Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal/YMMV

• And the Fandom Rejoiced: With the announcement of Episode 22 and its Duel between Shark and Kaito, even many haters of the show immediately perked up and started placing their bets.
• Anticlimax Boss: For all that V was hyped, he didn't turn out all that impressive in his duel with Kaito. Although part of the problem is how he spent the entire thing acting as Mr. Exposition, his strategy boiled down to tanking behind Dyson Sphere's ability to negate all attacks hurled at it, then direct attacking with its effect to bypass Kaito's Galaxy-Eyes Photon Dragon. Overall the whole thing came across as a massive letdown. Kaito just so happened to have a perfect combo to summon Neo Galaxy-Eyes and win. V had no counter for it despite having seen the same card defeat both of his brothers in their Tag Duel against Yuma and Kaito.
• Ass Pull: As per Yu-Gi-Oh! tradition, being the main protagonist means Yuma is entitled to as many of these as the plot demands.
• Complaining About Shows You Don't Watch: Many a complaint has been made where the complainer has even confessed to not watching ZeXal but denounces it purely due to Shin Yoshida being the head writer, what they've seen of character designs from previews and promotional stuff, or even from the text episode previews.
• Complete Monster: Don Thousand, in order to ensure his revival, traveled the world and selected seven humans who had connections to the Legendary Numbers, which had sealed most of his power. Not too bad right? Look at his methods for doing so. As an example, he brainwashed Alito's best friend and the ruling court to execute Alito, something that everyone had managed to notice, and just before Alito was executed, Don Thousand altered his memories to make it seem that he had been heartlessly killed, instead of being framed by a God of Evil. The end result was filling Alito with so much hatred, he was revived as a Barian. Then look at what happened to the other Emperors. Don Thousand essentially ruined their lives all to fuel his comeback, which also ended up tearing up nations and killing large numbers of innocents. Oh, and this includes being responsible from turning Vector of all people from a decent guy into the monster he is now.
• Ear Worm: Courtesy of 4Kids
• Ensemble Darkhorse: Haruto
• Fan Dumb: When Zexal was first unveiled, fans translated the previews into "Exceed Summons" and Shark's Number as "Revise Dragon". When the official spellings were announced, it was revealed that they were supposed to be "Xyz Summons" (but pronounced as "ik-seez") and "Leviath Dragon". Needless to say, some fans went ape shit. Some are still in denial even now, refusing to acknowledge the real names and just being angry dicks to anyone who tries to correct them. Averted by the guy who actually did the translating, saying that he was doing so with no context and that the official spellings are correct.
• Hell Is That Noise: Kaito has a habit of whistling a quite eerie melody to announce his presence in a time-stop.
  • Said melody is also present in his leitmotif.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: A normal guy teaming up with an ancient bodyless being to restore said being's body by defeating opponents using powers similar to their own; sounds like Kamen Rider OOO to me.
  • Quite a few shows have that premise, what really connects this to OOO is a certain role Astral's Seiyuu has on that show.
• Ho Yay: Yuma and Astral, also called keyshipping, complete with tentacle porn (thanks No. 96)
• Magnificent Bastard: Vector was behind most of the plot from the show's beginning, but the second season has him play near the entire main cast for saps for about 20 episodes as Shingetsu, give no fucks when his plan to turn Astral evil backfires and creates Dark Zexal (he almost wins because of it, too), show his utter dedication to absolutely burying the main cast for beating him last season and eventually obtaining the Numbers in order to destroy the Astral World, and realize that using friendship against Yuma is most likely the best way to beat him. And even after all that, he's still a likeable villain because of the sheer respect you have to have for his dedication to his plans and his hammy, entertaining personality.
• Memetic Molester: Jin, not helped by his insane stalkerish obsession with Kaito and his general appearance. Kaito himself went memetic on at least one forum after some of his... expressions in Episode 22.
• Memetic Mutation: I blew it on my bing! - A shoddy google translation of Yuma's catchphrase "Kattobingu" that went viral shortly afterwards.
  • Also tomatoes, thanks to the pre series special focusing on tomatoes and real life actors eating them.
  • "You just summoned your mom."
• Nightmare Fuel: The effect of Giant Killer... Or it would be if the animation was graphic and not incredibly stylized.
  • It would have been much worse if its only on-screen victims were not machine monsters.
• Pandering to the Base: While the franchise is aimed at kids to begin with, the series seems to be deliberately appealing only to the younger kids for having a brighter, more childish art style, a protagonist who's much younger then the previous ones (and acts like it too), a general Lighter and Softer feel and having a quiz show explaining some of the most basic concepts of the game. Oddly enough, the series also featured many Callbacks to Yu-Gi-Oh: Duel Monsters, which could be seen as pandering to the original fanbase.
  • It's not a case of Viewers are Morons: if they're explaining the rules, it's because they're explaining the rules to their newer, younger audience.
• Ruined FOREVER: The series quite quickly became a Base Breaker with more than a few fans declaring it as this.
• So Bad It's Good: For some.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks: Some people who were fond of Yu-Gi-Oh 5 Ds' Darker and Edgier tone don't like that the characters...even though it's not guaranteed that the series won't have its dark moments.
• The Scrappy: Even though the series is still new Yuma is the least liked protagonist so far due to his lack of duelling skill, hypocrisy really stubborn nature and his screw ups take up unnecessarily large amounts of screen time. Tokunosuke is also unpopular since he's a slimy cheat who was too easily forgiven and generally causes more harm than good to those around him.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: Astral is male.
  • That hasn't stopped the fan artists though.
  • Although Yuma is much more popular for BL fans to be the uke in their art.
• Villain Sue: Kite's skills in dueling are mainly reliant on how he just magically has the cards to counter whatever elaborate strategy his opponent has. Just because. The show tries to show him as an expert strategist, but his cards are often ridiculously cheap.
• The Woobie: Baby Tragon. Poor critter's been used by Tokunosuke to presumably rig countless duels in his favor. Let's also not forget Baby Tragon is a Rank 1 Xyz Monster (lowest possible rank), has low ATK/DEF stats, and has an effect confined to only supporting allied Level 1 monsters (in other words, useless for the most part). Baby Tragon's card picture even features him having a very sad face. This story ends with a happy ending, though: Baby Tragon jumps up and flies around with joy when Yuma opts to befriend him and properly use him in the ongoing duel instead of abandoning/mistreating him like most other duelists. Yuma gets to keep him, too!