Yu☆Gi☆Oh! GX
Yu-Gi-Oh! GX

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It's alright.

I have a bit of mixed feelings on the first Yu-Gi-Oh (Real mixed feelings not recommendations. I like the original series, the Duelist Kingdom City is a little rougher, and the final story was good. But I always felt like the original series was the strongest.

I wanted to see what happened next so I tried GX. What's interesting is GX is in the universe of the GX anime, but telling a different story. It appears everything in this manga is unique to the manga, and it's done well. The characters don't have enough development, as the manga ... assumes readers will probably have seen the anime before, and while I know some of the story I've never watched the anime.

That being said, you still read these mangas for the big battles and the shocking twists, and in this GX has the same problem that the original Yu-Gi-Oh has, since a majority of the manga is about cards that had not been released yet (According to the card lists in the manga), I'm not sure how much development was done on making the cards work into a real meta. The fact is there's the usual "asspulls" where Jaden has a developed deck, that he keeps being able to pull almost any card from usually something new and still winning.

That being said, it's still a more mature version of the franchise compared to the childish presentation of the anime, it's not as dark as the original series but still a good story, and while I feel the end feels a bit rushed, and the big villain feels under developed other than being the bad guy, I enjoyed it overall, and it gave me a feeling that I wanted to play more Yu-Gi-Oh which ultimately is why I like to read this franchise. Check it out if you liked the original, but this more a pleasure read, given a score of 8 in the assumption you want something light and happy, I wouldn't put this in top tier categories, but for fans of Yu-Gi-Oh you'll be well served here.

Although the Yu-Gi-Oh! GX anime began airing in 2004, the manga would not start its publication in V-Jump until over a year later. Supervised by the franchise's original creator, Kazuki Takahashi, the manga was written and illustrated entirely by his former assistant, Naoyuki Kageyama. Despite his assistance in the original Yu-Gi-Oh! 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 "it's 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 spin-off of the original Yu-Gi-Oh! 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.

Yu-Gi-Oh! GX takes place on Duel Academy Island, an institute established by Seto Kaiba for prospective duelists to learn the ins-and-outs 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 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 real-world 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 well-known 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 set-up is that it requires much less suspension of one's beliefs to understand why duel monsters is so important the characters in the manga despite being set in an otherwise ordinary(-ish) 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 middle-school students, possessed by the spirits of ancient Egypt, playing a children's 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.

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 screen-time 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 off-screen. 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 Yu-Gi-Oh! 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 one-off 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 half-way 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, 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 GX's breakneck pacing, there is no reason Kageyama could not have simply built up to the duel after just a few pages.

There is no questioning the overall rockiness of GX's 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 21-pages to 31-pages. 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 manga's 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 Kageyama's heavy focus on dueling translates into more dynamic and complex duels than anything in the original manga. Just like in Battle City, GX's 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 duelist's own merit – it at least offers higher quality and more exciting duels than ever before.

The other aspect which works to GX's 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.

Among the original Yu-Gi-Oh! trilogy, GX is best known for its characters, and more specifically, Jaden's 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 Jaden's deck is valuable to him, and in volume two, readers find out why: it was a dying gift from a mentor-like 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 self-discovery has an incredible conclusion, which perfectly wraps up the manga as a whole. Now, while I have nothing but praise for Jaden's 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 back-and-forthes, and unique new monsters.

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The final aspect I must discuss is the antagonist. Recall that one of GX's 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 Kageyama's 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 Yu-Gi-Oh! 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 Yu-Gi-Oh! is concerned, but what absolutely ruins any semblance of intrigue around this character is shattered in the final volume. Straight up, the final antagonist, Tragoedia, explicitly states that his motivation for coming back and killing humans is because (and I quote) "[he] was bored [and] nothing more." I cannot begin to describe how disappointing of an ending this was to read. Not only are we, as readers, deprived of any real background and motivations for the main antagonist's actions, but it just makes the inclusion of this supernatural element feel like Kageyama's half-hearted attempt at connecting GX with the original series. I genuinely believe that GX could have been a better written manga without the supernatural elements, There was so much more Kageyama could have worked with, such as Jaden and Chazz's shared past and present rivalry, or the dynamic between the American and Japanese academies. Literally anything else would have been better.

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In short, Yu-Gi-Oh! GX is – at best – a series of semi-interesting duels with a well-written protagonist strung together by a horrible ancient Egyptian sub-plot, and at worst, a shallow attempt at continuing the duel monsters legacy that we could otherwise do without. As a Yu-Gi-Oh! 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.

"It wasn't in the manga, therefore it isn't canon" is a common argument, that you might get with certain anime series, where fans try to defend their favourite series' by only attributing the original authors material to it, as opposed to the overly prolonged anime adaptations. I'm starting this review with this excursion, not to start arguing about what's canon and what isn't, but because Yu-Gi-Oh! is a series, where things get especially interesting in this regard.
Why so? Because I wouldn't be surprised, if most Yu-Gi-Oh! fans would consider the anime as the main canon, when asked, while being mostly unaware of how abrupt Takahashi's ... manga output actually is. As far as Takahashi's Yu-Gi-Oh! is concerned, it's only "Season 0", "Duelist Kingdom", "Battle City" and I guess the last movie (while I do admit, that I'm not too sure, how much involvement Takahashi had in other things connected to YGO). Simply put, the anime series along with the card game became way too profitable to be depending on the slow manga releases too much. The TCG and anime just kept running, while the manga department had to reconsider on how to function next to their now bigger brothers. The final idea was to put out new storylines using the same characters. The first attempt at this was Yu-Gi-Oh! R, which tried to pass itself of as a sequel to the Battle City arc. Following that they decided to make a GX-manga. Here, they chose to make no implications whatsoever, that the anime and manga could be happening in the same universe. With that said, I would also like to forwarn, that this review will be heavy on drawing parallels between the two versions. I am also a casual fan of the card game, so there might be some lines referring to the card game dropped as well, since this review might be of interest for the "TCG-informed"-crowd as well.
All in all the concept was interesting enough, but did it work out?

