Predictions and Observations:
Third Time's a Charm

Jaden said that they were *officially* upperclassmen now. Wow. I never bothered to look up the exact definition of “upperclassman”. It kinda just came when I was a freshman and everyone else was an upperclassman. Maybe it *does* only count once you’re more than halfway through. I’ll check: Wow—Jaden’s right. An upperclassman is only a junior or senior. Speaking of which, I thought that Jaden would always be a year behind me, making him about the same age, actually, since I skipped, but he’s catching up. Now we’re both juniors. Briefly.
For the record, so are Syrus, Chazz, and Bastion. This makes, let’s see, Alexis and Atticus are definitely seniors now, if Atticus hasn’t graduated yet, and Alexis’ still being there proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that Duel Academy is a four-year school and Zane either graduated early (certainly wouldn’t put it past him) or Alexis misspoke in saying, in Jaden’s freshman year, that he was a “third-year Obelisk Blue”. Unless Alexis is about to take off for parts unknown, of course, and just stuck around to make sure Chazz wasn’t abusing her former dorm-mates *too* much. As for Atticus, we haven’t seen him around yet, and it’s probable that he graduated (if he used to be in the class of Year 1, Zane and Chumley’s, but was out for most of it, and so repeated that senior year in Year 2 and graduated at the end of it). We’ll have to keep an eye out for the Rhodes sibs, because they’re either graduating, graduated, or darn close, and this might be the clue I’ve been waiting for. As for underclassmen, Hassleberry’s a sophomore, as is Reggie von Howell III (remember, mini-Chazz? Wonder if we’ll see him anywhere around ever again), Aster if he stuck around, man, there were’nt very many canon freshmen last year. This year we have Blair as a freshman and it looks like there are some other folks showing up also. By the way, unless Jaden and the gang are getting new blazers sometime soon, my blazer theory is also having some trouble…maybe it’s just a matter of preference for each student…?

“And it almost feels like we didn’t get a summer break. Uh, *did* we?” These guys love their dramatic irony. Well, Jaden, does the month of March count? It was more of… a very long Spring Break with a new school year at the end of it. By the way, I’m trying to figure out if there’s any sort of pattern here. The first season started in October and ended in April, and the first rerun-zone between was about four months. The second season started in August and ended in February, and the interval was about *two* months before the third season began. Therefore, I will make the entirely baseless prediction that *this* season will end somewhere around this coming October, and then the fourth season will begin toward the end of November.

‘Nobody say Sartorius or mention destiny’—I notice that there’s an abnormally large amount of backstory discussion in this episode. I s’pose some things might take some explaining, like the Neo-Spacians and so forth. More often than not, whenever I attempt to imagine what may happen next, since I tend to drift into the pattern of cause-and-effect, I have an unpleasant tendency to just kind of think of characters reacting to what’s already occurred, rather than thinking of any other plot twists of my own. Whenever I read any of my attempted fanfics of years past, I notice so many allusions to things that happened, inside jokes almost. Anyway, my point is that for once I would have been right. It’s kinda eerie. Will we have to wait ‘til next week to find out what *does* happen next? Besides Chazz getting paint in his hair again? (remember, when he was trying to paint his dorm room white while outside it was being smashed and rebuilt by lifepoints?)

“More nervous breakdowns than a worm in a henhouse” indeed! Syrus has shown plenty of times that he’s got major guts! In fact, he’s one of my favorite characters at the moment!

The Neo-Spacians are *back*? Where did they go?

The opening: *Look* at all those new folks! And, Sy’s going to get promoted AGAIN, apparently. Is it just me, or is his the only blazer color that ever changes?

Is it just me, or did Chazz’s voice seem different? Bit deeper and scratchier than usual? It was almost sorta missing that distinct Chazz-ness that I always consider fundamental to any imitation.

To set the record straight… wow. It really is so confused and obscure how exactly Sartorius got in that I had to look it up. Yep, Crowler and Bonaparte pretty much welcomed him right in as a freshman, and I still say that it’s ridiculously easy for anyone except actual normal students to enroll.

Crowler and Bonaparte are seemingly worse as a pair. I was a bit startled to hear them threaten to sue and then laugh about deceiving Sheppard, because in the past Crowler has shown such devout, if somewhat ludicrous and exclusive, devotion to the Academy. Then again, it’s safe to say that with those two, their own hides matter to them the most.

