It would have been nice if they'd given Asuka and Aki the same treatment...I'm not even going to comment on Mai. xD
Then again, we have Sherry from 5D's. She technically ties with Yusei (in a sense... not literally), and she kinda replaces Jack Atlas as the rival, seeing as the latter degenerated into a joke character. xD
Well, Yu-Gi-Oh! is traditionally quite slow to start, no? At least, the less said about the Duelist Kingdom arc of the first season, the better. It takes a while to set the scene and introduce the plot, since it's going to span at least a hundred episodes. I can persevere with a bad start...even if some of the character designs are ridiculous. xD
Well, people generally consider Zexal to have the second slowest start after GX. The first nine episodes of Zexal seem like filler-ish duels, except for the fact that they're technically not fillers. The plot starts kicking in once Shark comes back, but they do take quite a while to find a clear direction for the plot to move.
The weird thing about Zexal is that they intentionally made the characters look stupid at first, and then they transitioned into having dramatically better designs (most notably Yuma and Shark).
Examples:
More overpowered than Six Samurai and Lightsworn? They were both a menace...Six Samurai for the ability to fill your field within two turns if you drew the right cards (plus the existing Warrior-type support that already existed in the metagame thanks to the earlier Elemental Heroes...) and the Lightsworn were just designed to blast through an opponent to compensate for the fact that your deck was getting systematically demolished...I always wondered if they would work with RFG cards and Necroface, actually; I never got the chance to test those in the game. But Rainbow Dragon I hate for its brokenness. Judgement Dragon? That was Chaos Emperor Dragon all over again.
Yes... back in my day, Six Samurai decks had toooo much power, but now they're absolute jokes against the likes of today's archetypes. I don't even want to begin explaining what they're capable of... O_o
Lightsworns are pretty tame now, but I mostly see them as side engines for decks who like a lot of milling (such as Junk Doppel, Chaos Dragons, etc.). Also, Michael (their Synchro) gets put into plenty of random decks that have tuners and LIGHT monsters.
Yup...after all, it's a show about card games, first and foremost. Without engaging duels, the plot might as well be nothing but filler, because the conflicts never get resolved in a satisfactory fashion. If the fate of the planet - or multiple dimensions - rests on these games, and if it's going to last multiple episodes, it needs to be engaging. I need to actually care about the resolution. GX lost that for me after the second season; the main character had turned EVIL, but that sense of urgency that was present in Duel Monsters (freakin' season zero, screwing with the series ordering! xD) was completely lost in the influx of new characters.
Yeah... the problem with basically any series after DM is that they're FORCING everything to resolve with a card game, even when card games would otherwise be irrelevant to the plot (though it never personally bothered me). The only time they acknowledged this was during the Judai vs Saiou confrontation, but that satellite was SOOO poorly executed, and Judai screwed up by throwing his key towards Ed even though Tyranno could've just Kattobing'd in the first place. (I actually burst out laughing when Saiou refused to duel. xD)
I'm pretty sure every person has a different perception of the word "engaging," but I'll give you a fair warning so that you don't give your hopes up. In GX, 5D's, Zexal, and even ARC-V, the creativity of the duels are -usually- inversely related to the stakes at risk. So if the stakes are high, the duels will be rather... situational (there are many exceptions, of course). I don't know what to tell you if you hate situational cards, but I personally feel that they don't degenerate the show as heavily as most people make them out to. Also, Judai's Rainbow Neos set a standard for all subsequent series. Apparently, Extra Deck monsters can now appear out of thin air, but the only time it's actually annoying is in ARC-V.
Another thing I must note is that the anime considers "stacking" to be a skill, not a method of cheating. Hence, the Kaiser spent all of his childhood training at a dojo in order to learn how to stack three Cyber Dragons and the right spell cards (reference to Kaiba, who is probably like the best stacker of all time xD).
