Just Another Blog

I just really like this ship.

is this the plot of season 3??

Hello guys! Thank you for reblogging/liking my previous post. I got  asks about ships I couldn’t include, so this time I’ll translate all the ship tags that are officially recorded in pixiv to be fair. I’ll start from part1 Phantom Blood. Here we go!

Jonathan/Dio   (Top/Bottom)  diojona　ディオジョナ jonadio　ジョナディオ Speedwagon/Jonathan speedjona　スピジョナ jonaspeed　ジョナスピ Dio/Speedwagon diospeed　ディオスピ Jonathan/Erina jonaeri　　ジョナエリ

PB doesn’t have as many characters as later parts so there aren’t many ships. But not officially recorded doesn’t mean other ships don’t exist. If there are ships not on the list ask me anytime.

Inspired by this wonderful post.

- Crow was supposed to be the main villain of the Dark Signer arc, with the smoking-gun evidence being a piece of very early concept art by Takahashi that describes him as a guy who’s tried to steal Yusei’s D-Wheel before and is now his friend, with Rex Godwin’s massive Nazca condor shirt emblem being a cleverly-placed red herring.

- Crow was made into a good guy because his cards sold well, in that set that came out a month after he debuted and was shown as a good guy and Yusei’s never-mentioned BFF. Rather than the standard anime production cycle of a few months per episode, they created the episode in negative three weeks, paying very close attention to the card game the same way they did when they swapped out Kaiser’s Cyber Dragons for the incredibly meta-relevant Cyberdarks.

- Aki Izayoi’s role was reduced because her voice actress, Ayumi Kinoshita, was pregnant at the time of the show’s run in 2008-2011. She would go on to get married in 2012 and give birth to her first child in 2014, setting the world record for Longest Pregnancy.

- The Roma-Sophie cult scandal, which went public in September 2010, affected the production timeline of the entire second half of 5Ds, which began in mid-2009. Having seen the future, they decided to distance themselves from the cult, and cleverly destroyed the Arcadia Movement building and largely ended its plotline in December 2008. They also excised almost all elements of the occult and shifted the series in the direction of pure sci-fi. Except for that part of the series and the whole-ass DS game, because they figured they could have a little cult stuff. 

- The aforementioned cult also caused them to completely revert Carly Nagisa’s long-running character arc, as her voice actress, Li-Mei Chiang, was a high-ranking member of Roma-Sophie. To accomplish this, they significantly downplayed her role in the series and turned her into a cheerleader for Jack Atlas. However, she was so nice around the office that they decided to raise her character from the dead, give her a prevalent, irritating running gag, and have her keep showing up and even get a filler recap episode that aired in October 2010, despite her having essentially no role in the ongoing plot and many other characters losing prominence or being written out in the transition to the WRGP Arc. They only recasted her part in that episode, which was near the end of the series, because she was literally under arrest at that point. It came as a complete shock to everyone, despite the fact that they had been planning for the eventuality for over a year.

These facts may have no apparent sources or citations except hoary decade-old internet rumors and fandom gossip one step above a friend’s dad who works at Nintendo, but they are definitely true. Because, as we all know, the idea of Yu-Gi-Oh shows downplaying or sidelining prominent female characters, reverting character development that might alter the status quo (especially when it comes to romance), rejecting cool occult elements that appeal to an older audience in favor of toyetic sci-fi that appeals to kids, and sticking the spotlight on completely unprecedented characters for no reason to the point of sidelining existing characters and plotlines, is utterly inconceivable. There has to be an outside explanation.

In seriousness, friends: sometimes a show just does things you don’t want it to do. There’s no reason for it. Nobody forced the writers to do it. There was no nasty executive sharpening a knife over their shoulder. The same writers who wrote the things you liked, can write the things you didn’t like. This is especially true when you are a nostalgic twentysomething Western adult and the show is aimed at ten-year-old Japanese boys and therefore does things not meant to appeal to you in any way.

And I believed most of these myself at some point. I eagerly jumped on the idea. It let me construct a “true” version of 5Ds that existed in a mental covenant between me and the show’s writers, who understood what was really good about the show. I could claim that, really, the last half wasn’t bad, because it was just them doing the best with what they could under heavy limitations.

But there were no limitations. They wanted the show to be that way. They did it on purpose. It sucks, but it happens. Some people actually preferred the show that way, you know.

and theres a line from Yuya that caught my 5ds-obsessed attention

During the Synchro Arc, where Yuya has to fight off other duellists to face Jack Atlas (yes 5ds excitement here), Yuya uses a weak tuner monster that other people call a "useless garbage card" and wins with that very card. Already, you see where this is going if you know anything about 5Ds. As the protagonist here in this synchro "5ds" dimension, he perfectly captures the protag of 5Ds in his words:

This echoes Yusei almost exactly:

tThis was on purpose, it must've been. the protag of Arc-v, during the 5Ds inspired season, says the same sentiment that Yusei always carried during 5Ds?!?!?! Its no coincidence.

Now, I draw your attention to Jack's reaction. In Arc-v, he is the King (as was in 5Ds), and just as in 5Ds during the Fortune Cup, he watches every duel. Jack hears Yuya say this, winning with a card that we later find out was the very reason Jack decided to become King in the first place (long story short, it fell from the Tops to where he was in the lowest sector and inspired him).

Here's the full sequence:

hHe smiled. He had never smiled until this point in Arc V. Is he smiling because it reminded him of Yusei? Probably not, the legacy characters in Arc V are confirmed to not be the same as their original counterparts.

He is probably smiling because that's his exact sentiment too. In a later episode, he explains why he gave that weak card to a fan, because it symbolised that nobody is useless just as no card is useless and he wanted to pass this on to a poor boy like he used to be.

Jack didn't, as far as I can tell, have this feeling originally in 5Ds. Yusei had to teach him that, because his strategy was always high power monsters and the weak monsters were only used to bring out stronger ones. But in Arc-V, he feels this on his own, and teaches it like Yusei taught it to him. Jack doesn't know Yusei in Arc-V. If he did, maybe this is evidence for it.

But my headcanon is that maybe Yusei, who would live in the Tops with his father since Zero Reverse never happened in this universe, let Tuning Magician fall to the lowest sectors, as a gift to people less fortunate. Yusei wouldn't be a selfish Tops like the others are, he'd still have his values. Maybe he sent the card down to the Commons to find a use with someone who needed it, and it just so happened to land in Jack's hands and inspire him.

The fact that not only Yuya, the protganist and therefore the one who has to be the most morally-righteous (kind of) said this line but that it was what Jack always pushed throughout Arc-V as his redeeming, good-guy trait, says a lot considering this sentiment is Yusei's.

Yusei always, ALWAYS, pushed the idea that no card is useless. Then Jack is the one to push this in Arc-V and teach the protagonist there? I find that a little suspicious... and gives me lots and lots of nostalgic 5Ds headcanons......................

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sorry for the rant, at this point I'm just watching Arc-V for anything to bring it back to 5Ds especially with the Synchro Arc. And I've never seen anyone talk about this line of Yuya's, so my 5Ds-infested brain needed to get some release here.