I think the KaibaCorp portfolios were out on the desk because Sheppard was going through his selection of new staff-members. I’m glad to see that Duel Academy is finally getting some new teachers, because ever since a certain one got turned to dust and his spirit ingested by a cat, the Slifer Dorm has been pretty much entirely unsupervised, and even before then, the only classes at Duel Academy that we knew about and knew about teachers for were art, P.E., duel alchemy, and techniques. However, students talked of other classes, so I guess it’s not quite *that* pathetic. Still…if nothing else, the Slifer Dorm needs a headmaster and has needed one for some time. From the look of his blazer, though, somehow I doubt Viper will be filling that vacancy.

Is it just me, or did Zane Truesdale suddenly disappear off the face of the earth? That’s another backstory that may take some explanation while we’re spending an episode on backstory clarification (one of their *friends* who also happens to be *related* to one of them is currently on a self-destructive, psychotic rampage and is the longest-term and probably baddest villain we’ve yet had in GX…), but nobody mentioned anything at all, not even in talking about what happened in the previous year that they want to put behind them. He also wasn’t in the opening. Please, please don’t tell me that we are not going to see how this ends! As a matter of fact, we didn’t see *any* graduates in the opening if memory serves—not Zane, not Chumley, and not (probably he’s graduated by now) Atticus. By the way, I wonder if, now that Atticus has graduated out into the big dueling world, he’ll end up dueling Zane again?

Hassleberry talked about the cognitive development of the adolescent mind. He’s usually so plain-spoken. It was funny to hear him say a mouthful like that. By the way, it just means the growing of the brain in older kids and teenagers.

“Y’know, I could sit here and have flashbacks all day.” Yup, they love their fourth-wall smashing. Reminds me of Going Bananas: “Enjoy the flashback, loser!” Except, did *that* have any flashbacks *within* flashbacks? This one sure did!

Aster’s reaction to the Neo-Space is prominent in the flashback to Homecoming Duel II, I notice, how it made him feel like he did when dueling was still fun. That is, I believe they’re trying to tell us, the power of Neo-Space, and Jaden, as the major Neo-Space duelist guy, never ceases to feel that way and to remind others that they can, too.

Jaden’s getting used to all this; he’s resigned to having crazy adventures by now. I think in terms of episodes it took Yugi and his pals a bit longer (this episode would correspond to mid-Battle City Finals, circa Noah’s Virtual World), though not much, and it almost certainly took shorter in terms of years, because Yugi’s adventure totaled four years and Duelist Kingdom and Battle City weren’t all that far apart, and Jaden’s adventure has canonly gone on two years.

I drew certain parallels between Jaden and Belowski in this episode, as Jaden sat on the roof of the main building just hanging out with his monster spirits and being considered more than a bit strange for talking to thin air. It was also probably the music.

“Nah-noo, nah-noo”. Know I’ve heard it before, can’t quite place it, and can’t google it because spelling’s rather ambiguous. Darn it. E.T., maybe? I haven’t seen that movie since I was about five, if not younger.

Chazz came back to the Slifer Dorm. Let’s see… hang on, where was he between Blinded By the Light II and, say, The Dark Light (which occurred on the same day as the final day of the tournament), then? Not the White Dorm. What did he do, pitch a tent?

So Blair’s a new freshman… huh. It’s canon that this has been two years, right? It’s canon that Duel Academy is a high school, right? It’s canon that two years ago Blair was eight and a half, right? This doesn’t add up. Even if she *did* skip a grade or two (which, being precocious enough to give Zane a half-decent match in the Nationals at the age of eight-and-a-half, she may well have), she’d still be a lot younger, say, ten or so. She’s a bit tall and mature for ten, and she’d seem a lot more out-of-place in a school full of fourteen and above. I wonder if, when we discover a bit more of Blair’s backstory, we’ll discover that she accidentally stumbled into a time warp or something? Until then, I’d also like to note that the Slifer Dorm finally canonly contains a known female student (Blair didn’t count the first time around, because she was pretending to be a boy and nobody knew except Jaden and his friends).

Sheppard…?

