Yu-Gi-Oh! Arc-V S1E3: “Dark Village Pendulum Summon Stolen”

Time for another blast from the past for the thread! Yu-Gi-Oh! Arc-V is a show that sort of bewildered me when I saw the first couple of episodes more than a year ago. Lots of well done character writing and world building, except for the occasionally just bizarre plot point that I couldn't wrap my head around. Especially when said points made the otherwise well-written characters seem like fever-dream hallucinations. And not even in an outrageously or amusingly WTF way like JJBA at its best; just flat "huh?"

In any case, this is the first of five more episodes in queue. Hopefully it'll hold my interest despite these issues.


Each episode of this show starts out with a recap, which is very fortunate in this case since it's been so long for me. The long and short of it is that everyone thought that Yuya had discovered a hidden technique in the Action Dueling game, or had a magic power that let him make it do things it normally didn't that they thought he could teach to other people, or...something. But, since he wasn't able to repeat the Pendulum Summon on command, most of his new admirers left him and decided that he must have "cheated" somehow when he did it at the publicity event before. I really do not know what counts as cheating and what doesn't in this game. A small handful of them still believe in him though, and are staying enrolled in the You Show/Yusyo/whatever dueling club for that reason. Implicitly, no one has decided to stay there based on the club's actual merits. Also, the president of LeoCorp is investigating this or something. That brings us up to date.

Yuya is sparring relentlessly against what's his name, the manly man whose name sounds like Gorgonzola. After hundreds of matches, Yuya finally manages to do the thing again and make three OP monsters appear from a single summon.

Why it worked this time and not during any of the many previous attempts he made over the course of the night, he has no idea.

The next day, Yuya sleeps through half of his classes at school because he was up all night trying to make Pendulum Summon work. I honestly forgot that he even went to school, lol. And, just his luck, it turns out that his teacher is the only person in this entire world who doesn't think holographic Pokemon ripoffs are more important than education, childrearing, and life itself.

Man, what are the odds?​

Roll OP. It's slightly too long for how little informative or anticipation-building content it contains, but it's still kinda fun.

Reopen on Yuya and Zuzu (the daughter of the guy who runs You Show. I forget exactly what their relation to Yuya's missing father who died of cowardice is, but it was something) leaving school at the end of the day. She's scolding him for not taking better care of himself, and for waking up blabbing about action dueling and pulling cards out of nowhere when the teacher shocked him awake. He just complements her on the perfect comedic timing with how she leaned across the aisle from her own desk and bopped him over the head in a fit of fremdschamen. Heh, that's a nice little character moment for both of them.

As they reach the sidewalk, they're approached by the three younger kids who decided to keep coming to You Show, who have apparently heard that Yuya managed to make Pendulum Summon work again. Before they can exchange many words though, Yuya is abruptly hit in the nose by a trio of sticky darts. Apparently, that's a slightly older-looking weirdo's way of introducing himself.

Looks like an anime rival. Oh joy.

The weirdo, Shingo, starts exaggeratedly fanboying at Yuya in a way that doesn't feel remotely genuine even without his less-than-respectful icebreaker coming before it. Going on about how it's probably only the "chosen one" who can use special cards like the ones he used.

Literally what?

I'm just going to assume he's being completely facetious here, and that this "chosen one" concept isn't actually a thing that anyone else believes in. Because if it is, then there's no way in hell they would be judgy at him for "cheating." Or else there'd be rules against using bullshit special cards that only some people can arbitrarily use in pro or even serious-amateur matches.

So yeah. I'm going to assume it's all sarcasm.

The weirdo, named now as Sawatari, invites Yuya to show his moves at a bigger venue than You Show. He's apparently booked a holoarena in a bigger dueling club for this afternoon. He *already* booked it? Either he's very confident he won't be turned down, or he's just planning to ghost his planned opponent in favor of Yuya lol. Or else the club is owned by his dad or something, that could also be.

Also, Sawatari has the most inexplicable theme music ever. It's like a...game show theme, almost?

Yuya and Zuzu are shocked to hear what he managed to reserve on such short notice, implying that it's a bigger deal than I thought. I was right about how he managed to reserve it, though, at least kind of:

Son of an influential local politician. Close enough to what I guessed.

