This review is spoiler free except where marked otherwise. 220https://i.ur.com/Q8KI7OD.jpeg Although the YuGiOh GXhttps://anilist.co/anime/482/YuGiOhGX/ anime began airing on October 6 2004 the manga would not start its publication in VJump until over a year later running from December 17 2005 to March 19 2011 for a total of 64 chapters and 9 volumes. Supervised by the franchises original creator Kazuki Takahashihttps://anilist.co/staff/96913/KazukiTakahashi the manga was written and illustrated entirely by his former assistant Naoyuki Kageyamahttps://anilist.co/staff/121975/NaoyukiKageyama. Despite his assistance in the original YuGiOhhttps://anilist.co/manga/30054/YuGiOh/ manga Kageyama was not involved in the creation or production of the GX anime. As such he makes it clear that the manga is wholly separate from the anime explicitly stating that this version is very different from the anime and that its better if readers look at it as something completely separate volume one page one. He borrows the basic premise of a dueling academy and uses many of the same characters but how he interprets and develops these characters as well as the direction in which he takes the story is strikingly different than the anime counterpart. Accordingly this manga is better thought of as an independent spinoff of the original YuGiOh manga than an adaptation of the GX anime. For that reason I will avoid comparisons to the anime where possible. I will however make frequent reference to the original manga highlighting how GX handles the duels the themes present in the original and how it stacks up overall. YuGiOh GX takes place on Duel Academy Island an institute established by Seto Kaiba for prospective duelists to learn the insandouts of both the card game and pro scene. Students are given a rank according to their performance on a series of theoretical and practical exams and are expected to rank up over their tenure at the academy before eventually gradating and ideally entering the pro scene. Although the idea of a dueling school has been the subject of much ridicule it helps better situate the role of duel monsters within the world of the series. A good way of understanding this is by means of a realworld parallel namely eSports. While there is no gamer school in the way GX has duel academy they have both carved out their specific niches within their respective cultures: both are generally wellknown by the masses even if the majority do not compete in them and there is a dedicated demographic of people whose lives are centered around them. The benefit of this setup is that it requires much less suspension of ones beliefs to understand why duel monsters is so important the characters in the manga despite being set in an otherwise ordinaryish world. In this way I would argue that GX surpasses the original manga in this respect as the original manga asks a lot of the reader in terms of suspending their beliefs: after all the fate of the world being determined by the outcome of two middleschool students possessed by the spirits of ancient Egypt playing a childrens card game can be a bit difficult to digest at first but students enrolling in a school to professionally compete in a niche competition is not so much. 220https://i.ur.com/M7fNDpw.jpeg 220https://i.ur.com/i4vxZ4b.jpeg YuGiOh GX Chapter 1 While GX begins with a strong premise that helps ease readers into the world its presenting the execution of the first chapter is riddled with problems that will continue to plague the series as a whole. For one GX has major pacing issues. In the opening pages of chapter one alone the reader is presented with 1 Jaden defeating some random opponent and being congratulated by Syrus 2 a brief unrelated exchange between Jaden and Alexis 3 Syrus being defeated by a prospective instructor Mr. Ryuga and 4 Jaden talking to Syrus after the match. Four interactions two duels across four different locations all within the span of five pages. Because of how little screentime each interaction is given they come across as hollow as if they are doing the most generic thing just to move the plot along. This issue crops up regularly and can make a lot of the dialogue feel stock and boring. Related to this is a second major issue: that a significant amount of the dueling happens offscreen. Not only are the two opening duels only given a page each but the final duel of the opening chapter the climax starts in the middle of the fifth turn. What makes this issue particularly pressing is that GX is a manga that especially focuses on dueling more so than even YuGiOh Duelist. Given that one would expect the manga to slowly build up the duels carefully creating the momentum necessary to engage readers and deliver a huge climax but this is often not the case. To make matters worse this problem is not only limited to less important duels between oneoff characters but extends to major duels between main characters. In chapter eight for example Jaden and Syrus are forced into a high stakes duel where if Syrus loses he is expelled from the academy and if Jaden loses his deck is confiscated. Surely something of this magnitude would be treated with the upmost care right? Wrong. Not only does the duel start halfway through but the chapter begins with the two dueling before any context is given as to why. This in media res approach simply does not work for this style of manga because a duel can only deliver on its excitement if the action is slowly built up and so thrusting readers into the middle of the action is an inefficient means of creating intrigue. Further the whole point of starting in medias res is to promise the reader that there is plenty of excitement to come often because a slower start is necessary to set it up but given GXs breakneck pacing there is no reason Kageyama could not have simply built up to the duel after just a few pages. 