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I've been rewatching the original (read: second) series, but subbed for the first time (mostly because by the time I thought "actually I DO want to watch a bunch of yugioh" the twitch marathon was in season 4). Aside from Duelist Kingdom, anyway, which I don't like very much and didn't care enough about to want to pay attention to, so I just had the dub going in the background. It's weird seeing all these little things the dub made changes to in Battle City. Censorship stuff aside, things like the Yugi vs Seeker duel where, in the dub, Seeker threatens to tear Joey's Red-Eyes in half if he tells Yugi about his Exodia strategy. Meanwhile originally he makes no such claims and it's entirely Yugi declaring he has no right to know his opponent's strategy and wants to play honorably. He winds up figuring it out by turn 3 either way. Also:  Never change, Kaiba. TriffTshngo fucked around with this message at 10:03 on Nov 10, 2017 |
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Nov 10, 2017 09:56
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| # ¿ May 5, 2024 17:50 |
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Old-rear end Yugioh talk ahead: So I fell off the original Duel Monsters anime as a kid when it was airing about halfway through the Orichalcos arc (as I'm sure many did, since it's very stupid). Awhile back I watched Battle City with subtitles for the first time and I'd just like to say that 4kids getting rid of the original music was a loving travesty. Not to mention all the other garbage they did to the show. Skipped Duelist Kingdom and the VR filler but I decided to watch the Orichalcos arc, just to finally see what the gently caress happens in it. I'm at the final stretch, Yugi vs Raphael round 2 just ended (I don't know if spoiler tags are warranted since it's 20+ years old but w/e) and man was I crestfallen when Raphael's soul wasn't taken, because what a lovely, lovely character. Also is it, like, common opinion that the way Mai was handled in this arc was bad? Because I actually loving loved it (until literally the last second when she goes and gets beaten off-screen by Dartz). Everything to do with Jonouchi, Varon and Mai in this arc was so much more compelling and enjoyable to me than the Yugi/Raphael and Kaiba/Amelda poo poo. I feel like the majority of people I've seen talk about it over the years seem to dislike Mai's involvement with the villains, like it "ruined" her character development or whatever, even though I felt it was actually pretty rationally explained and added some depth to her as a competitive duelist rather than just relegating her to Tertiary Friend #7. And special shoutout to episodes 163 and 164 (Dark Yugi fighting Little Yugi in that stupid ghost canyon after the train duel) for being the absolute worst bile I've ever seen from this series. They're somehow worse than volume 6 of the manga where I'm convinced Takahashi, who mentions in the author's notes that he'd recently had his bag full of chapter ideas and sketches stolen at a pachinko parlor, was either using discarded ideas or making poo poo up on the fly while he had to try and re-write the Monster World arc from scratch. Episode 171 on the other hand:  (that's Jonouchi vs Varon part 3 where the animation gets really good and all the cool stupid poo poo happens)
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Aug 16, 2021 18:36
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I highly recommend reading the first 7 volumes of the manga (basically everything pre-Duelist Kingdom), poo poo is wild. Volume 6 is a weird terrible outlier but in general I really really enjoyed the rest of it.
