Doesn't seem like a show that can aspire to anything more than was presented in the first episode & premise. The same shounen fare, only the trappings are changed. It's not really a bad thing by any means, but it's not great.
The background for the show seems to come off as a heavily diluted Speed Grapher, which would be ironic should the show be praised for those elements. There's even a Suitenguu-esque character, though he only appears to be 1-dimensional. Of course, there were the weird Yugioh elements. The show was promised to be more than simply a Yugioh imitation, is the addition of a thin "money is evil, but also power" layer supposed to fulfill that promise?
The episode didn't clear up my #1 question about the show. Why is a cash-funded Yugioh game preferable to the normal Stock Market that we have today? Why would society implement this system over what we already have? In Tiger & Bunny, there are corporate sponsors and television programs to explain the existence of the heroes. There isn't anything like that herein.
In fact, this episode raises even more questions. The show was supposed to represent stock trading through Yugioh duels, yet during the duel there was no mention of stocks, bonds, etc. When the dude "died", an arbitrary sum of money was transferred to the account of the victor. Does the victor inherit the entire portfolio of the loser, because that could be detrimental to the victory. Honestly, I expected more, closer to something like Spice & Wolf. The show said it would aspire to be more than merely a modern Yugioh on the ANN interviews, but I'm really not seeing it. Are you?
|