Offscreen Moment Of Awesome / Anime & Manga

Offscreen Moment of Awesome in Anime & Manga.

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• Banana no Nana. We see Hoshi Budou kick Nana's butt pretty badly. Then suddenly Nana has somehow won. Fans are very curious how a Banana Manipulator could defeat a Fragile Speedster Ninja Maid.
• Black Butler emulates Devil May Cry as Sebastian reveals his true form in the first season finale to fight. We never get to see it kicking asses.
• Black Cat is very strange with this trope, and way too fond of it. They'll have occasions where they show just the beginning and end of fights, beginning and middle of fights, the middle of interrupted fights, and the beginning, middle, and end of a fight but without actually showing how the victor won. Basically, whenever opposing groups of badasses congregate in one place, you're not going to get to see much of the action. And since the badassness performed on-screen is damned near off the charts, it really makes you feel like you missed something. It reaches its peak in the Train vs Creed fight, where after a long and brutal battle Train fires his ultimate attack, misses, and somehow wins anyway. No explanation is given except for a flashback of the ultimate attack sailing past Creed. And still completely missing. Maybe more of an Unexplained Moment of Awesome, but it is still disappointing. (That last example is only in the anime. The manga's a bit better about this trope.)
• Bleach:
  • Subverted with the Byakuya/Kenpachi versus Yammy battle. Byakuya and Kenpachi are set to actually team up against the most powerful Espada of all, who has just released his full power, and the scene cuts away. The pair eventually arrives in Karakura Town looking ragged, beaten and with healers running after them saying they can barely stand. It looks like they've returned from an epic battle, so one Shinigami dares to ask how good the fight was... "Boring", is the response.
  • When Yuki and Shino begin their stint as Karakura Town's guardian Shinigami, they immediately run afoul of a gang of very powerful Hollows. Cue the arrival of Ichigo, Uryuu, Sado and Orihime. When Yuki comes around later, he recalls Orihime talking about his injuries and Ichigo and Uryuu engaging in Snark-to-Snark Combat while fighting. He's awed by the gang's ability to fight Hollows, but that awe is all that's really revealed.
  • Zaraki's greatest ever fight is finally revealed in flashbacks, his epic battle with the greatest of all swordsmen and very first Kenpachi, Yachiru. The story only deals with the assessment by Zaraki and Yachiru of how astonishing and extraordinary a battle it truly was as the focus is on the fall-out, not the battle itself. Yachiru is the original name of Captain Unohana.
• Midway through Blood+, Saya confronts Diva face to face after Diva has rampaged through the good guy's base of operations, killing dozens of mooks and raping then killing Saya's younger brother Riku in the process. The episode ends with Saya and Diva sizing each other up in preparation for a no-holds-barred beatdown. The next episode ...starts with a one-year Time Skip and follows the supporting cast as they struggle against Chiropterans in the U.K. Saya shows up by the episode's end of course, but the big fight is never mentioned again, not even when the two characters fight for real later on. Also in the same episode Riku is killed on the verge of Taking a Level in Badass, though this is much more defensible dramatically and indeed becomes crucial later on.
• In Canaan, it is never shown how Yunyun saves Maria from being blown up by the time bomb in that train car. That must have been quite a stunt, especially considering how little time she had to pull it off.
• In A Certain Scientific Railgun, our heroines are going to a facility protected by a platoon Power Armor Mooks in a rescue mission.
  (camera pans over smoking wreckage)
  Kuroko: You could have left one of them conscious to answer questions.
  Mikoto: How was I supposed to know there wasn't anyone inside!?
• The first season of Code Geass ended on a massive cliffhanger with several characters' fates hanging in the balance. But Executive Meddling forced the second season to start with a Time Skip and a reboot, after which part of the season was spent on a retread of Season 1's plot. To their credit, the writers tied up most of the dangling plot threads eventually via flashbacks, but the end result was rather anticlimactic.
  • Also, in R2 Turn 22, after the epic showdown with Lelouch's parents, Suzaku finally confronts Lelouchand the two are about to speak honestly with each other. Keep in mind their love-hate relationship has been the driving conflict in the show.The narrative cuts to a month later, with Lelouch and Suzaku's alliance having formed off-screen. Now, it makes sense for narrative reasons, but it still feels anticlimatic.
