Duel Masters Victory

Okay, I think I understand why this franchise kinda died down after a while. Duel Masters Victory is bad. Like, straight up bad. Remember my Duel Masters Win review where while I liked the escalation of the franchise and how the TCG was fun, the anime itself was a nothingburger? Well, Victory is ACTUALLY what happens when the franchise reaches it's biggest "idgafer" state ever. Like, I'm not even kidding when I say this: somehow this MIGHT singlehandedly be the most boring, nothing season of the whole franchise. Heck, the Shobu retcon doesn't even come until like three seasons later, THIS is actually the most boring thing this whole franchise has produced. And I ACTUALLY like the good parts a whole lot. To get this out of the way: This show is actually so ugly looking. Look, I don't even think the 3D models themselves are bad. You can animate them and they'll look fine. However.. When you make them do slightly more complex movements they look absolutely ugly. Like, "blender viewport with no lighting" levels of ugly. It looks uncanny, some of the more goofier characters clearly have been drawn over the models so it creates this rather conflicting style of animation where everything feels almost plastic-like. Characters move in a really stiff manner, the voice acting does a lot of the heavy lifting for character expression and emotions, and the characters look lifeless in more dramatic shots. And it's even worse when you get the creature models (which look fine in my opinion) put alongside the normal character 3D models, it absolutely reeks of cheap labor and low budget. Princess Prin Prin's model looks absolutely disgusting when put alongside other characters, it's almost like you're watching one of those Deviantart collages where there's characters that have a completely different artstyle mashed onto the same picture. Now about the actual show itself, uuhh.. Kinda nothing too. Katta is Shobu's younger brother who managed to survive the coma he was in that was established in Star Cross, he hates Duel Masters because his big brother took all his fame and two random dudes decide to become his friend to leech off the Kirifuda card legacy. Sadly, I don't think the twelves minute per episode help the show feel more like something. A lot of the duels are kinda nothing, and this is genuinely the worst sidecast in the franchise. The only interesting characters are Dragon Ryu and Onsen, and that's kinda it. You get fifty-two episodes of not much going on, and you kind of just watch these duels that are a very obvious downgrade from the 2D animated ones from Charge and the OG series. Onsen is a interesting villain that I think is kind of wasted here, he's a super weirdo freak obsessed with saunas and that's a interesting character gimmick. Turns out that he's also posessed by Aliens, the big threat this block.. And that's also cool! However, he might singlehandedly be the most wasted character ever. So, turns out that he's not a bad guy.. He's just brainwashed by Awesome Gallows! And he's not really evil.. And yet, he kind of does nothing else through the Victory series! Not saying that he should become a main character member, but when the most he gets are his henchmen appearing in one episode of the Joe era and him having a cameo where he looks like a squished toad isn't exactly the most you can do with this guy. I liked him, wish more were done with him. And the worst part of all: Duels here aren't interesting. Y'know, I think at one point Matsumoto realized that Duel Masters needed a new protagonist, so I ultimately don't mind the change from Shobu to Katta. It's fine, YuGiOh did it and it was great (most of the time) but.. Katta just doesn't really get much to do in these duels. Katta thinks he's the hot shit, he gets his ass kicked, and he wins sometimes. The cast that surrounds him is also kinda nothing sadly. Benchan is a good character that I ultimately like the ending of, Dragon Ryu and Princess Prin Prin get interesting lore in Duel Masters Play's, Yohdel and Bucchake are nothingburgers. Everyone else is genuinely just boring villain fodder that I cannot try and justify as being interesting or well-written. But if these characters aren't interesting, then I don't care about their duels. They're fine on their own, psychic creatures aren't the most interesting thing in the whole world and I think the gimmick isn't as interesting, probably on the lower portions of the franchise. Too many fodder fights for me to get invested, and with the episode length you get a stretch of slog. First time where I can safely say watching duels from this show is an actual slog, none of them had me invested with Dragon Ryu vs. Onsen being the exception. Just not worth the watch man, skip to the VS era. That's where the good stuff is.