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em-exceeds-change-zearu · 7 years

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I’ve mentioned this a few times on plurk, but I personally actually like the 3rd season of 5D’s despite it’s weird turn into slice-of-life absurdity while the writers tried to figure their way around the plot rewrites mandated after executive meddling crashed down on them. Scenes like this crop up every now and then during the season which more or less imply that despite Neo Domino City and Satellite reuniting, things aren’t hunky-dory and wonderful like your generic shonen anime would do when rejoining two divided factions. No, there’s still dissent and the city is still not quite reunited despite whatever spiel they want to put about the WRGP being the celebration of the reunited city and the Daedalus Bridge being the symbol of that and etc etc etc. We see that with all these background details-from the three boys’ expenses almost constantly being in the red, to that one episode centered about a young man’s family being hounded by sleazy debt collectors despite them finally being Neo Domino’s citizens, and so on. The earlier filler episodes even have small bits that are intended to drop more plot hooks-Yusei and co go to get an old man out of the reconstruction sites in Satellite, they meet with Saiga at Martha’s and find out about the mysterious falling tablets; Yusei goes to settle issues at Duel Academia, Sly the student who has an unnatural interest in Stardust Dragon is introduced. Some plot hooks are used, some aren’t, but the fact of the matter is that there was some attempt to seed in plot through all the filler works.

That being said, I feel like Season 3 would have been stronger if it was instead set during the 6 month timeskip between the Dark Signer arc and when actual! season 3 begins. Think about it. You have a grungy Satellite that crawled up to become the new King of Riding Duels under dubious circumstances (you can’t tell me people wouldn’t have questioned the validity of a duel that literally happened in a flash of light to everyone else), the former King who was recently revealed to be from Satellite and therefore a fraud, a completely markered up criminal, the Black Rose Witch, and a pair of twins who have largely been isolated from the outside world due to Ruka’s spiritual shenanigans. All of them don’t fit into Neo Domino’s social world at all, all of them are now trying to find their own place to fit in after being brought together by the Signer War, all they have at this point is each other.

Give me Jack fighting for his reputation and his new identity, insisting on carving his own way to be the King while making himself open to the people-all of the people from Satellite and Neo Domino alike, the kind of King Carly wanted him to be. There's resistance of course-he's lost fans, there are people insisting he's a fraud, there are others who hate this new persona of Jack's because he is different and challenges their standards and flawed and human instead of an ideal and a figurehead, but he soldiers on, unrelenting. Give me Aki still struggling with the stigmas that being the Black Rose Witch put on her, trying to fit into a normal life as a senator’s daughter and not quite adjusting because whatever her parents feel now, that doesn’t change the fact that she spent her formative years emotionally and physically apart from them, that doesn’t change that the place she feels validated and loved was at the Arcadia Movement (and now, with her fellow Signers), and it doesn’t change that she sees hostility no matter where she goes. I think it was @stierhai that mentioned this idea of Aki taking over what was left of the Arcadia Movement, or at least working with all the psychics that were displaced by the movement’s collapse, some having been taken in under Security’s care and others roaming free, working with the internal politics and wresting them away from Divine’s influence and making it into what it should have been, a haven for psychics to learn their craft without being stigmatized (and making it her own “place” as a result). Give me the twins deciding to go back to school and make friends their own age, but finding it difficult due to their own reputation during the Fortune Cup and Ruka’s still admittedly weak physical ability, never mind that they’re also friends with the other Signers. Give me Crow reluctantly having to give his kids up to Martha-because with the Daedalus Bridge being built and the B.A.D. area being renovated, he just doesn’t have a place to live anymore and can’t get by thieving like he used to, struggling to make any kind of income because he’s got markers up the wazoo despite all his charges being cleared, having to deal with more stigma than his other friends (because at least Jack has two years of being beloved as the King and a fresh clean face to get by, and Yusei has the current title as King to deflect some hatred) to the point that it’s a wonder he’s able to hold down any job at all until he flat out decides to make his own business with nothing but his D-Wheel and a jacket with a hand-drawn logo on it from his kids.

