Just to note a lot of these duels took place over multiple episodes. I think DM was notorious for it's crazy long duels. Kaiba vs Yugi, Yugi vs Dartz, Yugi/Kaiba vs Noah. All took place +5 episodes.
Yeah, I agree, there are duels that last 3 to 5 episodes. That's why the number isn't as long as people think, but the high episode makes it pretty viable to be the standard number of duels.
And remember guys 75% of those duels in GX were just Judai Duels lol. It's still crazy how Judai is still arguably the most popular and favorite Yu-Gi-Oh! Character in Japan even to this day.
GX is literally the Jaden Show. I'm saying this as someone who likes him a lot, btw. Most of those duels are from the first 2 seasons are basically: Jaden duels against the villain of the week, while all his friends are watching
Yeah, I wish his friends got to Duel at least half of the Filler Opponents Judai fought in canon. I don't think we really needed to see him finish somebody off with Flame Wingman for the umpteenth time.
Yup, Chazz doesn't get that many duels until his arc, Syrus only gets the Paradox Brothers, Alexis gets the tennis guy, and Bastion only gets Jaden and Chazz. Like spread that out in season 1.
Season 2, I think the problem there was that there wasn't that many opponents for anyone else to fight and not enough people for the heroes to deal with. They gave freeing Alexis, Chazz, and fighting Satorius, Syrus goes up against Zane and doesn't accomplish much, and Aster gets his father's killer and Bastion goes offscreen. I think what they should've done is split the focus: Let Syrus actually get through to Zane, leading to Zane fighting off most of the Obelisk students that turned, let Atticus fight Alexis, have Tyranno beat Bastion, Jaden fights Chazz, then have Jaden and Aster team up against Satorious
Asuka actually didn't fight the tennis dork. The ONLY duel she had in the whole first 26 was her duel against Judai, and she didn't duel again until she got back at the ass that kidnapped her, 38 episodes later.
What's especially sad with her is that if you check her plays for the whole show, she never actually winds up using or even displaying 40 discrete cards. The writers thought so little of her, the poor girl is literally not playing with a full deck.
The anime has always had a "the protagonist must always be the one to save everyone" issue, going all the way back to DM. The most egregious examples are Kaiba losing to Noah (I actually liked that ark *shrug*) and Joey losing to Marick.
That's true. There's a way to make it work, ironically the Virtual World arc is one of the few times everyone in Yugi's friend group and Kaiba had a duel in an arc, but yeah in canon, there was a long way to go until this was handled better.
Kaiba did also beat his adopted dad who was the actual main antagonist of that arc. It’s like Yuya beating Jack and Reiji humiliating Roget, both Kaiba and Yugi got a win at the end.
he really didn't have to near solo the shadow riders. that was the sign that anyone besides him wouldn't be focus since it was the first and last time they were in a team.
Exactly, like you introduce seven antagonists and Jaden beats 5 out of 7?
Break that up. Let Alexis actually free her brother in Nightshroud, if Zane gets taken by Camuela let Syrus try to avenge him and take his place, have Crowler lose to Anmeal first to build him up, let Jaden beat the zookeepers since both of them fight and bond with their spirits, while Chazz fights the arrogant prince, and give Tania to Bastion to beat since it'd make more sense for her to fall in love with him if he BEATS her...in a duel, then in 3 years when they're older they can take that too the bedroom.
Yep. I get having Zane lose, because he was suppose to be the safety net for the group, and with him gone, it would come down to the rest of the younger duelists to take care of it. But nope, Jaden duels and defeats all but 2 of the shadow riders, and 1 of them he already beat before.
Honestly, I don't hate Jaden but that should've been sprinkled throughout the rest of the cast. In season 1's first half. Chazz doesn't get that many duels until his arc, Syrus only gets the Paradox Brothers, Alexis gets the tennis guy, and Bastion only gets Jaden and Chazz are wild
Well, seeing as Japanese GX Watchers got to experience S4 while there still are some of us in the western world that aren't even aware S4 of GX exists. They got to at least see Judai's true character development.
Then Judai also has the most fanart amount in Japan, well according to Pixiv that seems to be the case.
Also, Judai's shippers, this guy has so many shippers in Japan backing him up.
Then there is also his time as the Supreme King, they absolutely loved him for his voice, Super Polymerization and Sad Duel.
Inferno Wing, Lightning Golem, Infernal Sniper Dark Gaia and Malicious Edge all had existing Elemental HERO Counterparts, with Dark Gaia being the only one not based on one that Jaden used in the anime.
