Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS

[Flash Flyer - Sakura]

Yeah, unlike in the past when the field placement didn't matter, we need to see more of the field setup now. One thing that came up was "How is Honeybot protecting Decode Talker when the latter is in the EMZ (presumably)". I compared both versions; neither say that it protects Mutual Linked monsters.  

 

I had to look at the shot of the field after Decode attacked for the third time, and it was in the Main Monster Zone between Link Bumper and Honeybot. So...it's legal, but yeah. 

 

[shadowsapex]

[spoiler=Random Thoughts]

My god, I'm not going to be able to take the link summoning sequence for much longer. It's only the 5th episode; spare me!!

Honestly, whose bright idea was it to replace the individual summoning chants of Arc-V with rattling off a list of jargon? That isn't interesting in the least!

 

There is no way anyone can believe the game has slowed down after watching this episode. I mean, Yuma's never summoned this many xyz monsters before, let alone on the second turn of his second duel. Lookit, even the anime's being powercreeped.

 

And an aside about Ignis 'not understanding human emotions' or whatever. The guy definitely has emotions. What he doesn't understand is illogical things. He's said before something about an AI being better than a human. Assumedly, he mostly acts on logic (though we don't know enough about his personality to say that for everything he does, like trying to save Cyverse.) It makes sense - because he's an AI, he probably thinks a mile a minute, enough to calculate all the most likely outcomes of doing something, and wouldn't understand why humans act on gut feelings or instincts or whatever. He's probably programmed that way. Also, Yuusaku mostly acts logically, so Ignis probably gets thrown by the few occasions when his actions fly in the face of that.

 

 

[Flash Flyer - Sakura]

[spoiler=VRAINS 006]

• Yusaku switched out his Cyberse deck for a bunch of pack fillers Well, I guess that's one way to hide your identity as Playmaker. 
• Akira tells Aoi to stop Speed Dueling because it'll kill her eventually and affect his position in SOL.
  • I guess he sort of cares, unlike the description we have of him, but whatever.
• Specter gives Aoi a card to make her more aggressive. (Well, guess Revolver set the whole thing up)
• Yusaku says he'll only duel Hanoi, so...reduced action from him for the rest of the series because of this?
• AI senses Hanoi's threat, but Yusaku doesn't listen.
• Kusanagi poking fun at Yusaku being unable to meet a girl. 

On a sidenote, I'd like Aoi to win, but let's see what happens. Chances are the writers will make Yusaku win again with a bunch of BS combos / Storm Access.

 

 

[Brinolovania]

[spoiler=Episode 6]

I actually have nothing important to say about this episode, but I just have to get it out there that Yusaku's face when he's getting roasted about not being able to talk to girls is the best thing in VRAINS so far.

 

 

[Sleepy]

[spoiler=VRAINS 006]

• Yusaku switched out his Cyberse deck for a bunch of pack fillers Well, I guess that's one way to hide your identity as Playmaker. 
• Akira tells Aoi to stop Speed Dueling because it'll kill her eventually and affect his position in SOL.
  • I guess he sort of cares, unlike the description we have of him, but whatever.
• Specter gives Aoi a card to make her more aggressive. (Well, guess Revolver set the whole thing up)
• Yusaku says he'll only duel Hanoi, so...reduced action from him for the rest of the series because of this?
• AI senses Hanoi's threat, but Yusaku doesn't listen.
• Kusanagi poking fun at Yusaku being unable to meet a girl. 

On a sidenote, I'd like Aoi to win, but let's see what happens. Chances are the writers will make Yusaku win again with a bunch of BS combos / Storm Access.

 

 

 

[spoiler=spoiler]

I don't think he'll have reduced action. I think his memory will eventually be restored and he'll move on to a different goal. After all, Revolver seems like future part of the main crew rather than a final villain. 

 

 

[Flash Flyer - Sakura]

[spoiler=spoiler]

I don't think he'll have reduced action. I think his memory will eventually be restored and he'll move on to a different goal. After all, Revolver seems like future part of the main crew rather than a final villain. 

 

 

 

[spoiler=Response]

Probably he'll start dueling more people outside Hanoi once the whole incident is settled, but right now, he explicitly said "unless it's Hanoi, I'm not dueling them" so that's why I said that. 

 

Hopefully he becomes more willing to duel after things clear up, but we'll have to see. 

