For a while I was feeling quite terrible and unable to leave the house, and my pen ran out of ink while working on QoG. I finally managed to get one and have been working faithfully. But while I was waiting I worked my way through the Season3/Battle City arc. It's actually quite interesting, when you skip all the Noah episodes, you literally don't notice the cut. If the Noah arc took place *after* Battle City rather than in the middle of it, it would be a lot better.

The Battle City arc is probably the best of the series (though my second favorite) and as the finals wear down, it builds up a LOT in terms of the ending. It suggests the story is nearly over, and starts up evil Bakura's plan for world destruction as well as the realization that someday everyone will have to say goodbye. The last two episodes of season three are really touching and got you really excited to see Yami's past.

Then Season 4 happened.

Follow up:

Like a lot of people I HATE season 4. And in this entry I'm going to talk about why.

1. It's Pointless

Yugi-Oh, like most shonen series, is chock full of filler episodes with storylines and characters that take up time while the artist of the manga puts more of the plot out. Interestingly enough, the Doma arc was actually in the manga, but the problem is, for all 40 odd episodes of the arc, it doesn't move the plot forward one bit. We learn nothing about the pharaoh, nothing about Yugi, Kaiba, Joey or even any of the side characters like Tea or even Tristan. And even the special dragon cards are never used past this season. Even in Yugi-Oh The Movie the little fluffy white thing was used in season 5. You never even see the minor characters from series ever again. The season could literally never happened and you wouldn't notice.

2. They changed Mai

Mai Valentine was one of my favorite characters from the series. She was tough, independent, funny and when she wanted to be, sweet. She was a strong female character that could handle herself, even if she lost every onscreen duel like YGOTAS points out. The back and forth between her and Joey was funny and cute, and you really rooted for the two to get together. Season 3 ended with her driving off thanking Joey for being her friend, and saying she'll come back someday. Then season 4 takes place and she comes back a completely different person--power hungry, cruel, basically 50 steps back from even her first appearance when she was conniving and underhanded. She lost everything that was charming and funny about her, and for no good reason. She is allegedly 'traumatized' from when Marik put her in the shadow realm, but she didn't act that way at the end of season 3. She was still pulling jokes and laughing and didn't even seem to have a problem with Marik. Yet when she comes back on season 4 she acts like it was a life altering situation, one so altering that she turns her back on all the people she cared about.

3. Random Yami evilness

In the manga Yami/Atem was pretty sadistic, as were most of the characters in the manga. He had no problem punishing people or hurting people who deserved it. Some of his penalties were as bad as Bakura's but even then he had a moral compass, and in the anime he was a regular boy scout. Even as a spirit of darkness, during the battle against Raphael, it made NO sense for Yami to take over the Oricalcous and turn into basically a villain.

4. Return of Rebecca

Rebecca was an annoying character, but somewhat cute in her own way carrying around a teddy bear and being a brat. And the idea she gets a crush on Yugi is pretty adorable too, but to make her a main character was really unnecessary. She didn't have enough of an interesting back story to justify it. And in the K-1 Grand Prix you got enough of her to know what happened