Arc V > Gx/5ds > Original > Zexal

GX was bad to start with, but got wayy better. It also kept characters and locations from the original series. The duel school thing was kinda stupid, but totally something Kaiba would do so...
5ds started off really good(and the motorcycle thing was actually really cool and not overused), but ended up with the weaker seasons last. Also brought in Syncro summoning, and only mentioned fusion summoning once. And acted like the other characters never existed, except in the movie. Although all the characters would still be alive....Seemingly has no normal schools.
Original was good, although the duels could get really long. Some of the characters were pretty unlikeable too.
Zexal is okay, although the main character is pretty unlikeable. Same issues as far as 5ds goes with not bringing back characters or other summoning methods. Instead focuses only on XYZ summoning. Seemingly has no normal schools.

Arc V: made duels a lot more interesting and entertaining( I thought it was stupid at first, but it entertainment duels are really entertaining. And not as stupid as they seem. Especially when you consider that dueling is entertainment anyway, so it actually makes more sense). They actually go to real school for the first time since the original series, and the "duel school" is really just a cram school/after school thing. Much more believable. They also bring back all the summoning methods, and a few characters from other series, and make them important. In fact, the characters brought back are more important in arc v than the brought back characters in GX(although that wasn't hard). Actually, arc v makes everything more believable....and they act more realistically too. For example, since they have "real solid vision" they can move around the field, so at one point they use the solid monsters to run away, and don't bother slowing themselves down with a duel. Also even when they do duel, when they get into a really dangerous situation, sometimes they try and run away. Which is what real people would do. And also what no one ever seemed to do in the other series.

This Reivew will contain no SPOILERS.
English isn't my main language, but i will do my best to avoid any mistakes.
note that this is my first review.
so let's Start:
When we Talk About Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V we will be talking about the fifth Season of the Yu-Gi-Oh! Series.
Story: 9
The story talks about Yuya Sakaki who wants to be an entertainment duelist just like his father after "Action Duels" Spreaded in the City.
the story might be boring at the start of the anime but it will get updated and summoning methods from the previous series will be used and that's exactly what will make it fun to watch with ... some mysteries. i'm Sure that alot of people dropped this anime because of its boring and aimless/childish story.
i recomment everyone, Specially the people who liked Zexal and the previous seasons to watch this show to THE END. it really will shock you how the story will develop.
Art: 9
yup, it's great.
Sound: 8
The Soundtracks are really great! and they're making the duels more fun!
the OP/ED's are good too.
Characters: 7
here, you will see alot of different characters. and of course you will like some and hate some. for me i didn't like the protagonist "Yuya Sakaki" and some guys from LDS like Sawatari Shingo but there are alot of other characters to like.
Enjoyment: 10
i Really Enjoy watching this show. as a real life duelist i really enjoy those duels!
Overall: 9
it's just great. at the start of the show i didn't really like it but i gave it a chance and kept watching instead of thinking that it's bad and childish. and i hope that everyone gives this a show a TRY.
because it's not bad as it looks.
and Finally, This is my personal opinion about this show.
and in the end "GIVE THIS SHOW A CHANCE"