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Oct 22, 2021 23:17
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So I recently started watching through GX for the first time and I hit the end of "season 1" I guess. Taking a break and watching some other stuff before continuing so I thought I'd do a review of what I've seen. I'm watching the JP version, if it isn't made abundantly clear by me using the original names for everyone. One of the first things I noticed was that Yugioh feels really weird when everything happens in more or less the same set of locations. Pretty much everything in the original series involved the gang traveling from place to place, only staying in one place for multiple "encounters" (since I'm including the pre and post-Duelist manga arcs) for very specific circumstances, like the finals of Duelist Kingdom and Battle City, and in Battle City they switch from the zeppelin to the tower halfway through. Hell, even those had some different cool backgrounds thanks to field spells during the Yugi vs Bakura and Kaiba duels. Duel Academy isn't a bad setting by any means but being in one place for so long does make it feel a tad repetitive when you see Asuka and Ryou standing on that pier for the 15th time, or Judai dueling people on that little shoreline next to the cliff near the Osiris Red dorms multiple times. Not the biggest complaint in the world, just something that struck me as a pretty stark difference from the original. Something else was the increased focus on duels. I don't think a single duel in this first season went longer than 2 episodes, because very rarely do they cut away to other characters doing stuff or have tons of lore and flashbacks and the like, which plagued a lot of Yugi's big duels. They're much snappier. That said, a lot of them feel kind of rushed, like because they're not adapting from a pre-existing story, they wanted to make it much more purposefully episodic in nature, duelist of the week type stuff. I'm not going to say they should have gone back to 5 and 6 parters but I honestly do feel like you could justify a few 3 parters here and there, just to give the duels and the stories surrounding them some time to breathe. I know things get crazier and more in-depth as the series goes but in season 1 there were a lot of one-off "hijinks" duels as I view them, most of them just there purely to serve as establishing Judai as the focal point of the story and give him cred as the new guy to replace Yugi while exploring Duel Academy somewhat. Tons of low stakes stuff early on, lot of stuff with Professor Cronos trying to get him kicked out and comedically failing when Judai passed whatever dumb trial he was put up too. A few of these were fun, I enjoyed Kagurazaka the copycat duelist with Yugi's deck, Motegi Mokeo the sleepy kid on the roof, and most of the main cast's duels with one another. Less fun were SAL the dueling monkey (do you get the "saru" pun), Mitsuru Ayanokouji the tennis guy, Taizan Taira the tarzan guy, and, I think, the single worst episode so far, Anacis the guy with the submarine. I absolutely despised that episode. Obviously the big thing in season 1 is the Seven Stars arc, which started pretty strong but got progressively less interesting as it went. Judai vs "Darkness" was a fun duel, it was cool to see someone using an actual Red-Eyes deck rather than Jonouchi's warrior/gamble deck that just Also Has A Red-Eyes In It. Vampire Camula was the highlight of the arc for sure, even despite several very stupid things going on with the writing. Like, they knew she was going to use one of their souls as the payment for her dumb soul-taker card instead of her own after her duel with Ryou, why did they then all come to watch Judai duel her the next day? Surely it would have been smart to just, let him go alone so they couldn't be used as leverage against him??? Also the whole "last vampire" backstory... goes absolutely nowhere and means absolutely nothing and I don't know why it was a thing. Why is she a vampire??????? What???????????? Ah whatever. She was cool regardless. Tanya.... I liked her duel with Judai a lot, not so much the one with Misawa. The rest of the Stars were all ok but not great, I thought. Manjoume and Asuka actually getting wins against Don Zaloog and Titan when it seemed like they were setting up for all 5 of the other keyholders to just lose as soon as they were up to bat and then Judai saves the day, I was pleasantly surprised. Of course then they got chumped almost entirely off-screen by Amnael but I guess while that's less dignified it's also less annoying than dragging out both of them losing two full duels against the guy. Oh and Kagemaru was dumb and sucked, and that duel was lame. Overall I had a good enough time watching. I'm a little sick of Judai's deck because he duels SO MUCH MORE than Yugi did, you see the exact same 8 monsters over and over and over every single episode. Holding my breath for the Neo-Spacians to arrive and make his deck way worse while they treat it like a powerup because lmfao those cards are so bad. Trying to make them into a workable deck in Duel Links was hell. San da.
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Jan 26, 2022 19:17
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SyntheticPolygon posted:Season 1 GX filler is solid imo. Having just recently watched season 1 of GX for the first time... there are a couple of gems in the filler but most of the time I was not into it.
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Mar 7, 2022 22:40
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Speaking as someone who hadn't seen jack poo poo past the first third of the Orichalcos arc until very recently I found the truncated duels in "season 1" or whatever of GX to be a little underwhelming. Not saying I need them all to be 5-6 episodes like the Duelist Kingdom and Battle City finals or anything but I wouldn't be upset if some of the more important duels got 3 episodes, just to give them a bit of time to breathe. I've felt pacing issues from time to time watching GX, where things feel like they're moving unnaturally fast in order to cram a duel into 1 episode fewer than it might have originally been scripted for.
