Duel Quality in Yugioh Anime

[Sleepy]

Just like the name suggests. I'd like to hear people's opinions on the quality of the anime duels shown in each generation of the franchise. How well do they portray the IRL game? (especially during their respective time), how memorable is it for you?, what are your expectations on it and/or what could be improved upon it? What are the things you liked about your favorites?

In fact, I'd like to get an overall gauge between each series, but if you wanna tackle individual duels, that's fine.

 

 

- - - - - -

 

As I think of my own opinions, I realize I could crap over pretty much all series when it comes to duels. DM with the Duelist Kingdom rules, ZeXal with its boring pattern in most of the duels, 5Ds with a lot of pack filler-level cards, Arc V with pretty much every time Action Cards were used, GX with extra situational plays, and VRAINS with all the instant swarming plays and vague card placements.

 

Yet I have a bunch of good bits to talk about...

I'll just make a more detailed post about my opinion later xD

[Blake]

if [general] you go in expecting duels to not be battles akin to any other anime, you're doing it wrong

 

it makes more sense to do that than to have random cards be used. Just think of their decks as their "power".

 

Also idk why you would complain about Action Cards, they were an improvement. It kept the situational bullshit and pack filler to a minimum. Some examples were bad, but they were by large good.

[Sleepy]

if [general] you go in expecting duels to not be battles akin to any other anime, you're doing it wrong

 

it makes more sense to do that than to have random cards be used. Just think of their decks as their "power".

 

Also idk why you would complain about Action Cards, they were an improvement. It kept the situational bullshit and pack filler to a minimum. Some examples were bad, but they were by large good.

 

Care to give any samples from your personal picks? I kinda made this thread to see people's opinions on the duels, not to see people's opinions on my OP's personal thoughts.

 

 

But I guess might as well address the Action Cards:

I don't see the improvement. It could have been anime-only cards and it would still not have affected IRL pack lists since some of them are barely above "HERO Barrier" anyways. Besides, every set will find a way to have some pack filler in regardless so it's not like it is the most pressing matter to argue about filler A vs B.

 

Sure an archetype-specific filler card from some "bad guy of the week" kind of character's archetype replicated throughout the series would be a terrible idea, but it isn't exactly unthinkable that several players could use the same staples. They could use weaker generic ones.

 

What they did was introduce the concept of an always undefined amount of invisible potential advantage. Yuya most of the time didn't even bother with using defensive cards because he would try to rather go for an Action Card.

You could say he was merely adjusted to the format of the duel mode, and although that is technically true, it was the most shallow way to go about it. It would have been cool to see Yuya prepare to the potential blocking of his Action Cards in some way. Many other main characters did it. Jaden dueled a couple times while being restricted from Fusing, Yuma at some point actually teched an attack-negating spell because he knew his Utopia would probably get negated for the millionth time.

 

I don't intend to bash on Yuya specifically, but he was most of the duels in Arc V. Though I could mention Yuzu's action riding duel where her Diva that copied an Action Card was released IRL instead with said Action Card's effect incorporated in her. In a way, I guess at least that action card DID get through to pack filler prints....

 

For my personal thoughts on Action Cards, from the stand point of one of those kinds of fans that like(s/d) testing out my casual builds IRL against anime opponents (and sometimes specific duels), I find Arc V the hardest to replicate for this goal because Action Cards kind of crap on potential Card Advantage. I know this is like, the crappiest point in my entire comment, but it's just something fun I guarantee some other people do out there.... *shrugs*

Like, Pendulums could potentially explode with returned card advantage, but it was quantifiable one so it is different......

 

I can see how the concept could have been made better, and definitely things can always improve, but I don't think Arc V did it all that well, personally. I'd have to get a specific duel recommended and examined. Not like I didn't watch most of it already but, I'd try to have an open mind.

 

 

 

Soooo you don't have any personal ranking on your fav duels you'd like to share?

[xlArisenRoselx]

I personally love the action cards. Granted, I didn't know they existed IRL, but I still like the concept of them in the anime. It would not make sense to have them IRL unless we get to be as high tech as them. Think about it. We don't have duel disks and a huge arena for us to play in. We have a tabletop with our cards sitting on it. Kinda pathetic if ya think about it. I mean what would we do with them? Have a random person hide them around the area without us knowing where they are, then once their hidden, commence the duel, and if we need an action card, pause the duel while both players search the building for an action card? Stupid and Pointless. I would much rather use cards like Mirror Force to back me up. At least until we have the cool duel disks.