AWESOME AGAIN, YUGIOH ANIME! *Mild basic unavoidable spoilers from ep1 below~
We've finally come out of the dark ages of Pokemon BestWishes and Yugioh Zexal (the latter of which they claim is pronounced "Zearu" but that's just BS)
and here we are with great stuff like Pokemon XY&Z and YUGIOH ARC V !!!(pronounced arc-five for some reason,but whatever, it's great!)
But we're talking about Yugioh Arc-V's amazing comeback, so let's go into depth!~~ I'm only putting overall rating details for now-other stuff will come with the later show progression
----
Overall 9/10:
I was one of the many fans that was about to drop the Yugioh anime series for ... good (and thus the new cards) thanks to the several-steps-down-from-epic-series that Zexal anime was, but Arc-V came out and I saw Yuya's design and thought "hey look we got a yugioh protagonist who has good looking hair and a gravity-defying jacket again!"
and then I also thought
"Ok, I'll give ya one more chance Konami, but if this sucks too I'm shaving myself bald and going to train as a Himalayan monk and forget about the material world" so then I endured about 20+ initial episodes on and off but Arc-V didn't strike me as anything special, in fact it only felt like a slightly better Zexal (being the same Studio Gallop). But then it started to show promise. Akaba Reiji (the 'Kaiba' rival counterposition of Yuya) showed me that there were unusual things about the world of Arc-V, and other mysterious people who looked like Yuya started to appear and then it was LIke WHAT WE HAVE DIFFERENT REALITIES. Stuff like that. Point is, it started to get good, we cast off several characters that weren't gonna be important early on in the show and made for a new season (you know it's good when the third opening theme is just that awesome)
and by season 3 of Arc-V, it was guranteed Arc-V was on the path to glory in both its merch sales and anime tv ratings!
This is in a way Zexal done right. But it's injustice to compare to Zexal. Arc-V is up there in the high leagues with 5D's in performance and loveable characters (and SOME FAMILIAR CHARACTERS FOR OLDER FANS Yes but you have to watch past season 3 for that great fanservice explosion)

Looking back, and reflecting on Yuya's 'smile' which he uses to hide his weakness of being depressed all the time from his Father's disappearance, it's a pretty big step up in reality for Yugioh! series with characters! Or rather just a step back up to the high level playing field that I thought ended
for good with 5D's series as the peak (not the dub crap, no one watches that)

Very real ptsd if I say so myself; tho admittedly I can only appreciate it now that I've gotten hooked back onto Yugioh series again.
And there goes my wallet and all the money in it as I buy all those cards again....
I'll update review again when the series airing is over (plz don't end)

Yu-Gi-Oh! Arc-V is the fifth installment in the Yu-Gi-Oh! franchise, following Yu-Gi-Oh! ZeXal, and notably stands out to me as being the first time since GX Konami have actually done it right. This isn't a review of 5Ds or ZeXal, so I'll keep it brief, but I feel that unlike 5Ds, the characters are actually interesting and human, and unlike ZeXal, more than five of them actually stand out. Also, Arc-V has finally stopped with the hyper-promoting of new game mechanics. Yes, Pendulum summoning, which is very cool, is emphasised, but Synchros, Xyz and Fusion all make a return to the stage. Yes, it is ... a tool to sell more cards, but they're really catering to the anime fans this time around.

Story: 7 - Now, the plot is in its infancy, but from what I've seen of it, it's very interesting. There have already been a few twists at this early point, and I'm enjoying the build-up to what I'm guessing will be the final battle. There isn't much to comment on here, but the mystery of Yusho Sakaki's disappearance is definitely a nice hook for the series, and brings us in to view a cast who seem to be gettong embroiled in a battle without them even realising it. One gripe, however, is that it seems to be unravelling into a standard shonen battle plot, as opposed to the rollercoaster it looked like it would be earlier on.

Art: 8 - The art in this series definitely upholds the standards set by ZeXal, as is to be expected for a show with the budget of Arc-V. The animation is almost seamless, transitioning between frames smoothly. The characters are well designed, I think, especially in the case of Yuya and Yuzu, with the characters emotions portrayed perfectly through their facial expressions and body language. This brings me onto another point, which is in the body language of characters. It's always drawn on point. Now, the art and animation aren't outstanding, but they are very good. They're exactly what I would expect from a Yu-Gi-Oh! series.

Sound: 9 - I adore the duel sounds and the action music, they are absolutely perfect for building suspense and showing off a flashy move or something similar. Next up is the voice acting. Personally, I think Yuya's seiyuu is absolutely perfect for the role, the way his cry of "ladies and gentlemen!" rings out is entirely unforgettable, as well as the words "tamashi no pendulum!", shouted every time he pendulum summons. Sora is another character whose seiyuu stood out to me: the way he talks is just indifferent enough to portray him, but he's certainly capable of the moments of excitement. The first OP and ED weren't really my thing, I'd skip the OP more often than not, but the second OP is definitely worth sitting through every time, it's a wonderful piece of composition that fits well with the premise of the show.

