Top 20 Y Ruler Of Time Videos

Of all the critics I’m likely to cover in the name of Meta Month, this might be the one with the most… sophomoric sense of humour. At least, when he started out, what with his Eli Roth-isms and what not (“really gay-looking two-page spread”). Also, for as much as I am here to highlight his video work, he really doesn’t do that anymore in favour of his Weekly Manga Recap podcast with Rollo T. Now, ignoring what WMR may or may not have going for it, this especially sucks when Y Ruler Of Time might well be one of the most consistent video critics I’ve seen. If anything, he seems to only have gotten better as he went along. And so, with this comment in mind, I’m counting down the Top 20 Y Ruler Of Time Videos.

#20: Franken Fran: The Sentinel Saga

A team-up with JewWario as the FamiKamen Rider, the manga volumes in question of Franken Fran are a set of especially grim and gruesome tributes to the Kamen Rider series. Their individual respect for the material, with varying degrees of withdrawal due to the gore contained within, is admirable and this is just another video where the two reviewers work really well together.

#19: 5 Terrible Evil Plans

 

A dedication to 5 of easily the most convoluted, hair-brained schemes ever cooked cup by mangaka for their villains, this list ranges from Naruto to Bakuman so it doesn’t even need to go into the realms of plot-related fantasy to enter the realms of narrative fantasy. It’s just fun seeing Y cutting these grand-scale bad guys down to size.

#18: The Downfall Of Bleach

This shows Y at his most personal, as he cuts close to his own history as he finally takes a look at the first manga he ever read… and how, over the course of a few years, it went into the utter nadir it did that led to its cancelation not that long ago. However, rather than just highlighting the series’ point of no return, he also goes into the early days of the series and what made it such a draw to begin and then getting into Kubo’s sudden brain enema that led to Bleach dropping so far into critical and commercial favour.

#17: Let’s Make Forbidden Love

 

A look at a rather bland and finicky werewolf romance, Y goes through the usual routine of questioning the popular decline of werewolves in fiction to start out. Then he gets into how much the manga in question emphasizes the bestial nature of the relationship, to the point where both he and the audience begin to question the ethics of the coupling itself.

#16: Reaction Shots: Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL

 

Computer broken? Rant about the new Yu-Gi-Oh! series that, even for that franchise, is bloody ridiculous. After giving some passing praise to the past series, even 5Ds, he highlights how they are officially scraping the bottom of the barrel and somehow dumbing it down even more for kids than they already were.

#15: To Love-Ru  

For those of you unfamiliar with the concept of a harem romance manga, it’s basically all about one guy being the object of every woman in the series’ desire. Sounds pretty frickin’ boring, right? Well, usually it is, unless you’re dealing with a series that goes so overt with its harem themes that it becomes kind of awesome from another direction altogether, resulting in a prime candidate for Y’s approach to analysis.

#14: Shamo

This might have the single most perplexing introductions of any video I’ll spotlight on this blog in the name of Meta Month, which brings up the running “soap opera for men” that is professional wrestling… and then prison rape? Yeah, the whole video is basically built on how outlandish that connection is but, as he looks at this little-known manga, it actually does begin to make sense.

#13: Endless Eight And Naruto 467

The most v-log video on this list, it features Y going over bits from Naruto and Haruhi Suzumiya that… well, really didn’t go over too well. He’d go into much further detail on Naruto 467 with his 5 Terrible Evil Plans video, but his emphatic confusion at said plan as well as the repetition of Endless Eight in this video makes for some damn good laughs.

#12: Top 5 Badass MANga Characters

This list may seem like a no-brainer, given the prevalence of series like Dragon Ball, but as Y highlights early on, these types of hypermasculine characters are a lot rarer than it may appear. As such, this video is pretty much a highlight of the surprisingly underutilized character breed, and the fact that it acknowledges said underutilization only makes it better.

#11: Training Arcs

A tribute to not only how certain series handle training arcs, but also the long-running tradition of the training arc in it of itself, this is one of the better examples of Y’s best tool when it comes to his approach to video-making: The man is excellent at rapid-fire observations and jokes, which is what makes his Reaction Shots videos so good and this one (as well as another further on down the list) in particular.

