Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's/YMMV

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Anime examples

• Alternate Character Interpretation: Divine and Paradox get this.
• And the Fandom Rejoiced: In-universe example: "Why are these Team Taiyou losers been wasting our time throwing out normal monster after normal monster? They've been at this for 18 turns already!... wait what? You serious? They're gonna summon Sleeping Giant Thud? But they only need another two turns!. I wanna see! I wanna see! Go Team Taiyou!"
  • Real life example Man, Team Taiyou is boring....What, what? A reference/appearance of the original series God Cards comparing it to Thud?? MY GOD THEY BEAT CROW IN A STRAIGHT UP DUEL!? Go Team Taiyou!!
  • Every time it was revealed that Masaaki Endo was doing one of the songs, especially when it was shown that he was singing the fifth opening after already singing the fourth.
  • 4kids losing the license to the series... Though extra YMMV, since that also means No Export for You for certain things.
• Anticlimax Boss: What Team Catastrophe turned out to be, due to being Placido's Unwitting Pawns and not wanting to win as much as wanting to just break shit. Heck, Hans didn't even get to duel!
• Ass Pull: This is Yu-Gi-Oh!, so there's guaranteed to be a lot of come-from-behind victories revolving around cards that had never been foreshadowed. The most Egregious example? Rubble King from episode 10, a card whose effect depends on there being a lot of cards in the Graveyard... and it just happened to be the second-to-last card in Yusei's deck. This card was created out of wholecloth to enable Yusei's victory in that episode and never appeared again, not even being released in real life. And technically speaking, he didn't need it in the first place; he could have activated his winning trap card, Blasting the Ruins, at the start of his opponent's next turn.
• Awesome Music: Fans are split as to whether "Hyperdrive" is a good song or not. But come on here...
• Badass Decay: Aki. At the start of the series, she was a cold stone bitch who nobody messed with or they would suffer from her unleashing the powers she had. Now she's a moe school girl who does almost nothing plot wise - until the WGRP, where she's racing and dueling with the whole team.
  • Jack suffered from this, too. While in the first season he was Yuusei's equally-matched rival and the secondary main character, he was the show's Plucky Comic Relief at worst and a Memetic Badass at best seemingly bearing no relevance to the plot whatsoever... Until a mini-arc actually addresses the perceived decay, with a robot duplicate of Jack's King persona claiming that the real Jack has lost his edge, saying that he cannot win against his past self. After losing once, Jack has a rematch and whoops his doppelganger's ass in spectacular fashion.
    • And just in case anyone still doubts Jack, another mini-arc saw Jack fighting against the forces of the forces of the Crimson Devil and stealing the powers of the Crimson Devil to make his newest trump card, Scar-Red Nova Dragon. It helps that he is the reincarnation of a legendary Signer with a special power called "Burning Soul"
    • The final episode pretty much turn him from emo self procalimed covered by money king into a real king. He has some Magikarp Power on him really, going from Badass Decay into possibly the strongest among signer with only Yusei as the competitor.
    • Its funny to think that it is implied that without the Legendary Signer, the Crimson Dragon side is losing against the Scar-Red Nova. Now that same being is Jack's Slave/Trump Card. This imply that Jack is stronger than even the Crimson Dragon itself
• Base Breaker: Crow, Crow, Crow. Quite possibly the worst Base Breaker in the series, it's hard to find enough people who share opinions to come to a consensus on what they think he is and what he should be. Some people call him the Kamina of the series(Though most detractors say that the honor should go more to Jack). Others love him for what he is, the Large Ham of the cast. Still others call him a Canon Sue, citing his use of an archetype that's been a tournament staple in real life, the fact that he became a Signer , and the fact that he never shuts up as reason for being hated. This extends to just about any episode that revolves around Crow, to the point where, if you see Crow featuring prominently in an episode, there's bound to be an argument about it.
  • Aki fits this to a minor degree. Either you love or hate her Backstory and Character Development.
• Better on DVD: Especially when filler episodes can be skipped over and some can be treated as a bonus arc (Crashtown).
• Black Hole Sue: Crow's increased presence ended up warping the intended plot quite a bit. The story goes something like this: Crow was never intended to be a main character - he was a close friend to Yusei, but not a major part of the cast. After Blackwings started selling like hotcakes in Real Life, the Konami suits ordered the anime crew to make him a permanent member of the cast (so more Blackwings could be made, of course), and, as it turns out, Katsumi Ono had a soft spot for Crow. So while Crow isn't a Black Hole Sue in the context of the 5D's universe, he is one metatextually.
