Back to Gwenpool's Profile Gwenpool's Profile

ARC-V is one of the most controversial YGO series - you either love it or you hate it. I fall in the former category, and I thought I'd talk about why I think it's great.

The story is easily one of my favorites of the franchise. The premise starts off simple: Yuya Sakaki and his friends want to become entertainment duelists: professional duelists who specialize in making duels into entertaining performances to wow the audience. With the power of a new way to summon monsters, Yuya is propelled into the public eye, for all the good and bad that entails. Over the course of the show, ... the plot unravels into a tale where Yuya's optimism and resolve is tested as he becomes embroiled in an interdimensional war.

Being a narrative about war, genocide and trauma, the story has a lot of dark elements. But surprisingly, it doesn't feel particularly aimless or edgy. These themes are explored well and make the world and its inhabitants very deep and compelling. The characters (especially Yuya) constantly deal with these somewhat realistically and with a lot hardship, but it makes the victories all the sweeter. By the end of the show, Yuya's struggles throughout the journey have shaped him into a better, more dynamic and interesting character.

Side-note: the foreshadowing game in this show is strong. There's a throwaway line during the first episode that hints at the main villain and how they fit into the story. A lot of characters' hidden motivations are hinted at well in advance. Things are easy to miss, but if you go into the show looking for clues, you're bound to see the puzzles as they fall into place.

Unfortunately, the story is far from perfect. While you have tons of great characters with interesting personalities and fun decks, the show isn't able to fully explore them. The show feels like a mad dash towards the finish line in the last 30~ episodes, so many characters and ideas never reached their full potential. The show feels like it ran out of time to tell its story, so it just hastily created what it could and ran with it, ultimately leaving a rather unsatisfying conclusion with a lot of wasted potential. It's especially disappointing because the rest of the series is so strong. But at least some of the major ideas were explored well, and the story is still engaging.

But if you're looking to get into the card game, this is the show for you. The duels start off simple, and they walk you through all of the major summoning mechanics. All mechanics are treated with this impressive, grand air about them, making them feel very big when you're watching the show. It draws you in and showcases the best of what the game can offer. That said, while you don't need to be familiar with the older shows or the card game, this show will reward you for being familiar with them. Watching the previous seasons will help you enjoy tons of Easter eggs, clues and references to those seasons.

The duels themselves are neat. Most of them are Action Duels, which allow the players to explore an interactive field and try to claim one-off cards to help them out of tight situations. This cuts down on the need for characters to conveniently draw into extremely situational cards that would be useless in any other situation. Unfortunately though, the duels are let down by many of them have questionable writing; expect most of Yuya's duels to have him get battered until he has a few hundred Life Points left, then overcome his enemies with a one-turn-kill. Effect or battle damage is applied liberally. There are still a lot of fun and impressive strategies, but the general formulaic nature of the duels brings them down.

The show's art style is interesting; you have the outlandish character designs that have been cropping up in the franchise around Zexal, but more subdued and grounded. Like they strike a good balance between weird and reasonable. Backgrounds and scenes often have surprisingly good animation, which makes sense as duels are meant to be entertaining spectacles. Unfortunately, it loses focus because you have a lot of off-model moments and weak animation. While the show continued to have well-animated moments, it felt like the animation budget was running out and weak, misshapen shots become more and more prominent. There's speculation that the show's budget was siphoned off for the Yu-Gi-Oh! movie that was released at the time, and after looking at the last 48 episodes, I completely believe it.

In terms of music, ARC-V's soundtrack is some the best the franchise has ever had. In a franchise with tons of fantastic tracks found in all series, this show stands out with tracks that range from ethereal and enchanting, to foreboding and dramatic, to really cool tracks that get your heart pumping.

Voice acting is another strong point. You have the charismatic Kensho Ono voicing the lead, adding a lot of fun and charm to a character already brimming with it. But you also have people like Tetsuya Kakihara, Shinpei and Shinpei Takagi, Aoi Yuki and Masamichi Kitada to provide impressive performances.