 

====

At the same time, let's see how the writers handle Aoi's deck. Probably will be the intended form of Trickstars and not the solitaire variant that most people know about.

 

 

[Atypical-Abbie]

[spoiler=EP6]

Why wouldn't Yusaku just carry around no Deck instead of a casual Deck? Or at least have a decent Deck as well? it is fun to see them poke fun at older cards and see some classics. Aoi has an excessive number of pillows, my god. Yeah, Yusakus's thing is the 3 things he keeps doing. That's going to get annoying quick. Aoi's need for attention seems like she's attempting to fill the hole of her brother, which I actually kind of find interesting, it's not a huge step, but a decent enough one to make Aoi somewhat interesting and not just idol.

 

 

[~British Soul~]

Managed to catch up on the latest two episodes. (Still not used to it airing on Wednesdays)

 

[spoiler=Thoughts on VRAINS 5]
- When Yusaku activated that trap and Ignis was like "why didn't you do so sooner?", I was like "It's not like he has something up his sleeve or anything." Which ended up being the case so he can use a skill.
- I do like that as the duel progressed Yusaku respected Go's style and opted to continue the duel despite Kusanagi's request to log out.
- Ngl, I had to google Kusanagi's name as I keep forgetting it, anywho he notes that Go can help against the KoH, ofc Yusaku thought otherwise as he didn't want Go to face that kind of danger, not that I'm surprised given Yusaku's character thus far (I'm sure he'll learn to trust others later)
- Ofc Go's fans still see him as a champ even though he lost, shows how good of a role model he is

 

[spoiler=Thoughts on VRAINS 6]
- So we learn that Akira is technically Aoi's brother-in-law (and not regular brother from prior info), and we knew that he doesn't trust her, so it's no surprise he wants her to stop dueling as Speed Duels are dangerous (for the 15 billionth time). At least he sort of cares about her safety... or his position at SOL
- When Kusanagi made fun of Yusaku not being able to chat to girls, I found that rather amusing
- I do like that Yusaku had a pile of random garbage to hide that he's playmaker (at least it was better than Joey's all-monster deck at the start of DM)
- When Specter gave Blue Angel that Dark Angel card, I was like "Is that a card that we'll see in CIBR 'cuz I don't recognise it from COTD" ofc after looking at the set list, I backpedalled a bit as it might not be in said set, nevertheless it was enough for Ignis to sense a threat that gets ignored initially
- I also think that Yusaku's "3 things" shtick is gonna get annoying after a while and I'm sure his attitude towards dueling will most likely change eventually as the "I only duel Hanoi" thing can't last forever.

[Atypical-Abbie]

[spoiler=EP7]

Ah man, fields don't affect the environment anymore, I was hoping they would do that again, was one of my favorite parts of Arc-V. It's odd to see the duels acting more like real duels, I feel like I am watching a real duel a lot of the time, yeah we don't have a lot of cards yet, so it's limited what we can do, but since they are similar to the anime ones so much, what they do is pretty much what we would do. Playmaker is not the best duelist I see in this episode, he clearly should have known that she had Reincarnation added and then set, it was a pretty obvious play he ran into there. So you can teleport to your board eh? Doesn't seem as dangerous now I suppose, reminds me of VR games that use the jumping feature instead of walking. Wow, exposition much? Just told us randomly that his parents died, couldn't it have been a little more fluent than that?

 

 

[Hallohallo]

First OP finally has the FULL version

http://topologicdragon.tumblr.com/post/162073755830/its-finally-here-the-full-of-with-the-wind

 

Also, no episode next week.

[Flash Flyer - Sakura]

[spoiler=VRAINS 7]

• Yusaku won again; yay (* sarcasm *)
  • That being said, was either that or Aoi goes ballistic due to Dark Angel and stuff.
  • Defect Compiler saved him from getting killed.
• Aoi, y u no draw 2 Lycorissica and bounce them off Candina? If you did that, Yusaku would've been dead already. [Er, I would need to run through the possible outcome if she had drawn multiple Lyco.]
  • Come to think of it, Aoi could've NS'd the Candina she got back from Lillybell; search another copy of Lyco or Reincarnation; preferably the latter and then set it. She didn't use her NS that turn. 
  • This would amount to using the FTK Turbo strategy that people hate (and probably not helping that I'm using it often against the AI [not that I have a choice because other stuff doesn't work on my desktop YGOPro] or figuring out how to make it more efficient). 
  • Trickstar Fraud literally is "build off Lyco, burn 600 and then burn off the field too".
  • (Then again, I did pose the question earlier on how they'll make Trickstars appealing due to said FTK deck leaving sour tastes in people)
• We find out that Aoi / Akira's parents died, and latter did everything for Aoi. (Guess this is why he told her to quit it, and so he does actually care.)

