SulliMike23

OK, I took a break from playing YuGiOh in any shape or form, but recently I started playing Master Duel lately and I've been noticing a certain trend. But before I get into it, let me just say that I've been collecting YuGiOh cards for a long time, since the very first booster set ever came out as a matter of fact. The first cards I ever got from my first booster pack were Frenzied Panda, The 13th Grave, Silver Fang, Flame Manipulator, Armaill, Hinotama Soul, Umi, Machine Conversion Factory, and Final Flame.

Like any ignorant person who gets into the game from the booster packs alone and the anime, I thought the rules of Duelist Kingdom applied to the way you play the game. I didn't know how to calculate life points or anything. But when I finally got my hands on the Yugi and Kaiba starter decks and learned how to play the game properly, I just started playing. I had very few wins under my belt playing against my friends at school. Even after I graduated high school, I still collect the cards and I have no intentions of stopping.

I've been revamping my main deck over and over, but I can never find the perfect combination of cards that can ever give me a proper win. But I refuse to give up on that notion. But when it comes to the video games, I seem to have a bit more luck against other players. Especially since not all the cards in the games are cards that I don't have in the real world. So, having so many cards that I either could never find or could never afford due to financial reasons, was a really great experience. However, after getting back to playing Master Duel after a couple years hiatus I have begun to notice something that other players are doing that is just driving me nuts!

When I begin a duel, I expect me and my opponent to begin the duel the same way: we set or summon at least 1 monster and, depending on who goes first, we enter the battle phase. I also expect the person who goes first to set a spell or trap to protect their monster or life points or at the very least end the turn after setting/summoning their first monster. Instead, I wind up facing players who keep summoning monster after monster after monster and using card effect after card effect JUST TO GET THEIR STRONGEST MONSTER ON THE FIELD RIGHT OFF THE BAT!!! That's not adding in the wait time for the game's lagging moments.

It's like these people just wanna end the duel on either the second or third turn of the duel and not really put any effort into it! I can't even count how many times people have Link Summoned the same link monsters over and over until they're satisfied with how strong they are! But by the time they FINALLY end their turn, they've practically made it almost impossible for me to either activate a spell/trap/monster effect, or even summon a monster! So, it's gotten to the point where I just surrender just before they end the turn because they summon strong enough monsters to the field, but then they summon more monsters! I'm like, "frack this" and just hit surrender and let them win without any effort.

Now don't get me wrong, I understand the need to get your stronger monsters on the field in order to assure victory, but to do it SO MANY TIMES on the FIRST TURN, just to make it impossible for your opponent to make a decision on how to counter it all or even come up with a winning strategy depending on the deck they have is just ridiculous! It's like these people just don't wanna put any effort into it or wanna see what their opponent will do!

And DON'T get me started on Exodia decks! I get the need to wanna have a deck with the instant win cards, but to do it all on the first turn is just STUPID! I get that this one dude one the World Championship that way, but if you ask me the tournament folks should ban Exodia decks like that. If I'm gonna win, I would rather put my opponent through the ringer and actually make it a fair fight and at least let them land a few blows here and there. But to totally OTK your opponent is just mean, IMO.

So can someone explain to me, why people waste the first turn of the duel, JUST TO SUMMON THE STRONGEST MONSTER IN THEIR DECK RIGHT OFF THE BAT!?!?!

Hey folks, another cartoon review here! This time about one of my favorite Transformers TV shows of all time! Beast Wars!

Originally released in 1996, this show was based on the famous Transformers toy line, but for a newer audience just 12 years after the original TV show aired on TV. The show centers around the conflict between two groups of Transformers: the Maximals, the heroic descendants of the Autobots; and the Predacons, the evil descendants of the Decepticons. Like the original Transformers, the Maximals and Predacons had a battle in space that left them stranded on a deserted planet devoid of life, save for the local animal population, which consists of animals from Earth (no spoilers). The planet is rich with the element known as Energon, the element which gives Cybertronians their life's blood; so much so, that if they stay in their robot forms for too long, they could go into stasis lock. So in order to protect themselves from the energon fields, they take on the form of the local animals.

As the series progresses, we see that there is more to the planet that they crashed on than was originally thought. I won't spoil what the planet was, but I will say that it shouldn't really come as a surprise to anyone as to which planet they crashed on. When the show finally ended its running for three seasons in 1999, it left an impression on not only fans of the franchise, but also the franchise itself. Many elements from the show were added to other iterations of the franchise, including the live-action films, the anime that was released in Japan only, and the cartoons that were on the air since the early 2000s.

The characters are quite memorable on both sides. The leaders are basically reincarnations of their predecessors Optimus Prime and Megatron and share the almost the same names as the two. Each character also has their own unique personality that makes them quite memorable. From the young and eager teen-like cheetah-bot Cheetor, the cowardly and snarky Rattrap, to the honorable and warrior-minded Dinobot, and the universe's favorite chew toy Wazzpinator. The characters also develop as the series progresses, becoming better with each season.

The show was also one of the first in the line of CG animated cartoons that came out in the 90s, so the animation is kinda dated; but that doesn't mean it's bad in any way, shape, or form. There are some characters who could've been used a bit more in later seasons, and there were plenty of characters introduced among the toys that had been promoted in the commercials that could've been in the show too if given the chance. But overall, the show was a great one overall.

I give this show a solid 9/10.

It's been a while since I did one of these things, but I think it's high time I went back to them. Now for this rant, I'm gearing it towards fandom and what they do to certain characters. Mostly I see it in fanfics and a few fanarts, but for the most part certain characters often become the target for this particular fandom idea. I'm not talking about character bashing, I'm talking about pairing a character with more than one person. That's right, I'm talking about harems!

