Revolver lost.
And thank god VRAINS will end next month. It was the only reasonable decision since this 'season' didn't have much going for it anyway and the rest of the series has been **** too. The writers had better put in extra effort to make YGO7 great because I can't stand the mediocrity of the past three YGO anime.
First of all, sorry for the long post.
Right on the money. There's been a good arc in zexal season II (except for the final bad guy coming out of nowhere), where although maybe not intended from the start, things do connect and there's a sense of progression, overall the show was mediocre. arc V started to get a little bit interesting with the other dimensions but just stumbled all they way after the synchro arc (which i like personally but can see that's not all that great) and in vrains, it's so noticeable that there's a lot of internal problems (the fact that there were not 1, not 2 but 3 apologies for filler episodes is a huge red flag), that it hurts.
But most importantly, the lack of any lasting setup and resolution for the majority of these 3 series is really starting to wear me out. Not counting that honestly fantastic final zexal arc (even with the terrible "true" final villain) where the previous story arc built the villains with those goofy GX season 1 episodes and all progresses amazingly until the climax with vector, everything else feels disconnected or specifically in the case of arc-v, artificially connected. Arc-v's synchro arc showed me that these different dimension focused arcs, if given just enough "glue" to each other, can work and give us a different kind of story for each. And they progressed well enough from "fighting the elite that know nothing of the struggle of the poor from their ivory tower" (yeah, i know, the final message was not that well delivered but it built it up quite nicely) to "struggle against the invaders" but it's here in the XYZ arc that things go wrong so fast. It's premise is awesome, but the execution turned out to be horrible and then they end up in the fusion dimension and there's no theme for it. I guess you could say it's a "overthrow the evil king who wants to rule the dimensions" but in the end, zarc appears and is defeated so fast while the professor, who was built almost from the start of the series, just gets immediate redemption and just don't get his proper commupins.
And now, Vrains is what we're seeing, there's an incident, more than half of the children involved are not even actively involved in the plot (RIP Jin, i feel they had other plans for him) and any potential villain that was teased is even remotely relevant (queen could also have been so much more). In the previous arc we get awesomea potential preview of a possible villain (Go merged with an AI) and that idea goes nowhere. I thought for a brief moment that roboppi could have been tampered with in link vrains by a lurking new evil virus but it was just AI's programming being too much. The other chess pieces are nothing but normie investors (that probably don't even play childern's card games ) but they could have been a good candidate for villains too (they could have taken a page out of GX with chazz's brothers and their bought up decks). And revolver's created Ai is "touched" by AI's words but that too seems like it's an abandoned villain possibility. In the end we have a revenge fueled AI that feels like he never even started to learn to cooperate with humans since it was never shown 1 proper establishing scene of AI struggling with his decision to abandon playmaker, therefore his heel turn gave me whiplash, contradicting what the entire series showed us so far that AI was growing with playmaker and they were becoming true partners. So far, well deep into this arc no satisfying character development for AI was given and with only 1 poor henchman that's completely loyal to the main villain, nothing on the bag guy's side becomes remotely interesting. So, to recap, AI went from a mischievous Ai that became a prisoner to playmaker and both slowly grew as partners to cardboard cutout nihilist that after witnessing a tragedy that great, instead of understanding it was lightning's fault that 4/5 of his allies were killed and the humans who supported them would gladly fight alongside him for a coexistence with each other, he puts the entire good guys cast on the same level as revolver and considers all humans as hostile, thus creating this huge disconnect i have with him.
And the next week's episode is the final duel's start, or so it seems, making me ask: what was the point of the past 2 episodes and revolver confronting soulburner when his character arc was resolved when he overcame his fear with the help of flame? What happens to the brain dead good guys cast? Are they magically revived like in every other series? And if so, why can't the AI be magically revived as well? And more importantly, is this ending going to suck even more than arc-v's? Because it really looks like it.