Why do we have to get good yugioh story crammed in a single flashback? I know it's card games the anime but come on! Ai's little flashback and explanation and cut-scene was very good, it was emotional, it explains his complete 180 turn of his internal compass and finally i feel something or him. But this needed to have happened more during the series and not all at once. I guess it's like a champagne bottle, it hides all it's pressure underneath the screw, looking like any liquids bottle but when it's opened it shoots the screw with tremendous force, just like Ai's motivations working against him because we got nothing on his sudden turn. And all the sudden, everything is out, we get really surprised and the pop is very effective. But the build-up wasn't worth the watch. Anytime Ai was on screen i knew he was either doing something goofy or completely obliterating his opponents and not even knowing why he was like this made me uninterested in whatever he wanted to do.
Don't get me wrong, the anime is improving each series with the amazing quality of their duels but when it comes to pacing the story and feeding us at least little bits of information here and there, it's just rally dry, Ai is a bad guy now for some reason, who knows, but palymaker and friends must stop him. When Ai was a good guy, i liked him, his personality was great and his emocional moments hit. The bad guys were not known and therefore there wasn't any preconceptions of how they were supposed to be. All of them brought something unique and their personalities stayed consistent through their arcs. i liked seeing blood shepard's deceit with his AI, Onizuka's obsession leading to implanting an AI in him, specter's mad dialogue once he's into it, windy's cockiness and scumbagery, the cold unfeeling horror of SOL while they dissected earth and the cunning and manipulative lightning who would betray everyone to accomplish his goals. Bohman was sadly a nothing villain that had that relationship with his previous version but his smaller big brother is the one i liked the most because, again, there was something to him.
But after bohman is defeated, we get a villain that just turned to the evil side because. We don't need to be given an explanation why, just accept it. And 1 by 1 he steamrolls everything in his path, the previously formidable opponents become absolute jokes that are offed offscreen and there's only 1 who can stand in his path, the MC. But honestly, with only 1 sidekick (that also just destroyed everyone until she just couldn't handle Ai's programming) i guess i couldn't expect much more.
I get it, Ai being a goof is supposed to make those moments sadder, he's just hiding everything inside. But now that scene where he beats blue angel and her brother, making her survive so that she could feel as he feels, it' effect is absolutely neutered. That was the only emotionally effective scene from the 2º arc until then and now it just doesn't make sense. Was he just trying to provoke playmaker more? But i thought he was already doing that by being very arrogant and taking serious things not seriously. Why did he need to act serious then?
I know, over-analyzing things only leads to less enjoyment of an obvious card promotion show but it's things like some GX moments that i still remember being awesome like camulla's shocking (for us) win against zane, his turn to the dark side (and probably some more incredible parts that i haven't watched yet), 5d's black rose witch arc which is tangibly related to carly's confrontation before turning into the dark signer, her emotional duel with jack, yusei and kiryu's story and just the dark signer arc in general, the last arc of 5d's, the barian arcs of zexal and for me personally Four's story and interactions throughout the series and even in Arc V with the satisfying synchro arc that makes me expect more of this series's stories. I enjoyed some moments of vrains greatly but just like past synchro arc Arc V, vrains left little impact on me.