• Broken Aesop: The Team Unicorn duel, according to numerous disgruntled fans. The Aesop the writers were going for was probably something along the lines of "It's better to lose and have fun than win and be a stick-in-the-mud," but it came across as broken because a) Team Unicorn was in a major tournament, so you'd imagine winning would probably be a pretty high priority for them, b) the tournament was double-elimination, not single, so Team 5D's could still progress to the finals by beating two more preliminary opponents, and c) the Aesop itself was handled more like "Hard Work Hardly Works" or "You Can't Fight Plot Armor" than anything else.
• Broken Base: Let's just say that the only thing that the fandom can generally agree on is that the music is great and the first 64 episodes were better then what came after that. You'll have arguements on anything from how many seasons exist to correct character spellings to anything involving Aki and Crow.
  • Crashtown Arc - pointless filler that ran on for too long and changed absolutely nothing, or interesting arc focusing on a character that until now had been Put on a Bus? The fans may never agree.
  • As of Episode 107, Placido's transformation. The coolest villain in all of Yu-Gi-Oh, or just silly?
  • ZONE's true identity, a good plot twist or poor writing after foreshadowing pointed to something else?
• Canon Sue: Bruno is the most obvious example. In his very first episode he heavily outshines both Crow and Yuusei at D-wheel mechanics and computer hacking, beats Crow (an excellent duelist) and Jack (the former King of Games) at a duel puzzle after Yuusei (the current King of Games) asks him if it's even possible. Now subverted, since Bruno was secretly Dark Glass, Yuusei's watcher, albeit his memories seem to have gone the way of Laser-Guided Amnesia though he retained his great dueling prowess.
  • The jury is still out on whether or not Crow counts for this trope. He's something of a Broken Base there.
• Complete Monster: Divine. There's no lives he won't ruin so long as he can make god use of them.
  • Lotten in the Crash Town arc to a lesser extent. At least Barbara was loyal to him a trait he didn't return.
• Common Knowledge: This Reddit post puts a pretty definite kibosh on two of the fandom's biggest misinformations surrounding the anime's production
  • The long accepted reasoning behind 5Ds' second half moving away from mythological to purely technological foes, the infamous Aki "benchwarmer" plot and the underusage of Carly and Misty has little to nothing to do with Ayumi Kinoshita's pregnancy nor Carly's first VA being arrested for cult membership. Firstly, Kinoshita gave birth to her first child in 2014, which kills that idea pretty firmly. Secondly, Carly's VA was arrested in 2010, well into the show's run - in fact her last episode was 128 out of 154, and as any anime fan knows, anime is first acted out and then animated, which means there simply was no way in hell the cult connections could've affected the original plan for the season. So, in the end it just boils down that the writers wrote themselves into a corner with the Dark Signers and had to start again from scratch, so the girls sadly had to take a backseat.
• Crazy Awesome: Admit it, as absurd as the idea of "Card games on motorcycles!" may be, if they actually invented the equipment needed to make it real, fans of the card game would be lining up at the DMV to gain a license for it. In fact, when Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS came out, many fans were disappointed that the "Speed Duels" mentioned in promotional material had nothing to do with Turbo Dueling.
  • To a lesser extent, the idea that Crow was originally supposed to be the Big Bad of the Dark Signers arc. Kazuki Takahashi's character designs explicitly define him as a protagonist, a kind of a "lovable crook" that would've stolen Yusei's D-Wheel once, only for him to realize the error of his ways, especially given he would've done that to a friend of his.
• Creator's Pet: Despite the fact that Crow and Aki (especially the former) are The Scrappy or Base Breaker (depending on who you ask), they are considered to be cool by younger characters (the twins for Aki and Crow's orphans for himself) and are apart of the hero's best friends.
  • Yusei, for some. He's constantly deified by the series and is considered to be awesome by a lot of the cast in general, and he virtually never loses (and when he wins, it tends to be through some new card that came from nowhere). It doesn't help that the later seasons pretty much revolve around him, to the detriment of most all of the other characters.
• Die for Our Ship: Carly or Mina or Stephanie. Ironically, Jack never officially gets together with ANY of them.
• Double Standard: Kiryu is universally loved by the fandom. Crow is its biggest Base Breaker. These characters have many of the exact same traits, except Kiryu is bishier and angstier.
• Draco in Leather Pants: Jack in the first arc. Divine in general.
• Ear Worm: The dub theme song. Dear lord...
  • The original opening during the Dark Signer Arc will get stuck in your head as well.
• Ensemble Darkhorse: Ushio, he started out as a Butt Monkey villain and then pulled a Heel Face Turn to become a permanent supporting cast member. He's fairly well loved and received in the fandom.