Now what can I say about harems? Well, the definition of a harem is a group of people either in love, or married to, a single person. I have seen plenty of anime that use this for comedic purposes; the first one to give me something of an idea of what a harem anime is about was Tenchi Muyo. I will admit, it was hilarious seeing one guy attracting so many ladies of different personalities; but as I grew older and saw more of these shows...I started to get annoyed because they're too common these days. But in the world of fanfiction, it's a whole different matter!

In fanfiction, certain characters of certain anime often get paired with so many different characters that it practically starts pairing wars. But at first, I didn't pay much attention to such fanfics; but after reading a few Naruto fanfics with this idea...let's just say I'm glad it hasn't happened in the actual series. I swear, the fans often pair Naruto up with SO MANY CHARACTERS that's it's hard to keep track of them all! Sometimes they'll even pair other characters in the series with their own harems!

For the most part, these harems are often an excuse by the writers of these fanfics to settle the whole idea of not deciding who the character should be with. Other times, these fanfics are often made as an excuse to fill the fanfic with lots of sex scenes. I just can't wrap it around my head as to why people like this concept when it could only happen in certain cultures around the world whereas in some countries like here in America, it's considered taboo. In fact, one fanfic writer actually had a character who explained 3 perfectly good reasons why harems in countries like Japan could never work.

As I said before, they only exist in certain cultures and countries across the globe, including Mormons and Muslims; that's reason number one. Reason number two, again because such a concept is considered taboo, it's also illegal in countries like America and even Japan; so having a harem would be cause for your arrest. The third and final reason is that no one in their right mind would want to share the object of their affection with anyone, unless they were in love with someone else.

In anime, we see evidence of what I'm talking about as some girls actually do start fighting each other over the guy that they like. In reverse-harem anime, where a girl is the center of attention for so many guy characters, the same is also true. Usually, by the end of one of these series the main character has either won the affections of the person they are in love with, or has finally accepted the affections of one of the other characters in their so-called "harem" and the other characters are paired with someone else, or they just simply watch from afar. But sometimes, the series will have no resolution to this whatsoever, or the main character will claim that they have feelings for every person in their harem! I think that last part is just stupid and unrealistic.

But at least in actual anime/manga/light novel series, the main character DOES settle down with someone and it's often the main object of their affections in most cases. In fanfics, on the other hand, it depends on who writes the fanfics. Certain pairings will either be the main pairing, or will take a side-step to the main pairing of the harem. But for the most part, it just depends on who the writer thinks the main character of their fanfic is better off with.

But because I see so many of them in popular fanfic categories like Naruto, Bleach, My Hero Academia, Fairy Tail, and so on, it's hard to not see a fanfic where there's just ONE pairing for the main character! Even so, that doesn't stop me from looking. What do you guys think?

As a kid growing up in the 1990's, TV and video games were my life. Every Saturday morning and every Monday through Friday after school was filled with episodes of my favorite TV shows including, Power Rangers, Gargoyles, Animaniacs, Voltron, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, etc. Back then, shows like them were made to do one thing: sell toys, and boy did they ever succeed in doing so.

But lately I've noticed a trend, TV shows like that keep getting rebooted to different ideas. Some have been good reboots, others...not so much. One example of a GOOD reboot was My Little Pony. The show back in the 80's was meant for little girls and it did sell the toys real well; but the reboot made in 2010 became a cultural phenomenon! It was a prime example of taking an existing product and adapting it to make it even better. Another franchise that seems to be going the same way would have to be Transformers. The characters don't often change, but the dynamics remain; the Autobots and Decepticons fight each other one their home planet of Cybertron for resources before taking their fight to Earth. The Autobots befriend humans and by the end of the show, defeat the Decepticons.

But one franchise that has seen reboots and has been around since the 1950's that REALLY needs a reboot to go with the times and sell well, is GI Joe. When GI Joe first came out in the 50's, it was branded to be a boy's toy and it did well. It had plenty of imitators and critics. But during the height of the Vietnam War, the toy brand was almost forgotten until the folks at Hasbro managed to revive it and turned GI Joe into an organization that fought the terrorist organization, Cobra. But to really sell the toys, the Joes started off as a comic book and it did it's job to sell the toys. Then the TV show came out and it became a hit! But as the 80's came to a close, GI Joe started to see a big change.

After the 80's GI Joe was no longer seen as an American organization fighting communism. It was seen as an international team fighting a petty terrorist organization that wanted to conquer the world. It has seen it's fair share of spin-offs and off-shoots; but it wasn't until after September 11, 2001 that it became popular again. For obvious reasons. Since then it has had many changes and has been redone quite a few times. But once again, GI Joe has lost it's popularity and is in need of a new lease in life.

One of the things it had to do in the 80's was NEVER kill off anyone! Not even unpopular characters! After the Transformers movie killed off prominent characters like Ratchet, Brawn, and of course Optimus Prime, Hasbro decided not to kill Duke off in the GI Joe movie when he was supposed to. But these days, it's actually OK to kill off characters! I've seen it happen! So that's one of the things that needs to be done.

Another thing that needs to be done is have GI Joe use REAL WORLD weapons and vehicles! There was this GI Joe miniseries that took our favorite characters from the 80's TV show and actually had them use weapons like the M4 and AK-47 and actually killed a few of the characters! I still think that should be relevant today. To heck with what the FCC would want, GI Joe should be KILLING their enemies, not have the same kind of accuracy as Stormtroopers.

I could go on and say what changes would be needed to change GI Joe to fit today's standards, but overall, I would say it's one franchise that needs a revival that would give it the same kind of fandom that it had back in the 80's. So what do you guys think? What other franchise needs a revival?