[Dr Kain]

So I watched all of the Battle City Finals episodes over the last few days and while they are over all amazing, once again the anime needlessly drags them out. First off, there was no reason the Battle Royal episodes needed to be three episodes in length. The whole thing is like three chapters long so that is one episode per chapter. Nevertheless, they do a nice job of following the manga quite here so I have very little to complain about outside of its length.

The same goes for the Jounouchi vs Malik duel. Although, I really feel like the writers dumbing Mai's punishment for losing against Malik really takes away from how dire it is that Jounouchi wins. Now this duel could have been down in two episodes, but it is fine the way it is.

Unfortunately, I cannot say the same for the Yugi/Kaiba duel. The duel itself is the second best duel in the entire series, but for some reason the writers felt it was stretch these episodes out to six episodes. There simply no reason for it. We did not need this pointless Jounouchi subplot of him dreaming about being at the tournament from before Duelist Kingdom as it is unneeded exposition. It serves nothing to the plot of the arc and just distracts the viewer from the fated duel. They also seemed to kind of make Priest Seto during the flashback scene seem more of a dbag than the manga does, which kind of sucks since Priest Seto is one of my favorite characters in the series. That aside, this duel should have been four episodes at the most with all of the bland fluff taken out. I love how much these guys are able to out do one another on a constant basis. It really makes it feel like such an epic duel.

Of course, nothing is as annoying as the pointless Jounouchi/Kaiba duel. Hell, even Kaiba admits that this whole duel was a waste of time, which is exactly what it was. Even with it not being in the manga you know Kaiba is not going to lose to Jounouchi and there is hardly anything to get excited about. Not to mention it makes no sense having Malik take over Anzu's body to confront Yami Malik when they still have Yami Malik amazed that Malik's soul is still in Anzu during his duel against Yugi. None of this battle makes any sense, especially when they start the duel at the top of the tower and then are suddenly down on the ground in the rubble. Ooooooooooooooooookay.

Finally, I give the writers props for the Malik/Yugi duel as they did an excellent job on animating this one. It is the third best duel in the series and an epic one at that as we finally get to see the villain of the arc duel Yugi. The anime does a great job with it and even though the flashbacks are a little much, they don't feel like they are there to waste the running time. I also have to say that I kind of prefer the way the anime has Yugi summon all of his monsters as opposed to just using Black Magician and Black Magician Girl in the manga.

Unfortunately, the last two episodes are dragged in flashback hell as we have to see all of the highlights from the duels throughout the arc just to end the thing. I do like the farewell sequence though with Otogi and Mai in the anime. I am glad to see that they did not feel the need to actually show the duel between Yugi and Jounouchi as I feel it would take away from the mystery of how the battle actually transpired. Did Jounouchi win? How quickly did Yugi defeat him? The world will never know.

Overall, the anime does a great job translating the duels from comic to animation but does a poor job on the pacing of the episodes themselves. Instead of getting duels that flow nicely together, we get duels that are interrupted by needless pandering. I love watching the duels take place, but there is just too much other stuff going on in between them that makes them take longer to finish. It also does not help that the next episode, which is the true finale to Battle City in the anime is just a god damned clip show. UGH!!!!

Oh, is it just me, or does it seem like the animation took to a dip in quality during this arc?