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NEWS: Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal II to Debut on October 7 in New Timeslot

That seems a bit.. [insult removed]. I don't consider 'toyetic' a valid reason to consider something a 'lesser' show. Especially when most anime is made to sell a product or merchandise to begin with.

Capsule Monsters doesn't exist as far as most fans are concerned, given it's a 4Kids produced spin off and not canon with the anime continuity. Then again, 5Ds is in limbo as well given the rumors Zexal may have replaced it given the director's comments on Twitter, but nothing official has been stated.

I mainly compare it to Frontier because how Frontier abandoned the 'partner' aspect of Digimon in favor of making the kids turn into the Digimon Kamen Rider/Super Sentai style and is such a different format. An interesting gimmick, but it seems most people didn't like the deviation.

Likewise, 5Ds stands out from the others given:

-Yusei is actually pretty confident/pro at dueling (Compared to Yugi, Judai, and Yuma who either suck at dueling, are considered the underdog, or have self confidence issues)
-Yusei has no otherworldy entity of questionable morality bonding with him. (Yugi has Atem, Judai had Yubel, and Yuma has Astral. Judai also has Daitokuji's spirit too in the end I guess if you count that.)
-Yusei has no humanoid signature monster with a fan-favorite female side kick. He has a dragon, which is usually what the YGO rivals have (Yugi had Black Magician/Black Magician Girl, Judai had Featherman and Burst Lady, and Yuma has Gagaga Magician and Gagaga Girl)
-Yusei doesn't have a Kuriboh mascot which helps him duels at certain times (Yugi has Kuriboh, Judai has Winged Kuriboh, and Yuma has Kuribolt)

Looking at that, you can kind of see why YGO fans consider it an oddball out of them all. And in that case, I suppose Zexal is similar to Xros Wars in that both of them largely return the franchises to their original format and were pretty popular.

I was under the impression that Zexal might be an alternate universe due to the way that the show seems to be playing with the idea of those. 5D's continued from GX's plots and themes at the end, so this could be a way of continuing 5D's after they prevented a "dark future" scenario.

I suppose you could look at that way as a "return to form". However, I'm going more into how 5D's had deeper themes than the previous shows (Well, Duel Monsters was pretty consistently about letting go of the past and moving on from death, but the show was so bloated those themes were lost on many) in the same vein as Tamers did.

Zexal screams "different" to me because the characters are extremely simple, the designs aren't reminiscent of previous series barring a few characters (Such as Astral), the show lacks themes (As I mentioned with 5D's and DM, although even GX eventually got into that sort of thing) and it seemingly "reboots" the franchise by shifting to a universe with AR tech instead of KC's Solid Vision. The show just doesn't seem "Yu-Gi-Oh!" to me. It feels more like Beyblade with trading cards, but that seems like slight at Beyblade...

Alternate universe seems like a nicer way of saying "we're ignoring 5Ds" by the producers. All we really know is Yugi and Judai were established in Zexal, but there's been zero mention of Yusei so far, and the director's comments of "there's a reason for that, but I can't say"

I didn't really notice any 'deeper' themes in 5Ds that weren't present in the other series, what themes were you thinking of specifically?

Guess we'll have to agree to disagree in that regard. Zexal doesn't have social conflict, but today's episode posed a nice plot twist/question for morality. spoiler[Would you kill an innocent person in order to save your son's life?]. It also set up the second season and is matching the summary they provided for it, so I can't wait to see where things go from here after they finish off the first season's villain. I will say Shark is pretty badass though, spoiler[got stabbed in the gut with a knife and is currently bleeding to death, but still has the strength to duel.]

Kaito has a main role in the story, so yeah, there will be more episodes like that.

I also just noticed 27 is also where the dub is. Please tell me you're not judging it based on the 4Kids dub.

The one episode of the dub I saw completely rewrote Shark's backstory (Sister is alive and well and talking, surprisingly enough) and rather than IV revealing he's the one who caused Shark's sister's accident to get Shark to enter the Duel Carnival, he instead calls him a loser which makes Shark mad so he enters. Amazing writing right there. No real surprise you don't see any of the themes when 4Kids always removes them all, sadly. Their work on the original series and GX is just as terrible. Piracy is the only way to actually see the true Yu-Gi-Oh series.