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Favorite Yu-Gi-Oh spin-off?


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I still prefer the entirety of 5D's to GX. I mean, both series' have different storylines. 5D's pans out like your typical Teenage-oriented Shonen anime, with dark themes, awesome-yet-improbably-stupid moments and the POWER OF NAKAMA AND KIZUNA THAT MAKES YOU FLY IN SPACE WHILE MAGICALLY TURNING GOLD. Characters like  Kalin Kiryu and Vizor Bruno was actually close to making me cry, and the entirety of CrashTown Arc was amazing. The Three Emperors, Jose Jakob, Primo Placido, and Lester Lucciano are actually pretty good villains too.

 

GX on the other hand, is a lot more light-hearted and doesn't take itself too seriously. I actually like seeing the minor characters interact with one another. Basically, GX is the brief period between the Dark Signers and World Grand Prix arcs of 5D's extended to 3 seasons. 


I only watched the first 15 episodes of Zexal and quitted after seeing Yuma turn Super Saiyan. 

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GX's main draw for me is the light-heartedness played somewhat well compared to the rest of the franchise, while managing to have its dark moments too. 5Ds only piqued my interest when the plot shifted into high gears, somewhere in the Dark Signers arc. ZeXal just sucked in my eyes until recent episodes (the ones without Yuma).

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I liked Yusei as a main because he did several things I liked.

He stood by the weaker monsters (who went a little bit more powerful as time went on) but didn't look stupid while doing it (all the time) like Yuma.

He had actual ISSUES to overcome. Getting out of what was considered to be "the bad life" even though he didn't hate it.

That, and later on people having counters to Synchros. I found that to be neat. 

And his hair was the best. Bestest eva.

Also, he had to overcome his doubts to get the power he needed. He didn't just fuse with some spirit and get the ultimate power he needed. And he (hardly, I think he NEVER did it, unless the 5 Tuners thing counts) warped the odds of his Main deck. 

 

I watch the series for the plot and the duels, since dueling is the plot. =P 

Except for all dem plot cards, its usually fine. Some series, I just couldn't watch because the duels kind of sucked. You gotta have good plot for me, and some decent duels.

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I still prefer the entirety of 5D's to GX. I mean, both series' have different storylines. 5D's pans out like your typical Teenage-oriented Shonen anime, with dark themes, awesome-yet-improbably-stupid moments and the POWER OF NAKAMA AND KIZUNA THAT MAKES YOU FLY IN SPACE WHILE MAGICALLY TURNING GOLD. Characters like  Kalin Kiryu and Vizor Bruno was actually close to making me cry, and the entirety of CrashTown Arc was amazing. The Three Emperors, Jose Jakob, Primo Placido, and Lester Lucciano are actually pretty good villains too.

 

GX on the other hand, is a lot more light-hearted and doesn't take itself too seriously. I actually like seeing the minor characters interact with one another. Basically, GX is the brief period between the Dark Signers and World Grand Prix arcs of 5D's extended to 3 seasons. 


I only watched the first 15 episodes of Zexal and quitted after seeing Yuma turn Super Saiyan. 

Just wanted to point this out. Jose is the Japanese name and Jakob the English one, so you scratched the wrong one.

Then again, I agree Jakob sounds better than Jose. It's the one and probably only name that sounds better than the original.

 

 

 

 

 

More on topic, to be fair I initially was greatly disappointed with GX, after watching the all serious duels of DM, I couldn't stand watching an episode about Jaden dueling a jungle guy over a sandwich, and I finally ragequit and dropped it after the episode where he duels a monkey was aired in Mexico. So back then it was lowest of the low. I continued hating on it during most, if not all, of the 5Ds era, where 5Ds was overall better even with it's flaws.

Though 5Ds became really forced in many aspects, and by the end of it, when Z-One was revealed to have become Yusei's copy at some point, rather than he being the actual future Yusei, they lost me, right after not saying what happened to Paradox, not ultimately giving any real purpose to Cherry, having Rua get his dragon when all 5 signers were already existent (even though it looked like he was originally gonna be one but ended up being dropped, and instead was delayed 100 or so episodes and appeared at what I think was a more meh time to appear than the Dark Signer arc), and how Aki and Crow didn't have individual climax duels. I ended up waiting for next gen to come.  There's also that I never quite got Z-One's motivation for going back to kill Yusei and reviving his life-long friends to help him, only to betray them, have them fight each other, and switch to Yusei's side (yes I actually understand what they were going for, I just don't think it was executed in quite the best way....)

 

Anyways.. then during ZeXal, I re-watched GX, and well.... it has a bunch of decks that range from most of the cardpool in existence back in the day, like Mokey Mokey, Umi, etc. Along with introducing new cards, so it's essentially a lot of fanservice to those that followed the game IRL, not to mention they actually had the rules of the game right much much more than DM. Also the strategies are varied due to this, and Fusions are not quite as prevalent. When Jaden didn't fuse, it actually involved something that was already in his deck to begin with, like Bladedge. Once I got sick of ZeXal, GX was heaven, even more so for a nostalgia fan like me. The story might not have been the best at all, but it had some very great characters. Chazz is still considered arguably the best rival of all generations, and Bastion not for anything is he actually iconic of the series. Though the catch with GX is that you have to watch it as a comedy. If you expect something serious and satisfying it's gonna be bad.

