You know, I used to be a really big fan of Yu-Gi-Oh! Not just the anime either, the card game. The card game was a lot of fun and, if I knew how to build decks back then, I would've been really good at the game. The anime was a lot of fun as well, although it did have some problems.
Yu-Gi-Oh! the anime was far more into the card game of Duel Monsters than the manga was. The manga's schpiel was to try a whole bunch of different games and see which ones stuck. Of the games that were introduced, Duel Monsters was the only one that ended up with a strong amount of popularity over the years. Initially, I thought it was because that was just the game the anime decided to focus on, however, when I think this, my mind inevitably goes back to Dungeon Dice Monsters, a game which got started on an introduction through the anime and, while it did have some rulesets and games built around it, it never lasted long.
That said, I don't think it was simply a matter of the card game being the best there ever was in terms of games in that universe either since Capsule Monsters was actually a really fun game in its own right. Capsule Monsters was my favorite game from Yu-Gi-Oh! and not even because of the manga but because of the PS2 game Yu-Gi-Oh! Capsule Monster Coliseum where you play as Yugi trying to overcome as many Capsule Monster games as possible, with some Yu-Gi-Oh! Anime references here and there.
That said, I think the major reason Capsule Monsters never got far was for largely the same reason Dungeon Dice Monsters didn't: not enough recognition but also the rules were too convoluted to have games built around these regularly, too many pieces you'd have to carry around in a duffle bag, and too many variables that needed to be followed.
For this reason, Duel Monsters was what got the longest amount of time to develop. And while the original anime is responsible for popularizing it, and 5d's introduced a game breaking mechanic, I think Yu-Gi-Oh! GX was where the game really got going in terms of deck building and card combinations.
You see, back in the original Yu-Gi-Oh! there wasn't much in the way of proper strategy or tactics regardless of what Yugi had to say on the matter. In most battles that I can think of from that anime, particularly Duelist Kingdom a lot of battles came down to ass-pulls and deus ex machina.
The most notable examples I can think of come from Joey Wheeler. The first, against Mai Valentine, he uses the Time Wizard to age his Baby Dragon into Thousand Dragon. Now, in the actual card game, the reason this happened was because Thousand Dragon is created by fusing a Time Wizard with a Baby Dragon. The way this was portrayed in the anime, however, was that Time Wizard could age cards and Thousand Dragon was simply the result of that effect.
An extension of this was Mai's Harpy Ladies becoming old and decrepit after using the Time Wizard's effect. In the game, Time Wizard has a special ability based on chance. You flip a coin, if it's heads, the opposing monsters are destroyed, if it's tails Time Wizard is destroyed. In theory, Time Wizard destroying the Harpy Ladies could've worked in the context of the game but the way this was portrayed in the anime didn't make a lot of sense.
Fast forward a few episodes to Joey's Duel with Bandit Keith and Joey uses a trap card that Keith had to create the Red Eyes Black Metal Dragon. Now, this card combination can do that but the way it works is kind of weird. Basically, the way it works is a lot more straightforward and accurate in the anime but there's still a problem with its presentation: namely that, for Joey to have used the Red Eyes Black Metal Dragon, he would've had to have had it in his deck in order to summon it.
The reason this comes down to ass-pulls is because, at this point in the anime, most characters' decks have not been fully expounded and the rules of this game are not entirely clear.
It wasn't until Yu-Gi-Oh! GX where we got a better understanding that the cards characters have are not entirely known but can still be used at any given time. For comparison's sake, let's compare Joey's use of Red Eyes Black Metal Dragon to Jaden's use of Elemental Hero Wild Heart. For Joey, the Red Eyes Black Metal Dragon could not be easily discounted as him having had the card prior to the duel for 2 reasons: first off, he never uses it again, ever, which leads me to believe that he didn't have the trap card that was necessary to fulfill the conditions. And the second reason is because Joey only got the Red Eyes Black Dragon during that same arc earlier on the island where he got it from Rex Raptor. So the show wants you to believe that Joey had a card like the Red Eyes Black Metal Dragon prior to acquiring the Red Eyes Black Dragon and kept it in his deck under the assumption that someone would allow him to use the necessary card he was missing to summon it proper.
In Yu-Gi-Oh! GX Jaden summons Wild Heart against Bastion because there's a trap card that's preventing him from attacking and Wild Heart is immune to Trap Cards. Now, it's an elemental hero so you can assume Jaden had it the entire time and, while definitely an easy to summon monster, it's not a particularly strong one, with only 1500 ATK points. So in this case, you can assume Jaden never summoned it in previous duels because it wasn't a particularly useful card against prior opponents. It just happened to be useful in that particular duel because Bastion had a Trap Card that served as a complete dick move.
Now, that said, while Yu-Gi-Oh! GX did certainly serve as a step in the right direction, it wasn't perfect, and no this doesn't relate to any of the characters. While there are some characters that are better than others, I personally never had a problem with Jaden or the way he expressed himself. I thought his outgoing nature made him a fun guy to follow.
