Yu☆Gi☆Oh! 5D's
Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's

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Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D’s is widely regarded as the best anime in the franchise, tackling mature themes like class struggle and institutional corruption with a degree of sophistication unmatched by other entries. What most people don’t know, however, is that there’s a 5D’s manga that unfortunately falls short of this praise. This’ll be my third Yu-Gi-Oh! review, and it saddens me that with each iteration, the Duel Monsters legacy is dragged further through the mud. While the original manga still stands the test of time, proving not only to be the template for the franchise but an exceptionally well-crafted battle shonen in its own right, the GX ... and 5D’s manga are poor imitations, riddled with issues, only to be enjoyed by diehard fans. In fairness to GX, it wasn’t a particularly ambitious manga. With its humble setting, solid duels, and well-written protagonist, it could at least offer a net positive experience despite its shortcomings. Sadly, the same cannot be said of 5D’s. This manga was brimming with potential, whether through the new dueling format, creating the possibility for more nuanced duels, the futuristic setting, offering a unique environment never before seen in the franchise, or the strong cast of characters handed to it from the anime. There were lots of concepts at play that could genuinely innovate upon the franchise, but the manga fails to capitalize on any of them.

The manga opens with a duel between Yusei and his close friend, Sect. In typical Yu-Gi-Oh! fashion, Yusei emerges victorious. Immediately after, Sect performs the sunset salute, a superstitious ceremony to summon the skeleton knight, a mythical creature rumored to grant a rare card to those who encounter it. Yusei dismisses the legend as nonsense when, suddenly, a massive structure rises from the earth, and atop it, the skeleton knight, now holding Sect hostage. This forces Yusei into another duel, this time against the mythical knight. Although Yusei is able to squeeze out the victory, Sect is left in critical condition, forcing Yusei to rush him to the hospital. Suddenly, his journey is interrupted by none other than Jack Atlas, who was sent to the Satellite to duel Yusei by his adoptive father, Rex Godwin. For what it’s worth, this is a solid duel, both in terms of its composition and narrative function. On the one hand, it works as a good introduction to the concept of sense, as it doesn’t outright explain it but demonstrates its power, generating curiosity within the reader, and on the other hand, the outcome of this duel, Yusei’s defeat, serves as a defining moment in determining Yusei's motivations for the remainder of the series – to become strong enough to defeat Jack. On the whole, 5D’s has a decent start, bypassing many of the preliminary issues of GX’s manga by showing most duels in their entirety and advancing at a reasonable pace. It further borrows from GX by humbling its protagonist early on. Although Yusei is initially heralded as the strongest in the Satellite, his status as strongest is quickly revoked when Jack enters just four chapters in, setting a precedent for Yusei losing, and preventing duels from feeling one-sided.

With such a strong opening, one may question my initial remarks about the series’ quality. Unfortunately, my praise for this manga ends with the first volume. It certainly introduces a slew of new ideas that could make for a great manga, but as previously mentioned, it fails to capitalize on any of them. For example, with the advent of turbo duels, the manga introduces two new win-conditions. In addition to reducing your opponent’s life points to zero, you can now render your opponent’s duel runner immobile or reach the finish line first. One would think that with all these new conditions, Hikokubo could find more unique ways to keep duels interesting, perhaps by coming up with more interactions between cards and duel runners, or by integrating the futuristic environment into the racing aspect, allowing duelists to discover or even create shortcuts to the finish line. However, most of the duels simply play out as if the duel runners weren’t there. While there are a handful of instances in which one duelist will cut-off another or jump over some terrain, the turbo aspect is highly neglected.

This is particularly disappointing, as these new win-conditions were the perfect opportunity for Hikokubo to return to what made the original Yu-Gi-Oh! manga so good. In a previous video, I talked about Takahashi’s use of a more flexible ruleset, with a certain level of interactivity among the cards and their environment. The classic example is Yugi attacking the moon. Though often the subject of ridicule, it’s paradigmatic of what made Duelist Kingdom great. Yugi wasn’t simply lucky enough to draw a card that did exactly what he needed, but rather, he was aware of his surroundings, recognized that the moon increased the tide of the sea field, giving his opponent’s water monsters an advantage, and figured out a way to remove that advantage with the resources available. Now, this is often ridiculed because, as we know, you cannot destroy a spell card by attacking it, but the point is once you divorce the manga from the strict rules of the TCG, you open up a whole new world of interesting narrative possibilities. After all, if I wanted to see a technically sound duel, I’d attend a YCS, but no one is reading a Yu-Gi-Oh! manga just for technically sound duels.

