I thought that this week's episode was okay. I'm not too happy with the decision to give Vector a sad sendoff. It looked more like they were showing that he still had a bit of humanity left in him rather than redeeming him completely, but either way, I would have preferred Vector going down as his trollish self. Even though past Vector was more kind and gentle and troll Vector was the result of Don Thousand's influence, Vector fooling everyone in the previous episode showed that that Vector was long gone and for all we know, troll Vector was the real deal at this point. I'm not too surprised that they went that route since this is a Yu-Gi-Oh! series and friendship is magic that fixes pretty much everything, but it was kind of disappointing. If they do revive him with all of the other characters, then I wouldn't be too surprised if they do wipe out his memories so that he can start fresh as Rei. I think that they were hinting to that with some of Yuma's lines here.I couldn't really find myself to care about Misael's death. He was basically the Aporia to Don Thousand's Z-ONE in terms of being a sacrificial lamb to show the protagonists how powerful the final boss is. Plus, he's one of the least interesting Barians, along with Girag and Durbe. I'm almost tempted to put Merag under that list too, but she was more wasted potential than boring. Alit at least had personality that could make him fun to watch, Vector was an entertaining villain and Nasch has his whole conflict about being a Barian, despite thinking he was human for so long. The only thing Misael really had going for him was his rivalry with Kaito and that was pretty weak. The whole believing in others was pretty underwhelming due to how boring he was.
I did like Don Thousand's design and voice. He was ridiculously overpowered though. From what I've understood, there's at least some reasoning for it besides being the overpowered final boss. The Earth and Barian World are merged and since the Numeron Code is on Earth somewhere, he can use its powers, or something like that. He's also basically the god of the Barian World. The effect is still broken as heck, but there's at least some more reason behind it than usual.
I'm also officially tired of the special ending montage whenever characters die now. It worked great with Astral since that was the first time and pretty unexpected. It worked well enough for the Arclights, but with every other time, it just comes off as way too overdone. It especially annoyed me when they tried to make Vector's death look more sad than I honestly think it should have been given everything he's done. It also seems too emotionally manipulative after pulling that stunt so many times. It comes off more like they're trying to make the audience feel more sad with the montages more than the actual deaths. That's one of my major issues with this arc. The deaths don't have a lot of emotional weight to them. Aside from Kaito's and maybe IV's deaths, I don't think that they've been handled too well and in most cases, it feels like they're trying to kill off as many characters as possible in a single episode rather than make any of their deaths have meaning. The fact that I don't consider almost any of the characters who have died to be interesting or fleshed out doesn't help matters either. The overplayed special montage during the ending theme just seems like another attempt to make the audience feel sad without provide enough attention to individual characters' deaths.
As for the preview information:
I was think that they wouldn't have Nasch vs. Yuma, but I also was under the impression that Nasch would be absorbed by Don Thousand during the match. That should be pretty interesting to see. Yuma vs. Astral is something that everyone knew was coming, although I'm not sure why they'd have to duel. It probably has something to do with the Numeron Code. I have heard rumors about another episode airing after 146, even though its title and description really give off a series finale vibe to it. We'll have to wait and see if that's true later on. Either way, I'm hoping that we'll get more Arc-V news soon.
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