I suppose the God cards might have had something to do with that, although the Sacred Beasts were quite interesting, even if they were obviously inferior to said cards. I did like Armityle though. I think the problem was the lack of development for the new characters in particular...it would have been so much better if someone who had been with Judai since the beginning brought him back to his senses - Shou would be the obvious candidate, although Kaiser or Manjoume would have worked just as well. The plot was throw in interesting directions, but the character focus was totally skewed, so it was hard to really care about what was going on. At least, that was how I felt. Who knows, maybe I'll change my tune when I watch it again, but I doubt it somehow. xD
Well, I'll admit that a majority of the new characters (such as Jim and O'Brien) weren't necessarily
needed in the plot, but they were pretty darn well-written, despite being replaceable by the already established characters. However, Amon is a different story... he was a complete waste of a character slot. He turned evil, tried to become the main antagonist, failed pretty hard at doing so, and most importantly, got defeated by the actual antagonist (rather than Judai). The only thing I'll give him credit for is putting Manjoume in his place. (You gotta admit, Manjoume DID deserve that... come on, picking a fight because someone is richer than you? xD)
I do wish it was Shou who brought an end to the Supreme King, but the writers didn't give him enough duel-development episodes to warrant the skills to do so. I guess they wanted to save his growth for the end, but they definitely could've done more with him.
It was, but I would have liked to have seen a clearer focus, rather than this back-and-forth pandering that led the viewer to read between the lines...assuming there was anything to read, anyway. Again, it felt like the writers couldn't decide who they wanted to focus on, at least in terms of the relationship between the two brothers. Shou advanced all right on his own, but his brother had always been a major source of inspiration and his spectacular inferiority complex, and there was never really any proper resolution between the two; he never really stepped out of Kaiser's shadow...after all, he got absolutely demolished when he duelled him. Kaiser, by the same token, never really recovered from his degeneration, which started off brilliantly but ended up turning him into another random antagonist wandering about. Kaiser WAS important, for being the first to give Judai the beating he deserved (and for tying with him afterwards, which in no way diminished his standing as a credible duelist) and for being that senior, experienced character that shows like this always seem to have. His losing was important for his character progression, but I don't really think he ever recovered properly from the loss, which was...disappointing, considering what the writers tried to do with him. I dunno, I'm rambling. xD
I wouldn't say "demolished," as Shou literally had that duel won... minus the fact that the Kaiser stacked De-Fusion at the bottom of his deck. xDDD (Reverse-Cyber Style... I see what they did there! =P)
Shou did actually step out of the Kaiser's shadow, but you said that you haven't seen the final season, right? So for now I don't think I should spoil how. xD (Just know that it was pretty rushed.)
As for the Kaiser not recovering from his degeneration, that's... both true and untrue at the same time, haha. Ultimately, it was just the product of lazy writing and poor pacing. xD It looks as if the writers wanted to do a lot more with him, but they just couldn't plan out their episode numbers accordingly. As a result, he regained his personality out of nowhere during the Dark World arc, and his excuse for turning normal was that he simply "got over the phase of craving for victory." xD So yeah, there wasn't a single event that "snapped" him back to normal, but the writers had no more room for another walking antagonist. xD So in a sense, when you said that he never "recovered
properly," you're right... rather than redeeming himself, he just stopped being evil xD (well, IF he qualified as evil anyways).
I guess that's what happens when the writers don't use all of their episodes wisely, they just end up rushing things.
Yeah I can do a writeup of that, just learned about it the other day too, so I'm semi familiar with it. I've been trying to think of something else to do for random cards, because it's getting kinda boring (as you can tell from what I've reviewed so far; I stopped for a couple days after generating Bunilla haha). But yeah I was thinking maybe newer cards, stuff that hasn't been released.
Ah, I didn't notice that you already had it up, haha. But now the alternative discussion is up-to-date, so that's always good!
Alternative/On-going discussion: Thoughts on today's/a previous day's random card?
My thoughts on
Lose a Turn... Honestly, I don't think it was necessary for Konami to make this card, especially since Skill Drain and Vanity's are still sitting at 3. Sure, it isn't as abusable by other decks, but what good does it do for the game by having this card
alongside Vanity's and Skill Drain rather than as a replacement? I personally feel that making the game revolve around floodgates is the wrong way to go... but hey, maybe Konami is only trying to get Vanilla Pendulums to rule the world for a few months before changing their minds. xD