Oh. Wait. That hair. He's the son of that LeoCorp executive we saw being all ominous before, isn't he? Yeah, I'll bet he is.

Zuzu reminds Yuya that the kiddies at You Show will be expecting him during the same timeslot. However, since all three of said kiddies (at least, I don't think we saw any others stick around at the end of episode 2) are present and eager to see Yuya use the bigger venue, and Sawatari is willing to let them come too. So, off they go. Sawatari grins when none of them can see his face, and whispers about how all is going according to keikaku. Then...yup, the gym he was referring to is attached to the LeoCorp tower.

They walk through a huge corporate gymnasium to get to the arena. Notably, the (mostly child) students seem to be lifting weights and taking classes in rooms full of desks as well as actually playing the game. I'd have thought that the technicalities of card-summoning would be easier to learn practically, but I guess a classroom setting works for at least some of it.

The weightlifting is honestly harder for me to square with the game. Track-running and the like would make sense, since they have to run around the arena to collect those action cards, but upper body strength? Eh, I guess the holoterrain sometimes has climbable elements and stuff, so it works ish.

Zuzu is feeling very bad about how impressed both the kiddies and Yuya himself are by this multimillion dollar corporate megagym. Comparing it unfavorably to her father's neighborhood dueling club that needed to essentially win the lottery just to get a working holoprojector after their last one wore out. Sawatari keeps rubbing it in, either on purpose to be mean or just totally oblivious thanks to his privilege.

There's also this blue-haired girl who the camera lingers on as she passes Yuya in the hall. Yuya stares. Have we seen her before? I can't remember.

Sawatari walks them out into the arena, where a bunch of other guys his own age are waiting. Also fans of Yuya's, according to Sawatari. He then asks if he can see the cards Yuya used for the Pendulum Summon, and when he does Sawatari just forcibly grabs them out of his hand and says he's keeping them and his friends will beat them up if they try to take them back.

What? All that setup just for that? He could have just done that on the street somewhere lol.

Or...okay, apparently the reason he brought them here specifically was because he wants to try out his new Pendulum Summon (assuming he can get it to work) immediately. And um. Apparently he wants Yuya to duel him so that he can do it. Which he thinks the guy who he just basically mugged is totally going to do because um...reasons?

Before Yuya and Co can react to this Sawatari gets a call on his Yu-Gi-Oh smartphone thingy. Some shadowy figure who does NOT seem to be his father is telling him to stop screwing around and just bring the cards in already. Sawatari thinks for a moment, and then tells the man on the other end - who he names as Nakajima - to fuck off, he wants to use the cards right now in a gigantic arena where everyone looking out the windows from the nearby tower can probably see.

The man tells Sawatari what the actual fuck.

Before he can really take the kid to task (or, like, disconnect the holoprojector, assuming he's in the nearby tower and can access it readily) though, another person in the office tells him to let it go. It's Sawatari Senior, of course. Fuck, his hair is even stupider and looks even worse with those glasses than I remembered. Anyway, he tells his secretary to pipe down and let his son do his thing.

...and I just now remembered that this is supposed to be in Miami, for some reason. Despite all the Japanese names and the Japanese everything. But hey, they finally got something right. "Florida man and son capture children and force them to fight holograms in private gym" is exactly what I expect newspaper headlines from 20 years in the future to read like.

Sawatari tosses Yuya a bunch of very weak cards and tells him that's what he's got to work with. I guess Yuya didn't have any cards on him besides the couple that just got stolen. Sawatari then has his friends grab Zuzu and the little kids, and tells Yuya that their safety is contingent on him dueling him right here, right now. He then activates the holoprojector and fills the arena with a nighttime urban cityscape called "Dark Village," and has his friends leave Yuya's friends on a patch of floor that quickly becomes the top of a tall pylon tower at the center of an intracity bridge.

Those bridge towers are REALLY tall. Tall enough that they must stick way up above the sides of the seemingly open-roofed arena and be visible from the streets outside the complex. This is not good optics for LeoCorp, lol.