• Done for laughs in Cross Ange's prerequisite Beach Episode. Several of the pilots were lined up for a race across the beach, all wearing swimsuits stated to be water-soluable. Right after the starting gun goes off, the scene cuts away.
• In Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, a few moments where Zenitsu uses his body to protect others take place completely offscreen, the first being where he saves Shoichi from a fall out of the Drum House’s upper floor, Zenitsu apparently saved the boy and hit his own head in the process, bleeding from the concussion; another is during the Infinite Train arc, Zenitsu saved Nezuko and a few passengers by embracing them and taking everyone out of the colliding train after Enmu’s defeat, yet again hitting his head hard, bleeding from the impact.
• Devil May Cry: The Animated Series: In the final episode, Dante finally pulls out his Devil Trigger... offscreen. He's grappling with the Big Bad, the camera zooms in on his face, he starts glowing, his eyes widen and his voice deepens. The camera cuts back to show an explosion on the roof they are fighting on. When it comes back to them, the fight's already over (though this also holds the implication that he may have used Devil Trigger explosion and killed the demon instantly with that).
• Played for Laughs in Episode 19 of Digimon Ghost Game, where this happens twice. Time Master Monster of the Week Piximon attempts to go back in time to Ret-Gone Gammamon. The heroes and audience see him vanish, there's a Beat, and then he returns burned and terrified courtesy of GulusGammamon. Out of curiosity, he then visits Gammamon's future and returns in complete awe.
• In Fairy Tail during the Phantom Lord Arc Mystogan visits Porlyusica and reveals that he defeated every subdivision of Phantom Lord by himself and proves this by scattering all the subdivisions' flags across her yard. He also reports that he was the one responsible for regathering Makarov's magic power, which was drained from his body by Aria, giving him the strength to defeat Jose Porla.
  • Erza destroys 100 monsters of the Pandemonium this way. It is expanded in the anime to the point where we get to actually see it.
• In the series finale of The Familiar of Zero, Saito somehow stole a fighter jet from a Japanese military base and used it to fly back and save everyone.
• Fist of the North Star:
  • Shin's fight against Raoh in the 1986 movie.
  • In one episode of the anime series, Kenshiro fights an army of Ken-Oh's ninjas armed with poisonous weapons. Before Kenshiro kills any of them, it cuts to Raoh storming the Nanto capital. Shortly after Raoh destroys the gates and slaughters hundreds of guards, it cuts back to a pile of dead ninjas, just in time for Kenshiro to resist the poison and kill the ninja leader.
• In the second Futari wa Pretty Cure Max Heart movie, Hikari/Shiny Luminous decides to fight a Zakenna by herself so Nagisa/Cure Black and Honoka/Cure White can proceed. Aside from a 2-second scene later, we see nothing of the fight. It should be not that Luminous is a Support Party Member and a Non-Action Girl.
  • Also between Episodes 5 and 6, the three girls have their first battle against a major villain (Circulas) and it just started in the end of Episode 5. The battle was completely skipped in the following episode, and both sides were fine and didn't have any significant looses.
• Gundam:
  • We never got to see the war between the Federation and the Jupiter Empire, despite the appearence that Tomino had been setting them up as an Outside-Context Villain. By the time Mobile Suit Victory Gundam had rolled around it was over.
  • Also the fight with the the Neo-Zeon movement on Mars, who fought with souped up versions of the old Zeon suits (they called themselves the Oldsmobile Army). The story ended up being told in a short manga series.
• Happens a lot in the anime .hack//Roots. Fights are left offscreen apparently due to low budget. For example in Episode 6 only bit of action we see is a funny angle in which Enders repeatedly kicks Haseo. Episode 23 has Haseo fighting against one hundred players in one episode and viewer sees almost nothing since it focuses on Haseo's teammates. Other disappointing fights include Ovan vs. Tri-Edge and Haseo vs. Tri-Edge whose climaxes are omitted.
