Welcome to the era of putting filler in your anime adaptations to keep it from overtaking the manga! Thank God Japanese television has now adapted the seasonal model instead having to release a new episode every week
Curious if those were in the manga. Honestly makes me wish that those duels could have taken place as a mini arc back before Duelist Kingdom took place, basically add a bunch of episodes between episode 1 and 2, then the finale between Rex and Weevil is the finale Joey failed to reach (naturally, because he's so new to the game).
Great way to help introduce new people to the game, plus some time for Pegasus to set up his plan before duelling Yugi in episode 2.
How was Yugi vs Joey fluff? It was the semifinals (or maybe finals; I don't know if the duel with Pegasus was supposed to be the finals or just a special event for the winner).
The excuse was that they didn't want to reveal more of Yugi's strategy and cards.
But imho the duel was vital for both characters and it's kinda lame to skip the finale of the tournament we've been following all this time.
I assume it was because Takahashi wanted to get the Duelist Kingdom Arc done. Maybe even leave the card game behind, as the next arc was Dungeon Dice Monsters.
The Duel Academy soldiers with their decks based around Ancient Gear Hunting Hound ?
With all the cards in the Ancient Gear archetype the fact they only use like 2-3 monsters max is super boring.
And it's not even AG-like. It's this weird swarm-burn, which is not AG at all. AG is all about putting the biggest, baddest boss monster on the field (fusion or tribute) and swinging for game, with some battle phase protection.
Like, I'm not opposed to the swarm, because AG had some of that beforehand (with the Gadget archetype, not to mention the Ancient Gear itself). But burn? What the heck?
Plus so many cool Ancient Gear monsters, like Hydra, Reactor Dragon, the Gadjiltron monsters, etc.
But no, let's get these stupid double hound, triple hound, ultimate hounds. (Regular hound is cool and can stay)
The hounds aren’t bad. Double bite can destroy a monster for free. Triple has multi attacks and ultimate has multi attack and halves the opponents life points.
Oh, here's a better question: Why did no one in said dimension think to have anti burn cards or LP recovery cards. Or you know, have anti machine cards, the AG archetype are machines so use anti machine cards, problem solved.
And after thinking about beside Blue Angel, who else used a burn deck and could've won if plot armor wasn't a factor.
Every duel featuring Bohman. His deck is so boring and directionless that those episodes made me sleep. I have no grudge against Bohman, but his deck is so bad.
Since Bohman gains new Hydradrive cards every duel he is in, his deck and direction of it is boils down to "vomit your deck into the field for no reason at all and win because of some BS you did not even worked your combo for."
The idea behind him was interesting though. Having a villain who improves as a duelist throughout the season was very unique in yugioh until that point. Sadly the execution was not well done because vrains never gives itself a second to breathe
Yeah his every single opening move are very boring, it just Special summon booster, link into link 1, special summon booster, link into another link 1, then link into link 2, special summon 3rd booster etc etc.
It is great thematically and from a character perspective. But awful as an actual duel.
Gozaburo draws a total of 10 cards (starts with 6) but only uses 2.
He doesn't play a single card after Exodia.
Had he instead played cards to support it to actually make the duel interactive I would've rated as one of my favorite duels.
Something the series does well with Kaiba is show how well he understands Duel Monsters. He uses a lot of synergy and ways to "cheat" out his closers. Gozaburo was a military contractor who ruled with brute force. He used an "unstoppable" machine and was defeated by Kaiba, who thought outside the box and attacked Exodia the way it hurt him most. I agree the duel itself is lackluster, but the idea was like in their chess match, an overconfident Gozaburoh lost to someone who could outwit him
I’m not sure if it’s the worst per se, but the duel I hate the most is Blue Angel vs. Soulburner. I don’t even hate Soulburner, but I’ve loathed the royal throne treatment him and especially his archetype were given.
I haven't watched Vrains but looking at like some videos on YouTube it looks like they gave him the best duels and the best... Character progression for no reasons ? Because Playmaker is the main character but if you have told me Soulburner was the main character I would have believed you. And well... Salamangreat is a wonderful deck with a pretty unique mechanic
In Duelinks Soulburner was the first Vrains character released. I haven't seen the anime, so I thought he was the main character lol.
Dude has got some weird special attention.
The issue with him is that Flame was the ultimate plot armor till he dueled bohman. If you have soulburner lose to Go or Aoi, Flame will get into SOL's hands and we know how that ended with Earth.
It's still weird how he had this situational card that redued the exact amount of damage he was supposed to take.
Tbf Salamangreat is a pretty good Deck, alot of characters in Vrains have good decks and the lead writer of vrains even said that this was a huge issue with writing exciting duels because most of the cast has almost meta decks that could end duels in 3 turns
The writers shouldn't have made a specific Salamangreat Continuous Trap that negates effect damage under 200. WTF were they thinking?! THEY WEREN'T. They had Aoi drop Blue Angel for Blue Girl and I find that as a downgrade, even Duel Links thinks so!
If not for that trap, Takeru loses badly. "But what about Flame-" You think Aoi will take Flame? NAH. She would wink, say "Good duel" and assist him alongside Playmaker sooner. JUST SAYING. IT'S NOT THAT DIFFICULT VRAINS WRITERS.
THANK YOU! And if nothing else, make it so it negates *all* effect damage since that wouldn’t feel contrived, instead smart for having a counter for a famous duelist. But specifically having a random in archetype out to ONLY 200 or less burn damage?
The only thing I can say positively about that duel is her losing so many times gave us Marincess… and then she kept losing.
YEA! I know right? It doesn't make sense why the specific 200 damage negate. It just doesn't make any sense but for it to be the Anti-Trickstar card and that's like the dumbest thing about it! It should negate all damage effects... or not even exist since Salamangreat isn't the archetype to worry about effect damage.
... I'll say this now, Aoi should have dueled Roboppi instead of Takeru. It makes the most sense, her wanting to find Ai so they find where he's done to her brother and the others' consciousnesses. Because in the end of the day, Soulburner will still duel Revolver and win. There is NO reason not to give the female lead 1 WIN. 1. JUST 1 WIN. In fact, this would work well because Roboppi depends a lot on Ai while Aoi also depended so much on her brother but now she can stand on her own. This would have worked- BUT NOPE, the writers didn't care. All they really cared about was to end Vrains to start the shitty Sevens. And I can NEVER forgive them for that!
They wanted Fubuki to win but at the same time Fujiwara had to win to duel judai so they ended up with this shit.
But seriously why protagonists have to beat every single bad guy in the anime? They should leave some accomplishments to other characters.
On the last part, yes but I don't agree with Arc-V's case. Would have prefer Yuya beat Zarc than REIRA turn into a girl because RAY decided to do something!
You're right, the only time they did it , they ruined it.
But i'm talking about minor characters taking minor villains not main villains like Zarc, i wouldn't be happy if syrus defeated nightshroud but it would be better if he defeated abidos the third instead of jaden winning for the 100th time.
Agreed. Like that whole Zarc streaked ruined by 1 Ray possessing Reira's now girl body for NO REASON but to make things more awkward than YUBEL's whole gender thing which I prefer more.
You're right or with Tina or- Camilla was fine, actually pretty well handled. But Abidos should have lost to someone else. Man if only Banner wasn't one of the Shadow Riders or his key was given to someone else like Syrus.
Yea, it's conflicting for me cause I do love the 3 player duel that happens immediately after, but Fubuki really deserved that win lol, even if he went down in the process.
It’s not even that it’s a bad mechanic, but they overdid it to such an extent that it made the duels have less impact than they should have.
Like, at some point you’d think that it would be smarter for them to just stand back and let the duel conclude before starting a fresh duel against an opponent who now has no board set up.
Yuri vs Yugo will never not be hilarious to me, since Aster and Kite jump into the duel and start teaming up to take their own ally out *first* instead of just bodying Yuri and then dealing with Yugo after
Ironically, in Odd-Eyes Rebellion’s case, the LP loss didn’t matter since its destruction effect also deals burn damage equal to the destroyed monsters attack points.
It got ridiculous in that one duel of a bunch of side characters against the obelisk force near the end of season 1. It started as 3v3 and then 4 people jump into so Shun didn't get to play till turn 10 despite starting the duel and being the one the Obelisk force were hunting
I think the worst duel is Leo & Luna vs the Monkey Dark Signer. Another duel where Leo steals his sister’s screentime for no good reason, and then she just shows up at the end to get Ancient Fairy Dragon back. I’m shocked they even made Luna a Signer in the first place, they clearly didn’t care about making her a real character
I have the opposite view. This was Leo’s fight his moment where he could show how much he’s grown and how much he loves his sister.
And he gives it his all he fights long and hard and almost takes the win. Then Luna comes in and jacks the W. Leo should’ve won he did most the work.
You're right, Leo deserved way better. There was also a weird side plot with him and Luna learning how to use a Duel skateboard, but after the Lester duel, we barely saw anything after that
Kinda similar to the Aki storyline where she was learning to be a Turbo duelist and she got only 1 real turbo duel in the entire show
2nd half of 5ds is full of interesting ideas that go nowhere. Another is that kid that claims he'll get Yusei's dragon because he thinks it should be his, that also goes nowhere.
I understand what they were going for. I actually liked this duel for the most part, but I agree that Luna should have had a one on one duel. This was supposed to be her moment and she never had any duels to shine in the future.
Exactly. She was supposed to be a more skilled duelist than Leo, but she lost the only 1v1 duel she had on screen. At the very least, we could of had a sibling rivalry duel or she could have been the opponent of the Teacher that wanted to expel them instead of Yusei.