Character: 9 - This is where the show really stands out to me. Obviously, content is a lot more important than style, I mean, you can have the best art in the world but if you're content sucks you've got a crappy anime. Compare and contrast with something like Kill la Kill, which has a sketchy art style and clunky animation, but a fantastic plot and wonderful characters. The characters in Arc-V are probably the best set of main and supporting characters I've seen in a Yu-Gi-Oh! series. Let's start with Yuya, who is inherently flawed, obviously not the best duelist in the world, and hiding his sadness behind a mask. This is the kind of character archetype that appeals to me, and a lot of the tropes used are hard to pull off, and unlike with Yuma, it's done flawlessly. He's interesting, and has already gone through blue screens of death several times as a matter of course; his early character development is refreshing and entertaining. Then we have Yuzu, who is the supportive best friend, but her archetype goes much deeper than that. She starts off as kind of a mothering type, a Kotori 2.0, but she actually has more interesting flaws. Her character development, however, is top-notch, and has made her probably my favourite main character in the series bar Reiji. Now, in her character development this series loses having a strong female lead, but that can be forgiven because of the narrative necessity of Yuzu's development, and the fact that it led to her being such an interesting character. Then we have a character like Reiji, who looks like a hipster Kaiba, but is written so extraordinarily well it takes a hell of a long time before we know whether or not he's a good guy or a bad guy. Hell, right now I still have my doubts. Finally, Kurosaki Shun and Yuuto. They are both mysterious, and interesting, but Shun is definitely the one I prefer of the two. I won't say much to avoid spoiler, but he's finally the well-written pragmatic hero that Yu-Gi-Oh! series have been sorely lacking. All previous characters falling into this archetype haven't been written right, in my opinion, and I write a lot of pragmatic heroes. I get a lot more of an anti-hero vibe from several characters than I ever expected, and that's a damn good thing in my book. As far as rivalries go, Sawatari starts off as a jerk-ass and continues fulfilling that trope until character development hits him hard and fast.

Enjoyment: 9 - So far, I haven't disliked an episode, and that's saying something, especially with the annoying Yuya cheer squad comprised of the one-dimensional children, the only character mistake made in this show. Every episode and every duel has served a narrative purpose, for once there have been no pointless filler duels, and for that I am glad and I give a 9 for enjoyment.

Overall: 8 - Critically and objectively, I thing the fact that the plot is beginning to stagnate into something altogether predictable brings the series down somewhat, as well as the annoying cheer squad that just take up character space for no reason. However, this show is worth watching just for the characters, and even a cliched plot would be interesting with this character set. Hopefully, like ZeXal, we get a rip-roaring second season with a fantastic plot, but only time will tell. I still recommend a watch.

I came into this series with low expectations. It was a down time for the Yugioh franchise. Coming off an excellent series from 5Ds to Zexal, it was terrible. Zexal almost completely ruined this franchise for me. I decided to give Arc-V a chance and I almost dropped it. It comes off as extremely kiddy and happiness and friendship everywhere, but you can't judge a series based on its looks. After starting off extremely slow, the series takes a 180 turn and becomes a suspenseful, action packed series. If you are willing to struggle through the first 10-20 episodes, you won't regret it.

Story: 9

Arc-V has ... one of the most compelling stories of any Yugioh franchise. It is almost better than the original and the first half of 5Ds. It brings back the sort of dark and emotional vibes that Duel Monsters and 5Ds gave, while also keeping a light heart feeling. Without spoiling much, if you watch this series, prepare for completely unexpected plot twist and a good, well written story.

Sound: 6

The OST is decent. The second and third opening are very good and the second ending is probably the best of any Yugioh series.

Character: 8

There are many loveable characters in this series. The protagonist Yuya, is different than all the protagonist of previous series. He is not an amazing duelist like Yusei, but he is not complete garbage like Zexal and he does not have to rely on some sort of spirit to be a better duelist. Yuzu, the main female protagonist is in my opinion, the only bad characters on the show. I do believe that she will become more important later in the series. Sora is a complete savage. He is the most ambiguous character in any of the Yugioh series, rivaling Bakura. You don't know what you're supposed to feel with him. Then finally there is the badass Kaiba-like character of Shun Kurosaki. He actually has good motives for why he duels. There are almost many other great characters such as Regi, Reira, Dennis, and not to mention two characters from a previous series make a return.

