Anime/Manga My Thoughts on Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters GX

xcv2009

xcv2009

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    ~~~~TL;DR at bottom~~~~

    I haven't done a review in like two moons, and I probably won't get around to doing it regularly any time soon, if ever (as I've seen most of the movies I've been interested in), but because Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters GX was 180 episodes long, I figured it was appropriate enough to force myself to do so anyway.

    In all seriousness, it took me awhile to watch all of this anime - I'm pretty sure ZEXAL (146 episodes) and ARC-V (145 episodes at the current date) came out before I finished, so to say the least, it took quite a few years for me to finally decide to put the cap on GX.

    Understandably, you might think this is because GX is the most boring thing on the entire planet... and you'd mostly be wrong. To be honest, I'm not really huge into the Yu-Gi-Oh! franchise (despite having seen all of Season 0, Duel Monsters and Duel Monsters GX (431 total episodes, I still can sort of enjoy it for what it is - I like the art and character designs, and it's nice to listen to and relax to.... though this won't be a luxury I can easily do anymore, as I intend to watch the rest of the franchise in Japanese.

    Some additional information; the final 24 episodes of GX were never dubbed, so I had to watch it in Japanese. Even before I really got around to getting this far, I was already aware that the Japanese was far less censored and far more serious, so really it was just a manner of getting used to having to read like 30 lines of dialogue each minute.

    Anyway, I sort of get why people say GX was one of the worst of the Yu-Gi-Oh! franchise as an anime, but apparently after 5Ds, it just might get worse than GX... though on the bright side, I did somewhat enjoy the ride GX offered.

    TL:DR
    It's pretty okay in the long run.
     
    I really liked GX, sure the first 2 seasons had a REALLY generic villain plot but other than that I really liked the concept behind it. Plus the main reason I like it more than the OG is because they actually follow the rules of the card game and don't make up new broken game winning cards on the spot (aside from a few rare occasions) and I simply don't like all the mechanics later series introduced, Synchro was fine sorta, but riding duels, XYZ and Pendulum were just lame.

    It was also really nice to see people dueling in an era where archetypes and themed decks just became a thing and characters were making combos instead of everybody just having completely random cards in their decks that if you built you would see were completely impractical and useless since you would never draw the right cards.

    Season 3 and 4 were great IMO, we got awesome crazy duels and also a lot of character development and an actually interesting plot. Not to mention everybody had a fairly unique deck strategy so duels never got boring. Shame Season 4 never got dubbed.
     
    I haven't watched GX since I watched it before school years ago. I really enjoyed it at the time and liked the school setting although I never realised the last 20 episodes were never dubbed, that actually explains why I never saw the ending and the network constantly replayed the series up until the same point.
     
    GX always seemed to be less exciting than DM to me. None of the villains had that charismatic, psychopathic flair that you saw in the likes of Marik and Bakura, who could drag duels out to hell and back and still make them damn good watches. None of GX's characters had the presence of any of the original cast; they were a forgettable band of misfits that never seemed to grow beyond what they were originally...and, in the case of Asuka and Bastion, got notably weaker as time went by.

    Jaden was noticeably lacking, too. You could almost believe in Atem's seeming invincibility, but Jaden was a pretty ordinary kid (at least until things started making little to no sense later on down the line) just pulling wins out of his arse from the get-go; there was no real skill involved with him, just a lot of luck at the most convenient points...which I suppose is largely what Yu-Gi-Oh! is all about, but you need to be able to sell it. Yugi, Kaiba, and even JOEY managed to sell it, Jaden never did. I think my favourite duels were the ones where he was actually beaten...Aster's first duel with him was especially satisfying. Aster himself was generally a pretty great character.

    That said...those dubs, though. Man, Camilla's voice. I still smile remembering it. The dub felt like a 90s throwback, it was positively cringeworthy, and I actually enjoyed watching it for that. It clearly couldn't pull off the ridiculously serious melodrama of the original series, so it settled for being a half-arsed comedy with some throwbacks and a lot of terrible puns and catchphrases. Chazz it up.
     
    if GX failed on any level, it's probably with the characters. The only one I liked at this point was probably Judai/Jaden and maybe Yubel. I liked the designs of the Rainbow deck guy, but he didn't really offer much to the anime. I think looking at it smart, GX was an experiment that could've helped YuGiOh improve in the long run.

    Now, whether it actually did or not is up to debate, but it still could help others who end up watching it.
     
    xcv2009 said:
    if GX failed on any level, it's probably with the characters. The only one I liked at this point was probably Judai/Jaden and maybe Yubel. I liked the designs of the Rainbow deck guy, but he didn't really offer much to the anime. I think looking at it smart, GX was an experiment that could've helped YuGiOh improve in the long run.

    Now, whether it actually did or not is up to debate, but it still could help others who end up watching it.
    Click to expand...

    I think it just had too many characters. The main cast got pretty much completely shafted in Season 3 when Jaden became best friends with the new dude and a lot of the screen time was used to develop the new students. After they were killed off and came back they pretty much stopped serving any purpose other than for some filler in Season 4 (and only Syrus and Chazz had good filler episodes that developed their characters).


    The original Yu-gi-oh has Yugi's group, Kaiba, Bakura and whoever were the villains at the time. GX tried to expand it but introduced way too many characters instead.
     
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