I'm on the final episode and I am howling at the audacity of older Yugi sending Judai back in time to duel him when he is younger and Atem is still around. All I can think about is how fucking mad Kaiba would be if he ever knew

lmao i know right

Kaiba Will Smith posing at his space elevator

Flipping things over in his office

WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU LET HIM TIME TRAVEL

Well since Yugi has apparently mastered the cosmos then maybe he also lets Kaiba duel. But it is a lot funnier if he never does, cuz fuck him

Anyway it's not often I say this but I agree with 4kids decision not to dub this fourth season.... It was really dull overall. But at least I can say I watched the whole thing now

Judai saying he wants to go on a journey to connect everyone who can sense duel spirits is quite interesting though. And what are you going to do then? Start a cult?

Just make the world's most intense duel monsters fanclub that is definitely not a religion despite how it absolutely looks that way to anyone who ain't blessed

gx season 4 is important tho in the themes about growing up (i for one have big feels about manjoume confronting his own private fear of the future and what he wants after graduating to try to enter the pro leagues)

Yeah that stuff was ok. I'm not saying that there was nothing good about it just, yes it is about growing up, but if I was a 4kids exec I too would think this was unwatchable for a child

because boring

the problem tho is that 4kids sanitized the hell out of gx, the og sub even for the beginning seasons makes the subtext heavy that the reason bad things are happening is because adults are taking advantage of kids and the repurcussions of how that fucks you up for the rest of your life going forward/affects your ability to grow up and become an adult as well

which, given that the head writer of gx also worked on devilman, it becomes increasingly obvious gx was not meant to be for 4kids at all even before season 3

season 2 is my favorite especially in sub for not pulling punches on the fact that the hikari no kessha/society of light is in fact a cult, and that the ultimate goal isnt just light over darkness or white over black, what they mean is the death of all life on earth and being washed away to nothingness

dictating what is okay to eat, dress, and sermons of what theyre allowed to think in this pursuit, and while manjoume and some others had their memories of their actions in the cult wiped after judai breaks them free of its hold, they dont ignore the trauma that, for manjoume especially, more than half a year's worth of memories are gone and he has to now

live with always having the fear of never knowing for certain what he actually did or didnt do to himself or other people during that time (and is acknowledged later in throwaway comments that he even lost a significant amount of weight due to the cult/has an aversion to white clothing nowadays)

but lol that would be too heavy for 4kids audiences

so season 4 having him still being determined to succeed as an adult after all the bullshit hes dealt with, and knowing that he has to be prepared for the bullshit that all of us experience as an adult that isnt cool or actionlike and yet still willing to give life a shot, is a good feeling

I feel ya. The first season is the only one I watched dubbed! and I liked s2 a lot too although it took me a really long time to get myself through GX so I watched that part like. 3 years ago RIP

the surreal feeling of having to go back to school and everything after how fucked up S3 was does permeate S4 which I get

but it definitely feels like it was rushed through

so it didn't really stick

and there are probably things that are lost on me because of how infrequently I watched it

like maybe Asuka wanting to be a teacher came up earlier? to me it seemed like it came out of nowhere for her darkness

like that part of Gurren Lagann where Yoko is now a teacher because why not LOL

oh yeah no s4 was definitely rushed dont get me wrong

asuka's teacher thing makes sense in some ways when seeing her interactions with others, more so in s1 than in 2 or 3 because... lol cult and death taking away more screentime for it, but it does sort of reek of the writers going "oh shit uh what about asuka"

like to be fair she never has expressed an interest in pro leagues even in subs really, so its not too odd that she isnt going that route like sho and manjoume are, but still

it also being canon that the guy had to go "Oh shit what about Kenzan. I guess I'll just make something up" was very unintentionally hilarious

so yes, the main threat of this season became very hit or miss because of things like that

I also thought it was downright confusing that apparently Fujiwara really was here all along, even though initially they were totally setting it up like he was an Aigami

like hello?? Why did you make it seem like he brainwashed everyone into thinking he was a student when he was really just Fubuki's friend the whole time

If you have characters where you have to make up their anxiety on the spot anyway, just combine tasks instead of making up a new character. Asuka could have been harbinger of darkness it'd be lit

And then you don't have to make a big deal of them always being there when apparently that is not intentionally suspicious

There is even still the Fubuki tie. wrow

true, true

I think they might very refrained from that bc we already had ppl converted to white dorm prior, and the unresolved abandoned dorm stuff also happened prior to the series. the real oversight imo was not mentioning Yusuke sooner but he wasn't invented yet lol

also Honest was the one doing the hypnosis because iirc he was already being chased by Trueman at the point and trying to move undetected while posing as Yusuke, who was still missing at the time

Well true that main character getting brainwashed is also overplayed but I completely missed that about Honest. Then again I watched the first episodes of the fourth season probably last year

I still think it's weird

I couldn't get invested in Fujiwara

Maybe they could just rez Amon from the dead for it or something. I don't know

thats fair! i was just explaining the odd behavior of "Yusuke" in the beginning. Yusuke himself is a polarizing writing choice. its probably symptomatic of how GX is like Kingdom Hearts in its lore lmao. you either enjoy the retcon or it bounces right off you