No, my issue is not so much with Jaden himself as it is with the cards he chose to use, the Elemental Heroes. Now, throughout Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, bearing in mind I'm not counting Season 4 as I'm not all the way through it yet, Jaden's Elemental Heroes have roughly two primary rules: the first is none of them can be particularly powerful, and the second is that all of them have to be capable of fusing.
The first rule is pretty easy to set up. If you look at all of the Non-fused Elemental Heroes, the strongest of them Blade Edge, or Edgeman if you're watching the subs, is the one with the single highest base ATK power at 2600 points. The only other non-fused Elemental Hero I can think of that has over 2000 ATK points is Neos at 2500.
Now, of course, many of the Elemental Heroes can have card effects, such as Wild Heart being immune to Trap cards and Blade Edge being able to deal life point damage to an opponent when destroying a defense position monster. However, for the most part, the Elemental Heroes' real power came from their ability to fuse.
You see, it wasn't just an ATK and DFS buff that the fused Elemental Heroes had, they had two other benefits beyond this. The first is that every Elemental Hero fusion had a special effect. Flame Wingman had the ability to deal Life Point Damage equal to the ATK of the monster he just destroyed. Thunder Giant can destroy an opposing monster with less ATK than it by sacrificing a card from your hand. Wild Edge has the ability to attack every single monster on the opponent's side of the field in a single battle phase. Plasma Vice has Blade Edge's ability and Thunder Giant's ability without the ATK power limit.
The other rule for Elemental Heroes, which is not introduced until Aster Phoenix and is never truly utilized at all but is nonetheless a game changer, the same Elemental Heroes can be used to make multiple Fusion Monsters. For example, if you wanted to fuse Avian and Burstinatrix together you had two options, either Flame Wingman who can deal damage to an opponent based on the attack of the destroyed monster or Phoenix Enforcer who cannot be destroyed by battle.
This lends a bit of a mix-up game to what fusions you want to use, since it not only prevents players from having a clear idea of what you're going to summon but it also gives extra utility to fusions by allowing you to adapt what fusion you use to the situation at hand.
However, there is a major problem with fusions in GX as a whole, namely that there are far too few ways to summon them. In GX, unless you were planning on summoning a specific fusion that could only be summoned by some specific card specific to certain types, fusions generally required one of two cards: the first is a polymerization and the second is a Fusion Gate. Polymerization is a regular spell card, while Fusion Gate is a Field Spell.
And, for as much as I didn't like this solution initially, Yu-Gi-Oh already had a card type that would resolve this issue: Union. For those of you who don't know what Union cards are anymore, Yu-Gi-Oh Zexal replaced that card type with XYZ but they did basically the same thing. In fact, XYZ monsters were of the Union type before XYZ became its own type.
Why does this matter? Well, you see, Unions had a special effect that I wasn't too sold on initially but, the more I think about it, the more I think it works for Elemental Heroes. And that is that Union monsters can fuse with each other without requiring an external card. As long as all the components were on the field, Unions could fuse whenever they wanted.
If Elemental Heroes were made into Union monsters from the get-go, it could've made them a lot more viable than they turned out to be. Elemental Heroes would've been worth building decks around because you didn't have to rely on luck to the same degree.
Of course, this wouldn't stop 5d's from introducing Synchro's and basically breaking the game that way, and Zexal might have removed Unions anyway for XYZ's but this just seemed like a real missed opportunity.
Elemental Heroes are already really reliant on fusing as it is and since Jaden, the main character, was the one using them, of course they'd get a lot of focus. This would've been the opportunity to give Union monsters some recognition rather than requiring me to look back on it and tell Konami how stupid they were.
That's all for now. Have a wonderful day.
EDIT: Okay, so I've been rewatching Yugioh GX and there's one thing here that I want to make an addendum on. Jaden's duel with Bastion wasn't how I remembered it. There wasn't a trap card preventing him from attacking and Wild Heart bypassed it. Rather, Wild Heart's effect was a rather small point because, while I don't remember exactly what the trap did that wouldn't affect Wild Heart, Jaden used the card with the spell Wild Boomerang to destroy Wild Heart in battle and that in turn caused Bastion's trap to be destroyed and deal him 500 points of damage, ending the duel. Just wanted to correct that just in case someone wants to call it out.
EDIT 2: Okay, so there are two major errors that I need to correct right now because they were ill-informed and short sighted of me to make. First, Xyz are not a replacement for Unions. While what Unions used to be and what Xyz are now are functionally very similar, Xyz monsters and the way they're summoned are very distinct from fusions. Unions, at least during the original series, were used to fuse two monsters without polymerization but, now, Unions are simply a card type that can also function as equip spells.
Also, as I get further into GX, I realize just how much focus Unions are given in the series with Chazz in particular, who never really abandons them like I thought he did when I was younger. And, also, the concept of Fusing without Polymerization is executed eventually in the form of Contact Fusion, which is done between Elemental HERO Neos and any given Neospacian. So, while it doesn't go all the way with the concept I suggested here, there are elements of it within both GX and the actual card game. It just so happened that Elemental Heroes were not the series that did it.
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