Return to the Second: Yu-gi-oh Impressions

A little over a year ago I talked about a series that was rather close to my heart, Pokemon. It was around that time I got back into watching the last series, and granted since then I haven’t continued it, but certainly I still would. Yet, recently I been watching a lot of Yu-gi-oh, which, as far as I remember, is the second anime I ever saw. Granted I have gone at a rather slow pass of rewatching to make fun of the original series, but since it began nearly two years ago I have watched every episode of the latest series Yu-gi-oh Vrains and more recently I been watching Yu-gi-oh 5Ds, between those two shows and how much I play Duel Links, I figured giving my impressions on these two series, while thinking of the old times would be a good way to do a flashback post.

I got back, or at least tried to get back into Yu-gi-oh once before after I stopped watching in the series fourth season when I was a kid, it was I believe for ARC-V, but while I did watch the first ten or so episodes, I just could not get into it. Was it just not feeling it at the time, I do not know.

It was a year after that attempt when I got into the recently released app, Yu-gi-oh Duel Links, which in the two years since launch I find myself playing nearly every day. It was this game that sparked my interest into rewatching the original. Which I certainly had a lot of fun watching just to make fun of every few seconds.

Come June of 2017, things changed, the newest series of Yu-gi-oh began airing and I decided to give it a shot. Surprisingly I was hooked. A lot changed with the game I once knew, where fusions, and ritual summons where rarely a thing, to new summons, Link Summons. While the show honestly has the entire duel done in a few turns, it still has a nice balance of creating tension with the character nearly losing or trying to uncover the truth of an event that happened years prior in the series. The first year of the series the main character, Playmaker, changes a lot, and his character development can be seen throughout, it was really nice to see that, and too bad it is not as apparent in the second year of the series. Still, compared to what I remembered from the original series, it felt like the characters did not change as much. Also Ghost Girl is the best.

When I compare that character development for the latest series and the original, the original was closely based on and followed the manga. It was because of this that, a lot of the anime was in fact original, Duelist Kingdom and Battle City certainly were from the manga, but the dragons and the virtual world and things like that were all original, and honestly it did feel like there was a major difference between the two. Either way, it is because of all the original content, their journey was spread out and that character development felt as if it took much longer to emerge.

Now, as for Vrains, I still rather enjoy the second year, the arc is enjoyable, a lot more dramatic, and a lot more going on with so many different sides fighting one another sharing the concept of AI and free will. But there is both good and bad from the episodes, still, nice to watch every week.

Switching over to 5Ds, well, again, this was thanks to being into Duel Links, and with the major update for Japan’s two year anniversary focusing on the 5Ds characters, I decided to give it a try. I got rather hooked right away, I saw the first arc in two days. But after that I stopped for a few months. It was not that I didn’t want to watch it, it was mostly due to Monster Hunter World taking up all my free time. Either way, I got back into it, and watched at least an episode or two a day, sometimes before work when I wake up or around the time when I eat supper since either there were no shows airing that day or I just wanted to watch something. The second arc gave a finally that, really felt like the show could have ended then and there. But it did not, now it went from a gloomy dark series to one with a lot of filler episodes, this is mostly due to the fact there was production focusing on the Bonds beyond Time movie, which in turn took priority over the anime, which lead to about thirty to forty episodes of filler. Now, I don’t really know where the series goes from here. At the same time, I do not mind this filler. It was nice at first, a nice break after a major arc to give the characters time to get ready for a tournament, while giving a bit more development to the characters when something isn’t going to end the world. Still, it is filler, and it is just mealy okay, and certainly the batch of episodes I am on now are the weakest thus far.

Now, where will I go from here? I know I did not really continue Pokemon too much after a few months. But, this series I feel it is fitting for how things are. I started off watching Pokemon, slowly over time while I stopped watching it I watched Yu-gi-oh a lot more growing up. It felt like these past few months made that the case again. I can at least see myself getting through Vrains and finishing 5Ds. I would like to watch GX, but, I honestly do not know. Perhaps this was just a second time reemergence of my childhood coming back to me, while there is certainly nothing wrong with that. It is nice to build new memories looking back on old ones. But staying like this is never a good things and I do not mind if after Vrains end my time watching Yugioh comes to an end again as well.

Maybe in a year or so I will do a post where I return to Megaman or Digimon, probably the former over the latter. Either way I hope you enjoyed.

Feel free to check out my other post where I returned to Pokemon: HERE.

Also feel free to give your thoughts on series you saw when you were little and either tried to come back to or wish you did. 

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Again, I hope you enjoyed and see you next time.

– Joe