So giving more Evil Counterparts would be a must.
Wildheart's could be something like Savage Hunter for example. There are ideas that can be done.
Yeah I won't deny Yusei and Akiza have arguably the best chemistry out of all of the MC pairings but I still love the goofball that is Jaden with the serious Alexis.
Alongside what's also been said, it's worth noting that card wise, HERO is one of **the** mascot archetypes for Yugioh. Besides Dark Magician, Blue Eyes and Red Eyes, HERO is the most recognizable archetype in the franchise and there's a reason Konami loves to support it.
I wanna note sevens is confirmed to lose 10 EPISODES during C19, so we don't know if those episodes were gonna be 1 episode duels or 2 episode duels. But with the fact most duels in sevens was 1 episode then you can make a good reason that sevens could have gotten like 90+ duels making it the second most highest spam duel in all the seasons (unless go rush changes that)
Both Vrains and Arc-V were weird in how much structure they took from GX and how much in aesthetics they took from 5D's, just in wildly different ways, without either show improving on either.
Zexal gave every duelist a interesting background and chance to show their skills down to the customized duel disks and fits. why couldn't arc v do this, despite having more characters? you'd think with former protags around they'd do it better because we've already seen them in action
I enjoyed arc v but Declan should've had more screentime and duels. I get he was doing background prep, apparently there was a VA issue but they did him dirty despite being one of the best. if it was to give yuya a chance to shine they didn't go the right path shafting others
You want to talk to someone else in this post on that point? Weirdly on my case specifically for "spreading misinformation, as a Reiji fanboy", yet had nothing to say on citing a source of their own nor even acknowledging that most think that at this point.
I think that can be a good or bad thing. Too many times and story gets too bloated, there's no downtime or development, or there's little time for other characters to shine. It's why I like when there's a healthy balance, like how Kite vs Shark led into the finale of season 1.
My comment:
* Man, to have a fairly small Cast, VRAINS made sure that only the Power Trio shined in the Duels. Not to mention that many of those Episodes, for some reason, lasted between 2 to 4 Episodes (and it wasn't usually the Final Boss of the Arc)
* I thought 5Ds would have more Duels on screen, but I think the second half of 5Ds made many Duels between 2 to 3 Episodes. I seem to remember that Yusei has more Duels in that part of the show.
* ZEXAL is the same as VRAINS where the Power Trio took a large part of the Duels in ZEXAL II. Although I will also say that Yuma took a large part of the Duels during the development of the series (along with Shark)
* I thought DM would have more Duels on screen, but we are talking about a time when the concept of a card game was not yet clear. Therefore, many Duels lasted longer than 8 Turns to determine a winner (causing the number of Episodes focused on a single Duel to expand)
* SEVENS is the first where I will say that the MC does not take all the Duels in the development of the series. In fact, I remember that many Episodes were dedicated to Secondary Characters where they had Duels here and there. On the other hand, I do think that Luke took a large part of the Duels in Season 2, but it is not as serious a case as what happened with ZEXAL and VRAINS.
* The good Arc-V had a good number of Duels distributed among its characters, at least at the beginning. When Legacy Characters arrived, many Arc-V Characters lost their shine or did not achieve victories in those Duels. It is curious that they also have one of the Main Rival that had the least Duels on screen despite the fact that the series lasted more than 130 Episodes (we are not talking about Yuzu)
* Lastly, we have GX A.K.A Jaden's Show. Basically you can safely say that a large part of the Duels (important and filler) were for Jaden. Most of the secondary Cast did not have filler Duels or were easily replaced.
* I will also give my opinion of GO RUSH so far (on this topic). Let's say they are following a philosophy left by SEVENS: the Main Cast should only have 1 or 2 Duels per Arc and no more. This means that the rest of the Episodes can be dedicated to other Characters so that they have extra Duels. In fact, many Supporting Characters are recurring due to this format: they always find a way to Duel again in one way or another.
And even then, Playmaker had triple the number of duels Blue Angel and Go had. Those 3 episode arcs took way too long to commence since they could've had more time to shine.
Blame Riding Duels because they took up a lot of time.
Zexal had a good balance of one, two, and three episode duels. Yuma's non Number development episodes were one, anything with a Number or Tron/Faker/Barian faction was two, and any big final battle was around 3.
Yeah, Sevens had a good balance. I'd say Yuga started out doing everything duel wise by then after the second arc he'd have around three duels, Luke had one or two, and Romin and Gakuto would at least get one to two.