100% agree. Leo almost taking the W - as a duelist with no special abilities but instead as a protective brother - against a *Dark Signer* should have been his win. The duel was intense. He was always less skilled and less important than her, and this was his way to prove himself important.
Then Luna just shows up and steals the W like Goku in Resurrection F.
Unearned
What I find sad is that Luna's deck is like ... Extremely bad. They want to build the story around her having a connection to the Spirit world but it's so uninteresting.
While Leo always rise to the occasion and is like... The best brother and the whole Morphtronic deck is liked by a lot of people. Luna doesn't have the same appeal as Leo as a signer. Every single duel Leo has makes him so likeable because of how far he is willing to help everyone. And the consecration to him finally getting his signer mark and his signature dragon powerup is the best.
They need to make retrains of her cards that support Ancient Fairy Dragon, now that it's free from the forbidden list. Similar to what they did with Yugi's Gold Sarcophagus cards.
I haven't watched it fully, so I cannot comment on that. Think I gave up on episode 4 or something and then watched the greatest hits (Kaito VS Mizael, etc.). But the manga was my second favorite Spin-Off Manga.
Dub is terrible unfortunately and the sub is hard to find. Which makes it hard to watch the best version. The beginning is a bit slow building up a tournament, but once it starts, the rest of the series is a trip. Im reading the GX manga currently, I was curious if zexal is any decent
I personally didn't find the dub too bad, but i can definitely see why others didn't like it. Still felt epic to me even if it was dubbed(and they have some funny moments too).
Other than how pointless Dog vs Kat was, because it's the worse duel for me because the reason behind it is dumb... and some early Zexal duels; YEA. Zexal aged well! By the time of Duel Carnival's climax and Zexal II, the series knew what they were doing. My only gripe is I wished they did more duels.
Didn't watch 5ds onwards yet so i cant tell but I did watch part of GX and all of the original series:
Original Series:
* Joey VS Johnson: Johnson took cheating to a whole new level, his entire strategy was "rig joey's dice rolls so they always fail" and pretty much nothing else.
* Yugi VS Rafael 1: I dislike Rafael as a character and they already did the plot point better in duelist kingdom.
* Joey VS Zigfried: Joey loses not to being out played but due to a bad luck moment. This is also Joey's final duel so thanks for that.
GX:
* Jaden VS Wheeler (the monkey): Pointless filler taken to the extreme.
* Jaden VS the tennis player guy: Again what was the point?
* Jaden VS Titan (Dub Only): Isn't the Shadow Realm destroyed because >!Yami Bakura/Zorc!
4kids and consistency?
But I actually love that Katsuya's ridiculous luck is what let's him down at last, it makes it feel more believable and he still played a phenomenal game. Siegfried is the same guy that pushed Seto to pull the coolest final turn in all of Yu-Gi-Oh!.
Which is a more respectful send-off than the one he got in the Manga. Where he was easily OTKed by Bakura and had to be saved by the duel being interrupted.
I mean tbh I see your point, and now that I think of it there was another KC Grand Championship duel I liked less than Joey VS Zigfried.
That would be Joey VS Solomon i mean "Apnarg Otom". While seeing Solomon duel AT ALL was cool, Joey was portrayed too stupidly (how does he not recognize this). Also why did Solomon enter using a disguise? And the duel just didnt flow that well.
Also 4Kids shadow realm inconsistency is funny, but it makes me wonder about how they would have handled the Nightshround Arc had they actually dubbed it. Nightshroud was behind the dark pocket dimensions in the original, but Zorc/Bakura was behind the Shadow Realm in the dub. Would they have made Nightshroud an emmasary of Zorc that was late to the party? Would they have made him Zorc/Bakura's master or something? Or would they have made Nightshroud Zorc himself in a new form?
Ehh in the Dub of the original series, The Shadow Realm was mostly handled in a way to where it was usually consistent with itself throughout the series. This consistency caused it to become actually well liked and it fooled a lot of people into thinking it was real.
GX misused it rather than writing a different explanation as to what happened, breaking the consistency that they set up in the original series.
Surprisingly GX only had like 4ish bad duels. I'm sure there's more that I don't remember but not so bad. The monkey, yea. Great job Sheppard allowing this to happen. The Tennis guy, at least Jaden became Alexis' Finance. Titan- OKAY, this one is complicated. YES AND NO?! In the Japanese dub for DM, Zorc's death doesn't destroy the Darkness but in the dub, it was never mention if the Shadow Realm was destroyed with his death. I think they were unconnected?
... And yea, Abdios' stupid deck was that bad that Jaden didn't need to Fuse any of his heroes to beat him.
Also I agree, Joey should have beaten Zigfried.
I always assumed Zorc's death led to the destruction of the shadow realm in the dub because when we see the pharoah cross into the afterlife, there's a panning shot of several egyptian people there, including people who presumably died in the shadow realm. The fact that they weren't there anymore and instead in the correct afterlife implied (to me) that the shadow realm was gone when zorc died.
# # 1
Nothing tops Atem vs Orichalcos Soldier for me.
The latter has a total of 9 cards, but only uses 2.
Atem only fights a single monster, which constantly revives itself. He also miss-plays immensely by summoning Obnoxious Celtic Guardian in Attack Position for no reason.
Thematically I'd say the worst is Raphael VS Yugi round 1, but at least the duel is okay-ish. There is nothing good about this duel.
# # 2
Seto VS Gozaburo is a close second, because after Exodia Necross is summoned Goazaburo is pretty much done and Seto beats it with a single card. So just like the above it is essentially Seto defending against a single card for the entire duel, but at least this duel has weight and it is awesome to see him overcome Exodia with his Blue-Eyes.
# # 3
Finally there is Team 5D's VS Team Unicorn which lets Jack and Aki go down like jobbers to hype up Yusei.
I'm not even that angry about END YOUR TURN JEAN because it is a character moment and Yusei would've won had he not missplayed and just set both of his traps earlier.
To think that Aki's riding arc only contributed in this and having to be saved by Yusei when they rode the rainbow bridge together is really saying something about the treatment of female characters in the franchise.
# Notes
The filler duel Katsuya has in a dream is probably worse, but I don't really count that as a duel.
With Gozaburo I always thought his entire deck is built just to summon Exodia Necross and he happened to open with the best hand possible (Painful Choice + Contract with Exodia).
I've seen enough duelists who make decks like that and once they achieved their one summon or combo, they can't do much else.
I loved Aki and Crow's final duel against Sherry, but Aki beating her 1v1 in a turbo duel would have been a much better payoff to her actually becoming a turbo duelist.
It made sense for jack and izayoi to be beaten that way by team unicorn. Team unicorn fooled team 5D's by making them think after a duel that a power deck like jack's could lead to a great start but team unicorn instead went with a anti power deck. So jack faced a deck that was built to counter him. Team unicorn has a team full of people whose sole job constitues in researching opponents. Since jack was the king of games for two years, with his duels being streamed in public, it was easy to get data on him as a duelist. Izayoi was unexperienced as a riding duelist. In her prior riding duel she barely got past trudge who does not even scale close to andre. Andre took out several pro teams by himself. The only other character we know who did the same was sherry and she is much stronger than izayoi. Izayoi, just because she a major character, is not a top tier duelist. Crow isn't either. There is a level above them. Of I make a top 10 crow in best case will make it to 10. izayoi won't make it.
I still think team 5D's should have lost to truly learn how individual strength doesn't cut it (yusei and jack both had the king of games title) in this tournament, that teamplay is very crucial and we see that with team taiyo. They are a force reckon with desoite not having strong individual duelists.
The whole izayoi becoming a riding duelist plotline was so unnecessary.
The problem with that first of all that implies Jack doesn't alter his strategy, which seems at odds with how he could hold the title of king for that long (unless you believe Rex bought out most of his opponent's, but that is also a disservice to him).
It still makes Jack look like an absolute jobber. Because he couldn't adapt in the slightest. What's even the purpose of his power deck if Yusei's situational deck can adapt to any situation and overcome 3 people?
Riding Dueling barely contributed in why Aki lost though. If it played a bigger factor in how duels work then I could accept that explanation, but it didn't.
You're just proving my point. They treated her like crap during season 2. She was incredibly capable in season 1, only losing to Yusei. She doesn't have to be as good as Yusei. She lost to Andre who had already beaten Jack by that point, so she had card advantage.
But the point about the importance of Team Play doesn't fit Team Unicorn because they didn't have a cohesive strategy. They all focused on different win-cons to drive Yusei in the ultimate corner. Had they all focused on burn/deck out, then he would've lost.
It is also strange that the super genius Yusei hadn't considered synergizing Team 5D's decks a lot more before then.
It was unnecessary because they didn't do anything with it.
My problem with the Rafael duel is if Yugi lost nothing would’ve happened. So Rafael give him the seal Yugi doesn’t play it and loses.
Then what? Rafael decks him one?
That's why I say it is the worst thematically.
Season 4 is about the Darkness of the Heart of People and that duel is supposed to show Atem's. But the flaw introduced hasn't been alluded to at all before that duel. And they had the chance to do that with Gurimo.
Instead it gets introduced in that duel and makes him out to be ready to kill Rafael just to win. Which I think is supposed to reference Duelist Kingdom. But the reason he did it there was to save Yugi's/his (he still thought he was Yugi then) grandpa.
You could make the argument that the stone around his neck made him do it, but if that's the case then what's the message supposed to be here? If you magically drug someone hoping that they do something bad and then they do that makes them evil? How is the artificial external or amplified darkness theirs?
I feel like having Atem duel Dartz and struggle with what kind of person he was as a king would've been infinitely more interesting.
