History Anime / YuGiOhVRAINS

* TransformationSequence: Among few characters who undergo a change in appearance in this manner when logging into LINK VRAINS, only Yusaku/Playmaker and Takeru's/Soulburner's has been shown with this. When Blue Girl teams up with Aqua, she undergoes her own transformation on-screen, into a new avatar called Blue Maiden, which looks marginally more mature than Blue Girl.

* TransformationSequence: Some characters undergo a change in appearance in this manner when logging into LINK VRAINS. Only Yusaku/Playmaker and Takeru's/Soulburner's has been shown. When Blue Girl teams up with Aqua, she undergoes her own transformation on-screen, into a new avatar called Blue Maiden, which looks marginally more mature than Blue Girl.

%% * GettingCrapPastThe Radar: Due to overwhelming persistent misuse, GCPTR is on-page examples only until 01 June 2021. If you are reading this in the future, please check the trope page to make sure your example fits rest of the current definition.

* InterspeciesFriendship: Any Ignis and human relationship is this. Averted at the start when Yusaku only considers Ai a useful hostage, then they turn into FireForgedFriends later on.

* SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome:
** Yusaku's past shows that when he decided to fight back to reclaim his past, he grabbed his deck he hadn't touched since he was little... but as other flashbacks show before he got the Cyberse Deck, he began his fight against Hanoi by using a starter deck like the one you would buy in real life.
** SOL Technologies gets flack from the media and public since it's obvious that they are involved in the battle with Go and Playmaker.
** Baira makes a note to Blue Angel that due to her popularity she knows her Trickstar deck inside and out and can immediately counter it.
** IJustWantToBeBadass is deconstructed when Naoki and a random watcher wants to fight the Knights of Hanoi while watching Playmaker, only to get cold feet when an actual Knight challenged them the moment they jumped in LINK VRAINS. Both only survive thanks to Playmaker saving them.
** For all the TrainingFromHell GO underwent (part of which involved integrating an AI chip into his brain) just so he can stand a chance at beating Playmaker, GO ultimately loses to him a second time, which goes to show that HardWorkHardlyWorks. In other words, grinding for days (or even weeks) on end will get you nowhere in a situation where your success is just as much a matter of chance as it is a skill.
** Even after [[spoiler:Lightning]] exposes the shocking truth about Kogami's comatose state and the true responsible party, it doesn't excuse the fact that the Knights of Hanoi committed many wrongdoings against SOL Technologies and to humanity as a whole, all in the name of terminating the Ignis and avenging Kogami. Revolver states that he intends to openly confess his organization's crimes after fulfilling their mission of terminating the Ignis, even if it leads to their arrest.
** After LINK VRAINS has been the site of two fights that ended in people sent to comas, the company has to shut it down in order to prevent more PR disasters.

* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler:Ai is defeated which frees all the consciousness data of the people he defeated. But with his death all the Ignis are dead. Three months later everyone returns to their normal lives. Playmaker has disappeared, having left on a journey but everyone believes he will return one day.]]

* DarkerAndEdgier: Yusaku is the first main character in the franchise who started out as a {{Jerkass}} AntiHero instead of a HotBlooded IdiotHero or an AllLovingHero, using ''Duel Monsters'' as weapons for his quest of {{Revenge}}. The same applies to the series itself too, as the entire premise explores {{Escapism}}, {{Ambiguous Disorder}}s, cybercrime, and the dark side of online gaming. Unusually enough the dub actually embraces this - the openings which are standard for a Shonen anime (i.e. optimistic and upbeat) are replaced with a cinematic, dissonant opening meant to invoke tension and the humor isn't dialled up as much as was the standard for previous dubs.

* AdultFear: Children getting kidnapped and forced to duel in order to get food will strike fear in every parent's heart. One child lost his parents trying to look for him after many months and another became an EmptyShell from the trauma and had to be put in a psychiatric ward for many years.

* YouGottaHaveBlueHair: Thanks to it a virtual world, hair color is completely customizable and every avatar in LINK VRAINS has multicolored hair.

* MulticoloredHair: Taken UpToEleven as every avatar has two or three different hair colors.

** Unlike the previous series where the protagonist has a circle of friends and friendship is the main theme, Yusaku started as a revenge-driven loner who is fit to be a Kaiba-expy than a Yugi-expy.
** Varis meanwhile has the [[TrueCompanions Knights of Hanoi]] who he is close with, unlike the previous rival-positioned characters who are loners or aloof at the start.
** Soulburner breaks the trend of Joey-expies as he didn't viciously betray or brainwashed to fight the protagonist. He's also the first one to [[spoiler: win against a Kaiba-expy.]]

* AlternativeForeignThemeSong: As is tradition for the ''Yu-Gi-Oh!'' dubs, the ''VRAINS'' dub replaces the original J-Pop songs with a much more ominous theme that features dissonant {{Cyberpunk}}-like sounds mixed with some OminousLatinChanting.

