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This one is entirely skippable.

For the most part it just compiles together the first 6 episodes of the original series while adding some differences that barely change the trajectory of the story.

I guess back in 2007 there was some appeal to see Evangelion with "improved" visuals, but it's 2021 and well,... maybe it's my opinion, but 2007 Evangelion's art and animation has not aged that well. The cut corners and blemishes are very easily noticeable when compared to newer anime of our times. I'd even argue the 90's original fares better in comparison.

Maybe you'd think, that they would at least re-do the battles with more ... vibrant animation and new choreographies, but 2 out of 3 times you'd be wrong. I opened up Netflix to compare this with the original show and the first two battles almost seem like literal shot-to-shot/new-coat-of-paint remakes to me and let me remind you - I prefer the art of the original. At least the final battle seems to be where the animators went all out by giving the Sixth Angel (originally fifth) a re-design, that perfectly shows-off their animation craft and how they improved it since 1995.

I guess the movie has one purpose: if you are going to marathon the Rebuild series, you might as well start here and get the full experience.

Junji Ito has done it again. When Ito is not working on his own material, he seems to pick up my favourite literary works and adapts them into the manga medium. Following Frankenstein he has now also tackled Osamu Dazai's No Longer Human. An odd choice, actually. No Longer Human might be schocking, depressing and even terrifying to some, but it has never been intended as a work of horror.

It's worth noting, that this is also not the first time a manga artist has tackled this source material within the medium, as Usamaru Furuya had already drawn his version of the story between the years ... of 2011 & 2012. The end result was a 3 volume series with a "Death Note"-like bishounen artstyle, that contemporarized the story setting and left parts of the novel out, but still delievered an albeit short, but nevertheless faithful adaptation of Dazai's work. There were some other attempts as well, but I am not too familiar with those.

Ito's version is less utilitarian. Here, I would like to point out, that it's been years, since I last read the original novel whole and while I occasionally revisited parts of it, my memory might not be perfectly factual. One thing I noticed is that Ito doesn't skip a thing. Heck, he even pads the stuff out with a bit of his own madness. This character dies, that other one murders somebody, some kid is uneccessarily scary looking... while we are at it, why don't we commit some arson? Cool, I guess. People won't forget Ito is a horror author that way. There's just one problem: No Longer Human is not a horror manga. Sprinkling this horror-esque panels around the manga, just because Ito is good at it, felt like it worked against the story to me and more like these jumpscares in modern horror movies, that don't do anything, but make you jump up and get annoyed 2 seconds later. I guess sometimes it does work, when the scene calls for it, but othertimes it just falls flat.

Have I jumped into the criticism too quickly? I guess, I could establish the plot a bit as well. No Longer Human is speculated to be an autobiographical psychological tragedy written by Osamu Dazai. It follows Yozo Oba and his tragic process of growing up. Feeling alienated in a world, he can't quite comprehend himself, he hides away his shame and anxiety and resorts to clowning, which eventually grows into a fullblown personality disorder and inability to connect with his outter world and functions as a springboard into the downward spiral of his life. The novel is not without a reason a canonized work of Japanese literature. It grabs the reader's attention with it's poetic opennes to the main character's inner turmoil, that I assume most people can atleast in part relate to. That's however not all, as (and I assume Dazai wasn't aware of this) it also shows a vivid portrait of a developing narcissistic personality disorder, as well as thematizes several social issues as suicide stygma, general societal as well as class-based expectations, substance abuse, as well as poverty and ambition. Honestly, there are a bunch of college essays still to be written on this book.

But back to Ito... I already mentioned, that Ito has done more than the necessary to re-tell the story for manga readers. Ito's story is mostly the same thematically, but padded out with some otherwise unnecessary scary twists and turns, that don't change the direction of the story too much. There is a bit of a meta-approach, that shows in the last part of the story, as Ito is about to give the story a more sympathetic ending... (I'll end this here, as it delves into spoiler territory. I'll just say this much: I almost liked how Ito padded out the last part of a story, only to go sikes afterwards and give us another unecessary horror scene in the end in order to not mess with the real history of the novel).

