History Anime / YugiohZEXAL

* IdiotBall: Early on, Yuma and Astral acquire No. 11: Big Eye and No. 61: Volcasaurus, two very powerful Number monsters who could have won a lot of duels that called for their effects. Neither Yuma nor Astral ever think to summon these two monsters except for one other time each; in Volcasaurus' case, it's for naught because he summons it during the only duel where his opponent has a counter in place. The same can also be said for No. 6: Chronomaly Atlandis, a card acquired much later but had equally high utilities for, given its overpowered effects; instead... they settle for using Gauntlet Launcher...

** Episode 12 finally shows him using his brain a bit (with help from one of Shark's cards) without Astral needing to tell him everything to do...

* AdaptationalVillainy: Played Straight in the manga. [[spoiler: Dr. Faker and Mr. Heartland start off in the same place as the anime, claiming to be [[WellIntentionedExtremist fighting to save the human world from the Astral World through genocide]]. Then we learn that [[ApocalypseHow destroying the Astral World will also destroy the Human World]] and, ''[[ShockingSwerve out of nowhere]] [[OmnicidalManiac both Dr. Faker and Mr. Heartland suddenly already know this and are still going forward]]''.]]

* HotBlooded: What makes Yuma unique among the other ''Yu-Gi-Oh!'' protagonists is that he's beyond hot blooded when it comes to dealing with everything, especially dueling. Life better watch out, cause he'll bring it to 'em.

* IdiotHero: Yuma. He gets better at dueling throughout the series, but remains this trope in regards to everything else.

** [[spoiler: Charlie's niece, Mayumi, which is why he stole No.7 from the museum. He got it so she'd have all the luck in the world to get better from her upcoming operation.]]

* SheatheYourSword: [[spoiler: Near the end of the duel between Yuma and Nasch, Nasch activates a card that stops an attack and forces each player to draw a card. The drawn card has to be played or the player loses. Nasch uses his Chaos Draw and Yuma uses his Shining Draw and Yuma's card is revealed to be "Double or Nothing!". Yuma seems poised to win the duel; however, he ends up stopping his attack using Utopia's effect, realizing that if he won this way, then it would be admitting that he's abandoned his ideals by dooming both his friend and the Barian World. However, it turns out to be exactly the move he needed to make to win the duel. It turns out Nasch knew that Yuma would draw Double or Nothing! and drew a card that would have reflected the damage he would have taken back at Yuma, causing him to lose. Since Yuma stopped his attack however, a side effect of the card reduces his life points to zero, and since he had to play the card or lose anyway, Yuma wins.]]

* AdaptationalSexuality: In the manga, Astral reveals himself to be in love with Yuma. [[HoYay Of course, given some of the directions the anime takes, it may not be all that adaptational...]]

Has the distinction of being literally the last SaturdayMorningCartoon ever broadcast before the Creator/{{Vortexx}} block ceased airing on September 27, 2014. Also holds the honor of being the second Yu-Gi-Oh series to completely finish its English dub (''GX'' only stopped at the end of its third season and ''[=5Ds=]'' stopped midway through its last season and given a hastily edited GeckoEnding).

** [[spoiler: And now, with Mizael dead at Don Thousand's hands, after Episode 141, even Don Thousand, the BigBad himself, has died, with Eliphas dead not long before him. Shark/Nasch follows not long after that. This season is looking to have a truly massive body count.]]

* MagneticHero: [[LampshadeHanging Commented on]] when his teacher compares him to the sun of a solar system.

* ConspicuousCGI: Used for most Number monsters, especially during summoning or attack sequences.

* KidHero: Yuma has the distinction of being one of the youngest main heroes in the entire series, second only to the elementary-aged [[Anime/YuGiOhSevens Yuga]].

* KidHero: Yuma.

* GoodVsGood: Surprisingly. True there are some major villains like Don Thousand and Vector, antagonists like Vetrix, Dr. Faker, and most of the Barians are doing their deeds for understandable reasons.

