I feel like talking, I guess? So I’m gonna chatty here for a bit.

I watched another fucking yugioh in the last two weeks, you may have noticed. Like my other favorite, as far as you know, it may also only include 2 characters hahaha

It was never my intention to watch any spinoff media, so that I’m here a year after my initial manga binge like, “Yeah, I’ve read the original manga, and watched 4 additional spinoff anime series” is … certainly something. ( For people keeping track at home for some reason, content I have consumed: DM manga, GX, ZeXal, Arc-V, VRAINS. Someday I may get over how much I hated the motorcycle based section of Arc V and then watch 5Ds, but right now I don’t plan on it. Actively uninterested in the ones that have been coming out lately from the new animation studio, so I feel like it should be a stable level of consumption for now???? But it’s likely that somebody could hand me the manga versions of any of the above and I would sit through that also so who the fuck knows.)

I got merchandise, even, so like, I cared about some stuff enough to make more than one purchase. There’s even parts in place for a few other dolls and adjacent nonsense, so it’s like, oh, wild, I gave a surprising number of shits about this. I have four keychains. A damn throw pillow. Jewelry.

I still don’t care about card games. I actively skip a lot of duels between like, minor characters or one-offs haha. In the end, I think the diversity of different games and the horror elements of the original manga is still what I like best about it but, overall themes of “very good guy is violently possessed by Darkness” is AnAppeal, for fucking sure. Additional themes of ‘guy eternally tangled up with inhuman partner’ is a vibe I enjoy as well. Protagonist being themed with darkness and the Rival character being light is an inversion that I enjoy no matter how many times they do it. Sometimes there’s like a confusing level of theming going on but I’m still on board?

Anyway, I had a surprisingly good time overall. I had like a different experience for every one of these. Two of them I live blogged on a large Discord server one of them I did on my own and one of them I watched almost nightly with a bunch of friends and we all screamed at the violently ricocheting animation quality and baffling plot points. But even the series I liked the least was still enjoyable and still had fucked up little dudes in it that I loved so it all works out. ( there’s really dumb specific merchandise of one of those little dudes that I want so bad and I will never be able to find it haha)

Maybe it was all just a coping mechanism or something and I would have enjoyed it less if I were in a more stable and less pandemic, inflation, and disability infused world but it is nice to enjoy a bunch of little colorful guys and try to draw their stupid hair

Feel free to say words at me about this! I will probably have more words to throw at you against your will!