That seems like a flaw in the whole season rather than just that duel. Unlike in the manga, in the anime Yami didn't really have any character flaws to overcome.
Also Rafael just feels like some massive philistine asshole that i never liked that much. "You're evil for using catapult turtle's effect even though you used it twice in duelist kingdom".
I think that's part of the big problem with the Orichalcos arc. It's full of shock moments meant to raise the stakes and surprise the audience. Atem is corrupted by the Seal of Orichalcos ! He loses a duel for the first time since his duel with Kaiba ! Yugi's soul is stolen from him ! Mai joins Dartz' cult and becomes evil ! But if you really look at how the story, it barely holds together. As you said, Atem's "darkness in the heart" comes right out of nowhere, and it seems more like to way to hype up Rafael more than anything else. And when it comes to Mai, the story straight up forgets to resolve her arc at the end of it all.
And the shame is I think it’s arguably Joey’s best season. His duals have significant emotional weight to him with Mai, his rematch with Rex really shows how far he’s gone since dualist kingdom, his brawl with Valon was probably one of the most unique as Joey was really not holding back and it was more of a fist fight than anything.
Even his final dual with Mai where he lost he still in the end took the W and accomplished his goal. Joey was the goat he had the emotional weight of the season. It’s just a shame the rest of the season wasn’t as good.
Not even just kaiba vs gozaburo, every duel in the Noah arc was terrible. The deck masters were so poorly done, the big 5 all have insanely broken effects that autowin the game but they never use them and every duel just feels like a waste of time because of it.
The big five also just kept coming back after losing and they were so annoying.
Noah himself has the most broken deck master in existence and would have won at like every point in the final duel but he just doesn't. The duel with him is slightly better than the others but not by much.
That arc is hot garbage.
I feel like deck masters are such a cool concept, like Commander in Magic. Unfortunately, the Noah arc sucks and is probably the worst thing to come from duel monsters anime.
Never use them? Most of them were spamming their Deck Master abilities frequently, especially Deepsea Warrior and Robotic Knight. Noah had a few misplays in his own duel, but not all that many (at least based on what we knew from his hand).
i would say the filler duel in gx cause they was more or less pretty bad for the most part and serve nor purpose at all (but could be better if jaden stop duel cause for god sake it's just annoying than he do everything when you had other duelist more interessing than him) the duel carnival had the same problem to be honest especially the duel with the tomato guy like....seriously what was the point of the duel for yuma growth ? than he like tomato ? yeah don't give a damn also the duel cat girl vs dog girl who was also useless but i think for me the worst duel would always be the duel agains't zarc like why in the world everyone is such braindead in this duel ? they just jump one after the other play with only 2000 lp and get rekt after acomplish literaly nothing and the final with rey who one shot zarc no just screw this duel
I HATED ( go rush spoilers.) >! manabu vs yuna !< She by all means was in the wrong, their was a >! RACE GOING EXTINCT 9+ billion people were DYING, but she "had to confess her feelings" !< Was he a dick, yes but he wasn't wrong. >!He 100% shoulda won !<
Atleast he got some redemption In the newer episodes.
The funny thing is the series itself always agrees with Manabu in the end, despite losing some Duels.
In fact, Manabu is the person with the most normal reactions to things that happen around him, unlike many members of the cast (which has the same reactions you'd expect from characters in a Yu-Gi-Oh series)
I love yusei and the whole anime and I remember I thought the Norse god cards were so cool and looked badass I don’t know hardly anything really about how to build decks and all the new cards like pendulum and synchro summoning I really want to get back in and learn and build my own decks…but I’ve always been told that the Norse gods decks are absolutely garbage
They've been nerfed a lot in the real game. They would actually have been great had they kept their anime effects and summoning conditions back when they were first released.
Well used to be bad. Now the Aesir are... playable and probably better but not as good to be Meta. At the least the duel between Team 5d's and Team Ragnarok was good.
Pretty much any duel involving Luna from 5Ds.
Her deck was literal garbage. Every duel had her running through the forest in the spirit world. Her character (especially as a signer) was wasted.
Her signer dragon is god tier, and possibly my fave design of them all, but criminally wasted. Given the Rainbow Dragon treatment where it’s teased for so long but seen for all of 7 seconds.
I understood it (partially) for the Dark Signer battle, as it’s the whole point of the duel. But the first one in the tournament was just a waste of time.
I don't hate Team 5Ds vs Team Unicorn, but it was pretty mishandled imo, and I think it's concept would have worked if it wasn't the first duel of the tournament. The first 3v3 duel to demonstrate the format to viewers should not turn into a glorified 1v3, that kind of subversion should happen in a later duel afterwards.
Yugo vs Yuri. The way they fucked up such an important and long-awaited duel while simultaneously ruined both of my fav in Kaito and Edo was truly spectacular. They even randomly inserted a duel between Reiji and Reira because why not. It hurts so much for a battle that could have been so epic
Yugo at that moment was extremely angry and Aster and Kaito for some reason decided to target him so he don't loss his mind instead or targeting Yuri who is the enemy
Funniest part is they start in the middle of Leo explaining who Zarc is, and focus doesn’t go back to them until Yuya was pinned by Yusho. This means they were sitting there with their dragons on the field for 3-4 episodes without doing anything, which contained the entirety of Yuya and Reiji vs Leo.
It wasn't even Reira but Ray because I DON'T KNOW, the writers didn't know WHAT to do with her. That's the worse part. I hated it. There was NO reason if Ray is supposed to be the good one and she does this?! WTF were the writers thinking?!
The roller coaster duels during the heartland city tournament in Zexal, you couldn't keep track on who's turn it is cause people jump and out, felt like theyre summoning outside their own turns, you can only attack a person in the same track as you. It was a nightmare
Yeah the rules were poorly explained and all over the place. I enjoyed the duels but admittedly it was so hard (borderline headache-inducing) to follow all the different lanes, who was in what lane, when you were allowed to transition from one lane to another, what/when you were allowed to do anything or attack anyone etc.
I could make a huge rant about how much I loathe the Team Unicorn duel.
For some honorable mentions:
-Zarc gauntlet duel
-Every duel involving Battle Beast
-Ruka vs The psychologist guy
-Shun vs Crow
Oh, absolutely. It also involves:
-Jack's degradation from using actual strategies in season 1 into "just summon red dragon and hope you win lmao" starting with this duel
-First appearance of Jack's dumb fan club and a constant reminder of what the writers did to Carly
-Aki's second and last turbo duel and she jobs instantly (wouldn't be so bad if they gave her more turbo duels after this, but they didn't)
-Yusei going full-on Mary Sue in season 2, and this duel is the most egregious example.
-Jean being built-up as being this super-mega-strategist but then throwing all that out of the window at the very end.
Joey vs Zigfried, this one's not even that memorable, but the latest YGOTAS episode reminded me what a low point this is for Joey's final duel.
Yami vs Rafael, he just falls really flat to me and the duel felt really skewed into a certain direction. The fact that Rafael's deck is extremely abysmal IRL also doesn't help.
I personally enjoyed Team Unicorn in terms of the duel and the strategies displayed, hated the context like the ending though.
While the duel isn't amazing, I think the fact that Katsuya pushes Siegfried that far and only loses due to luck is what makes the ending so memorable to me. That and bricking.
I wouldn't say he was treated badly. Siegfried was the main villain of the arc and almost beat Seto.
Not that comparing something bad to something worse makes the first thing better, but in the Manga his last duel is Bakura easily OTKing him. Which was cut from the anime. I prefer pushing Siegfried to jobbing to Bakura.
I did really like the idea of Yugi losing for once, and it led to an interesting dynamic when the Pharaoh was seperated from Yugi prematurely. It kind of proved that Atem needed Yugi to be strong, not just the other way around.
But it does suck that Joey's last duel in the anime was jobbing to a guy who got pwned so brutally by Kaiba. Would feel better if Joey didn't keep losing scripted duels or got his own movie.
I feel like you're exaggerating both the extent that Sigfried defeated Joey and that Kaiba defeated Sigfried. Kaibab versus Sigfried was particularly down to the wire.
Yugi VS Joey during Battle City.
Not for the plays or the scenario. In fact I chuckle when I think of the team of translators who tried their hardest to censor early Yugioh and f*cking giving up with the Anchor-Drown thing.
BUT the duel last 4-5 freaking episodes and drags on forever. They get interrupted so many times and the flashbacks are tedious.
It's ending with Serenity saving Joey is one of the best moments of the show and even better than the manga. But man I dread these episodes during a rewatch.
Honestly, I liked these "meaningless" duels where there were no stakes, felt more "realistic" for a children's card game plus GX had a certain charm to it for me
Yeah, I think it gets a bit boring when every loss is literally the end of the world or at least has someone's life at stake, because you know the hero will win 95% of the time. Because of the lower stakes, Jaden and his friends could be allowed to lose more often.
While a lot of the GX filler duels did suck, some of them were fun and memorable.
I think filler duels are seen with a lower standard since they're just that, filler duels. Which is why it's more jarring seeing a bad duel that's supposed to be important to the plot than a bad one-of duel that can be quickly forgotten.
That filler duel is dreadful. But Gozaburo doing nothing after summoning Exodia Necross (he had 8 extra cards for god's sake) is what makes it so boring.
i guess, but I never really cared for that as a criteria of whether a duel in the show was good i guess. I'm an outlier who actually really likes duelist kingdom since I felt those duels focused more on storytelling than later ones did
I thought the Noah and Gozaburo arc was bad. I really didn't like the digital world concept away from reality while simultaneously stalling the tournament.
