Was gonna watch the first episode of The Promised Neverland and call it a night, but got hooked by the end of it and ended up binge-watching the entire first season in one sitting. Might be the best first arc of any anime I've ever seen. Been told to not watching the anime but read the manga from here instead. I loved Norman and Emma. The twists and cliffhangers were really entertaining, and kept me spamming the "next episode" button. This series is a perfect example of how film/TV/anime can use facial expressions to make the viewer feel involved.
Over lockdown I watched the first three Yugioh series (DM, GX and 5Ds). I didn't expect much from this nostalgia binge but I was completely wrong. I expected card games good vs evil you know the drill, but I got some quite complex stories and characters that I thought were really well done. I don't think I'll watch any more, though, as I'm told they're not that great after 5Ds.
I had watched all of DM in the English dub as a child but holy fuck the Japanese version is infinitely better. Kaiba is fleshed out a lot more by the end, darker themes are brought up, and the soundtrack is insanely good. Also, biggest lie of my childhood but the Shadow Realm is entirely a dubbed censorship thing lol. People straight up die in the original. The first arc might be kind of tough for some people to get through because, despite the story and characters being pretty decent, the game doesn't even have proper rules yet lol. It is still quite captivating though. The duels get a lot better as the story progresses, however, and players come up with a lot of cool strategies to one up each other. All the Egyptian mythology incorporation is really cool. Honestly one of my top 10 anime and really glad I went on this nostalgia binge.
GX was a hot mess, but a lovable mess, and some of its ideas are good. They introduce a lot of potentially interesting characters in season 1, but most of them end up doing nothing. The only one that gets some sort of development gets faded out as the story progresses. They introduce a lot of characters whose roles could have been done by existing characters. Season 1's slice of life style was quite cool, but when things started getting serious the show took a nosedive. The first season's villains after Manjoume (if you can really call him one) are very boring and generic, and season 2's isn't much better either. Season 3 flips the show on its head and is pretty good, though retains a few of the series' overall flaws, and Sho's character arc was laughably bad. I wish they brought back some of the old characters from DM into S4 though. You'd think with the kind of threats the gang were facing that Yugi and co. would get involved. A fun ending though, almost as a way to reward Judai for all the shit he went through.
5Ds is almost as good as the original, and has the best protagonist out of the three by quite some margin. The first half focuses on poverty. Yes, poverty. Half of main characters represent how different people grow by growing up in poverty. Interestingly, there was a lot of controversy behind the scenes which lead to them having to completely change their story midway through which kinda held it back. One of the voice actors was involved in a cult, and when the news broke out they removed all cult references as best as they could... in a series where the two antagonist groups are based on cults. Secondly, Crow and Kiryu were supposed to be the same character, but because the people that played the game loved Crow's cards so much, management told the writers not to take any risks with Crow, so they created Kiryu which killed the twists as Kiryu was a nutjob and Crow was just out here vibing with no nuance so there wasn't that link between them, only contrast I guess. Aki's voice actor got pregnant so they made her character take a back seat. Still a great show, though, and the duels themselves are way better than they were in GX. The soundtrack here is pretty good too, especially the character themes. Yusei has like 5 or 6 but they are all bangers.