Yu-Gi-Oh! Arc-V (Anime Review)

So guys, this is a fairly big entry for me because I finally finished all of Yu-Gi-Oh! Arc-V, the fifth installment in the Yu-Gi-Oh! franchise. I've done reviews before for the original series, GX, 5D's and Zexal, but, ever since 2021, I've been trying to get all of the fifth series, Arc-V. Like I said in my Zexal review, that series was the last of the whole series to be brought here in terms of DVDs, so, when it came to this show, I had to buy the DVDs from America and I've had Seasons 1 and 2 since 2021 and I've been looking for Season 3 for a while, but, thankfully, in November a few months, I finally found it on eBay and watched the whole thing from start to finish and I finished it about two months ago. So, now, I'm here to review it. I've personally enjoyed every Yu-Gi-Oh! series before this to different degrees and I've been really happy about collecting every series on DVD so it was nice to be able to get this and add it to that collection and just finish the series overall at last. So, in the end, while I think this might be my least favourite of the first five Yu-Gi-Oh! series I've seen so far, I had a fairly good time with this series. I do have some problems with this and there are some things that are pretty questionable, especially when it comes to continuity with the rest of the franchise, but I enjoyed the series for what it was for the most part. So, let's get into it, and, like I always say, I'll be discussing about the series from beginning to end with spoilers, so if you don't want it spoiled, go watch it then come back and read this. So, the basic plot for this one is that the protagonist this time around is a fourteen year old boy named Yuya Sakaki who considers himself to be a Dueltainer and his dad has also been missing for a few years. He attends a Dueling School called the You Show Duel School with his friend Zuzu Boyle and her dad who runs the school. One day, he's having to duel someone his Dad was supposed to duel before he disappeared and in this duel, he learns a new dueling technique called Pendulum Summoning and this causes everyone to want to learn how to do this, and especially the Leo Duel School which want to take down the You Show Duel School. Yuya and the other students try to save it, but then things start going crazy when two guys named Yuto and Yugo arrive, and after Yuto is defeated in a duel, he disappears inside Yuya which allows him to talk to him in his head. They then learn that the head of the Leo Institute, Declan Akaba, is planning on doing something with a tournament he's setting up and Yuya is suspecting something. I'll stop there for now and get back to the plot in a second, I just wanna talk about my overall thoughts on everything so far. So, kinda like a lot of the other Yu-Gi-Oh! series, this show definitely tries to set up the rest of the series from the beginning and you can tell there's something going on with all the weird things happening like the Pendulum Summonings and then the whole thing with the Leo Institute and then meeting Yuto and Yugo, so it tries to plant some interest in us from the beginning, but I don't think it really achieves that until a bit later. Like Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal, I found a lot of what happens in the early episodes to not be very interesting, even if it did have some ideas that were interesting like the idea of Yuto and Yugo who look like Yuya. But, I don't think things really pick up until around the point when they start the tournament and Yuya starts to understand a bit more of what the bigger plot is. Stuff related to that kinda stuff is where it starts getting interesting and we even learn more about what Declan is doing and why he's trying to use everyone. As it turns out, Yuto and Yugo are from different dimensions and are their dimensions' counterparts to Yuya. Yuto is from the XYZ Dimension, which is where Zexal is set, and Yugo is from the Synchro Dimension, where 5D's is set. And that's really interesting to me because this felt like to me that they were gonna do a crossover with the other Yu-Gi-Oh! series, which these shows really haven't done before aside form a few mentions and character cameos and the Bonds Beyond Time movie. But this show doesn't really do the kinda crossover I was expecting, but I'll get to that in a second. Anyway, Declan discovered that his dad, Leo Akaba, went to the Fusion Dimension, where GX is set in, and took over Duel Academy and has convinced everyone there to take over the other dimensions by attacking everyone and turning them all into cards. This is why Yuto is here because the XYZ Dimension has been completely wiped out and now he's trying to stop Duel Academy. Not only that, but, the first season ends with Zuzu being taken and sent to the Synchro Dimension and so Yuya and some of his friends like Gong and Sylvio go to try to save her. This is when we start the second season, and there are some other pretty important characters that appeared in the first season, but I'll get to those later. For now, the second season takes place entirely in the Synchro Dimension and we see a lot of things from Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's, but there's huge differences between how things were there and the way they're presented now. For one, it shows that everyone in New Domino City are divided again and the layout of the city is different too. Instead of there being the main New Domino