** [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking Lastly there are no]] TournamentArc, a manga adaptation, a protagonist/rival team up, or any Battle Royals/Tag Teams[[note]] If you don't count Soulburner vs. [=BitBoot=], where Bit and Boot merged into one, or Blue Maiden and Akira vs Ai, which was more of a 2 vs. 1.[[/note]]. However, while the Mirror LINK VRAINS Duels aren't explicitly a tournament arc, they effectively function as one.

** [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking Lastly there are no]] TournamentArc, a manga adaptation, a protagonist/rival team up, or any Battle Royals/Tag Teams[[note]] If you don't count Soulburner vs. [=BitBoot=], where Bit and Boot merged into one, or Blue Maiden and Akira vs Ai, which was more of a 2 vs. 1.[[/note]].

** Kenjo Dojun - Kenneth Drayden. His alias went from Blood Shepherd to The Shepard

** Kyouko Taki - Clarissa Turner.

* MundaneSolution: Just like in the [[RealityEnsues real life]], Yusaku stops Revolver from hacking into their computers by shutting off the power.

* SlidingScaleOfRobotIntelligence: Covers the entire scale, starting with all household AI on the Brick or Robo-Monkey level. The Ignis are somewhere between god-like levels (Lightning) and ridiculously human ones (Ai), capable of complex thought and showing emotions. Roboppi starts off at the Robo-Monkey level and slowly goes higher the more Ai tinkered with its programming. [[spoiler:Unfortunately, [[RealityEnsues it can't keep up with its growing intelligence]] and broke down soon after.]]

** In an early episode, Kusanagi talks about one customer who lives on top of Stardust Road. Later episodes reveal that this is actually Revolver's home base.

* SpotlightStealingSquad: Soulburner follows Crow's footsteps as he quickly became the deuteragonist, overshadowing older characters like Go Onizuka and Blue Angel, even replacing Go as part of the PowerTrio. He gets two battles in season 3 whereas Playmaker and Revolver only got one each.

** Revolver - Varis

* AmbiguousEnding: The series concludes with little more than a [[TheStinger Stinger]] showing [[spoiler:Ai's supposed revival in his eye form, unaware of what's going on in his surroundings]], without any further context.

* StatusBuff: [[spoiler:Judgement Arrows, the [[AntagonistAbilities card used by the villains]] to double the attack of the linked monster on the battle phase.]]

* BigFancyHouse: Revolver is shown to be living in one spacious house in the vicinity of Stardust Road, in contrast to Yusaku's HorribleHousing.

** The scene where Ai says he's starting to hate humans after learning Earth's death becomes more important [[spoiler: after he turncoats and wishes to continue Lightning's plans. Although this is just an excuse for him to SuicideByCop.]]
** All those times that Yusaku was getting observed in Episode 1? While it's obvious that it was Ai watching him [[spoiler: it's revealed he was silently goading him to become stronger and become his sword and shield to fight the Knights of Hanoi.]]
** Faust warns Playmaker in their fight that Ai shouldn't be trusted before he's turned to data. Come season 3 [[spoiler: Ai does a FaceHeelTurn and proceeds to wipe nearly every secondary characters, including Faust.]]

** In episode 3, Yusaku's class professor is teaching about computers and talks about the binary game Tower of Hanoi before we hear Yusaku's thoughts. 30 episodes later, Dr. Kogami and Revolver launches the Tower of Hanoi program.
** [[spoiler: Ai's existence always leading to a BadFuture]] is hinted twice:
*** First when Bohman, after being defeated, says he closed the Ignis' future when he sided with humans and hopes they won't regret their decision.
*** The second is during Pandor's battle, she asks if they think it's impossible for AI and humans to coexist, [[spoiler: he admits he doesn't know the answer to that]], but hints it's impossible for him.

** [[spoiler: In the first episode, a camera is watching Yusaku fight against a Knight of Hanoi five years prior, this turns out to be Ai's first actual meeting with him.]]

* RoboSpeak: Earth and Roboppi speak in this manner in the dub, in contrast to their normal sounding voice in the original version.

* AmbiguousEnding: The series concludes with little more than a [[TheStinger Stinger]] showing [[spoiler:Ai's supposed revival in his eye form, unaware of what's going on in his surroundings]].

* TwoDVisualsThreeDEffects: The ace monsters summons and attacks are animated this way, though off-model episodes have them animated normally. The clash between Decode Talker and Gouki the Great Ogre in episode 5 is rendered in full CGI. For non-ace monsters, Dotscaper is always animated in 3D in summoning sequences.
* TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture: The series is based in a world roughly 10 years from "now", most likely 2027 (the series premiered in 2017).

** Pretty much everything about SOL Tech like Queen's current state after being defeated by Ai. There’s also unknown information about SOL Tech's other higher-up staff members after hyping them up as an Evil Corporation.
** Yusaku's Link Sense is not given an explanation as to how he got it.

* TheAlcatraz: Baira was under constant surveilance in a state-of-the-art prison said to be impossible to escape, but Revolver and the others just waltz in the place and bust her out easily. Albeit they state it took months to rewrite the computer security to let them infiltrate the prison.

