France’s 5th place debut in Season 1 seemed, at the time, to be an obvious and fair representation of the nations dueling ability and potential. Nestled behind the “big three” as well as Korea, it was only fitting that France and Great Britain would duke it out for the dubious title of “best of the rest.”

But when France was knocked from its 5th place roost in Season 3, it was a double shock. It was leapfrogged not only by Britain but by Italy as well. Since then France has remained 7th in the world. As Italy and Britain continued to rise, France finds itself trapped in a remarkably consistent and immutable partnership with 8th placed Spain.

Why is this so?

Much like the German question posed previously, it comes to anime. While France has a large anime market, it could not, in hindsight, be expected to compete with the English-speaking market dominated by the United States and Britain. Meanwhile, right around Season 3, in fact, 4Kids Entertainment massively ratcheted up its presence and advertising in Italy, which included the Yu-Gi-Oh! franchise.

And so, France has suffered not so much from a lack of potential but from the timing of the realisation of another nations potential. However, Season 3 throws up another curious statistic. In that season France only earned 5,567 TP, an appalling amount even in those early days and less than any nation outside the top fourteen and less than even newcomer Hong Kong.

While the impact of this startling recession is now limited, due to the nature of the world rankings, as the starting point for France’s current position it lingers as an intriguing question.

Checking the tables at the time indicate that while the top French duelists of the time, CLARAMORGAN and cossafred740, maintained their status from Season 2, no other French duelist made it into the top 1,000 TP ranked duelists in Season 3. This vanishing act is certainly puzzling and leads one to believe that, for a short time, there was a great reduction of interest in the online game in France.

Now, Season 3 was a recovery season after a large recession in terms of global accumulated TP the previous season. This would suggest that France was one of the more sluggish nations when it came to recovering from that recession for whatever reason. Which pretty much concludes the mysteries behind France’s current position in the world rankings.

But what of the future? Season 9 saw France fall some 70,000 TP short of 6th place Korea, maintaining a relatively similar gap in Season 8. Meanwhile, the country also strengthened its own lead over 8th placed Spain, from 20,000 to 25,000 TP. Which, unfortunately, seems to suggest that the status quo is likely to remain so for France. And if Season 10 to date shows us anything its that the cracks dividing France from its immediate rivals above and below it, are potentially developing into chasms.

To pharaphrase King Louis XIV, this is the state of France today.