 

Back on topic, I love the one duel that Yuya had when he fought the guy who took his pendulums(forgot his name lol.) Not the first battle, the one where they both had their own pendulums. I like this duel because neither player was letting up at any point in time, and the advantage was constantly being shifted to the other person. I was on the edge of my seat just thinking about what could possibly happen next. It was one of the most hardcore duels I had witnessed(don't judge me for not finishing any of the serieses other than Duel Monsters). That being said, what is one of your favorite duels?

[Sleepy]

I personally love the action cards. Granted, I didn't know they existed IRL, but I still like the concept of them in the anime. It would not make sense to have them IRL unless we get to be as high tech as them. Think about it. We don't have duel disks and a huge arena for us to play in. We have a tabletop with our cards sitting on it. Kinda pathetic if ya think about it. I mean what would we do with them? Have a random person hide them around the area without us knowing where they are, then once their hidden, commence the duel, and if we need an action card, pause the duel while both players search the building for an action card? Stupid and Pointless. I would much rather use cards like Mirror Force to back me up. At least until we have the cool duel disks.

 

Back on topic, I love the one duel that Yuya had when he fought the guy who took his pendulums(forgot his name lol.) Not the first battle, the one where they both had their own pendulums. I like this duel because neither player was letting up at any point in time, and the advantage was constantly being shifted to the other person. I was on the edge of my seat just thinking about what could possibly happen next. It was one of the most hardcore duels I had witnessed(don't judge me for not finishing any of the serieses other than Duel Monsters). That being said, what is one of your favorite duels?

 

 

That would be Sawatari. It IS one of the two best duels he had in the whole series I must admit. The other one where he shone a lot was his time against Z-Arc. He was a hair short from actually winning, and would have been pretty amusing to have him win, kinda like how Joey almost beat Marik in DM xD

[xlArisenRoselx]

Yeah, that would have been funny. Marik, the supposed supervillain possesing all three Egyptian Gods beat down by the measly Joey Wheeler who doesn't have anything all that great in his deck... I think I would have stopped watching Yu-Gi-Oh if that happened.

[Sleepy]

Yeah, that would have been funny. Marik, the supposed supervillain possesing all three Egyptian Gods beat down by the measly Joey Wheeler who doesn't have anything all that great in his deck... I think I would have stopped watching Yu-Gi-Oh if that happened.

 

xD

People like to crap on Joey so much lol. To be fair, Joey was actually boosted up more in the anime than it was in the manga.

In the manga Bakura at Millennium World was about to OTK Joey with 1 card because Zoma the Spirit's manga version is a Magic Cylinder x2, and there's no Orichalcos arc or Gand Championship arc. This means for Joey that there is never again a duel that showcases him back with his Red-Eyes in the manga. He also forfeited at the end of Duelist Kingdom as some sort of agreed upon strategy to not give Pegasus more of a chance to keep analyzing them. That was smarter but also less manly :v

But in the anime, I do think he deserves much more. 

 

I think Marik is pretty good, and I mean the OG Marik. The "evil alter-ego" is pretty bad. Evil Marik lost the 4-way match, technically got outsmarted by Mai but pulled in some BS with the Sphere mode, technically lost to Joey because he was more focused on torture than the actual game. TBH, I would have loved to see regular Marik throughout. He had an actual motive and was the one that created that Slifer combo. Evil Marik at some point implied that he messed with Marik's deck to make it more torture friendly xD

[Lystern]

Every main character has card(s) that wins the game, no matter which situaiton he's in.

[Sleepy]

Every main character has card(s) that wins the game, no matter which situaiton he's in.

 

You give me an idea....

It would be nice if I could make a compilation at some point with all game loses all Yugioh main characters have ever had, to get a landscape of how things are for them... It does bother me too that they are mostly always placed in situations where they cannot lose or the series ends. Then games with no stakes they also tend to win.

Thinking back to it, the one with a best chance to sometimes lose on screen is Jaden in GX Season 1, when he dueled for cafeteria sandwiches or random escaped lab monkeys that just wanted to be free. It would have given the school more value as the number of better duelists increased for Jaden to eventually rematch.

