Anime every day

[Aura]

I know it's a little late to talk about New Year's Resolutions, but every year I like to set two of them, one that is meant to actually improve my productivity in life and another that is meant to force myself to do more of something I enjoy. This year, my latter resolution was that I wanted to watch more anime. As a result, I've set up a system where I'm trying to watch five episodes a day. I wanted to start this thread to sort of document what I've been watching and what my opinions are. So I guess you could consider it a sort of review, but I'm using it as a bit of a diary to keep track of my thoughts.

Anyway, right now, I'm trying to focus on the Yugioh series. I've been on a pretty big Yugioh kick again with Duel Links and Arc V being broadcast on Nicktoons (at least here in America), so I've wanted to sort of catch up on the series. I've also never seen the japense versions of any of the dubbed Yugioh series, so I thought it would be interesting to start from the very beginning. I've already watched Season 0, so I decided to start with Duel Monsters and it was really interesting to see the original source material and just how different it was, but it was almost more interesting to see what hadn't been changed considering how heavily the series was censored in America. I had also never seen any of season 5, so that was an entirely new experience for me.

I found that a lot of stuff was far darker in the japanese version than I expected, to the point where I almost found it over-the-top and even humorous at times. For example, in the dub, Bandit Keith hated Pegasus because he humiliated him by having a child beat him and he wanted to get his revenge by beating Pegasus in a duel and proving himself. In the Japanese version, after losing that duel, he life spiraled into depression and he became an alcoholic and it fucked him up to the point where he was willing to flat-out murder Pegasus with a gun. It felt really over-the-top since this all stemmed from a children's card game. xD There are a lot of other details that seem over-the-top and excessively edgy compared to what I'm used to, like how almost every card had the word "God," "Hell," or "Demon," in its name. I know it's just the nature of the monsters and what they were intended to be, but being used to the official localized card names, it just felt like fanfiction that was trying its hardest to be edgy and cool. 

There were some other examples of unexpectedly hilarious dialogue as well.

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Anyway, I could go into detail about all my opinions on this series, but since I got a bunch of catching up to do, I'll just describe my basic opinions on the seasons:

Season 1: I thought this season was interesting. Although the complete and utter ignorance of the fundamental rules of the game is at its absolute worst here, the way the monsters were used almost gave this season a bit more of a Pokemon or Digimon-esque vibe. Although a lot of the opponents Yugi and Jonouchi (Joey) faced were pretty bland, they all used interesting (albeit very cheaty) strategies that made each duel feel very different. This is debatably the closest to Season 0 that the series got, to the point where part of me is convinced that this plot was originally written as a continuation of season 0 rather than a reboot. Anyway, I loved Pagasus' japanese voice so much more. He had a very similar manner of speaking to his English voice, but something about him randomly exclaiming "Shit!!" or "Goddamn!!" in english with that same voice that's usually more sing-songy in tone was incredibly hilarious to me. Not to mention the heavy Japanese accent the character being American.