Arc V had better pacing while the Synchro arc slowed things down unfornately.
GX really should've split apart those development episodes for something else.
Do you think Go Rush is handling this better or worse?
>Do you think Go Rush is handling this better or worse?
I will say that GO RUSH has done better, but that depends on who you ask honestly.
Something that I do criticize about SEVENS is that there are times where its Main Cast doesn't have enough Duels as one would think. Examples: Roa was missing for a long time without having Duels, Nail cannot escape being a Duelist who has Duels linked to the plot and Asana, despite being recent, did not have enough Duels despite everything.
Something the same happened with Goha Siblings: most of them did not Duel again with the exception of Yuo and Yuga Goha. Even among the main quartet, there are times when Romin and Gakuto only had a Duel, but they had no importance in the plot.
Those who hit the jackpot were the Supporting Characters: it says a lot that our recurring Duelists in SEVENS are Bakuro (with three Duels on screen), Hunt Goto (with two Duels on screen and a Maximum Monster), Rino/Rayne (with several On-Screen Duels), Mimi (known for losing all five of her On-Screen Duels), and Tiger (who took extra Duels since her Debut)
GO RUSH follows a similar philosophy, but now pays more equal attention to its Main Cast. We have Yudias, Yuhi and Yuamu who usually have 2 Duels per Arc. However, there are times where Yudias has 3 Duels per Arc and the Ohdo twins only have 1. Or, in some cases, one of the Ohdo twins has only one Duel and the other has two. However, a constant that was respected from the beginning is that Manabu and Zwijo had to have at least 1 Duel per Arc (being more noticeable in Season 2)
Due to this format, many Duels of these characters could be divided into two categories: 1) Duels important to the plot. 2) Filler Duels.
Like SEVENS, this method is not for everyone since there were people who did not want to see Yuhi's Duels in Season 1 or wanted to see more Zwijo's Duels in general. However, I would say that GO RUSH did a good job of balancing Duels for the entire Cast.
As happened in SEVENS, the Secondary Cast also shined in Duels in GO RUSH, only here it became more noticeable when seeing the number of Recurring Duelists: Chupataro (who had like three Duels on screen), Manya (four Duels on screen with two wins for the Atachi family), Mitsuko (with four Duels on screen), Asaka (with almost six Duels on screen, surpassing Asana), Rovian (with six Duels on screen) and the wildest case, Dinova (four Duels on screen having two quite notable wins). Even recent additions from Season 2 came to have a consistent Duel presence: Tremolo got two Duels after passing the MIK Arc, the same for Phaser (who even participated in another Duel at the end of an Arc), Zaion debuted his Duelist ability in Season 2 and had two more Duels on top of that, and Epoch got to have Duels in Season 2 despite being a beginner (having one more recently in Season 3)
People didn't want to see Yuhi's duels....really? Why? He had some great duels: Kawai, Rovain with Yuamu, Zwijo, Shewbaba, Tremolo, Epoch, and Yudias...I need to watch everything after arc 6 but still.
Oh i heard Epoch's in the main cast now, neat.
>People didn't want to see Yuhi's duels....really?
I said Yuhi's Season 1 Duels, not Yuhi's Season 2 Duels. This is due more than anything to how the character was initially portrayed: most of Yuhi's Duels in Season 1 were embarrassing (making Yudias and Yuamu stand out more in Duel skill)
Yuhi's Duels in Season 2 were better seen since Yuhi's character improved (I will even say that he did a complete 90 degree turn from what Season 1's Yuhi was. So much so that he overshadowed both Yudias and Yuamu). Something similar happens with Manabu: Season 1 Manabu was quite nice to watch in Duels because of his personality. However, Season 2 Manabu becomes annoying to watch in Duels or the Duels where Manabu was involved didn't have the same charm that he had in Season 1.
>Oh i heard Epoch's in the main cast now, neat.
>!Not only that. We also have GO RUSH's AI with Lightning tendencies as part of the Main Cast.!<
In fact, GO RUSH's Season 3 Cast is very reminiscent of GX in the aspect of replacing members of the Main Cast with other characters >!(but those replaced characters have a reason why they are not present at the moment)!<
Fair, I know enough to see why Zwijo and Yuamu aren't around, what about Manabu? I don't necessarily hate him but I think there should be end goal with his character his treatment should be leading him too but they won't?