Visually, the novel looks great. There was a clear difference in skill and production value when comparing It0's art to Furuya's after reading both stories. It's excellent, even if I would refrain from overdoing the scary parts that often myself.

Ultimately, I wouldn't call it a bad manga, but the unnecesarry scary padding Ito added seems to make more sense, when you consider Ito's legacy as a horror mangaka. Come to it like I did - being primarily a fan of the original novel (in this case atleast I give priority to Dazai over Ito) - and you just might cut yourself on the unnecessary edge Ito honed around it's corners (sheesh, it's odd to call Ito unnecessarily edgy). It's a faithful retelling of the original and you can tell the story means a lot to Ito on a personal level, but I still prefer the source material over it.

So here's an anime to make you remember just how shitty you were as a kid.

Were you the kid who teased weaker classmates back in the days? The guy who laughed along at episodes of torment or were you just too afraid to do anything about tortures you saw others endure? Well, buckle up, because this anime just might be about you.

But please, do not misunderstand, I am not here to shame you over your dark past or accuse you of anything, as I myself have been occupying those roles - as well as the one of the victim - at some point of my ... childhood. What I am however trying to accomplish with this intro, is to pinpoint the strenghts of this movie.

A Silent Voice displays perhaps the most detailed account of bullying I have seen in any show/series so far. Granted, the movie's concept is maybe not the most original (I for one found quite appearent parallels between it and the manga series Onanie Master Kurosawa, for instance), but it still shines brighter than it's contemporaries by showing a layered presentation of the phenomenon rather than reducing it to two-dimensional stereotypes or simply the interaction between bully and victim.

Another decent element of the story is thematizing deafness through the bullied character of Shoko, emphatically presenting the possible issues one with such disability might be facing growing up - from the mockery you're unable to hear to the speech impediment you get by having zero feeling for the sound of your voice.

The overall quality of the film is fine. Story is character-driven high school drama done quite well. Most fleshed-out among characters is obviously Shoya, who is given a well developped psychological background. The rest of the cast is perhaps a bit less developped, but still works quite appropriatelly given the roles they are supposed to perform.

I guess I can't complain too much about the visuals either, but there was definetly a bit too much of a familiarity in some of the character designs. It's fine though, cause the film still gets bonus points for it's visual narration style - I particularly loved the little crosses, that they put on characters' faces, Shoya was trying to avoid. One scene I loved in particular is when Shoya walks away from his dark-haired childhood friend as she tries to re-unite him with another former classmate, immediately marking them with his crosses - I thought it should have been a meme gif, but I guess no one jumped to that opportunity yet.

Given that I barely criticized the film yet, you might be asking yourself why only a 7? Well first of all, I don't just hand out 8s, 9s and 10s. 7 is still a relatively great score for me. But the main reason the film falls short of a high score to me is, that at the end of the day the film doesn't leave me with any food for thought or new perspective, but rather with just a handful of good feels. Instead of being too challenging the film actively goes for crowd-pleasing moments - such as Shoko being just too good, the [SPOILER] blossoming romance between the bully and his victim and the Best best case scenario coming together in the end [/SPOILER]... which is all fine, but also a bit underwhelming to me.

I guess I also had a bit of an issue with the pacing. Nothing major, I was mostly entertained throughout - especially in the first half. But at some point it just feels like the movie is losing focus and just handing out slice of life episodes more akin to a series than a 2 hour film, that I felt dragged on for too long.

So yeah... 7/10

Frankenstein has always been one of my favourite stories of any medium - I know, kind of ironic considering, I still haven't finished the original book by Mary Shelley.

Then again, just like the titular character, who wouldn't have things some other person's or force's way, I saw the films, read and researched on things and somehow patched together a plot summary of my own over the years. The general idea of the story was always really compelling to me: a man wanting to surpass god, as well as the sympathetic attempts of the monster, who was shunned out of society for being different always ... spoke to me on a personal level, so the first moment I noticed on Book Depository, that an english translation of Junji Ito's Frankenstein manga was available, I immediately grabbed my credit card and ordered it.