Has the distinction of being literally the last SaturdayMorningCartoon ever broadcast before the Creator/{{Vortexx}} block ceased airing on September 27, 2014. Also holds the honor of being the second Yu-Gi-Oh series to completely finish its English dub (''GX'' only stopped at the end of its third season and ''[=5Ds=]'' stopped midway though its last season and given a hastily edited GeckoEnding).

* AbsurdlyPowerfulStudentCouncil: The Student Council President and the Special Disciplinary Commander have the authority to suspend and even expel students, and even apply arbitrary rules to dueling (monsters whose appearances violate school dress code for example).

* AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence: [[spoiler: The goal of Astral World. For this reason it removed anything with chaos in it and expelled it, creating Barian World. It also sees no problem with letting weak souls in Astral World die off in order to achieve Rank-Up viewing only the worthy as capable of ascending. Rank Up is also required for ascending to Astral World in the first place, but V and Kite find a way around that, while those who die but have willpower go to Barias World.]]

** BorrowedCatchphrase: Tetsuo, Charlie, Tron, Astral, and Shark have all used "kattobingu", though Charlie got it from Yuma's dad Kazuma instead of Yuma himself. Cathy mutates it into "Cattobingu", which, while a clever way to work it into her CatGirl theme, makes even less sense than the ordinary catch phrase.

* CrapsaccharineWorld: Heartland, in comparison to the likes of Satellite and Dark World looks pretty bright and colorful. There's robots cleaning up people's messes, a futuristic atmosphere, and no systematic conflict. [[spoiler: Except we've got brainwashings a plenty, cards that warp, distort and outright degrade people's minds into horrifying insanity, a terrifying madman in charge supported by a guy that looks like Dr Weil who is willing to commit omnicide on one universe to save his son, and which we see as junk being dumped into a world and its residents ''running, screaming.'' After the Barians are introduced, it gets even worse. They're at first quirky and bizarre, rather incompetent and overspecialized. Then we see that Girag, despite his comedic quirks, basically goes around brainwashing everyone he can in order to make them basically an army of mind control slaves. As if that wasn't bad enough, Misael appears, with a terrifyingly powerful dragon at his beck and call, and he basically terrifies the protagonist out of dueling him. And then Vector returns, and is shown as ''even crazier, eviler and more disturbing'' than we already thought he was. He made a lot of squicky moves on Yuma through his disguise of Shingetsu Rei and a multitude of lies, and his duel with him showed his commitment to completely burying the heroes for defeating him that one time. And even then, we get a GodOfEvil that Vector incarnated into himself, which has further decayed his sanity. And then we get a nice little story about a King who executed his subjects en masse and then committed suicide...shown in an illustration, followed by several other legends with more sympathetic characters suffering from tragic fates. Then we get the world ending followed by several supporting and even main characters''dying''!]] Such a light cartoon, eh?

** There's also Yuma and Takashi's off-screen duel where Takashi wins without losing any of his Life Points.

** Anna's whole "strategy" is simply doing as much damage to Yuma as possible, Yuma gave her a piece of her own medicine by inflicting '''''6000''''' points of damage.

** Yuma accidentally wins his duel with [[spoiler:Nasch]] by attempting to lose.

* ChekhovsGun: At first it seems that Galaxy-Eyes Photon Dragon and its upgraded form Neo Galaxy-Eyes Photon Dragon are just there to give Kaito a Non-Number Card to be able to fight on par with Yuma [[spoiler: Then it's revealed its most powerful shape is a Number and is destined to clash with Mizael's Galaxy-Eyes Tachyon Dragon in order to show the way to the Numeron Code]]

** This can be subverted as well on No. 39 it all depends on how you translate Kibō'ō which the example above translates as "king of hope". The Franchise/YuGiOh Wikia page translates it as King of Wishes, Hope and one of the fansubbing groups translates Kibō'ō as Aspiring Emperor, it all depends on the translation.

