Here is the YuGiOh State of Things, I guess? If you want to know what I have consumed and what I like.

Duel Monsters: In my heart, this is the only one that’s actually Yu-Gi-Oh, haha. The others are just like, shows named whatever their subtitle is. I saw some of the dubbed anime in highschool, but mostly read the manga. When I decided to come back to this franchise this year, the manga is where I went. I also watched a decent amount of the anime before deciding it wasn’t worth it to keep going because they fucked over Ryou Bakura, haha. I watched enough to know I love Bakura’s voice as Rica Matsumoto and the ‘Passionate Duelist’ music cue. Also love Bakura voice in “Season 0”, which I have also not seen all of, but I read the maaaanga, so it’s enough, pretty much. My feelings and things I like and how I see them in this are all based on subtitled Japanese episodes and reading the translated manga.

My favorites are Ryou Bakura and Malik Ishtar, can you fucking believe it? I know this must be a shock. I think this has… probably been elaborated on or demonstrated enough that I don’t need to go into detail about this. I also really like Ryuji Otogi. Mai is also very good. Yugi is sweet and good, actually.

And then this collection of spinoff nonsense. I did not ever want to watch any of these. I decided to watch one a few months ago because it was just fun to talk to the group of people I was hanging out with and they were talking about good boys dealing with trauma, and uh, that’s a thing I like, so I said, fine, I’ll watch one (1) spinoff. I chose …

Arc V: Baby’s first spinoff. (This sentence has foreshadowing in it. See if you can guess what it was.) I fucking love the first theme song. I listen to that daily. A thing I also love is this protagonist. I love tomato clown boy Yuya Sakaki. I feel more fond of him as a character than I almost ever feel for protagonists of a show? I’m a 'not fully developed side character’ kinda bitch usually. The ending to this one was a hot mess, and I had a lot of Concerns and Questions about the ultimate fate and okayness of the counterpart Yu kids and bracelet girls, but I loved Yuya’s tour of significant dueling. I found the duels so much more entertaining in this than any other anime versions of duels I’d had to sit through because Yuya spends all of his running around and bouncing off walls rather than standing yelling at the guy across the way. Also liked his top hat bow tie wearing circus animal monsters.

But speaking of monsters, holy fuck I love Sora Shiunin. The cute stuff that turns out to be just nightmares? Toys and violence? Unhinged desperate motivations that turn into real character development?? Sincere friendship with main male and female characters?? Fucking hell, I love Sora. Sora Sora Sora SORA.

I purchased keychains of Sora and Yuya. Did not expect to care about spinoff media at all, let alone enough to make A Purchase. So that’s something.

ALSO GIRLS! They were real characters! For a while, Yuzu was doing more protagonist plot duty than Yuya, and she has her own duels and motivations that aren’t jokes. I really liked her, actually, and I was shocked to find myself able to enjoy multiple girls in a franchise that is Bad At Them.

ALSO DENNIS. I FUCKING LOVE DENNIS. I can’t believe his name is fucking Dennis, but I LOVE HIM.

I really enjoyed watching this and found myself missing the characters when I was done watching - which I liveblogged on a Discord server. I was real funny, thanks.

Then I got asked when I was gonna liveblog another one, with people pitching the ones they wanted to see me watch and comment on. Some shit happened on the public server I did all this on and I didn’t want to liveblog there again, so I moved it to a private one. Where I have been going through…

GX: I’m early in the final season. I suffer from this show suffering from straddling the line between 'these are fucking cards’ and 'this is magic that can kill you.’ It feels more absurd than the original because it’s still trying to operate in both real and fantasy world and it’s kinda mostly not working for me because of it. i admittedly had a friend steer me over the episodes that weren’t plot and were just 6000 year long duels. Me yelling about how much it is struggling between 'real life cards’ and 'incomprehensible magic’ aside, I had a really good time with the third season. Felt sad they thought they needed to bring in an entire new cast, though. Even as I loved some of those characters.

Did you know there are two plot-important and extremely capable awesome black guys with great looking natural hair shapes in Yu-Gi-Oh? Yeah, I didn’t either. (Can’t imagine why…) But they are both fantastic, so fucking shout outs to Kenzan and O'Brien, I love them.

I think my favorite is Manjoume. Which only happened after they sent him to the north pole and rolled him in garbage. Once he became proper trash, I loved him. Wish they’d let him keep the entirely trash monster deck from that one episode. Fucking dragons are so boring, blaaaaah

Shocking how much more I liked Judai once Johan showed up. Seems like he really needed what Johan had to offer. I like them as a pair very much. I like Johan’s monsters as much as I really don’t like Judai’s, haha.

I liked a lot of the Yubel stuff? But I felt like a lot of it was needlessly drawn out and then it concluded too quickly? I don’t know how I feel about it all, but I loved the effect of the voice drifting between styles/genders.

Anyway, I haven’t finished that. I was not having fun in Season 2 (my friends were assuring me it would be worth it), but I really enjoyed Season 3. Dunno how we’re feeling about Season 4. But I’m not nearly so motivated to watch it? That might mean nothing.

While I was doing THIS, the other spinoff people had been begging me to liveblog was…

ZeXal: I kinda… don’t like this one. We have watched most of the first half. I’ve been watching it with my friends on Discord, and so it’s kinda fun to watch with running commentary, but the only characters I really like are not showing up often or being really developed. I’m bored, I don’t like the protagonist or his monsters, I’m not finding characters I care about. Tron’s family is the most interesting thing going on. I’m missing something that is making the rest of my group go nuts with love about this one. I don’t think I’d still be watching if it wasn’t the group watch project.

I like III and IV and Tron and like, most of Shark. Actively can’t stand the female characters, who just yell in distress and/or hit people out of nowhere in an overblown display of jealousy. I’m so tired of that shit. Kinda why I stopped watching a lot of this sort of thing ages ago.

Anyway, much like GX, I’m told the second half of this show is just OMG SO MUCH BETTER, so perhaps my feelings will change.

I don’t want to watch 5Ds. I hated the motorcycle parts of Arc V, I don’t want to see any more of that.

Sevens is full of characters too young, designs and a style I don’t like. So Vrains is the only left that is a possibility. It’s actually the one I wanted to watch based on the first pitches from the Discord server after my Arc V liveblogging, and I really love Arc V, so I’m curious if the ones that sounded appealing to me alone will continue to be the ones I enjoy the most. WE WILL PROBABLY SEE. LE SIGH.

But there you go, that’s what I have seen and what I have enjoyed.