So what's there to say about Ito's Frankenstein?

Well for starters it's Frankenstein alright. Ito took minimal freedom in re-telling the Frankenstein story. You can go step by step through the Wikipedia article on Shelley's Frankenstein and it'll match up 90% of the time.

If you're not familiar with the classic novel, the story is about Victor Frankenstein, who inspired by alchemy throughout his childhood sets out to create life, where there is none. Blinded by ambition, he eventually finds himself succeeding, but creating a creature too repulsive to let out walking in the sunlight alone. The story, that's often considered a horror classic, ultimately diverts into a double character-drama; one, who is guilt-tripping over the pandora's box he just opnened and another, who being the content of said box, is struggling to find his place in a world, that clearly doesn't welcome him.

Like I said, the story mostly aligns with the original Shelley novel, however diverts in some places. Most notably the climax; Ito seemingly took more inspiration from the 1932's Bride of Frankenstein movie rather than the source material. Thinking things through I doubt, that effectively benefited the story or characters, but it doesn't really ruin them or take the overall narrative in a different direction.

Given those minor changes and probably some details the artist couldn't bring onto just 200 pages of comic panels, Ito still does a pretty good job at adapting the story. The story is still coherent and the two lead characters are pretty decently presented - even if I do find, there was a bit of that lacking.

Artwork was good, but I did feel like the author was page-limited to a degree, where panels just weren't placed as strategically as they could be. Take the first facial reveal of the monster we see. The art is good, but the full reveal is on an uneven page number. You turn the page and get this build-up of the monster getting up, but the suspense gets lost, when the facial reveal is right there to the right. In the manga's defense, I'm not sure whether this is just a flaw of the edition I bought or whether it was in every printing of the manga.

Another thing on the artwork. Every panel with the monster looks pretty detailed and good, but it is giving me vibes, that Ito's interpretation of the monster is cosmetically very derivative of his otherwise recurring Fashion Model character of his short stories.

So to summarize: it's a fine book and I'm sure glad Ito had interest in re-adapting a favourite story of mine into a different medium. It's faithful to the source material, so if you're only familiar with the general idea of Frankenstein, but want to know the original story and are not much of a novel reader and more into manga/comics than this is quite the recommendation for you. On the other hand Ito doesn't do much to make the story his own, even the schocker artwork is mostly derivative of his other work, so he isn't pushing himself to new levels with this book either. It's a good read, but there are probably better ways to experience Frankenstein and Ito.

6/10

I don't think I have ever written a review on something I quite liked as much as this, so this right now seems kind of unusual for me, but yeah, Akira the manga is excellent.

I had already watched the movie previously and loved it. It was an aesthetic masterpiece, however as far as story goes, it just felt too rushed and like it's skipping larger chunks of important information. Even if it ultimately raised interesting questions about society and technological development, it still felt like something was missing.

Now that I have finally gotten around reading the manga, I have to say, that even that problem ... is eliminated for me.

The story initially focuses around a group of juvenile delinquents, who happen to stumble upon a shriveled-up-vegetable-kid with psychic powers, while minding their own business, speeding with their motorcycles on the Neo Tokyo highway. One accident later all hell starts breaking loose.

The plot as it progresses is great. It starts by painting a society with loose morals; authorities are violent, kids get involved in all sorts of trouble (our real-life parents would be getting panic attacks for) and street gangs are running rampant. Throw in some politics, secret organizations and psychic powers, mix 'em up with interesting sci-fi ideas and post-world war II anxieties of the Japanese and you have yourself a tasty mixture to serve as the basis of a story unlike anything back in 1982 - as well as today.