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Mar 31, 2022 20:12
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So I finished Season 2 of GX a few days ago. Figured I would post some thoughts on it since I did so for S1 awhile back. Overall I liked it a lot more. Their intention up front with the start of GX was pretty clearly "let's dial things back from world-saving drama and do something lighter" and I don't know if the ratings were poor so they pivoted halfway through, or if the writers just got bored with school shenanigans or what, but the Seven Stars arc of S1 was very obviously a hastily thrown together concept. The Stars themselves didn't feel the least bit cohesive as a threat, and the less said about Kagemaru the better. S2's Society of Light plotline was thankfully set up right from the start and built up over a long period of time, which gave it some amount of weight when things started to happen with it. Saiou was a pretty fun villain overall (being voiced by Koyasu helped) and while the whole "Light of Destruction" thing was kind of poorly explained, there's enough there to be like "yeah ok sure I'll buy it I guess." While the visual of Judai's friends all getting brainwashed and recruited by a cult was interesting, I don't think they took it as far as they could have, really. The fact that Kenzan was immune to it and Shou was too much of a loser nerd dork for them to even bother made it a bit less dramatic than I was hoping it'd get, and Edo never really being aligned with the SoL kind of made it feel like they lacked a unique "Ace Duelist" or whatever since their #1 and 2 were just Manjoume and Asuka. But, these aren't dealbreakers really. Just some minor issues. The duels where Judai beats Manjoume and Asuka to undo the brainwashing were both really good, at least. Other good stuff: pretty much everything to do with Hell Kaiser Ryou. Him losing one match to Edo and going on a complete downward spiral until he's forced into what are functionally kid-friendly deathmatches on the underground circuit, awakening to his pain kink in the process, is incredibly funny. The whole "Headmaster Samejima was Ryou's sensei who taught him how to use Cyber Dragons as a child" backstory was... bizarre and not remotely what I expected to happen but uh yeah sure okay. The duel with DARKNESS and owning his lovely nerd brother were both very good stuff, though I kind of wanted the former to be a 2-parter. I thought that would've been a good one to let breathe a little. Also, I really liked all of Edo's duels in the first half of the season, he has some fun interplay with Judai as a rival. Stuff I thought was... less good: doing basically nothing with Edo for the second half until they remembered "oh poo poo we need to wrap up this subplot." Everything to do with DD just felt... completely last minute, half-assed, and spaghetti-on-the-wall thrown together. The way they try to tie it together with Saiou and the Light of Destruction plot is so incredibly weak, as well, I really disliked the whole thing. Also the thing with Orgene and the laser satellite felt like a weird inclusion to be honest. Like, the villain having possession of what functionally amounts to a nuclear football adds some tangible stakes beyond "If I win the card game, the world will be destroyed... somehow! Hahahaha!!" but I must ask: why does this country have a satellite with an orbital strike laser cannon pointed at the ground? Why did they apparently make it powerful enough to "destroy the world"? Why does destroying a single planet also destroy the universe in order to re-make it, as the Will of the Light asserts near the end? Why is the climactic final battle of the season between two of the worst archetypes in the history of Yu-Gi-Oh, and why is that still so loving funny to me? Other less significant gripes: Napoleon sucks, he exists because now that Cronos has grown fond of Judai and pals, I guess the writers felt the story needed another teacher who blindly hated the Osiris Red dorm for just as unexplained reasons as Cronos in S1. Even though, no, they didn't need that, and in fact I would have preferred they not have him. The 3-way duel between him, Cronos, and Pegasus was fun but honestly not worth him being there the rest of the season. There were a number of what felt like callbacks to DM that were also kind of... lame? The episode where the Industrial Illusions card designer steals a copy of Ra was really kind of pathetic, which I guess was the point since it was about Ra being shackled and bound by his dumb field spell but eh. Still kind of a lousy episode. The real Saiou being there next to Judai as they dueled the Will of the Light... not quite as cool as Bakura and Malik vs Dark Malik. Also the field trip to Domino City felt like a weird, way-too-soon trip down memory lane. Like hey guys remember... Yugi's Grandpa!? Like, yes, yes I do. And Misawa... jeez, man. What happened? Did the single writer who liked him leave after the Amazoness Tanya duel or something? Anyway, on the whole I liked it a lot more than S1, the lows weren't nearly as low and the highs, while not too much higher, were more frequent, I think.
