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

It’s pretty cool of the Yuma vs Tron duel to have two episodes handled back-to-back art-wise by the fantastic Gil Bo Noh and Kenichi Hara

Was also touching how Yuma pointed out the hope and loneliness felt by III, IV, and V at Byron who used them as tools of revenge despite being the good kids they are, then punctuated it after his “What would a kid like you know?” retort with “I know what it’s like when a parent goes missing on ya!” Also that bit about III/IV/V doing what they did for Tron’s sake probably because they thought it natural to help their parent but it’s still wrong. The somber OST in that scene was really good. And #69’s definitely animated to be pretty imposing with its God Rage and God Slaughter moves; the Xyz Change to ZeXal and seeing it was still a struggle to hold Tron off was good. Also always interesting when there’s so much packed into the cold open that the OP kicks in almost 8 minutes into the episode, lol.

(Checked the dub out of curiosity and most of it actually was dubbed pretty well, though the dub’s OST really takes away from it, but Tron and less-so Yuma what even are your voices)

brb gotta go cheer for the new protag ZeXal-Or-Not

Th… That’s not nice

Have slowly been going through more ZeXal the past weeks–got a bunch going on and all, takes me a while–get back to the WDC for the Kite vs Tron duel, and suddenly there’s Hart’s face on Tron’s causing him to take any shock Tron takes during the duel, what’s up

Keep reading

Okay, I thought I might’ve been onto something earlier, but

THEY!

So, those three are in BBT, in the DM-5D’s verse, but also in ZeXal? ZeXal’s spot in the YGO timeline really is screwy, huh? 😭

(I mostly joke, weren’t these three confirmed to be more gag characters since real-life parodies? Maybe ZeXal could take place alongside 5D’s instead of in a parallel universe somewhere… [maybe containing it to its own timeline might be best haha])

I have been watching more of ZeXal in the past couple weeks, and I think I’ve gotten myself settled in well! The Kite episodes were A+, and coming from seeing him more in ARC-V than ZeXal, it was definitely interesting to see his original self, and immediately tower over Yuma and Astral after he nearly destroys them; it spurs the first time Yuma and Astral start to feel fear over losing with higher stakes, and leads well into the Duel Lodge episodes where they learn about Duel Spirits and how they can fear losing or being destroyed too, to set up that lore.  Then the Jin episodes were great, the Chaos Xyz powerup was neat, and the scene with Kite coming in after the statue breaks and steals Jin’s number was really good.  The backstory to Yuma and Akari’’s parents was well done, and it was cute how it was layered around the concept of the Saturday Parents at School Day.  The Black Mist episode! It was good to see Tetsuo doing something by helping to free Yuya, and then his coordinating with him and Astral was a nice touch–though it was interesting that #96′s form changed like that…

Also

Originally posted by bosimba

bless

21 episodes down, and yeah, safe to say I’m enjoying actually watching it through finally so far.  The OST has also been stellar, and I should probably work on downloading the rest of the ZeXal Sound Duels (have only had SD1 for the longest lol).

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 😭