Predictions and Observations:
The Next King of Games

That theme is interesting. The main thing I noticed was that it has lyrics. That makes it very different from the original Yu-Gi-Oh! I was surprised. Truthfully, GX doesn’t seem to be too far into the future of Yu-Gi-Oh! Everything seems to be the same, except that dueling is an official part of education, which is bizarre (d’you think those Air Force guys the group met in A Duel with Dartz I informed the government of how handy it could be to have a trained army of super-duelists after the Dartz incident?). I find it downright scary that Crowler has a *Ph.D* in dueling, that’s just weird. The new models of duel disks were also quite strange. It shows that Kaiba—or even Zigfried and Leon?!—has been busy. Yugi seems about the same, maybe a few years older. Of course, that was assuming that—OMG!!! I just realized something! (checks) I was right! Yugi wasn’t wearing the Millenium Puzzle! That would have to mean that the person whom Jaden ran into was just Yugi himself! Maybe I was wrong to say this wasn’t too far ahead, because the Yugi Jaden meets and the Yami that we know are indistinguishable from one another, from what we see. How interesting. This tells us that before the end of this season, or at least, before the GX era begins, something is going to drastically change.

Let’s see, a rundown of the new characters (meaning everyone):

Jaden Yuki, the main character- That *is* some confidence and enthusiasm there. Nothing upsets Jaden, or so it seems. It that respect he reminded me of Joey. But don’t get me wrong, Jaden’s a new character entirely. I can’t quite place it, but he seems quite different from anyone we’ve met before. They all do, really. I felt completely clueless watching Yu-Gi-Oh! for the first time in a whole year. I forgot how weird it feels. He does seem destined for something; for one the series begins with him defeating the undefeatable, like Yugi before him. And his Winged Kuriboh coos at him. That’s a weird-prophetic-super-magic thing. Also, you have to admit, Jaden is a bit, well, oblivious. He was running late to the exam, and the more and more Crowler gets angry, Jaden thinks, for instance, look at him tremble! I must really be impressing him! Of course, this could all be cheerful banter and let us know moreover that we haven’t seen anything yet.

Syrus, the little blue-haired kid Jaden meets- You have to wonder how he won his duel. I’m serious, the other guy, um, Bastion, is explaining the *rules* to him right and left during Jaden’s duel. If Syrus didn’t know that if a monster in attack mode is destroyed, the difference between the attacking monster’s attack points and the monster destroyed’s attack points is deducted from the destroyed monster’s duelist’s lifepoints…well, that’s like, the first thing you learn about dueling! I understand that this was probably a plot device to explain the game to newcomers and make Bastion look like the expert duelist they say he is, but doing it that way was kind of a putdown to Syrus.

Bastion Misawa, the highest-scoring applicant on the written exam- I like Bastion. He was the guy who beat the proctor with that Ring of Destruction move. Reminds me a bit of Bakura; maybe it’s just the accent. Nah, they served the same role at one time or another; Bakura was the voice of what’s going on, explaining the duel, I recall, in Best of Friends, Best of Duelists in particular, similar to how Bastion explains the action to Syrus and the new guys watching at home. Bastion, it seems, duels by technicality and logic rather than by heart or instinct. Either that, or we haven’t seen him in action yet. He does look, though, like a guy who will be no pushover.

Dr. Vellian Crowler, Dept. Chair of Techniques at Duel Academy- An evil weirdo. I do think that it was funny that people keep calling him Mrs., and Jaden calls him a mascot.
I would like to note that Crowler said something to the effect of, you new rookie duelists, I forget how *attached* you are to your cards. I don’t know if anyone caught it, but Crowler just dissed a bunch of the world’s top duelists (a lot of whom we’ve met before: Joey, Leon, Kaiba -yes, Kaiba!-, Rafael, Mai, Pegasus, Grandpa Moto, Hawkins, come to think of it, just about everyone!), most importantly Yugi. Not only “How dare he, this means war!” but also, “Get with the program, loser!” It’s a well-known fact, we know by now, that among the top-ranked duelists, the ones who triumph are those who care for their cards and put their hearts into the game. It really made me wonder where our familiar faces are when the next generation of duelists is being taught by creepazoids like this. Surely these promising students should be taught by the best duelists who will teach? How did they get stuck with Crowler?
On the other hand, Crowler seems to really care that the school be rid of “talentless flunkies,” enough to duel Jaden personally. In this sense, it seems, he is, under the scariness, devoted to the Academy. Of course, this could have been just to vent frustration over his boss, Chancellor, um, Sheppard. He doesn’t seem to much like Sheppard.
One must wonder how he became a teacher, the main teacher it seems, dueling like that.

Alexis, the Academy girl student in the blue- She seems nice enough. Don’t know much about her yet.

Zane, Alexis’ friend- Seems like kind of a dork. Don’t know much about him, but seems like a snob. I note he didn’t seem too happy when Alexis praised Jaden’s talent.

Chazz Princeton- To give some idea, he has a couple dumb cronies with him. He seems like a bully. No, scratch that: it’s screamed in our ear, RIVAL ALERT! He says that he and his pals are so much more ready for the Duel Academy, and those losers will find out the hard way what they’ve gotten themselves into- the Chazz Princeton way! He called Bastion lousy, though, so I don’t think he’s a very good judge of his opponents. He’ll find soon enough, to his annoyance, that these guys are no pushovers. He seems to be a fan of Crowler- he looked livid when Jaden beat Crowler, and said there’s no way a rookie could have beaten Crowler. Come to think of it, that’s something he has in common- besides the hair- with Zane; they’re both elitist snobs and they both think Crowler’s cool. Chazz just wishes Crowler treated the other second-rate duelists (déjà vu: we’ve heard this term used quite a bit before! A connection?) this way.

Let’s see, who else?

Oh, right- I wanted to mention Chancellor Sheppard. I note how careful the show is to hide his face- could it be a familiar one?

If anyone’s interested, I transcribed the lyrics to that theme:

Chillin’ out with the crew at the school yard
Findin’ trouble, never lookin’ too hard
Back at class, they never taught us this:
Some things ya gotta learn hit-or-miss!

Tough times, hard climbs
We’ll take ‘em on together
Right now,
Let’s go! Yu-Gi-Oh GX! Generation Next!

Game on, get your game on,
Come on, you’d better play your cards right!
Game on, get your game on,
We’ll make the grade and win this fight!

(Instrumental)

We’ll make the grade somehow
Yeah! Yu-Gi-Oh GX!
Game on, get your game on,
Come on, you’d better play your cards right!

Come on and get your game on!

More tomorrow night, on the next episode, Welcome to Duel Academy! That’s all for now, folks! -Clio