With the Yu-Gi-Oh! anime ending, but the card game and hype still going strong, it was no surprise, that the franchise would go into it's next round. This resulted in a series, that further expands on the crazy world of competitive card games by creating Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, where an entire academy, where kids learn how to play the game and educate themselves to be pros, got build. If you are reading this and think it sounds stupid, you might as well turn around, cause YGO! is past the point of making normies understand, why their concept is great.
The series follows Jaden Yuki a happy-go-lucky duelist, who just wants to have fun, never gives up and is damn good at card games. He gets accepted at Duel Academy, but has to stick around the drop-out Slifer Red dormies, cause he mopped the floor with a teacher on his entry exam and since early 21st century media always had a problem with authority figures, the teacher is a dick about it and sticks him with the dropouts regardless of his appearent skill. The rest is alll about his life at the academy; studying, dueling, hanging out with his friends and dealing with evil forces, that want to conquer the world and could easily do so by force, but will fairly agree to settle things by playing a card game instead.
With the introduction out of the way, let's get into the analysis whether the show is good or bad.
Plot (-):
The plot divides into four seasons, which all amount to a total of 180 episodes.
The first season is divided into two arcs. The first one starts episodically, but slowly starts snowballing into more significant arcs like Jaden and his best friend Syrus about to get thrown out of the academy, but having a chance to prevent it through a card game (have I mentioned everything gets settled by a card game yet?) or the inter-academical duel between their best 2 duelists. For lack of ambitiousness the first half probably works best in the entire series. The cast is colourful, the cards are interesting enough to keep fans of the TCG invested and aside from the general premise, it's not too ridiculous.
The second half of season 1 on the other hand... as much as I enjoyed it as a kid, it's writing isn't particularly good or creative. A group of deulists called the Shadow Riders want to snatch a legendary card trio (The Sacred Beasts - a knock off of the Egyptian God cards from the original YGO!, but with the difference, that back in those days the Sacred Beasts actually had playable copies out for IRL), that are hidden at the academy. Sounds fine, problem however is, the group doesn't make much sense; one member is a brainwashed former star student of the academy, whose brainwashing mask only gets explored in the final season, then there's a real life vampire and a real life amazon, a pharaoh from the past, a group of duel spirits (basically playing cards, that have a soul - there's quite a bit of this in this series actually), an alchemist and a minor villain from the first half, who just got picked into the line-up randomly. The whole organization doesn't make much sense and is just a way for them to display their (to be fair) cool cards. Their boss is an old fart, who wanted to attain eternal youth through possessing and using the Sacred Beasts, he's (SPOILER) the former principal of the academy and they make it seem like he's been around for decades, but then characters from the original series start popping up barely aged, making you question the entire timeline's logic.
Season 2 starts out fair enough with the main characters winnig streak slowly growing boring by using the same cards over and over again, so they come up with a magic plot device (SPOILER - the villain makes him unable to see his cards) for him to change his deck up with cards he supposedly invented as a kid, that actually got made and were send to space were they became duel spirits. There is Aster Phoenix, a pro duelist, who is butthurt over the main character using the same cards as him (how this info passed the asses of students, who want to be pro as well, is beyond me), except Jaden's beloved Elemental Heroes aren't even his main deck as it turns out (big surprise!). The main villain of the season creates a card game playing cult and fearing the heel-turn of star student Zane Truesdale, whom even Jaden failed to defeat in season 1, the principal starts some kind of world championship on the academy, that's initially really hyped up, but ends up being ignored by the main characters, leads to the villain acquiring a death ray and Zane's heel-turn having no real malicious intent other than it being an attempt by the writers to reinvent a fan favourite character by making him edgy. The entire tournament finishes (aside from the final duel, that nobody probably cares about) off-screen and is completely overshadowed by Jaden facing the cult-leader Sartorius.
In season 3 they introduce a whole batch of new characters, who are exchange students from other academies. They have interesting playing styles, but are mostly there to replace other secondary protagonists, who the writers had no idea, what to do with in that season. The season is basically divided into 3 part: First an exchange professor introduces a new educational method - the bio-bands, which measure students dueling spirits and gets them promoted or demoted based on the results. The duel academy personel is of course a-ok with this (yeah, I really have questions about the quality of the school curriculum). Turns out (SPOILER) the professor is just sucking out kids energy, so an evil duel spirit can bring his adopted son back, all this results in the duel spirit gaining power and transferring duel academy to the duel spirit world, where monsters will fight you by playing cards and the students who got their life sucked out by the bio-bands turn into zombies. The season culminates in the main character turning into an evil armor-wearing overlord, who starts decimating his friends. After the least conspicious exchange student plays a draw with him, which defeats his evil side, but leaves his real him unaffected, he gets conflicted, but still ends up facing the evil duel spirit.
