Yu☆Gi☆Oh! Duel Monsters GX

In the world of Duel Monsters, a new generation of duelists await their turn to bid for the highest title: The King of Games. As an aspiring duelist, the happy-go-lucky Juudai Yuuki enrolls at the Duel Academy, a reputable institution tasked with nurturing these potential challengers.

On his first day, however, Juudai's laid back and careless attitude causes him to arrive late to his entrance exam. There, he stumbles upon a familiar figure who entrusts him the "Winged Kuriboh," a card which becomes Judai's new partner. Soon, he begins living as a duelist—but will destiny and darkness bend his reality into something beyond his imagination?

Yu☆Gi☆Oh!: Duel Monsters GX follows the story of Juudai as he strives to fulfill his goal of becoming the next King of Games. As they are thrust into countless unprecedented circumstances, one thing is for sure for Juudai and his friends—there will never be a dull moment at the Duel Academy!

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Yuuki, Juudai Main

KENN Japanese

Manjoume, Jun Main

Matsuno, Taiki Japanese

Tenjouin, Asuka Main

Kobayashi, Sanae Japanese

Marufuji, Shou Main

Suzuki, Masami Japanese

Kenzan, Tyranno Main

Shimozaki, Hiroshi Japanese

Yami Yuugi Supporting

Kazama, Shunsuke Japanese

Kaiba, Seto Supporting

Tsuda, Kenjirou Japanese

Mutou, Yuugi Supporting

Kazama, Shunsuke Japanese

Marufuji, Ryou Supporting

Maeda, Takeshi Japanese

Crawford, Pegasus J. Supporting

Takasugi Jay, Jiro Japanese

Kobayashi, Noriko Producer, Planning

Yamakawa, Norio Producer

Jitsumatsu, Teruaki Producer

Tsuji, Hatsuki Director, Storyboard

Reviews

Jul 13, 2009

Issuxark

Recommended

After watching the whole series in just two weeks or so, I will tell you how I felt about this series. I watched the orignal Japanese version, not the English dubbed version (although I've watched some on TV).

Yu-Gi-Oh! GX is a sequel of the original Yu-Gi-Oh! series as most would know. The game of Duel Monsters has gotten so popular that there are pro leagues as well as specialized schools to mainly train and teach students to become great duelists. It's an interesting setting and did intrigue me.

The story follows after a young boy named Yuki Judai, who just starts to attend an elite Duel ... Monsters school called, "Duel Academia" The school is divided in three different classes, "Obelisk Blue", "Ra Yellow" and "Osiris Red" (the names should sound familiar for those who watched the original series). It is basically dividing students into their skill levels, Osiris Red being the lowest class, Ra Yellow in the middle and the Obelisk Blue, consisting of the school's best duelists.

The series starts off with a lighter tone, just following Judai and his life in school as he makes new friends. But as the story progresses, it does get deeper and more complex. I felt that there were quite a few story elements that seemed forced and didn't make sense, but it was watchable overall. Much like the original series, there's heavy emphasis on friendship. One thing that does get a little annoying is that duelists read their card effects every time they play it and it kind of gets tiresome, but I guess they can't help it since there will always be people who aren't familiar with the cards and their effects.

I wasn't super impressed with most of OP and ED songs, but soundtracks were quite good, although I would have liked a little more variety of music during duels. It's like when you hear a certain music starts to play, you know that our hero's pulling off an awesome combo to finish the duel!

Art wise, I felt that GX got a slight down grade from the original series. Not a big difference, but I never thought that GX had better animation or art quality. Not the worst, but not too impressive on most parts. However, I never expected it to be amazing since it is a 180 episode series afterall.

There are quite a bit of characters in GX and I felt that there were perhaps a little too many. Character developments are there, as it would be crazy to have a 180 episode series without character growths. Some character developments being more natural and subtle than others. The series inserts new characters here and there to keep it interesting, but it felt a bit crowded later on.

I mainly watched this because I play the card game myself. It will be much more enjoyable if you play the game. It does gets kind of repetitive, but that could be because I was having a marathon (almost). The TV series is very different from the manga, so give it a read! I personally like the overall feel of the manga more, because the manga has more mature feel to it.

Basically, this series is worth a watch for someone who:
- plays, or is interested in the card game
- wants to kill some time
- is looking for something to watch with his/her kid

In conclusion, Yu-Gi-Oh! GX was a decent series, but it was never at the level of the original Yu-Gi-Oh! series.

