The title for this review is a comment on director Katsumi Ono's twitter, translated from Japanese. Let that set the mood.
Anyone who's followed my edit history can probably guess my opinion: ARC-V is bad. It's frustratingly bad. The kind of bad that makes you wonder how the people who made it got paid. It's the worst YGO series so far, and hopefully ever. Some people say ZEXAL, but ZEXAL can be pretty decent with a watch guide in hand. ARC-V, no matter how you watch it, will have to end on one of the worst final arcs in modern anime.
So let's start with the characters! ARC-V has a lot of characters. Plenty of them are worthwhile. None of those get focus. I'm gonna be frank; all the legacy characters are bad. It was an okay idea, executed horribly, from the point onward of "Let's bring back the one character 5Ds could have used less of!" And while Shun and Sawatari and Yuzu are pretty fun, the main drivers of the plot are Leo, a blithering idiot, Reiji, a worthless cheerleader, and Yuya, a moronic, god-empowered brat with seesawing character development and a strategy based on the show telling you that what you are watching is entertaining, who then turns into an overpowered ugly demon with a preposterously stupid motivation who ties up the show for five straight episodes on one duel.
Which brings me to the duels. There are some standouts early on, notably Sora and Shun or Masumi and Yuzu, but after that point, Action Duels and Battle Royales grow on the show like a cancer. The anime's relation to the game has always been confused, but when you can pull supposedly-random-but-not-really cards out of nowhere and call in any number of allies, then it makes the stakes feel completely arbitrary, with more in common with Calvinball than an actual game.
There are many other things to discuss - the poorly paced arcs, the dubious monster designs, the fact that entire casts of characters just vanish for no reason - but I want to talk about Yuzu. Now, people have defended Yuzu by saying that no other YGO show has been good with its female characters. That's quite true - but no female character had as good of a reason to be important as Yuzu. She's the keystone of multiple arcs, she's a fragment of the universal savior, she's the main character's best friend and love interest. And yet, past a certain point, she doesn't even pass the Sexy Lamp Test. I remember when people were theorizing she would get the Ceremonial Duel, or be the one to beat Zarc, things that would have been mad with Anzu or Asuka, but sounded entirely credible. Yet here we are.
And this is why I can't recommend ARC-V. 5Ds, I can recommend watching the first half and you'll still get a decent show. But ARC-V's first arc will only raise your hopes. The closest I have to recommend is to watch the first fifty episodes, and then either make up an ending or read a fanfic - and if you want to keep watching, just remember that the ending waiting for you is an ending where an evil baby smiles, fifty-two pickup gets played, damage is still taken, and everyone is okay with five innocent people being dead.
"Shame on you."
The title for this review is a comment on director Katsumi Ono's twitter, translated from Japanese. Let that set the mood.
Anyone who's followed my edit history can probably guess my opinion: ARC-V is bad. It's frustratingly bad. The kind of bad that makes you wonder how the people who made it got paid. It's the worst YGO series so far, and hopefully ever. Some people say ZEXAL, but ZEXAL can be pretty decent with a watch guide in hand. ARC-V, no matter how you watch it, will have to end on one of the worst final arcs in modern anime.
So let's start with the characters! ARC-V has a lot of characters. Plenty of them are worthwhile. None of those get focus. I'm gonna be frank; all the legacy characters are bad. It was an okay idea, executed horribly, from the point onward of "Let's bring back the one character 5Ds could have used less of!" And while Shun and Sawatari and Yuzu are pretty fun, the main drivers of the plot are Leo, a blithering idiot, Reiji, a worthless cheerleader, and Yuya, a moronic, god-empowered brat with seesawing character development and a strategy based on the show telling you that what you are watching is entertaining, who then turns into an overpowered ugly demon with a preposterously stupid motivation who ties up the show for five straight episodes on one duel.
Which brings me to the duels. There are some standouts early on, notably Sora and Shun or Masumi and Yuzu, but after that point, Action Duels and Battle Royales grow on the show like a cancer. The anime's relation to the game has always been confused, but when you can pull supposedly-random-but-not-really cards out of nowhere and call in any number of allies, then it makes the stakes feel completely arbitrary, with more in common with Calvinball than an actual game.
There are many other things to discuss - the poorly paced arcs, the dubious monster designs, the fact that entire casts of characters just vanish for no reason - but I want to talk about Yuzu. Now, people have defended Yuzu by saying that no other YGO show has been good with its female characters. That's quite true - but no female character had as good of a reason to be important as Yuzu. She's the keystone of multiple arcs, she's a fragment of the universal savior, she's the main character's best friend and love interest. And yet, past a certain point, she doesn't even pass the Sexy Lamp Test. I remember when people were theorizing she would get the Ceremonial Duel, or be the one to beat Zarc, things that would have been mad with Anzu or Asuka, but sounded entirely credible. Yet here we are.
And this is why I can't recommend ARC-V. 5Ds, I can recommend watching the first half and you'll still get a decent show. But ARC-V's first arc will only raise your hopes. The closest I have to recommend is to watch the first fifty episodes, and then either make up an ending or read a fanfic - and if you want to keep watching, just remember that the ending waiting for you is an ending where an evil baby smiles, fifty-two pickup gets played, damage is still taken, and everyone is okay with five innocent people being dead.