  • Kiryu also to a lesser extent. The fact that he ha obtained a seven episode long arc focused on him may or may not be acknowledging his fan popularity.
  • The Familiar of the Crimson Devil is quite popular as well, mainly due to his quirky personality.
  • Cup Ramen Man.
  • Carly prior to season 3.
    • Season 3 nothing, Carly is a fan-favorite for good reason. Same with Misty and to a lesser extent Sherry.
  • Martha.
• Epileptic Trees: Several, but one that sticks out is the thought that Rudger is Jack's father.
  • On a related note, that Rex is Crow's father.
    • Interestingly enough (and related to both of the above), in the 5Ds manga, it appears that Rex is Jack's father.
  • Zonesei/Oldsei. Yusei is ZONE The evidence fans use is stacking up in their favour. Jossed later on.
  • Sly is Divine's son.
  • Many people theorize that Yusei is now dead thanks to his final stunt shown of jumping over the bridge connecting Satellite and Neo Domino. It doesn't exactly help that Yusei already dodged huge air fans, jumped over a pit of magma and stood on top of a railling on a cliff in the final episode alone.
• Estrogen Brigade: Let's not even get started on this one.
• Fanon Discontinuity: Many fans like to pretend that anything after the Dark Signer arc did not happen or that ZONE was really future Yusei.
• Foe Yay: Rua/Aporia has quite the backing, especially once Aporia showed up to duel Zone.
• Fridge Brilliance: Some fans wondered why Yusei needed to find Accel Synchro when he already had Savior Star Dragon. But watching the Yusei vs. Placido duel, it becomes apparent that Placido had already found a way to counter Savior Star. Savior Star Dragon can negate ONE monster effect per turn, but stealing the Skiel Carrier cards gave Placido TWO lines of defense (Wisel Guard 3 and Skiel Carrier 5). Savior Star would negate one, bounce off of the other, and get absorbed the next turn. Game over, hero dead, town destroyed, roll credits.
• Fridge Horror:
  • Yusei's self blame towards Zero Reverse becomes horrifically justified when Yusei's future self is ZONE and Yliaster's leader. He was the one who guided Rudger into triggering the event, killing hundreds of people and his own father and causing what he feared the most.
    • Subverted in the fact it was merely someone who psyched himself into believing he was Yusei, made himself look exactly like Yusei, and then go mad from being unable to save the World from a Zero Reverse.
  • So Yusei saved Neo Domino City. Great! Only didn't ZONE want to destroy Neo Domino to prevent a far bigger disaster from taking place in the future? By saving the city, did Yusei just doom the future world, with no one left to prevent it?
• Fridge Logic: Quite literally. Crow was in one for around 24 hours! Indeed, this seems to keep happening to Crow as he, once again, avoided being killed by jumping into a fridge with an old man.
  • This bit is exclusive to the English Dub. If Jack, Yusei and Crow grew up together in the same neighborhood, from they were babies I might add, why is it only Jack has an Australian accent?
    • It's 4Kids. Leave it at that.
• Genius Bonus: Similar to the many references to real-life subjects hidden in Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, the Fortune Cup and Dark Signers arcs are full of references to Incan mythology, while the W.R.G.P. arc gives us references to geneticists, genetics and biology.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Luciano is nucking futs, a Laughing Mad child psycopath, and a Large Ham if there ever was one. But admittedly, it gets a bit hard to mock him for it after realizing he represents a child who was driven insane by the loss of his parents.
  • Straighter example: Zero Reverse and the Bad Future itself, thanks to Japan suffering what is pretty close to the real life equivalent with the 8.9 earthquake, tsunamis and power/nuclear plants exploding.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: About a month and a half prior to the series airing, Yu-Gi-Oh the Abridged Series had Tristan ride up on a motorcycle, and when asked he explained that "in the future, card games will be played on motorbikes," before cutting to a promotional artwork for 5Ds. Then the series got dubbed, and who should be voicing Yuusei but the same guy who voiced Tristan, using almost the same voice he did for Tristan too. Hilarity ensued.
  • Some fake episode titles mentioned something about a new Earthbound Immortal. With the airing of episode 112, we learn that the Crimson Devil is actually an Earthbound Immortal that fought one-on-one with the Crimson Dragon and lost.
• Hollywood Pudgy: Bruno, whose on-screen stats would indicate that he's probably closer to having a normal weight-to-height ratio compared to the rest of the cast, but because this is Yu-Gi-Oh!...
• Ho Yay and Les Yay: Has its own page.
• I Knew It!: One of the many Epileptic Trees surrounding the Tenors, and was recently revealed to be true in the anime, was that the three are the same being, each of them representing a period in the life of the same person. They are, and they do, and that person is Aporia.
