Yugioh VR//NS, season 2 review.
May. 22nd, 2019 08:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cypsiman2Season two of VR has finally come to an end, and like with season 1 I will share my thoughts on the season as a whole. Thesis statement, this show is still really bad and no one should watch it. I shouldn't have watched it, I make bad decisions in my life so that I may serve as a warning to everyone else.
Lots of spoilers below the cut, but then again this show is so trite that you could see just about all of them coming well in advance.
Our protagonist Yusaku is, if anything, even more of a nothing character than he was back in season 1. Back then he had some agency, some inner drive, some connection to the plot going on. In season 2 he is nothing but a glorified pinball being bounced around from set-piece to set-piece as the plot demands. The whole thing is kicked off when a mysterious AI enters the real world, a feat which is never explained how this was done, and steals the "consciousness data" of Kusanagi's younger brother Jin, and being that Yusaku still only refers to Kusanagi as an acquaintance this leaves his investment in things at a despairingly paltry low. And that just continues throughout the rest of the season, nothing that happens matters to Yusaku, he's just involved because he is the protagonist so he has to be the one to win all the duels and save the day. There is no arc, no growth, there is just a bland empty vessel with the word HERO stamped on its forehead going through the motions.
In terms of supporting cast, two new human characters are introduced, Soulburner and Blood Shepard. The show really, really pushes Soulburner in the early parts of season and goes out of its way to have him duel previous supporting characters in order to hype him up. Once this initial period of shilling and going into his melodramatic backstory about him and his Ignis partner Flame is over, his appearances become very sparse and his ultimate contribution to the plot is minimal. Mainly because there is no plot but I get ahead of myself. Blood Shepard, or BS as is more appropriate, is meant to be a recurring antagonist type, but he loses all but one duel and the one duel he wins is against his younger sister Ghost Girl and ends up having no consequence whatsoever. He's really just there to be edgy and brooding and he is even more of a nothing character than Yusaku. Plus his deck is really boring. Then there are the other Ignis characters who are introduced: Flame, who was already mentioned, Aqua the boring token girl, Earth the boring Nice Guy, Windy the boring psycho, and Lightning the boring pretentious big bad. They are all one note and have nothing going on.
Finally there is Bohman who is the mysterious AI who somehow entered the real world at the start of the season and then never did anything like that ever again. He is a mess of a character, radically changing between appearances; in the first one he is utterly baffled and confused on what is going on around him, then in his next appearance he claims to be the real Yusaku and that the one he's facing is a fake who took his place in the real world and nobody believed that for even a second. Then on his third appearance he finally settles on what he actually is; an Ignis created by Lightning to contain all the other Ignis within himself to become the ultimate being who will rule the world and it is all very dull and it has been done before and nothing new or interesting is done with it and so his run as the final boss of the season is just bland. Also he uses gambling cards so he's really bad.
All the other supporting characters from season 1 return with nothing of any substance to do; Go is hit especially hard as he is abruptly rewritten to be angry and resentful and willing to do terrible things to try to one-up Yusaku who he suddenly hates now and its all very bizarre. Aoi, in lieu of actual character development, gets two new character design changes over the course of the season and is also given a contrived backstory to account for why she becomes Aqua's partner. Revolver and his bunch also show up roughly halfway through the season to resume trying to kill all the Ignis because Revolver's daddy did a simulation that said the Ignis would try to destroy humanity so they tried to kill the Ignis first which was the cause of all this nonsense that nobody acknowledges.
The pacing and plotting for this season just does no exist. Everything is being made up as it goes along, nothing ever feeds into or contributes to what happens next, there are plot holes and contradictions everywhere, and despite that there are far fewer clipshows than before, so little of the show actually matters. Its also a very ugly show with bad designs and consistently poor animation with occasional instances of spectacularly terrible shots that look like something out of a Liefeld comic.
Honestly, I could have just copy and pasted my review of season 1 for this; season two repeats the beats of season 1 so many times it was monotonous. This show is bad, do not watch it.
Lots of spoilers below the cut, but then again this show is so trite that you could see just about all of them coming well in advance.
Our protagonist Yusaku is, if anything, even more of a nothing character than he was back in season 1. Back then he had some agency, some inner drive, some connection to the plot going on. In season 2 he is nothing but a glorified pinball being bounced around from set-piece to set-piece as the plot demands. The whole thing is kicked off when a mysterious AI enters the real world, a feat which is never explained how this was done, and steals the "consciousness data" of Kusanagi's younger brother Jin, and being that Yusaku still only refers to Kusanagi as an acquaintance this leaves his investment in things at a despairingly paltry low. And that just continues throughout the rest of the season, nothing that happens matters to Yusaku, he's just involved because he is the protagonist so he has to be the one to win all the duels and save the day. There is no arc, no growth, there is just a bland empty vessel with the word HERO stamped on its forehead going through the motions.
In terms of supporting cast, two new human characters are introduced, Soulburner and Blood Shepard. The show really, really pushes Soulburner in the early parts of season and goes out of its way to have him duel previous supporting characters in order to hype him up. Once this initial period of shilling and going into his melodramatic backstory about him and his Ignis partner Flame is over, his appearances become very sparse and his ultimate contribution to the plot is minimal. Mainly because there is no plot but I get ahead of myself. Blood Shepard, or BS as is more appropriate, is meant to be a recurring antagonist type, but he loses all but one duel and the one duel he wins is against his younger sister Ghost Girl and ends up having no consequence whatsoever. He's really just there to be edgy and brooding and he is even more of a nothing character than Yusaku. Plus his deck is really boring. Then there are the other Ignis characters who are introduced: Flame, who was already mentioned, Aqua the boring token girl, Earth the boring Nice Guy, Windy the boring psycho, and Lightning the boring pretentious big bad. They are all one note and have nothing going on.
Finally there is Bohman who is the mysterious AI who somehow entered the real world at the start of the season and then never did anything like that ever again. He is a mess of a character, radically changing between appearances; in the first one he is utterly baffled and confused on what is going on around him, then in his next appearance he claims to be the real Yusaku and that the one he's facing is a fake who took his place in the real world and nobody believed that for even a second. Then on his third appearance he finally settles on what he actually is; an Ignis created by Lightning to contain all the other Ignis within himself to become the ultimate being who will rule the world and it is all very dull and it has been done before and nothing new or interesting is done with it and so his run as the final boss of the season is just bland. Also he uses gambling cards so he's really bad.
All the other supporting characters from season 1 return with nothing of any substance to do; Go is hit especially hard as he is abruptly rewritten to be angry and resentful and willing to do terrible things to try to one-up Yusaku who he suddenly hates now and its all very bizarre. Aoi, in lieu of actual character development, gets two new character design changes over the course of the season and is also given a contrived backstory to account for why she becomes Aqua's partner. Revolver and his bunch also show up roughly halfway through the season to resume trying to kill all the Ignis because Revolver's daddy did a simulation that said the Ignis would try to destroy humanity so they tried to kill the Ignis first which was the cause of all this nonsense that nobody acknowledges.
The pacing and plotting for this season just does no exist. Everything is being made up as it goes along, nothing ever feeds into or contributes to what happens next, there are plot holes and contradictions everywhere, and despite that there are far fewer clipshows than before, so little of the show actually matters. Its also a very ugly show with bad designs and consistently poor animation with occasional instances of spectacularly terrible shots that look like something out of a Liefeld comic.
Honestly, I could have just copy and pasted my review of season 1 for this; season two repeats the beats of season 1 so many times it was monotonous. This show is bad, do not watch it.