Enjoyment: 9

This is a very enjoyable series to watch. There are amazing duels that take multiple episodes to do which helps give a Duel Monsters feelings. All the characters are almost equal in strength and Yuya doesn't have the 'Plot Armour' that a lot of MCs have.

Overall: 8

The action duels are utterly ridiculuos, maybe the worst idea in the series. Deciding duels by randomly running around for cards is a disgrace for the whole series. Furthermore, this shows how bad the duels itself are written, because this "randomness" (which somehow almost alwys favoured Yuya) was a deciding factor in a lot of duels.

These are some serious issues, but there were a lot of redeeming points: the characters were not bad, Reiji was a great Seto Kaiba duplicate, maybe the best since the original, I also liked the Professor, and the 4 Yuyas and Yuzus as well. Getting back some of the old ... characters of the series was also nice.

Story is something yyou could expect from a children's card game anime, no more no less.

So in the end still better than Zexal, and at least on par with GX and 5ds (excluding the Dimension World and Dark Signers arcs which were great).

Story - 6

I really want to like this anime more than I do. It's probably dumb to have any kind of expectations for a show created to sell merchandise to children beyond painfully mediocre, but what the show had managed to capture in the first few dozens of episodes got my hopes up.

What seems like the typical shounen fare of a main character wanting to be the best (in Sakaki Yuya's case, the best duelist and entertainer like his father) is interrupted by events seemingly incompatible with his dreams. The show manages to capture the feeling that there's something sinister and mysterious lurking in ... the background, and that Yuya and company are caught up in something much, much larger than themselves that could very easily squash them. That kind of vibe is more than I expected from a show like this.

However, as soon as the show passes the episode 50 mark into its second major arc, what seems like the characters finally taking the first leap to engage that looming threat turns out to be a meandering experience. A lot of the events feel like padding or unnecessarily drawn out. Even though the main cast formally organized as a team, they hardly spend much time actually being shown working as one (and much of that teamwork is towards the very end) compared to the time spent on them being isolated from each other or dealing with other secondary characters. It's underwhelming.

Another criticism I would have is that some instances that cause drama only seem to happen because of a failure to rationally communicate, creating situations that feel somewhat contrived. I wouldn't call this that big of a problem though, since there are also occasions where the characters act rationally to try to solve a problem.

A few times, how events play out feels unsatisfying compared to their build up, or are executed in a frankly kind of boring way that turns out to be a tease. It kind of feels like previous series were better able to achieve satisfaction or catharsis with their larger events. This problem is more prevalent in the 2nd half of the show.

Enjoyment - 7

Speaking very broadly, the show's story still maintains some interest and mystery. Even as the overall quality seems to dip, there are still some good moments and duels.

Characters - 6

Some of the main cast so far are underutilized or fall short of their potential. The show has a large cast to juggle, so some falling to the wayside is probably expected. Many of them have genuinely well defined personalities that bounce off each other well when they interact. The problem is that there's not a lot of that interaction between the contrasting personalities of Yuya and co.

A few secondary characters can come off as annoying or irritating to some. However, there are also secondary characters that are entertaining but don't overstay their welcome and gracefully exit the show when their role is over. It can be a mixed bag when it comes to less important or one-off characters.

The rivalry between Reiji and Yuya also seems like lost potential. They're both similar in having unsorted issues dealing with their fathers and a desire to protect their home, but go about how they deal with their personal problems in starkly different ways (Reiji making sure to maintain his stoicism and a distance from others, while Yuya is more emotionally driven). I think this could have been given a little bit more attention than what it had gotten.

