The way I've been picking series to review is to put my anime playlist on shuffle and review whatever show's theme song plays. The winner tonight is "Freedom" by Ozone, the 3rd opening theme for Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds.
5Ds is the most serious of all the Yu-Gi-Oh! series. Our protagonist, Yusei Fudo, lives in a ghetto called Satellite. The upper class lives on the mainland in Neo Domino City, but the lower class is stuck on the island that processes Domino's trash. Eventually it turns out that Yusei is a city-born, while the King of Duelists, Jack Atlas, is native to Satellite. Yusei and Jack once were good friends, but then Jack betrayed Yusei, stole his D-Wheel and Stardust Dragon, and escaped to the city, where he became the King of Duelists. Now, Yusei has built himself a new D-Wheel and goes to the city to confront Jack. He out-duels familiar-looking Security guards, and faces off against Jack. Their duel causes a gigantic crimson dragon to appear. Security finds them and arrests Yusei.
In jail, Yusei learns that he is one of 5 legendary "Signers"--guardians and servants of the Crimson Dragon, reincarnated from ancient Peruvians. Jack, too, is a Signer. Yusei gets out of jail, and finds two more Signers: Ruka, (Luna in the dub) an adorable 11-year old girl with a hyperactive and equally adorable twin brother Rua (Leo in the dub); and Aki Izayoi, (Akiza Izinski in the dub) known as the "Black Rose Witch". Aki is a psychic duelist, which means the cards she plays become real, and people hate her for the destruction she wreaks. Divine (Sayer in the dub) protects Aki, but feeds her lies about the world hating her so that she will fight for him and the Arcadia Movement, a group of Psychic Duelists. Yusei has a mysterious charming way about him that bonds everyone together. Which is a pun, of course, because his name has something to do with "bonds", and the first opening theme is "Kizuna", literally, "bonds". He will eventually wins Aki over with these bonds, as he wins over everyone in the series.
Rex Goodwin, Director of the Public Security Maintenance Bureau (Sector Security in the dub) organizes the Fortune Cup to gather all the Signers together and gauge their power. The Fortune Cup ties together the 1st season, and takes place in episodes 15-26. No duel in the first season takes more than 2 episodes, not even the long-anticipated showdown between Yusei and Jack. The 2nd season breaks this rule, but only a couple times, so it's forgivable. Because of the length of duels, the Fortune Cup is enjoyable. Not all duels are on motorcycle, as 11-year olds (and girls, until season 3) obviously can't ride D-Wheels. Don't feel too bad for Aki or the twins, though--they're awesome enough without motorcycles.
Season 2 is my favorite, the Dark Signer arc. If you've seen the original Yu-Gi-Oh!, (from hereon referred to as "DM") it's basically a better version of the Doma/Doom/Orichalcos/Waking the Dragons story arc. The Dark Signers are set up to fight all the Signers. Alliances change, awesome new characters--Carly and Crow!!!--emerge, romances bloom, people actually literally die, in both languages! Or at least they almost die in the dub. Everyone gets wonderful lovely character development, the twins get a 4-part duel, someone says "I love you". Though it's "daisuki", which can also be translated as a really strong like (see, original series, episode 78: "Attack Me! The Fatal Last Turn") and not "aishiteru" or another word for love.
Animation on this series is better than DM so far. From what I've seen of GX, it appears to be the best animated. Poor Yu-Gi-Oh always suffers from noticeably different animation directors. Kenichi Hara is the best, and is recognized for the close-up of a pointing finger that originated in Yu-Gi-Oh! His episodes are always shiny and fluid and actually proportional. I could pull up examples of the poorly animated episodes, but I will refrain. You will discover them as the series wears on. DM had disgusting episodes in the late 3rd, 4th, and 5th seasons. They are the worst animated professional things I have ever seen. 5Ds even gets some obvious!CG, which becomes less obvious as time goes on. It is also used only when needed to create really cool angles of Riding Duels, so it's forgivable that it's obvious. Romeo x Juliet used CG just for some waving flags. I thought that was kind of lazy.