To return to my main point, I believe 5D’s missed a massive opportunity. It could have returned to this Duelist Kingdom style of gameplay while simultaneously avoiding its criticisms. Consider this: although the medium for these battles is duel monsters, they nevertheless occur during a race. It would seem natural, then, that duelists use their cards in service of winning the race. Unlike in Duelist Kingdom, where unconventional strategies may be criticized for violating the established ruleset, the context of 5D’s allows readers to re-interpret the duels as tools for winning races. Now, we have one instance that gets close to this. In Yusei’s duel against Hunter Pace, Hunter sabotages Yusei’s duel runner, then uses a stall deck to out speed Yusei while protecting his own life points. However, this is the bare minimum. Why not let Yusei use Turbo Synchron to give his runner a speed boost, or Fortress Warrior to create a ramp for him to jump off? Have a monster attack the duel runner, for Christ’s sake! There are so many opportunities to introduce a level of strategy that’s been missing from the franchise for so long and make duels less predictable. To make matters worse, the general quality of the duels is a cut below what was found in the GX manga, which should come as a surprise to anyone who followed the TCG, as the transition from GX to 5D’s came with an exponential leap in complexity for the real-life card game. Some may interpret this criticism as my personal dissatisfaction with the manga not meeting my expectations, but the issue is more complex than that. Genuinely ask yourself, what’s the purpose of introducing new win-conditions if they’re never used? What’s the point of the futuristic setting if the physical environment is hardly acknowledged by the artist? They’re gimmicks, creating the façade of something new and exciting to attract attention, only to reveal itself as yet another mediocre Yu-Gi-Oh! manga, a simple re-skin.

Another major issue with 5D’s is that following the initial set up with the skeleton knight, the manga continues into yet another tournament arc, the fifth in the overall manga continuity. Although there is nothing inherently wrong with using a tournament structure, the franchise has become oversaturated with them. Had 5D’s been more effective at utilizing its other win conditions, it would make the tournament somewhat engaging but forcing readers to experience another series of uninteresting duels between characters they don’t care about is criminal at this point. Moreover, the actual execution of the tournament is sloppy. The first rounds, for example, are just random duels. That’s right, there isn’t even a tournament bracket. Admittedly, the second stage becomes slightly more interesting, with duelists having to collect some number of star tickets whose levels add up to twelve. The problem, however, is that despite this more involved premise, the execution is practically the same. Duelists moving from location to location dueling one another, with little attention paid to the journey between locations, and the locus of attention focused on the mediocre duels.

The one aspect that 5D’s had going for it was the age of its cast. Unlike past Yu-Gi-Oh! series, 5D’s is not set in a school, but instead, features a cast of adults. In theory, this should allow Hikokubo to explore more mature themes through complex interpersonal drama, but in reality, the reader is met with relatively shallow motives and generic conclusions. In fact, three of the main character arcs can be reduced to, “I need to become stronger to defeat the person who hurt my pride,” including Sect, Akiza, and even Yusei. In each instance, the individual is humbled by another duelist, chases some external source of power, but ultimately discovers that “true power comes from within.” There are slight variations in how each individual comes to this conclusion, but the execution is very one-dimensional. This lack of depth amplifies the problems with the tournament structure, as by contrast with Battle City or GX, the reader is not invested in the duelists, and that, taken together with the generally less exciting duels, makes for a much less engaging experience.

There are certainly other grievances I could express, such as how the ancient past subplot is just a lazy re-skin of the original manga, or how underdeveloped the concept of sense is, but I believe I have expressed my main criticisms. 5D’s is not a bad manga in the strict sense, but it sets itself up to be something good and fumbles at every possible opportunity, leaving readers with the safest Yu-Gi-Oh! story imaginable. It’s this combination of lost potential, together with its generic execution, that makes reading this especially painful, even as a hardcore Yu-Gi-Oh! fan. For that reason, I think my final score of 5/10 is quite generous.