(L) Yugioh Zexal

[cohen]

It is a good thing we don't know enough about Exceed to confirm that. That was merely speculation.

The rule for Koaki Meru is that if you already have something shown, you cannot reveal it again. It is a common rule actually. If any card is revealed in your hand, you keep it revealed until the end of the turn. So, if your whole hand is revealed (not shown) you cannot activate the reveal effect and would have to use the discard effect.

[Duo Maxwell]

I was wrong about the Exceed Summon, then.

[cohen]

Rank 2 is out now, see if you can find a summary somewhere.

[cohen]

Sorry for the double post, this is just an update

Preview for Yugioh Zexal. Seems there will be a female opening, which is new to the franchise since the second opening of Duel Monsters. Oh, and Yuma sounds a lot like Sena from Eyeshield 21, even though that VA will voice Astral, the blue guy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtfVjR_y5g4

[Blue-kun]

'Yu-Gi-Oh!' Creator Terminates U.S. Deal and Sues for Millions of Dollars

I wonder what sort of problems will pop up from this. Still, it doesn't seem to bode well for American fans, although since it's 4kids maybe people are actually happy that someone else who isn't nearly as bad might get the license instead?

That said, even though they aren't getting sued (apparently), Funi's name has been popping up in all sorts of bad headlines lately.

[cohen]

Yeah, looks like we won't have any idea. I doubt Konami would not want the anime to air in America, but you never know. As for the anime itself, I have this to say

The guy most likely responsible for this retired a few months ago, no longer being a part of the company. Watch CW this week and see what 4kids puts together.

[stardrago]

I just saw final episode of Yu-gi-oh 5d's and they did a big time skip; I wonder if ZeXal takes place during that time skip?

[cohen]

100% doubt.

[Blue-kun]

Spoiler for 1:

I was giving a quick watch over it a while ago, it seems like the first episode covered all the way until the point in the duel where Astral first appears. Praise where praise is due, the episode itself looked good most of the time, which has been a given in most YGO series as of late, but yeah. The music was very good too, and I was surprised to see that Conisch was the one they picked to score this new season. Great composer, can't wait to see what else he'll do now.

The bad side is that I still don't like these character designs and the whole show despite trying to borrow a bit from the original YGO still screams GX-atmosphere to me. I didn't click with it, and I'd much prefer a more mature cast of characters, like the ones presented in 5D's. The OP was also really... weird. It had some really good cuts, genga was tight in a lot of those and overall the sequence as a whole had style. But the song... jesus. Why mihimaruGT, Japan. Why! The ED on the other hand was fine, a different song from what I remember of every other YGO! ED so far -- it seems to me it'd have worked better as the OP, but oh well.

Overall, it was good, and miles better than our other card game offering, Vanguard. That "Yu-Gi-Oh feel" of really over the top card game is still there, and as such most fans should be able to enjoy. Let's just see where they'll be taking it from now on.

[cohen]

Hey guys, could we move this please ...

I don't see how VG delivered more to the table than Zexal did. Zexal presented 7 characters so far, and more side characters that will gain importance later on. It showcased the new mechanic of Yugioh pretty well, while explaining exactly what was going on in the duel, to a much better OST.

I'll give VG the opening, but nothing can beat ZX ending.

[Blue-kun]

Originally Posted by cohen

Hey guys, could we move this please ...

I don't see how VG delivered more to the table than Zexal did. Zexal presented 7 characters so far, and more side characters that will gain importance later on. It showcased the new mechanic of Yugioh pretty well, while explaining exactly what was going on in the duel, to a much better OST.

I'll give VG the opening, but nothing can beat ZX ending.

No, no, that's not what I meant. ZEXAL compared to Vanguard had much better everything. Maybe I should rephrase it, since you got it the other way around.

Just the game itself would be enough to make ZEXAL much more appealing than VG, but the production was quite nice as well and we even got some great music. Not to mentionthe main characters, because no matter how much of a kid Yuma is, at least he's not as boring to watch as Aichi was. There's simply no competition, really.

[Shiroth]

It's been a while since i've watched a Yu-Gi-Oh series. I'll be checking this out for sure.

[ars89]

Spoiler for ep 1:

Well interesting bunch of characters. I was interested in that dream Yuma kept having and then i guess that's Astral who appeared at the end. Didn't get who was talking to Shark when he summoned that new monster that nobody has heard of.

[cohen]

Originally Posted by ars89

Spoiler for ep 1:

Well interesting bunch of characters. I was interested in that dream Yuma kept having and then i guess that's Astral who appeared at the end. Didn't get who was talking to Shark when he summoned that new monster that nobody has heard of.

I assume the entity that took over Shark was the entity that controls most of the number monsters. Astral has memories he needs to recover, each memory being represented as a number monster. There are 99 of these (in the manga that is).

Well, subs are calling it either "Fly to Pop" or "Rise to the Sky", but 'official' subs call it "Bring it to Em" (CR preview subs) which is where everyone is kinda iffy on. What is exactly the right translation for Katto Bingu? I go with Bring ... as an official type of source gave us it.

[Matsura]

I just finished watching.

The production values are obviously quite high, and a lot of quality art went into the creation of it, but I just don't see anything particularly new from Zexal. The environments came as a shock at first, but only because they were coming from Yu-Gi-Oh!

This is the type of art design I'd expect from Astro Boy or Rockman EXE--not in the sense that it's bad, because these designs worked fine there, but rather that at heart the designs belong there and not here. Yu-Gi-Oh! was always unique in my mind for integrating some very dark, urban environments with fantasy. Even in broad daylight you could see thickly shadowed alleys peeling away into an underworld sleeping beneath Domino, and the most popular characters--Kaiba, Pegasus, Marik, and Yugi himself--were some of the most psychologically unhinged in the original series. Let's not forget that this all started with an ancient Egyptian serial killer possessing a young boy to take revenge on bullies.