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Dec 30, 2008

Seeker

Mixed Feelings

It's best to note that while the Yu-Gi-Oh! GX anime is not the worst anime in existence, it is far from the best. This series puts a couple of blemishes on the Yu-Gi-Oh! franchise; in fact, when compared with the manga, it earns the same reaction you'll find from avid Tsukihime fans: "What anime?"

The premise of a dueling academy makes a lot of sense when you consider the fact that Yu-Gi-Oh! is about a children's card game. While the importance of a children's card game seems exaggerated in the viewers' eyes, you have to remember that in this animeverse, it -isn't-. Duel Monsters is the ... most popular--and clearly the most influential--sport of the world. Plus, when you realize the Academia still has the required graduation classes (though you won't see them too much on-screen), you realize that the school is a typical high school--just one with a very specialized "Ivy Leage" program.

Still, while the premise doesn't have flaws, the way it was carried out does. The first half of season one made GX seem like a slice-of-life anime, which wouldn't be so much of a problem if the plot was at least consistent rather than having these separated one-shots. Then when GX actually started having substantial plots, it seemed like another series taking itself too seriously. A white hole in space sending proxies to bring about destruction? A deranged hermaphrodite demon seeking her lover? A force of darkness wishing to unify all existence in nothingness? Sorry NAS, not buying it. What probably made these plots worse was that they were arranged in a "What enemy will I face this school year?" fashion.

The art was average. It didn't thrill me, but it didn't disgust me either. No more to say on that. Now as for music, that was actually GX's best asset. The OPs and EDs weren't the best, but the OST soundtracks were. They did their job of accenting the situations quite smoothly. If an upbeat song came on, the situation was happy or comical. If a slow and sad song came on, the situation was depressing or dark. And if that one song that raised your spirits came on, you knew the protagonist of the duel was making his comeback.

NAS dropped the ball with its characters. Too many characters introduced at a time with too little development reserved for each one. Judai, the main character, was a Gary Stu that didn't get a background story until season three. The background wasn't even good either, turning out to be a contrived DM reincarnation rip-off with pathetically shallow "I need to grow up" development in season four that made him nothing more than an ass. And the other protagonists only got their little development in season one, and were shafted in season three with the appearance of the Academia champions.

Still, I found myself enjoying the series while watching it. Much of the bashing GX gets is in hindsight, when the fans start looking back and realize the flaws they overlooked when they first watched it. In the end, the GX anime turned out to be run by a group of people who had no idea what direction they wanted to take the show in; they would rather insert any random and unnecessary bit of occult history and symbolism if it made viewers think they were actually putting any thought into the series. (And let me tell you, GX is riddled with occult stuff if you know how and where to find it.)

I suggest that rather than watching this anime you read Kazuki Takahashi and Naoyuki Kageyama's manga adaptation.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Jan 26, 2016

KikiYushima

Not Recommended

This is going to be a rather harsh review so skip it if you do like the series. Also it contains spoilers for some bits so read at your own risk.

I honestly do not understand how anybody is giving this series above a 5. It is one of the most painfully mediocre anime series I've come across in all my years of watching anime. The second half of 5D's which is a trainwreck compared to the first half is HIGH ART compared to GX. I'll admit I've only watched random bits of the series, but I've watched large chunks across the first three seasons, so ... I think I've seen enough to be able to judge it. However, if you do like this series, I commend you and am glad you can find some redeeming value in this series.

Characters: 2/10
These characters... Calling them "characters" is too kind. Even calling them cardboard cutouts would be too generous. These are some of the most static, cliche, bland, forgettable characters I've come across in all my years of viewing anime. There is almost no character development to speak of. Even when they DO get development, they tend to act like their development never happened.
The best example of this is Chronos. He starts out as an antagonist then drifts to being a bit of an ally to Judai and co toward the end of the first season. He even ends up being proud of Hayato and recommends him to Industrial Illusions. But by time the second season starts, he's actively trying to destroy the Osiris Red Dorm.
The characters are also inconsistent.
Manjoume is extremely driven, hard-headed, and independent, but during the last bit of the first season, he falls in love with Asuka quite literally out of nowhere. I mean I skipped the first half of the first season, so maybe there was some interest shown before. However, there was absolutely NO indication of that during the previous episodes of the Seven Star Assassin's arc.
The worst part is that the characters are static beyond belief. I watched half of the first season, part of the second, and half of the third, but I saw absolutely no character growth in anybody. Judai was still the same, boring shounen protag he always was. Manjoume was the same joke he always was. Shou remained the same coward he always was. Misawa wasn't even there for half of the third season.
There is no character to growth to speak of. I'm a writer so I know what real character growth look like.
Mostly static characters are not bad in and of themselves. In fact, they can be very interesting. However, when the entire cast is static, that's when there's a problem. None of the characters grow at ALL.

