YMMV / Bakugan

For the anime:

• Americans Hate Tingle: It's hated by die-hard fans of Franchise/Pokemon fans in the US and UK for being a Franchise/Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh! rip-off. Even The Simpsons had a bit dedicated to mocking it.
• Awesome Music: 'Bang Bang Bakugan!', 'Buchirin Generation', 'Number One Battle Brawlers' and 'Air Drive'.
• Badass Decay: The writers gave Hydranoid the shaft after Season 1, and his G-power dropped from 550 to 500 G's while Gorem, Preyas, and Tigrerra got boosted to that level and had their abilities buffed, making Hydranoid seem comparatively unimpressive. Compare his successors Helios and Dharak, who both got buffed in Mechtanium Surge.
• Broken Base:
  • Either Baku Tech! Bakugan is the best reboot of the franchise, or the worst one ever done by Sega.
  • Western fans either like it or hate it for being a poor man's Pokemon.
• Cliché Storm: The show's usage of common elements of Mon anime elements resulted in some accusations of this.
• Complete Monster: These are the worst the Bakugan Battle Brawlers have had the displeasure of facing:
  • New Vestroia: King Zenoheld is the ruthless leader of an alien race known as the Vestals, who enslaved the Bakugan to use them as entertainment against their will, passing them off as inanimate playthings. After they were freed and revealed as sapient beings, something which horrified most of his followers, Zenoheld designed the Bakugan Extermination System to commit genocide against them. His own son, Prince Hydron, fares no better as Zenoheld treats him as a disposable pawn, abusing and torturing him to take out his frustrations at losing. After his genocide attempt is foiled, Zenoheld loses it and decides to wipe out all life in the universe, including his home world of Vestal, out of petty spite for being defied.
  • Gundalian Invaders & Mechtanium Surge Arc 1: Emperor Barodius is the sadistic leader of an alien race known as the Gundalians and hero Dan Kuso's Arch-Enemy. Barodius invaded and planned to eventually destroy the peaceful world of Neathia in order to capture a powerful artifact known as the Sacred Orb, which would allow him to control all Bakugan and conquer all of reality. Barodius cares nothing for his men, and treats them as expendable pawns to use and abuse, having them tortured for failing him or having them killed in order to gain an advantage. Eventually defeated by the heroes and imprisoned in an alternate universe for eternity by Code Eve for his attempted genocide, he was mutated there into Mag Mel. As Mag Mel, he formed a psychic link with Dan Kuso and Drago, which he used to torment Dan with terrible visions of the destruction he intends to cause on Earth. Barodius, now as Mag Mel, declares war on his homeworld of Gundalia, intending to wipe it and his people off the map before being stopped. His newly created Co-Dragons Sellon and Anubius are expendable as well, Mag Mel killing the former despite her begging him to stop and the latter for living out his use. Mag Mel, after being fully revived, has all humans transferred to the dark dimension where he plans on torturing them. At full power, he sends monsters to the five biggest cities on Earth in order to drill to the Earth's core and blow it up, releasing a large amount of energy which he will use to wipe out the entire universe.
  • Mechtanium Surge Arc 2: Coredegon/Mechtavius Destroyer is a rogue Mechtogan obsessed with wiping out all the Bakugan so he can't be summoned to do battle. Introduced by destroying his progenitor Fury, Coredegon and his entourage then travel to Bakugan City on Earth to wipe out all the Bakugan living there, along with their human partners. Defeated, Coredegon abducts the human Gunz Lazar and copies his appearance to become Wiseman, a guise he uses to become empowered under the pretence of attacking humans to force them to give up their Bakugan. He then uses Gunz's likeness to infiltrate the Brawlers' HQ to steal a Bakumeter that allows him to summon Battle Suits for the Nonets, making the Brawlers, including Gunz's partner Reptak, think their friend has betrayed them in the process. Managing to defeat the Brawlers, Coredegon offers to spare Bakugan City from destruction if the Brawlers kill their own partners. Regaining his full power, Coredegon murders the Nonet Balista for suspecting his true operation, before revealing himself to both sides by attacking them. Banishing the Brawlers to spend an eternity in the Doom Dimension, Coredegon then slaughters the Nonets for standing up to him, and in one Bad Future, murders all the Bakugan throughout the dimensions along with their partners and people living with them.
• Ending Fatigue: The New Vestroia arc. Okay, so the brawlers had to free the Bakugan from the Vexos. Oh wait! Now they have to stop the Vexos from destroying all the Bakugan! Oh wait! Now they have to stop King Zenoheld from destroying the whole universe! Mira even lampshades it:
  Mira: First you wanted to enslave the Bakugan, then you wanted to destroy the Bakugan and now you want to destroy the universe.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • The Vexos will more than likely never appear again — and never did — but after entering the second season after New Vestroia, some of the members are still getting plenty of fan art. And Spectra's popularity was a contributing factor to his return in the latest arc.
  • Volt Luster is likely the most popular of the Vexos, being likely the most honorable antagonist in the series, by far the most sympathetic, and arguably the best Vexos in terms of pure skill in Season 2, after he Took a Level in Badass and was able to hold his own against Shun/Baron simulataneously, and handed Hydron's ass to him. Also liked was his shades of Hidden Depths, being implied to serve Hydron out of loyalty rather than Zenoheld, his rescue from poverty all but stated to be the reason why, which is likely why he didn't kill Hydron. Not many fans took well to him being Put on a Bus to Hell and never being reunited with Brontes.