Yuya as a main character is okay. At times I do feel sympathetic to what he wants to achieve (ultimately getting the bad guys to stop using card games to hurt others), but other times I feel as if they're making him explicitly state his motivations a little too often, almost to the point of becoming a parody of itself. Subtlety is probably not the biggest priority in a show like this, but they manage to be more subdued with other characters in not directly stating multiple times what they're all about and what they live for. There's somewhat more depth to his character than what I've written here, but I can't judge him in full until the show finishes. In the 2nd year of the show his development as a character seems to waffle for the sake of it, but I chalk that up to the padding issues present throughout.

Sound - 8

Soundtrack is great, and a few tracks are pretty memorable. Don't have any complaints.

Art - 5

Overall, the character designs service the characters' personalities well. The monster designs are probably not something to rave about, but there are some nicely designed monsters here and there. However, where it suffers is in the animation. 2-3 episodes out of a dozen will look good (even great), but there will be some egregiously stilted or poorly drawn animation in others, to the point where it's a little distracting. I'm not rating the animation next to a gold standard, but it is slightly disheartening after the previous series managed much better consistency in the animation department. The animation problems probably have to do with Studio Gallop having to juggle the productions of a weekly show and the upcoming DM movie at the same time.

All of this is of course subject to change as the show starts to enter its last(?) year of its run. I don't imagine my opinion is the popular one, and I think it's great that a Yugioh series can still invest people in its story. I'm just not as enthusiastic about the show as I was, or hoped to have been.

Warning: This review is 100% biased, and since I'm not a Yu-Gi-Oh player you may find my opinion completely irrelevant.

You all want to know what I think of this anime? 3 words: HUGE. FUCKING. MESS.

Holy crap, this anime had more inconsistencies than I could've ever imagined, and that' saying a lot since I tend to love clusterfucks.

Storyline:

I’m not even sure where to begin on this one because there are a lot of things that have gone wrong with the storyline. The main issue I have with this series is that it lies too much. The first couple of episodes lead up to ... nothing the current episodes have evolved into. Looking back at it you’ll start to realize you’ve fallen into madness.

In the beginning, the series has been set up with Yuya (the protagonist) who tries to follow his father’s footsteps and be an “entertainer Duelist”. He gets a lot of shit thrown at him because of his father’s disappearance, but we’ll talk about that later. Anyways, Yuya decides to duel against one of his dad’s haters or whatever. Yuya wins thanks to his magical pendant that turns his cards into “pendulum” cards; he gains recognition and fans including Tatsuya who sees Yuya as his role model. Storyline continues, then shit happens.
The whole premise of the show seemed to revolve around Yuya finding his father while keeping his father’s legacy uphold with his own duelling. And, to also gain more students for Yuzu’s dad’s duelling school. Yuya’s got this magical pendant that turns his cards into “Pendulum” cards which is somehow NEVER explained as the series progressed. Seriously, at some point Yuya and Reiji go head to head with Pendulum summoning to see who’s superior or whatnot. Even that never got explained as to how Reiji managed to do this or how the origin of pendulum summoning began. Also, with how Tatsuya stood out in the beginning despite the other two kids who were there. It felt like he was basically axed from the show. For someone who admired Yuya a lot, we never saw Tatsuya’s gameplays. What about developing his character? It was tragic actually.

Then for some reason the writers of the show quickly decided that Yuya’s storyline was too asinine, so they decided to give Yuzu a magical bracelet as well. It basically acts like a metal boyfriend detector. Yuzu then meets Yuya 2.0, gets emo and then cries about how she doesn’t understand why this is happening to her (it’s alright Yuzu, I don’t even know what happened to the script after this). Fast forward later, Yuzu gets kidnapped, and Yuya and the gang try to save her.

Basically the whole plot in the beginning gets thrown out all thanks to Yuzu’s bracelet. Forget, about Yuya’s magical pendant and him looking for his father, it’s all about Yuzu now.

It doesn’t just stop there, they decided to add counterparts of Yuya and Yuzu so there’s like 8 main characters now? Oh yeah, GX decided to be one of the main antagonists this time.