 

 

[-kyo-]

is it just me or are we at what feels like mid season threat level in the span of 7 episodes?

[SkaterTheDJWolf]

My thoughts:

[spoiler=VRAINS]

OK, so one theory about the opening is the Millenium Eye in the opening is a Chekov's Gun of timeline significance.

Also, is Yusaku born from the digital world? That [italic] might [/italic] explain everything, from his sixth sense to his hair sense (or lack thereof).

It wouldn't surprise me if Revolver and Playmaker turned out to have something in common, because EVERYONE does this with the main villian and main protagonist.

Heck, maybe Revolver was just a Disc One Final Boss, and next year will have even worse villians.

 

 

[Alaina]

[spoiler=Other response]

It also probably feels sudden, considering supposedly the strongest duelist is coming in to duel in episode 8, since Kaito and Reiji had their debut duels around episode 12-14. Though, Zane had his in episode 8, Jack had his in 4 and Pegasus had his in the second episode so it's not really unheard of.

 

 

[Dr. Cakey]

This is a giant, absolute post of textual HYPERDEATH, so you know.

 

[spoiler=Episode 6]

Something about the opening scenes of ep6, with the pretty long cut of Aoi looking out the window in silence, with just the ambient sound of the city, I really liked. It felt very lonely. I wish it had been part of the cold open tho- No, bad Dr. Cakey! There was a bit you liked, so appreciate it!

 

Note in the TV interview with Aoi's brother, he gives a bunch of evasive non-answers, but when he's asked if Blue Angel is going to duel Playmaker next, he flatly denies it. Just from that, you can tell a) he knows Aoi is Blue Angel, and b) he cares about her. This is what is called 'good writing', and I highly recommend it, not only in Vrains but in all- *watches ten more seconds* oh wait no then he calls her and says You Are Blue Angel Please Stop Being Blue Angel Also I Care About You.

 

Look, being elegant and subtle isn't some absolutely necessary thing, especially in children's entertainment where things are usually spelled out more because children are smol and have smol brains. But if you're going to Tell instead of Showing, then just Tell. Don't Show, and then also Tell literally a minute later.

 

It's difficult to tell if VRAINS is rushed, has poor story economy, or just isn't interested in the stuff I'm most curious about. With both Go and Aoi, their respective introductory episodes (4 and 6) have felt like a checklist of their basic character information more than anything else. Opportunities for anything beyond that are actively skipped.

 

Opportunity 1: imagine yusaku trying to talk to a girl haha that would never happen

On the one hand, I was deeply, deeply relieved there wasn't some bit or montage of Yusaku awkwardly trying to talk to Aoi (with hilarious results!) because cringe comedy makes me, um, cringe. But on the flip side, the punchline to this set up is...there is none. He neither fulfills nor subverts the presented expectations, he just accidentally stumbles into a setup where he doesn't need to actively talk to her and, in fact, basically doesn't talk to her at all. Which leads us right into...

 

Opportunity 2: Yusaku's Deck

So, Aoi asks to see Yusaku's deck because...? The club president indicates this is against Duelist Etiquette because A Duelist's Deck Is Their Life, i.e. she must have a reason to want to see it. And that reason is...to let us know Yusaku knows not to show his one-of-a-kind cards that only Playmaker uses to random people. She could have made some comment on it. What is her opinion on the legendary Goblin's Secret Rememdy/Neo the Magic Swordsman FTK deck?

 

Opportunity 3: "The next day..."

Okay, so the next day Yusaku and Aoi bump into each other and have what could loosely be described as a "conversation". Theoretically, this is an extremely important juncture, because it's the last chance to line up dominoes to get paid off during the coming duel. As things pan out, nothing at all is accomplished. As far as I can tell, it exists solely to establish that the girl who is sad about her brother...is sad about her brother. Come on, you can do better than that*.