City and the Satellite on another island, you have the city on top where all the wealthy people live and all the poor people live in a city beneath them trying to get by with what they can. This actually reminded me a lot of Final Fantasy VII which kinda has a similar setting. Anyway, when Yuya and the others get there, they try to find Zuzu, but they actually find Crow there. It was really awesome to see Crow again, I think he's a very underrated Yu-Gi-Oh! character, and I love they got the original voice actor back for him. In fact, they meet a lot of old characters from the previous shows and they got the original English voice actors back for a lot of them. I don't know if they got them back for all of them, but, if they did, that's awesome and it was cool to see him and Yuya talk. But this is where things get really weird. Old characters like Crow and so on are back in this from their shows, but the protagonists aren't. For some reason, the protagonists from the previous series aren't in this one despite going to their homes, so we don't get to see Yuya interacting with Yugi, Jaden, Yusei or Yuma, which was really disappointing. All that happening in the fifth series in the franchise would have been the perfect opportunity. I guess they do kinda explain it later on, but it's still so weird. Not only that, but the character's positions are different here too like it shows Crow is back in the slums trying to feed a group of kids he's caring for and Jack is back to being his arrogant self and rising the ranks to being the most famous person in the city. We even get a new character in this named Shinji and he reminds me a lot of Yusei. He looks a tiny bit like him and acts a little bit like him too and takes his position as someone who's trying to prove the worth of everyone in the slums and get people to stand up for themselves, especially since everyone in the slums gets treated like garbage by the people above. So, even with this different setting, they do manage to make us feel bad for them and make the people in the top city seem hateable. Speaking of, this series might actually have the most hateable character in the whole franchise, Roget. This guy does so many horrible things to make everyone's life a nightmare just so he can have absolute power. In this, New Domino City is run by some elderly people and he's trying to manipulate them into doing what he wants to do and you just hate everything about him, especially when the others come so close to winning and he ruins it. So, for this season, Yuya and the others are trying to stop Roget as well as fix New Domino City and find Zuzu. For this, they take part in something called the Friendship Cup where they Turbo Duel and Yuya wants to duel Jack as a way of making him see the errors of his ways, but he gets beaten the first time and this only makes things worse and so they're doing one duel after another with Yuya, Zuzu, Gong, Sylvio, Crow and Shinji trying to make it to the top and they see the cruel punishments done if they lose as well. So, yeah, this season has a lot of things like that and it's pretty rage-inducing to watch them trying to do the right thing only for a lot of things to go wrong and seeing them get mocked left and right. Not only that, but Yuya is also starting to feel something going wrong in his head, like feeling something else is trying to take over and Roget even takes advantage of that too. I will say, stuff like that is why I preferred watching Season 2 more than Season 1 with the uncovering plot being presented and so on. And it's insanely satisfying when they manage to ruin Roget's plan and expose him and manage to get everyone in on their plan. And the actual final duel of the Friendship Cup with Yuya taking on Jack again is pretty cool and satisfying when Jack changes his mind during the duel and Yuya wins. After that, they try to stop Roget, and Declan is able to beat him and they even find Zuzu, but then, as a last resort, Roget sends them to the XYZ Dimension and they get split up again. Not only that, but Zuzu gets sent to the Fusion Dimension where Leo Akaba is and Duel Acadamy. But, in the XYZ Dimension, Yuya, Gong and Sylvio actually meet Kite there, which was really cool, he was my favourite character in Zexal so it was nice to see him again and, yeah, he's just as stand-offish as he was in Zexal and even accuses Yuya and the others of being from Duel Acadamy because, like I said, the XYZ Dimension has been devastated and a lot of people are gone. And I like a whole bunch of stuff to do there because we see Yuya and the others duelling members of Duel Academy who're doing terrible things and being horrible people, not just from the fact that they capture people and turn them into cards, but they openly enjoy the torture and all the pain they put people through. We even see that some characters from earlier are from Duel Academy like Sora. Yeah, there's actually a character in this series named Sora, and he was trying to trick the others into befriending him and making them think he was on their side, but, later on, and especially because of his genuine friendship with Zuzu, he really did join their side. Yeah, we learned that back in Season 1, but it's more important here because Zuzu herself is in the Fusion Dimension and actually meets Alexis there. Again, it was really, really cool to see Alexis here too, and I think what makes it even cooler is that this version of Alexis is supposed to be like