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Plot contrivance is present is nearly every story. Some try to hide it and make it more natural, while other try to limit it to a few big ones that shape the entire story. This anime doesn't do that. It's an unbelievable serie of coincidental meetings, people splitting up and meeting again and splitting up again by plot demands.

This is difficult to go into details without getting into detailled spoiler territory but for instance, at one point the main character was looking for someone.
He doesn't find this person by searching for them. Instead he finding them randomly after following the people arresting a random ... guy he ate with earlier in town. That's a pretty good representation on how everything goes into that anime. (as there are many more exemples and most of the plot feels incredibly forced.)

This is by far my biggest issue with this show, which undermine when some characters says the world is a big place when the entire story has to take place in a small square for things to keep happening this way.

There are others things that I disliked about the story like the way the final villain is defeated (I guess you could say it was foreshadowed but it is still very lame), and the entire final arc is pretty mediocre in general.

Overall I'd say the story start decently enough, but quickly gets into a downhill slope until around 2/3, where it really gets quite bad.

The art is quite mediocre and I prefered the art of some older animes. In general, it is decent but it is during the fight it's at it's worst. Most of the fights are pretty poorly animated.

The sound isn't that memorable to me, either positively or negatively. It did it's job It is quite fine and didn't affect my view of the anime negatively at all.

The characters were also fine. There was the cliche "Almost every girl falls in love with the MC by being arround him for a day" but I guess that's pretty common. Of course, the final villain is basically a mustache twirling villain that's only there to serve as an obstacle between the romance between the main characters.

I will say, that at least, I didn't find the anime boring.My main issue with it really is the story (and to a lesser extend, the animation).

Before starting this review, I have a warning. I have watched this anime while having knowledge of the Three Kingdom history and having seen other adaptations of it. This is relevant because weirdly enough, this movie doesn't start at the beginning of the story but further up. This mean if you don't know already know what is happening, you will be very confused as to what is happening or who are the various characters and will probably struggle to follow what is happening.

I would say this is a fairly decent adaptation of this particular part of the Three Kingdoms story. For a 1985 anime, the ... art is decent enough. It's not great but is good enough to not deter from the story. Some parts are quite nice looking but it's globally average.

The character design is good and important characters stand out well. However, you only know most of their story, once again only if you have knowledge of the source.

The plot is rather faithful but does make it's own small changes which give it some originality. The plot is solid though I will say some parts felt a bit rushed (the final battle mostly) while another feel just goofy (the snow ambush).

Despite having a sequel, the movie did pick a good ending point that can is satisfying on it's own.

All in all, I enjoyed this movie and it's a decent (but not groundbreaking or anything special) historical war movie.

Watch this if you have seen other adaptations of the Three Kingdoms and want to see another take on it.
But I do not recommand watching it without knowing the background of the story.

Yu☆Gi☆Oh!: Transcend Game is a prologue to the Dark Side of Dimensions movie. However, it is barely connected to the movie. As someone who had seen the movie before reading this manga, I had a hard time seeing any links except the characters present. For instance, the VR system that this manga is focused on is absent from the movie.

If you try viewing it as it's own entry while ignoring the movie, it is also a disappointing manga.

Story 5/10
As it's only two chapters long, you cannot expect much in the way of story. However, the story is still rather uninteresting and vague. A lot is ... left unexplained at the end.

Art : 8/10
The art is pretty decent.

Characters : 5/10
Considering how short the manga is, all the characters are paper thin. There are basically only two characters that have some presence : Kaiba and Sera. Kaiba has his usual personality and Sera is made overly cryptic, probably to keep the suspense for the movie.

Enjoyment 4/10 :
As the characters and the story are mediocre, the manga isn't especially interesting to read. Furthermore, the duels, the main point of Yu-Gi-Oh, are trivialized in two-three pages each with monsters having arbitrarily high attacks numbers. All the interesting story points seem to have been reserved for the movie.

Overall 5/10 :
This manga fails both as a prologue to the movie and as an independant entry.
It cannot stand on it's own, as it's just a setup to the movie, but it's also mostly irrelevant to the movie and doesn't enhance it's experience.
As it's pretty short and the manga is more mediocre and pointless than straight up bad, I do not rate it lower.
However, I would only recommand it for the fans of the Yu-Gi-Oh serie who wants to see all the content on this serie.