 

*To be completely honest, I have no ideas for what should have happened instead, but if you feed me a line like "All anyone wants to know is if they can get the new Duel Disk first or if they can work at SOL after they graduate" my reflexive next line is "Well, I don't care about either, but I can ask anyway if you want", and then she makes a that-was-almost-funny face and then you move on to the core of the scene.

 

But despite my sweeping complaints, this is probably the best episode of VRAINS so far. Episode 7 is going to have to be really stupid to screw this up.

 

 

 

[spoiler=Episode 7]

Oh. Oh. Oh.

 

So, uh, I didn't think I was going to say a VRAINS duel was too short, but...the Blue Angel duel was too short. This is a bit tricky to unpack, because for the most part the episode is fine, and there's something satisfying about watching the intentionally annoying needling from Trickstars in action, even if it's the way Trickstars are supposed to be played, as opposed to the swift hellblade of death they apparently actually are.

 

The difficult part of this episode is Hanoi's Dark Angel card . Now, don't get me wrong, good characters going evil and having evil dark auras of evil swirling around them is pretty much my favorite thing, but it completely derails Aoi's story and thus the whole point of the duel. Weren't we doing something about Aoi and her brother and being independent or something? I guess not. Maybe the writer got distracted by a squirrel or something. Instead we have Blue Angel screaming in pain an...uncomfortable amount. *cough*

 

But I guess we have something more important to do, which appears to be for Aoi to nearly die so Yusaku can be angry at the Knights of Hanoi and duel Revolver (or so the PV assures me). I believe this technically counts as fridging without the actual death (I assume. VRAINS is honestly free to surprise me, just for the novelty.), but let's set that aside. After all, this is going to totally change Yusaku's character: after all, before he was just angry at the Knights of Hanoi and wanted to duel Revolver. Now things are completely different.

 

Also, are you tired of Yusaku using Storm Access yet? Don't worry, if the episodes so far are predictive, he's only going to use it about...*does extremely complex mathematical calculations* seventy more times.

 

In the next exciting spoiler tag, see Dr. Cakey's ideas for improving the Blue Angel duel.

 

 

By the way, I'm not a good judge of this, but episode 6 and 7 look notably better than previous episodes. Maybe a lot of animators just really wanted to draw Blue Angel. That's understandable.

 

[spoiler=Blue Angel Duel ～ケイキ・バージョン～]

No, there is no reason I wrote "Cakey Version" in katakana.

 

Let's accept as a premise that it's absolutely essential that Blue Angel get possessed by the card of dark edginess. (Wait...possessed? I thought this was VR, shouldn't she get hacked or...screw it.). Fine, but in exchange I get two episodes instead of one. Well, this could probably be done in one episode, but it'd be pretty crunched, and Trickstars didn't get shown off to their full extent, so I think on the whole it's win-win.

 

Instead of Dark Angel having the Worst Effect Ever In The Entire Game, make it more powerful, to make the duel longer. I couldn't help but notice there are at least three new Trickstar cards in Circuit Break (which is less than three weeks away, by the way, so maybe you'd like to show them off a little), including one named Sweet Devil which, I dunno, sounds like it might be good for a character to use when they're controlled by The Darkness The Taint The Void nonspecific evilness. Dark Blue Angel would have a different playing style than regular Blue Angel - maybe she focuses on battling instead of effect damage - but Yusaku is finally able to bring out Encode Talker with Storm Access and attack for game, but wait...suddenly she uses a roundabout, effect-damage-related effect to protect herself at the last moment! (This would be an appropriate moment for her to use her Skill, though obviously it would be something different than that stupid Trickstar Fraud.)

 

The dark aura disappears, because regular Blue Angel regains control. After all, she's the one who's going to beat Playmaker, not the Knights of Hanoi fighting through her. She's a strong independent idol who don't need no nonspecific evilness to win.

 

Now, while Blue Angel winning might be neat, I do think Yusaku ought to win the duel. Yusaku wins (right after using his "3 things" gimmick in a way which is elegant and a little bit touching instead of forced and overly wordy), probably on her turn because he's supposedly clever and because she did most of her damage to him on his turn. Blue Angel can still get her Virtual Reality Blacklash of Near Death (VRBoND) the moment the duel ends, and in fact it's even more severe than it would have been because she pushed herself to keep dueling past her limits.

 

On the whole, the outline is pretty loese and needs some tweaks somewhere in there, but I think all that can easily be smoothed out in the rough draft.

