Appmon Finale

(Hello excuse while I log onto tumblr after 84978529357 years just to post this)

Sexist writing in Yu-Gi-Oh!!: Yoshida Shin and Zappa Go

I tweeted about this on my twitter, but decided to make post on tumblr, as the fandom might be still alive here, I don’t really know. Long post ahead, TLDR at the end.

By now almost everyone in the western YGO fandom must know who Yoshida Shin is. He is the man who has been working as YGO screenwriter since DM, and wrote storylines for both Zexal and Arc-V’s manga versions. The western fandom has declared him as sexist, blaming him on poor female writing in the series as well as fanservice of the female characters.

However, in truth, that’s just exaggerated conclusion made by angry YGO Arc-V fans on tumblr who hated YGO Zexal and wanted to blame someone for their reasoning of not liking it. In Japanese fandom, only problems there is about Yoshida, is about him giving some good characterizations, but never giving them deeper continuation or conclusion. There is no talk about him being sexist or worse at writing women than other writers in YGO. And even in Japan, they call out about problematic subjects in anime, as we can see when there was an uproar of children’s idol anime Pripara, which portrayed in one of it’s ending a middle-schooler character in lingerie as in reference for Marilyn Monroe.

A famous quote people base their idea of Yoshida being sexist on is how he said in YGO Zexal’s manga, that his series don’t have a lot of women. Many people see this as that he hates women and female characters, when in truth what he is saying in that context is, that he tends to often focus on male characters more than female characters and that he should and works to change that and include more female characters to his own writing. 

Even in the manga versions of Zexal and Arc-V, it’s hard to tell which decisions in comic are made by Yoshida. He wrote the overall storyline of the manga, but it’s as big possibility it was manga artist’s own decision or someone else’s working with the manga, to add fanservicey, ship-teasing moments between Yuuya, his brothers and Yuzu, who turned out to be their mother at the end. Especially the famous groping scene is something so tiny and irrelevant to the plot, I have hard time believing it’d been worthy to be written by storywriter. Even fandom arguing about age difference between Yuushou and Yuzu is hard to say. Personally, I don’t think younger Yuushou looks older than maybe 15-16, in which him developing relationship with Yuzu who is 14 wouldn’t be problematic. EDIT: Looking at few writings by Miyoshi, the mangaka, has done in the manga versions of Zexal and Arc-V... He literally talks about female characters’ chest sizes and seems to me that he is behind of the fanservice and female characters being sexualized.

Despite working a lot on Zexal as it’s composer, which some people claim has worst female writing in YGO, Yoshida didn’t write every episode of Zexal, he only made scripts for around 40 of them. You can check ANN which episodes he worked on here.

Is Yoshida Shin sexist? I can’t say with absolute certainty if he is or isn’t, but after seeing how he barely has part in writing female characters in YGO series, I don’t think he is more sexist or misogynistic than any other writers in YGO, shounen series usually just tend to have poor writing/treatment of female characters. He seems to be quite your average writer in shounen anime, and if you think he’s sexist, you probably should think so is every shounen writer.

However, taking a look in some episodes of Zexal that had the most uncanny, gross and fanservicey moments, a certain man’s name pops up as a writer; Zappa Gou. This man has written episodes that include many series people complain and take as example of Zexal having gross and sexist fanservice, such as Kotori’s shower scene in episode 83 and in my personal opinions, episodes that had Rio acting like character from s*scon inc*st anime. Once again, Yoshida had nothing to do with these episodes’ writing, so putting blame on him for the fanservice or sexist undertones is unjustified.

If we take a look at Zappa Gou’s work in screenplay and composition, you can find a lot of... questionable series. He has written in a lot of fanservice, ecchi and hentai series, which I think explains the uncomfortable sexualized fanservice, or at least raises a question or two. Besides these animes and Zexal, he has also worked on Yu-Gi-Oh!! Arc-V’s first season as writer on 10 episodes. To be more exact, the same man who wrote several fanservicey, sexual ecchi animes and that one scene of Kotori’s towel slipping, wrote most of Arc-V’s first season’s episodes, that revolved around its female characters. This includes both Yuzu vs. Masumi duels as well as Yuuya vs. Mieru duel. So, if you think Zappa Gou is sexist and creepy hentai writer, note he also wrote many episodes about Arc-V’s female characters, that I personally think explain why Yuzu often acts like basic tsundere love interest from fanservice series, why Masumi had crush on her adult teacher and the whole Yuuya seeing Mieru’s upskirt.