I'm saying this but, GX is actually my fav Yugioh series *shrugs*.....

[VCR_CAT]

For Duelist Kingdom, the duels are pretty much part the course. They set a lot of bars in how things worked, and they're always fun to go back to for the goofiness, the HAM moments, and the utter BS that is all of Duelist Kingdom's rules. When the writers got serious about its duels, though, they got very good and very entertaining to watch and there aren't many instances in that first series where the duels were unenjoyable to watch. Either the characters themselves were fun, or the duel itself was.

 

I despise GX and anyone who knows me knows this. There are only a handful of duels in that show I actually enjoyed watching, and those were the ones where the plot and characters surrounding the duel made things more interesting; which essentially involves anything with Chazz. Otherwise, the duels were just utterly fraught with the "E-Hero Of The Week" or tossing in some of the most obtuse plot-device cards the series has seen. I mean, Arc V has a lot of plot device cards by Yuya to completely win a duel, but those are done differently in ways that they're meant to be eye-candy fun and not just ultra-specific-scenario-cards.

 

5D's has, frankly, some of the best duels I've seen in the YGO series. They really hit their stride with how over-the-top they wanted things to come across as, and duels such as the Goodwin 3v1 or the final duel against Z-ONE were some of the best I've seen. Frick, that Goodwin 3v1 is what got me back into YGO after so many years. But, at the same time, 5D's has some utterly dull filler duels; when the show wanted it to count they made it good, but when it didn't it really fell flat. Overall, 5D's can be described as high-peaks-and-low-valleys.

 

ZeXal, in hindsight, has some really good stand-out duels. As a whole, ZeXal screwed the pooch in its writing in a lot of aspects, but at the same time, I can't help but think back and remember how much I actually enjoyed a lot of the duels. None of them got as good as 5D's' good duels, but at the same time the bad ones didn't get as bad either. It wasn't entirely entertaining to see them as always being Ace vs. Ace to the point that seeing a character summon anything else from the Extra Deck was actually a novelty, but also it is kinda fun to a degree to see duels that are just bashing aces against each other.

 

Arc V suffered 5D's syndrome, but didn't quite get as good with its good duels. I mean, it has some REALLY stand-out duels that were really, really cool to watch. Reiji's early duels were some of the best in the series. I mean, the first half had some really exceptional duels overall, but that second half just got... it got really bad. The writing got really lazy as a whole; good characters getting jobbed for the dumbest reasons, and just a lot of BS in what's going on overall. A pretty big shame after how good that first half was.

 

and VRAINS so far has been alright, for what little we've seen of it so far. The duels have been actually pretty nice so far; the one against Go Onizuka was really fun to watch, and the Revolver duels stand as the best in the series so far. The only problem, though, is that while Arc V had some of the most protagonist losses in all of YGO, it feels like VRAINS is going back to basics with a protagonist that almost never loses. It's not something I can fault it especially more than the others because even the OG did it to a degree that was even worse than 5D's, which was pretty bad for it, but I can hope that they get some losses in. I dunno; the show hasn't been out relatively long, so there's still room to see where things go.

[(GigaDrillBreaker)]

The best duel of GX was Chazz vs Adrian Gecko. When Chazz used VWXYZ and lost to CLOUDIANS

[Sleepy]

I think it's time for me to drop in mine.

[spoiler=DM]

DM's wacky duels were fun to watch, but Duelist Kingdom is probably older than the rules. People tend to attack it a lot, but it is the IRL game that was unable to translate the cards' actions to the game outside the show. Catapult Turtle seemed to pop cards rather than inflict damage, there were a ton of undefined rules about type advantages, Poly mixes, and direct attacks (this latter one iirc was that as long as you played a monster in your previous turn, the opponent' couldn't hit you directly on their next, which is why most starter decks have so many monsters in them, even when they aren't good monsters, but direct attacks did exist).

It was more of a replay event than anything else.....

 

Battle City. Thank Kaiba for the Tribute rules, increased LP, change in how direct attacks worked (previously encouraging mindless shielding at minimal effort). It still suffers from BS from time to time, like Brain Control's infinite combo, but again... Brain Control's official text was printed until the GX era so it is IRL not replicating the show properly here. Ra is inexcusable, but mostly everything else was great. The Colosseum duel is one of the best in all the franchise, with how techs were based on the opponents knowing each others' personalities... Except for that BS Red-Eyes move at least....

