Yu-Gi-Oh! GX

Well when my friend told me about there is going to be a sequel to Yugioh! And I was just, cool! I truly didn't like Yugioh the original as much as Yugioh Gx. I liked the character Jaden and Jesse the most. But I found Alexis Rhodes a tad bit annoying, her voice wasn't annoying, but she was just flirting with Zane and Jaden! And I was like Zane doesn't want you lady! And I was just! Uhh... I hate her! She was the whore of the show! And the obnoxious person I found. I kinda found Syrus annoying too because we get the point, you want to spent quality time with your bro Zane! And his voice! Goodness, his voice was higher than mine! Well I like the show, and I just can't believe how much I started loving the show!

I had heard mixed things about Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, both from my friends and online. Polls online show that GX or Zexal are consistently on/near the bottom of people's ranking of the Yu-Gi-Oh! series. I have watched the original series and 5D's and liked them both (although I still found the concept of speed duels a bit silly). I was hesitant to watch it, but after being given all the episodes on DVD I couldn't pass it up. To be upfront, this is only a review of series 1-3 as these are the only dubbed episodes.

So, what did I think of it? Well, its a bit of a mixed bag really. The series is canon and starts with a nice nod to the original cast members. It even had occasional appearances of other cast members throughout the series. I liked that idea, since they did acknowledge the original (and best) series without relying on it. The new cast was good, but very very different from the original. Jaden is a very talented duelist with a knack for truancy. This laid back attitude can get quite annoying at times, but what I found more grating was his over-exuberance for the game. He loved duelling a bit too much...The rest of the cast was good too. What I liked about this series is that we got more action from the cast other than the main protagonist compared to the original series. More duels = more variation, which I liked.

It seems that each series has a type of duelling that they like to latch onto and not let go. The original series utilised the same monsters over and over again, whilst 5Ds seemed to love synchro summoning. GX is no different and fusion was the name of the game. It was good since we got to see a wide variation of fusion monsters. However, it did get quite "samey" after a while, since we knew what Jaden was going to do most of the time. The only difference was the "winning move", which was very clever at times. I did also enjoy the new monsters and their use of the old monsters in the original series. The Egyptian Gods were even involved, along with a different version (which are considerably less powerful) that I enjoyed. So, although there were some aspects of duelling that I did not enjoy, there was plenty to be admired.

In terms of the actual storytelling, it is mixed in my opinion. Series 1 is obviously trying to get us used to a new cast and a new concept of a duelling academy. As such, the majority of the plot occurred in the duelling academy and the main storyline was very much internal. It was very good up until the end, which I found to be a bit of an anticlimax. Series 2 was my favourite, because the creators got a bit more...creative. The did so without it being too crazy. I enjoyed the concept of the "light" being evil and having main characters turn evil. It got us to see a different side of them. Series 3 was where it went a bit off. It started out OK, but when the duellists started going inter-dimensional duelling demons and beasts, it was a bit too weird. I just think that they were trying to out-do the previous season, but went a bit too far. It was still enjoyable, but it just seemed a bit confused (and confusing at times).

All in all, this was a Yu-Gi-Oh! series that was worth watching. To be honest, I enjoyed it more than 5Ds (cue the boos!), but that is because I just like the traditional method of duelling. However, nothing will compare to the original series. Its not the nostalgia goggles, I just genuinely believe the story lines and characters in the original series were better.

Compared to the original Yu gi oh, GX is a joke but this anime is still good. To become actually interesting it takes 110 episodes, yes 110 I didn't mistype. Before that there isn't even a story (the knights can't be considered as enemies) , just adventures and jaden using the same duel strategy at the academy. There are some very good episodes still, like jaden vs crawler, jaden vs zayne, and jaden vs the original yugi deck, and the last episode and there's many references to monsters of the original series, even Ra.

The second part is where this can even be considered worth reviewing. Yubel is definitely more interesting and it's a shame that the sacred beasts are used so rarely compared to the Egyptian gods.

The third part is very boring. It's about the future of every character and honestly it's even worse than the first part but the final duel of GX is between yugi and jaden, honestly it's one of the best episodes.

The first part is 4/10. The second part 7/10. The third part 2/10.

I can't fault them for lack of giving it a good shot. Yu-Gi-Oh GX is another butchering or an anime put out by 4kids, but honestly, this could have been much, much worse. The names weren't too radically changed and was pretty much the only option in some cases (ask anyone to pronounce 'Manjoume'(although I was disappointed to see a character named Cronos go)) and they actually didn't fiddle too much with the base script. Unfortunately, they still wrote out plenty, and the voice acting was, as usual, mostly absurd. But, like I said, it still could have been worse. There are a few places where they use the concept of death, and the writers had the good sport to reference the Yu-Gi-Oh Abridged series once or twice, to my surprise. The aforementioned voice acting wasn't all totally bad, and I was a little glad to see they wrote out Cronos' (Crowler's) Italian accent, which annoyed me a little in the original series. The bottom line for it all is, it's pretty bad, but not nearly as bad as it could have been. I hope 4Kids continues to improve. On a lighter note, if you're a fan of the game(and thus able to get into the show's plot), this is a good show to springboard yourself into anime with.

I've been a big fan of anime for years, and even tried to get into the original Yu-gi-oh. This is the best one in a long time. A lot of adapts just change the words and don't' make sense. this is pretty cool though. The characters are like real people (some like my friends!) and are pretty funny. I was watching one and I forgot it was a cartoon b/c it was so cool. Cartoon network needs to air it more. Anyone hear about new episodes? For my all time favorite anime adapts, this is nubmer two, right below dragon ball z. my favorite eps are the one with the Sacred beast cards and the match between jaden and zane. They had attacks with like 20000 points! not even yugi could pull that off!