I’ve seen people praising Arc-V a lot, especially the same people who talk down on Zexal and claim it be The Most Sexist YGO Season Ever. People talk like Yuzu has top-tier female character writing, when in my own opinion she as well as entirety of Arc-V has just as average writing on the girls department as usual. Sure, Arc-V had a lot of female duelists, but barely any of them had some deeper role or meaning in the overall story. Many characters were written off or sidelined as the series progressed (Ayu, Masumi, Mieru, Olga, Tyler sisters, Sayaka) had only short time on screen (Tylers, Sayaka, Rin & Ruri), or worked basically as Deus Exmachina plot tools (Rey & Bracelet girls). Not to mention the girls never got to won against any impressive characters in serious duels, like in any previous YGO season before. And I don’t even want to begin how Yuzu and Serena got trashed after Synchro arc, the whole damsel in distress and brainwash tropes and so on. The fact people act like Arc-V’s writing on its female cast is higher than in your average YGO are either in denial or blinded by their bias.

I guess my point in conclusion is: Yoshida Shin isn’t more sexist than any other writer in YGO anime and Zappa Gou, who has previously written several ecchi anime, worked in many gross Zexal scenes as well as a lot of episodes revolving around Yuzu, Masumi and Mieru in Arc-V. So think about who is sexist writer in YGO

By the way, I in no way hate Arc-V or it’s characters. It personally has my favorite cast of characters after Zexal and I really liked the premise of the series. But what it comes to Arc-V’s plot and writing in both story and characters, I can’t in any way deny it was awful. It had strong beginning in first season, but soon in second season, it went downhill very fast with poor pacing, horrible writing decisions and repeated character arcs - not to mention the finale is the most horrible YGO finale and basically destroys not only Kurosaki’s but also both Yuuya, Yuzu’s and rest of their counterparts’ character arcs completely. You can like series and yet criticize and complain about its writing, you can accept its flaws and still enjoy it. Man, Yuuya is like my 2nd fave YGO protag, yet I absolutely hate his writing. Won’t stop me liking his character premise though.

What I do hate is people who ignore facts for their own bias, deny clear flaws and act elitist, as if their biased opinions were only truth. It’s important to accept that things aren’t perfect. You can enjoy series, even if they have bad aspects.

TLDR: Yoshida Shin isn’t in more fault than any of the other YGO writers in the series’ bad female character writing. He has admitted he more often focuses on men rather than women and wants to work to change that. Female character writing and treatment is usually poor in shounen series like YGO. However, Zappa Go, man who wrote some very uncanny fanservice episodes and poor female characterization in Zexal, also wrote all of  Arc-V’s first season’s episodes about its female characters and also has been writer in several ecchi/hentai series.

PSA for Buddyfight fandom

So around a week ago, some adults of Buddyfight fandom attacked on a literal minor on this fandom over writing a fanfiction about their OTP. A lot of misinformation was spread over the fandom, mostly on twitter (and likely discord but I don’t use it so I don’t know the details). What I know is that some of the adults (20 years+) in this fandom attacked on a minor going by name Chazu and accused him of being predator for writing CP, which he didn’t (it was based on Ace timeline in which characters were an adults) and even apologized for. Not only Chazu is a minor himself (14 years old), he’s also trans, so like. Good going y’all. You chased a LGBT minor off internet and scared him for fake accusations that hurt him very badly, even after he felt comfortable enough to come back and most of the drama calmed down.

I seriously hope people involved in this drama assumed Chazu being an adult, because bunch of adults attacking on a person they know is a minor is seriously creepy and toxic. While understandably CP is a bad thing, especially in fandom of series meant for kids, accusing a literal child for something like that and even going as far as treating them like predator is disgusting, and coming from bunch of adults, absolutely stupid.

As adults, we older people in this fandom should know better than to jump into conclusions and attack blindly on people. Children in fandom exist and they might do things that would be bad for us adults to do, but it’s fine as they’re still children and growing up. This might be an unpopular opinion of mine, but I don’t see much wrong in minors writing or drawing nsfw about characters who are close to their own age. Some of them might use it to explore and express themselves, especially the LGBT children. As long as it’s nothing harmful, I think it’s fine.