Story (-):
The premise is the same as for the anime version; There's a ridiculously popular card game and now there are schools for people to get good at said card game. The characters go about their campus everyday and play card games with eachother, but their happiness is shaken, when some evil from thousands of years passed comes to claim it's revenge. There's not much to say here; it's the standard YGO-formula. Plot progression is nothing impressive either; this happens and now people have to settle it by playing card games. There's no twist you won't see coming and if something out of the ordinary does happen, it's a predictable alternative twist on what you'd expect to happen anyway. The duels are (as is classical YGO-fashion), for lack of a better word, "rigged". Duelists, as the card game players are called, don't win because their strategy is better (or if we are fair, particularly good), but because the writers favor them in the chapter over their oponnent and make them draw the cards they need. It's predictable, but in all fairness also fun.
Ultimately I enjoyed the first half of the series quite a bit, unfortunately the second left me pretty disappointed. It all becomes rushed and they introduce characters from the second and third season of the anime, mostly (I guess) because they were in the anime, but establish and utilize them poorly.
Not to mention nearly every plot progression, that transpires is mostly, because some super talented duelist has returned to his academy after studying abroad, got followed by a bunch of american duelists and they have to do tournaments and exhibition matches, because of it.

Characters (☆):
I guess I'm merciful today for giving this a star and not a minus, but in all fairness I do like the twist the writer had for the main character. In the anime original, Jaden Yuki (I'll be using the english names, by the way) seems like a tabula rasa at first and we have to wait seasons for the writers to decide what to actually do with him other than him being a generally likeable nice guy, who's talented at card games. The manga Jaden is kind of similair, but he does have a backstory, that ties in well with what is actually happening with the plot. Additionally to this I do like the manga-"Elemental heroes" and "Masked Heroes" he uses.
Then there is Chazz Princeton. In the anime Chazz was an ultimately likable narcissistic duelist with a rich-family background, who thought the world of himself, fell, had to realize he sucks and has to get better, succeeding in the end. Initially as a kid I only liked him, because he happened to use an "Armed Dragon"-deck, which I used back then too, but looking back and considering his anime-character arc, he would have made it as my favourite character regardless. His manga counterpart is not that interesting. Basically they did a 180° spin with him; now he is a prodigy from the start, but people think he only came this far because of his family ties, so he has to prove himself now. This would have been fine, if they didn't establish, that he was a junior champion back in the day, which undermines the fact, that people would not believe into Chazz's abilities. The fact, that his deck is boring, doesn't help the case at all. For some reason the writer kept coming up with random dragons for his deck, that had no purpose other than being relatively strong and it took until the second half, that his ideas ran dry, so he could start repeating cards Chazz already used.
Besides Jaden and Chazz there's also other recurring characters, but I don't really have much to say about them. Bastion Misawa is the same card-game-"bookworm" as he was in the anime, but his infatuation in this series is not directed at a muscular amazon, but at Alexis Rhodes, who with no missing brother character arc, is reduced to being "the girl, whose good at card games". Syrus Truesdale is Jaden's best friend and self proclaimed "little brother", who just like in the anime has big brother issues, just that his relationship is not as distant and dysfunctional as in the early anime.
The villains are relatively stock. Though I must admit, I thought there would be more to David Rabb, the evil jerk character, who ultimately got brushed aside for more panel-time of his more interesting colleague Reggie MacKenzie. The main villain is boring, but I did like the decent build up to his reveal.

Art (☆):
The art is decent. Naoyuki Kageyama is good at tracing the anime's style and only rarely has a panel stood out to me as particularly bad. Of course this also means the art is kind of lacking personality and an individual style, but that's to be expected for a manga like "Yu-Gi-Oh! GX"

Rating system:

As seen above, I use a star system (symbols I have stolen from Yu-Gi-Oh!'s entries here on MAL) to rate the series/movie in terms of four categories, which can indicate its quality. Those ratings do affect the final score I give the series/movie, but I do not use a mathematical method to assign the score. Ultimately I weight the final ratings by considering the stars given. I do not consider the categories to be equivalent and value a good story and characters over good art or a cathcy soundtrack. As far as the stars given go, I use a four stage scale:
(-) - bad, a series/movie is terrible in this category
(☆) - okay, it's fine, tolerable, but likely nothing special
(☆☆) - good, it's good, but may have flaws or isn't quite among the best I've seen in the category
(☆☆☆) - great, the best rating I can give, when it's truely remarkable in the category

As a final verdict, I have to say that I enjoyed the overall experience of the GX-manga, even if my ratings don't reflect this too well. It's what it is, take it or leave it. It's not exactly good, but if you're a fan and want some fun card battles and see an alternative spin on the anime, this will likely satisfy you.

Final score: 4/10