• His and Her Circumstances' abrupt ending, especially since we were getting all hyped up about the play Yukino had been preparing for the past few episodes. This is made even more unforgivable by the fact that, after religiously following the manga virtually to the panel for almost its entire length, Gainax diverted from the story to add an original filler episode just before the end, when only one more episode would have allowed them to portray the play in its entirety.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
  • Diamond is Unbreakable: Antonio is prone to doing this, due to all the adventures he goes on in his quest for the rarest and highest quality of ingredients, such as traveling to Mount Kilimanjaro to obtain snow to melt into mineral water.
  • Stone Ocean: The group's Great Escape from Green Dolphin Prison happens entirely offscreen. Though Jolyne, Ermes, and Emporio likely used an opponent's Stand ability to slip out, how Weather Report and Anasui escaped shortly after wasn't elaborated much.
• Katanagatari Episode 4 had an intentional example, and spent a large part of the end of the episode rubbing it in viewers' faces. Shichika barely manages to defeat the mysterious white-haired badass the show had been building up for the past three episodes, thanks to Togame drafting him a brilliant strategy. Or so we hear, at length, from the two afterwards. The audience spends the majority of the episode with his sister, on an island miles away. The preview at the end of Episode 3 involves parting the sea, slicing up rocks, exploding a whole island, and fighting a giant shark. That's all that was shown, in very brief clips.
• Parodied twice in the The Law of Ueki, with characters describing how awesome a Dangerous Forbidden Technique was, after it was used off-camera. The Narrator then explains that it was the result of a lacking special effects budget.
• Liar Game has quite a few examples. Akiyama, Yokoya, and Harimoto are all proven to be highly intelligent characters with abilities to come up with high level strategies the average person would never think of. However, all three of these characters have unseen feats. Harimoto beats Fukunaga at the Pandemic Game entirely off screen with absolutely no attempt made to explain how he did such a thing, with us only being told he apparently beat her by "a narrow margin." Yokoya also beats Fukunaga off screen at Bid Poker with us only being given small insights into how he did so. Finally Akiyama wins the proto-Record of the Four Kingdoms Game against his own team; Perhaps the least impressive of the feats, but still a potential moment to show off his skill that slips completely past us. We also know that prior to the Liar Game, Akiyama has single handedly defeated an entire pyramid scheme, although we have no idea exactly how he did such a feat.
• At one point in Lupin III: Episode 0: First Contact Inspector Zenigata encounters a bunch of threatening thugs while exploring New York. Only the film cuts to immediately after the fight to show the thugs all in a mess on the floor, while a bemused, and only slightly roughed up, Inspector is still standing.
• In Majokko Tsukune-chan, there's an episode called "Tsukune-chan vs. Aliens." It's five seconds long, and all we see is the Mayor asking Tsukune-chan for help, and then a brief shot of the alien ship blowing up. Afterwards, an off-screen voice says "But I wanted to see that..."
• The Medaka Box finale sees Medaka defeat the MOON in offscreen single combat. She follows this up with an offscreen takedown of every named character in the series. Yeah, it's that sort of series.
• In Naruto:
  • The Nine Tailed-Beasts, almost all of which are fought and captured offscreen. When it was revealed one of these characters had control over lava, many fans were crushed that such important characters were treated like forgettable Mooks. The fillers expand on at least one of the Jinchuriki, but much is left to the imagination.
  • Another particularly egregious example would be Kakashi's battle against the remaining zombified Seven Swordsmen of the Mist. Fans were looking forward to seeing him "go on a rampage" and finally offset the massive Worf Effect that he'd accumulated. Indeed it's implied to be an absolute Curb-Stomp Battle in his favor, but the battle occurs entirely off-panel.
    • Fortunately, the anime team was well aware of Kishimoto's choice to omit the battle and gives us a generous Adaptation Expansion, showing a full and proper fight. As we all know, it was probably because a.) fans would've pissed on the animation studio doorstep if they tried to skate around showing the battles too, and b.) to provide some padding so that the anime wouldn't lap the manga — one filler marathon run was bad enough.
    • The same goes for Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 3, which expanded it into a full boss fight.
