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One of the best openings ever made just to disguise a "mediocre" anime

Honestly, I think watching this anime without having been born in Japan is the first mistake when trying to get the message it’s going for. You know, "atomic bomb" and "Japan" in the same sentence carries a lot of weight lol. Maybe I’m wrong, but that already sets the tone.

Now, going into the actual review — emphasis on the quotation marks when I say mediocre, because if it was actually bad I would’ve dropped it. Every mind game in the anime and the situations the characters put themselves in are, for the most ... part, pretty interesting. The scenarios do feel realistic with all the mental game stuff happening both online and in real life.

But when the whole rest of the anime revolves around a plot that keeps dragging on through a poorly handled narrative, it gets complicated. Everything feels super rushed, and the reasons things happen just to push us toward the final plot are straight-up ridiculous. It becomes impossible to ignore.

Like, how are you gonna tell me Twelve hands over a nuke because of some dragged-out crush
with EXACTLY three of the most cliché development scenes in the world, with even worse reasoning behind it and the supposed reasons are held off until the very end of the anime. It’s all so poorly developed that even the one moment that was meant to be hype just ends up falling flat. Which brings me to the ending.

The ending could have been good, it really could. But when everything leading up to it feels rushed, it’s hard to buy into the reasoning. You want me to accept that everything they did was just so they could be noticed and for people to know what happened to them? Even though there’s zero buildup for that across the 12 episodes? They tried to hand you an "okay" ending that could’ve hit harder, but forgot to do ALL THE REST. INCLUDING THE MESSAGE.

In conclusion, it’s an interesting anime, with several moments that are genuinely memorable,
but you watch it with a headache from how often it stabs itself with how ridiculous it gets.
And the ending... no comment.

You should watch it, it’s cool if you can survive the 70% that’s bad.

THAT SAID, THE BEST MESSAGE IN THE ANIME IS THAT EVERYTHING IS AMERICA'S FAULT.

WHY DOES EVERYONE HAVE CRAZY HAIR IN THIS ANIME??
Man, I really like how this anime delivers its ideas. Maybe that’s why it’s so fun. But even beyond that, the anime kind of turns into a jigsaw-style survival game. Like, in the first episode, Yugi’s edgy side just straight up kills a guy out of nowhere?? AMAZING introduction, though I wish that side of Yugi showed up more often, because in the end it turns into something like, "yeahh let’s win with the power of friendship."

The story? Very well written, and it manages to stay on track without getting lost or becoming tiresome. Sure, it has ... its fair share of character and plot clichés—without those, it wouldn’t really be a kids’ show, right? But even that works well with the formula it follows: introduce a bad guy, bad guy has to play a Shadow Game, bad guy loses and STARTS HALLUCINATING INSIDE HIS OWN MIND. And in the meantime, the show still manages to build character development leading up to the final arc, which brings us to around the halfway point—where things start to go in circles, and that’s where it begins to lose me a bit.
During this period of story and character development, Kaiba is introduced — essentially just another edgy character for Yugi to defeat. But instead of a clear win, the duel ends in a draw, which sets off a chain of events that directly affects the precious formula that initially made me so excited to watch the show. Once the best players of their respective games start challenging Yugi, things begin to shift. It's no longer about strategy or that dark tone the Shadow Games used to have — now it's just endless repetition of the same pattern: "You're better than me at this game, but I'll win with the power of friendship." It gets tiresome fast.

There's still a bit of strategic flavor in the final episodes, but it honestly becomes ridiculous, even for a kids’ anime. Yugi literally runs out of strategies and wins just by... believing in friendship? The best (or worst?) example is in the final game, where the dice just break due to the power of friendship (???). This turn toward a more nonsensical, less strategic style took away some of the original magic of the show.

That said, even with all the overused "power of friendship" moments, the final arc manages to hold on to some of its strengths. It brings back a bit of the strategic element here and there, and even better — the last battles start showing glimpses of the dark, twisted side the early part of the series had, which I really appreciated.

REALLY good. It’s raw in the message it wants to get across, and it hits hard with how relatable the characters’ forms of escapism are—something any human can connect with. The guy who made this had a genius idea, managing to balance abstract concepts while still delivering a clear message, mixing in a bunch of crazy stuff (it starts off kinda detective genre and suddenly turns into a fight anime, lol).

I give it a 9 because those fight-heavy episodes felt a bit like filler to me, but I still get the point they were trying to make. It becomes another (of MANY, seriously) portrayal of ... reality that this anime nails—people obsessed with the internet, games, etc., to the point they commit atrocities, and in their minds, it’s still somehow tied to the media they consume so much. It even reminded me a bit of Videodrome.

Going into the final arc of the anime, I really want to highlight episode 11—the detective’s wife vs. the kid with the bat—it’s a TRUE BOSS FIGHT OF WORDS, HOLY SHIT. In that scene, the bat kid basically represents her will to die, to give up, and she herself represents the drive to live. You see the situations she brings up—losing her baby, telling her life story—while the bat kid laughs, his body growing like he knows he’s about to land a hit on her. But he destroys the whole house and still can’t touch her, because she understood that despite all the suffering, without suffering, there is no happiness.

Now talking about the series ending—I really want to point out how Shounen Bat and Maromi are two sides of the same coin. But Maromi is way worse, because he represents the most modern form of escapism, especially in Japan—using cute things like a kind of drug, projecting your frustrations onto them. And the answer to all that escapism is right there in the anime’s ending. Notice: the ending is literally the same shit as the beginning, the world hasn’t changed. Pessimistic, right?

But that’s the thing—what had to change, did. Sagi no longer depends on Maromi. When she accepted responsibility for her dog’s death, EVERYTHING ended. Shounen Bat and Maromi no longer exist. To me, what the creator wanted to show is that even if the world doesn’t change, that’s no excuse to run away from all the negativity. In fact, it’s even more reason to accept reality for what it is—or better yet, change your own reality just by stopping the escape. Because that does make a difference. Not in the world, like in Paranoia Agent, where everything just reset, but in your social circle and, most importantly, in you