 

You're welcome, Studio Gallop. I accept both checks and PayPal transfers.

 

 

 

Did...I seriously spend three hours on this post? sheet, I need to chill.

[Flash Flyer - Sakura]

[spoiler=About Storm Access]

Yeah, let's just assume that Yusaku literally wins all his duels in Link VRAINS because he can literally "lucksack" (uh, would this be appropriate for this situation since it's not really drawing, but more of a ED Destiny Draw for stuff that he didn't have initially). Without it, he'd lose. 

 

It does get annoying to see him using said Skill often, yes, but I guess he actually gets the card afterwards, so...

 

 

[Alaina]

[spoiler=Storm Access]

Personally I'm pretty alright with it, at least so far. After all it's an in universe reason as to why his Extra Deck just gets infinitely larger as time goes on and it's not like the other ones he's gotten so far haven't shown up again. Yes I'm aware it's still only 3 duels in, so that too can change. Also, from a duel planning perspective it does literally nothing for Yusaku, since all it ever does is give him an extra deck monster, one that the writers could easily BS into existence anyway and say that he's had all this time, because he still clearly has at least 2 Link monsters beyond the ones he's gotten from Storm Access. Then he would just have an actually useful Duel Skill on top of manifesting a card into existence.

 

That being said, I'm not advocating him to get 70 new ED cards and do hope they let off on it after awhile.

 

 

[Expelsword]

If they do wind up using Storm Access a lot, I hope Yuusaku remembers that there's other monsters besides Number 39 Decode Talker later on.

[~British Soul~]

[spoiler=Thoughts on VRAINS 7]
- So it seems that Field Spells don't affect the environment anymore, a bit disappointing, but not the end of the world
- Ngl, I'm glad that the writers didn't go with the FTK route that Trickstars are capable of.
- So we learn that Akira/Aoi's parents died and that what Akira has been doing since has been so that Aoi doesn't suffer hardship
- It's neat that you can teleport back onto your board, I mean Playmaker would've been stuffed otherwise
- I'm pretty certain that the reason that Akira was unable to stop the duel was due to Hanoi
- It was somewhat interesting that Blue Angel thought she was in control of the duel by whittling down Playmaker's LP until she realised that Playmaker was planning to use his skill
- And by lucksacking Yusaku wins again... by OTKing

 

[Atypical-Abbie]

[spoiler=Thoughts on VRAINS 7]

- So it seems that Field Spells don't affect the environment anymore, a bit disappointing, but not the end of the world

- Ngl, I'm glad that the writers didn't go with the FTK route that Trickstars are capable of.

- So we learn that Akira/Aoi's parents died and that what Akira has been doing since has been so that Aoi doesn't suffer hardship

- It's neat that you can teleport back onto your board, I mean Playmaker would've been stuffed otherwise

- I'm pretty certain that the reason that Akira was unable to stop the duel was due to Hanoi

- It was somewhat interesting that Blue Angel thought she was in control of the duel by whittling down Playmaker's LP until she realised that Playmaker was planning to use his skill

- And by lucksacking Yusaku wins again... by OTKing

 

 

Funny, I said the same thing about Field Spells, as well as the teleporting.

[~British Soul~]

Funny, I said the same thing about Field Spells, as well as the teleporting.

Yeah, it doesn't feel the same without Field Spells changing the environment.

[Flash Flyer - Sakura]

Doesn't really bother me, but yeah, I expected the whole field to turn into an idol stage. Or it could just be a thing for Speed Duels, and normal duels are standard modifying the field. 

 

That being said, hopefully we get a normal duel soon.

[Dr. Cakey]

We don't even get the Speed World colorization effect from 5D's. :(

 

The show implies a normal duel has 8000 LP, so yeah, I want to see that bad.

[Flash Flyer - Sakura]

So realistic to what we have to put up with? Yeah, that would be good in seeing how anime Decks would work for us in actual situations (more/less anyway), though it'll make duels last longer and definitely more than 1 episode (counting the side talking).

 

Then again, with normal duels, Yusaku won't have access to Storm Access, so...if he's in pinch mode, he can't do anything.

[shadowsapex]

He'll have to lucksack like a normal protagonist.

 

But come on, characters inventing extra deck cards out of thin air was never a new thing, this is just it being explicitly stated now.