[Dr Kain]

To be fair, yes, a lot of anime does not need to watched beyond the first episode. However, a show that is as formulaic as Yu-Gi-Oh! is pretty much pointless if the first episode or two do not get your attention. At least, the series that came after the original.

I gave up on GX around the 60 episode mark because I got really annoyed with Judai when he lost to Edo and then become all depressed and left the school over it. The show was not that great to begin with, but this seemed to just be the exact opposite to Judai's character just because he lost. Plus, they already did something like that in the 20s when Manjyome (at least, AI think that was his name) lost.

5Ds did start off slow, but once Yusei got out of prison things really took off. At least until they beat Godwin, which could have been the end of the series. The stuff that came after was hit or miss, but I felt the show lost something when Aki became a generic character and stuff. Thankfully, the show had a good ending that did not just cut off early so they wouldn't piss off the fans when their main hero lost.

I made it through three episodes of ZeXaL before I turned it off. I really like the concept of the XYZs more than Synchros, but the animation looked so kiddy as if they replaced beyblades with cards. The characters were instantly annoying and Astral seemed to be a poor man's Atem. I did watch the final episode and even that seemed to be ripping off the Atem/Yugi duel, but with a stupid going to Astral's world not even 3 minutes later bit. UGH!!

Arc-V is pretty much giving me the same feel as ZeXaL, which is not a good thing. I also cannot take the cards seriously and this is coming from someone who just started building a Ghostrick deck.