Yesterday, I finally finished watching the first 46 episodes of #yugioh #VRAINS, up to the end of the first arc of the show. As promised, I'm going to do a short-form review of what I've seen so far, talking of my thoughts.

Therefore, let's go! Into the VRAINS!

Overall, as a casual and somewhat lapsed YGO fan, I enjoyed this series a lot. It was hardly perfect and some decisions didn't jive well with me, but by the end of the season it managed to win me over, and even vindicated some of the decisions I wasn't onboard with.

Plot-wise, this series was definitely an odd-duck so far. While YGO was no stranger to tech-based arcs (especially in the DM Anime's VR worlds), this is the first time YGO went fully non-supernatural. However, I do feel it manages to keep the franchise's spirit up well enough.

We still have high-stakes repercussions for a lost duel, enemies causing some visually supernatural-esque trouble, and the general 'vibe' of the franchise translated pretty well into a more 'grounded' scientific setting.

The handling of AIs with free will, while far from a new theme for sci-fi, was also fairly compelling and makes me curious to meet the next Ignis.

I feel the season had a rough start, with the first episodes tossing us on a somewhat complicated situation without much setup that takes a little to untangle, and a fairly sluggish pace until the end of the first duel between Yusaku and Revolver.

The recap episodes were admittedly a bit too many, but I feel only episode 38 was poorly placed, as it happens mid-endgame arc. Every other one is at least skippable (even if the second has an important bit of foreshadowing) and is paced in-between major events as a breather.

After roughly ep 14, though, the series reached its groove, with more evenly paced revelations and fairly solid character moments throughout.

The relatively small cast and the fact the majority of the duels only further the plot with not much 'filler' skirmishes really helped, as I felt like the show had a clear path for the story to follow and never lost sight of it.

I do feel, however, that a big issue of the story is how it started out putting the plot ahead of the characters.

While a three-way war for the possession or destruction of a sentient AI is a compelling premise, the cast starts out as interesting more than likable, with a lot of characters being generally aloof and only a few lighthearted characters in this arc.

This meant that the early episodes felt like a bit of a slog, as you were trying to pick up what everything meant while focusing on characters that were initially hard to relate to.

But, after the introduction arc is over, the show manages to strike a much better balance, putting emphasis on the characters much more constantly and making them engaging.

And since we moved on to mention the characters, I'd like to speak of them. Above them all definitely stands the protagonist, Yusaku Fujiki/Playmaker, a character that is very much the epitome of not judging a book by its cover throughout this first arc.

Specifically, one issue the early series has is definitely how asocial and unwilling to expose himself Yusaku is, which coupled with his moonlighting as a hacker vigilante out for vengeance and only one true 'friendship' with Kusanagi made him seemingly flat at first.

It made him interesting, but it also meant he had little time to be more than what the plot molded him to be.

That said, that was the entire point: he's a broken young man unable to move forward from his trauma and in desperate need for closure, and the fact he hasn't been able to build a normal life for himself is a natural consequence of it, as Yusaku himself says.

The interactions Yusaku had regarding his past are easily some of VRAINS' strongest points.

I also appreciated how the show made a point that in spite of how grim Yusaku is and sometimes willing to resort to morally gray actions, the show never treats him as someone willing to let innocents be harmed, to the point of being a flaw.

He might not have the most altruistic mindset per se, but he's not one to deny help or respect to those who need and deserve it.

Following on from Yusaku, there's Ai, his Ignis partner.

He's definitely a character bound to be divisive due to how his primary function is being comic relief and being a plot important character so far, but I do feel the fact Yusaku considers him annoying in-universe and his occasional and important moments of help balance him out.

His personality can definitely skeeve grating, especially how he feels a tad too selfish at times to be likable, but most of the time he manages to avoid seeming too unsympathetic, and in the final episodes of the season he does get some pretty poignant moments with Yusaku.

Plus, I love when he imitates his partner.

I also definitely appreciate his dynamic with Yusaku, as the over-emotional artificial intelligence paired up with the almost robotic human.

Even if Yusaku denies to see Ai as a friend, it's pretty clear that he does come to care for him as more than a hostage, and the final scene of the season with him freeing Ai after he stopped needing him was a nice display of it.

Kusanagi didn't really get to be much more than support, but as the only consistent confidant for Yusaku, I feel he was a nice presence to balance out his general loner act.

He also managed to be relatively lighthearted so far without feeling tonally incongruent (especially due to having been affected by the Lost Incident as much as Yusaku), and while his deal with his brother Jin hasn't been quite explored yet, I'm curious to learn more about him.

Go Onizuka is a character I felt was a tad meh. He's definitely the least involved main character, but while I feel that he got his good moments when he fought to protect others, his character often fell dangerously close to being an unlikable glory-seeker, especially early on.