• Invincible Hero: Yusei, who has the least on-screen losses of any Yu-Gi-Oh! protagonist, for a grand total of one, and even that was due to disqualification (he fell off his bike mid-duel) rather than his Life Points hitting 0. The Team Unicorn duel was particularly criticized for this, where the Magnificent Bastard opponent seemed to lose 50 IQ points solely due to Yusei's Plot Armor. Crow had shades of this until the WRGP finals, too, where he managed to lose to all three opposing teams.
• Launcher of a Thousand Ships: Yuusei. Possibly Lampshaded in episode 80.
• Magnificent Bastard: Goodwin (Deceased).
• The Masochism Tango: Although Yuusei and Aki are not officially in love/dating, there is an implied interest between them, and Aki spends most of her screentime prior to the third season kicking Yuusei's ass with tentacles, thorns, flying debris, and slams into the concrete worthy of a WWE wrestler.
• Memetic Badass: JACK. Just Jack.
  • Nitro Warrior. Every single time it is summoned (except for the final duel with Jack), the opponent is OTK'd - in Crashtown, Yusei summons Nitro Warrior and OTKs three guys at once!
    • Jose. Hhe runs down the track after Jack's D-Wheel when it's his turn to duel, and keeps up with him until he merges with his D-Wheel a few moments later. Many jokes ensued about the possibility of him just running around the track for the duel without a D-Wheel, which apparently he could have.]]
• Memetic Mutation: CARD GAMES ON MOTORCYCLES!
  • More recently, Jack's "obsession" with coffee.
  • ATLAS PUNCH!
    • And more recently ATLAS CHOKE!
  • The dub brings one along in the form of "magic glue".
  • "ABSOLUTE POWER FORCE!"
  • ZETSUBOU!!
• Mind Game Ship: The relationship between Divine and Aki is virtually the embodiment of this trope.
• Motive Decay: Goodwin.
• Mundane Made Awesome: The show has a hefty dosage of this trope, yet conducts all of the insanity that crops up in a completely straight-faced, almost deadpan manner.
  • You will either think that Aporia's introduction is either cool, or the most ridiculous fucking thing ever. Also his D-Wheel looks like a cat's face.
• Narm: Cup ramen is a major plot point. The plot becomes downright ridiculous when Yeager/Lazar's mother sells her prized show dress to buy cup ramen and then ramen drives his backstory Off the Rails.
• Nausea Fuel: Takasu blowing nosehair at people. Jaeger's picture of his family.
  • Let's just say that Placido was more intimidating riding his D-Wheel than becoming his D-Wheel.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • Everything about the Earthbound Immortals/Gods/Jibakushin. Every single bloody thing.
  • Kiryu's Infernity deck. Actually, just Kiryu.
  • A notable and unusual one is a shot of Ruka with a skull for a face.
• Periphery Demographic: While the series is targeted toward young boys, it has also attracted an audience of roughly women aged 13-26 thanks to the Ho Yay and watching the original series as children.
• Replacement Scrappy: Adding in Bruno to replace Kiryu for a new four-man group in Season 3.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap - A number of people disliked Rua before the Dark Signer Arc.
  • Crow may also qualify, being given a legitimate expanded backstory in 94 and 95.
• Ruined FOREVER: The verdict of some fans after Zone is revealed not to be Yusei, some claiming they'd quit if the series wasn't so close to ending.
• The Scrappy: Who is a Scrappy in 5D's varies almost depending on who you ask. Crow is hated for being a Remember the New Guy? character with a Game Breaker deck who "stole" third billing from Aki... that is, when Aki isn't being hated for going from Badass crazy chick to Wangster to cheerleader. The twins are hated for being The Load and for providing what is seen as unnecessary comedy to a rather dark series, and even Yusei, the main character, has his haters, who claim he's a Invincible Hero with too much Incorruptible Pure Pureness. The things most every fan seems to agree on, though, are that Jack, Carly, and most of the villains are awesome, and that Leo/Lyndon from episode 85 is an absolutely terrible character.
• Seasonal Rot: Season Three (specifically episodes 65-130 or so) tends to get a lot of flak for this.
• Straw Man Has a Point: While his plan to destroy an entire city was undoubtedly drastic, Zone is the last human survivor who was trying to prevent the same thing happening to the whole world. Team 5D's fights against his plan without even trying to think up of an alternative way to prevent the apocalypse besides a generic hope speech.
• Tear Jerker: Quite a number of these have cropped up.
  • Has its own page.