I for one can say I used to say and do a lot of harmful and gross things as minor that I regret doing now that I’m an adult. But back then, I was a child (and well, fandoms were different when I was kid, it was wild back in 2009) and as I grew older, I saw the harm on things I did and grew to better person. We as adults, shouldn’t jump into out own conclusions and blindly attack on everyone we see doing something we don’t approve of. First of all, we need to remember that there are children in the fandom and for them, I think it’s fine to do anything as long as they’re not harming anyone else in the process or sharing some harmful information (which again, wasn’t case in this one). And if we see children doing something that could be harmful (for example, sharing harmful stereotypes or glorifying abusive things), we, as adults, should be mature and polite over it, explain them gently what they’re doing wrong and help them to understand.

As adults, we should know better than attack on people, especially if we don’t know their age for certain. You can always block someone if they make you uncomfortable. And while it’s good to keep fandoms safe for children, we need to remember that children can produce something in fandom too and attacking on them for things they do isn’t helpful for them in any way. In worst cases like this, it can seriously harm the minor and make them extremely anxious, to the point they run off the internet over some adult’s untrue assumptions. So please, next time you see something that might or might not be harmful, think before you jump into conclusions, make sure the person in question is the age you assume them to be and if they’re children, treat them gently and try to educate them kindly rather than blame them aggressively. A bunch of angry adults calling children predator can be just as harming for kids than nasty adults being nasty.

Let’s try to think like an adults and keep this fandom enjoyable and safe for everyone. Let’s hope anything like this won’t happen again!

TLDR; A minor got accused by being predator/writing CP by bunch of adults in the fandom, making them extremely scared and chasing them off the internet. Let’s remember kids are still growing up and can do mistakes and it’s fine, let’s not blame them but educate them if they do something harmful. Always check op’s age to avoid accidentally scaring off a kid for no reason.

Also sorry, English isn’t my first language so I might make mistakes. Also this might not be so well written and very rambly, but this subject made me really annoyed as an adult myself.

Two new character added to Buddyfight Ace’s JP website! Darkness Dragon World user Meiru Amagasa and his Buddy Extermination Demon Dragon, Belial and Legend World user, Ace of Legend, Alexandre “Alec” Ankh with his Buddies Flame Deity, Magma Horus and Ice Deity, Freeze Horus!

So Bushiroad tweeted with preview of their this months magazine and there was some info about the upcoming Ace vs. King booster set.

The new legend user who uses “Double Buddy”, Legend Dragon Dragods and is one of the new main characters and Yuuga’s apparent “arch-rival”, is fully named アレクサンドル・アンク, Alexander/Alexandre Ankh. Sooo... He’s not “Alec” but “Alex”, I guess?

The other new character, introduced now, uses new Darkness Dragon World attribute “Demon Dragon”. His name is 雨傘メイル, Meiru... Amekasa? His first name could be Mail/Meil too, and his surname has various ways to read it (Urakasa, Amagasa, etc). 雨傘 literally means “umbrella” which is his attribute’s weapon. Just amazing, almost as good as “the shining number one star” that is literally Hikaru’s name.

Oh, and while Kei doesn’t debut in this set (please be Magic World user and not another Star Dragon World....), his full name is 神宮寺ケイ, Kei Jinguuji.

Roboppy is a trans icon and I love them with all my heart!

Bushi added character page to their JP website with Yuuga, Gao and new character Hikaru’s character infos along with their Buddies’, so I decided to translate them!

Did subs for Buddyfight Ace episode 47′s ending.

They aired 4 recap/card info episodes in Japan after plot finale 43. Nothing really happens in these episodes other than recaps about the season’s cards/decks and some pointless fun such as counting how many times they ate pizza in the anime. (Also it’s 90% reused animation and original clips are... poor.)

However, episode 47 had this somewhat plot-ish ending after the card info stuff, so I decided to make subtitles for it to show other fans. According to JP voice actors of the Ace Trio on twitter, this was indeed final episode, at least for now. No new info about the anime, but manga keeps going. They released special edition of Yuuga’s new deck in CoroCoro special last week along with nice comic you can read here!  (Might translate it if I feel like it and people want me to, idk if they’ll include it in official published manga volumes.)

Also sorry English isn’t my first language so the translation might be kinda awkward sometimes as my brain tries to process 3 languages at the same time.

i don’t have energy to edit this better

Masato’s hair is shaped like tree and Subaru is the brightest star and Bushiroad blessed us with MasaSuba this Xmas. Coincidence? I think not.

Late holiday gift I drew for my girlfriend~

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