The characters in Akira are good enough. I have found criticism of them not being developed too much and that's fair enough, but honestly I don't think Akira needed that. Yes, you might not like Kaneda, who is technically a morally more ambigious shounen main character, happy-go-lucky and way too brave for what he is doing, as well as an a**hole to boot, Kei is also kinda bland and while the colonel may grow likable for being a man of principle, who does his best to get sh*t done and Chiyoko is a bazooka wielding and tank driving war-machine, the closest thing to a relatable character will probably be Tetsuo, a crazy f**k, who develops godlike powers and holds Neo Tokyo in his palm with his rule of terror - the source of his relatability being the various psychological implications we get, an obvious oedipal complex, as well as his appearent ambitions. But none of that really matters, too much to me, cause - as I've already pointed out - the world building brilliantly makes up for it with portraying a general psychological mentality of the surroundings of Neo Tokyo, that makes the world come to life, even if I wouldn't want to go for a beer with any of the characters.

Aesthetically, it's also great. Sure Tetsuo looks like he is on one of those "who can make his face smallest?"-challenges and one or two characters look too much alike, but then again, all of them always seem really dynamic and never too stiff, the machinery presented has excellent designs and the backgrounds always look detailed and pleasing to the eye, which you grow to appreciate especially when Otomo starts sh*tting out pages upon pages of devastation and explosions.

So all things considered, I think it's only fair, I give this the best rating.

Okay, I'll take it.

I'm sure this doesn't say much to most people, but back, when Dragon Ball Super was about two thirds out I wrote a negative review on it. Didn't like it, bland characters, tacked on plot and the aesthetics of it were only slowly picking up steam. At the endpoint of it's run, the series only improved in one area, which was art & animation and there I was with another review in my hand, that was hardly any more positive than the previous one (didn't publish it, cause MAL only supports one review per series and I was too drained to update ... my previous review, having just finished a long one). I was about done with DBS, had it not been for this movie's poster getting published online, when I suddenly felt I could give it another go. Hey - it's Broly and it's a big budget movie - I thought to myself. If anything, I could get some of that DBZ - Movie 8 pummeling in high definition out of it. In that sense it couldn't be too wrong, right?

Yep, turns out it really wasn't. This was a joy to watch. It was exactly that one spark, that I found myself missing in the entire DBS-series to make it all worthwhile. But what's the difference between this and the series?

First of all the most obvious: art, animation and battle choreographies. Of course DBS the series could not have that, but I also never considered that to be the biggest fault of DBS. As for "Broly the Movie", I loved how it was originally this kinda loose looking art, that channeled early DBZ quite well and suddenly went into Buu saga sharpness, when the going got tough. Choreographies were also fast-paced and magnificent to look at. The only gripe I had with it, is when a shot lingered too long on the CGI models of characters, that just made them look too much like their straight from Xenoverse 2.

I also loved the soundtrack, especially during the fights, when the ridiculous chanting of character names began - "Kakarot! Kakarot! Kakarot!" - all accompanied by this epic percussion-driven orchestral music. Nice callback to original Broly's character trait of shouting it all the time.

As for characters; Broly was clearly the star. I feel like they were pandering to me for putting him in this and I wasn't even that big of an original Broly fan. He had that interesting personality and backstory, that not even one character introduced in the entirety of DBS's 131 episodes could match. By the time he was kicking the shit out of Super Saiyan God Goku - mowing down that sh*tty period-coloured form, the guy achieved the least saiyan way possible - by holding hands and going "kumbaia-don't destroy us god of destruction" with five other scared-for-their-lives-dudes - by simply channeling his inner great ape - I knew, I loved the guy.

Other characters weren't that interesting. They weren't bad, they just had nothing going for them.

The plot, when it isn't borrowing from material, which existed before the movie itself, is similair to the show, still paper thin. But unlike Super, which references old stuff mostly as means to fan service, this film actually patches things together into somewhat of a nice whole. It kind of reminds of that second-to-last Pokemon Movie, which I also enjoyed. I guess, there were still some things to dislike plot-wise, like how phoned in [SPOILER] Piccolo's cameo was [SPOILER], which was just there for the sake of [SPOILER] teaching Goku and Vegeta the fusion dance [SPOILER], which leads to [SPOILER] Gogeta [SPOILER], as well as everything Frieza does in this movie - which I guess shouldn't count as a spoiler.