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Oct 24, 2022 18:23
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NikkolasKing posted:The main problem with the Society of Light as per other critics I've read is that our hero doesn't really...do anything to fight them. Voldemort moved onto campus and Harry just shrugged and kept on getting his game on with everybody except the Dark Lord brainwashing the school. I think this, along with the aforementioned "random country has the strongest piece of military hardware in the series" are S2's biggest flaws in terms of plot. But I also excuse it because a dinosaur fossil soul flew into space to destroy the satellite and Jaden gave the main villain of S1 a big hug. It's all very self-aware stupid fun. It at least fits Judai's laid back dimwit personality to not be too worried about the SoL, even if it gets kind of silly after a certain point that he's not really doing anything about all these people he knows getting brainwashed and recruited into what are clearly just a school-approved cult. I was more annoyed that they never really have Edo address it until the very end when he solves his tragic backstory motivation in two episodes and then goes to confront Saiou and get bopped to set up Judai's final boss fight. I was kind of hoping there'd either be more of him willingly working for Saiou but questioning the goal/methods and eventually bailing, or him asking what the hell's going on from the start, and then trying to figure out what happened to his old friend on his own. Instead he just sort of stands around on his yacht in the school harbor in most episodes, occasionally staring in the direction of the SoL dorm as the scene fades to Saiou monologuing about fate or whatever. His friendship with Saiou basically never amounts to anything after the first few times you see them talk to each other early in the season, except to give you a reason to care that he's possessed by a totally separate entity and not just a bad dude who got corrupted further into a total psycho like DD.
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Oct 25, 2022 02:21
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I know a little bit about what's ahead, because I saw a random episode on TV one morning, deep into S3, of some wild poo poo in the middle of popping off (namely Judai turning into a villain and somehow dispatching with like 90% of the core cast and there being like 3 of them left who have to fight him to get the real Judai back. I may have that a bit wrong since these are 15 year old memories.). It's honestly the biggest reason I decided I wanted to watch GX instead of skipping it to go right to 5Ds, because that memory stuck with me so hard for all this time. I'd actually tried starting it like 8 or 9 years ago and dropped it a couple of episodes in because I just thought all the super early S1 stuff was boring.
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Oct 25, 2022 03:25
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Just wrapped up GX Season 3. That was a wild loving ride, man. I'll spoiler bar the whole thing for people who aren't interested, and because I'm just going to talk loosely about the whole thing with no actual regard for spoilers. I had a few complaints, but compared to how much fun I had watching this season, they're honestly kind of minimal. First one, while I liked that the status quo was upended several times over the course of the season, the way they structured it such that it was divided into 4 equal length arcs of 13 episodes apiece kind of hampered things here and there. The second quarter, which is when they first get transported by Yubel to another dimension, honestly kind of drags on for too long. And on a related note, I thought the third quarter, set in Dark World, would have greatly benefited from an additional 5 or 6 episodes. Not that I wanted them to keep the Supreme King thing going until the end of the season, because I liked where the Yubel stuff goes, but rather the desert arc probably would have been better if half of it had gone to the Dark World and given more time for the Supreme King to be a threat. He's only around for about 5 episodes, and only duels twice. It's kind of a waste of potential. Also, there are a lot of contrivances that you kind of just have to turn your brain off for in order for some of the logic of this season to work. I did find myself on multiple occasions thinking "why does that work like that." Also, I'll talk about them in a bit, but for as much as I liked the new characters in Season 3, it does sort of come at the expense of Manjoume, Asuka, and the other "core" cast members. Manjoume especially gets the short end of the stick this season. Other than that, though, it was pretty