  • The most egregious example of all may just be Tenten fighting Kakuzu with the Bashosen — a war fan that drains an immense level of chakra, but in return, can create a vast amount of a specific element. Being a weapons specialist, and getting some slight screen time (which compares normally to how she gets less panels than a landmark, the Hokage mountain) you'd expect a full out fight for the ages coming up, right? Wrong! Instead we see Tenten passed out, face down in the dirt as a medic tells her to never touch the fan again while the panel just before showed two of the three masks broken (Asuma destroyed the other one). Kishimoto teases us again later, implying she's planning something with Team 10 but that'll never be revealed either.
    • That aforementioned wrong becomes a "right" in the anime. We get to watch Tenten destroy both masks — one right after she obtains the Bashosen, and then again after several episodes when sunset is approaching and she's heavily tuckered out from hours in battle. Yay, Adaptation Expansion!
  • Itachi blackmailing Danzo Shimura. Who doesn't want to see how that went down?
  • Five Kages off-panelled by Madara. 'Nuff said. In this case, it's Played for Drama and shock potential, as it was made perfectly clear that they didn't stand a chance in hell.
    • Which also got an Adaptation Expansion in Ultimate Ninja Storm 3, the actual battle? Beyond words.
  • Pain killed Hanzo off-panel. In the anime, it becomes a case of Gory Discretion Shot.
• Negima! Magister Negi Magi humorously references this when Jack Rakan shows a film about the war that he and Nagi fought in. He leaves out everything except the final battle, calling it "A thrilling series of battles that would take a whole trilogy of movies or about 14 volumes to actually illustrate!" This is entirely in character for him.
  • The manga once again uses this intentionally for comedy, once again involving Jack Rakan. four of Fate's minions go into their One-Winged Angel forms to fight him. The next scene shows them defeated. If any other character tried to pull that, it would be a huge cop-out, but in this case it's perfectly in character for Jack, and preserved the minions' abilities for more dramatic reveals in later battles against the main characters.
  • Also can't forget the massive 3rd day of the Mahora Festival and the climactic battle against Chao Lingshen's forces. One part of the battle involved Kaede going up against Mana. Easily two of strongest characters in the series even now, and we only get to see the first part of the battle and the result (the two hit each other with time-displacement bullets at the same time, rendering the match a draw).
  • The Setsuna/Tsukuyomi fight in the climax of the Magica Mundus arc. Here we have Setsuna getting a rematch against an opponent that not only defeated her earlier but also implied that she'd rape Setsuna, or something to that nature. This time Setsuna is armed with a renewed self-confidence and a new pactio forged by her fandom-pleasing make-out session with Konoka while Tsukuyomi uses some kind of demonic power up of her own. The fight starts, it's good and then it just kind of jumps to the end. We're told that they fought for over half an hour, but we're only shown like a third of that. Good build-up that lead to a rather hollow climax because we didn't get to see the stuff that lead up to it.
  • The finale of the entire series did this with the climax of the Myth Arc of the entire series, which had apparently been resolved off-screen (the author having rushed the ending due to a dispute with his publisher) with the Lifemaker apparently having been beaten and Nagi apparently having been saved in an apparently epic battle that apparently showed how powerful Negi and his entire class were when they were all united.
• Happens a lot in One Piece due to the sheer size of the cast and the story already taking over a thousand chapters just to recount the events immediately relevant to the Straw Hats:
  • In the Marineford arc. Several times throughout the arc, two fighters meet and start to exchange blows in a page or so. Then the scene changes, and when we see the two fighters again, the fight has stopped without any further explanation. Sort of Justified though, in that you don't really have the time to fight a one-on-one battle in a massive war with all the other opponents to be concerned about.
  • Several epic battles take place off-screen. Some examples include Garp and Sengoku vs. Shiki, the Red Hair Pirates vs. Kaido's crew, and for the title of the new Fleet Admiral post-Time Skip, Aokiji vs. Akainu... we'll see it all in due time, right Oda? Right?!
  • Happens again as we learn about "The Payback War" which was the remaining Whitebeard Pirates fighting the Blackbeard Pirates in order to avenge Whitebeard. Then it happens again with the Blackbeard Pirates as we learn they fought the Revolutionaries and forced them to flee their home base.
  • Sanji kicks the piss out of his abusive asshole brother Yonji off-screen. It's so bad that Yonji needs a press machine to get his head back in shape.