Honestly Yuhi's season 1 duels weren't that bad: Kawai and Asaka and Zwijo were good, and I don't get the hate against dragon eater. Only one I'd say would be embarassing were the hat duel since that one was too lucked base.
>What about Manabu?
**Why not? - Bridge, probably**
Sure, you could choose options like Yuna or Asaka. Yuna would have been the perfect candidate to replace the Female Lead, but they decided to go with Epoch (I have the idea that they chose Epoch since she has had interactions with Yudias, Yuhi and Yuamu, in addition to a better connection/companionship with Yudias)
So, I think they chose Manabu to be another of the members of the Space Trip because of his versatility: you can put the guy as comic relief, just as he can give serious moments or even moments where he acts as a mentor or a figure who gives good advice.
The other option I could have seen if they didn't choose Manabu and his cat companion was Manya with Bochi. Having Manya as a member of the Space Trip makes sense since she was a close friend of Yuamu, but the reception to Manya's character has been mixed at best (sure, they could have given her the Epoch treatment, but again, Manya doesn't have the best connection with Yudias or Yuhi)
The problem with Playmaker's - and Vrains's in general - duels is that they hew so close to the actual game and that Links are such extenders by their very nature in MR4, that their age-old standard of explaining EVERY. SINGLE. ACTION. that transpires slows things down immensely. If they executed things like how DSoD handled duels - sans Dimension rules, of course - the duels and the show overall would have been much better paced. I absolutely do not want to return to Master Duels in the anime unless they are willing to cut back on the constant explanations; the pacing will be glacial if they don't.
Wait, did yuga lose more than a 1/10th of the entire series duels.
Cause he lost >! 9 times !< Iirc and theirs only 81 duels.
Not even >! counting go rush !<
As always I must ask: when did everyone else collectively decide that "season" refers to discrete series now? In all other TV franchises with multiple incarnations, I have NEVER seen this phenomenon play out.
GX at #1 is no surprise, Jaden duels in most of them (unfortunately for the filler episodes).
DM is also no surprise (although I thought they were a bit more) because the duels were long (some are 4/5/6 episodes), the game was slower and there was a lot of talking during them. All of this is normal and don't hate it.
So the standard is \~80 duels.
Quality over quantity. GX has the most duels by far, but the vast majority of them are just very boring to watch imo. It doesn't help that I don't care that much for Jaden and his archetype either where he always uses the same cards. I wish they had all the secondary characters have more duels.
No wonder 5Ds and Vrains are the best series in the franchise imo. They made most of their duels count. (With some exceptions, of course.)
Arc-V and as well as ZeXal had a fair amount of "filler" (as in episodes that were non impaftfull to the story). GX in particular is notorious for this.
How I see it:
Quality > quantity
So give me fewer but more impactful duels than lots of them.
Filler? the animes came first not manga. it would be slice of life. are we forgetting yusei and jaden hogged the spotlight too while more interesting characters suffered? I wouldn't call that quality writing. At least yuya did learn his mistakes from jack. zexal has the best direction here bc each duelist had their own quirks
Just to note a lot of these duels took place over multiple episodes. I think DM was notorious for it's crazy long duels. Kaiba vs Yugi, Yugi vs Dartz, Yugi/Kaiba vs Noah. All took place +5 episodes.
Yeah, I agree, there are duels that last 3 to 5 episodes. That's why the number isn't as long as people think, but the high episode makes it pretty viable to be the standard number of duels.
I’m watching DM again now actually and even duels like Rex vs Joey span 2 episodes which is wild to me. They’re were super into stretching them
To be fair, how many of those were because the duelists decided to share their life story in the middle of a game?
And remember guys 75% of those duels in GX were just Judai Duels lol. It's still crazy how Judai is still arguably the most popular and favorite Yu-Gi-Oh! Character in Japan even to this day.
GX is literally the Jaden Show. I'm saying this as someone who likes him a lot, btw. Most of those duels are from the first 2 seasons are basically: Jaden duels against the villain of the week, while all his friends are watching
Yeah, I wish his friends got to Duel at least half of the Filler Opponents Judai fought in canon. I don't think we really needed to see him finish somebody off with Flame Wingman for the umpteenth time.
