I'm still rewatching yugioh and reminiscing about how into the shipping culture me and many of my old friends used to be back in the day. and looking back on it, fun as the shipping was, that was entirely missing the point, wasn't it?
yugioh is one of the few shonen animes I recall that never had any endgame pairings. everything that leaned romantic was only ever implied- mai and jounouchi, anzu with atem and yugi, honda and shizuka (and honda and miho in season 0), even rebecca's blatant crush on yugi in season four- none of that ever ended up with the characters getting together. and of the more plausible queer ships- atem and yugi, atem and kaiba- never was there anything more than subtext and innuendo, at best.
I mean to be fair it was the 90s
what was romanticized to hell and back though? friendship. and for as much as that kinda got memed back in the day via things like the abridged series and everybody and their mom mocking anzu's "friendship speeches", like...wasn't that the power of this show in the first place? wasn't that the thing that drew people to it? because it wasn't the card games. the card games were fun and all but that wasn't why you stuck around, and it's not what the story was really about.
I dunno, it's just refreshing watching this old show from the 90s/2000s and getting hit over the head with how radically un-romantic it really is. it's not a given that the characters are in love with each other, and it's not a given that they'll end up together- but it is a given that they're gonna be friends, and that's what's going to win the day.
and outside of like, my little pony, it is functionally unheard of to have a story where friendship is placed above romance in the hierarchy of love.