I really love this manga. It just goes completely insanemode off the rails, way beyond the usual Yu-Gi-Oh insanity. The other manga take the base concept of the show and put their own spin on it, but this wasn’t just a spin, it was a full on pirouette. The religious imagery comes out of nowhere and never stops. Adam and Eve are there. The big bad is called "Genesis Omega Dragon" but everyone just abbreviates it to "GOD". That premise leads to some insane dialogue and the tonal juxtaposition that comes with it being Yu-Gi-Oh. Yuya would say something like "I know the worthlessness ofa life lived on repeat" followed by "I summon Entermate Funny Little Guy!"

Reiji duels a guy inside of an O'Neill cylinder space colony straight out of UC Gundam because GOD can't see him in space (but the space colony was a hologram, so he continues dueling in the vacuum of space with his comically overcomplicated D/D deck against a guy playing Cheating Turbo). Shingo was there the whole time bc Sora owed him 5 bucks.

The facial expressions and body language for every character were out of this world good. It adds so much to their characterization and made me absolutely fall in love with Yuya, whose anime counterpart I otherwise loathe. Reiji was a huge breakout hit for me, as was the ever-charming Yuzu and her silly little faces serving wonderfully as a sort of audience surrogate.

It was very funny how near the end Adam admitted "yeah it’ll be better for humanity if we let Yuya destroy GOD but what if you stopped him wouldn’t that be funny" as the only justification for giving Reiji his power. And Reiji fucking said "bet."

If you're in the Yu-Gi-Oh fandom and knew anything about the Arc-V manga before now it would most likely be the twist reveal at the end that Yuzu, the female lead, is actually Yuya's mom, because Yuya is from the future. You may also know about how they set them up as a romantic pairing before the twist reveal near the end, and the fandom has made it their mission to be extremely annoying about how that' gross or weird or whatever.

This is the only thing *I* ever heard about the manga before I read it myself, but the thing about that is... *that doesn't really happen.* They aren't set up to be a romantic pairing, they're friends the whole way through. I get the feeling that most people repeating the same opinion about the manga'ss ending haven't actually read it, and has just heard it from someone else who said it, whiiiich I think is kind of a shame. Especially because if the people who got squicked out about incest actually read it, they would have a lot more to say about the insanely obvious brocon going on

But yeah. Absolute standout among the Yu-Gi-Oh manga adaptations, I think. Arc V was wonderfully bizarre and something really special.