** Parodied by the (unfortunately not tournament legal) real-life card [[http://yugioh.wikia.com/wiki/Creator_of_Hope Creator of Hope]].

** [[http://yugioh.wikia.com/wiki/Dododo_Gasser Dododo Gasser]] too, whatever it's supposed to be.

** The Anime-only card [[http://yugioh.wikia.com/wiki/Space_Gate Space Gate]] looks almost exactly like a [[Franchise/StargateVerse Stargate]].

* SpikesOfVillainy: [[spoiler: Subverted as Kaito is firmly within protagonist territory at this point, but just ''look'' at [[http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20140520232415/yugioh/images/e/e5/Number62GalaxyEyesPrimePhotonDragon-PRIO-EN-UR-1E.png No: 62's neck.]]]]

[[folder A - C]]

!!"Kattobingu!"

** BlindIdiotTranslation: There were at least three alternative translations of 'kattobingu': the most common one being "I'll rise to the sky!", another as "Bring it to 'em!", and the funniest being one sub of the first episode had him saying "I'm ''pop flying''!"

* FanDisservice: We see Mr. Heartland naked at one point, accompanied by a [[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything suspiciously orgasmic]] magical girl transformation. It's not pretty.

* ShowWithinAShow: ''Different Dimension [=ESPer=] Robin''.

* SlouchOfVillainy: Kaito in episode 17 and 18, [[spoiler: or rather, a life like doll of Kaito set up because Jin is insane and worships it]]

** Even worse is Rank-Up-Magic The Seventh One, which Rank-Ups the Barian Emperor's Over-Hundred Numbers from the field, graveyard, or Extra Deck to summon their Chaos forms. And all the Barian Emperor's can use their Barian Chaos Draw to draw it whenever they want (except Vector, but he really doesn't need to as his entire Deck is a StoryBreakerPower).

* CallingYourAttacks: "[[TheMagicPokerEquation SHINING DRAW!]]" Monster attacks and card effects often get this treatment, too.

* ConspicuousCGI: Used for several monsters, especially during summoning or attack sequences.

* DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything: The gate Yuma opened at the end of the first episode releases all of the numbers, most of whom take people over and make them evil, with the exception of the one Yuma gets which is "Hope, King of Hope." Releasing various evils? And Hope being released with them? Now doesn't this sound familiar to the story of PandorasBox?

* GoodVsGood: Surprisingly. True there are some major villains like Don Thousand and Vector, antagonists like Vetrix, Dr. Faker, and most of the Barian's are doing their deeds for understandable reasons.

* HighClassGlass: [[spoiler:Byron Arclight aka Tron]] had this before [[GoneHorriblyWrong tried to discovered a lost gateway with his colleagues.]]

** In a similar vein Kaito '''Ten'''jo. Ten refers to a decimal point in Japanese and the number 10 in English. Note that Illumiknight's Number is 10 and that was the first Number Kaito summoned.

* NearVillainVictory: Subverted. [[spoiler:Astral and Yuma could not defeat Kaito, and the duel ended not because they turned it around, but because Kaito left them to go to his ill brother's side. Naturally, this shook them up incredibly hard.]]
** Subverted AGAIN [[spoiler:when Misael is ready to beat the living crap out of Kaito with his Chaos Number, but the Sphere Field suddenly began to fall apart, forcing him to retreat.]]

* ObviouslyEvil: Dr. Faker
* OddlyNamedSequel

* [[spoiler: ReallyDeadMontage : The regular ending animation after Astral's death in episode 111 was replaced by a montage of Astral and Yuma together.]]

* VerbalTic: Tokunosuke ends his sentences with "-ura."

* WhenAllYouHaveIsAHammer: '''Yuma'''. Lampshaded in the dub. "Monster with massively powerful effect and stats in the way? Just call 1-800-Utopia!"

*** Subsequent openings initially obscure important characters and then reveal their faces once they appear in the show, such as the Tron family or the Barians.