So to summarize;

The good:
Broly;
Broly pummeling people;
loved the art;
spectacular animation;
great battle choreographies;
great soundtrack;
fun and energetic atmosphere

The Bad:
Plot conveniences to drive the story forward;
thin plot, which only sets things up for the fighting;
[SPOILER] Gogeta - seriously, this "character", pardon me, "characters" (since his gender is males), can get f*cked with all of their over-powered iterations so far. Vegito is better anyway.[SPOILER] Yeah, I went there;
secondary characters also barely play a role in this or aren't present at all. I'm still kind of bummed out about how [SPOILER]phoned in my favourite Piccolo was [SPOILER].

So yeah, this was kind of cool to see. Gorgeous animation, exciting fights and atleast one character I really, really liked. Could be improved with less blue and red super saiyans or other references to the DBS series though.

Finding out there's an english dub of the new Legend of the Galactic Heroes anime has finally got me to watch the series in it's entirety. I know, unpopular opinion, but I tend to prefer english dubs over the Japanese originals, cause why not.

So about the series. Everything is technically there, it covers the first book in the novel series, which mostly serves as a set-up to the rest of the story. We get to know Yang Wen-li and Reinhard von Lohengram, who are both enticing characters and serve as a good contrast of major actors in the war between the Free Planets Alliance and ... Galactic Empire.

The ups of the show are, that the world-building is there, the main characters are established finely and the initial skirmishes between the Free Planets Alliance and the Empire are interesting and fairly enough sharper-looking and more action-packed, than the rigid old-school animation of the original series.

I also get a kick out of the odd pronounciation of german names. Most notably Siegfried Kircheis. Originaly his last name comes from Kirche (Church), which pronounces with an (x), but I guess the translators with their english phonetical systems have associated the character more with Kirsche (cherry) and decided to rename him into Kirscheis -> Kir-Scheiß. Scheiße is german for sh*t, childish I know.

The downs are mostly related to how short the series is and how it doesn't cover the more exciting parts of the whole story yet. Various characters get introduced, but don't serve as much more than fan-service for the fans of the franchise to recognize them, since their stories are still far from being told at this point. I'm also not the biggest fan of the aesthetic choices in this. The bishounen artstyle is of course a no-brainer given the anime-times we are in, but just isn't how I would prefer for the characters to look like (In all fairness a lot of the characters looked pretty feminine in the original series as well). The soundtrack is a bit of a step-down as well, most notably I am no fan of the opening, which sounds oddly similair to Starship's "We Can Build This Dream Together" to me. The english voice acting was mostly good, I was a bit bothered by Frederica Greenhill though. Her voice had a pleasant sound and I'm sure the voice actress can do good in other roles, but she seemed kind of stiff in this.

Ultimately, it's a competent product, but I would still recommend just watching the old version over this.

Plot: ☆☆
Characters: ☆☆
Art: ☆☆
Soundtrack: ☆

Final Score: 7/10

So I finished the Anime of the Year 2018 and I don't really get it. Well, I kind of do, I just don't relate to the hype. For what it's worth it's not a bad anime.

The story is about Violet Evergarden - a total badass with robotic hands, who is trying to leave her past behind by learning to know the one thing she's otherwise bad at - loving. The premise is basically Rurouni Kenshin, but whereas Kenshin Himura was forced to deal with his past by embracing it in samurai battles, Violet Evergarden is for the most part about the main character doing her ... best to avoid her past, up until it crawls up to her in the climax.

Violet, the former War Machine Supreme tries her best in being an auto-memoir-doll - basically a letter writer, which is a somewhat glorified profession, that perhaps too conveniently puts her in situations to trigger her character development. You can probably already guess, that she's initially flat-out terrible at it. She's basically one of those - beep boop, does not compute - very likely autistic characters (no offense to the character or autistic people intended - I am very possibly autistic too) and full on butchers her earliest assignments by treating them like reports and taking everything too literally. It's a bit confusing, how despite her poor performance she keeps getting important clients for some reason, most notably, when some genius sends her to a princess to write love letters to a prince. I probably sound like a dick with no empathy, but I can relate to the main character quite a bit actually given my own life story (ignoring the war and death part, obviously) and personality.

