Duel Masters Win

(NOTE: Series was fully watched twice, with both Spanish subs and no subs.) Surprisingly, I think this season is pretty weak. I've been enjoying my time with Shobu's era of Duel Masters, because it's able to take itself goofy while also being a genuinely good story. Win's era however, is pretty polarizing in my opinion. I think it has the best setup for a story within Duel Masters. Win Kirifuda is a completely separate character from the Kirifuda family, a simple weird kid who ends up making a deal with Abyssgard = Jashin, the leader of the Abyss = Royale race, a race from the Darkness Civilization. The Darkness Civilization race has been relegated to be reserved for villains/rivals, so having the main character use the Darkness Civilization is genuinely such a interesting idea. It's the crackpot idea of a edgy tween. But this is where I think it fails the most. Duel Masters Win is.. fundamentally childish. Now, I know the true purpose of hobbyani, I KNOW that the series has to sell toys and cards, but like.. C'mon. As far as I know, the Joe Era has LITERALLY people dying and shit over the duels, they have lore and have political civilization stuff sometimes. Win's era is perfect for a more grittier take on the franchise which is really, only done in the LOST series. Win is somewhat more childish and grounded in it's approach to storyteling, and I think that's why I don't really like a lot of the stuff in here. It looks good, though. the CGI of the monsters is great, it never feels weird or shitty like your average isekai. Brain's Base has already gotten a good flow to making these, and that's great! The battles never feel like a drag, and I won't even lie, the way they were shown in the story and how they animated it all GENUINELY got me playing Duel Masters Play's. You know a anime is good when the way they play the game gets you wanting to play it. Still, I just think the series is too kiddy with it's own good. This isn't as much of a complaint per say as I know that LOST exists and that every DM fan will shit on me for saying this when the whole series IS for kids (it undeniably is but that's not my point here) but.. C'mon. I feel like the series would've have a lot of benefits if it was a more modest, realistic story with a more serious tone. Not to say it can't be good the way it is, because I ADORE VSR and VSRF. But you're not getting me invested in a character whose whole gimmick is saying "that's okay, that's okay!" The side cast in here feels fundamentally boring and more so done for the sake of gags, with maybe the exception of Bowie and Kaiser? Kaiser's an interesting case as he's pretty much the antagonist but uses a Bolshack Dragon deck (which Shobu Kirifuda, the first protagonist of Duema uses), making for a genuinely interesting situation in retrospective. Bowie's fine, I like stupid rich kid character archetypes. But this cast also sucks. Like, a lot. If there's anything I can bring to praise about this series is that they make the side cast as appealing as possible, Bolts/Kira and Kojiro/Saori/Gyou are all great characters on their own right and they never once feel out of place, but the big issue here is that the only real interesting characters are Bowie and Kaiser. Win's dad is another quirky dad archetype, his friends are gag characters, the "fodder villains" are literally thugs without any sort of visually interesting design unlike Gejisuki, and everyone else is just. There? They don't do a whole lot, and that's disappointing. This is easily the most "inconsequential" Duel Masters anime out of the whole franchise, and it doesn't benefit from the twenty-nine episode runtime at all. Literally nothing happens in this show, and I know that Duel Masters has a lot of filler episodes and such, but this is my problem with the side cast being boring. I'd like to bring up one episode of the Katta Era where he and his friends help Hokaben build a deck. Normally, this episode would be considered "filler" in a shonen anime, but here it works well. Really well, I'd say. Hokaben's been built up to be a underdog character, so watching him actually make something useful to duel against that'll get him somewhere is great even if Hokaben ends up virtually doing nothing the rest of the Katta Era. Win era has too many episodes that don't particularly give their cast any sort of growth, as they focusmore on "they fight a goofy looking character in a goofy scenario" -- and while all Duel Masters series has those, Win's runtime doesn't benefit from these, as it never really has a focus episode on one side cast character (Kojiro got one in the VS anime), so it's really just Win and friends, Bowie and Kaiser doing stuff. Fargo and Issa are alright, I don't feel too particularly strong about them. Also, there's just no fucking way the show ends on a cliffhanger. Like, the shows LITERALLY ends halfway through the episode after Kaiser gets skillchecked, and the rest of the runtime is just the voice actors talking about the show. Now, this one might just be me, but no other Duel Masters series has ended like this. It might singlehandedly be the worst final episode in the entire series. The duel itself isn't even bad per say (I still think Gyuujiro vs. Katta is the worst season finale duel because of how forced it feels), but there's just no aftermath. Kaiser just loses after Win locks in. I guess I expected a bit too much, given how it's a twenty-nine episode series? But still, genuinely shitty to have a twelve-minute episode followed up with some undeniable filler. Regardless, the Win era isn't starting off super well. It's average, nothing to praise in the world of Hobbyani as a whole. Duel Masters itself is a really fun game, so I can't be too mad at this show. It IS the one that got me into playing it, so there's that. This is also the only series with subtitles so this is your only bet if you don't wanna suck up that dogshit dub of the OG DM.