• Fandom Rivalry: It has one with Pokémon and Beyblade (particularly Beyblade: Metal Fusion) fans due to sharing the same genre. It especially didn't help that all three shared an anime block on Cartoon Network around the time the latter two were airing.
• Fanon Discontinuity: Many fans are content to just view the original Battle Brawlers series as a one-off and discount the sequels.
• First Installment Wins: To many fans, Bakugan will never be as good as it was in the first season, no doubt thanks to Nelvana changing the relationship between Dan and Runo from Official Couple to Just Friends, later series slowly but surely losing various Gaming and Sports Anime & Manga elements and strategy until the middle of Gundailan Invaders where the show becomes about Kaiju spamming Ability Cards, and the female characters being treated horribly (the first series had a balanced main cast of three boys and three girls, but only the three boys became mainstays for the next three series.)
  • This also extends to the first series in general as in comparison to it, the reboot Bakugan: Battle Planet for the second generation didn't garner nearly as much acclaim or attention from fans.
• Foe Yay Shipping: Often overlaps with Ho Yay as well, and IT'S OFTEN! An example is last battle between Dan and Masquerade in Battle Brawlers. The battle was goddamn epic and...well, Intense, complete with collateral damage and...Clothing Damage, well, Masquerade turns out to be Alice Gehabich. And the guy in a girl's body tore off his tattered longcoat mid-battle, which exposed bare, feminine shoulders. And the reason he had a breastplate on? To hide her chest underneath.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
  • It was quite the flop in Japan, while a huge hit in America.
  • And it was the current go-to boy thing in South Africa for a while.
  • And is also very popular in Hungary of all places, where all 4 anime series are released/dubbed. The toys are a big deal on Hungarian bootleg sites.
  • And was a success in Sweden, too.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • During the first season, before Marucho reveals it is his house, Runo expresses concern if it is a mall or a store, as it could possibly put her parents out of business. Her concern is used to make Runo act completely angry unnecessarily, and therefore a moment for comedy. This is probably a lot harder to laugh at due to the large amounts of businesses that went bankrupt due to the Great Recession.
  • During Season 1, there were a few episodes that involved the Brawlers having doubts about Alice and wondering if she was really on their side, or if she was a traitor, which caused a few trust issues between them. Then comes The Reveal that Alice was actually Masquerade the whole time, and all those issues have a much darker perspective now, especially since she wasn’t even aware of what was going on.
• Ho Yay:
  • Spectra and Gus. Need we say more?
  • Ren and Marucho.
  • Jake and Marucho.
  • After Dan faints in the first episode of Gundalian Invaders, Ren has his hand directly on Dan's crotch.
• Launcher of a Thousand Ships:
  • Shun gets shipped with Dan, Alice, Masquerade, and Fabia, amongst others.
  • While there's no way Dan can surpass Shun in regard to his ships, he still gets a fair amount of shipping with Runo, Mira, Fabia, Masquerade, Alice, Spectra and (of course) Shun.
• Magnificent Bastard: Masquerade is one of Naga's enforcers and the chief rival of Dan Kuso with a desire to prove himself as the best Bakugan brawler. Battling his way to the number one spot, Masquerade uses his skills and wits to his full advantage, making use of his manipulations and Doom Cards to banish his opponents' defeated Bakugan to the Doom Dimension. As the Bakugan Battle Brawlers oppose him, he consistently remains one step ahead of them and recruits several top-ranked brawlers to keep them occupied, later casting them and even his own Bakugan aside after they serve his purposes. Evolving his Hydranoid to make it the most powerful Bakugan in the world, he faces Dan in a climactic final showdown which he narrowly loses. Taking his loss in stride, he learns to move past his obsession with victory and reveals himself to be the Split Personality of Alice Gehabich. Defecting from Naga's servitude, Masquerade uses his guile to aid Dan in fighting his former master's hybrid Bakugan, expressing contentment that his final battle was alongside Dan before fading from Alice's mind, leaving her with words of encouragement and his Hydranoid.
• Memetic Badass: VILANTOR! Clearly the most powerful thing on the show, with a currently perfect fighting record. It has also been the battle cry for King Leonidas, stopped the USS Enterprise, been commentated on and then eaten by Orson Welles, fought crime in Gotham City, defeated all of Kaiba's Blue-Eyes White Dragons, and generally been awesome on all levels.
• Misaimed Fandom: The Doom Card, a symbol of evil that basically sent losing Bakugan to hell and was an implement of the Big Bad and all around made people do nasty, terrible things. The kids LOVE the Doom Card...
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Mag Mel performing Mind Rape on Dan and Drago For the Evulz. If not that, then paralyzing a boy in fear to place the Brawlers in a Sadistic Choice where they either have to kill an innocent human being or let Mag Mel's monsters continue to destroy everything in their path.
  • Coredegon and his gang cross this by being completely willing to obliterate hundreds of humans and Bakugan with absolutely no remorse.
• Pandering to the Base: Mechtanium Surge is guilty of this to an extent, seeing as how Part 1 saw the sudden reappearances of fan-favorites Spectra, Helios, and Gus. Then in Part 2 there was the reappearances of Runo, Julie, and Mira, as well as several former Bakugan partners from the first two seasons like Preyas, Elfin, Skyress, Gorem, and Hydranoid (even if they were all Back for the Dead and the majority of them were reduced to non-speaking cameos).
