Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS
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 CARD GAMES ON HOVERBOARDS!!!!
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Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS is the sixth entry to the Yu-Gi-Oh! franchise aired in Japan from May 10, 2017 to September 25, 2019 and first in Canada from September 1 2018 to September 13, 2021. This would mark the final entry to ever be produced by Studio Galop, to be replaced with Studio Bridge as head animators for subsequent entries starting from Yu-Gi-Oh! SEVENS that promotes Rush Duels, which makes this the last entry to be a Master Duel-centered show. Out of all of its predecessors, and successors, Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS lacks the various known tropes, and a manga counterpart (which probably due to the production issues), and having no video game adaptations outside of Yu-Gi-Oh! Legacy of the Duelist: Link Evolution, which is a reskin of Yu-Gi-Oh! Legacy of the Duelist, and its world inclusion in Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Links and the short lived Yu-Gi-Oh! Cross Duel.
Plot
The series is based in a world roughly ten years from now, where a massive Virtual Reality Network called LINK VRAINS has been established. It's a suspenseful, thriller-style story in which Yusaku Fujiki Duels in order to learn the truth of the events surrounding his past
There is a city where network systems have evolved: Den City. In this city, with the advanced network technology developed by the corporation "SOL Technologies", a Virtual Reality space called "LINK VRAINS" (Link Virtual Reality Artificial Intelligence Network System) has been developed. By using LINK VRAINS which was built inside the Network System, Duels unfold where Duelists change their appearance separate from their real life identities, and in this VR Space people became excited over the latest way to Duel. However, in "LINK VRAINS", a mysterious hacker group that hacks via Dueling has appeared: The Knights of Hanoi. Their goal is to destroy the "AI World" known as "Cyberse" that exists somewhere in the depths of the Network. However, there is one Duelist who stands against the threat to "LINK VRAINS". His name is "Playmaker". He has become famous in the Network World for crushing the "Knights of Hanoi" in fierce Duels, without mentioning his name. But the true identity of "Playmaker" is ordinary high school student "Yusaku Fujiki", who pursues the "Knights of Hanoi" that appear in VRAINS in order to find out the truth of an incident that happened in his past.
Qualities that Go into the VRAiNS (Pun intended)
Note: Please always refer to the original Japanese airing as the Japanese version, and the English airing as the English version as subs and dubs while they are commonly used, they also are available in other languages, not just English.
- The idea of playing Duel Monsters in a virtual world in a similar vein to VR Chat is interesting, there have been many places that were explored prior to the 3rd season were interesting.
- Additionally, the hacker group known as Hanoi trying to eliminate the Ai, and their reasons for it speaks volume of how most of social media platforms nowadays use learning algorithms, as well as the recent controversial app, Aiart.
- Good animation even for 2017 standards.
- This is one of few Yu-Gi-Oh! series to experiment with unorthodox character designs for anime, even if said characters were one-offs.
- If not all, most of the LINK-VRAINS avatar look great and fit the duelist's theme.
- While some Speed Duels are interesting, the Master Duel of the climatic duels are well-done.
- If you don't like the tone of the original Japanese version, the English version gives the series a little bit of humor to keep it from being too grimdark without undermining it entirely.
- To be fair, the original Japanese version also does have humorous moments.
- Fan-favorite likeable characters, such as Takeru Homura/Theodore Hamilton, Emma Bessho/Sharpe, Aoi/Skye and Akira Zaizen, Spectre, Ai, Risa Hayami, Go Onizuka/George Gore (Season 1 and 3 only) Kusanagi/Cal Kolter, Earth and Revolver/Varis to name few.
- Very interesting archetypes like Trickstar, Altergeist, Gouki, Borrel/Rokkets, @Ignister, Salamangreat, G Golem and the infamous Hydradrive.
- The idea of having and experiencing Trauma from the Lost incident is interesting, and done well with Takeru Homura/Theodore Hamilton.
- On the same vein, having a character like Spectre who has a different view on the Lost Incident and treated it as "Good days" as he lacks any attachment to humanity and society, which explains his loyalty to Revolver is also interesting take on the matter.
- Recaps/Clipshow episodes, while they're frequently annoying, at least they provide some time to cool off from an arc to an arc, which was abolished by the 3rd season.
- Re-introducing the past mechanics, (except Pendulum Monsters probably because the series was produced at the time Duel Links did not have ones), with the least represented Mechanic Rituals being prominently shown for the first time. This inclusion of mechanics shows the interesting gameplays they add to the Link Monster Decks in the show.
- Although the third season took a major nosedive in the writing and was being rushed to end the show, it was saved by Ai, and the last two duels being Revolver/Varis vs Soulburner, and Playmaker vs Ai.
- For a piece of Japanese animation with budget cuts and production issues, the show kept carrying doing exactly what it wanted till the end, which is admirable, considering that most of shows tend to get cancelled with how hard and expensive animation as a medium is in general.
- This series ended Galop's 20 years of working on Yu-Gi-Oh! franchise on a decent note, and any Master Duel anime era on a high note.