Season 4 was japanese only and if you couldn't tell by now, I've been watching the dub. In this season the main character changes drastically, meanwhile the implied evil from season 1 (the mask, that corrupted the star student) returns to make his life a hell one last time. The season has some interesting parts, that finish the arcs of several secondary protagonists, who were benchwarming in the last season. Too bad the tacked on writing, doesn't quite make it as satisfying as it could be. Rather than implementing those minor character arcs in the plot of the main arc as a whole and returning to them every now and then, they just chose to slap 2 episode clusters together and let it all play out fairly quickly. It's fine, I guess.
So yes, the writing is oftentimes nonsensical and it really feels like they were just making things up as they went along. There is also alot of filler, which I could frankly enjoy about as much as the other stuff, as long as the duelists were using actually existing cards in the episodes. On the other hand you had the cursed doll using a cursed doll deck or the tennis player playing a tennis themed deck, that nobody would have even wanted to be real and which episodes, I honestly skipped on this re-watch.
It may sound like I hate the series, but in all honesty I had my fun. Unfortunately, that won't make me give the series a star in the category of plot.
Characters (☆):
I recently watched an Arc-V fake sub video, in which an antagonist, who travelled to duel academy, is mocking other characters using YGO! GX cards by destroying their monsters and criticizing the series' flaws. It was funny, but I found the statement, Jaden was the only character, who got character development, to be false.
Speaking of Jaden; a lot of people have praised Jaden's development from season 3 to 4. I thought it was ok, but not great. It's mainly because it's undermined by previous Jaden episodes, that did something similair. It just didn't feel fresh, but the end result is nevertheless remarkable. Personally I prefered the manga Jaden much more, with a backstory that didn't feel made up on the spot 100+ episodes in, him being talented, but not some destined to be legendary duelist after all, plus using the superior manga Elemental Heroes + Masked Heroes and minus the supreme king part (Evil Heroes were kind of cool though).
As for other characters; in my manga review I already mentioned, how I didn't like manga Chazz, who got turned into a Gary Stu. Here he is kid of great, but at times also annoying. Still my favourite though. He's constantly caught up between being the academys's best duelist and being a punching bag and while it does feel like they go a bit on repeats with him, I still like him most. Then there's the aformentioned Syrus, who's a dropout at first, but grows to be the academy's top 3 duelist. There's also Alexis - the girl in the cast - Rhodes and Bastion - the Genius - Misawa, who the writers quickly realised, had no idea what to do with past the first season, so Alexis is another one-off villain in season 2 and Bastion basically becomes a joke at some point. Zane isn't that good either. He keeps combo breaking ATK points like he has star power in Guitar Hero, but is just the designated genius in season 1 and 3edgy5me in season 2. He does get more interesting in season 3 to be fair, when his Cyberdark deck (which is honestly much weaker than his season 1 deck) starts giving him heart attacks. Then there's the season 2 and 3 secondary protagonists, who are also not particularly great characters, but fun to watch dueling.
Most of the villains are kind of flat. I have never been a fan of one-off main villains like Kagemaru and (arguably) Nightshroud/Darkness, who the writers didn't even bother giving a full set of cards. I mean Yami Marik from original YGO! wasn't that brilliant as a character either, but atleast I can associate a bunch of torture cards with him. I guess Yubel was best, having some beef with Jaden from the past.
Art (☆):
It's fine. It looks like Yu-Gi-Oh!, but it's visually not amazing and has ages poorly, when compared to the newer seasons.
Soundtrack (☆):
I'm giving another star here for sounding right. Nothing is particularly amazing to the point, where I would actively seek out the OST on Youtube, but nothing really grates on me. Since I was watching the dub for as long as possible, I also only know 2 theme songs; the "Get Your Game On" bubblegum punk one, from the dub and the season 4 Precious Time, Glory Days one.
Final Score:
The series is nothing amazing and if we are fair mostly a commercial for the card game. If you have fun with the card game you will likely also enjoy this series, but if you don't you might either be at a complete loss with what you are watching or you will create a web-series mocking the ridiculousness of the series for others to enjoy.
5/10
Rating system:
As seen above, I use a star system (symbols I have stolen from Yu-Gi-Oh!'s entries here on MAL) to rate the series/movies in terms of the significant categories, which can indicate its quality. Those ratings do affect the final score I give the series/movie, but I do not use a strict mathematical method to assign the final score. Ultimately I weigh the final ratings by considering the stars given. I do not consider the categories to be equivalent and value a good story and characters over good art or a cathcy soundtrack. As far as the stars given go, I use a four stage scale:
(-) - bad, a series/movie is terrible in this category
(☆) - okay, it's fine, tolerable, but likely nothing special
(☆☆) - good, it's good, but may have flaws or isn't quite among the best I've seen in the category
(☆☆☆) - great, the best rating I can give, when it's truely remarkable in the category
