just finished the arc-v manga (the vast majority, considering it isnt finished) so here’s a slightly in-depth review from someone who hasn’t seen the vast majority of the anime:
i actually really liked it!! the characters were all lovable and entertaining in their own right. even yuzu in the beginning was super intriguing and had great potential but didn’t really go anywhere - that along with sawatari and isaac. also the love triangle (though it technically didn’t dominate the story) also pissed me off bc Of Course that’s what caused this entire GotDamn mess to begin with
yuzu in general, i loved in the beginning, got bored by the end bc she didn’t really keep her slightly selfish persona w/her only caring abt her dad’s duel school and not yuya (which would’ve been a cool thing to keep to develop her further)
sawatari too, he had potential, but nothing really happened in the end. i like his relationship with sora and shun, but in the end the other two kinda stood out more bc they had more concrete personalities/quirks. sawatari kinda became a sora-satellite in the end, and while i love that bc He’s Gay, i also don’t like it bc aside from being cocky he doesn’t have much of a personality
i also didn’t really like rei akaba’s chara not bc of any flaws, but mainly bc he seems way too much like a kaiba 2.0 w/a revenge plot
the love triangle w/adam, eve, and isaac was also really frustrating bc............. hello???? love triangles are ridiculously overdone and are cheap ways to advance the story. just make adam an overzealous idiot and be done with it - no need to add isaac’s “””tragically unrequited lovee””” into the mix
the fanservice was something i really hated too, mainly bc in the gx and 5ds manga it wasn’t As Obvious and There + yuzu is 14 you freaks. so that kinda sucked :/ treatment of fem charas wasn’t great as a whole (everything w/yuzu, sora’s sister dying as his tragic backstory, eve revolves adam....... like wyd.....)
as for what i liked, i really loved the yu boys and their dynamics, + how they had their own small forms of characterization, with yuto kinda being the cool, composed type, yuri being The Bitch, and yugo being............ yugo. yuya was admittedly kinda flat as a character bc he was basically the embodiment of the ‘friend to all living things’ trope but it got balanced out with the sweet relationship between him and his bros
yuya i feel as a whole is a stellar example of how to balance out a bland character with impactful and interesting relationships to make them seem more fleshed-out in comparison
everyone else was p fucking cool too - shun was hilarious and though he kinda fell out of relevance once the duel w/eve began, his whole dueling to live thing was basically ryo marufuji’s character arc taken less seriously (thus making it better lmfao). sora, i loved seeing him being the little shit he was.
adam and eve were snacks too i mean look at them.
all in all, i really liked it, though if i had to rate the yugioh manga i’ve read so far in terms of writing, it would be:
that isn’t to say the arc-v manga is bad, but it just isn’t better than the first two, bc i rlly love almost all the gx charas and the story of 5ds a lot better
dm is at the bottom bc it honestly sucked ass. the anime does not receive enough praise for wading through the swamp of shit takahashi threw at them and pulling out gold
but i have to admit artistically, the arc-v has the best art, dynamic posing, and Iconique facial expressions (which, interestingly enough, come almost entirely from yuzu and shun................ hm)
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