Qualities that faceplanted in the concrete
- The serie's original airing was April 2017, with the following synopsis that was originally meant for it that Yusaku was meant to start out as an incompetent Duelist who doesn't like to stand out, and kids should try things instead of giving up on the first try. However because it was similar to Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V, alongside how that show turned out to be a mess, the budget cuts and production issues that reached their peak and harmed the series' original Premise, this show was postponed for two months, and have a mini program called Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS LABO, talking about the shows updates, as results, the show came off rather undercooked because SHUEISHA wanted it out in 2 months with the new premise. [1]
- As the section suggests, there was a scene from episode 34, where Aoi/Skye as Blue Angel faceplanted into the concrete after she lost to Spectre, which was cruel and unnecessary, spawned many memes. Thankfully, the English version cut that scene, as well as subsequent episodes omitted the scene when that loss is brought up in the Japanese version as well.
- Few unlikeable characters such as Blood Shepherd/Shepherd later on when he attempted to trigger Takeru's/Theodore's PTSD.
- Yusaku Fujiki/Playmajer may have started first as a tolerable protagonist, with sense of value to humanity despite his experience with the Lost Incident, however, he becomes infuriatingly pretentious and self-righteous when he Dueled Akira, he dismissed everyone else's tragedies as they're minor compared to his own, and refusing any compromise with his search for the truth behind his past.
- The whole Yusaku suffering PTSD for 10 years just because he was forced to Duel doesn't make any sense considering at this point he would've been better than he was portrayed throughout the series, he even has less excuses when Takeru/Theodore already almost got over his trauma until he confronted Revolver/Varis, and only lamenting having argued with his parents prior to the incident, and they died before he ever apologized to them, and Jin to a lesser extent, as Lightning completely broke his spirit by scaring him over and over and over. Not to mention that Miyu and the unnamed child have already moved on with their lives as well.
- The most infamous turning point would be Go Onizuka/George Gore becoming a Bounty Hunter for SOL Tech because he lost clout to Playmaker, while this is realistic, it completely butchered his character.
- The character was derailed even more when he took an Ai chip, captured Earth to allow him to be dissected and watch him getting killed.
- Thankfully, he somewhat redeemed himself, although, it was off-screen.
- Yusaku Fujiki/Playmajer may have started first as a tolerable protagonist, with sense of value to humanity despite his experience with the Lost Incident, however, he becomes infuriatingly pretentious and self-righteous when he Dueled Akira, he dismissed everyone else's tragedies as they're minor compared to his own, and refusing any compromise with his search for the truth behind his past.
- While Yu-Gi-Oh! has been infamous for having very strange animation errors and goofs, this show had it worse especially with budget cuts.
- Examples being when Ghost Girl/Ghost Gal struggling with the data storm and clinging to her board, the scene of her rotating has no transition.
- When Trickstar Holly Angel was first Link Summoned, the animation of her legs were animated badly.
- When Blue Angel challenging Prototype AI duelist B, the board was positioned as if she's not standing on it, it's overlapped on her instead of drawn in a laid down position.
- Some duels can get monotonous due to how hard it tries to replicate real life OCG/TCG Duel, and according to Masahiro Hikokubo, it was difficult to make Soulbuner lose duels he could have lost.
- Some interesting ideas were abandoned as soon as they were brought up:
- The Real vs Impostor Yusaku sub-plot.
- The Hanoi Spy in SOL Tech.
- Besides Ai, Yusaku, Takeru/Theodore, Ryoken/Roken and Aoi/Skye, almost every other character had no character send off, and the lost Incident Victims are treated worst.
- Spectre didn't have any lines of dialogue for 34 episodes since episode 86 where he lost to Lightning.
- Miyu Sugisaki existed as a plot device for Aoi/Skye to be relevant again, only to abandon that.
- An unnamed origin of Windy who was killed off-screen.
- The third season takes a massive nosedive, besides the last 2 duels, while Ai is still a likeable character, he spend most of these episodes eliminating characters flawlessly except Takeru/Theodore, Ryoken/Roken and Yusaku, and not letting Aoi/Skye disintegrate as a cruel joke.
- The tone can get too bleak at times.
- The controversial art theft by Konami Cross Media, having taken a a fanart without permission to replace Japanese text. [3] This was corrected in subsequent airings of the series.
- The era of this series which had featured the controversial change to the Duel Field, known as New Master Rules, which received major backlash (not as much as Master Rule 3) harmed this series' reputation. Fortunately, the rules were changed after the anime aired (now Fusion, Synchro and Xyz Monsters can be placed in Main Monster Zones, but Link Monsters and Pendulum Monsters Special Summoned from the Extra Deck must still use the Extra Monster Zone or a Main Monster Zone a Link Monster points to).
- While the English version is still good, some jokes are bad, and some are poorly placed undermining the severity of some scenes too much.
- Production issues behind the scenes forced the show to include a large number of "recap episodes", which the series has become notorious for. Asano Katsuya took to Twitter to apologize for these episodes after episode 38; explaining that they were needed to allow them to slowly improve the series. [4]
- As this series was left without any manga adaptation, many unutilized ideas were left to be desired, this could be attributed to the fact that the series' ratings weren't as good as its predecessors, or production issues reached its peak that SHUEISHA decided to ignore the idea.
- To add insult to injury, there was a Brazilian Facebook page that advertised a fake manga adaptation that supposedly was to be published infamously named "Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS Cyber Warrior Yusaku" that would be made by Akihiro Tomonaga, which was not only circulated on Yu-Gi-Oh! Subreddit, but also mainstream news sites hyped it, which made fandom anticipate it. As it turned out, it was a prank by the said deleted Facebook page as neither Akihiro Tomonaga nor YGOrganization said anything about the said manga.[5]