fantastic. Season 2 was a slow burn on the actual events of the plot, which got a bit boring at times, and Season 3 doesn't do that, things definitely happen at a much more lively pace, but they did do a fairly slow burn on building up Judai's turn in a way that was satisfying to watch, knowing where it was heading. Even early on, they did a pretty good job setting up a big factor of the conflict being about Judai and his lack of self-awareness, and inability to consider the consequences of his actions. Hell, even then, a lot of kids' shows of this type would have had him come back from being the Supreme King and treat it as a part of him that he's exorcised, or somehow been exonerated from, but they do the more interesting thing of having him accept it as part of himself, and a part that makes him who he is. I don't think it's a perfect character arc, there's little bits and pieces all over I was raising an eyebrow about, as I'm sure everyone did, but overall, it was shockingly* well done. *"Shocking" in the sense that, if I had watched this when it were new, I would have been surprised by it, but watching in 2023 I had enough vague foreknowledge about where things were headed that I probably was incapable of being properly surprised. I also want to mention that they do a pretty great job of integrating the four new guys into the cast. O'Brien, Jim, Amon, and Johan could have easily felt like awkward new hangers-on who didn't feel like they belonged. Maybe some people consider Johan the Poochy of season 3, idk, but in general I thought all 4 of them were great additions. Jim and Johan immediately gravitating toward the main group and making fast friends with them was fun, while O'Brien was pretty frosty for the bulk of the first half, only to wind up being the one to save Judai from himself (with help from Jim, of course) which was great. I also really enjoyed Amon's sort of, parallel path through the story, weaving in and out of contact with the rest of them, being up to his own stuff, which winds up leading to facing Yubel for his own reasons, entirely separate from that of Judai and the others. It was interesting, for sure. Also their decks all made for pretty interesting duels, although I have no loving idea how Jim's Fossil monsters work. Overall I had a ton of fun with it. poo poo was nuts. Judai is an incredible protagonist, big fan. Will check back in after S4.
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May 7, 2023 22:12
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Onmi posted:The issue isn't how they get integrated, the issue is they completely dominate the cast. That's always been the issue with Yugioh plot's after DM, not that the new characters wont be hanger-ons, but that the old ones turn into hanger-ons who exist merely out of continuity. No character takes such a gigantic loving swan-dive than Manjoume, who essentially could just not be in Season 3 and nothing would change, despite having quite a lot of interaction all through Season 1 and 2. I mean the better example in GX in general is Misawa who they just have no idea what they're doing with him. Yeah but I mean out of them I really only cared about Manjoume and Asuka at this point anyway. Shou, Kenzan, and Fubuki all just kind of suck, and I find it impossible to care about Misawa after what they did to him in S2.
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May 8, 2023 15:11
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| # ¿ May 5, 2024 17:50 |
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I finished GX last night. My thoughts on S4: While Darkness is kind of an underwhelming antagonistic force compared to Supreme King, Yubel, or even Saiou, he does serve a decent purpose of being the backdrop for some good character stuff with Judai, Johan, and Fubuki at the end. There's a ton I wish had been done differently about this season, and I think basically every episode with Trueman was made worse by his presence in it. The mid-season arc where they decide to just start resolving character arcs for every main protag (except Jim, god dammit) was very satisfying even if it felt a bit rushed in spots (like S4 as a whole). One of the biggest gripes that I'm sure pretty much everyone knows and agrees with is the lack of Yubel hanging out talking to Judai until the very end. Would also have liked Ryou to be involved with the Fujiwara/Fubuki stuff at the end since he was Fujiwara's friend too; I'm not a fan of his arc ending with his brother but that's just because I still think Shou sucks. As far as thoughts on the show as a whole, god drat it was a mess. But it was a wonderful mess. 9/10, big fan.
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Jul 20, 2023 23:58
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