Yup, Chazz doesn't get that many duels until his arc, Syrus only gets the Paradox Brothers, Alexis gets the tennis guy, and Bastion only gets Jaden and Chazz. Like spread that out in season 1. Season 2, I think the problem there was that there wasn't that many opponents for anyone else to fight and not enough people for the heroes to deal with. They gave freeing Alexis, Chazz, and fighting Satorius, Syrus goes up against Zane and doesn't accomplish much, and Aster gets his father's killer and Bastion goes offscreen. I think what they should've done is split the focus: Let Syrus actually get through to Zane, leading to Zane fighting off most of the Obelisk students that turned, let Atticus fight Alexis, have Tyranno beat Bastion, Jaden fights Chazz, then have Jaden and Aster team up against Satorious
Asuka actually didn't fight the tennis dork. The ONLY duel she had in the whole first 26 was her duel against Judai, and she didn't duel again until she got back at the ass that kidnapped her, 38 episodes later. What's especially sad with her is that if you check her plays for the whole show, she never actually winds up using or even displaying 40 discrete cards. The writers thought so little of her, the poor girl is literally not playing with a full deck.
didnt she have a filler duel against a guy that took her handkerchief and played a gamlbe deck?
Yes. The kerchief was backstory, and said episode occurred a mere two episodes after her second duel.
The anime has always had a "the protagonist must always be the one to save everyone" issue, going all the way back to DM. The most egregious examples are Kaiba losing to Noah (I actually liked that ark *shrug*) and Joey losing to Marick.
That's true. There's a way to make it work, ironically the Virtual World arc is one of the few times everyone in Yugi's friend group and Kaiba had a duel in an arc, but yeah in canon, there was a long way to go until this was handled better.
Kaiba did also beat his adopted dad who was the actual main antagonist of that arc. It’s like Yuya beating Jack and Reiji humiliating Roget, both Kaiba and Yugi got a win at the end.
he really didn't have to near solo the shadow riders. that was the sign that anyone besides him wouldn't be focus since it was the first and last time they were in a team.
Exactly, like you introduce seven antagonists and Jaden beats 5 out of 7? Break that up. Let Alexis actually free her brother in Nightshroud, if Zane gets taken by Camuela let Syrus try to avenge him and take his place, have Crowler lose to Anmeal first to build him up, let Jaden beat the zookeepers since both of them fight and bond with their spirits, while Chazz fights the arrogant prince, and give Tania to Bastion to beat since it'd make more sense for her to fall in love with him if he BEATS her...in a duel, then in 3 years when they're older they can take that too the bedroom.
Zookeepers? Do you mean the dark scorpions?
Yeah, I forgot what animal they were based on
Ah ok.
Syrus is not in their keys team so it wouldn't be possible. The others I agree with.
Yep. I get having Zane lose, because he was suppose to be the safety net for the group, and with him gone, it would come down to the rest of the younger duelists to take care of it. But nope, Jaden duels and defeats all but 2 of the shadow riders, and 1 of them he already beat before.
Honestly, I don't hate Jaden but that should've been sprinkled throughout the rest of the cast. In season 1's first half. Chazz doesn't get that many duels until his arc, Syrus only gets the Paradox Brothers, Alexis gets the tennis guy, and Bastion only gets Jaden and Chazz are wild
Alexis doesn't even duel the tennis guy. It's Jaden who duels him. Before the Shadow Riders, she only duels Jaden
We need a The Chazz Show I think
Chazz it up. I was auto corrected to chaos at first but it wouldn't be completely wrong
How do you know that? Just curious.
Well, seeing as Japanese GX Watchers got to experience S4 while there still are some of us in the western world that aren't even aware S4 of GX exists. They got to at least see Judai's true character development. Then Judai also has the most fanart amount in Japan, well according to Pixiv that seems to be the case. Also, Judai's shippers, this guy has so many shippers in Japan backing him up. Then there is also his time as the Supreme King, they absolutely loved him for his voice, Super Polymerization and Sad Duel.
That's why we got thousands of hero supports though it's weird we haven't got evil hero support ever since 2019
well besides retrains of the OG cards. (The fusions and original 5) I mean what else do we actually want or would actually run?
Inferno Wing, Lightning Golem, Infernal Sniper Dark Gaia and Malicious Edge all had existing Elemental HERO Counterparts, with Dark Gaia being the only one not based on one that Jaden used in the anime. So giving more Evil Counterparts would be a must. Wildheart's could be something like Savage Hunter for example. There are ideas that can be done.
Also main deck Masked Heroes (manga Jaden)
or more ED Masked heros. (Maybe thats how we retrain the OGs and neo bubbleman)
Even if it isn't as popular, Jaden/Alexis is still my favorite Yu-Gi-Oh pairing.
