Yu-Gi-Oh! Arc V S1E6: “Death-Toy Scissor Bear”

I'd include a summary of where we left off, but that wouldn't make this any easier to follow so why bother.


Yuya and Blue are still fighting in candyland. The observers further explain that Blue used a known spell card, "polymerization," to fuse two of his monsters into one strong monster, which makes all the awe and shock that everyone displayed at seeing him do this a moment ago even stupider than it already was. They also babble some nonsense about how the big LeoCorp dueling school teaches this technique, and ponder about whether or not Blue could have gone there before Zuzu reminds them that he hadn't quite enrolled yet.

...

Okay. Show. You JUST established that the LeoCorp-owned LDS school is the biggest game in town for Action Duels. Big supergym full of hundreds of members. It's the Wal-Mart to the other local dueling clubs' corner stores. Why would membership there be something to speculate over or be impressed by?

Also...maybe this is down to me lacking context from the earlier shows, but what the hell do you mean "teaching this technique?" He has a spell card in his possession. He plays the spell card in conjunction with two monster cards, and they fuse. How the hell is that supposed to be a "technique" that requires "learning?" Is it like Fullmetal Alchemist where you need to perform elaborate mental calculations to make your pokey-man cards work? Does the machine refuse to make the spell effect happen if you don't massage it with your tongue just right?

The best I can think of is that you need to know which cards are compatible with which other cards for polymerization. But, you could learn at least some combinations just by watching action duels on TV, right? Again, this game is a global obsession. You should be able to learn most of the rules and options through cultural osmosis by age eight, even without ever touching a single card yourself.

You know what this reminds me of? Isekai. I mean, the bad kind of isekai, where the magical world is literally a computer game that runs on XP and levels. The protagonist gains power just by gathering points, which grant him new abilities out of the ether that he never has to practice, train, or invent in order to use...but then he still gets his dick sucked by the surrounding narrative for having "achieved" such awesome powers. It's the ultimate lazy underachiever's entitlement fantasy.

Now, Yu-Gi-Oh! Arc-V isn't as bad about this about some of those isekai series. At the very least, it's not just the main characters who get credit they don't deserve for being handed unearned abilities. And the show does pay lip service to the concept of there being some kind of actual skill involved, what with the shots of people sitting in classrooms and working out in gyms at the big dueling school. But I really am having trouble connecting that with the things that the characters are actually impressed or surprised by in the duels themselves. What Blue did here didn't seem like it required any esoteric knowledge or skill; he just put his cards into the machine, and it did the work for him. There was no feat of physical ability on display (as far as I can tell, the weightlifting we saw is just to make you better at scrambling for action cards). Everyone is awed and impressed at Blue for, as far as I can tell, owning some cards.

Just like Yuya with his pendulum summoning. Only with him at least there was the question of why he has those cards and no one else does (or...DOES anyone else have them? This has not been made at all clear). But at any rate, this is a world in which people don't just worship you for being really good at videogames. It's one where they worship you for having paid a bunch of microtransactions for overpowered loot.

Which isn't unrealistic, neccessarily. God knows real life societies can worship people for owning things they didn't earn through any personal merit. But the way this show seems to be unironically celebrating this and expecting the viewer to feel the same way is really getting sand in my vagina.

...

So, they keep playing Calvinball, now with the addition of a hybrid monster. Ten minutes of screentime later, something happens that might be kinda sorta worth talking about. Blue beats Yuya to an action card through a combination of incredible athleticism, and good tactical thinking in destroying the monsters that Yuya could use as mounts to move faster.

Okay, see? THIS is good sports drama stuff. He's demonstrating actual skill, of a kind that could reasonably come through the types of study and exercise we see Action Duelists doing.

It also builds off of Blue's character introduction, where he quickly runs up and punches out three older boys before they can react. He's got exceptional strength and speed, and he's practiced and honed them well. It makes this scene more about the characters and less about which cards they happen to own.

Unfortunately, this turns out to be a very brief hope spot as far as my enjoyment of the episode is concerned.

The battle goes on. We're more than halfway through the episode now, and it's still just this mostly-friendly duel whose stakes are a (non-binding, as far as I can tell) promise that Yuya will mentor Blue if he can beat him. And even if it is binding, due to whatever residual mysticism Arc-V retains from the earlier series, the last couple of episodes have made Yuya's refusal to accept Blue up front seem really weird and irrational. The kid SAVED HIM AND HIS FRIENDS. Since then he's been clingy and stalker-y, but not actually harmful, and Yuya's hostility toward him predates him doing any of the actually bad behavior.

