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Dont watch this anime. I am a huge yugioh fan, ive seen every series, read every manga, play the card game, and by god, this is ....just the worst.

I will give that some episodes actually have some good animation, and on the whole i did like the music in this series, but thats the best thing i can say about it.

So lets start with the story. The first arc is not great, however in a stereotypical yugioh way. I mean, GX and Zexal didnt have strong starts either, right? In fact I would say Arc-V's start is better than Zexal's.It has your standard introducing characters ... through pretty low stakes duels, and the show introduces a pretty neat concept. Using all the summoning methods. Now, this is a brilliant idea, and theoretically should make the duels in the series very interesting. However the duels in this series are by far the worst, and thats because of the other dueling gimmick they introduced. Action Cards. Granted, in the first arc, action cards werent that bad. They had varying effects and hell there were sometimes action traps that actually hurt you. So well it did provide a convenient excuse for the good guy of the episode to get out of a jam, it wasnt that bad. More on that later.The plot of the first season gradually builds up into what would become the premise of the whole series. There are 4 dimensions that are at war with each other. Sounds interesting doesnt it. They proceed to introduce a few characters from each dimension who make very cool introductions, and then move on to the second arc, which involves them going into one of those other dimensions.

Now, here is where you start to see the signs of the show getting bad. The first dozen or so episodes in this arc are a complete stall for time with no real plot development.They introduce some more characters and include some fanservicey ones in order to draw in those 5Ds fans. Now having characters from 5Ds show up would be quite cool...if they were actually them. These are jsut characters with the same names and designs however, the Jack you meet isnt the one who fought the dark signers with yusei. its someone completely different. But back to the actual plot. Now youd think that , with interdimensional war happening, things would be pretty intense right? Nope! Most of this arc is taken up by a very slow tournament arc, that ends up doing nothing to help the cause of the heroes or the villains.Oh and all those cool characters who you wanted to see interact and develop with each other? Too bad, theyre locked in their rooms for most of hte arc.However there was a couple good episodes towards the end of this arc that really hyped up the overarching mysteries and seemed to really be leading somewhere, so i continued. Oh and the villain of this arc was a complete pushover who was so incompetent im surprised he managed to get his evil plan as far as he did.

Now the third arc. Where it starts to get really terrible. So the cast gets separated again, jsut like at the start of the second arc! And of course most of the focus goes to the less interesting of the cast. They also introduce two GX legacy characters, who , if you love GX like i do are just....sad to watch in this series. They never get a proper win and , in fact, do more harm than good. This is where the series starts pushing the "smile" message way too hard. In a situation dealing with people living in a war zone and have gone through essentially genocide, and a group doing the genociding who believe that what they are doing is for the best, the solution is to have a really fun duel to solve it. And it works. All the problems there literally go away because of that.

The fourth and final arc. What a mess. They finally give resolution to the mystery arc thats been building up and is very,very interesting in concept. However it is executed in the worst way possible. Its also around this time Action cards become unbearable. By this point you only see 3 different action cards.Evasion:negates an attack, Miracle:monster isnt destroyed and No Action:cancel another action card. Every . Single . Time. Well, now since theyve bothered hyping up these action cards as the tools of the main heroes so often, surely they will be useful in defeating the big bad? No. The big bad prevents action cards from being used at all, which was nice to not have that annoyance for a few episodes but by god it made it so pointless. Now the duel against the big bad...just,so,so awful. He just defeats all of the cast and then an insanely minor character shows up with the mother of all deus ex machinas and defeats him in one turn. The most unsatisfying final villain defeat ive ever seen in anime. They then spend the remaining 8 episodes getting a baby to smile. Not a joke, thats actually what happens and its as stupid as it sounds.

Now on to the characters. The main character, Yuya, is insufferable. He starts off just eh, but with lots of room for development.However, he never actually develops. I would even argue he regresses. In a show that centered itself around a very serious conflict, youd think he would develop out of his naivete a little bit, or maybe not cling onto his childish ideals so hard. Hell ,even just have a few episodes where he gives up on them. But nope, if anything ,his stance on "bring smiles through dueling" only gets stronger every episode, and he goes around sequentially making everyone believe in it too.He learns nothing throughout the entire show, he doesnt even become a better duelist, he jsut gets more and more situational cards, which he wouldnt even need if he just played his deck well.

The main female characters. So the main female character at the start is Yuzu and she starts it off pretty well, she gets a win against Yuya and actually does get some development. Then she gets kidnapped at the end of the arc and spends the rest of the show as a damsel in distress. Well, she does have about 7 episodes where she isnt lol. However, then they introduce Serena! Serena starts off even better than Yuzu and also gets some really good development. However after the second arc, she gets captured and also becomes a plot device. The other two girls, Rin and Ruri, are kidnapped before the show even starts and generally do nothing.

Other characters. while a lot fo them start off strong and get a good 2 or 3 episodes focused on them, theyre generally dropped off and just spout the same smile rhetoric as Yuya, dont get their arcs resolved, or both! Mostly both. Hell 6 of them end up dead at the end of the show and nobody really makes that much of a mention of it and they all act like its a happy ending.

Villains. arc v only really has 4 villains, and im going to go through them all, so this section will be a bit spoilery.

Roger:Huge idiot. His entire , very flawed, plan is to kidnap Reiji in order to use it as leverage to become more powerful than Reiji's father. However the audience already knows this is a futile endeavor as Shun tried this very early on , and it was made clear that Reiji's father didnt give a fuck about him.His dueling skills are also atrocious. He wouldve lost to two minor characters if it werent for this ridiculous system he set up where he got to try again and again if he lost.

Leo:what a joke. This guy is built up as the villain for most of the series, and he is just an insane idiot. He had every single opportunity to stop the heroes from winning, and to succeed, but he makes the stupidest decisions possible. He nearly gets defeated by Yuya and Reiji and only doesnt lose because the duel gets stopped. Then he goes on to duel against the real big bad of the series, and loses in one turn. he doesnt even get to play a card.

Zarc: The real big bad. This is where lots of spoilers come in. So hes the combined "original" form of Yuya, Yuto,Yugo and Yuri. Sounds cool in concept. Having someone with aspects of each of them would be interesting. However hes just an omnicidal maniac who stomps everyone he duels, until he gets defeated by a huge deus ex machina.

Yuri:The only actually good villain. He was fun to watch, had an interesting deck, and was all around a troll. Sadly he was heavily underused.

The duels themselves were just...so boring. Even putting aside action cards, no real interesting strategies were used, and everything just went on the ol' "bring out ace monster, sit on it until you win". The mosnter designs were not very good.The only deck i can say has interesting designs is Shun's.they were either waaaay too "cute" and childish,or were weird mashes of stuff together.

So, to recap, dont watch this anime.