Art/Sound: 5/10
The animation and sound on this series are...mediocre at best. There's nothing that really makes it stand out from other serialized anime.

Story: 2/10
Admittedly, I am not the most qualified person to judge the story since I've seen maybe 20-40% of the series, so I'm going to more use this category to judge the quality of the writing from what I saw.
As you can tell, I thought it was absolutely dreadful. this is one of the most filler-ridden, soulless pieces of garbage I've ever seen. To put into perspective just how trashy this anime is, I started watching at episode 27 and I had NO trouble keeping up with what had happened. I was admittedly a little bit more confused when I jumped over basically all of season two into season three, but I felt like I had lost nothing when I skipped so much. The stories were mostly self-contained enough to not really need too much backstory on what had happened in previous seasons. Even for when season two bled over into three, I jumped in without much of any trouble. I know this was one way to attract viewers as the anime progressed while it was airing, but it's still pretty bad.
The worst part of this series if the FILLER. I know it's to be expected of any long-running show especially in shounen, but that doesn't excuse just how tedious and BORING it is. I admittedly skipped over the majority of season two, but the first ten episodes at least have next to NOTHING related to the plot. The main plot during those episodes focuses around trying to get rid of the Osiris Red dorm. The main plot for the first bit of the seconds season is literally just trying to get rid of one of the dorms.
However, the worst part of the lazy writing is the deus ex machina. It happens three times in the last bit of season 1 and the first bit of season 2. The first one is when they need to get the spirit gates open so they have Manjoume randomly fall in love with Asuka and take the keys. When he loses to her, the gates open and Judai faces Kagemaru. What's supposed to be the first season's climax is a rushed clusterfuck. It takes only about two episodes to resolve which would be fine if it were any good. But no. I don't care if they established the Philosopher's Stone card a few episodes before, but they didn't establish its effects. It grants Judai three wishes for cards he needs and that's how he wins. It's anticlimactic at best and offensively lazy writing at worst. I know they were probably strapped for time, but if you're going to have this duel be the climax, THEN GIVE IT THE PROPER TIME IT NEEDS. DON'T JUST HAVE IT END BECAUSE JUDAI CAN GET WHATEVER HE NEEDS TO BEAT THE BAD GUY. The other example comes in season two when Judai gets his new deck. He's literally just whisked away to a planet to resolve an emotional crisis and is handed the cards he needs to defeat Ed.
The writing seems to get somewhat better in season three since you get the plot moving forward unimpeded without filler for awhile...but then it just stops for a small filler arc with zombie students.
This is where I gave up on the series and couldn't continue due to the painful mediocrity. The story is admittedly interesting, but there's an old adage in writing that holds true here: "Strong characters can carry a weak plot but a strong plot cannot carry weak characters." That is so painfully true in the third season of GX. The plot is interesting but the characters are so one dimensional you just cannot care about them.

Enjoyment: 1/10
If negative scores were a thing on this website, my enjoyment would be in the negatives. This series bored me at best and insulted my intelligence at worst.
I'll go into my personal reasons for watching the series at this point.
I don't remember exactly how or why I started watching 5D's last year, but I did and I absolutely fell in love with it. I'm a test-based roleplayer, so it was inevitable that my main partner and I started messing around in the 5D's universe. My main character is Aki and my muse of her has grown and drifted from canon in some ways. Mine can actively see and interact with the duel spirits in her deck, so I picked up GX since it's the series that delves into them the most.
Needless to say, I gave up before I got through the entirety of the third season.
Is it unfair to compare GX to 5D's? I don't think so, but it's basically apples and oranges. 5D's is a great series with strong character development and interactions (for the most part) with a compelling plot and characters. GX is a mediocre, stale, cliche, cookie-cutter shounen anime that has little to no redeeming value. Even the worst of 5D's is far better than the best of GX. I'd rather watch the Pre-WRGP arc of 5D's which is 90% filler over a ten-episode stretch of GX.
I honestly do not understand how anybody legitimately enjoys this series.

Reviewer’s Rating: 2

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