There's a bunch of characters, who kinda serve as stars of their own episodes, but all too often just disappear into the background (or not even there) once their spotlight is over.

Story-wise it's mostly episodic. As I mentioned most episodes focus on a client or a side-characters own arc. I guess it's fine, but simultaneously the show just falls into that generally beloved genre, that I just don't like too much - the feels-porn. Well, I like it, when it works, but all too often anime just feels like trying too hard, I just feel "molested" by those series for some reason. I guess Violet Evergarden atleast wasn't quite on Makoto Shinkai's level, but there were still plot points - like the whole Major Gilbert "reveal", that just seemed predictable and kind of phoned in to me.

Aesthetically, the anime was fine. It wasn't quite up to snuff visually, when compared to some of the beauty, we've witnessed in recent years, but it also didn't have any gaping flaws in terms of art and animation. The soundtrack was fine. The outro song, that sounds like it were sung by an 8-year old even kind of grew on me emotionally.

Ultimately I don't regret the experience, but I also don't really feel the hype.

Story: ☆
Characters: ☆
Art: ☆☆
Soundtrack: ☆☆

Final score: 6/10

Turns out this is actually kind of good.

Well, it's not completely surprising given, that I also enjoyed the previous film, but whereas Movie 20 recycled some of the better parts of the original Pokemon season, this one actually attempts to do so on it's own terms and succeeds quite decently.

Don't get me wrong, it's not a brilliant story. It's a kid film alright, it promotes a set of what most of us would perceive as good values like togetherness, solidarity, keeping the environment clean or non-conflicting relationships with Pokemon - who in the franchise, often serve as a stand-in for animals. The film also isn't ... completely free of falling for some hack-writing traps and cliches in terms of plot progression. With all that said, you can probably already guess what you'll get out of this.

But regardless of how (un)original the plot is, the movie still does a good job by presenting us with a colourful cast of characters, that have their flaws, but also room for personal growth within the story. Well, Ash is still bland and only there as an element of familiarity, but I did enjoy the movie original characters quite a bit.

Aesthetically the movie was good. Art was colourful and appealing, the action was well animated and enticing and the soundtrack was whimsical, but also not annoying, as is usual with Pokemon.

Plot: ☆
Characters: ☆
Art: ☆☆
Soundtrack: ☆☆

Overall Score: 6/10

So since I already reviewed the manga counterpart and have been rewatching this for the past couple of months, I might as well put down my thoughts on it.

With the Yu-Gi-Oh! anime ending, but the card game and hype still going strong, it was no surprise, that the franchise would go into it's next round. This resulted in a series, that further expands on the crazy world of competitive card games by creating Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, where an entire academy, where kids learn how to play the game and educate themselves to be pros, got build. If you are reading this and think it sounds stupid, ... you might as well turn around, cause YGO! is past the point of making normies understand, why their concept is great.

The series follows Jaden Yuki a happy-go-lucky duelist, who just wants to have fun, never gives up and is damn good at card games. He gets accepted at Duel Academy, but has to stick around the drop-out Slifer Red dormies, cause he mopped the floor with a teacher on his entry exam and since early 21st century media always had a problem with authority figures, the teacher is a dick about it and sticks him with the dropouts regardless of his appearent skill. The rest is alll about his life at the academy; studying, dueling, hanging out with his friends and dealing with evil forces, that want to conquer the world and could easily do so by force, but will fairly agree to settle things by playing a card game instead.

With the introduction out of the way, let's get into the analysis whether the show is good or bad.

Plot (-):

The plot divides into four seasons, which all amount to a total of 180 episodes.

The first season is divided into two arcs. The first one starts episodically, but slowly starts snowballing into more significant arcs like Jaden and his best friend Syrus about to get thrown out of the academy, but having a chance to prevent it through a card game (have I mentioned everything gets settled by a card game yet?) or the inter-academical duel between their best 2 duelists. For lack of ambitiousness the first half probably works best in the entire series. The cast is colourful, the cards are interesting enough to keep fans of the TCG invested and aside from the general premise, it's not too ridiculous.

