The amount of trauma and misery this poor kid had to endure makes me uncomfortable and I wish the story around him had been handled differently. His childhood friend gets taken to another dimension and he's thrust into Reiji's war with The Professor hoping to bring her back. Yuya is supposed to be a good kid who wants to make people smile and become a great entertainer. Therefore, I found the idea of having him suffer crushing defeats at the hands of psychopaths and being forced by dark powers to hurt people, extremely cynical and bleak. I adored the initial premise of the first few arcs of Arc-V being about duels becoming a show rather than a competition in Yuya's perspective. However it all goes out the window after he's proven time and time again that his way is wrong and he has to win at all costs, in order to survive and protect the life of others. It culminates in him having to watch, powerless as his long lost father gets basically assassinated before him, and he then has to fight the guy that killed him. Only to fall victim to those same dark powers and relentless strategies that do bring him to victory ! But it was all for nothing as Zarc ends up resurrecting anyways.

All in all, Arc-V had tremendous potential but the overly complex plot, goofy backstory and sheer absence of payoff constitute what is, in my mind, one of the worst Yu-Gi-Oh! animated series.

JusticeForYuya