Season 2: This is the season I always thought about when I thought of the original series, Battle City. This is where they started to follow the rules more closely, but they still had a small dash of Duelist-Kingdom level bullshit. For example, I distinctly remember Jonouchi inflicting direct damage to Ryota Kaijiki (Mako Tsunami) even though Kaijiki still had Tornado Wall active which should have reduced all damage to zero. A lot of Jonouchi's duels came off as pretty forced and rushed, and it really bothered me how a lot of the rare cards he got from winning duels had little-to-no synergy with the rest of his deck, but he still ran them anyway. The only one that even remotely worked well was Psycho Shocker (Jinzo). I guess they wanted to show Jonouchi getting really good cards by challenging only the toughest opponents he could find, but I found it a bit suspicious that these "toughest opponents" were all opponents he stood there and watched Yugi beat in season 1. Still, this season made me really love Jonouchi as a character, as after Duelist Kingdom, he began to focus a lot more on self-improvement. He wanted to become a true duelist like Yugi. However, what I really didn't like about him was just how cocky he got. I don't feel like he ever really faced any consequences for charging headfirst and challenging any tough opponent he could find. The closest you get happens in season 3 and I don't really think you can really count it. Yugi's shadow duels with the rare hunters were far more interesting in the Japanese version. These shadow duels get really dark and in many cases reminded me of season 0 in a similar manner to Season 1. I don't want to go into too much detail, but my favorite was easily the duel between Yugi and Pandora (Arkana). It used real buzz-saws instead of the "Dark energy discs" and the sound of the metal saws scraping along made the duel feel far more intense and exciting. The duel between Yugi and Jonouchi before the Battle City tournament was especially brutal yet surprisingly unchanged. I'm honestly shocked that 4Kids didn't censor this duel more, because it gets really dark, with threatening to crush Anzu (Tea) as well as plunging both Yugi and Jonouchi into the ocean to drown. Apparently falling to your death is too violent, but drowning at the bottom of the ocean is A-OK. During the actual tournament, I felt there was a LOT of missed potential for a huge plot point here. I really think they should have actually built Rishid (Odion) up to be Malik (Marik), and to have Malik's true identiy reveal be a surprise. Instead, from the moment Rishid appears, Malik gives him the orders to take his name in order to fool Yugi and his friends into believing that Rishid is Malik, but this was done onscreen and throughout the tournament, the internal dialogue of Malik is constantly reminding the viewers and I just think it would have been much better if it was kept a surprise. Anyway, the season ends on a cliffhanger after Malik defeats Bakura in a duel on the way to the finals. 

Season 3: This is where we begin to run into my biggest problem with Yugioh DM: The filler. The majority of this season is almost nothing but filler. Okay, the Virtual World arc did a lot to explain Kaiba's backstory, but I really think a few flashbacks was all that was necessary for that. We didn't need Noah, we didn't need the return of the Big 5, we didn't need pretty much anything in this Virtual World arc to get Kaiba's backstory. Although, I will say that watching Kaiba's Blue-Eyes defeat Exodia Necros was very satisfying, and probably extremely cathardic for Kaiba. I will also say that the Deck Master rule was an interesting way to shake things up, but it could only do so much for the arc's incoherent story. Thankfully, the Battle City Finals is also included in this season where we get the conclusion to the remaining plot threads. This season really set the ship between Jonouchi and Mai sail. The duels against Malik are without a doubt at their most intense here. From what I've seen so far, Malik is easily the most brutal villain in the entire series. I love his character, and in the Japanese version they get into a lot more detail about his motivations. Yami Malik is the amalgamation of all of Malik's pent-up hatred for the Pharoh for the life of torment he had been forced to endure as the Pharoh's gravekeeper. 

Season 4: This season seems to be pretty universally hated. The entire season is pretty much the definition of filler. It brings the overarching plot to a complete, grinding hault and goes off on a massive tangent that lasts 1 and a half seasons where the show just kind of forgets all about Egypt and the Pharoh's memories. I found this season to be really interesting, though. It uses a lot of cards that, at the time, were anime-exclusive due to how overpowered they would have been in the TCG at the time, but were later introduced into the TCG in more recent years, so it was interesting to see where they originated. Anyway, this season does a lot of things wrong. Most notably: It completely threw every single detail of Mai's character arc out the window and made her own to be some whiny little bitch. Why does she turn to the Oricalcos? Because she wants to win. I get that her loss to Malik was probably extremely traumatizing, but jesus christ I cannot accept that it would affect her this badly, especially not considering Jonouchi suffered so much worse than her. Needless to say, her character was my least favorite thing about this season. Regardless, this season has some of the most bizarre situation and plot points in the entire series that it's hard to really take seriously. There's a duel between Jonouchi and Varon that literally just devolves into a mech-suit battle where they punch each other in the face. (I'm not even kidding). The final duel against Dartz is also absolutely ridiculous. By the end, it just devolves into "My monster's attack is infinity!" "Well my monster's attack is infinity plus 1!" on top of all sorts of ridiculous anime bullshit.