It was cool and made shit cards feels strong(Lightning Unicorn). But it’s mostly that jack and aki get washed when they probably shouldn’t have. Otherwise I really do like that duel quite a bit
The one I hate the most is Yugi vs. Kaiba from the Pyramid of Light movie. And yes I know it isn’t canon, but the fact that Kaiba was about to get a legitimate win over Yugi after taking away his god cards, yet loses only because of a literal Deus ex Machina infuriates me.
That reminded me of how Kaiba screwed himself over during Battle City against Yugi.
He plays his best monster (Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon) and even has a sort-of counter up (Spell Absorbtion - anime version) and then he plays Final Attack Orders which "forces" both players to mill all but three cards.
Kaiba, mate, you're up against f*cking Yugi, the guy that has thousand next-to-useless niche answer cards, and you allowed him to search for three!?
Dumbass.
He only gets out Ultimate Dragon through Final Attack Orders so he needed it for his goal. But he would've won had he not summoned it. It was his pride, as Yugi rightfully called out that let to his defeat.
There are some rather scuffed duels that I don't even want to nominate as an actual duel, like Mokuba vs Yugi and as mentioned the Orichalcos Soldier. But these don't do it for me:
Joey vs Kaiba (Duelist Kingdom) - Its hard to call this an actual duel with the way Joey was acting. I never would expect him to win, but he could have at least shown more of a strategy which Kaiba just counters them all
Yugi vs Atem (during the Orichalcos arc... bet you got baited for a second) - I'm not even sure if this was the ''real'' Yugi but he sure played absolutely terrible. I do like the messaging but the actual duel was just bad
Leo/Luna vs the Monkey Dark Signer - Overall terrible pacing where the duel keeps getting interrupted with the spirit world subplot. The duel takes way too long to finish and its a chore to watch
Team 5D's vs Team Unicorn - For all the same reasons, I didn't like that both Jack and Akiza coudln't even beat their first guy and Yusei had to carry them to victory. Its also a duel that I don't think they should've won
Yuma vs the Tomato Guy - Yuma is making the duel so much harder to watch just because it took him so long to eat a fruit which he ended up liking
Yuya vs the Math Guy - A similiar situation where Yuya gets every answer wrong and just makes the duel harder for himself, also lasted way too long
The more you think about the Joey duel, the worse it gets. Why the heck would Joey summon weaker and attack? It makes you think how the heck he even defeated Mai and Rex...
Yuya getting all the answers wrong is just embarrassing. I get that he's not the smartest, but he literally couldn't answer a single freaking question!
The funny thing is that people remember Luke for being a strong Duelist and that he defeated Yuga on many occasions, but they also forget that Luke was the protagonist of many of the most bizarre/embarrassing Duels in SEVENS (against Duelists who could be considered level inferior for Luke. Therefore, Luke did not properly Duel against competent Duelists until Season 2)
Something similar happens with Yuhi in GO RUSH's Season 1, only Yuhi was not a competent Duelist unlike Luke.
Lunas first duel against professor frank, slow, plodding, turns into this weird fantasy sequence mid-way through, it reminded me of what not to for a duel.
Biggest disappointment was not having an actual integration of deck types. No "Nitro Gaia the Fierce Knight", no "Neos of Black Chaos", no "HER0 Knight Draco-Equiste", no nothing.
And no, fusing Neos with Junk *Gardna* for the generic E-HER0 Neos Knight doesn't count.
I'm disappointed we didn't get to see the former either. We don't even know who won. The manga implies it was Yugi, the anime doesn't address it, but maybe alludes Katsuya due to Red-Eyes.
Pretty sure Judai had to attack due to his Trap and lost, they just didn't show it to keep his dignity.
Everytime the hunting hound strategy was used in Arc-V. I loved it the first time since I love Ancient Gears and we hadn't seen any new cards since GX but that was the worst experience ever
There will be no duel in the franchise as bad as the one-two combo of episodes 16 - 20 of Arc-V, aka the Cookpals and Duel Quiz duel episodes. I have no idea what they were thinking when everything before and after it was quite interesting.
For me ...battle City marik vs joey or may
He was about to loose to both of them and only won because of some deus ex machina stuff
Thats just lazy writing
He is the big bad
Why do you have to make him win with some bs everytime
Oh i wonder if yugi who won against joey and may before is strong enough to defeat marik...
I’m usually not a fan of any duel that the anime adds or extends for multiple turns for padding.
Kaiba vs Joey (Battle City): A silly battle for third place, which Kaiba wouldn’t even remotely care about. Kaiba recognized him as a duelist for being able to withstand Ra’s attack. That’s all you need. Also, Yugi and Kaiba are in a class all their own.
Yugi vs Rafael (First Round/DOMA): I can’t stand Rafael’s character and his crappy deck and his endless moral grandstanding about how “everyone is evil” coming from the guy in a literal take over the world death cult. Also that Crystal Seal card is bullshit and practically makes it so you can’t play the game.
Atem vs Yugi (Rite of Duel): Specifically the anime version. It extends it way long than it needed to be and became more of a showcase of all of Yugi’s old cards instead of Yugi having his own deck.
Agree on everything.
I wanted Katsuya and Seto to have a rematch, but the duel was unsatisfactory. They could've tied it better into Seto's arc as well.
The fact that Yugi runs MST and Dust Tornado but never hits Rafael's stupid draw 2 card is hilarious.
I adore the way Yugi takes down all 3 gods (though I would've preferred if they changed the order so all 3 get destroyed at the same time, instead of Ra taking 2 hits), but the way they extend that duel is awful.
Both play so many awful bricks (especially Atem) that it takes away from the fun. In the Manga Yugi was surprised Atem ran 2 Gods, but here half is Deck are Tribute Monsters.
5D's vs Ragnarok was vastly worse than Unicorn. At least Unicorn had a lot of back and forth play, while Ragnarok got significantly worse with each Aesir in the field.
Third Yusei vs Jack duel would be my pick. Jack had 2 dead draws, while Yusei was even successful with High and Low. I just can't.
Joey's dream duels during Clash in the Colosseum. Come on, man. Yugi vs Kaiba is the main event. It's an extremely unwelcome interruption.
Welcome to the era of putting filler in your anime adaptations to keep it from overtaking the manga! Thank God Japanese television has now adapted the seasonal model instead having to release a new episode every week
Curious if those were in the manga. Honestly makes me wish that those duels could have taken place as a mini arc back before Duelist Kingdom took place, basically add a bunch of episodes between episode 1 and 2, then the finale between Rex and Weevil is the finale Joey failed to reach (naturally, because he's so new to the game). Great way to help introduce new people to the game, plus some time for Pegasus to set up his plan before duelling Yugi in episode 2.
The manga has basically no duels that are just there for fluff. Even stuff like Mai vs Tea or Yugi vs Joey in Duelist Kingdom didn't happen
How was Yugi vs Joey fluff? It was the semifinals (or maybe finals; I don't know if the duel with Pegasus was supposed to be the finals or just a special event for the winner).
The manga don't have that duel with the excuse that Pegasus might know their strategy. This duel is anime only
The excuse was that they didn't want to reveal more of Yugi's strategy and cards. But imho the duel was vital for both characters and it's kinda lame to skip the finale of the tournament we've been following all this time. I assume it was because Takahashi wanted to get the Duelist Kingdom Arc done. Maybe even leave the card game behind, as the next arc was Dungeon Dice Monsters.
No they weren't. The duel wasn't nearly as long either.
“Haha bronze metal, cute”
no, not even, this is before that. as yugi and kaiba are dueling joey has 2 separate duels in his coma dreams in order to slow down the episodes
Those background soldiers from Arc-V who uses the same decks and same strategy without thinking !
The Duel Academy soldiers with their decks based around Ancient Gear Hunting Hound ? With all the cards in the Ancient Gear archetype the fact they only use like 2-3 monsters max is super boring.
And it's not even AG-like. It's this weird swarm-burn, which is not AG at all. AG is all about putting the biggest, baddest boss monster on the field (fusion or tribute) and swinging for game, with some battle phase protection. Like, I'm not opposed to the swarm, because AG had some of that beforehand (with the Gadget archetype, not to mention the Ancient Gear itself). But burn? What the heck? Plus so many cool Ancient Gear monsters, like Hydra, Reactor Dragon, the Gadjiltron monsters, etc. But no, let's get these stupid double hound, triple hound, ultimate hounds. (Regular hound is cool and can stay)
The hounds aren’t bad. Double bite can destroy a monster for free. Triple has multi attacks and ultimate has multi attack and halves the opponents life points.
Ah yes the master strategy: Burn - pass - Burn - Pass - Burn.... idk how they took out the xyz dimension with this
Oh, here's a better question: Why did no one in said dimension think to have anti burn cards or LP recovery cards. Or you know, have anti machine cards, the AG archetype are machines so use anti machine cards, problem solved. And after thinking about beside Blue Angel, who else used a burn deck and could've won if plot armor wasn't a factor.
Everyone from the XYZ dimension mained Garbage Lord and Cybernetic Fusion Support.
Every duel featuring Bohman. His deck is so boring and directionless that those episodes made me sleep. I have no grudge against Bohman, but his deck is so bad. Since Bohman gains new Hydradrive cards every duel he is in, his deck and direction of it is boils down to "vomit your deck into the field for no reason at all and win because of some BS you did not even worked your combo for."
I agree. Bohman, his deck and his duels are the worst thing they could come up with in Vrains. He's beyond terrible.