Voice acting isn't too bad in the dub. Frank Frankson, who voices Tristan in DM takes the lead role of Yusei, and handles it very well. Everyone is over-the-top, but that's the way they're forced to act. Jack is... very odd, but stuck-up as he should be. I like his deep Japanese voice better, but his British-Australian-foreign mix is less annoying than I thought it could be, because Ted Lewis is one of the better VAs on the 4kids payroll. Bella Hudson, replacement for Megan Hollingshead's wonderful Mai in DM, voices Akiza. I am prejudiced against her for being the second voice of Mai, but Akiza's not too bad. The voice does fit Aki, which is more than I can say for Hudson's Mai. The twins are my biggest complaint. Their voices are grating, especially Leo's. Their scripts are annoying and a little offensive. The twins are basically the target audience of the show. Let's not put the kids down by throwing in "like" every other word. Dan Green, both Yugis in DM, reprises his role as Trudge (Ushio), and has one of the best performances. His is about the only voice anywhere close to its original timbre. Whoops, it's Trudge's love interest Mina that is my biggest complaint. She has a completely different personality than Mikage. The acting isn't bad, but the new character is unlikable. I wish Sayer really would kill her. Sayer! He's a gravelly Marc Thompson, also DM veteran of FOUR roles--Duke, Rafael, Valon, and Jean-Claude Magnum. It's a stretch, but Thompson pulls it off. He also voices Lazar, and nails everything except the laugh. Goodwin, Crow, and the rest of the main cast are pretty well cast. Crow's is actually spot-on with the way his Japanese voice sounded.
The biggest name in the voice acting is Veronica Taylor. I did a double-take the first time I read the credit. She is famously known for the original Ash Ketchum, as well as a host of other, much more respectable roles. (no offense, Ash, but... 4kids) She comes back to 4kids to play Carly, a reporter who winds up housing Jack Atlas after helping him duel and then escape from a hospital. She gets a little too involved with the Dark Signers, despite Jack's best efforts, and things play out from there. Carly is a very emotional character, and Taylor handles the range very well. That's saying something, because Carly's one of my favorite characters on this show, with Aki, the twins, and Crow.
A special mention to the theme songs, all of which I like. Even the ending themes are good, and I hate ending themes. Kizuna is better than LAST TRAIN because it gives more information about the series. The first 30 seconds with the bike, the main characters, Yusei on the junk, and Yusei walking through Satellite, the city, and Tops give you the entire premise of the series. Despite this superior storytelling, LAST TRAIN is my favorite. I don't think too much about Freedom or Believe in Nexus, but they're both good. As I said in my Theme Song post, "Close to You" is just about my favorite ending theme ever. Even better than the Japanese theme songs being good, the English theme song is good. 4kids had a contest to pick a theme song, and being a dork, I participated. To my surprise, my favorite theme, Hyper Drive, won! It's catchy, and doesn't lend itself to jokes as much as stuttering D-d-d-d-d-duel! Linked above is the second version, because the first version doesn't have Aki(za).
So, overall? This is very hard to be to objectively review. As I type this, I wait for subbed episode 115 to show up on youtube. Original Yu-Gi-Oh wins the honor of getting me into anime, and will always hold a special place in my heart. (Fullmetal Alchemist is still my favorite, based on quality, though) 5Ds was a bunch of things I liked about the original series thrown together with motorcycles and more interesting card games. I skipped reviewing season 3 both because it's not out in America, and because it's been mostly pretty awful. (as awful as you probably expect any Yu-Gi-Oh! spinoff to be)
But, to make this easy, let's go by only up to episode 64, the end of the Dark Signer arc. First, watch it in Japanese. The dub is better than it was for late DM, but you still get "don't worry, that boy isn't being tortured, he's actually producing the painful electric field", purple-fog-of-falling-off-a-building-doom, and more awful one-liners than you thought could exist. Voice acting is good, characters are likable, villains are freaking sweet. Divine is the coolest duelist to ever rock a white tie. The writing staff went to much effort to tie Divine and Aki into some sort of alchemical mythos about the Green Dragon and the Lady of Roses. Everyone gets great character development. However, they're playing children's card games. It can get old. Characters get dropped when they're cumbersome to the plot, even if they're cool characters. Animation suffers when the budget doesn't permit a good director or it's not a plot-important episode. Plot is great, however, and effort was put into researching Peruvian mythology for the Dark Signer arc.
Overall: Ah, a C- for the whole thing because season 3 plot really is that bad, but a B up to season 2 because it's pretty unique.
(Dub, however, is a solid D-. It's only good for lolz)
+Great characters, lots of effort put into some of the things characters are based on, sociological commentary, interesting plot, good opening and ending themes, card games on motorcycles are actually kind of cool. You've definitely never watched an anime like this before.
-Too long, focuses on card games, so very hit-or-miss. Drops the characters that aren't great so you don't notice how boring they are. Stretches suspension of disbelief. Animation is inconsistent. Season 3 plots are really awful. Characterizations are worse.
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