Season 5: This is the season I was most excited to watch because I had never actually seen any of it as a kid except for a single episode. Unfortunately, if you thought the Oricalcos season was filler, good god, you have not seen the KC Grand Prix arc. This is the slowest, most painful to watch season in the entire series. The character Leon has this really creepy fetishy fairy tail deck. I mean, I'm not even joking. The deck features furries, vore, and inflation in the form of the Wolf from Little Red Riding Hood who eats an opponent's monster and balloons up, feet in the form of Cinderella who kicks off her glass slippers to attack, and then equips those glass slippers to an opponent's monster (of course, they end up getting equipped to Black Magician Girl at one point and the camera focuses on it uncomfortably long), and bondage in the form of thorn princess and Curse of Thorns which both tie an opponent's monster up with vines. It seriously feels like they were trying to fit as many fetishes as they could into this deck. But that's just the tip of the iceberg with what's wrong with this arc. The main villain, Zigfried, is EXTREMELY boring. His motivations are so petty. He wanted revenge on Kaiba Corp because Kaiba got his duel system patented first. Every time Zigfried uses his valkyrie deck, the show unironically plays Flight of the Valkyrie for like a whole minute and a lot of monster attacks are just monsters walking up to the opponhent painfully slowly. The duels are extremely boring and repetitive as well. Many characters duel multiple times and they always start with the exact same moves. Thankfully, the season picks up after Yugi and co finally return to Japan where they can enter Yugi's memory world. It was really fascinating to see the origins of duel monsters and how the Millenium items were used to capture the monsters (referred to as Ka), which can be summoned from their stone slab using a character's life force (referred to as Ba). Remember how I said Season 1 reminded me almost of Pokemon or Digimon? Well that goes doubly so for this arc. Monsters are actual characters here and it was really interesting to see the origins of the Black Magician and Blue-Eyes White Dragon. I absolutely loved the characters of Mana and Kisara and the bond between Yami Yugi and Mahado was really sweet. I used to think of Blue-Eyes as cool just because it was a really powerful monster, but after watching this season and witnessing the bond between Seto and Kisara, I saw Blue-Eyes in a whole new light and fell in love with the monster all over again. 

All in all, I found DM to be really over-the-top at times and really slow and boring at others, but all-in-all, I had a lot of fun watching it. The same, however, really can't be said for GX. I'm gonna try to keep my summary of GX a lot more brief, but I was really excited to watch the Japanese version of GX. I had seen a good portion of the series, but I didn't remember much from my childhood, so I went in mostly blind. I had heard almost nothing but good things about the Japanese version, so I couldn't wait to dig into it! However, it quickly began to feel like there wasn't a single likable character in the series. Honestly, it seemed as though the writers intentionally made the series so that every single character was as unlikable as they could. I'm not gonna go over every character because, again, I'm trying to keep things brief for this one, but I think the worst offender is the protagonist, Judai Yuki (Jaden Yuki).

Judai is everything I hated about Jonouchi, with absolutely nothing that I loved about him. He's reckless, carefree, and gets everything that he wants/needs regardless of whether or not he actually deserves it. He never faces consequences for his actions until one point about halfway through Season 3 and when it finally happens, he just can't handle it and constantly asks where he went wrong. Gee, I don't know, perhaps it had to do with him blatantly ignoring literally ALL of his friends who told him NOT to run headfirst into Bron's castle and challenge him to a duel? A lot of people said his character got a lot better in Season 4, but if anything, I thought he just became even less likable. He seemed like a total jerk at this point. 

There are a few likable characters, though, I really liked Manjoume (Chazz). I just really wish the series treated him better. I don't understand how Season 4 randomly decided that he wasn't good enough to get a sponsorship for pro dueling. Did they just forget that he single-handedly wiped out the entire student base of North Academy with a deck of 40 cards he found randomly scattered around the wilderness? They tried to devolve him into a grovelling dog and made Edo Phoenix (Aster) out to be a total asshat in the process. I also really liked Hell Kaizer (Zane)'s character arc, but I really hated how they ruined his dramatic death scene in Season 3 by just kind of offhandedly saying "Oh yeah, by the way he didn't die of a heart attack, he's just in a wheelchair now. Oh, also, it wasn't the death-defying undergorund duels where he was constantly electrocuting himself that caused his heart problems. It was the deck that he wasn't even using." I also didn't like how his character arc was more or less resolved offscreen with absolutely no explanation. I suppose it's supposed to be implied that Syou (Cyrus) got through to him in their dis duel, but I really think they should have focused on that more.