  • One the most egregious recent examples happens during the Reverie, which the Revolutionaries have infiltrated and of which the reader has been following for several chapters. Then Oda cuts away to heroes' adventure in Wano which is arguably more important. However, rather than cutting back to the Reverie later when the first act of Wano is done Oda instead has Blackbeard casually read a newspaper about how Luffy's brother Sabo and Revolutionaries fought Admirals Fujitora and Ryokugyu off-screen. Oda is a bigger tease than Nami. We get a glimpse of this fight as a flashback in the Egghead arc, but it’s skipped over pretty fast to talk about the other things that went down at the Reverie.
  • Buggy’s entire existence post time-skip can be described as one. Despite never directly interacting with the Straw Hats after Impel Down, he's amassed enough of a power base to become a Warlord, and when Crocodile and Mihawk take over his organisation, it’s enough to make him an off-screen Emperor.
  • The Egghead arc has the Straw Hats and CP0 trapped within the Frontier Dome of the Labophase and they're attacked by the four Seraphim who were ordered by a mysterious traitor to kill them and the Satellites. The vanished Stella of Vegapunk is revealed to have been captured by the treacherous mastermind who is also responsible for the disappearances of numerous Cipher Pol agents. Right when the mastermind and traitor is revealed to be York, the Satellite who embodies Vegapunk's greed, the story cuts away for several chapters to show the numerous events that happen at the same time (namely the Red-Hair Pirates vs the Kid Pirates, the outcome of the Blackbeard Pirates vs the Heart Pirates (which itself has been mostly skipped), SWORDS' rescue of Koby, as well as Sabo telling Dragon and Iva about the true events that happened at the Reverie). By the time we are back to Egghead at the present time, York has been captured by the Straw Hats who are temporarily allied with CP0, the Stella of Vegapunk has been rescued, the four Seraphim have been subdued, and Bonnie has given up on killing Vegapunk, presumably because of Kuma's memories she saw. The story progresses without flashbacks of that event and instead focuses on moving forward.
• It's part of the joke to do this with Saitama in One-Punch Man. A major example: toward the end of the Tournament arc Gouketsu is introduced, a giant Dragon-level monster who gets a lot of build-up and seems a future Arc Villain. Saitama effortlessly obliterates him off-screen, just like nearly every opponent he faces; only his head is left. The idea is that if you already know how it's going to turn out, why waste the ink drawing it?
• Outlaw Star gets very lazy with many fights, cutting away from the action at bad moments. The second to last episode in particular totally skips two apparently awesome fights: Suzuka's finishing attack was shown as flashes of light in her eyes, and Aisha's frenzied assault in beast form was totally obscured by a whirlwind.
  • The last one at least has an explanation that the whirlwind was an "ultimate attack" type dealy, which nobody had ever survived before. The bad-assery is that Aisha transformed, jumped in, won, and seemed no worse for the wear. Doesn't change the fact that the whole thing was over very quickly and without detail.
• Ping Pong: Peco and Smile's final duel in the anime.
• The special Pokémon: Mewtwo Returns: Team Rocket, led by the rarely used Giovanni, have captured the Pokemon clones and their babies. Mewtwo is horribly injured, and Ash must free the Pokemon and help Mewtwo. When Giovanni and a small army of TR grunts shows up to fight, Misty and Brock step up to fight, letting out their Pokemon. Then it cuts away to a different scene. When it cuts back, the battle's over, thereby skipping one of the few battles against the Team Rocket organization as a whole (not just individual members like Jessie and James) in the show's entire 14-plus season history.
  • In the main series, May's final battle in the Kanto Grand Festival. It's a staple of the anime in the later sagas to have two rivals in the tournament arcs — one for the protagonist to beat, and one to beat them. After May's epic battle with Drew — which started at the tail end of one episode and carried on into the bulk of the next — we only see the last two minutes or so of her battle with Solidad.
  • Ash's Quilava's battle against Nando's Armaldo in the Sinnoh League tournament. The second that Ash sends out his Quilava to battle, the scene shifts over to the Team Rocket trio trying to make sales with their merchandise. By the time that it gets back to the fight, both Pokémon are on the ropes and do one final attack on one another only to double-KO each other.
