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.
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Jul 31, 2016
Yu☆Gi☆Oh! Arc-V
(Anime)
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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 ... |