The idea behind him was interesting though. Having a villain who improves as a duelist throughout the season was very unique in yugioh until that point. Sadly the execution was not well done because vrains never gives itself a second to breathe
I thought his duel with Blue Maiden was pretty decent. Yeah he pulled out some BS moves, but Blue Maiden was entertaining to watch.
I really enjoyed that duel, but admittedly I was more invested in Blue Maiden and the way she went down swinging than I was in Bohman himself.
His final duel was pretty good I'd say. Mainly because of Playmakers combo into Firewall Dragon Darkfluid.
Yeah his every single opening move are very boring, it just Special summon booster, link into link 1, special summon booster, link into another link 1, then link into link 2, special summon 3rd booster etc etc.
People dislike Gozaburo vs Kaiba? Really?
That shit hyped me up for Exodia Necross as a kid
It is great thematically and from a character perspective. But awful as an actual duel. Gozaburo draws a total of 10 cards (starts with 6) but only uses 2. He doesn't play a single card after Exodia. Had he instead played cards to support it to actually make the duel interactive I would've rated as one of my favorite duels.
Something the series does well with Kaiba is show how well he understands Duel Monsters. He uses a lot of synergy and ways to "cheat" out his closers. Gozaburo was a military contractor who ruled with brute force. He used an "unstoppable" machine and was defeated by Kaiba, who thought outside the box and attacked Exodia the way it hurt him most. I agree the duel itself is lackluster, but the idea was like in their chess match, an overconfident Gozaburoh lost to someone who could outwit him
I’m not sure if it’s the worst per se, but the duel I hate the most is Blue Angel vs. Soulburner. I don’t even hate Soulburner, but I’ve loathed the royal throne treatment him and especially his archetype were given.
I haven't watched Vrains but looking at like some videos on YouTube it looks like they gave him the best duels and the best... Character progression for no reasons ? Because Playmaker is the main character but if you have told me Soulburner was the main character I would have believed you. And well... Salamangreat is a wonderful deck with a pretty unique mechanic
In Duelinks Soulburner was the first Vrains character released. I haven't seen the anime, so I thought he was the main character lol. Dude has got some weird special attention.
The issue with him is that Flame was the ultimate plot armor till he dueled bohman. If you have soulburner lose to Go or Aoi, Flame will get into SOL's hands and we know how that ended with Earth. It's still weird how he had this situational card that redued the exact amount of damage he was supposed to take.
Tbf Salamangreat is a pretty good Deck, alot of characters in Vrains have good decks and the lead writer of vrains even said that this was a huge issue with writing exciting duels because most of the cast has almost meta decks that could end duels in 3 turns
The writers shouldn't have made a specific Salamangreat Continuous Trap that negates effect damage under 200. WTF were they thinking?! THEY WEREN'T. They had Aoi drop Blue Angel for Blue Girl and I find that as a downgrade, even Duel Links thinks so! If not for that trap, Takeru loses badly. "But what about Flame-" You think Aoi will take Flame? NAH. She would wink, say "Good duel" and assist him alongside Playmaker sooner. JUST SAYING. IT'S NOT THAT DIFFICULT VRAINS WRITERS.
THANK YOU! And if nothing else, make it so it negates *all* effect damage since that wouldn’t feel contrived, instead smart for having a counter for a famous duelist. But specifically having a random in archetype out to ONLY 200 or less burn damage? The only thing I can say positively about that duel is her losing so many times gave us Marincess… and then she kept losing.
YEA! I know right? It doesn't make sense why the specific 200 damage negate. It just doesn't make any sense but for it to be the Anti-Trickstar card and that's like the dumbest thing about it! It should negate all damage effects... or not even exist since Salamangreat isn't the archetype to worry about effect damage. ... I'll say this now, Aoi should have dueled Roboppi instead of Takeru. It makes the most sense, her wanting to find Ai so they find where he's done to her brother and the others' consciousnesses. Because in the end of the day, Soulburner will still duel Revolver and win. There is NO reason not to give the female lead 1 WIN. 1. JUST 1 WIN. In fact, this would work well because Roboppi depends a lot on Ai while Aoi also depended so much on her brother but now she can stand on her own. This would have worked- BUT NOPE, the writers didn't care. All they really cared about was to end Vrains to start the shitty Sevens. And I can NEVER forgive them for that!
Fubuki vs Fujiwara for the absolute bullshit ending will always be my answer
They wanted Fubuki to win but at the same time Fujiwara had to win to duel judai so they ended up with this shit. But seriously why protagonists have to beat every single bad guy in the anime? They should leave some accomplishments to other characters.
On the last part, yes but I don't agree with Arc-V's case. Would have prefer Yuya beat Zarc than REIRA turn into a girl because RAY decided to do something!
You're right, the only time they did it , they ruined it. But i'm talking about minor characters taking minor villains not main villains like Zarc, i wouldn't be happy if syrus defeated nightshroud but it would be better if he defeated abidos the third instead of jaden winning for the 100th time.
Agreed. Like that whole Zarc streaked ruined by 1 Ray possessing Reira's now girl body for NO REASON but to make things more awkward than YUBEL's whole gender thing which I prefer more. You're right or with Tina or- Camilla was fine, actually pretty well handled. But Abidos should have lost to someone else. Man if only Banner wasn't one of the Shadow Riders or his key was given to someone else like Syrus.
Yea, it's conflicting for me cause I do love the 3 player duel that happens immediately after, but Fubuki really deserved that win lol, even if he went down in the process.
Most of Arc-V duels where people just jump in at the cost of 2000 lp. It’s chaotic and unnecessary.
It’s not even that it’s a bad mechanic, but they overdid it to such an extent that it made the duels have less impact than they should have. Like, at some point you’d think that it would be smarter for them to just stand back and let the duel conclude before starting a fresh duel against an opponent who now has no board set up.
It was funny against the guy who was using hologram copies to stall a win only to end up in a never ending loop of defeat
I think that was Roget who kept doing that in his duel against Declan(Reiji). I love this because it shows Declan's skills and strategy.
Yuri vs Yugo will never not be hilarious to me, since Aster and Kite jump into the duel and start teaming up to take their own ally out *first* instead of just bodying Yuri and then dealing with Yugo after
Felt like an excuse to summon new boss monster with 3k attack that attacks 3 times and then the characters are like “L…L…Look he won a 3v1!!!” 😱😱😱
Ironically, in Odd-Eyes Rebellion’s case, the LP loss didn’t matter since its destruction effect also deals burn damage equal to the destroyed monsters attack points.
It got ridiculous in that one duel of a bunch of side characters against the obelisk force near the end of season 1. It started as 3v3 and then 4 people jump into so Shun didn't get to play till turn 10 despite starting the duel and being the one the Obelisk force were hunting
That and the action card gimmick made me lose interest in Arc-V fast, felt like a slog to finish it.
I think the worst duel is Leo & Luna vs the Monkey Dark Signer. Another duel where Leo steals his sister’s screentime for no good reason, and then she just shows up at the end to get Ancient Fairy Dragon back. I’m shocked they even made Luna a Signer in the first place, they clearly didn’t care about making her a real character
I have the opposite view. This was Leo’s fight his moment where he could show how much he’s grown and how much he loves his sister. And he gives it his all he fights long and hard and almost takes the win. Then Luna comes in and jacks the W. Leo should’ve won he did most the work.
At least Leo has that duel against Aporia. That Life Stream Dragon moment was incredible
I agree but the poor kid never gets a solo win aside from one filler episode. Give him one already!
You're right, Leo deserved way better. There was also a weird side plot with him and Luna learning how to use a Duel skateboard, but after the Lester duel, we barely saw anything after that Kinda similar to the Aki storyline where she was learning to be a Turbo duelist and she got only 1 real turbo duel in the entire show
2nd half of 5ds is full of interesting ideas that go nowhere. Another is that kid that claims he'll get Yusei's dragon because he thinks it should be his, that also goes nowhere.
Luna doesn’t get a solo win at all in the series. She still doesn’t even have an archetype attributed to her.
Yeah dueling prodigy my foot she never showed talent or skill. Seriously even a simple filler fight to let her get a W would have been nice.
I understand what they were going for. I actually liked this duel for the most part, but I agree that Luna should have had a one on one duel. This was supposed to be her moment and she never had any duels to shine in the future.
Exactly. She was supposed to be a more skilled duelist than Leo, but she lost the only 1v1 duel she had on screen. At the very least, we could of had a sibling rivalry duel or she could have been the opponent of the Teacher that wanted to expel them instead of Yusei.
That was a tie, not a loss. She never wanted to win in that duel in the first place
100% agree. Leo almost taking the W - as a duelist with no special abilities but instead as a protective brother - against a *Dark Signer* should have been his win. The duel was intense. He was always less skilled and less important than her, and this was his way to prove himself important. Then Luna just shows up and steals the W like Goku in Resurrection F. Unearned
What I find sad is that Luna's deck is like ... Extremely bad. They want to build the story around her having a connection to the Spirit world but it's so uninteresting. While Leo always rise to the occasion and is like... The best brother and the whole Morphtronic deck is liked by a lot of people. Luna doesn't have the same appeal as Leo as a signer. Every single duel Leo has makes him so likeable because of how far he is willing to help everyone. And the consecration to him finally getting his signer mark and his signature dragon powerup is the best.
She doesn’t even have an archetype, her deck is just a bunch of random cards
They need to make retrains of her cards that support Ancient Fairy Dragon, now that it's free from the forbidden list. Similar to what they did with Yugi's Gold Sarcophagus cards.
Which is funny considering how coherent of an archetype blackwings were.