• Nightmare Retardant: The Doom Dimension's name is really silly-sounding, especially in a serious context.
• Seasonal Rot: Also Sequelitis. Many fans and regular viewers found New Vestroia, Gundalian Invaders, and Mechtanium Surge to not be nearly as good as the original Battle Brawlers was.
• Shipping Bed Death: The finale of Battle Brawlers tied up a lot of the romantic subplots. Apparently, this means there's nothing left for the female Brawlers to do and they're all either Demoted to Extras or Put on a Bus entirely in New Vestroia. Three new characters join Dan, Marucho and Shun to make up the new six-element team— and two of them are male. Periphery Demographic? What's that? We just want to sell toys, and that requires a Cast Full of Pretty Boys, right? Wait... that is going after a Periphery Demographic.
• Ship-to-Ship Combat: For some reason, it's not about Dan the main character, but about Shun, his Foil & Lancer. Between Alice and Fabia, pick your choice.... The fans of the former are also in combat with the Alice x Lync fans.
  • While the ship combat regarding Dan is nowhere as caustic as Shun's, there is still the occasional fight between Dan X Runo (the Official Couple), Dan X Mira (copious Ship Tease with a sexy character that is in love with him), Dan X Shun, Dan X Masquerade and Dan X Spectra (the Ho Yay options) shippers.
• Squick: from Episode 30 of season 1 "I Am Marucho, Hear Me Roar", when Preyas begins his "evolution", in which he states his species evolves by multiplying. The problem? The second Preyas comes out of what is heavily implied to be his ass. It's even worse in the Japanese version as it shows the scene with an extra shot that essentially confirms it.
• They Copied It, So It Sucks!: Some fans of Pokemon, Digimon, Yu-Gi-Oh, and Beyblade accused this of copying elements from these shows.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Many wanted Volt to join the brawlers, and by extension replace The Scrappy that Baron was with a much more interesting and complex character. This never happens.
  • If it weren't painfully obvious already, Runo, Julie and Alice fall into this category after the first season.
  • Alice in particular was a devastating example. Notably due to her alter ego, Masquerade, being the Big Bad for a good majority of the first season. You would think a character who was previously the major cause of conflict for the protagonists would have more screentime and development afterwards, but unfortunately she gets the shaft like the other girls. What makes her case even worse than the other girls is that Alice/Masquerade and Hydranoid were one of the strongest brawler-bakugan duos on Earth, to the point that they could go toe-to-toe with Dan and Drago (and that’s not even going into Alice’s strategic skills when it comes to brawling), so they would’ve both would’ve been really useful allies for Dan and co. to have in the following seasons.
  • And the same situation happens again with Mira after New Vestroia: she doesn't appear in season 3 at all and, while she gets a few appearances in season 4, she sadly gets Demoted to Extra in an arc where more Brawlers were desparately needed.
• Trans Audience Interpretation: Though the show doesn't use the term "transgender" to describe Masquerade, he's still literally a man living inside a woman's (Alice) body. Trans fan naturally like the character.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: Hydron. He might act like a spoiled brat, but at the end of the day, he's still just a lonely teenager who was repeatedly abused by the very person that was supposed to care for him.
• Values Dissonance:
  • In one episode, while Joe is getting healed after fainting, the Brawlers enter his personal computer and go through his personal information to see if he is working with Masquerade. The fact he isn't quickly points the Brawlers in the right, but they are entering someone's private computer files and seeing personal information while he is unconscious, which is invasion of privacy in real life, and this is portrayed normally, and swiftly used for comedy. This kind of scene would be very hard to play as comedic today to the emergence of digital privacy as a major issue in the 2010's.
  • Masquerade managing to track down where the brawlers are simply by accessing the Bakugan website, ( before the reveal he is Alice), can get a lot more uncomfortable with the rise of online harassment as a major issue.
• Win Back the Crowd: Mechtanium Surge, thanks to its Continuity Porn (one of the biggest complaints from fans about New Vestroia and Gundalian Invaders is that everyone except Dan, Marucho and Shun is Put on a Bus) and the surprisingly dark storyline. Opinions vary on how successful this actually was.
• The Woobie: The show has quite a number of them.
  • Alice is unwittingly corrupted by Naga and is turned into Masquerade. While under Naga's control, she is forced to send countless Bagukan to their equivalent of Hell, learns that her grandfather is serving a monster, and later condemns all of her friends to the Doom Dimension even though they later escape. When she finally breaks free of it, she is forced to remember all of the atrocities that she committed under Naga's orders.
  • Wavern is born a white Bakugan, leaving her powerless and the subject of discrimination from the more normal Bakugan. She saw her brother go insane with a desire for power, she is brutally separated from her Love Interest before being forced to hide the Infinity Core which is slowly killing her, and finally, it makes her the target of her brother which forces Drago to kill her.
• Woolseyism: The English dub changes the catchphrase “Pop out” to “Bakugan, stand!”