 

 

 

[spoiler=GX]

IRL cards during the GX era are archetype hell. It became virtually useless to buy single packs, and when the previous gen had tons of vanilla filler and underwhelming effects and was still better, you know it is bad. Though GX era duels showcased lots of DM era themes that didn't originally make it into the anime, such as Amazoness, Umi, Zombies, etc. Watching them was always fun. As for the actual GX era stuff in the anime, it ranged a lot in quality, and plot-fixing draw cards were always a bit forced. The things I like more about GX apart from showcasing older cards often, is that I really like watching the characters themselves. Chazz, Bastion, and Jaden are always a joy for me (as much as people are annoyed by Jaden).... but yeah, the duels could have been more dynamic here and there.

 

 

 

[spoiler=5Ds]

 

I think 5Ds is pretty much the golden age for the game's duels, both in the show and IRL. Synchros were an unprecedented move after all. The anime made some of the most hype moments, and made Yusei's deck actually consistent in the sense that he used some very bad cards, but he kept using them so they were not meant as one-shots and justified being there. Among my favorite moments is Fitzgerald getting beaten by no new cards, Shooting Star's and Quasar's appearances, Jack's entire final duel, and Team Ragnarok's duel.

 

There were some crappier duels like Kiryu's wild west filler, but it clearly wasn't taking itself too seriously so even those gave me a few smirks xD

IRL, I still saw people playing HEROes, Red-Eyes/Blue-Eyes decks, Plant Synchros, etc from previous eras, so other than how cheap Goyo felt and the FTK loops with Dark Strike Fighter or Frogs, things were always fun.

 

 

 

[spoiler=ZeXal]

I find the duels pretty linear for the most part. The duels with the best variations were those involving Shark or Misael. 

Yuma's ZeXal forms were cool but it always felt bad that he never once used the same ZW monster twice, or that instead of running more Numbers, he went for Utopia so much.... Utopia V replaced Volcasaurus. Vector vs Yuma in Zargazzo is one of the worst, if not the worst, duel conclusion in the franchise... the only saving grace is Vector's animation. Vector is great...

All in all, bumded down duels made me appreciate 5Ds even more for the most part. Though it wasn't entirely bad, even Yuma made some interesting moves like Baby Tiragon + Gagaga, or teching an attack negation spell because we all expected Utopia to be negated at that point (they shouldn't have given Numbers the non-destruction effect).

 

 

 

[spoiler=Arc V]

Action Cards make me stop caring about keeping track of their resources, or getting any feel that they are unprotected even at 0 face-downs. Which Yuya rarely ever set anything in the backrow. He depended more than most players in the show on getting protection from Action Cards. I honestly don't get the appeal of this game mode, even if it had been "done well". Even when the games were good, it was never because of the Action Cards themselves. Like, I loved Shun vs Sora (game 1), Yuzu's riding duel, Reiji's duels, some of Jack's duels, Yugo's duels in Standard, Yuya vs Sawatari's Sylvans, and more.... but the instances of Action Cards could have been replaced with built-in monster effects or with actual backrow that ultimately served the same purpose and it would have been better IMO. Yuya had Performapal backrow that protected him but opted for using dodging cards that are more meh instead.... It wouldn't even be that much of filler.

 

Too bad because other than that trait, the duels are actually better thought out than ZeXal's..... Action Traps were interesting for a bit though...

 

 

 

[spoiler=VRAINS]

This must be rather unpopular, but I think Yusaku is rather ass-pully... His hand gets depleted in a duel, and the entirety of it can be used from the GY, he also has a ton of "Pay LP" effects that never bother him when he already has low LP. It needs more time to flesh out his theme and I hope those 2 traits keep getting more and more consistent for him (LP manipulation and GY action). I sure hope he doesn't play one of these days against a GY sealing theme, only to have no need for the GY in any of the cards.... 

Blue Angel's burn theme I don't particularly enjoy, and Go never was in a tight spot because of how well he replaces himself.... that kills the act of "being in a pinch" IMO. Hope they tune those details at some point. 

 

and I want Yusaku to lose sometime, not doing so is one of the least appealing traits of any protagonists here....

It is weird but I actually like watching the characters more than the duels... Ignis at Yusaku's place, Kusanagi at the food car, etc......