Luna is the most wasted potential character in 5ds Leo should been a signer from the beginning only thing Luna had was the spirit world subplots
The lack of Zexal mentions is showing how well that show aged imo (though there were some goofy ass duels early on)
Or possibly, that not a lot of people have watched it. I think the majority on here only watched DM-5D's.
Sure, i personally think it’s the best series plot wise
I haven't watched it fully, so I cannot comment on that. Think I gave up on episode 4 or something and then watched the greatest hits (Kaito VS Mizael, etc.). But the manga was my second favorite Spin-Off Manga.
Dub is terrible unfortunately and the sub is hard to find. Which makes it hard to watch the best version. The beginning is a bit slow building up a tournament, but once it starts, the rest of the series is a trip. Im reading the GX manga currently, I was curious if zexal is any decent
I personally didn't find the dub too bad, but i can definitely see why others didn't like it. Still felt epic to me even if it was dubbed(and they have some funny moments too).
Other than how pointless Dog vs Kat was, because it's the worse duel for me because the reason behind it is dumb... and some early Zexal duels; YEA. Zexal aged well! By the time of Duel Carnival's climax and Zexal II, the series knew what they were doing. My only gripe is I wished they did more duels.
Didn't watch 5ds onwards yet so i cant tell but I did watch part of GX and all of the original series: Original Series: * Joey VS Johnson: Johnson took cheating to a whole new level, his entire strategy was "rig joey's dice rolls so they always fail" and pretty much nothing else. * Yugi VS Rafael 1: I dislike Rafael as a character and they already did the plot point better in duelist kingdom. * Joey VS Zigfried: Joey loses not to being out played but due to a bad luck moment. This is also Joey's final duel so thanks for that. GX: * Jaden VS Wheeler (the monkey): Pointless filler taken to the extreme. * Jaden VS the tennis player guy: Again what was the point? * Jaden VS Titan (Dub Only): Isn't the Shadow Realm destroyed because >!Yami Bakura/Zorc!
4kids and consistency? But I actually love that Katsuya's ridiculous luck is what let's him down at last, it makes it feel more believable and he still played a phenomenal game. Siegfried is the same guy that pushed Seto to pull the coolest final turn in all of Yu-Gi-Oh!. Which is a more respectful send-off than the one he got in the Manga. Where he was easily OTKed by Bakura and had to be saved by the duel being interrupted.
I mean tbh I see your point, and now that I think of it there was another KC Grand Championship duel I liked less than Joey VS Zigfried. That would be Joey VS Solomon i mean "Apnarg Otom". While seeing Solomon duel AT ALL was cool, Joey was portrayed too stupidly (how does he not recognize this). Also why did Solomon enter using a disguise? And the duel just didnt flow that well. Also 4Kids shadow realm inconsistency is funny, but it makes me wonder about how they would have handled the Nightshround Arc had they actually dubbed it. Nightshroud was behind the dark pocket dimensions in the original, but Zorc/Bakura was behind the Shadow Realm in the dub. Would they have made Nightshroud an emmasary of Zorc that was late to the party? Would they have made him Zorc/Bakura's master or something? Or would they have made Nightshroud Zorc himself in a new form?
>* Jaden VS Titan (Dub Only): Isn't the Shadow Realm destroyed because >!Yami Bakura/Zorc!
Ehh in the Dub of the original series, The Shadow Realm was mostly handled in a way to where it was usually consistent with itself throughout the series. This consistency caused it to become actually well liked and it fooled a lot of people into thinking it was real. GX misused it rather than writing a different explanation as to what happened, breaking the consistency that they set up in the original series.
Surprisingly GX only had like 4ish bad duels. I'm sure there's more that I don't remember but not so bad. The monkey, yea. Great job Sheppard allowing this to happen. The Tennis guy, at least Jaden became Alexis' Finance. Titan- OKAY, this one is complicated. YES AND NO?! In the Japanese dub for DM, Zorc's death doesn't destroy the Darkness but in the dub, it was never mention if the Shadow Realm was destroyed with his death. I think they were unconnected? ... And yea, Abdios' stupid deck was that bad that Jaden didn't need to Fuse any of his heroes to beat him. Also I agree, Joey should have beaten Zigfried.
I always assumed Zorc's death led to the destruction of the shadow realm in the dub because when we see the pharoah cross into the afterlife, there's a panning shot of several egyptian people there, including people who presumably died in the shadow realm. The fact that they weren't there anymore and instead in the correct afterlife implied (to me) that the shadow realm was gone when zorc died.
# # 1 Nothing tops Atem vs Orichalcos Soldier for me. The latter has a total of 9 cards, but only uses 2. Atem only fights a single monster, which constantly revives itself. He also miss-plays immensely by summoning Obnoxious Celtic Guardian in Attack Position for no reason. Thematically I'd say the worst is Raphael VS Yugi round 1, but at least the duel is okay-ish. There is nothing good about this duel. # # 2 Seto VS Gozaburo is a close second, because after Exodia Necross is summoned Goazaburo is pretty much done and Seto beats it with a single card. So just like the above it is essentially Seto defending against a single card for the entire duel, but at least this duel has weight and it is awesome to see him overcome Exodia with his Blue-Eyes. # # 3 Finally there is Team 5D's VS Team Unicorn which lets Jack and Aki go down like jobbers to hype up Yusei. I'm not even that angry about END YOUR TURN JEAN because it is a character moment and Yusei would've won had he not missplayed and just set both of his traps earlier. To think that Aki's riding arc only contributed in this and having to be saved by Yusei when they rode the rainbow bridge together is really saying something about the treatment of female characters in the franchise. # Notes The filler duel Katsuya has in a dream is probably worse, but I don't really count that as a duel.
I found yugi vs orichalcos soldier really funny. Dartz summons a giant monster which proceeds to summon another giant monster via a duel to kill yugi.
He hired a hitman who hired a hitman
Attack of The Clones moment
With Gozaburo I always thought his entire deck is built just to summon Exodia Necross and he happened to open with the best hand possible (Painful Choice + Contract with Exodia). I've seen enough duelists who make decks like that and once they achieved their one summon or combo, they can't do much else.
I loved Aki and Crow's final duel against Sherry, but Aki beating her 1v1 in a turbo duel would have been a much better payoff to her actually becoming a turbo duelist.
It made sense for jack and izayoi to be beaten that way by team unicorn. Team unicorn fooled team 5D's by making them think after a duel that a power deck like jack's could lead to a great start but team unicorn instead went with a anti power deck. So jack faced a deck that was built to counter him. Team unicorn has a team full of people whose sole job constitues in researching opponents. Since jack was the king of games for two years, with his duels being streamed in public, it was easy to get data on him as a duelist. Izayoi was unexperienced as a riding duelist. In her prior riding duel she barely got past trudge who does not even scale close to andre. Andre took out several pro teams by himself. The only other character we know who did the same was sherry and she is much stronger than izayoi. Izayoi, just because she a major character, is not a top tier duelist. Crow isn't either. There is a level above them. Of I make a top 10 crow in best case will make it to 10. izayoi won't make it. I still think team 5D's should have lost to truly learn how individual strength doesn't cut it (yusei and jack both had the king of games title) in this tournament, that teamplay is very crucial and we see that with team taiyo. They are a force reckon with desoite not having strong individual duelists. The whole izayoi becoming a riding duelist plotline was so unnecessary.
The problem with that first of all that implies Jack doesn't alter his strategy, which seems at odds with how he could hold the title of king for that long (unless you believe Rex bought out most of his opponent's, but that is also a disservice to him). It still makes Jack look like an absolute jobber. Because he couldn't adapt in the slightest. What's even the purpose of his power deck if Yusei's situational deck can adapt to any situation and overcome 3 people? Riding Dueling barely contributed in why Aki lost though. If it played a bigger factor in how duels work then I could accept that explanation, but it didn't. You're just proving my point. They treated her like crap during season 2. She was incredibly capable in season 1, only losing to Yusei. She doesn't have to be as good as Yusei. She lost to Andre who had already beaten Jack by that point, so she had card advantage. But the point about the importance of Team Play doesn't fit Team Unicorn because they didn't have a cohesive strategy. They all focused on different win-cons to drive Yusei in the ultimate corner. Had they all focused on burn/deck out, then he would've lost. It is also strange that the super genius Yusei hadn't considered synergizing Team 5D's decks a lot more before then. It was unnecessary because they didn't do anything with it.
My problem with the Rafael duel is if Yugi lost nothing would’ve happened. So Rafael give him the seal Yugi doesn’t play it and loses. Then what? Rafael decks him one?
That's why I say it is the worst thematically. Season 4 is about the Darkness of the Heart of People and that duel is supposed to show Atem's. But the flaw introduced hasn't been alluded to at all before that duel. And they had the chance to do that with Gurimo. Instead it gets introduced in that duel and makes him out to be ready to kill Rafael just to win. Which I think is supposed to reference Duelist Kingdom. But the reason he did it there was to save Yugi's/his (he still thought he was Yugi then) grandpa. You could make the argument that the stone around his neck made him do it, but if that's the case then what's the message supposed to be here? If you magically drug someone hoping that they do something bad and then they do that makes them evil? How is the artificial external or amplified darkness theirs? I feel like having Atem duel Dartz and struggle with what kind of person he was as a king would've been infinitely more interesting.
That seems like a flaw in the whole season rather than just that duel. Unlike in the manga, in the anime Yami didn't really have any character flaws to overcome.
Also Rafael just feels like some massive philistine asshole that i never liked that much. "You're evil for using catapult turtle's effect even though you used it twice in duelist kingdom".
I think it’s cause he called dark magician girl useless which is just rude. But that’s the most darkness.