how she is in Season 4 of Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, which was never dubbed and I never saw it, but it was cool to have a version of that dubbed in some way. Anyway, in the Fusion Dimension, Zuzu also meets Yusho, as in Yuya's dad and he explains what he's been doing and that Leo Akaba brought him there against his will years ago and he's been stuck there ever since. Again, I really like huge reveals like this and this leads to a fun thing there where Yuya and the others finally get there with Kite, Yugo and the others and try to get to Duel Academy and the reason Yugo is going is to save his friend Lulu. And that's something else that's really interesting because Lulu is actually the Synchro Dimension's version of Zuzu along with Yuto's friend named Rin who's the same for the XYZ Dimension. Anyway, they get to Duel Academy and Duel their way through to find the girls and take down Leo. Not only that, but they're also trying to stop Yuri, as in the Fusion Dimension's version of Yuya as well who's basically the evil version and is an incredibly talented and dangerous duelist who does terrible things to people and even defeats Yugo which causes him to be inside Yuya like Yuto was but that eventually leads to a bunch of huge reveals like Leo eventually telling everyone that all the dimensions were once all together and he had a daughter named Ray and there was once a duelist named Z-Arc who let the victories he was achieving go to his head and he began to get power that made him go crazy that led to him attacking everyone until Ray sacrificed herself to stop him and both her and Z-Arc were split and the dimensions were too and that's why everything is the way it is and now, Yuyu, Yuto, Yugo and Yuri are the different incarnations of Z-Arc and Zuzu, Lulu, Yuto's friend Rin and a girl from the Fusion Dimension named Celina are the different incarnations of Ray herself and every time Yuto, Yugo and Yuri are absorbed into Yuya, he's beginning to come back. Not only that, but Leo was doing all this and having people turned into cards and kidnapping the girls because he wants to bring Ray back and will do whatever it takes to do it. Again, really, really, really insane reveals just keep happening around this time and this is what I meant when I said that maybe the whole continuity of the other shows is like this. I have a feeling the reason they're not acknowledged is because of this, maybe, but it's still really weird by that alone, still though, this is really heavy stuff and stuff like this in the Yu-Gi-Oh! franchise isn't really anything that new because it's always been pretty crazy and insane with doing stuff like this, but, yeah, this is all sorts of weird and crazy. I'm not saying it's bad, it's just I know this is to be expected for the franchise. Not only that, but it's just really satisfying to get answers like this and the whole getting to the point is pretty cool to see, especially when we're told about what's been going on with Yuya and the others, even if I'm not really a fan of everything that happens. For one, again, I just wish we were told what happened to the previous protagonists in the franchise and, especially what happened to the dimension Yugi is apparently from because they talk about the three previous shows, but not the original, so I'm curious to know what's going on there. Anyway, eventually, after defeating Yuri, Z-Arc is able to take over Yuya's body and begins to merge all the dimensions together as a way of destroying everyone and so everyone tries to defeat him but he's too good with duels to be defeated until Ray herself actually takes over Riley's body. Riley is Declan's adopted younger brother and she uses his body as a way to stop Z-Arc and this is where things start getting really, really, really weird because after he's defeated, Yuya, Gong and Sylvio are brought back home and start living their lives again like nothing happened and they've forgotten all that did happen and even about Zuzu herself. But, eventually Zuzu's dad is able to remember her and he's able to make Yuya and the others remember too which leads to a part that shows that Declan and some others remember what happened too and Riley himself has been reverted back into a baby and they say the only way for things to go back to normal is if they're able to make him smile by Yuya going through the different dimensions again and winning different duels. Yeah, stuff like that is where I feel stuff is kinda going a bit too far in this series and, while I get that's kinda the rule of the world with this, it still kinda feels like overboard at times. But, anyway, Yuya does eventually win all of the duels until the last one is against Declan himself and everyone is hoping Yuya will be able to do it since they're all counting on him to make things right. And, as you'd imagine, Yuya of course wins and this puts a lot of things back to normal and eventually Zuzu comes back as well. I'm a little confused about what happened to Yuto, Yugo, Yuri, Lulu, Rin and Celina. I mean, you do see them when Yuya and Zuzu see each other again, but I'm kinda curious. Anyway, that's how the series ends and even Yuya gets to see his dad again and it literally ends with him and his dad about to have a plain fun duel together. So, yeah, that's really the series, I didn't mention everything, but, the general basics were mentioned, and, as for the series overall, I don't know if I can express exactly how I