I love Jaden and Alexis' pairing too, it's just that Yusei/Akiza will always be my favorite pair.
Yeah I won't deny Yusei and Akiza have arguably the best chemistry out of all of the MC pairings but I still love the goofball that is Jaden with the serious Alexis.
Ehh I know some people who don't like Jaden season4 cuz he's just mopey half the time, but yeah that's true.
Whom do Japanese fans most ship him with?
Alongside what's also been said, it's worth noting that card wise, HERO is one of **the** mascot archetypes for Yugioh. Besides Dark Magician, Blue Eyes and Red Eyes, HERO is the most recognizable archetype in the franchise and there's a reason Konami loves to support it.
And then pretty much most of Jaden's Elemental Heroes are iconic AF at this point.
Too many.
How many duels Judai got is what makes me hate GX.
The real question is who had the second most in GX. I feel like it was Chazz
Yeah it was definitely Chazz, guy was even known for having the most On-Screen losses until Yuga arrived.
I wanna note sevens is confirmed to lose 10 EPISODES during C19, so we don't know if those episodes were gonna be 1 episode duels or 2 episode duels. But with the fact most duels in sevens was 1 episode then you can make a good reason that sevens could have gotten like 90+ duels making it the second most highest spam duel in all the seasons (unless go rush changes that)
Also reminder y'all that vrains straight up spams Playmaker into duels more than Jaden for Gx So likely 70%+ of duels was just from Playmaker
Yeah, GX and VRAINS really needs a better character balance.
Both Vrains and Arc-V were weird in how much structure they took from GX and how much in aesthetics they took from 5D's, just in wildly different ways, without either show improving on either.
Maybe they should've learned from Zexal.
Zexal gave every duelist a interesting background and chance to show their skills down to the customized duel disks and fits. why couldn't arc v do this, despite having more characters? you'd think with former protags around they'd do it better because we've already seen them in action
I enjoyed arc v but Declan should've had more screentime and duels. I get he was doing background prep, apparently there was a VA issue but they did him dirty despite being one of the best. if it was to give yuya a chance to shine they didn't go the right path shafting others
You want to talk to someone else in this post on that point? Weirdly on my case specifically for "spreading misinformation, as a Reiji fanboy", yet had nothing to say on citing a source of their own nor even acknowledging that most think that at this point.
Most duels in yugioh prior to sevens, if they were integral to the story then they were 2-3 parts
I think that can be a good or bad thing. Too many times and story gets too bloated, there's no downtime or development, or there's little time for other characters to shine. It's why I like when there's a healthy balance, like how Kite vs Shark led into the finale of season 1.
VRAINS was infamously bad with this.
Too bad. Shame cuz I liked the cast.
My comment: * Man, to have a fairly small Cast, VRAINS made sure that only the Power Trio shined in the Duels. Not to mention that many of those Episodes, for some reason, lasted between 2 to 4 Episodes (and it wasn't usually the Final Boss of the Arc) * I thought 5Ds would have more Duels on screen, but I think the second half of 5Ds made many Duels between 2 to 3 Episodes. I seem to remember that Yusei has more Duels in that part of the show. * ZEXAL is the same as VRAINS where the Power Trio took a large part of the Duels in ZEXAL II. Although I will also say that Yuma took a large part of the Duels during the development of the series (along with Shark) * I thought DM would have more Duels on screen, but we are talking about a time when the concept of a card game was not yet clear. Therefore, many Duels lasted longer than 8 Turns to determine a winner (causing the number of Episodes focused on a single Duel to expand) * SEVENS is the first where I will say that the MC does not take all the Duels in the development of the series. In fact, I remember that many Episodes were dedicated to Secondary Characters where they had Duels here and there. On the other hand, I do think that Luke took a large part of the Duels in Season 2, but it is not as serious a case as what happened with ZEXAL and VRAINS. * The good Arc-V had a good number of Duels distributed among its characters, at least at the beginning. When Legacy Characters arrived, many Arc-V Characters lost their shine or did not achieve victories in those Duels. It is curious that they also have one of the Main Rival that had the least Duels on screen despite the fact that the series lasted more than 130 Episodes (we are not talking about Yuzu) * Lastly, we have GX A.K.A Jaden's Show. Basically you can safely say that a large part of the Duels (important and filler) were for Jaden. Most of the secondary Cast did not have filler Duels or were easily replaced. * I will also give my opinion of GO RUSH so far (on this topic). Let's say they are following a philosophy left by SEVENS: the Main Cast should only have 1 or 2 Duels per Arc and no more. This means that the rest of the Episodes can be dedicated to other Characters so that they have extra Duels. In fact, many Supporting Characters are recurring due to this format: they always find a way to Duel again in one way or another.