Bonus, here are a few screencaps that had me giggling like a middle schooler:

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Anyway, with all of that out of the way, I'm going to try and make daily or weekly posts to this thread to keep track of everything I watch from now until the end of the year, and probably onward. I just thought it would be fun to document something like this and share my opinions with other people, maybe discuss the series as others join in. ^^ Today, I just finished GX, so tomorrow, I'll be starting with Yugioh 5D's which I'm excited for already!

[lVergill]

Try watching Yu-Gi-Oh Zero, it doesn't have the same game system with using cards game and summoning monster but rather using the Shadow Game Ritual for punishing the evil. It is a dark theme for the Yu-GI-Oh series to take and I wish they went that road. 

[Aura]

@lVergill I would be watching that, but I've seen the entire series from beginning to end relatively recently. I loved it and I know the manga is much more gruesome than the anime, so I might go back and read that some time... maybe manga'll be my next resolution~ But yeah, I agree that I wish the series continued in that direction, and like I commented in the OP, season 1 really feels like it was originally planned as a continuation rather than a reboot. I LOVED Yami in Season 0. He was far more interesting of a protagonist due to his moral ambiguity, which is even more apparent from what little of the manga I've read. I feel like DM really missed the mark on his character, but there were bits like Season 4 that still captured a similar take on his character which I really liked, I just don't like how they made him out to be unquestionably the good guy.

Anyway, yesterday I watched the first five episodes of 5D's and already I am far more invested in it than I was GX. Within the first five episodes, we've been introduced to Yusei, seen a lot of world building, introduced to a very unique and interesting setting coupled with fantastic world-building with a much more unique approach to a main cast who I'm excited to learn more about. The Turbo duels are far more exciting and action-packed and come with their own unique rules to top it off. Already, Yusei is a much more interesting protagonist than Judai could ever hope to be because of one significant difference: Much like Yugi and Yami, he has a major character flaw that is addressed by the show. Judai was made out to be this perfect boy who could do no wrong and always had all the answers. (The answer was always 'dueling,' apparently.) Not only does Yusei seem to be more of a rogue, hiding from the police, and in dueling, he plays too aggressively. This was demonstrated in his duel against Jack where he attacks directly despite acknowledging Jacks' face-down card. I loved this moment as it really gets into the mind games of the actual TCG and makes me excited to see how the future duels will go. Yusei is a good duelist, but for once, he's not a perfect duelist like every other protagonist. 

But aside from Yusei, I also love the fact that there hasn't been any real filler yet. GX was filled to the brim with pacing-interrupting filler. Almost every other episode (even as far back as the first few) was a filler episode completely unrelated to the story or the plot about some duelist NPC of the day that Judai had to fight. Occasionally (but very rarely) these filler episodes would serve the purpose of giving a side character a chance to duel, but that was about it. Honestly, if you ask me, I would say that if you have to make filler just to keep a character relevant, you should probably just write them out of the story period. Anyway, the closest thing 5D's has had to filler so far was the episode where this insect duelist challenged from Domino challenged Yusei to a duel for his Duel Runner. If this were GX, I would probably be criticizing the fact that it always has to be Yusei, but in this case, he seems to be the only duelist in the group. I might retroactively criticize this later if it turns out any of his friends in Satellite actually are duelists, but so far none of them even seem to have a duel disk except for Yusei. They seem to be really poor to the point where the girl has to resort to stealing in order to get a part for Yusei's duel runner, so maybe they just can't afford duel disks.  Anyway, while this duel might seem like filler to many, I wouldn't classify it as such as it served the purpose of being the first standard duel in the series. Meaning it served as a demonstration of what standard duels are like for any new viewers, and it also helped to establish that Yusei can detatch his duel disk from his Duel Runner, which will more than likely come up later. It also demonstrated the fact that turbo duelists, or at least Yusei, have two different decks; one for turbo duels and one for standard duels, both of which Yusei seems to keep on his person at all times.

