One thing we have to note regarding DM's relative stability is that it
had a lot of Takahashi's and Jump's influence. Jump primarily goes with
generic shounen battle anime that grabs readers, and as a result needs a
multi-arc story structure with a fairly linear plot and minimal WTF to
avoid losing popularity. Save Bleach and Reborn, since they're half-way
fueled by character love from fangirls, and Gintama since that's pretty
much the Japanese Futurama/South Park. As in, Shueisha corporate
meddling + editorial team and Takahashi's control over his series most
likely served as a sort of counterbalance to Konami's corporate
meddling.
It's not like Takahashi's an astronomical writer himself. He pretty much
can't write his own duels, seems to have relatively little interest in
the way his own series goes, and effectively relies on Atem and the
equivalent of Deus Ex Machinas to resolve battles at times. The whole
"Destiny Draw" deal, the "YOU JUST ACTIVATED MY TRAP CARD" portrayal,
the impossible to win situations, and ludicrous combos that are pretty
much YGO's trademarks all started with Takahashi. It's just that we
didn't have as many wonky mid-series plot changes or toyetic corporate
meddling commercialism screwups thanks to Takahashi's position. Up until
then, the card game was just side merchandise.
But Konami and NAS show a tendency to be incapable of keeping their
noses out when necessary and intervening for the sake of the show
otherwise. Bad duel writing? It's almost always been the Spell/Trap line
that's been situational as hell in YGO, and that's because Konami and
the anime team can't make decent, stable, original s/t for the life of
them while sustaining dramatic effect. Well, rather, there's a way to
keep things stable, but for some reason SOME party or another within the
dev teams seems to screw things up. And that's partially because they
made no-cost end-game level cards ala Heavy and Mirror Force at the very
beginning of the show. Half the forced duels and bizarre writing are a
long-term result of Konami and Takahashi's doing early on. There's also
the fact that we seem to have multiple card design teams slaughtering
each other, so that leads to additional chaos.
And then we have my previous Gundam 00 comparison. If you have a basic
plot outline for an entire season, you don't go and shoot that outline
to bits at the last moment without expecting a massive aftershock. We
know Crow's character position was changed mid-way, but Crow showed up
ridiculously early in the Dark Signer Arc. The change in backstory
shouldn't have affected the plot. But it did. Rua got shot to hell and
back. Whatever changes involving Crow seems to have thrown the plot off
track, and as such is most likely linked to the series' extension and
Konami meddling regarding BFs. Considering how 1 movie decision threw
over 70% of a 26 episode plotline into total chaos with 00, I'd say
Crow's new position forced the crew into rewriting a good chunk of the
plot for the Dark Signer arc, leaving them with not enough time to get
the plot done before the 3rd season.
This push would've been relatively fine had they not turned Crow into a
Signer, but well...Konami loves BFs and for some reason somebody decided
he had to be one to be a main character. So this leads to further
inconsistencies in the plot. And then we had the movie team formed
sometime mid-Season 3. The central staff got shoved into movie
development, so there's a very high possibility that there was less time
to work on the main series as a result, which led to more filler in the
main show. Of course, about 10 episodes would've been understandable at
the third season as a kind of buffer for the next plot, but as we all
know we got an entire season of slice of life that was less entertaining
than Judai's insanity. And I say the movie + Crow and Kiryu pushing is
the cause of it.
And then the WRGP. What the hell was that? We got experimental cards
here and there that got nerfed or cut, the duels were wonky as hell, and
everything was just sick and wrong. The duel designers showed utter
incompetence during the WRGP(save Team Taiyou), and combining that kind
of low-grade gameplay with the "But I'm not gonna give up" screenplay
only served to create a negative image. I mean, they weren't even the
kind of insanity-based compulsive actions we get in ZEXAL, just "how are
these guys pro?" moves that looked like something out of Bleach. Not to
mention that we had characters having their personalities outright
rewritten. Of course, considering how it came off the coattails of the
movie, we can't rule out the possibility of a rush job in an attempt to
get the plot structure done. In which case the source of the chaos goes
all the way back to the Dark Signer Arc and Crow, since Crow+Kiryu seems
to be the source of most of the troubles regarding pacing, and like I
said the movie is likely to have sucked up resources.