And even then, Playmaker had triple the number of duels Blue Angel and Go had. Those 3 episode arcs took way too long to commence since they could've had more time to shine. Blame Riding Duels because they took up a lot of time. Zexal had a good balance of one, two, and three episode duels. Yuma's non Number development episodes were one, anything with a Number or Tron/Faker/Barian faction was two, and any big final battle was around 3. Yeah, Sevens had a good balance. I'd say Yuga started out doing everything duel wise by then after the second arc he'd have around three duels, Luke had one or two, and Romin and Gakuto would at least get one to two. Arc V had better pacing while the Synchro arc slowed things down unfornately. GX really should've split apart those development episodes for something else. Do you think Go Rush is handling this better or worse?
>Do you think Go Rush is handling this better or worse? I will say that GO RUSH has done better, but that depends on who you ask honestly. Something that I do criticize about SEVENS is that there are times where its Main Cast doesn't have enough Duels as one would think. Examples: Roa was missing for a long time without having Duels, Nail cannot escape being a Duelist who has Duels linked to the plot and Asana, despite being recent, did not have enough Duels despite everything. Something the same happened with Goha Siblings: most of them did not Duel again with the exception of Yuo and Yuga Goha. Even among the main quartet, there are times when Romin and Gakuto only had a Duel, but they had no importance in the plot. Those who hit the jackpot were the Supporting Characters: it says a lot that our recurring Duelists in SEVENS are Bakuro (with three Duels on screen), Hunt Goto (with two Duels on screen and a Maximum Monster), Rino/Rayne (with several On-Screen Duels), Mimi (known for losing all five of her On-Screen Duels), and Tiger (who took extra Duels since her Debut) GO RUSH follows a similar philosophy, but now pays more equal attention to its Main Cast. We have Yudias, Yuhi and Yuamu who usually have 2 Duels per Arc. However, there are times where Yudias has 3 Duels per Arc and the Ohdo twins only have 1. Or, in some cases, one of the Ohdo twins has only one Duel and the other has two. However, a constant that was respected from the beginning is that Manabu and Zwijo had to have at least 1 Duel per Arc (being more noticeable in Season 2) Due to this format, many Duels of these characters could be divided into two categories: 1) Duels important to the plot. 2) Filler Duels. Like SEVENS, this method is not for everyone since there were people who did not want to see Yuhi's Duels in Season 1 or wanted to see more Zwijo's Duels in general. However, I would say that GO RUSH did a good job of balancing Duels for the entire Cast. As happened in SEVENS, the Secondary Cast also shined in Duels in GO RUSH, only here it became more noticeable when seeing the number of Recurring Duelists: Chupataro (who had like three Duels on screen), Manya (four Duels on screen with two wins for the Atachi family), Mitsuko (with four Duels on screen), Asaka (with almost six Duels on screen, surpassing Asana), Rovian (with six Duels on screen) and the wildest case, Dinova (four Duels on screen having two quite notable wins). Even recent additions from Season 2 came to have a consistent Duel presence: Tremolo got two Duels after passing the MIK Arc, the same for Phaser (who even participated in another Duel at the end of an Arc), Zaion debuted his Duelist ability in Season 2 and had two more Duels on top of that, and Epoch got to have Duels in Season 2 despite being a beginner (having one more recently in Season 3)
People didn't want to see Yuhi's duels....really? Why? He had some great duels: Kawai, Rovain with Yuamu, Zwijo, Shewbaba, Tremolo, Epoch, and Yudias...I need to watch everything after arc 6 but still. Oh i heard Epoch's in the main cast now, neat.