feel about this series, but, overall, I did finish it pretty satisfied. I can't say I loved it, like, when I finished the other Yu-Gi-Oh! shows, I came out of them saying I loved the experience of watching them and I don't know if I can necessarily say the same here, but, still, I did really enjoy a good amount of this. Clearly the thing I loved the most were the constant plot points that were being discovered and I did like the characters' journey through the story too. Speaking of, the characters here were mostly pretty good. I did like Yuya more than I did Yuma, even though I did really like Yuma too, and I thought he was just a fun character in general with usually keeping a happy attitude a lot but then the stress of all the bad stuff happening gets too much for him and he begins to break down mentally and we see that happen. In fact, the whole stuff with that reminded me a lot of the whole Jaden and Supreme King stuff in GX, which may have been the intention because Z-Arc is referred to as "Supreme Leader Z-Arc", so that might have been intentional. I was actually surprised Zuzu wasn't in this that much because she's mostly just separated from the others, but I still liked her too and it was cool to see her interacting with the other Ray incarnations too like Lulu, Rin and Celina. But, again, the main thing I found weird was that all the other protagonists weren't here and I still think that was a shame because, like I said, I feel like this being the fifth series in the franchise would have been the perfect time for a crossover like that, though, the only thing I can think is that Yuto, Yugo and Yuri could have been what the protagonists were supposed to be since they all have the traditional "Yu" in their names. And, as for the duels themselves, I'm not gonna lie, even though duels are the main appeal and the main aspect to this entire franchise, I personally didn't really care for them, so, a lot of the time, especially when it looked like they were gonna be going on for a while I mostly just fast forwarded through them and really only just watched ones that I knew were super important. But even with that out of the way, I liked the big duels that determine a lot of what would happen, like Yuya vs. Jack or everyone vs. Z-Arc or Yuya vs. Declan. Speaking of which, even though I had some questions and weird issues with the choices made about the other dimensions, I did still like when we saw characters from the other shows and it was cool to even have characters from them talking to each other like when Kite meets Alexis and they start talking, that kinda stuff was really cool and, as someone who's a huge fan of this franchise, that was really cool to see. Kinda wish we coulda gotten more, but it was still cool. Although, I'm a little puzzled by something. At the end, everyone seemingly goes back to normal and everyone's pretty happy with it, which I guess is to be expected with this franchise, but it was kinda weird that the guys from Duel Academy didn't receive any kinda punishment for all the horrible things they did because maybe they saw the error of their ways and changed, but it's weird that none of them, even Leo Akaba, who started this whole thing weren't punished at all for almost killing every person in every dimension. It's not that much of a complaint, just something I found kinda weird. But, anyway, there were some characters I really didn't like though like Sylvio. I know his whole character was supposed to be super egotistical and full of himself and I'm sure that was meant as comedy for him, but I just found him really annoying and never really found him likeable, even in moments where he was supposed to be really likeable, I just didn't. Okay, I've probably focused a lot on the negatives for this video a lot, but, I do want to stress that I did still find this enjoyable and I did enjoy the ride for most of the series. Again, like what I said in my review of Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal, it's kinda hard to really say a lot of these are great or anything because this franchise isn't really something that's the most liked when it comes to all its sequel series, but I still find them really enjoyable for what they are. And I did like this a good amount and when the plot was being unveiled in interesting ways, I was really enjoying it and I like Yuya's interactions with Yuto and the others too. I especially like how Yuto, Yugo and Yuri helped Yuya during the last duel and he even used their dragons since they all have their own special dragon card. And, overall, I'm just so glad I was finally able to watch this series and add it to my Yu-Gi-Oh! collection. It was really satisfying to find the third season on eBay and finally watch the whole thing. And, as for the future of this series, I'm not entirely sure because I don't know if Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS or Sevens have been dubbed or anything so, even though I really want to watch them, we'll just have to wait and see what happens. So yeah, I guess you could say me watching this series and finally adding the DVDs to my collection was a nice way to make the collection grow and almost be like a tribute to Kazuki Takahashi with me finally watching all the currently available Yu-Gi-Oh! series and having them in a collection like I do. And so, yeah, everyone, that's my review of Yu-Gi-Oh! Arc-V. Thank you all for reading and please comment down below to tell me what you think.