And now, onto spoilery discussion:

Spoiler:

I have problems with the character design. The protagonist isn't so bad, but Shark just doesn't come across as the rival they're building him up to be, because his hair is composed of plastic Barbie accessories.

While the duels are much faster than the original series, the augmented reality integration has me scratching my head. It's certainly more practical than the original series, but the characters are being thrown about, tossed, and rammed into the ground by augmented reality--that is to say, things which by definition do not exist, not even as light particles. Furthermore, the D-Gazer blocks out everyone not wearing DBZ headware, making the user completely unaware of their surroundings. Can equipment that actively makes you a traffic hazard really be all that practical?

Most productions designed to advertise merchandise fall in one of three directions: those which are an advertisement first and a story second, those which are a story first and an advertisement second, and those that try to draw a middle ground. While Zexal seemingly puts itself in the middle and starts off weaving in a story of treasure hunting parents and sealed monsters, I can't help but feel that I'm watching a 26-minute excuse for Duel Monsters to have black cards.

(And the last time a card game added special black-colored cards, we ended up with the first banned Pokemon card )

Perhaps I'm not getting as much out of it because I haven't seen the manga source material, but an anime should be able to stand on its own and I don't see that here. I'm uncertain if I'll drop it or not, because while the effort is certainly there, the results are not.

[Endscape]

Spoiler for first episode:

Just caught the first episode. I liked it quite a bit, more than I really expected to, though I liked all the previous seasons. The animation quality is great, and while I don't really like the characters designs, they're okay in their own way. The music was also cool. The characters themselves were nice. Yuma especially impressed me, though I can't quite put my finger as to why. Guess that cheerful, competitiveness struck a cord in me. The dueling, with the exception of the Exceed summons weren't all that good, but it's the first ep. Despite the fact that they're tying hard to bring in stuff from the first season, it has a flair all it's own, which I like.

[ShiroiRyu]

Saw the first episode.
For one time, the hero look really dumb and bad.
After one who was really strong (Yusei), i think it's was good. ^^

[cohen]

Even though the anime has yet to be licensed in America, NAS and TVT feel the need to take down the episodes from youtube ...

They do this all the time with Yugioh, but it makes you wonder what would happen if all this would be legalized. Some of these videos have well into the tens of thousands of views.

Oddly enough though, the same guy who uploads subbed Vanguard has his videos intact. I think it might have to do with subbed versions of Yugioh ... here is episode 1 raw he has up.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ek_VH..._order&list=UL

[cohen]

Guess I am going to be posting a lot in this thread ...

Spoiler:

Basically rank 3 and rank 4 with more action. I loved it. I hope someone more skilled at reviews can give one

edit: http://up.b9dm.com/lz/23525.html

edit: Youtube linked

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUKsb...&feature=feedu
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGraT..._order&list=UL

[RX-78GP04G Gerbera]

Being a Yu-Gi-Oh! fan all around (not just because of competitive card tournaments), I think people have been a bit too hard on ZeXal, especially with only the anime/manga JUST beginning as well as Exceed Summons and so many people judging ZeXal as a failure SOLELY because of seeing character designs before anything even started before, and then based on just the first 2 episodes/chapters.

I liken it to GX a bit in being a breath of fresh air from a long, dark, gloomy, etc series previously (Duel Monsters for GX and 5D's for ZeXal) and being more light-hearted and "casual", but people hate on it because of them NOT being like them, being too "childish" in comparison (whether in design or personality) and such. I think GX got WORSE when they got to the middle of Season 3 and into Season 4 BECAUSE they tried to integrate so much darkness, angst, etc into the story; forcing Judai into a complete 180 of his character, shoving virtually everyone else into the background, generating a bunch of new questions without ever answering the older ones, and so on. Even the final Duel against Yugi involved some inexplicable time travel and wasn't THAT great overall.

It's why I prefer the GX manga to Seasons 3 and 4 of the anime. The manga actually balances out Judai's character and other things.

Also, while Yusei may have been "strong", he also became REALLY boring and one-dimensional, and the story became really...lame not too long after Season 2 started for 5D's. Don't even get me started on the "revelations" learned during the Duel against Z-ONE and such. Hell, I think Aki, Rua, and Ruka got more overall character development than the likes of Yusei, Jack, and Crow. I also disliked Yusei's extremely heavy reliance on Stardust Dragon itself + related things and the constant "lucky" draws of otherwise uber-situational cards that would probably be useless in 95% of the other Duels he's been in. Even against MINOR opponents (like Team Unicorn and Team Taiyou), he resorts to using Shooting Star Dragon, his ACE TRUMP CARD at the time, thus openly revealing it to his main opponent's for later. Same with Jack and Scar-Red Nova Dragon.

Then people, especially those who are (too) serious about the competitive tournament scene, that hate on the Exceeds right now solely because they're not, right from the get-go, nigh-broken cards like earlier Synchros were with 5D's (if one notices, a lot of the Synchros used in the Extra Deck are from the earlier days of Synchros with some exceptions, like Trishula).

They rarely ever realizing that, perhaps, Konami is actually being smart about their execution this time around UNLIKE how they did with Synchros (making the "better" ones having big stats, little to no downsides, and/or liberal Synchro Material Monsters while others do have more downsides and/or more restrictive Synchro Material Monsters, which actually kept them balanced out in comparison). By starting out slower than Synchros the way they are, it means that as the series progresses, the Exceeds can usually only get better and better in terms of stats/effects while, at the same time, enable Konami to monitor them to keep them from getting too out of hand in ways while Synchros quickly ended up running amok and people screaming for ones to get restricted/banned.