Nothing in this series makes sense anymore. Instead of Yuya trying to figure out the origins of Pendulum summoning, and finding his dad, he suddenly has to go fight a interdimensional war in order for Reiji’s dad to stop kidnapping little girls. All the characters they decided to introduce got pushed aside with characters we’ve already seen (aka Asuka from GX, Crow from 5D’s).

Art:

I’ve got no qualms with the art; it’s bright and colourful, and sometimes messy which suits the overall quality of the series.

Sound:

I have to admit that ARC-V has one of the few anime openings I managed to bother listening to because they’re so darn catchy. And, typically I usually skip openings and ED’s just to save time. So, congratulations to that achievement ARC-V.

Characters:

I will applaud the ARC-V writers for finally trying to incorporate more characters other than their protagonist, Yuya. The downside to this? They had to minimize too much of his relevance in the series to balance him out with Yuzu. If they decided to cop out the characters, they should’ve just made Yuzu the main character from the start. At least it would’ve been consistent.
I like Yuzu, I like Yuya. Unfortunately, the series didn’t know what they were doing with these characters. Add the other counterparts into the mix, and you get every fanfiction ever made. It felt like AU’s were being pulled out from an invisible hat and crammed into an overflowing prose. Both Yuzu and Yuya had a beautiful relationship which would’ve developed even better if the writers didn’t decide to too many concepts in one.

Reiji has daddy issues. That is all.

Tatsuya got ignored. I want justice for this.

Conclusion

The issues that I had with this series weren’t the fact that they decided to give more screen time to a female character. The issues I had with it were that the writers decided to to take on more concepts than they could execute. The dimension travelling, missing parents, magical jewellery, counterparts + throwing in characters from previous generations, and you start to feel a bit overwhelmed.
Arguably saying, this could be said about all the other generations such GX, 5D’s, and Zexal. And, you’re probably right. But, for so many people claiming that the writing has improved and that ARC-V is the best that’s happened so far isn’t impressive in the least.

I really wanted to love this anime, I love the characters, I liked the soundtrack and animation. The only thing I didn’t like was how the storytelling was being handled. I didn’t feel like ARC-V was being its own show. The whole dimension travelling/counterparts was the water that broke the camel’s back for me. I don’t have issues with crossovers, but if they were going to do that they should’ve just went the same route as “Bonds Beyond Time”. Not dedicate an entire anime series for it. It just felt like a last minute cop out in hopes of making decreasing sales skyrocket again.
If ARC-V did manage to increase its sales revenue then that’s great, they got what they wanted. However, I’m thoroughly disappointed that it had to come to this. I was hoping to become immersed to the game itself and buy a Yu-Gi-Oh deck of my own just like I did with Vanguard. And, for the most part ARC-V did tempt me in the beginning of the anime to do so, but my feelings have diminished since then.

Am I being too harsh with this series? The answer is yes, it’s not like the previous Yu-Gi-OH animes didn’t have its own set of flaws that are similar to ARC-V. The only difference is that ARC-V was the only series I managed to become so invested in that it nearly convinced me to buy a trial deck of my own. So, I’m harsh within reason that it didn’t live up to the expectations I had for it or as others hyped it up to be. This is the first Yu-Gi-Oh series I’ve ever dropped. The series hasn’t ended yet, so if they managed to fix these plot holes I may change my mind.

Coming back with the all-new Pendulum monsters and a plot line, Yu-Gi-Oh! Arc-V is the newest anime series featuring the Yu-Gi-Oh! card game. Much like ZEXAL, this follows a kid named Yuya who strives to be the best duelist in a SoL/Comedy/Adventure setting. Though difficulties and obstacles persist, let's see what makes Arc-V an anime that resonates in Yu-Gi-Oh! fans new and old. [Warning: Minor Spoilers]

Story: 8/10

It's quite a clichéd story as Yuya and his friends strive to be the best at a tournament by proving themselves as the best through duels. Then we have the villains who are basically soon-to-be-friends as well as the ... ZEXAL elements in the story. But the plot soons turn into an inter-dimensional war as all the summoning types engage in battle. Honestly, this is just amazing as it somehow sums up the prior 4 into one series.