#10: Prince Of Tennis 2

The follow-up to his first ever review, which more than any other showcased his more juvenile tendencies that I think he literally grew up out of, this gets into a much more deep-seated hatred for the subject in question than he managed to convey before.

#9: Y Reviews Anime… By Soulja Boy?!

Yeah, it’s an old punching bag by now, but bear in mind that the song being reviewed isn’t from one of his albums, or even one of his mixtapes. If you think his popular stuff is bad, just wait till you get to the shit that didn’t catch on. Y Ruler Of Time tries to give the song as many passes as possible, but at the end of the day it’s still a Soulja Boy song; there’s a lot to make fun of.

#8: The Legend of Koizumi

For those of you who think that Yu-Gi-Oh! wasn’t overblown enough, here’s a manga where political matters are settled through epic games of mah-jong. Complete with Super Saiyan Aryan Hitler. If that isn’t enough to make you take a look at this review, which admittedly features Y doing a valiant effort to keep up with the material, nothing will.

#7: Contemporary Shonen

A series of classic manga (and a brief mention of their anime adaptations), encapsulated into a short video through Y’s rapid-fire gag-heavy style. His look at One Piece is not only seriously funny when he describes the premise, but it’s also what finally got me to start reading it for myself. It’s a video full of constant punchlines and all of them hits well.

#6: Toriko

Time to get into some weird personal trivia on this one, but in all honesty I have no better way to explain the baffling impact this video has had on me. The sandwich Y makes at the beginning while he talks about food preparation, something that plays a big part in the manga in question? I have probably had those for lunch more times than anything else since first watching this video. Yeah, you want to talk ‘fan boy’, try “changed the food I eat” in terms of impact. On a slightly less personal note, it’s kind of nice seeing a review of this series before it became the major success it is today.

#5: Marmalade Boy

What makes this review work so well isn’t the fact that Y gives the usual treatment to the story’s romance, which involves incest in certain degrees. Rather, he points out how the relationship involving said incestual squick is actually not so bad. At least it isn’t so bad in comparison to the irredeemably assholish actions of the parents in the equation, which leads to some great rage-outs from Y.

#4: Naruto

“You arrogant spooge-face!” Yeah, this is Y’s second review so he’s still hip-deep in the teenage-isms of his early work, but I’d be lying if I said it wasn‘t amazingly funny. From his constant put-downs of Sasuke to the first iteration of his great catchphrase “And feminism marches on!” to his quick run-through of all the letdowns in the plot after the time skip, this is prime material.

#3: Speed Racer

The only proper episode of Small Page, Big Screen that Y has so far produced, and good God, based purely on this first attempt I desperately wish he made more of them. While I don’t necessarily agree with every gripe he has with the film, he at least makes entertaining cases for each issue with the film from the writing to the editing to the mildly nauseating effects work. It kind of sucks that this is the only one of its kind but it’s still very good in spite of that.

#2: Love Pistols

I have a theory: Male pregnancy has never been depicted with any kind of skill in any medium. And in case you need any further proof of this, here’s a mildly fantastical yaoi (gay romance) manga that not only features bestiality undertones that make Forbidden Love look downright chaste, but the explanation for said mpreg might lead to one of the funniest lines from Y about “woman’s greatest vengeance”.

#1: Let’s Bible!

 

This video’s effectiveness will vary depending on how strongly you hold your religious values, because the manga in question is sacrilarious to the nth degree. How sacrilarious? Try smacking mariachi Satan with a diamond rowing oar and re-casting Jesus as a special needs hot chick. Yeah, the subject matter this time around leads to a lot of laughs, but Y does an amazing job at matching it for laughs like with ample use of Tenacious D’s Beelzeboss and his questioning why this version of Jesus is so boring.

Next time, we’re going from a reviewer that not nearly enough people checked out to a reviewer that has one of the most monstrous fanbases of any Internet critic I’ve yet come across by looking at his feature-length production that may or may not have my name attached to it.