The third “Yu-Gi-Oh” spinoff, “ZeXal,” comes to its conclusion, ready for “Arc-V” to take its place. Like Yugi vs Yami Yugi, the series can’t end until its hero faces the voice in his head that teaches him how to duel, and a tearful sendoff must be had.
As this is the story’s conclusion, there will be spoilers.
Written by Shin Yoshida
Illustrated by Naohito MiyoshiThe deity of despair, E’Rah, appears and declares that she has come to destroy the Astral World. Astral realizes that she was the one who scattered his memories and that E’Rah also chose Yagumo to be her agent. Enraged by these discoveries, Yuma, Kaito, Shark and Astral kick off an epic duel to decide all their fates!
“Yu-Gi-Oh” as a series has lasted for well over a decade, with spinoff after spinoff following the original series’ completion. Out of all of them, ZeXal is by far my least favorite. The main character was annoying, the plot uninspired, and the designs garish; this is the series that nearly ended my interest in “Yu-Gi-Oh” (but fortunately, “Arc-V” has managed to pick up the slack and then some).
However, the manga versions of the various sequel and spinoff series have always been vastly different from the anime; for all the complaints about the “Yu-Gi-Oh GX” anime, the manga was fantastic, and managed to avoid the many pitfalls that the anime had. The same goes for “5D’s,” which made sure not to drag on after using up all its good ideas.
Yet those differences are due to the manga versions being written by a different team than the anime versions; “ZeXal” is not that lucky, being written by the showrunner, Shin Yoshida. In fact, both the manga and anime are nearly completely identical early on, until the manga took its own path. In doing so, it became marginally better than its anime equivalent, but still remains the weakest of the series, and repeats many of the same mistakes.
The volume picks up in the middle of an epic final duel against E’Rah, a force of darkness and despair… and that’s about as far as her character goes. She likes despair, wants to wreck everything, and manipulated a few characters to achieve her goals. The previous volume introduced her with no foreshadowing because… the artist, Naohito Miyoshi, was tired of constantly drawing Yagumo as the villain, so Yoshida created a busty bad girl for him to draw instead.
Admittedly, E’Rah’s deck, which relies upon creating corrupted copies of the main characters’ ace monsters, made her a fitting foe for them at the very least. And seeing Shark and Kaito (once rivals now allies, as is typical for “Yu-Gi-Oh”) sacrifice themselves in the duel to allow Yuma, the protagonist, the slimmest chance to win, made for some decent drama.
Yet most of her cards are uninspired “Anti” monsters, which are basically floating symbols and circles with chains, and all of them happen to do the exact situational thing that they need to get around the exact combo the players happen to be using at the time. I know, it’s pretty par for the course for the bad guy to have the right cards to keep a situation in his or her favor, but the fact that they’re all “Anti-this or that” and are used the exact same way is rather uninspired.
Of course, Yuma still finds a way to get a last-second victory by drawing just the right card at just the right time. “God draws” are familiar tropes in “Yu-Gi-Oh,” but rarely has it been so blatant as the “Shining Draws” that literally create the exact card he needs. This happened in the anime as well, and it doesn’t work any better here.
Similarly, almost every anime features a scene where characters gain a power-up right when things turn grim, typically with a form change of some kind. Think of Goku when he first turned Super Saiyan in “Dragon Ball Z,” or Ichigo’s Hollow form in “Bleach.” In this case, we get Yuma and Astral “overlaying” with each other (because the summoning mechanic this spinoff is focused on, Xyz Summon, requires the player to “overlay” monsters) to… basically go Super Saiyan, or in this case, become a powered-up Yuma named “Zexal.”
Continued belowIt was a ridiculous deus ex machina in the anime, and it’s a ridiculous deus ex machina now, but at least the manga had the decency to save it for the final boss, so I’ll give it that.
At least the duel looks very cool, or it would if it was paced well enough to really appreciate the monster designs. Naohito Miyoshi has drawn some incredible creatures, but half the time they appear in huge splash pages filled with multiple monsters being summoned at once, cards being shown everywhere, reaction shots aplenty, and massive sound effects. They all bog down the pages, making them cluttered, and detract from the action and pacing.
Individually, there are some great designs. E’Rah’s “Anti-Hope” is a menacing figure, and each of the “Numbers” monsters has a unique design, drawing from a number of sources. It seems, though, that the only way to really appreciate them between all the sound effects and fractured splash pages is by getting the actual cards… which may be exactly what they’re up to, given that this is a series meant to sell a card game.
Still, once E’Rah is defeated (I did say there would be spoilers, although good triumphing over evil is hardly a spoiler worth mentioning), it’s time for a final dramatic duel, as Yuma faces off against Astral, his floating ghost buddy who’s been guiding him through the entire series.
The setup is actually done in a way that showcases Yuma’s development quite well. He’s always been something of a one-note character – the archetypical idiot shonen-series hero with a good heart and unbreakable spirit, with an emphasis on the “idiot” part. But the final chapters at least show a semblance of character development, which is actually nicely reflected in the final duel.
Yuma’s last duel against Astral is well-orchestrated, bringing back a number of cards that Yuma used throughout the series as callbacks to their earlier duels together. At the same time, Astral uses a multitude of Numbers monsters, both showcasing the ones they fought throughout the manga and a number of cards that only appeared in the anime.
It does occasionally have to use the usual “super situational card that would only help them in this exact situation,” or “insanely broken card with a dozen different effects designed to make things dramatically tough,” but those act less as “god draws” to completely turn the duel around, and more as necessities to extend the duel and up the stakes, so in this case, they’re more or less acceptable.
This duel also suffers from the same cluttered pages and panels filled with monsters, but given the amount of cards played at once, trying to give each one the focus it deserves would add on at least another three chapters, and it’s not quite as egregious is the previous duel. In this case, it also helps demonstrate the intensity of the duel.
What does not help the intensity, though, is the manga’s insistence on creating dire situations by having the main character pay all but one of his life points. “Yu-Gi-Oh” series tend to create dramatic moments by putting the hero at very few life points, but it works better when their opponent brings them down to it, rather than willingly paying that amount.
Following the duel, though, the manga comes to a satisfactory conclusion. There’s sad goodbyes, happy reunions, and an overall feeling of determination and hope that lets it end on a high note. For all its characters lacking depth and development, plot points that don’t go anywhere, and uninspired villains, the “Yu-Gi-Oh ZeXal” manga manages to at least have a few recognizably decent moments throughout its run, and the ending is one of them.
Final Verdict: 6.2 – a satisfying conclusion to one of the least satisfying spinoffs. I wouldn’t quite say “all’s well that ends well,” though it does end well. With ZeXal over, it’s time to look forward to “Yu-Gi-Oh Arc-V.”