 

 

ZeXal? ZeXal initially tried to squeese as many parallels as it could from the other series (mainly DM), added bigger powercreep, more linear plays (You know everyone is gonna start with an Xyz... except Kaito, but you know Galaxy-Eyes is coming, and there's nothing wrong with having a boss/Ace, but when you have a random anime deck full of potential variety and only go for the Ace everytime, that's wasted potential) and tried to get a GX feel, except the characters are a lot weaker. For starters, all of Yuma's crew is crap, and even though the Varians and Arclights were well made originally, there's something about ZeXal overall that brings them down to me.

 

 

[spoiler=Finally, I'll copy/paste a Youtube reply of mine to someone saying Yuma has grown (with small edits for improvement)]

 

 I don't think Yuma actually grew the right way. The problem was not just about being bad at the game, but about the mentality of "I'll just keep bouncing my head on the wall until it hopefully breaks". He was always positive and energetic enough to keep trying no matter what, but he would never stop to analyze why he failed and never really did anything to further his goal other than repeating himself.

Examples? Yuma kept the same deck for years, and lost all the time, not just because he was bad at managing it, but also because it focused on Xyzs, yet he spent years without a single one up until Utopia came along. Then later on, I don't consider any Zexal Weapons to be Yuma taking strategic steps to beat all his opponents since they are one-shot on the spot creations to pull a win off the ass, and he has over 60% of the Numbers plus a handful of non-Number Xyzs on him at all times (which who knows why he suddenly has most of those non-Number ones out of the blue if they were hard enough to get to have him stay with 0 Xyzs for years). Yet Utopia everywhere is what we get from an Extra Deck that's twice as big as Jaden's. Same old trick.

When Astral left to his world after having won against 96, he entrusted Yuma with the pile of Numbers and I bet he trusted Yuma to have grown up and to know what to do. Oh but he instead goes to cry in his room until former enemies come cheer him up (III). This happened pretty recently and it's a very solid testament to how much he can manage actual hardships, and how much he actually has grown.

Also, Yuma's lost duels were 99% either off-screen, casual ones with players, or turned out to not actually have consequences. The remaining 1% is pretty much the game he lost to Shark in season 1, which had sweet consequences for Yuma. So his "bad player" trait is almost pointless. There were never any thoughts shown to be given to his deck while building it, or him even hinting at modifying the deck for X reason. He was shown making it before the WDC but that's about it.

Well, there was the hammer attack-negating spell he used against Heartland, but that's pretty stupid if you look at it. Everyone's been negating Utopia for almost 80 episodes now. It was about time, and it's almost the end of the series so, come on. It took past episode 100 for a measure like that to be taken?


Overall Yuma's growth had very poor execution. It's not even about how badly he starts, but how and how much it grows along the ways.

[/spoiler]

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GX is my favorite spin-off. It's just more entertaining with the overall package than the other two, at least for me.

It was consistent and slowly got better and better, unlike 5Ds, which had a meh 2nd half, and Zexal which tried to be a shonen action show for some reason.

I did like 5Ds a lot though, it's just a shame things took a dip in quality. I don't hate Zexal, but god could it have been a million times better.

 

This is just me again, but I liked the duels and decks a lot better in GX than any other series, DM included.

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GX comes in second although storyline didn't really blend too much. Season 4 was awesome, though 4Kids cut it off to make way for 5Ds. Jaden/Judai is one of the reasons I still play E-HEROs, though in a hybrid form. It is nice to see him mature over the seasons though.

 

GX has always been my favorite.

 

The E-HEROs have been a deck I've somewhat gotten down pack to a certain degree. Not only that, but Season 4 was the most interesting season, only because of Jaden being one of the characters that began to mature during the series.

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  • 1 month later...

I liked GX as a kid, not so much looking back. The GX and R manga were both pretty good (even though the online scanlations for the manga never went past chapter 45 and I never saw the Masked/Vision Hero's). 5D's was interesting at the beginning, but I gave up around the Dark Signers arc, just dropped Yugioh for a while.

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I will have to go with GX.

 

It's the most imaginative series character-wise.

 

Jaden is basically Goku. Not very interesting, but this is shonen, and his aloofness was occasionally funny. And, his relationship with Dorothy was cute.

Syrus is a less awesome Jimmy Olsen.

Chumley...has a koala face, and looks awesome for it. He also gets one of the best duels in the show.

Alexis is the only strong female lead in the show's history.

Zane is a generic cool guy turned evil douchebag by a humiliating game loss, followed by a string of losses, much like the basic heel turns in wrestling.

Bastion's the smart guy, and showed that characters in Yu-Gi-Oh! can be smart enough to run an existing card against an opponent's deck...hey, Yusei. Did you catch all that?