During this action duel, Blue acts a little smug at times when he was Yuya on the back foot, but in a way that makes him seem more exuberant than malicious. He also takes his own knocks with grace and humility (much more than Yuya demonstrates, in fact). The worst thing you could say about his personality, both here and in the episode leading up to it, is that he's immature and has a poor sense of boundaries, but given that he also appears to be a little younger than the other characters that seem forgivable.

So...what are the stakes even PRETENDING TO BE in this fight? It's not like the last duel, where the duel tried to make the audience think that its outcome would determine Yuya and his friends' safety. Or even like the one in the pilot, where it tried to make the audience forget that Yuya had already gotten everything he and his dueling club needed from the publicity match just by showing up. Between last episode and this one, we've had a full episode's worth of screentime dedicated to a duel that will determine whether Yuya will take this seemingly promising (if a little over-excited and socially inept) kid on as a trainee. Oh the drama. Oh the excitement. I'm holding my fucking breath.

Yuya has a breakdown in the middle of the match when Blue beats one of his pendulum monsters, and he has another flashback to his father to help him deal with this agonizing personal crisis. Yawn.

In the flashback, Babby Yuya has lost the little pendulum-necklace his dad gave him. His father tells him to lift his head up and laugh even when he wants to cry. By raising his head, Babby Yuya happens to spot the sunlight glinting off of the necklace where it's hanging from the branches of a tree. He must have been tossing it around or something and gotten it stuck on a branch.

Okay. How is that applicable to this situation? How is that the lesson he needs to remember now?

A much more appropriate memory would be something like Babby Yuya throwing a tantrum because he didn't win a a game of tic-tac-toe, and Yusyo telling him to grow the fuck up.

Or, if he's REALLY dreading having to mentor Blue (as mishandled as his developing antipathy for him was) and the wager he made to him actually is spiritually binding or something, it should be a lesson to the effect of "you need to learn to live with your mistakes" or "never make a promise you're not okay with having to keep" or such.

Yuya snaps back to the present, and realizes that the important thing here isn't to win, but to entertain. Um...I don't think it's even THAT, in this case, but at least he's much closer to the mark than he was a minute ago.

Also, while he was having his depression flashback, Blue was trying to figure out why the pendulum summon'd monster he just took out didn't get buff his own monster using its life-point-absorbing power. And, it turns out that pendulum summoned monsters don't die if reduced to 0 hp; they go back to the player's "second hand" and can be re-deployed, seemingly indefinitely.

Everyone oohs and ahs over how amazing this is. Instead of laughing about what shit game design it is and rightly agreeing that pendulum summoning was a mistake that should be banned from all professional matches. You know, because the writers were morons.

Also, the flashback turns out to be even more inappropriate to the situation than it seemed at first. Yuya remembering that the point of these matches is to have fun and entertain the audience has absolutely no bearing on his Pendulum Summoned monsters turning out to be even more broken than he thought. The defeated monster would have gone back to his hand no matter how well or poorly he reacted to its defeat, or which childhood memory he psyched himself back up with.

Yuya wins the game. Hooray. I was worried for a minute, there. Blue is a graceful loser, which seems to surprise everyone for some reason even though its 100% consistent with how he's acted up until now.

Blue asks Yuya if, despite not having been accepted as his pupil, he can at least still be his friend. Okay, the obnoxious part of Blue's personality that can't take no for an answer is coming back around now, though it's still undermined by how Yuya was this cold and ungrateful toward him even before he started acting this way.

Then the bossman, Zuzu's father, tells Blue that regardless of whether Yuya wants to be his mentor or his friend, he'd love to have Blue as a member at You Show. Blue eagerly accepts.

For the *third fucking time,* the action duel pretended that its outcome would have an impact on the plot in either a major or minor way, only for that to be dismissed without a thought within 2 minutes of the duel ending.

Two episodes. Almost two entire episodes were spent on this duel.

I can't even.

The end.


You can tell me that this is just a kids' show and isn't meant to be scrutinized like this. I'll reply that if you want your kids to take the short bus to school for the next five years, you can feel free to let them watch it.