I've got this morning's second episode of the original Yu-Gi-Oh! on right now. It's actually almost over. Anyway, I was a little surprised to see that 4kids decided to skip over the Virtual World arc. I actually have mixed feelings about that. The worst part of the Virtual World arc was that it delayed the climax of Battle City. That was a serious error on the part of the writers. Right when the show was going to get to the final duels of the Battle City Tournament, which everyone had been waiting to see, the writers just decided to interrupt everything with a completely different story. If the writers really wanted to do that arc, then they should have written it as taking place after Battle City. It still would have worked.
Picture this, Yugi and the gang are traveling home on Kaiba's blimp. The ordeal of the Battle City Tournament is behind them. Suddenly, Noah's automated sub rises out of the water and forces the blimp to land. Then the Virtual World adventure begins. The writers actually missed a cool opportunity here, because the version of Virtual World I'm suggesting, Marik's evil persona would have already been destroyed, so we could have seen Marik help Yugi and his friends instead of trying to destroy them. It could have been Yugi and Marik against the Big Five instead of Yugi and Joey.
Alternate realities and wishful thinking aside though, there are a few things about the Virtual World arc that I like, such as the following duels.
- Yugi vs. Gansley/Deepsea Warrior
- Tea vs. Crump/Nightmare Penguin
- Tristan, Serenity, and Duke Devlin vs. Nesbit/Robotic Knight/Perfect Machine King
- Yugi and Joey vs. The Big Five
- Kaiba/Yugi vs. Noah
Aside from the duels, the Virtual World arc revealed the more of the backstory of the Kaiba brothers, which would have otherwise left out. I also liked the part where Tristan was turned into a robot monkey. That was funny.
Oh well, I guess I'd rather see the end of Battle City sooner instead of later anyway.