The second half of season 1 on the other hand... as much as I enjoyed it as a kid, it's writing isn't particularly good or creative. A group of deulists called the Shadow Riders want to snatch a legendary card trio (The Sacred Beasts - a knock off of the Egyptian God cards from the original YGO!, but with the difference, that back in those days the Sacred Beasts actually had playable copies out for IRL), that are hidden at the academy. Sounds fine, problem however is, the group doesn't make much sense; one member is a brainwashed former star student of the academy, whose brainwashing mask only gets explored in the final season, then there's a real life vampire and a real life amazon, a pharaoh from the past, a group of duel spirits (basically playing cards, that have a soul - there's quite a bit of this in this series actually), an alchemist and a minor villain from the first half, who just got picked into the line-up randomly. The whole organization doesn't make much sense and is just a way for them to display their (to be fair) cool cards. Their boss is an old fart, who wanted to attain eternal youth through possessing and using the Sacred Beasts, he's (SPOILER) the former principal of the academy and they make it seem like he's been around for decades, but then characters from the original series start popping up barely aged, making you question the entire timeline's logic.

Season 2 starts out fair enough with the main characters winnig streak slowly growing boring by using the same cards over and over again, so they come up with a magic plot device (SPOILER - the villain makes him unable to see his cards) for him to change his deck up with cards he supposedly invented as a kid, that actually got made and were send to space were they became duel spirits. There is Aster Phoenix, a pro duelist, who is butthurt over the main character using the same cards as him (how this info passed the asses of students, who want to be pro as well, is beyond me), except Jaden's beloved Elemental Heroes aren't even his main deck as it turns out (big surprise!). The main villain of the season creates a card game playing cult and fearing the heel-turn of star student Zane Truesdale, whom even Jaden failed to defeat in season 1, the principal starts some kind of world championship on the academy, that's initially really hyped up, but ends up being ignored by the main characters, leads to the villain acquiring a death ray and Zane's heel-turn having no real malicious intent other than it being an attempt by the writers to reinvent a fan favourite character by making him edgy. The entire tournament finishes (aside from the final duel, that nobody probably cares about) off-screen and is completely overshadowed by Jaden facing the cult-leader Sartorius.

In season 3 they introduce a whole batch of new characters, who are exchange students from other academies. They have interesting playing styles, but are mostly there to replace other secondary protagonists, who the writers had no idea, what to do with in that season. The season is basically divided into 3 part: First an exchange professor introduces a new educational method - the bio-bands, which measure students dueling spirits and gets them promoted or demoted based on the results. The duel academy personel is of course a-ok with this (yeah, I really have questions about the quality of the school curriculum). Turns out (SPOILER) the professor is just sucking out kids energy, so an evil duel spirit can bring his adopted son back, all this results in the duel spirit gaining power and transferring duel academy to the duel spirit world, where monsters will fight you by playing cards and the students who got their life sucked out by the bio-bands turn into zombies. The season culminates in the main character turning into an evil armor-wearing overlord, who starts decimating his friends. After the least conspicious exchange student plays a draw with him, which defeats his evil side, but leaves his real him unaffected, he gets conflicted, but still ends up facing the evil duel spirit.

Season 4 was japanese only and if you couldn't tell by now, I've been watching the dub. In this season the main character changes drastically, meanwhile the implied evil from season 1 (the mask, that corrupted the star student) returns to make his life a hell one last time. The season has some interesting parts, that finish the arcs of several secondary protagonists, who were benchwarming in the last season. Too bad the tacked on writing, doesn't quite make it as satisfying as it could be. Rather than implementing those minor character arcs in the plot of the main arc as a whole and returning to them every now and then, they just chose to slap 2 episode clusters together and let it all play out fairly quickly. It's fine, I guess.

So yes, the writing is oftentimes nonsensical and it really feels like they were just making things up as they went along. There is also alot of filler, which I could frankly enjoy about as much as the other stuff, as long as the duelists were using actually existing cards in the episodes. On the other hand you had the cursed doll using a cursed doll deck or the tennis player playing a tennis themed deck, that nobody would have even wanted to be real and which episodes, I honestly skipped on this re-watch.