The last episode I watched ended with Yusei defeating Jack in a duel to win his Stardust Dragon back. After Yusei took control of Stardust Dragon, pitting it against Red Demon Dragon, a massive fiery dragon appeared, which is clearly going to be the main focus of this story along with the strange markings on Yusei and Jack's arms. Anyway, by the end of the duel, security was called and Yusei seems to have been arrested. I can't wait to see what's coming up next!

[Aura]

So, the next set of episodes starts with a really interesting idea. After being captured by the police, Yusei is branded with a mark that I didn't really notice was missing until just now. They brought up a mark on the insect duelist's face as well. Apparently, it is a mark placed on a criminal's face that removes their rights within the Neo Domino City. Once again, Yusei is facing actual consequences for his actions unlike Judai who by this point would have done something against the rules that is grounds for explusion, but instead of being expelled, he's given the opportunity to duel his way out of it (because of course he is.) If you can't tell, I'm going to be doing a lot of comparing between GX and 5D's x3

We also get a look into the antagonists' plot here. I forgot to mention Godwin in the last post, but he along with a couple of subordinates were introduced. Their goal seems to be to resurrect the Crimson Dragon. I can only assume this Crimson Dragon is something on par with the Egyptian Gods or Mythical Demons and by extension, probably has an incredibly underwhelming real-world TCG counterpart. After being arrested, Yusei had his duel runner and his deck confiscated before being sent to a re-education facility. On the road, he met this old man who is later revealed to have smuggled his entire OOPart deck into the facility. Yusei dueled Himuro after the old man lost to him. Somewhere along the line, Jack Atlas learned about that he and Yusei are both signers who weild signature dragons. The security at the facility searched Yusei after Jack informed Godwin that he saw Yusei with the mark. Later, Yusei, Himuro, and the old man were taken to a higher security facility run by the warden Takasu, a man with a really disgusting habit of plucking his nose hairs and blowing them.

Yusei happens to be placed in a cell with a cellmate who had an escape plan ready, but that day, Himuro was found to have been smuggling a knife. As a result, Takasu punished the entire facility by removing their free time. Yusei objected to this and accepted a challenge from the warden on the conditions that if he wins, the warden would forget Himuro's crime, and if he loses, his own sentence becomes a life sentence. However, upon accepting this duel, Takasu confiscates both Himuro and the old man's decks, leaving Yusei without a deck with the plan that, without a deck, Yusei would lose by default. However, all of the inmates group together and give Yusei cards that were smuggled in. With these cards, Yusei was able to build a deck of 40 cards for his duel. This was interesting, as the cards were mostly random, with little to no strategy put together.

When it came time to duel, Yusei and the warden were given duel disks that were chained to the floor and were set to electrocute the users every time their life points depleted. Honestly, at this point, this really isn't anything too shocking (no pun intended) considering it's a concept that's been used since season 2 of DM. When the warden takes damage, however, it's revealed that his duel disk seemed to be "out of order," and wouldn't electrocute him. Furthermore, the warden was also cheating by using his security cameras to spy on the cards in Yusei's hands. However, after a while toward the end of the duel, around when Yusei's cellmate would have attempted his escape, there was a power outage, after which the warden's disk was reactivated, electrocuting him as promised. Also during the power outage, Yusei swapped the position of the face-down cards so that the warden would target the wrong one when trying to destroy one of the cards. I loved this idea because, while it is technically cheating, there was no way the warden could call him out on it without revealing that he was cheating, himself. This was another situation that reminded me a lot of season 0. Anyway, upon winning the duel with his final draw, a card that inflicts 3000 points of damage if there are 30 or more cards in the graveyard, Takasu refuses to hold up his end of the bargain. However, Godwin appears and reveals that he had been watching the whole duel. He releases Yusei and his newfound friends and relieves Takasu of his duty. 

The episode ends implying that Yusei would be dueling Ushio once again. He's dueled this same police officer twice now. I forgot to mention him in the previous summary as well, but this is clearly the same guy as the hall monitor from Season 0. Anyway, it's clear that he's going to be a recurring character, but I'm starting to get worried that we're going to be dueling against this same officer a bit too much. I can only assume that either his deck is going to be changed up in some way, or his rematch with Yusei will be interrupted in the next episode, but we'll have to wait and see. I'm interested in meeting the rest of the Signers, as well! 

