Seasons 2 and 3 of Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal II have been merged here and rebranded here as a single season for this release. The plot points that were built up in the previous two seasons (or four seasons if you saw them in Japan) finally reach their conclusion.
Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal is not good. All the elements that have come to define the Yu-Gi-Oh! franchise as a whole are here, the card game, the otherworldly threat, the lessons that the heroes learn along the way, all of it. However, these elements fail to truly come together in the way that they have in the past. Character arcs simply happen to move the plot along instead of contributing to organic character growth, the plot is somehow both underexplored and over-explained, and the emotional moments aren’t as effective as they could have been.
The big problem here comes in the form of one of the series antagonists. He is imposing enough as a villain, and the show deserves credit for a villain whose MO throughout the show is actually reflected in his duelling style, but his very presence and the way he approaches his goals undermines the message that the rest of the show seems to be striving for.
There are moments in which Zexal tries to be a series about how war pits different people against each other who have to fight for their survival despite neither being bad. It might have pulled this off but the unquestionably evil nature of Don Thousand severely undermines that. This isn’t helped by the fact that the exact nature of the threat facing the worlds involved in the series is never made explicitly clear. The characters just mention that one of them needs to be destroyed to save the other.
Similarly, the cast of characters are all likeable enough, but the show almost never capitalises on them. There are some good moments, but as a show, it is pretty forgettable.
As is typical with the release of a Yu-Gi-Oh! series there are no special features here, making this release only especially tempting for those without access to the show on a streaming platform or anyone who particularly wants to own the physical release for collection purposes.
Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal Season 3 Complete Collection is pretty close to the bottom of the barrel as far as its parent franchise is concerned. While it had interesting ideas behind it the show makes effective use of none of them and ends up basically going through the motions made standard by the Yu-Gi-Oh! Iterations that came before it. This release can be safely skipped, even by the most die-hard of Yu-Gi-Oh! Fans.
YU-GI-OH! ZEXAL SEASON 3 COMPLETE COLLECTION / CERT: PG / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: VARIOUS / STARRING: ELI JAY, MARC THOMPSON, GARY LITTMAN, CHRISTOPHER KROMER, DAVID WILLS, EILEEN STEVENS / RELEASE DATE: JUNE 18TH