  • Also, during the Johto League, Ash and the gang encounter a witch who miscasts a Pokemon translation spell, turning Ash into a Pikachu at the end of the episode. The transformation is stated to last a few days, and the next episode picks up... about five seconds before it wears off.
  • In the Alola League's preliminary round, Mallow decides to utilise Shaymin, her accompanying Mythical Pokemon who has almost never been shown battling up until this point. The rest of the match doesn't chart Mallow, all we see is a shot of the wrecked opponents Shaymin leaves and the reveal it survived into the next round.
  • Journeys enjoys doing this a lot:
    • Ash's rank progress is incredibly off-screened to death with him rapidly moving up through the ranks against 10,000 other trainers so that Filler episodes can be shown rather than focusing on every battle he wins. On top of that, his team (except Pikachu) also seems to learn moves while busy(?) training in off-screen land.
    • Goh's easy captures eventually have him show off Pokémon he just got that weren't shown to the audience. Apparently, it's hard to show him catching a Pokémon in the span of 10 seconds of seeing it in his line of sight.
    • Iris becoming a Champion is explained in the muddiest of ways possible. She just got strong. That is all there is to it. There is zero mention of Alder being involved, despite him showing up in a voiceless cameo group shot when she fights Cynthia in the Masters 8.
    • 4 (arguably 5 counting Leon) of the top 8 trainers for the worldwide tournament show up almost out of nowhere without even knowing they were participants at all. The Top 8 are basically and literally all Champions from Kanto to Galar (and Alain).
• In Puella Magi Madoka Magica, the climactic battle against Walpurgisnacht rarely shows much of the action in the various timelines. Either Madoka or Homura face her down on their own, though some timelines have them fight together, and then it cuts to the aftermath of defeating Walpurgis, showing Madoka having died during the battle or about to witch out. The most egregious example is in the timeline just before the one the show mainly takes place in: Madoka faces off against Walpurgisnacht and defeats her in one shot, though the viewer never gets to see anything of this apparently amazing battle.
• In Rebuild of Evangelion, the Eleventh Angel was defeated in the Time Skip between the second and third films, and is never shown to the audience.
• The ending of Sailor Moon S skips Sailor Moon and Sailor Saturn's fight against Pharoah 90. We even get to hear some of it, but it all takes place inside an opaque dome of energy so nothing is seen. This is also the closest Saturn really gets to doing anything in the series.
• In Saiyuki, Cho Hakkai's youkai form isn't shown to the audience until well into the series. Consequently, his first two battles in that form — one where he took out a basement full of gangsters and one where he killed a huge monster — take place entirely off-screen. Given that the monster fight freaked out even the combat-loving Goku, this probably overlaps with Gory Discretion Shot.
• In Shaman King, when Sati and co defeat the four kings of hell to get the remaining four of the five grand elemental spirits, the most we see of this is Cado apparently having lost his arm against Mephistopheles. They all eventually win.
• Touch (1981): We never actually see the Koshien match in the manga or the anime, and only Tatsuya's trophy in the manga.
• Trigun anime Episode 18: Vash and Wolfwood are about to take on about two hundred men to save Lina. We are then shown Vash getting his hair cut by Lina post-fight, as well as the ruins of the battle.
  • In the corresponding Trigun Maximum chapter (the very first one), the large fight is also skipped, but Vash confronts the imposter holding Lina against her will and defeats him.
  • Subverted in the first episode, where Vash gets up and without fear points his gun at the criminals and one hears a gun going off. It isn't until sometime later during said episode that it is revealed that Vash forgot to put bullets in his gun and ran off while getting shot at.
• Victoria faces off against Sieglinde for the U-19 MA championship belt in the final ViVid Strike! OVA. Only brief parts of the fight are shown, but they completely tear the ring apart and Victoria wins via judges call (becoming the first character in canon to actually beat Sieglinde).