*** [[spoiler:In the last turn, She can't do anything but remove Wonder Heart's equipped cards and send them to the graveyard one by one via the revived Tesseract Hydradrive Monarch's effect, leaving Crystal Heart as her last monster on the field. Even activating Crown Tail's graveyard effect cannot block all of its battle damage, making her lose the duel.]]

* {{Deconstruction}}: Similar to how ''[[Anime/YuGiOhArcV ARC-V]]'' deconstructed many tropes found in the first four entries, ''VRAINS'' might be considered as this to the ENTIRE franchise, given the CyberPunk and cynical themes of the said series:

** [[spoiler:The Arrival @Ignister is unaffected by effects, gains attack for each card on Ai's field, and can destroy one monster per turn. Ai combos this with Judgement Arrows that doubles its already hefty attack power every battle phase then adds other monsters like Darkwright that slowly chip off Playmaker's health and Gussari to protect it even more. Playmaker has to cycle through all his boss monsters trying to survive and destroy it and most of them can't even last one battle phase against The Arrival.]]

** [[spoiler:Twice in Bohman vs Blue Maiden.
*** [[spoiler:First when Tesseract Hydradrive Monarch forces her to choose which monster she should send to the graveyard so it can attack again but is able to get out of it by banishing her monsters.]]
*** In the last turn, She can't do anything but remove Wonder Heart's equipped cards and send them to the graveyard one by one via the revived Tesseract Hydradrive Monarch's effect, leaving Crystal Heart as her last monster on the field. Even activating Crown Tail's graveyard effect cannot block all of its battle damage, making her lose the duel.]]

** Playmaker, Soulburner and [[spoiler:Blue Maiden]] are foreshadowed to be the heroes of Link VRAINS for Season 2.

* AstonishinglyAppropriateAppearance: All avatars are this and it makes sense since players are allowed to customize it. For instance, Blue Angel sports a blue motif, uses an idol themed deck to signify her status as an idol, and her Blue Maiden avatar change this to a water-themed deck to symbolize her friendship with Aqua. Soulburner's hairstyle, scarf, and color scheme represent fire which is appropriate as he uses a fire-themed deck. Playmaker wears a dark latex suit with Tron lines, and his deck is filled with dark Cyberse-type monsters.

* EnemyMine: Varis teaming up with Yusaku, Soulburner and Blue Maiden is this. While he still wants to kill their Ignis, he knows that [[spoiler:Lightning and Bohman]] are the more serious threats at the moment.

** After [[spoiler:Lightning and Windy]]] trap Playmaker and Ai, the former says he can't let them go since they heard their discussion, and the latter comments that it sounds like a villain's dialogue.

** The Storm Access, used by Playmaker, Revolver, Bohman, and Windy, allows the user to randomly add a card found in a Data Storm to their deck. Almost inevitably, whatever they draw will usually be perfectly suited to winning the duel in a curbstomp.

* MercyKill: [[spoiler: Soulburner finishes off a malfunctioning Roboppi as it's program is breaking down at Playmaker's request]]

*** Bohman chaining the trap card "Card of Pandora" to Heatleo's bounce ability so it always targets the card and draws two cards.

* SlidingScaleOfRobotIntelligence: Covers the entire scale, starting with all household AI on the Brick or Robo-Monkey level. The Ignis are somewhere between god-like levels (Lightning) and ridiculously human ones (Ai), capable of complex thought and showing emotions. Roboppi starts off at the Robo-Monkey level and slowly goes higher the more Ai tinkered with its programming. [[spoiler:Unfortunately, [[RealityEnsues it can't keep up with it's growing intelligence]] and broke down soon after.]]

** The Tower of Hanoi's activation will act as a giant {{EMP}} that will destroy every network and device whether its connected or not, bringing the whole world back to a time without computers and possibly killing millions. Yusaku and Kusanagi comment that this is too excessive just to terminate Ai.

* TimeSkip: There are [[RuleOfThree three]] time skips after every arc, each one skipping three months.

* VirtualSidekick: The striking majority of duelists have [=AIs=] installed in their duel disks, whose job is to act as a CombatCommentator. Among them there are a few cases that stand out.

** Varis's three lieutenants effortlessly defeats thousands of AI duelists within seconds but were defeated by Gore, Blue Angel, and Playmaker.

** Varis and Dr. Kogami believe that giving the Ignis free will, they will turn against the human race and start supervising and controlling all humans. They set out to kill them for this reason.

** In a flashback, Emma, Akira, and Blood Shepherd chase an [[DuelingHacker evil hacker]] then confront him in a ''gunfight'' inside the network different from LINK VRAINS, with the hacker somehow turning a hacking program into a bomb.
** The [[spoiler:rebuilt Tower of Hanoi's]] method of network scanning to find the rogue Ignis' base is depicted as a powerful explosion before the outline of [[spoiler:Mirror LINK VRAINS]] slowly separates from LINK VRAINS.