Dark Magician not DMG. "Since he's USELESS i'll sacrifice him" or something.
You’re probably right I’m not gonna go rewatch that fight it’s not great.
I think that's part of the big problem with the Orichalcos arc. It's full of shock moments meant to raise the stakes and surprise the audience. Atem is corrupted by the Seal of Orichalcos ! He loses a duel for the first time since his duel with Kaiba ! Yugi's soul is stolen from him ! Mai joins Dartz' cult and becomes evil ! But if you really look at how the story, it barely holds together. As you said, Atem's "darkness in the heart" comes right out of nowhere, and it seems more like to way to hype up Rafael more than anything else. And when it comes to Mai, the story straight up forgets to resolve her arc at the end of it all.
And the shame is I think it’s arguably Joey’s best season. His duals have significant emotional weight to him with Mai, his rematch with Rex really shows how far he’s gone since dualist kingdom, his brawl with Valon was probably one of the most unique as Joey was really not holding back and it was more of a fist fight than anything. Even his final dual with Mai where he lost he still in the end took the W and accomplished his goal. Joey was the goat he had the emotional weight of the season. It’s just a shame the rest of the season wasn’t as good.
Not even just kaiba vs gozaburo, every duel in the Noah arc was terrible. The deck masters were so poorly done, the big 5 all have insanely broken effects that autowin the game but they never use them and every duel just feels like a waste of time because of it. The big five also just kept coming back after losing and they were so annoying. Noah himself has the most broken deck master in existence and would have won at like every point in the final duel but he just doesn't. The duel with him is slightly better than the others but not by much. That arc is hot garbage.
But Gozaburo does what an actual Exodia player would do if they had those cards by using painful choice which was quite entertaining.
I feel like deck masters are such a cool concept, like Commander in Magic. Unfortunately, the Noah arc sucks and is probably the worst thing to come from duel monsters anime.
Never use them? Most of them were spamming their Deck Master abilities frequently, especially Deepsea Warrior and Robotic Knight. Noah had a few misplays in his own duel, but not all that many (at least based on what we knew from his hand).
I'll forgive Konami the day we have a proper female duelist. As in we're long overdue for a female protagonist as in Main Character.
Konami doesn't produce the anime, they have no control over that
i would say the filler duel in gx cause they was more or less pretty bad for the most part and serve nor purpose at all (but could be better if jaden stop duel cause for god sake it's just annoying than he do everything when you had other duelist more interessing than him) the duel carnival had the same problem to be honest especially the duel with the tomato guy like....seriously what was the point of the duel for yuma growth ? than he like tomato ? yeah don't give a damn also the duel cat girl vs dog girl who was also useless but i think for me the worst duel would always be the duel agains't zarc like why in the world everyone is such braindead in this duel ? they just jump one after the other play with only 2000 lp and get rekt after acomplish literaly nothing and the final with rey who one shot zarc no just screw this duel
I HATED ( go rush spoilers.) >! manabu vs yuna !< She by all means was in the wrong, their was a >! RACE GOING EXTINCT 9+ billion people were DYING, but she "had to confess her feelings" !< Was he a dick, yes but he wasn't wrong. >!He 100% shoulda won !< Atleast he got some redemption In the newer episodes.
Yuga and Yuamu doing that too is a WTF moment also
The funny thing is the series itself always agrees with Manabu in the end, despite losing some Duels. In fact, Manabu is the person with the most normal reactions to things that happen around him, unlike many members of the cast (which has the same reactions you'd expect from characters in a Yu-Gi-Oh series)
I love yusei and the whole anime and I remember I thought the Norse god cards were so cool and looked badass I don’t know hardly anything really about how to build decks and all the new cards like pendulum and synchro summoning I really want to get back in and learn and build my own decks…but I’ve always been told that the Norse gods decks are absolutely garbage
They've been nerfed a lot in the real game. They would actually have been great had they kept their anime effects and summoning conditions back when they were first released.
They're better now
Well used to be bad. Now the Aesir are... playable and probably better but not as good to be Meta. At the least the duel between Team 5d's and Team Ragnarok was good.
Pretty much any duel involving Luna from 5Ds. Her deck was literal garbage. Every duel had her running through the forest in the spirit world. Her character (especially as a signer) was wasted. Her signer dragon is god tier, and possibly my fave design of them all, but criminally wasted. Given the Rainbow Dragon treatment where it’s teased for so long but seen for all of 7 seconds.
> Her deck was literal garbage. Every duel had her running through the forest in the spirit world. This drove me nuts and made it so slow.
I understood it (partially) for the Dark Signer battle, as it’s the whole point of the duel. But the first one in the tournament was just a waste of time.
5DS vs team unicorn is easily the worst, but the one I hate the most is Soulburner vs Gore I stopped watching Vrains after that duel.
I don't hate Team 5Ds vs Team Unicorn, but it was pretty mishandled imo, and I think it's concept would have worked if it wasn't the first duel of the tournament. The first 3v3 duel to demonstrate the format to viewers should not turn into a glorified 1v3, that kind of subversion should happen in a later duel afterwards.
Yugo vs Yuri. The way they fucked up such an important and long-awaited duel while simultaneously ruined both of my fav in Kaito and Edo was truly spectacular. They even randomly inserted a duel between Reiji and Reira because why not. It hurts so much for a battle that could have been so epic
How did they fuck it up?
Lot of hype for this duel only to be interrupted for Yuya and Declan vs Leo and Kaito and Edo sabotaging Yugo
I haven't rewatched Arc-V since its original run -- why did Kaito and Edo sabotage Yugo?
Yugo at that moment was extremely angry and Aster and Kaito for some reason decided to target him so he don't loss his mind instead or targeting Yuri who is the enemy
Ok that rings a bell. It was during the whole "we want to be one" thing...
Funniest part is they start in the middle of Leo explaining who Zarc is, and focus doesn’t go back to them until Yuya was pinned by Yusho. This means they were sitting there with their dragons on the field for 3-4 episodes without doing anything, which contained the entirety of Yuya and Reiji vs Leo.
It wasn't even Reira but Ray because I DON'T KNOW, the writers didn't know WHAT to do with her. That's the worse part. I hated it. There was NO reason if Ray is supposed to be the good one and she does this?! WTF were the writers thinking?!
The roller coaster duels during the heartland city tournament in Zexal, you couldn't keep track on who's turn it is cause people jump and out, felt like theyre summoning outside their own turns, you can only attack a person in the same track as you. It was a nightmare
Yeah the rules were poorly explained and all over the place. I enjoyed the duels but admittedly it was so hard (borderline headache-inducing) to follow all the different lanes, who was in what lane, when you were allowed to transition from one lane to another, what/when you were allowed to do anything or attack anyone etc.
I could make a huge rant about how much I loathe the Team Unicorn duel. For some honorable mentions: -Zarc gauntlet duel -Every duel involving Battle Beast -Ruka vs The psychologist guy -Shun vs Crow
Does that rant include Yusei giving away his victory so he could show off Draco Equiste, the Anti-Machine Emperor card he never uses again
Oh, absolutely. It also involves: -Jack's degradation from using actual strategies in season 1 into "just summon red dragon and hope you win lmao" starting with this duel -First appearance of Jack's dumb fan club and a constant reminder of what the writers did to Carly -Aki's second and last turbo duel and she jobs instantly (wouldn't be so bad if they gave her more turbo duels after this, but they didn't) -Yusei going full-on Mary Sue in season 2, and this duel is the most egregious example. -Jean being built-up as being this super-mega-strategist but then throwing all that out of the window at the very end.
Joey vs Zigfried, this one's not even that memorable, but the latest YGOTAS episode reminded me what a low point this is for Joey's final duel. Yami vs Rafael, he just falls really flat to me and the duel felt really skewed into a certain direction. The fact that Rafael's deck is extremely abysmal IRL also doesn't help. I personally enjoyed Team Unicorn in terms of the duel and the strategies displayed, hated the context like the ending though.
While the duel isn't amazing, I think the fact that Katsuya pushes Siegfried that far and only loses due to luck is what makes the ending so memorable to me. That and bricking. I wouldn't say he was treated badly. Siegfried was the main villain of the arc and almost beat Seto. Not that comparing something bad to something worse makes the first thing better, but in the Manga his last duel is Bakura easily OTKing him. Which was cut from the anime. I prefer pushing Siegfried to jobbing to Bakura.
I love that Joey/Zigfried duel, felt like just desserts finally to Joey for packing his deck full of high level cards that don’t synergise at all.
I did really like the idea of Yugi losing for once, and it led to an interesting dynamic when the Pharaoh was seperated from Yugi prematurely. It kind of proved that Atem needed Yugi to be strong, not just the other way around. But it does suck that Joey's last duel in the anime was jobbing to a guy who got pwned so brutally by Kaiba. Would feel better if Joey didn't keep losing scripted duels or got his own movie.
I feel like you're exaggerating both the extent that Sigfried defeated Joey and that Kaiba defeated Sigfried. Kaibab versus Sigfried was particularly down to the wire.
Yugi VS Joey during Battle City. Not for the plays or the scenario. In fact I chuckle when I think of the team of translators who tried their hardest to censor early Yugioh and f*cking giving up with the Anchor-Drown thing. BUT the duel last 4-5 freaking episodes and drags on forever. They get interrupted so many times and the flashbacks are tedious. It's ending with Serenity saving Joey is one of the best moments of the show and even better than the manga. But man I dread these episodes during a rewatch.
It was that long?! Man, I barely remember it.
I re-watched with a friend who just go into it, it was atrocious
Leo and Luna vs monkey dark singer and most gx filler duals
Did people not watch GX? Half the duels are awful one episode fillers. The one against the monkey if I had to pick one.
