The Bastard Child of Digimon and Yu-Gi-Oh!

Written by aznchi on January 10, 2012 at 2:51 PM

This is going to be a really quick review, because honestly, I want to forget about this horrible anime, but I'd like to do humanity a favor ward people off it.
Story:
The story is very cliche at best, involving a group of kids finding monsters and being transported to a different world. Basically Digimon, but Digimon had developed characters to back things up. Whatever pitiful shred of character development exists feels forced upon these already cliche characters.
Dialogue:
The dialogue is remarkably cheesy, and not in the good way. Every line of dialogue is horribly written, and the voice-actors don't help. More than half of the voices used feel out-of-place, and it feels like any random person off the street was chosen to voice the characters. Then again, maybe the actors are just playing the horrible roles given to them.
Animation:
Bakugan feels very similar to Digimon, in that the same animations are played repeatedly throughout the series with background changes. But Digimon bothered to move the mouths of its creatures, Bakugan does not, and all this does is make it awkward to watch the dialogue between the kids and their Bakugan.
Entertainment:
The horrible dialogue and animation seem to fuse in matches between the kids and their opponents. Although it can be amusing to watch at times, the lack of any explanation on the effects of "ability cards" used leaves viewers guessing as to what they do. Indeed, Bakugan doesn't even explain the rules of the game, and the game seems remarkably unbalanced, unlike Yu-Gi-Oh! which had some degree of balance in its duels and kept the effects of cards consistent.
Final Verdict:
I tried to like Bakugan, I really did. It had a neat concept, combining the sense of exploration and adventure from Digimon with the addictiveness of Yu-Gi-Oh!, but in the end, Bakugan feels like a marketing move more than anything else and I can't recommend this to anyone over the age of 6. Maybe very young viewers may appreciate the show for its colorful art and monsters, but I doubt even Bakugan's target audience will be disillusioned early on.