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OP: “Kizuna” by Kra
ED: “START” by Nagagauchi Masataka
Production: NAS?
Yu-Gi-Oh 5D’s

[ Episode 1: Riding Duel! Acceleration! ]

And you thought GX was bad.

I have a confession to make, I like Yu-Gi-Oh. True, the story is retarded, the characters are one dimensional and the morals are as important as table manners for Naruto. Yet there is something about the series, something captivating, that I cannot understand why. Maybe it’s because the premise is so stupid, it’s enjoyable. If you heard about “Yu-Gi-Oh the Abridged Series”, and if you didn’t you probably haven’t heard about youtube.com, you know it cracks about the many flaws the show has, which makes it an even greater guilty pleasure. After 220 episodes, the creators decided to send Yugi to a retirement house and send in Yuki (and no, I won’t call him “Jaden”), a spunky guy who just wants to duel. He duels in his academy and beats most of the students, and saves the world three times, but he barely graduates. Yes, saving the world does not translate to graduation. Yu-Gi-Oh GX wasn’t a great sequel and it’s even more stupid that the original, but at least it had charming characters.

But alas, as much as I liked the old shows, this one sets a new record. Yu-Gi-Oh 5D’s is pure garbage. The only saving grace of the anime, its goofiness, is thrown out for a much more grittier setting. Everything is a lot darker and even the opening theme sounds like the start of a Maximum the Hormone song, albeit it gets more cheery afterwards. This, however, doesn’t compare to the most ridiculous thing I have seen since Naruto Shippuuden 28’s “let’s be stronger than what we were 10 minutes ago” crap: Duel Monsters… ON MOTORBIKES! Are you yanking my chain?! MOTORBIKES?! I know the show wants to be extreme, but look what this approach did to Beyblade. I mean come on! It’s tiny spinning tops, I don’t need all those zoom-ins and flashy effects to blur the fact it’s just 2 tops trying to knock each other.

Let’s try to be more serious. Our lead hero name is Yusei Fuudo… Yusei? You say that’s his name? You say he is a lame character?! Sorry but I can’t contain myself, Yusei is pretty much an emo version of Yuki Judai with Yugi’s outrageous hair. He barely speaks so he can act cool in front of his entrouge and all he care his pimping his D-Wheeler. What’s a D-Wheeler? That’s the aforementioned motorbike I was ranting about! Clever guys, try to give it a different name so 4 year olds won’t know it’s a god damn BIKE! A bike that has a duel disk inserted in it, believe it or not!

His rival? Jack Atlas? More like Jack-ASS the way he is portrayed. All they say about him that he is the king of the ring and that’s mainly because he stole Yusei’s cards. So it’s only the first episode and besides the occasional pictures of cards flying by and duel monsters, nothing looks or sounds like Yu-Gi-Oh. I don’t expect them to show Yugi or Kaiba every 6 seconds, but at least show a connection like GX did.

Moving on. A little girl steals a chip in order to help Yusei improve his oh-so precious D-Wheeler, but the police is on his trail. Their leader stops Yusei at a dead end and asks him to turn in. So how does Yusei responds to that? WANNA DUEL?! SERIOUSLY?! WANNA DUEL?! I can’t believe he said it! Imagine you are driving over the speed limit and a big cop stopping you and asking for you license, will you go and say “let’s duel”?! Saying that in real life will guarantee you a duel, all right, against greasy convicts who want a piece of you. Who the guy thinks he is anyway acting like such a hotshot?! Moreover, the cop actually agrees! COME ON!

Now for the duel itself, which now takes place on the D-Wheelers. The two duelist place a spell card called “Speed World” and the D-Wheeler initiate auto pilot. After that the two duel until one player has all of his life points depleted and the duel ends. You see the second sentence? That is what Yu-Gi-Oh always was, two duelists card battling to inflict as much damage as usual with their monsters. I don’t know what those Japanese corporate suits were thinking, but those two might as well duel on foot, it’s the exact same thing. There is also a stupid gimmick about speed counters that affect the speed of the D-Wheeler, but the series doesn’t explain it at all. Come to think it, there is no introduction what so ever and the viewer is sent to the lions not knowing that a confusing abomination is about to commence!

Like pgsels stated in his first impressions of the show, the dialogue is downright horrible. It’s the worst shounen cliches I have seen since Beet the Vandel Buster (the only Shounen show I couldn’t watch more than a single episode). Adding insult to injury is when Yusei gets into a pinch amidst the duel. When he draws his next card, he says, and I quote: “I have faith in you, my cards. Heed my voice.” Heed my voice, fellow readers: CHEESINESS. It pissed me enough that Yugi had to say that every single duel when he is in a pinch, but that emo bang biker as well?! Judai at least was cool and only dueled for fun and not for “heart of the cards”. It was cute and charming in 2001, but it’s 2008 and times have changed and I at least expect a little more sophistication from the writers, but for god sakes it’s Yu-Gi-Oh! The last thing I would ever receive is sophistication!

Come to think of it, another cliche the show keeps churning is the whole “antagonists drops protagonist’s life points to 100 points, but gets demolished a turn afterwards thanks to just one small card he happened to draw that turn”. Now this is something I want to stress out: Yu-Gi-Oh, the actual card game, is nothing like that. What the show does is giving the characters the best cards they can have in the best situations. I’ll give you an example from this episode: Yusei just happens to draw Junk Synchron, and with that card he is able to merge with a different monster and win the entire match. Imagine if he drew something like, Kuriboh (the alleged lamest card in the game), he’ll be screwed. That’s how real life is, you don’t get what you want, and it’s too bad the series relies on too many coincidences that around this point, it’s not even arises the question who is going to win, let alone the necessity of watching the next god-awful episode.

I better end this on a happy note, the OP is at least cool. That’s the only good thing I can say about 5D’s. The writing is cheesy and ridiculous, the characters (including Yusei’s buddies) are bland and generic, the scenery is dull and drab with all the dark colors which makes the show looks like a bad sci-fi anime and the worst part of all is the actual duels might as well be on foot since the motorbikes only add an extra ounce of cheesiness. This is the only episode I am ever going to write about and if you guys will ask me “Yu Sei this anime sucks?” I’ll respond with “Only a Jack-ASS will watch it”.

That’s game! OVER!

2/10