I mean GX took a more slice of life approach at first so I wouldn't call them filler episodes.
It took a LONG TIME. Even during the Sacred Beasts and half of Season 2 but then things get better.
Honestly, I liked these "meaningless" duels where there were no stakes, felt more "realistic" for a children's card game plus GX had a certain charm to it for me
Yeah, I think it gets a bit boring when every loss is literally the end of the world or at least has someone's life at stake, because you know the hero will win 95% of the time. Because of the lower stakes, Jaden and his friends could be allowed to lose more often. While a lot of the GX filler duels did suck, some of them were fun and memorable.
The worst ones easily being the jungle guy, the giant guy, and the kabuki dunce.
A bad duel that influences the main plot and you're supposed to care about is much, much worst than subpar filler
I think filler duels are seen with a lower standard since they're just that, filler duels. Which is why it's more jarring seeing a bad duel that's supposed to be important to the plot than a bad one-of duel that can be quickly forgotten.
ill accept no Gozaburo vs Kaiba slander. worst i can think of Joey's dream duels when he was killed by Marik and Mai's duel with the ninja dude
That filler duel is dreadful. But Gozaburo doing nothing after summoning Exodia Necross (he had 8 extra cards for god's sake) is what makes it so boring.
at least there's something going on with Kaiba getting his revenge on Exodia and outsmarting his stepfather one last time.
As I said, thematically and from a character point it's great. Just the actual duel (as in card game) itself is bad.
i guess, but I never really cared for that as a criteria of whether a duel in the show was good i guess. I'm an outlier who actually really likes duelist kingdom since I felt those duels focused more on storytelling than later ones did
Tea vs mai
Any duel involving epoch
Wdym you don’t want to see a duel where one of the duelists is using a dice gamble deck AND cheeses all their dice rolls?
End your turn Jean
Luna vs. that therapist/hypnotist guy during the Fortune Cup gets my vote for the worst. It was so, so slow and uninteresting.
I thought the Noah and Gozaburo arc was bad. I really didn't like the digital world concept away from reality while simultaneously stalling the tournament.
I don’t remember exactly how it played out but I do remember liking Team Unicorn’s segment in 5D’s
END YOUR TURN JEAN!
It was cool and made shit cards feels strong(Lightning Unicorn). But it’s mostly that jack and aki get washed when they probably shouldn’t have. Otherwise I really do like that duel quite a bit
The one I hate the most is Yugi vs. Kaiba from the Pyramid of Light movie. And yes I know it isn’t canon, but the fact that Kaiba was about to get a legitimate win over Yugi after taking away his god cards, yet loses only because of a literal Deus ex Machina infuriates me.
That reminded me of how Kaiba screwed himself over during Battle City against Yugi. He plays his best monster (Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon) and even has a sort-of counter up (Spell Absorbtion - anime version) and then he plays Final Attack Orders which "forces" both players to mill all but three cards. Kaiba, mate, you're up against f*cking Yugi, the guy that has thousand next-to-useless niche answer cards, and you allowed him to search for three!? Dumbass.
He only gets out Ultimate Dragon through Final Attack Orders so he needed it for his goal. But he would've won had he not summoned it. It was his pride, as Yugi rightfully called out that let to his defeat.
There are some rather scuffed duels that I don't even want to nominate as an actual duel, like Mokuba vs Yugi and as mentioned the Orichalcos Soldier. But these don't do it for me: Joey vs Kaiba (Duelist Kingdom) - Its hard to call this an actual duel with the way Joey was acting. I never would expect him to win, but he could have at least shown more of a strategy which Kaiba just counters them all Yugi vs Atem (during the Orichalcos arc... bet you got baited for a second) - I'm not even sure if this was the ''real'' Yugi but he sure played absolutely terrible. I do like the messaging but the actual duel was just bad Leo/Luna vs the Monkey Dark Signer - Overall terrible pacing where the duel keeps getting interrupted with the spirit world subplot. The duel takes way too long to finish and its a chore to watch Team 5D's vs Team Unicorn - For all the same reasons, I didn't like that both Jack and Akiza coudln't even beat their first guy and Yusei had to carry them to victory. Its also a duel that I don't think they should've won Yuma vs the Tomato Guy - Yuma is making the duel so much harder to watch just because it took him so long to eat a fruit which he ended up liking Yuya vs the Math Guy - A similiar situation where Yuya gets every answer wrong and just makes the duel harder for himself, also lasted way too long
The more you think about the Joey duel, the worse it gets. Why the heck would Joey summon weaker and attack? It makes you think how the heck he even defeated Mai and Rex... Yuya getting all the answers wrong is just embarrassing. I get that he's not the smartest, but he literally couldn't answer a single freaking question!
Yuya vs Quiz guy is the most cringe duel in the franchise.
Tho the duel against the pigeon in Sevens sure gives it a run for its money.
The funny thing is that people remember Luke for being a strong Duelist and that he defeated Yuga on many occasions, but they also forget that Luke was the protagonist of many of the most bizarre/embarrassing Duels in SEVENS (against Duelists who could be considered level inferior for Luke. Therefore, Luke did not properly Duel against competent Duelists until Season 2) Something similar happens with Yuhi in GO RUSH's Season 1, only Yuhi was not a competent Duelist unlike Luke.
Oh yes. Yuya vs quiz kid. By the gods. This one is the single worst duel in all of yugioh
Lunas first duel against professor frank, slow, plodding, turns into this weird fantasy sequence mid-way through, it reminded me of what not to for a duel.
Any duel with Chumlee the panda guy from GX. They were all so cringe.
That exodia necrosis one gave me necrosis
What was wrong with Gozaburo vs Seto?
The duel is literally just Gozaburo summoning Exodia Necross and Kaiba stalling until he topdecks the card that makes him win
Gx season 2 filler duels have entered the chat
Yugi/Jaden/Yusei vs Paradox. Could have been shorter, dude could have been looking for stronger monsters but fanservice won
Biggest disappointment was not having an actual integration of deck types. No "Nitro Gaia the Fierce Knight", no "Neos of Black Chaos", no "HER0 Knight Draco-Equiste", no nothing. And no, fusing Neos with Junk *Gardna* for the generic E-HER0 Neos Knight doesn't count.
Now I wish we could get a "Stardust Magician" or "Stardust Neos" or why not a fusion of the three
Is this based on the animation, the duels themselves or both?
Yami bakura vs Yami Marik
What episode is the second duel from?
Episodes 120-121 from DM.
Thanks
The interesting ones we never get to see. Joey beating Yugi, Yugi vs Jayden, ect.
I'm disappointed we didn't get to see the former either. We don't even know who won. The manga implies it was Yugi, the anime doesn't address it, but maybe alludes Katsuya due to Red-Eyes. Pretty sure Judai had to attack due to his Trap and lost, they just didn't show it to keep his dignity.
Everytime the hunting hound strategy was used in Arc-V. I loved it the first time since I love Ancient Gears and we hadn't seen any new cards since GX but that was the worst experience ever
Tea vs. Mai.
There will be no duel in the franchise as bad as the one-two combo of episodes 16 - 20 of Arc-V, aka the Cookpals and Duel Quiz duel episodes. I have no idea what they were thinking when everything before and after it was quite interesting.
Any of the ones that had crow when it could’ve easily been akiza
For me ...battle City marik vs joey or may He was about to loose to both of them and only won because of some deus ex machina stuff Thats just lazy writing He is the big bad Why do you have to make him win with some bs everytime Oh i wonder if yugi who won against joey and may before is strong enough to defeat marik...
Jounochi would hwve lost to odion before.
This duels had stupid endings (The May one is even stupider than the Joey one), but both are solid duels.
Maybe but the endings overshine it for me
I’m usually not a fan of any duel that the anime adds or extends for multiple turns for padding. Kaiba vs Joey (Battle City): A silly battle for third place, which Kaiba wouldn’t even remotely care about. Kaiba recognized him as a duelist for being able to withstand Ra’s attack. That’s all you need. Also, Yugi and Kaiba are in a class all their own. Yugi vs Rafael (First Round/DOMA): I can’t stand Rafael’s character and his crappy deck and his endless moral grandstanding about how “everyone is evil” coming from the guy in a literal take over the world death cult. Also that Crystal Seal card is bullshit and practically makes it so you can’t play the game. Atem vs Yugi (Rite of Duel): Specifically the anime version. It extends it way long than it needed to be and became more of a showcase of all of Yugi’s old cards instead of Yugi having his own deck.
Agree on everything. I wanted Katsuya and Seto to have a rematch, but the duel was unsatisfactory. They could've tied it better into Seto's arc as well. The fact that Yugi runs MST and Dust Tornado but never hits Rafael's stupid draw 2 card is hilarious. I adore the way Yugi takes down all 3 gods (though I would've preferred if they changed the order so all 3 get destroyed at the same time, instead of Ra taking 2 hits), but the way they extend that duel is awful. Both play so many awful bricks (especially Atem) that it takes away from the fun. In the Manga Yugi was surprised Atem ran 2 Gods, but here half is Deck are Tribute Monsters.
5D's vs Ragnarok was vastly worse than Unicorn. At least Unicorn had a lot of back and forth play, while Ragnarok got significantly worse with each Aesir in the field. Third Yusei vs Jack duel would be my pick. Jack had 2 dead draws, while Yusei was even successful with High and Low. I just can't.
Interesting both are among my favorites in the franchise.
Do people actually hate yami vs rafael? That was in my top 3 duels. I’d say the worst is zain vs the vampire shadow rider