The Ark Cradle plot was fine up until we got to ZONE, but the entire
series itself was already as unstable as hell by that point if you look
at the rest of the show. And then Konami+NAS planned ZEXAL somewhere
during that arc, so that's pretty much a disaster formula. The show was
already in a similar yet worse condition in comparison to how it was
fairing during the Dark Signer Arc and couldn't afford any hiccups. It
was incapable of making any plot changes look like they made proper
sense given the way the series was flowing, let alone go into depth
regarding things that weren't explained. And with ZEXAL being planned?
I'd say deadlines, deadlines, deadlines with no chance at an extension
of 5D's, which they seriously needed to go in depth into everything. So
that's pretty much setup for the ZONE fiasco.
And regarding ZONE, I'm still somewhat stumped. Is ZONE=/=Yusei
Yoshida's doing, Ono's doing, or somebody else's doing? Keep in mind
that Yoshida enjoys having either outright twisted nutcases or fallen
messiahs as his antagonists, and that his normal heroes happen to be
socially screwy or psychologically screwy people who eventually end up
finding redemption. Otoha in Karas is an ex-Yakuza member who's the son
of his brother, and Karas is pretty much Yoshida Style DX. It's honestly
unlike Yoshida to not have Yusei be ZONE. Given how the preview for the
final ep against ZONE originally showed the entire Stardust line
including /Buster being removed from the grave, but ended up being the
Signer Dragons in the final product, I can't help but think that the
final duel got a series of edits and redubs mid-way due to a change of
mind on the behalf of somebody higher than Yoshida. Though it could just
be bad pacing and other factors.
On that note, regarding Yusei, Yoshida's Yusei from the Dark Signer arc
was originally a cool-headed nice guy superman whose major flaw was that
he'd turn into an Ikari Shinji level whiner whenever he lost
confidence. And while Yusei would win ridiculously often, he'd at least
accept that he won a good portion of games through asspulls and have
nightmares about his limits before we got into the WRGP arc. Annoying as
hell, but not somebody who's impossible. There are a few superhumans in
society every once in a while. ONE hero like that in a show where such a
character has never shown up isn't a catastrophe as long as you sustain
consistency. But that got shot during most of the WRGP thanks to
horrible duel writing and bad portrayal. Which, again, in my opinion is
most likely a complex series of screwups instead of simply just
Yoshida's fault.
All in all, the ENTIRE staff and franchise structure showed signs of
underlying fatigue, conspiracies, and incompetence during 5D's. You
can't get THAT much chaos over the course of 125 episodes unless the
entire staff team is hit by a series of corporate screwups or internal
disagreement. Or a tactical nuclear weapon like the crazy yaoi writer in
charge of SEED Destiny who's effectively a one-person corporate
executive team when it comes to meddling. The problem with 5D's, was
ultimately that it tried too hard to be normal and was too linear to
overcome whatever changes and hiccups that occured mid-way. There are
WAY too many variables that can affect portrayal and stabililty in YGO.
Yoshida's standard writing style just wasn't fit for the franchise when
it came to 5D's, and to be truthful, 5D's itself wasn't fit for the
franchise. Not even Tomioka would be able to cover the amount of
structural chaos and bad dueling that was in 5D's by endgame,
personally. Same goes for Takegami. Maybe if they had two or more head
writers working on the plot together, but not with one.
As for the sexism, it seems to be a general problem with YGO save for
the GX manga, and is something that isn't going to be easily fixed.
That's not to say Yoshida's completely innocent for not giving female
characters more plot relevance. But the general male,
7-year-old-oriented atmosphere of the card sales, the male demographic
of the show, and the more shounen-oriented female character positions in
general are a long-standing crux of the industry. Females are either
oversexualized and made into hot fighting chicks that make for god-tier
fap fodder, or they're turned into moeblobs or random support. As a
result, any female that appears for more than one or two arcs as an ally
is often likely to get nerfed or corrupted, become a useless
cheerleader, or turn into what's effectively random fap fodder. Of
course, on rare occasion somebody defies this female undermining, but
that's relatively unlikely with corporate meddling and commercial
interests regarding the franchise these days. You could do something if
you gathered enough younger female players, but then you'd have to make a
cast and plot oriented towards younger girls.
Aki's value as a character dropped after she became normal, personally.
Psycho Aki with all the sadism was pretty much what made her stand out
amongst YGO heroines. Erasing that completely was a bad idea, but at the
same time keeping her as a psycho dominatrix wasn't exactly proper,
either. The fact that she recovered from her insanity is pretty much
what killed her, sadly. And that's somewhat related to the original
plotline before the extension. They pretty much ended on a note with Aki
becoming happy, rendering her plot relevance next to 0.
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