It may sound like I hate the series, but in all honesty I had my fun. Unfortunately, that won't make me give the series a star in the category of plot.

Characters (☆):

I recently watched an Arc-V fake sub video, in which an antagonist, who travelled to duel academy, is mocking other characters using YGO! GX cards by destroying their monsters and criticizing the series' flaws. It was funny, but I found the statement, Jaden was the only character, who got character development, to be false.

Speaking of Jaden; a lot of people have praised Jaden's development from season 3 to 4. I thought it was ok, but not great. It's mainly because it's undermined by previous Jaden episodes, that did something similair. It just didn't feel fresh, but the end result is nevertheless remarkable. Personally I prefered the manga Jaden much more, with a backstory that didn't feel made up on the spot 100+ episodes in, him being talented, but not some destined to be legendary duelist after all, plus using the superior manga Elemental Heroes + Masked Heroes and minus the supreme king part (Evil Heroes were kind of cool though).

As for other characters; in my manga review I already mentioned, how I didn't like manga Chazz, who got turned into a Gary Stu. Here he is kid of great, but at times also annoying. Still my favourite though. He's constantly caught up between being the academys's best duelist and being a punching bag and while it does feel like they go a bit on repeats with him, I still like him most. Then there's the aformentioned Syrus, who's a dropout at first, but grows to be the academy's top 3 duelist. There's also Alexis - the girl in the cast - Rhodes and Bastion - the Genius - Misawa, who the writers quickly realised, had no idea what to do with past the first season, so Alexis is another one-off villain in season 2 and Bastion basically becomes a joke at some point. Zane isn't that good either. He keeps combo breaking ATK points like he has star power in Guitar Hero, but is just the designated genius in season 1 and 3edgy5me in season 2. He does get more interesting in season 3 to be fair, when his Cyberdark deck (which is honestly much weaker than his season 1 deck) starts giving him heart attacks. Then there's the season 2 and 3 secondary protagonists, who are also not particularly great characters, but fun to watch dueling.

Most of the villains are kind of flat. I have never been a fan of one-off main villains like Kagemaru and (arguably) Nightshroud/Darkness, who the writers didn't even bother giving a full set of cards. I mean Yami Marik from original YGO! wasn't that brilliant as a character either, but atleast I can associate a bunch of torture cards with him. I guess Yubel was best, having some beef with Jaden from the past.


Art (☆):

It's fine. It looks like Yu-Gi-Oh!, but it's visually not amazing and has ages poorly, when compared to the newer seasons.

Soundtrack (☆):

I'm giving another star here for sounding right. Nothing is particularly amazing to the point, where I would actively seek out the OST on Youtube, but nothing really grates on me. Since I was watching the dub for as long as possible, I also only know 2 theme songs; the "Get Your Game On" bubblegum punk one, from the dub and the season 4 Precious Time, Glory Days one.

Final Score:

The series is nothing amazing and if we are fair mostly a commercial for the card game. If you have fun with the card game you will likely also enjoy this series, but if you don't you might either be at a complete loss with what you are watching or you will create a web-series mocking the ridiculousness of the series for others to enjoy.

5/10

Rating system:

As seen above, I use a star system (symbols I have stolen from Yu-Gi-Oh!'s entries here on MAL) to rate the series/movies in terms of the significant categories, which can indicate its quality. Those ratings do affect the final score I give the series/movie, but I do not use a strict mathematical method to assign the final score. Ultimately I weigh the final ratings by considering the stars given. I do not consider the categories to be equivalent and value a good story and characters over good art or a cathcy soundtrack. As far as the stars given go, I use a four stage scale:
(-) - bad, a series/movie is terrible in this category
(☆) - okay, it's fine, tolerable, but likely nothing special
(☆☆) - good, it's good, but may have flaws or isn't quite among the best I've seen in the category
(☆☆☆) - great, the best rating I can give, when it's truely remarkable in the category