Give me Yusei, who, despite being the protagonist of the series, actually steps back this arc and becomes more of a background character, a quiet thread of support that keeps all these oddball misfits together. Yusei, who by default is the only thing all the other Signers have in common, bringing them together until they end up as their own interconnected network. Jack and Aki, being used by Iliaster and Arcadia respectively, hunting down evidence of those opposing factions and their ideals and their plans, working together in public to tear down the conspiracies and dealings that built Neo Domino into the faux-utopia it became, with Yusei a quiet moderating force between their easily inflamed personalities. Aki and the twins bonding more as they try to attend the academia together, with Aki trying to help smooth things along for Ruka so she at least doesn’t have the same rocky environment in school that she did in her youth and Rua and Ruka being a supporting, healing place for her to go when school becomes too much (and please, please, let Aki take down Heitmann, she has more investment in this matter than Yusei does and it can help her reputation in the school as well). Crow being the fun big brother for the twins (Yusei is nice, but steady and a little distant, Jack admittedly bonds with Rua and sort of takes him on as an apprentice but he’s still raw and open and figuring out this New King stuff and can be hard to tolerate in large doses, and Aki is a good big sis but also has her own issues) and the twins being a rooting force for Crow-while they clearly don’t need to be taken of the same way his own kids were, they’re also lacking the care and doting affection of a parent that his own kids have, so he’ll take care of them in his own weird big brother way. Yusei, who sits back and helps to facilitate all this happening, because now he knows better than to just shoulder all their burdens himself, knows that it’s better to support and be supported, and while he still has his own doubts and fears about the city’s future and his place in it, he knows with them he can find an answer some day.

Give me the results of this when they go into the WRGP together-still a team that’s not quite in harmony yet, but they’re trying. They lose against Team Unicorn the first round-because even though Yusei tries his damned best, he can’t make up for the mistakes they made and the quick eliminations of Jack and Aki that happened because of it. From this they learn what is needed-how to combine their unique abilites, and when a rematch happens (because this time Team Catastrophe’s failure does not set off Placido’s robo-army just yet, there’s still a chance that the Unicorn-5D’s rematch could result in the Signer’s elimination), it takes full advantage of the fact that the WRGP takes place all over the Daedalus Bridge’s duel lanes, and the fact that it happens with no autopilot.

The rematch happens-and to Team Unicorn’s surprise, Aki is the first wheeler out. She deserves her chance to show her real skills after falling so quickly to Andre, where all she was able to do was pass on Stardust Dragon. A free wheeling chase across the Daimon Area happens-the alleys she knows better than anyone else, the alleys she prowled as the Black Rose Witch, the alleys that once cracked and split open at her call now neatly paved and pristine. Even as she calls out her plants and they bare their fangs, not a single brick is broken out of place, not a single street is damaged, because instead of rampaging and letting out all her sorrow she is determined to follow her new purpose now and show just what a Psychic Duelist can do other than spread fear. She evades all of Andre’s attempts to block her attacks, triumphant.

The Second Wheeler? Crow, who takes off across the Daedalus Bridge’s roads with glee at being able to freely cross the divide between Satellite and Neo Domino, who leaps from Duel Lane to Duel Lane with the wings of the BlackBird, and who can easily power through Breo’s deck destruction with a surefire kill thanks to all the cards that got sent to the graveyard (because if there’s a master of someone using things discarded like trash, it’s someone from the deepest depths of Satellite). Crow, who can finally enter a tournament like the WRGP and show everyone from Neo Domino just what he’s made of, and finally, finally get a reputation beyond the few people who willingly take his house calls, and create his first stepping stone to bigger and greater things.

The Last Wheeler is not Yusei, but Jack, who leads Jean on a drive all around the newly reconstructed Satellite, his knowledge of just where every building is and where reconstruction is still going giving him the edge when it comes to dealing with no autopilot. Jack showboating like usual-driving up buildings, turning backwards, but all being done just to show off how well he knows Satellite, how much of his skills are real without using autopilot, and just how much growing up there has shaped his dueling and who he is today. (Because who knows the deepest depths of Satellite better than the duel gang who took over it all, who roamed every inch of turf and claimed it as theirs, who powered through every single adversary in their path because their strength was absolute!)

Team 5D’s wins, and not because Yusei was the savior who dragged them all to victory, but instead because they bonded together into something stronger, something who could effortlessly tear apart a team who bested them when they were fragmented and still not quite together, because they made the field into something that demonstrated their own strengths, their weaknesses, their pasts, and their dreams for the future.

just. god. give me a season 3 like that. pls. god. if only we could have had this.

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