Professor Tholonius Viper, huh? Sounds ominous. *Looks* ominous. But- no evil magic? How bad could he be? It’s not like Sheppard would intentionally put his students in danger, right? Um… actually…the shadow riders…kinda…he seems to have turned a blind eye to quite a bit…then there was leaving Crowler and Bonaparte in charge for longer than ten minutes…more like a semester…and, um, yeeeeah. Well, we’ll have to see. I wouldn’t rule it out, exactly. He mentioned that Viper will be unprejudiced because he’s unaware of Jaden’s past triumphs. Is Sheppard implying that Jaden’s amazing enough to have pretty much lost any enemies he has in the school, even cowed Crowler and Bonaparte, because few want to try their luck against him? Wouldn’t surprise me. However, on that subject, we *do* know one current character who’s raring for a rematch with Jaden. Hint: he has a tendency to get paint all over him, non-conformity is the core of his personality, he likes to smell like tuna fish, seems to be off to a simply *wonderful* start with Blair, rhymes with “spaz”...

Huh. I’ve been playing video games again (GX Spirit Caller for DS is fun…but Syrus keeps kicking my butt…), and they’re not canon but they give me a few more wacky ideas to kick around.
They actually say at one point there that Alexis is a freshman, too. It got me to thinking, and I don’t believe that it was actually canonly said otherwise. I had assumed that she was a sophomore at least, because she already knew her way around a bit and had a few friends, including upperclassmen like Zane, and she seemed to have some settled-in authority over people who just got there; if they got lost or something, she would definitely have helped. And she didn’t just know her way around, she knew things like that back way out of the stadium in Welcome to Duel Academy. She seemed to already kind of be settled into some habits around campus; nobody new was very predicatable yet, but we knew early-on that in the evenings Alexis could very likely be found at the Abandoned Dorm leaving a rose for Atticus, or down by the lighthouse talking with Zane, or elsewhere around the island keping an eye on nighttime wanderers (like Jaden, Chazz, and Syrus in Welcome to Duel Academy, and like Chazz in Formula for Success). However, I realized that it’s entirely possible that she’s in Jaden’s year also. It means that she would have arrived with the other Obelisk freshmen from duel prep school, earlier in the summer (because Chazz was similarly settled in and I’ve already gone through this with *him*), therefore making her a spectator at the entrance exams, like Chazz. This explains how she already knows her way around. Jasmine and Mindy could easily be in the same year as well, explaining how she already knows them well, if they were all at duel prep school together (however Jasmine and Mindy managed to survive it…). As for the other reasons, I think the reason may be Atticus. All evidence shows that he and Zane were very good friends before he disappeared. It’s possible that Zane and Lexi may have been introduced at some point, meaning that when she arrived at Duel Academy she already knew him. Atticus may also have given his little sister a couple tips about life at Duel Academy (like the back way into the Obelisk Arena), considering they were always on good terms. Already knowing a few people there and a few handy secrets about the school, plus Lex’s own studiousness (“Duel Monster cards can be divided into normal monster cards, fusion monster cards, ritual monster cards, effect monster cards, trap cards, and spell cards…” –A Duel in Love), that would have made knowing such things as when the welcome dinner is and where everything is a high priority and therefore having her take some time to find out, may account for her settled-in confidence, and it may also be that Alexis is very strong-willed and tough—even if she was nervous about her first classes and so forth, would she show it? Anyway, I now consider it a possibility. We’ll just have to see. If she doesn’t graduate at the end of this year, we’ll know… And now, with that little thought, not only is the blazer theory entirely blown out of the water (MUST be personal preference, now!!), but there may be some way this can all fit together. Okay. If Jaden’s year includes Jaden, Syrus, Chazz, Bastion, Alexis, Jasmine, and Mindy; the sophomore class of that year includes Atticus; and the senior class of that year (yes, I’m trying the three-year theory again) includes Zane and Chumley --- both Zane and Chumley graduated at the end of that year; Atticus (I’m assuming) got held back, making him now part of the sophomore class which also includes Jaden, Syrus, Chazz, Alexis, Bastion, Jasmine, and Mindy; and the freshman class includes Hassleberry and several people who are “enrolling” in Duel Academy for their own bizarre reasons (like Sartorius). NOW, we have Jaden, Syrus, Chazz, Bastion, Alexis, Jasmine, Mindy, and Atticus in the senior class (third year!!!), Hassleberry and (I just remembered) “mini-Chazz” as sophomores, and Blair as the only known freshman. That actually holds the most water of any of these crazy theories I’ve ever tried to work out on this matter.

If I chose one quote to represent this episode, it’s the one that keeps getting repeated: “Everything is back to normal.” Given that, I have this hunch that things aren’t going to stay that way for very long.