[Aura]

I didn't get the chance to watch any yesterday, but I did watch some more today. I'm gonna make an effort to keep these posts a lot more brief and to do so, I'm probably gonna cut out the plot summary since you've probably either seen the anime, have no interest, or can just look up the plot summaries of each episode. In this case, episodes 11-15.

Over the course of these episodes, I've been introduced to Luca and Lua, although what's bothering me about these two is that their names are romanized as "Ruka and Rua" in this particular sub, but their names are clearly printed on-paper in romanized letters as "Luca and Lua." I know that L, and R, sounds share the same Kanji in Japanese, and the translators probably hadn't seen that part of the anime where their names are written out yet, but I still hope this will be changed. It's just a minor issue, but it's going to be bothering me >.<

Anyway, I'm already loving these two characters! Luca seems to be a younger, more juvenile version of Judai. I find this type of character much more likable as a support role rather than the protagonist. His sister, Lua, also plays off of him really well with her more serious personality. It's pretty clear that things are going to get interesting between these two characters as Luca seems to be a bigger fan of dueling, but Lua is evidently a signer. 

I've also been introduced to the Black Rose Witch, another signer. I don't know much about her yet. 

I will say that I have played Yugioh 5D's Reverse of Arcadia, so I do know the story of the second(?) season. By extension, I already have some of the big reveals and plot twists of season 1 and 2 "spoiled." However, I don't remember many specifics, so a lot of things will still probably be new. However, I do know the identity of the Black Rose Witch among other details. However, I do expect there to be a lot of surprises regardless since there was plenty of surprise across DM and GX despite my knowing most of the stories from those series as well. By the time I reach season 3 of 5D's, I'll be going in mostly blind. I know nothing about Zexal, I have seen some of Arc V, and I've seen nothing on Vrains (although from what I've heard, Vrains is sounding pretty disappointing and filler-heavy, even worse so than GX. Hopefully that works itself out soon!) 

[Aura]

Well, I never got around to updating yesterday, but I did watch the episodes! I'm finding the relationship between Lua and Luca so much more interesting! It's a bit ironic that in my last update, I mentioned how Lua reminded me of Judai and now it's been revealed that Luca has a connection to the spirit world, implying a potential connection to GX. I don't really remember much of what happened since I was really tired when I watched, but I do recall her dueling against this really creepy therapist guy whose goal was to test Luca's power and see if she was really a signer, since Lua dueled in her place during the main tournament. 

I also remember being fairly confused as, when Yusei dueled, suddenly he was having a turbo duel? Maybe I missed something, but it seems strange that all of the duels up to this point had been standard duels, and then out of nowhere there are suddenly turbo duels involved. I get that the tournament is called the Fortune Cup, so it would make sense for it to be a turbo duel tournament, but characters like Ruca who don't have a D-wheel and couldn't drive even if they did. Maybe it's an oversight, maybe I just wasn't paying attention to when it was explained. It just really stood out to me.

As for the episodes I've watched today, this series' darker nature is really starting to show itself if it hadn't already. Bomber, the duelist who defeated Lua and was facing Yusei in the second round, revealed that Godwin used his home village as a guinea pig to try and summon the Crimson Dragon which somehow destroyed the entire village and killed everyone in it, including his little siblings. There was a legitimately surprising twist where he activated a trap that seemed to sprout spikes from his D-wheel, but after the duel, Rua noticed that the spikes were still there even after the cards faded away, meaning that they had been real spikes the whole time. He then ran the D-Wheel directly toward the Window Godwin had been standing in as an attempt to murder him, but was stopped by Yusei who crashed into his D-Wheel and broke off the spikes. He was unable to stop the spikes from continuing on and crashing through the window where Godwin caught it. The spike rapidly spun in his hand and burned away at his glove, revealing that he had a prosthetic arm. This was a LOT of information to take in from just one episode, and it seemed to have come out of nowhere! 

