Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • And the Fandom Rejoiced: With the announcement of Episode 22 and its Duel between Shark and Kaito, even many haters of the show immediately perked up and started placing their bets.
  • Anticlimax Boss: For all that V was hyped, he didn't turn out all that impressive in his duel with Kaito. Although part of the problem is how he spent the entire thing acting as Mr. Exposition, his strategy boiled down to tanking behind Dyson Sphere's ability to negate all attacks hurled at it, then direct attacking with its effect to bypass Kaito's Galaxy-Eyes Photon Dragon. Overall the whole thing came across as a massive letdown. Kaito just so happened to have a perfect combo to summon Neo Galaxy-Eyes and win. V had no counter for it despite having seen the same card defeat both of his brothers in their Tag Duel against Yuma and Kaito.
  • Ass Pull: As per Yu-Gi-Oh! tradition, being the main protagonist means Yuma is entitled to as many of these as the plot demands.
  • Complaining About Shows You Don't Watch: Many a complaint has been made where the complainer has even confessed to not watching ZeXal but denounces it purely due to Shin Yoshida being the head writer, what they've seen of character designs from previews and promotional stuff, or even from the text episode previews.
  • Ear Worm: Courtesy of 4Kids
  • Ensemble Darkhorse: Haruto
  • Fan Dumb: When Zexal was first unveiled, fans translated the previews into "Exceed Summons" and Shark's Number as "Revise Dragon". When the official spellings were announced, it was revealed that they were supposed to be "Xyz Summons" (but pronounced as "ik-seez") and "Leviath Dragon". Needless to say, some fans went ape shit. Some are still in denial even now, refusing to acknowledge the real names and just being angry dicks to anyone who tries to correct them. Averted by the guy who actually did the translating, saying that he was doing so with no context and that the official spellings are correct.
  • Hell Is That Noise: Kaito has a habit of whistling a quite eerie melody to announce his presence in a time-stop.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: A normal guy teaming up with an ancient bodyless being to restore said being's body by defeating opponents using powers similar to their own; sounds like Kamen Rider OOO to me.
    • Quite a few shows have that premise, what really connects this to OOO is a certain role Astral's Seiyuu has on that show.
  • Ho Yay: Yuma and Astral, also called keyshipping, complete with tentacle porn (thanks No. 96)
  • Memetic Molester: Jin, not helped by his insane stalkerish obsession with Kaito and his general appearance. Kaito himself went memetic on at least one forum after some of his... expressions in Episode 22.
  • Memetic Mutation: I blew it on my bing! - A shoddy google translation of Yuma's catchphrase "Kattobingu" that went viral shortly afterwards.
    • Also tomatoes, thanks to the pre series special focusing on tomatoes and real life actors eating them.
    • "You just summoned your mom."
  • Nightmare Fuel: The effect of Giant Killer... Or it would be if the animation was graphic and not incredibly stylized.
    • It would have been much worse if its only on-screen victims were not machine monsters.
  • Pandering to the Base: While the franchise is aimed at kids to begin with, the series seems to be deliberately appealing only to the younger kids for having a brighter, more childish art style, a protagonist who's much younger then the previous ones (and acts like it too), a general Lighter and Softer feel and having a quiz show explaining some of the most basic concepts of the game. Oddly enough, the series also featured many Callbacks to Yu-Gi-Oh: Duel Monsters, which could be seen as pandering to the original fanbase.
    • It's not a case of Viewers are Morons: if they're explaining the rules, it's because they're explaining the rules to their newer, younger audience.
  • Ruined FOREVER: The series quite quickly became a Base Breaker with more than a few fans declaring it as this.
  • So Bad It's Good
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks: Some people who were fond of Yu-Gi-Oh 5 Ds' Darker and Edgier tone don't like that the characters...even though it's not guaranteed that the series won't have its dark moments.
  • The Scrappy: Even though the series is still new Yuma is the least liked protagonist so far due to his lack of duelling skill, hypocrisy really stubborn nature and his screw ups take up unnecessarily large amounts of screen time. Tokunosuke is also unpopular since he's a slimy cheat who was too easily forgiven and generally causes more harm than good to those around him.
  • Viewer Gender Confusion: Astral is male.
    • That hasn't stopped the fan artists though.
    • Although Yuma is much more popular for BL fans to be the uke in their art.
  • Villain Sue: Kite's skills in dueling are mainly reliant on how he just magically has the cards to counter whatever elaborate strategy his opponent has. Just because. The show tries to show him as an expert strategist, but his cards are often ridiculously cheap.
  • The Woobie: Baby Tragon. Poor critter's been used by Tokunosuke to presumably rig countless duels in his favor. Let's also not forget Baby Tragon is a Rank 1 Xyz Monster (lowest possible rank), has low ATK/DEF stats, and has an effect confined to only supporting allied Level 1 monsters (in other words, useless for the most part). Baby Tragon's card picture even features him having a very sad face. This story ends with a happy ending, though: Baby Tragon jumps up and flies around with joy when Yuma opts to befriend him and properly use him in the ongoing duel instead of abandoning/mistreating him like most other duelists. Yuma gets to keep him, too!
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