220https://i.ur.com/yESTz93.jpg YuGiOh GX Chapter 8 There is no questioning the overall rockiness of GXs opening chapters but there are certain aspects that are either improved upon or utilized to create more opportunities for genuinely enjoyable moments. The first aspect is that by the fourth volume chapter 27 onwards the manga switches from 21pages to 31pages. This may seem like a minor change but by giving Kageyama more space he no longer has to resort to starting duels halfway through and can use the extra space to show the duel in its entirety. This suggests that the earlier issues were the result of the limitations surrounding the mangas publication something completely out of his hands. While there may have been alternative ways of dealing with the previous page limit and so Kageyama does not totally escape the previous criticism one can see that having more pages simply dissolves this issue entirely. The second aspect is that Kageyamas heavy focus on dueling translates into more dynamic and complex duels than anything in the original manga. Just like in Battle City GXs duels are set within an established ruleset but with more improved rules to help bring the card game in line with the real life TCG for example fusion and tribute monsters can now attack the turn they are summoned which was not the case previously. While this type of dueling is still subject to same criticisms as Battle City namely battles often feel determined by luck for example drawing the right card at the right time as opposed to the duelists own merit see my reviewhttps://anilist.co/review/20996 of the original YuGiOh for more details it at least offers higher quality and more exciting duels than ever before. The other aspect which works to GXs advantage is the nature of its protagonist Jaden. In the original series Yugi is presented as the good guy who always triumphs over evil. The consequence of this is that in most of his duels the reader expects him to win. The problem then especially in Battle City was that some of these victories did not feel justified: they were not a result of his own autonomy but of luck which can feel cheap and undeserving. This however is not the case in GX. Although the manga actively choses to begin with a scene of Jaden winning invoking the memory of the undefeatable Yugi GX quickly subverts this expectation by having Jaden lose several important duels. Not only does this come as a shock to the reader but it fundamentally changes how they perceive the duels: no longer will they expect Jaden to simply steamroll every opponent because he is the protagonist. Moreover because of the large cast of exceptionally strong duelists Jaden does not always play the role of the hero who saves the day. These two features humble Jaden in a way that allows duels to be unpredictable which helps keep the reader engaged. YuGiOh GX Chapter 35 Among the original YuGiOh trilogy GX is best known for its characters and more specifically Jadens development across the four seasons. Given that the question naturally arises how does the GX manga fair in light of this? Well much like its anime counterpart Jaden is given a fair amount of development. Early on the manga establishes that Jadens deck is valuable to him and in volume two readers find out why: it was a dying gift from a mentorlike figure from his past Koyo Hibiki. This backstory was actually fairly moving and casts Jaden in a whole new light. Unlike his journey in the anime manga Jaden is principally concerned with establishing his own identity. For the first half of the manga he essentially wants to be Koyo but by the second half he comes into his own identity which is beautifully represented by him putting aside the deck given to him by Koyo and using his own cards. This journey of selfdiscovery has an incredible conclusion which perfectly wraps up the manga as a whole. Now while I have nothing but praise for Jadens character arc in the manga my praise ends with him. The manga is unfortunately bloated with characters that are given little to no background and have zero personality the most the reader will remember about the majority of the cast is the type of deck they play as it is only when dueling that any of these characters distinguish themselves from one another in any meaningful way. Perhaps the worst example of this are with the five American duelists introduced in the second half. They exist solely to provide the main cast with the opportunity to face strong duelists in a tournament setting. At the very least the duels are generally well done with a lot of dynamic action complex backandforthes and unique new monsters. 220https://i.ur.com/PBBbzTf.jpg YuGiOh GX Chapter 43 The final aspect I must discuss is the antagonist. Recall that one of GXs greatest virtues is how it situates duel monsters within the world of the series. While I maintain that this is still generally positive it does work against itself in the latter half and this has to do with Kageyamas attempt at introducing a supernatural element into the manga. It is important to note that the events of the manga are entirely motivated by the antagonist a spirit from ancient Egypt trying to resurrect itself who is drawn to Duel Academy out of a necessity to complete the resurrection. While the YuGiOh franchise is no stranger to ancient Egyptian antagonists the problem in GX is that it is set in an otherwise ordinary world so the first few mentions of Shadow Games can break the readers immersion and come off as jarring. This could be forgiven if the antagonist was executed well enough to justify this shift in tone but unfortunately that is not the case. Readers are given a couple pages worth of backstory in the first half but otherwise the antagonist does not make any significant appearances until the last two volumes: he was the evil spirit of a criminal in ancient Egypt who was sealed into a stone tablet which was then destroyed. Some 3000 years later said spirit somehow unbeknownst to the reader gains control of the American Duel Academy and uses its students in an attempt to resurrect itself. Not a particularly unique backstory as far as YuGiOh is concerned but what absolutely ruins any semblance of intrigue around this character is shattered in the final volume. In order to demonstrate why I must go into spoilers so feel free to avoid the following section if you want to remain unspoiled. In short YuGiOh GX is at best a series of semiinteresting duels with a wellwritten protagonist strung together by a horrible ancient Egyptian subplot and at worst a shallow attempt at continuing the duel monsters legacy that we could otherwise do without. As a YuGiOh fan I am willing to extend the series some charity and focus on the good more than the bad but giving this series anything higher than a 7/10 would be unreasonably generous.