• In Yellow Dragon ga Arawareta, the main heroine (the titular yellow dragon, an uber powerful being) is BrainwashedAndCrazy. Her friends decide to rescue her from a group of kidnappers (who are a technologically advanced kingdom that want to use her as a weapon), no matter what it takes. We see a castle she was held in exploding, and we then learn that she never got under their control. She was just playing along to see what her friends will do, but didn't want to wait any longer, so she freed herself. Offscreen.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!:
  • During Battle City, Honda, Otogi, and Shizuka are ambushed by three Ghouls, and Honda decides to take them on himself so that Otogi and Shizuka can escape. Their escape is well shown; by the time the episode gets back to Honda, all threeGhouls are lying on the ground at his feet.
  • Earlier, Honda got an off-screen awesome moment in Duelist Kingdom. After punching Yami Bakura out and throwing away the Ring, he carried the unconscious Mokuba and Bakura back to the dueling platform without getting caught by guards. While going through a maze with looping flights of stairs and doors to nowhere that even had Yami Bakura confused.
  • The 4Kids dub gave Ryou Bakura an offscreen moment of awesome, given the properties of the Shadow Realm. (Even if you use the original version, it means Bakura was sent to Hell and somehow managed to escape, which is itself pretty awesome.)
  • At the end of Battle City, Jonouchi challenges Yugi to a duel with the Red-Eyes Black Dragon at stake to determine how far he's grown. The episode then ends and the outcome is not revealed, but considering Jonouchi got the Red-Eyes Black Dragon back, it can be presumed that he won.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! GX
  • One episode has the captain of a submarine offer the series' main character the chance to work with him and travel the world. When our hero refuses despite the very generous pay, the captain forces the matter by saying that if he doesn't win their duel, he'll have to come with him. Judai soundly defeats him, and thus has no actual obligation to take up his offer, but the captain persists and tricks Judai's friends into leaving him behind, then the submarine dives with Judai trapped on it. The episode immediately cuts to several weeks later, with Judai's best friend brooding over the fact that he left. Jaudai then comes in, battered and bruised, after having fought his way to freedom. Needless to say, his friends are overjoyed.
  • In the manga, Judai also defeats Chronos as part of his entrance exam, but it's never shown, despite being referred to a few times.
  • The end of Season 3 has Jaudai fusing his soul with Yubel's and the two disappearing. They reappear in Season 4, some weeks later, without saying what they were doing. Judging by the dialogue at the end of Episode 155, however, they were off kicking the ass of the Light of Destruction at its source. While it makes sense that such a fight wasn't shown (since it's very unlikely they dueled it), it's still disappointing to miss.
  • During an arc where Manjoume became Edo's assistant, Manjoume is shocked to witness Edo dueling someone for practice, only Edo insists his opponent start with 10,000 Life Points while he starts with 100 Life Points. Due to the rigorous activities Edo had to do all day, his hands are damaged and he can barely even hold his cards. Manjoume is forced to leave. It later cuts to Edo standing over his defeated opponent and complaining about having to face weaklings.
  • During the Darkness arc, all but one name on a list of the inhabitants of Domino City are shown to have vanished during the Trueman assault. That sole survivor: Seto Kaiba, implying that he was actually able to fend them off.
  • The anime's ending with the duel of Yugi and Judai. After Yugi turns into Yami Yugi, he proceeds to summon Osiris the Heaven Dragon and Judai proceeds to attack him and the screen fades to white and then skips ahead to a unspecific time afterwards. The end of the duel is left ambiguous as to who won and also leaves out how the hell Judai got back to his own time, not to forget how he ended up in the desert.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds
  • In the very first episode, Rally (a kid) manages to steal a hyper-advanced chip straight from the factory, while having a tracker on his person. It's never shown how he accomplished that.
  • Several of the duels in the Fortune Cup are off-screen.
  • In the WRGP, Sherry and her butler form a team of two people (in spite of everyone trying to get at least three members due to the format) and she manages to beat a whole bunch of other teams all by herself. The protagonists are astonished when she tells them this.
  • Right at the end of the series, Jack sets off to fight a whole bunch of powerful opponents — including Kiryu who he had never been able to beat — as part of his personal training, and beats them all. Those duels are never shown.
• In the YuYu Hakusho manga, the Demon World Unification tournament sets up some potentially epic battles (Kurama vs. Shigure, Hiei vs. Mukuro, Yusuke vs. Yomi), but only shows a little of Yusuke vs. Yomi before suddenly cutting to after the tournament.

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