• The Untwist: ZONE not being Yusei, despite sharing the same appearance and heavy foreshadowing.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Jack's and Yuusei's scarred friendship was one of the main focuses of season one (and the entire focus for the first five episodes), but it was never fully explained what happened that caused them to grow so far apart after Kiryu's death.
  • A lot of Foreshadowing went into hinting at ZONE being Yusei from the future. When it was revealed he was just some random nobody who underwent plastic surgury to emulate Yusei, the fandom went nuclear.
  • When Sly, one of Rua and Ruka's classmate, was introduced, the series made notice that he had interest in Yusei's Stardust Dragon. This was never developed.
  • Aki's character arc in the second season began with her wanting to learn how to Turbo Duel to understand the adrenaline and energy that Yusei and other Turbo Duelists feel, and it was hinted she wanted to get closer to Yusei after being jealous of female Turbo Duelist Sherry. Once she got her license to ride Aki only ever took part in a single Turbo Duel as a member of Team 5Ds, and was eliminated in the same episode she went in.
    • Two episodes after she got Aki got her license, Rua and Ruka got a two-episode arc where they got to Turbo Duel using skateboards instead of motorcycles. This went absolutely nowhere.
  • After all the focus on Jack and Carly's relationship during the Dark Signers ark, the dreaded Reset Button rears its shiny head. Their relationship is never put into focus or developed in any form or shape again, and instead Carly is reduced to being just another Jack fangirl for the sake of comic relief. The sound you're hearing is the sound of Jack/Carly shippers reaching for the torches and pitchforks.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: Rally. Someone really needs to tell that kid that he dresses like a girl. The long fluffy hair doesn't help.
  • This is even lampshaded in Tag Force 4 when Carly tries to question Yusei about his life when Rally forces her and the player character into a duel. Carly whispers to herself, 'What is with this girl!? She's cute, I'll give her that, but...' to which Rally angrily responds, 'I'M NOT A GIRL!!!'. Carly completely ignores this and continues talking to herself about accepting the duel.
  • Jaeger fits the trope, too. Lampshaded in Episode 81, when a holographic Jaeger "clone" can't make up its mind whether it belongs in the men's or ladies' bathroom.
  • Luciano has a long braided ponytail, eyelashes and a feminine voice. But at least he wears the male school uniform.
• Wangst: Aki's backstory.
  • Also, Yuusei's on-again off-again fear of Wisel Emperor, an Anti-Synchro monster that he's already defeated. Using a Synchro Monster. And even though that Synchro was Deus Ex Machina dragon, he still has Junk Archer, whose effect already perfectly counters Wisel Emperor's.
    • Not to mention Turbo Warrior, which is completely unaffected by the effects of monsters level 6 and lower...such as the level ONE Machine Emperors and every component piece of them shown to date (Wisel's only have gone up to 3, and Skiel has only upgraded as far as 5), meaning it could have charged head-on into Wisel's core, ignored Wisel Guard 3's attack redirection effect, and kamikaze'd it into oblivion.
    • Though they don't see a lot of use, normal Tribute monsters still exist. Without a Synchro to absorb the Machine Emperor is stuck at 2500 points, which isn't very hard to overcome. Solution to avoid making him stronger? Just don't use Synchros so much! Yusei could have just retooled his deck with stronger base monsters and not relied on Synchros so much, and he probably would have been fine.
• What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic
• The Woobie: Aki in the first arc. Aporia is a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds
• Woolseyism: The English dub's "Earthbound Immortals" just sounds more dramatic than the original "Earthbound Gods". There's also a similar instance of renaming the Polar Gods to Aesir in the dub/TCG. Aesir is a group of gods that Odin and Thor belong to and which Loki is heavily associated with, despite not actually being one himself.
  • A notable instance is changing Himuro's knife that he hid from the prison guards into magazines. The dub simply makes it more subtle and turns it into a Parental Bonus.

Video game examples

• Breather Boss: Compared to the Sequential Boss that comes before him, Jack in WC 2009 is this. Mind you, he's also the Final Boss
• That One Boss: Dark Signer Bommer in 2010. A riding duel is painful enough since the game introduces it not long beforehand and you must allow him to summon his Earthbound God in order to win.
  • Dark Signer Kiryu from the same game could count as well the first time you face him in story mode. Facing a boss playing an Infernity deck when both players start with no cards in hand could be a nasty challenge for the unprepared.
  • Dear god, Lawton in 2011. He starts with 10 cards in his hand and runs pure burn. Do the math. Sometimes you need a miracle not to be killed on the first turn.
• That One Level: The stealth missions of sneaking past Security. This was a pain to complete in 2009 and they mercifully toned it down in 2010.