Yuugiou Arc-V/ Yu-gi-oh! Arc-V

When Starve Venom absorbed all that attack power I couldn't help but imagine the Ojama guy thinking "well at least I played no part in this fuck-up".

He really didn't. The last two guys also did their best to remove options from Yuri's field.

Those first two people have no excuse though.

Yeah. It's just their poor luck that nothing they did mattered, since they were screwed the moment they removed his last monster due to it's ability.

So I gotta ask, as someone who's mostly just watched the anime (which doesn't always make the best moves for the sake of plot), how do you deal with something like what Yuri did?

I mean, taking out your opponent's monsters seems like a wise choice, but in this case, it's what let Yuri turn the battle around completely. He was never really in any danger (as shown by his complete lack of concern when they were all taking their own turns).

The smart thing to do is read the cards on the opponent's field. Absolutely everything has some sort of counterplay, whether it's self-evident or not.

In this case, Squid Drosera triggers if it leaves the field and affects all special summoned monsters. Since this is the fusion dimension, it is extremely obvious that Yuri will fusion summon on his next turn. Fusing with that as material counts as leaving the field, so it will trigger no matter what. So how do you make it useless? A few options:

1. Negate it, if possible.
2. Don't special summon until after its effect goes off.
3. Go ahead and special summon to get rid of it, but get those monsters you just summoned off the field.
4. Use an effect to shuffle it into the deck. For some reason, the rules say this doesn't trigger "leaves the field" effects.
5. Use an effect to take control of it and Xyz summon with it as material. See option 4.

If the brothers had done the destruction in reverse order, they'd have successfully done option 3 (VWXYZ would have not had a counter on it since it wouldn't have been on the field at the time) and duelist 5 would have survived that onslaught.

Though to be fair, WTF, why do you leave yourself wide open without having more backrow or a handtrap to protect yourself, duelist 4? As was noted, the show had them misplay on purpose just to end it in one turn.

edited 26th May '16 9:52:00 AM by burnpsy

You can't activate VWXYZ Dragon Catapult Cannon's effect on the opponent's turn can you? (or maybe instead of Yuri's monster, go for Predator Planter so that he can't immediately revive whatever just got destroyed? Probably wouldn't've made a difference in the end, but it seems smarter to me.

edited 26th May '16 10:06:54 AM by ComicX6

It's only on your own turn, but yes they could have gotten rid of Predator Planter.

Doesn't really matter, though. No matter what they got rid of, Starve Venom was hitting the field.

Or, you know, set cards like Mirror Force, Negate Attack or something that destroy the dragon before it was summoned. (which no one in these series ever do).

On an unrelated note, I'm so glad that Yuzu is important again after spending 2/3 of the last arc being captured. And she got to interact with another female character!

Edit: Hmm, then the safest and my favorite choice would be either Dimensional Prison or Breakthrough Skill

edited 26th May '16 10:47:03 AM by shatterstar

Mirror Force would have been a poor choice due to the final clause of its anime effect.

Good thing the burn damage isn't a thing in the actual game, but they'd need something like Drowning Mirror Force, Storming Mirror Force, etc.

Or just do the hilarious thing and tribute it.

edited 26th May '16 10:26:35 AM by burnpsy

shatterstar makes a good point actually. No one ever uses Negate Attack in the anime anymore, and instead goes for riskier or gimmicky means of defense. I guess that's because Negate Attack is a little too reliable in these dramatic situations.

Nobody uses Negate Attack IRL either unless they have Bountiful Artemis.

Even if one wanted to use it, Threatening Roar is always better since it can be chained to an attempt to destroy it or at the start of the Battle Phase, which you can't do with Negate Attack. Not to mention there are a lot of monsters that have effects preventing you from responding to their attacks.

edited 26th May '16 11:53:49 AM by burnpsy

Good point but Artemis is only used in Fairy deck, which isn't popular right now.

Anyway, I'm kind of disappointed that Yuzu is now in the Fusion Dimension but the writers didn't think to bring Serena to it. Missed a whole lot of interaction and backstory potential.

The way the Yuzu counterparts have been handled could be better, if only because Ruri and Rin are non-entities and Serena's still pretty boring as a character.

otherwise, Yuzu herself has been utilized infinitely better then the previous female characters have been, at least.

The Synchro Arc is her only real black mark, but I agree with that.

I don't know. Even when captured by Roget, she was the reason he ended up being exposed in the first place, afterall, as well as the fact that she survived getting flung into a building on her D-wheel.

Hey, they got one good female character with actual dimension. Don't get your hope up too much. Look what happened to 5Ds after the Dark Signer arc with Aki, Carly, Mikage and Rua. *shudders*

I think we're complaining about the fact that Yuzu spent 50+ episode doing little to nothing and have little screen and plot importance. Not to mention she only dueled three time and learned absolutely nothing about Synchro Summoning while the dueling ratio in the last arc was much better.

I think from the writers' POV Serena got her big moments in the Invasion arc. But still. They brought Yuzu into the Fusion Dimension and not think to bring someone defected that is actually native to the dimension into it? That screams They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot to me.

Well, the two of them don't have to cancel each other out. Asuka can be used to interact with the rebellion while Serena would be used as someone who know the facility and the higher ranking members better than Asuka.

edited 26th May '16 8:20:08 PM by shatterstar

It would be nice if the cast showed a little bit more concern about her (re)capture and Reiou once again being one step away from completing his master plan. Not saying they should go full-blown panic mode, but I would like to see a little less aimlessly wandering around Heartland and a little more nudging towards the Lancers reuniting and strategizing how they're going to tackle Academia. Otherwise I'm going to be reminded of that time in Valvrave when Saki was capture and barely anyone gave a shit until she showed up being tortured on live TV.

Well that is sort of what Asuka's doing right now.

edited 26th May '16 8:14:43 PM by ComicX6

You know, I wonder just how far Yuzu's bracelet sent Yuri. I mean, he does have dimensional travel tech on him already, so it's mostly curiosity.

You know, I noted a discrepance between how the Fusion You show students and the Obelisk Force soldiers duel in Battle Royales. The You Show students should have capped Yuri at least a couple times before losing, at least.

edited 29th May '16 12:53:13 PM by Blueace

Wow, Sakaya is pretty bad at this dueling thing.

Eh, they did all right considering they were fighting named Elite Mooks.

Sayaka and Allen are Kotori-II and Anna-lite to me. Don't see the point of them.

We'll only call her Kotori lite if she only ever duels once and then goes back to being a useless cheerleader.

Plus, Kotori's one duel that I know of was when she was mind controlled, so I'm already willing to give Sayaka the benefit of the doubt.

Plus, she doesn't offer creepy Fanservice, which is more than Kotori can claim.

As I understand it, the director of Zexal put her in entirely for that purpose.

Am I right?

It would explain the baffling decision of a main female character who doesn't duel at all. At least Anzu had the excuse of her lack of duelling being the artifact of when the series was about more than card games.

Apparently her seiyuu is an avid player of the actual game (to the point where the decks Kotori uses in the video games are derived from the ones she uses IRL), so I imagine someone in casting got a good laugh at her expense.