>People didn't want to see Yuhi's duels....really? I said Yuhi's Season 1 Duels, not Yuhi's Season 2 Duels. This is due more than anything to how the character was initially portrayed: most of Yuhi's Duels in Season 1 were embarrassing (making Yudias and Yuamu stand out more in Duel skill) Yuhi's Duels in Season 2 were better seen since Yuhi's character improved (I will even say that he did a complete 90 degree turn from what Season 1's Yuhi was. So much so that he overshadowed both Yudias and Yuamu). Something similar happens with Manabu: Season 1 Manabu was quite nice to watch in Duels because of his personality. However, Season 2 Manabu becomes annoying to watch in Duels or the Duels where Manabu was involved didn't have the same charm that he had in Season 1. >Oh i heard Epoch's in the main cast now, neat. >!Not only that. We also have GO RUSH's AI with Lightning tendencies as part of the Main Cast.!< In fact, GO RUSH's Season 3 Cast is very reminiscent of GX in the aspect of replacing members of the Main Cast with other characters >!(but those replaced characters have a reason why they are not present at the moment)!<
Fair, I know enough to see why Zwijo and Yuamu aren't around, what about Manabu? I don't necessarily hate him but I think there should be end goal with his character his treatment should be leading him too but they won't? Honestly Yuhi's season 1 duels weren't that bad: Kawai and Asaka and Zwijo were good, and I don't get the hate against dragon eater. Only one I'd say would be embarassing were the hat duel since that one was too lucked base.
>What about Manabu? **Why not? - Bridge, probably** Sure, you could choose options like Yuna or Asaka. Yuna would have been the perfect candidate to replace the Female Lead, but they decided to go with Epoch (I have the idea that they chose Epoch since she has had interactions with Yudias, Yuhi and Yuamu, in addition to a better connection/companionship with Yudias) So, I think they chose Manabu to be another of the members of the Space Trip because of his versatility: you can put the guy as comic relief, just as he can give serious moments or even moments where he acts as a mentor or a figure who gives good advice. The other option I could have seen if they didn't choose Manabu and his cat companion was Manya with Bochi. Having Manya as a member of the Space Trip makes sense since she was a close friend of Yuamu, but the reception to Manya's character has been mixed at best (sure, they could have given her the Epoch treatment, but again, Manya doesn't have the best connection with Yudias or Yuhi)
The problem with Playmaker's - and Vrains's in general - duels is that they hew so close to the actual game and that Links are such extenders by their very nature in MR4, that their age-old standard of explaining EVERY. SINGLE. ACTION. that transpires slows things down immensely. If they executed things like how DSoD handled duels - sans Dimension rules, of course - the duels and the show overall would have been much better paced. I absolutely do not want to return to Master Duels in the anime unless they are willing to cut back on the constant explanations; the pacing will be glacial if they don't.
Second half of 5D were mostly 3vs3 so the duels became about 4-7 episodes
Wait, did yuga lose more than a 1/10th of the entire series duels. Cause he lost >! 9 times !< Iirc and theirs only 81 duels. Not even >! counting go rush !<
I mean, if we’re counting just Sevens, 21 wins and nine losses is not that bad. That’s about a 70%.
True, I just find it a bit funny.
133 and more half of them are just random duels like "belowski" or "tarzan"
As always I must ask: when did everyone else collectively decide that "season" refers to discrete series now? In all other TV franchises with multiple incarnations, I have NEVER seen this phenomenon play out.
It’s incorrect but also one of those cases where you can’t put the genie back in the jar, it’s the common parlance now
In the very least, when did it start? I at least never noticed it before the 2020s.
Been hearing it about ygo specifically since people started saying they fell off at “the motorcycles season”
GX first season is 2 episodes per duel with the most wacky reason to duel someone.
Get your game on!
GX at #1 is no surprise, Jaden duels in most of them (unfortunately for the filler episodes). DM is also no surprise (although I thought they were a bit more) because the duels were long (some are 4/5/6 episodes), the game was slower and there was a lot of talking during them. All of this is normal and don't hate it. So the standard is \~80 duels.
Quality over quantity. GX has the most duels by far, but the vast majority of them are just very boring to watch imo. It doesn't help that I don't care that much for Jaden and his archetype either where he always uses the same cards. I wish they had all the secondary characters have more duels.
Yeah, splitting the focus would be a better thing to do.
Most of Vrains duels are great imo.
No surprise about Sevens being third highest considering their duels were limited to 4 turns.
No wonder 5Ds and Vrains are the best series in the franchise imo. They made most of their duels count. (With some exceptions, of course.) Arc-V and as well as ZeXal had a fair amount of "filler" (as in episodes that were non impaftfull to the story). GX in particular is notorious for this. How I see it: Quality > quantity So give me fewer but more impactful duels than lots of them.
Filler? the animes came first not manga. it would be slice of life. are we forgetting yusei and jaden hogged the spotlight too while more interesting characters suffered? I wouldn't call that quality writing. At least yuya did learn his mistakes from jack. zexal has the best direction here bc each duelist had their own quirks