"Any card—so long as it exists—has a power that is needed."

So, while I’m doing my 99% editing to gear up to finalize my GX Season 2 subs, I thought I’d finally work on watching through ZeXal properly (I only ever really saw up to like episode 17 or something like every other week when it first aired, and with all the politics content I watch I could use some variety in these times lol).  So far I’m liking it better than I thought I would, though maybe because it’s years out from 5D’s airing right before it, and because I already had ARC-V to settle me into the idea of a younger cast if a show’s done well (last episode aside).  Yuma’s not a bad main, has his moments but when contextualized as his being 13, it makes sense. Kotori and Tetsuo are okay so far, I actually felt something for Ura-boy’s backstory, Cathy’s was a fun episode, and the Yuma/Shark dynamic is getting good; just finished episode 12 and their tag duel.  Yuma empathizing with Shark about being afraid to lose and fail was nice, and they both came out knowing more about the other and being more friendly with each other–as we know happens with dueling being a way to learn more about each other in anime world.  Next up’s my proper Kite intro, so looking forward to the refresher there, but I’m eager to get to when the plot beats pick up later on (in due time).

That said… I was always a fan of the theory that ZeXal happened in a parallelverse to 5D’s, where 5D’s was GX’s sequel where Synchro led to the future Z-ONE sought to stop and ZeXal was the sequel where Xyz was the norm instead, to explain why, say, that episode with the legendary monster statues didn’t have a Stardust Dragon one featured.  But then, this happened:

Mirror Force, Hero Barrier, and Scrap-Iron Scarecrow? Everything I’ve known is a lie 😭