By what I heard, he doesn't really get better from here on out, but we'll see what the future has in store for him.

Aoi Zaizen was a case of a character I enjoyed, but that I feel the series deliberately tried to make into a failure hero so far.

She's definitely a good duelist in terms of performance, but beyond her duel with Baira, most of her duels ended up either being of minor importance, or flat out FAILING at what she set out to accomplish.

By themselves, some of these failures were compelling, as I really, really liked her duel with Spectre during the endgame of the arc.

But it's always a shame seeing a female character having to deal with this kind of arc, especially when beyond Akira's devotion to her she didn't get to have much positive effect on the story yet.

This can still change in the next arcs, of course, but I hope she'll get some more development and be allowed to achieve meaningful development for herself. I enjoy Aoi where it matters, and I want to see her grow into a stronger character and beyond her depression and doubt.

Ghost Girl was mostly supporting, but I enjoyed her treasure hunter antics and she had a delightful presence whenever she appeared. A shame that her W-L ratio is even worse than Aoi's, but I feel like her larger confidence and pretty smart plays at least partially made up for it.

Akira Zaizen was alright, definitely a bit more of a supporting character than the rest of the 'heroic' side, but I really enjoyed his duel with Yusaku early on and I enjoyed his being the only truly SOL-affiliated character to not be morally ambigous-to-evil so far.

He's a nice brother and hope to see more of him.

In terms of the Knights of Hanoi, I do feel it's a shame that Genome, Baira and Faust only really got a couple episodes of focus before being booted out of the story.

They seemed to have an interesting place in the backstory of the Lost Incident, and I hope with them being likely revived, we'll get to learn a bit more about them in the future eps.

Spectre was a surprising highlight for a minor player, between an interesting Deck, a bonkers backstory (raised by a TREE!) and delightfully twisted personality, with his duels against Aoi and Yusaki bringing out some excellent characterization. He definitely left his mark.

The best of the bunch among the Hanoi, though, was absolutely Ryoken Kogami/Revolver, the resident Kaiba archetype and a very well-executed villain.

He's very theatrical, driven and sometimes goofily villainous (especially his 'userfriendliness' rant against AIs), but at his core, he's a nicely layered character that, had he made some different choices, could've easily been a hero.

I really enjoyed the relationship he had with Yusaku, both victims of the same incident and tormented by it in different positions and ways, and ultimately ending up as enemies simply because of the effect the Lost Incident had on their lives.

His devotion to his father's goals was also well-handled and intriguing, considering how he ultimately played a part in dooming them for otherwise altruistic reasons, in a nicely grey manner. I especially loved how he claimed not to be a good person when questioned about it.

And speaking of it, while he's ultimately mostly a background figure, I definitely liked Doctor Kogami, a man that caused horrible pain on six unfortunate children just to give birth to humanity's successors only to feel the need to make up for his mistakes in creating the Ignis.

It was interesting to see a villain trying to atone for his sins by leading to something even worse, while he and Revolver are both aware of what those actions will mean, but seeing no other way to save humanity. Their methods are extreme, but there's no other option for them.

There's also the other minor players of the series, but beyond Naoki being occasionally fun (his one half episode of focus being a rare breather in VRAINS) alongside the journalist duo, none of them had an excessively memorable presence.

The cast was pretty efficiently sized, however, managing to make a good impression in the allotted time regardless of role.

In terms of duels, I feel this is an area VRAINS got better as time went on.

I don't mind Speed Duels per se since they're just a simplified variant of the typical format and Master Duels were still used for the very important moments, but I do think the duel pacing in early VRAINS was fairly atrocious.

Specifically, between a combination of modern YGO's love for complicated chains of moves and lots of talk breaks between turns, the early duels felt at once confusing to follow and with way too cluttered turns in terms of moves, to the point I sometimes forgot who's turn it was.

As time passed though, I feel like the show managed to strike a better balance in making duels engaging (even if most of them still ended up as two parters at least), but I freely admit sometimes they still got too complex to follow with how many moves happen in quick succession.

Thankfully, the majority of duels don't disappoint character-wise, and with most of them being crucial to the plot that's a great asset for the series to have. Storm Access could be a bit too convenient for Yusaku, but being unable to use it during Master Duels balanced it out.

My favorite duels are definitely Yusaku VS Akira, Aoi VS Spectre, and the final Yusaku VS Revolver, for being fun to watch with clever strategies and writing, and some very solid character work for everyone involved. Really hope there will be more duels like this going forward.

All in all, there's a lot more I could say, but between Twitter's limitations and this thread already skeeving fairly long, I feel I already said enough.

I'm definitely enjoying the ride so far, and look forward to see what the next arc will bring, especially in terms of getting the remaining Ignis involved.