Chazz, the true star of the show, starts off as Kaiba, then turns into something greater in The Chazz

Crowler, the scheming teacher who wants to gets rid of that meddling Jaden who's too oblivious.

 

Then, there are the one-off characters like that Tarzan guy who was obsessed with drawing cards, Dimitri the netdecker (the anti-netdecking message of that episode was retarded btw), and the amazonian who married Bastion.

 

The more serious story arcs were lame (the Society of Light's members were funny though), and the attempt to turn Jaden from Goku into Batman-lite in the second half made me groan, but the characters were what made the show fun.

 

Story-wise, with all these goofy characters, regulars and one-offs, the show would've been better as a school anime with card games instead of being a school anime with cards sometimes, while emulating the original series "save the world" crap the rest of the time. After Jaden vs Chazz in the battle of the schools, the Shadow Riders arc felt slapped on like they suddenly remembered this was Yu-Gi-Oh! Society of Light really should've been the first world-saving arc since the cult did work with the show's school setting better.

 

But, GX's last season was the best of the four series. It's the only arc where we see the characters prepare for their futures after school. 5D's tried it, but they stuffed all of it into three episodes, most of which consisted of a duel, while GX gave the graduating main characters and Crowler each their own episodes, ending it with Jaden.

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But, GX's last season was the best of the four series. It's the only arc where we see the characters prepare for their futures after school. 5D's tried it, but they stuffed all of it into three episodes, most of which consisted of a duel, while GX gave the graduating main characters and Crowler each their own episodes, ending it with Jaden.

I agree, GX's season 4 was pretty good, such a shame that series wasn't dubbed. Though I preferred the subbed version anyway.

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I will have to go with GX.

 

It's the most imaginative series character-wise.

 

Jaden is basically Goku. Not very interesting, but this is shonen, and his aloofness was occasionally funny. And, his relationship with Dorothy was cute.

Syrus is a less awesome Jimmy Olsen.

Chumley...has a koala face, and looks awesome for it. He also gets one of the best duels in the show.

Alexis is the only strong female lead in the show's history.

Zane is a generic cool guy turned evil douchebag by a humiliating game loss, followed by a string of losses, much like the basic heel turns in wrestling.

Bastion's the smart guy, and showed that characters in Yu-Gi-Oh! can be smart enough to run an existing card against an opponent's deck...hey, Yusei. Did you catch all that?

Chazz, the true star of the show, starts off as Kaiba, then turns into something greater in The Chazz

Crowler, the scheming teacher who wants to gets rid of that meddling Jaden who's too oblivious.

 

Then, there are the one-off characters like that Tarzan guy who was obsessed with drawing cards, Dimitri the netdecker (the anti-netdecking message of that episode was retarded btw), and the amazonian who married Bastion.

 

The more serious story arcs were lame (the Society of Light's members were funny though), and the attempt to turn Jaden from Goku into Batman-lite in the second half made me groan, but the characters were what made the show fun.

 

Story-wise, with all these goofy characters, regulars and one-offs, the show would've been better as a school anime with card games instead of being a school anime with cards sometimes, while emulating the original series "save the world" crap the rest of the time. After Jaden vs Chazz in the battle of the schools, the Shadow Riders arc felt slapped on like they suddenly remembered this was Yu-Gi-Oh! Society of Light really should've been the first world-saving arc since the cult did work with the show's school setting better.

 

But, GX's last season was the best of the four series. It's the only arc where we see the characters prepare for their futures after school. 5D's tried it, but they stuffed all of it into three episodes, most of which consisted of a duel, while GX gave the graduating main characters and Crowler each their own episodes, ending it with Jaden.

 

I love this post.

 

That's what GX is about. The characters actually are entertaining to watch much of the time, and despite the concept for the series overall and for some individual arcs/episodes being weird as heck, they did mostly have their pacing right, also one-time characters also often would have at least a second appearance somewhere (like that Mokey Mokey guy and the Tarzan guy at the GX tournament iirc).

 

I'll just end this post with this:

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The only spinoff i dislike is Zexal, actually.

 

GX was fun and interesting because it has, in my opinion, the best cast of characters out of the three sequels. Despite Jaden's duels being pretty lackluster (i got tired of watching him pull out e hero fusions endlessley), i really enjoyed watching the rest of the cast play the game. That, and i kind of liked the school setting.

 

5'ds is probably my favorite yu-gi-oh anime (other than the latter half of the original, anyway). Although it got worse as it wore on, the first half of the show is immensely entertaining. Before he basically became jesus, I really enjoyed watching yusei on screen. His motivations for winning the fortune cup and facing Jack really, really made me root for him. Jack is a great rival because he has believable motivations for doing what he does.  I think what really got me behind 5d's at first was the dystopian setting that the fortune cup arc portrayed. That being said, the show kind of dropped in quality post-dark signers, and i found myself not really caring much by that point.

 

Special mention goes to yugioh R, though, that manga is all kinds of badass.

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