Art: 8/10

The character and scenery designs are alright, but Arc-V really shows their true arts during the duels. The Action Field that always changes brings a new scenery into play every time as well as the monsters, spells, traps, etc. Their designs are much more child-like, but do not lose the element of action and thrill. The art here in Arc-V is most superior during the suspenseful duels between duelists.

Sound: 8/10

The openings and endings are pretty cool. I especially like the 2nd one. Other than that, background music during duels does set the atmosphere and vibe and it makes it explicit enough for us to know what's happening.

Character: 9/10

This time around, we have a pretty big cast of people that each have their own story as well as their own archetype that correponds to their character. This makes them have their own unique flair and makes them shine whenever they duel. Their monsters reflects themselves. Of course, though some shine more than others, I feel that the spotlight on people like Yuya, Sora, Kurosaki, and others makes the story all the more interesting. Still, I'd like for them to focus on others too.

Enjoyment: 8/10

Whenever Arc-V comes on, I always get excited for an intense duel of emotions, feelings, and even better, new monsters! As an avid duelist myself, seeing my cards come alive makes me excited! (since we do not have the technology to make the cards come alive.) It's always nice to reminiscence about the old series as before this, there was only 1 summoning method. But Arc-V has them all from Fusion to Xyz so the excitement never dies down.

Arc-V is truly an enjoyable anime for me. Despite being a kid's show, the exciting duels and dynamic plot makes it all the more interesting for me to watch. I recommend this people who want to get into the Yu-Gi=Oh! fandom as it teaches you A LOT about the game, as well as those who want to see a card game in action, because in Arc-V it's always time to d-d-d-d-d-d-duel!

It's really hard on where to start for this review for the anime specifically.
I've had so many mixed feelings over the course of watching this anime. I literally started watching this series around episode 40 and have been following it ever since, and not gonna lie, it's become disappointing.

What I will try to focus on in this review is more as a whole work rather than the current mess/chaos Arc-V is in. Because honestly, the 3rd and final arc is very upsetting to watch to say the least...

Let's start off with one of my favorite aspects of the anime. CHARACTERS. (Let's pretend the last 30 ... episodes never happened to certain characters). From the beginning, Yuya Sakaki has been amazing and I've loved his character development so much. he's come so far! I love all his counterparts as well. They all have such distinct personalities and the interactions between some of them are the BEST. It's one of the reasons I still hold onto this anime.

Annnd don't get me started on Yuzu! When I first started watching this series, I was so excited at the pivotal role Yuzu played in this anime, she had her own character development aside from Yuya and she had even her own storyline. She also had counterparts that were pretty amazing! Unfortunately, two of them are barely utilized as actual characters; they are literally just known as plot devices for a majority of the anime.

Unfortunately.... her character has greatly diminished since the Synchro Arc which is just very disappointing honestly. This anime sort of baits you into thinking that it breaks all the Yugioh tropes it's guilty of, but after 100 episodes (or even earlier for some), it starts turning into this clusterfuck that looks like the writers had no idea what to do and shoved random ideas around.

It really upsets me how downhill this series has gotten. Its premise was very impressive with the four dimensions. I've grown to love almost all the characters like Shun Kurosaki, Serena, so many others.

But the past 5 episodes have been a HUUUGGEE letdown. and my patience for Arc-V is slowly diminishing but my love for Yuya is still going strong! Haha.

The story was so good for the first 100 episodes!! But the pacing got really bad. I will admit the Synchro Arc could have been like 10 episodes less. The mini XYZ arc was atrocious in pacing and worldbuilding. It was so rushed and I barely connected with any Arc-V exclusive XYZ characters. A huge issue I think this anime is worldbuilding. It creates FOUR dimensions, but we only focus on mainly Standard and Synchro.

I hate to sound like a huge criticizer of this anime, but I don't want to mislead you all. It's a wonderful show with wonderful characters that started off very strong but as you continue, the pacing becomes h o r r i b l e. I had such high hopes for this anime but it disappointed me the moment the XYZ arc had begun. There were so many plot holes I could not forgive.