Beyond that, I'm loving Aki's character so far, but I'm really worried they might play the victim card with her too much. I really want her to be a likable character in the end, I love her design and her backstory, but I don't want her to suddenly switch from being overly dependent on Divine to being overly dependent on Yusei. After GX completely butchered any expectations I had for Asuka by giving her only a handful of duels, most of which were filler, and making her a damsel in distress most of the time. I don't want them to repeat the same mistakes with Aki, I really want to see her become a really powerful character. This franchise has really yet to capture a strong female properly yet in my opinion. Asuka was the closest they got, but she seemed more like the typical tsundere trope than a strong standalone character. Not that I'm gonna sit here and make a whole feminist point about it, it's just something I'd like to see. Anyway, the duel between Yusei and Aki ended on a really sweet note of Yusei demanding that she vent all her sorrows and frustrations through the duel and hold nothing back. When she tried to activate Black Rose Dragon's effect, he activated the effect of Stardust to stop it with a touching embrace. 

Tones shifted, though, when it came time for Yusei to duel with Jack and, oh boy, did their relationship take a turn for the worst. It's really shocking to see to just what extent Jack went in order to take Yusei's Stardust Dragon and leave Satellite, and all according to the plan of Godwin himself. I really can't imagine anything Jack doing to redeem his character from something so drastic, but at the same time, I thought the same thing about Kaiba, who Jack reminds me of immensely, even right down to his design. It seems that the plot of the season is starting to take action. It's not gonna be long before something big happens. Although, we've only been introduced to four of the five signers so far, so time will tell who that fifth one is, but I think I already know who that character is, and if I recall correctly, he was my favorite character from Reverse of Arcadia.

Also, this scene solidified the fact that Yusei is easily my favorite protagonist so far:

[Aura]

Welp, apparently, last post, I was at the end of season 1 and had no idea o.o It really took me by surprise considering there wasn't a single episode of filler. I'm willing to bet that there'll probably be a filler arc or two somewhere down the line like DM. Anyway, that first season was a great introduction to the series! Apparently, my prediction for the fifth signer was waaay off. I guess it was Godwin that was considered the fifth signer? From what I could tell, he had his arm with the birthmark removed and kept it stored nearby in order to summon the Crimson Dragon, which was why he had a prosthetic arm. I suppose that was technically left unconfirmed by the end of the episode, so maybe they were intentionally vague about it for a reason?

Anyway, season II began and introduced the dark signers and their dark synchro monsters with negative levels and high-level dark tuners. It's a really interesting concept that I'm honestly surprised they didn't experiment with in the actual OCG/TCG. Even if the cards wouldn't see any competitive play, it really seems like a concept made specifically to sell new cards to anime fans and the dark synchro monsters look really cool. I heard that they inspired the XYZ monsters from Zexal. I can kinda see that, but I'm not too sure how much truth there is to that. Anyway, it would be really cool to see some interesting play using these negative levels, like maybe combining them with cards that decrease a monster's attack by a number times their level. With negative levels, that would switch it into an increase of ATK. 

Anyway, the dark signers seem to be a sort of hybrid of the Society of Light from GX's season 2 and the Ghouls from DM's season 2. I'm starting to notice a trend of creepy cults sprouting up in the second season. However, in this case, it seems like a particularly interesting story as the dark signers seem to be spreading lies within Satellite to convince its people that the Crimson Dragon is a wicked god sent by Domino to destroy Satellite in order to stir up the political hatred between the two cities. The first of these dark signers seems to use small spiders to take control of people, reminding me a bit of Malik and his Millenium Rod. I don't know how much this is going to come into play, but mind control has been used pretty extensively in the past, so I hope they don't focus too much on this idea. 

As for the new characters introduced, I've gotten to meet Carly and Crow. Crow is the character I was referring to in my last post, from what I can recall, he was my favorite character in Reverse of Arcadia, and so far, he hasn't disappointed. Reverse of Arcadia had a bit of a limited PoV, so I don't know the full story of season 2, there will still be some surprises surrounding Carly. In particular, I'm interested in her relationship with Jack and how the two will develop together.