For the real card game:

• Adaptation Displacement: The anime is better known than the Card Game.
• Game-Breaker: The "H-Bomb". The card "Haos 2" (where you steal one of your opponents won gate cards by having a lower printed power) makes the "H", a "Lowest Power Wins" gate card is the fuse, and a low-power Haos Bakugan is the bomb. You win two points in a single round. This is getting increasingly broken as the G-power cap rises and will probably never go out of fashion. The only limit is that you can have only one of each card in your deck.
• "Stop Having Fun" Guys: Who are on opposing sides about rolling.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: Harpus is male... not even the shows staff got this.

For the video games:

Bakugan Battle Brawlers

• Awesome Music: The soundtrack contains tons of bangers, mainly the Pyrus, Darkus, and Ventus arenas, alongside the track that plays when two Bakugan attack each other.
• Game-Breaker: Darkus Leonidus with a specific set of 4 cards (one Gate Card, 3 Ability Cards) can easily break 1000 G-Power before adding pickups and whatever is generated in the battle itself. To say nothing about Omega Leonidas with Darkus Attribute and the same setup (substituting one ability card).
• No Problem with Licensed Games: It's generally regarded as a very good game, translating the anime's battles into game mechanics near flawlessly. It certainly helps that it has the anime's voice actors reprising their roles while having a graphics style mimicking the anime but in a video game.

Bakugan Defenders of the Core

• Awesome Music: The stealth theme for Britain.

Bakugan Bakugan: Champions of Vestroia

• Never Live It Down: The game's own announcement gave itself a bad reputation for being hyped up as the surprise announcement in the July 2020 Nintendo Treehouse Live presentation. Before the presentation, Nintendo advertised it as a "new WayForward game" ahead of time, which soured a lot of fan expectations when they found out it was a niche title instead of something involving one of Nintendo's first party series or an otherwise more popular third-party license. That this happened during the COVID-19 Pandemic when Nintendo-related announcements were dry certainly didn't help.

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