So, they start playing Calvinball. They play for a while. Things that I don't understand happen. Florida Man Junior goes all over the top sadistic anime villain even more than he already was. He tries to do the Pendulum Summon, but Florida Man tells him to wait before doing it. Some trap card gets activated that pelts Yuya with giant billiard balls, some of which slam into the side of the bridge tower that the hostages are on and nearly makes them fall off.

Would falling off a holographic tower onto holographic pavement or water actually hurt them? This battle does remind us that Action Duel contestants have a machine-tracked hit point column just like their monsters do, which implies that the holoprojector has safeties that prevent serious injury. Although...there typically aren't supposed to be more than two people in the arena during a duel, so maybe the safeties won't recognize the hostages? I don't know. I have no idea if the tower falling would actually put them in danger. They're panicking, but unfortunately the actions of the characters in this show have little to do with how the world around them actually works, so I can't infer anything from that.

One of the little kids almost falls off the edge, and Zuzu responds to his tears and screaming thusly:

Charming.

Calvinball continues. Score is oogie to boogie in Florida Boy's favor, and Yuya is tripping into vortex spot after vortex spot without a boomerang zone in sight. There's a moment where it looks like Yuya is about to get to the Opposite Pole and flip the vortex back around on Florida Boy, but in his distress Yuya forget that it was Opposite Day so he had to not declare the opposition effect by vocally declaring it. Everything is getting tenser and more dramatic by the second, in terms of music and framing and so forth, which...oh dammit, it's the same problem as before isn't it?

...

Does Yuya have to actually BEAT Florida Boy in order to rescue his friends, or just fight reasonably well? Like what, is Florida Boy just going to straight up murder them if Yuya loses? Or...maybe with the crumbling tower he doesn't have to do it proactively at this point, I don't know, would that fall actually hurt them or not? It's not clear at all, and I'm not inclined to be sanguine here because the show has already had this EXACT problem once before.

When Yuya dueled that Strong Ishimura guy at the charity event, the show's framing and the characters themselves kept acting like this was a battle with stakes. Even though Yuya had already gotten the reward just by showing up, and would have redeemed his family's inexplicably tarnished name even in defeat as long as he played a decent-ish game.

I feel like the show expects me to be invested in these battles' outcomes just *because* they are Yu-Gi-Oh matches. Never mind the fact that nobody in REAL LIFE cares that much about the outcome of Yu-Gi-Oh matches. Not even the kids who are playing them, as often as not.

So, is this battle important because Yuya needs to win it to save his friends from a nebulously defined fate at the hands of Florida Boy? Or has he already saved them just by playing, with the battle's outcome only mattering because of fuck you that's why? I have no way to tell. It could just as easily be either of them.

...

Then, all of a sudden, Florida Man calls his son again and tells him that NOW he can use the Pendulum Summon. I'm not sure what changed, but okay. Florida Boy inserts the cards into the machine, declares the thing, and...it works. Huh. That's actually surprising. And also raises even more questions than it NOT working would have raised. Not the good kind of questions.

One aspect that really doesn't help is Yuya's shocked and crestfallen reaction when he sees Florida Boy successfully Pendulum Summon.

Dude, what?

Didn't you attract a huge crowd of prospective students to You Show under the assumption that you could teach other people to do that?

Do you have any reason to think that you, alone, magically, have some kind of technopathic power that makes the machines give this highly specific ability to you?

If you DID think that, then how the hell was what you were doing not cheating? Why would you OR ANYONE ELSE WHO BELIEVED THAT have not interpreted it as cheating?

I don't think there's any way you can slice this without it crashing down harder than a bucket of water in the Pernicious Poem Place.

Up in his evil tower, Florida Man narrows his eyes coldly, and whispers "good."

End episode, thank fucking god.


I'm trying to think if there was ANY age I could have watched this at without seeing at least some of these problems. Maybe at age 4-6? 7, on a bad day? Who is this show for? What age range? It *looks* like it's targeted at older kids, but like...how?

Four more episodes. FOUR MORE EPISODES of this shit in queue. I guess I'm going to have a miserable couple of weeks, and you're all going to just suffer along with me.