Duel Masters
The anime designed to sell merchandise is common, and most children fell for because . . . well we didn’t know any better. Still some offerings were superior than others. The most prominent of these series is of course the Yugioh series. Like this series, Duel Masters has several different spin-offs, given titles with letters like “XD” or numbers like “Zero.” Duel Masters has several series called Duel Masters: Revolution, Duel Masters Versus, Duel Masters Versus Revolution, and Duel Masters Versus Revolution Final.
I point this out only to illustrate the issue I had with this series, it’s so clearly created for commerce that it’s painfully generic. Now to be fair most if not all anime is filled with troupes of some sort, but Duel Masters takes the cake. Furthermore, the animation is terrible, the character designs are uninspired and they use CG monsters, that’s if they bother to animate the monsters at all. This is understandable on one hand, if your goal is not to entertain but to get children to beg their parents for the latest card game it works.
I’ll admit that I also played Duel Masters, but it never quite caught on the way Magic or Yugioh did. If I can compare this series to the Yugioh series that preceded it, I will say that while they both served the same purpose, Yugioh was a by far more complete series that at least made you feel that they cared that you enjoyed it AND then wanted to buy the cards. With a proven template Duel Masters should have done better, and comparing the two series only made me dislike Duel Masters even more.
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