But I honestly do wish you give this anime a try! You come up with so many headcanons and the character interactions are my favorite part. Beware of the legacy characters though. I feel like they took up waaay too much screentime to characters who were actually part of Arc-V. But please give this anime a try. I really do love the breakthrough of tropes in the first 60ish episodes.

Animation can be a little wonky. You can tell some episodes had more effort just because of a plot point or a flashier duel.

The music is also a beautiful touch! And I hope you enjoy how the dueling has evolved in this anime too. Yes there's a hippo but I think this is such a creative evolution of dueling! It's no longer just standing around and placing cards, it's being interactive with your environment and some of the stunts the characters pull in the duels is pretty awesome!

I'm impressed by the improvement to the series, but it still has a long way to go to reach the heights of 5D's or the original series.

Story: 8
Kid wants to follow in his father’s footsteps and entertain people. He sets off on his task, gaining friends and rivals on the way. Started off very slowly, but roughly 40 episodes in and the plot thickens. There is enough tension and mystery surrounding the different "factions" to keep interest.

Art/Animation: 7
Poor “frame rate” at times, but otherwise all right. Art is quite good, and succeeds to differentiate between characters but it is a little inconsistent throughout each episode.

Sound: ... 8
Decent, but sometimes OST is played out of place. The OST itself is varied and a nice mix of modern and more classical themes. A few standout pieces like Yuto's Passionate Soul, and a few duds. Actual sound effects are effective and generally well-engineered. The seiyuu are quite fitting.

Characters: 7
Yuya Sakaki is a stereotypical pacifist hero archetype, the very antithesis of an interesting main character. He has had little real character development thus far. With the help of Yuto and the AU characters, he has at least gained some alternative personality.
Sora is a solid character. Confident and eager, yet hiding a dark and somewhat sadistic side. A lot like Bakura, and that's a good thing.
Reiji has a nice concept, but poor application, in my opinion. Stoic genius with red hipster glasses and a gravity and wind defying scarf. Seems like a stock character
Yuto and Yugo are excellent additions, who feel similar yet distinctive enough from Yuya to make great foils.
Selena is both a headstrong character, and a plot device, which makes her a strong improvement for the cast.
Reira is my favourite character of the series. A war orphan, his story is progressively improved upon. He begins as a drone, and earns his autonomy, out of the desire to be respected by his brother, and to be with his friends.

Enjoyment: 6
Duels: 4
Action duelling: Easily my biggest complaint. Turbo duels can be replicated by adding speed counters every turn. Action duels? How is that even practical from a duelling standpoint? The point of the Yu-Gi-Oh! anime is to accommodate the release of new cards. Completely derails if you can’t simulate a mode of duelling.
On an anime standpoint, it literally just offers characters a way to play random cards they didn’t have in their hand, lending itself to infuriatingly specific "themed" Action cards: see episode 16. This allows characters to consistently break the rules of dueling.
Pendulum summoning is quite overpowered, offering Yuya and other main duelists with an easy plotcard to defeat unimportant characters and summon large numbers of important cards with little sacrifice.
The addition of other summons is only redeeming factor of the duels. This is what every series should have done, rather than just ignore the previously introduced methods.
However, making special summons out to be some kind of learned skill is very confusing. Why are people shocked that others can perform Pendulum summons, given the correct cards? Why can't you perform it if you haven't got the credentials?

Cards: 6
I have serious misgivings about the carnival deck. It’s immature and more than a little off-putting. Odd-Eyes Pendulum Dragon is clearly an attempt at giving the main character a random dragon main card. It doesn’t fit with the rest of Yuya’s deck.
The other decks also seem similarly uninspired. New cards with conveniently appropriate effects are spewed out left, right and centre. Although, I can’t really blame Arc-V here. This is a problem pertaining to all Yu-Gi-Oh! series.

Overall: 7
There has been a vast improvement in the progression of the series since the beginning of the Syncro arc. Great characters such as Selena, Yuuto, Yuugo and Reira have been introduced, and the cardplay has been solid. The growing darkness of the story has certainly helped with grounding the series, though there are still times you look at a play and think: how cheap...