"Any card—so long as it exists—has a power that is needed."

The One With the Boi

A young man known as “Boy,” a hit in the world of gambling, has stormed into the Academia, selling himself into being a member of the Seven Stars opposition.  The Boy is challenged by his old friend Asuka to a duel.  The Boy’s tactics revolve around dueling by calling coin flips with his Gambler Deck.  He gets two coin tosses through his Second Chance and always guesses his flips right.  However, Asuka has had her eye on the Boy’s one weakness since childhood…

Here’s finalized!43! A nice bit of development for Asuka is always welcome, as it shows us some more on her dueling philosophy, and it was interesting to see an old classmate of hers in the Boy.  I do like how we see hints of his way of thinking and then Asuka calls it out right towards the end.  Also features one of the few uses of the “A Fresh Morning” tune from GX Sound Duel 1 at the beginning, and it’s a really nice track.

Thankfully, not much in the way of fixes this episode! Though the one fix with Judai’s hair in one shot did bug me a little; I flip-flopped between just painting over the miscolored section or just using the recolor tool in Photoshop, and while I went with the latter and it still kiinda sticks out, I do think using the former would’ve stuck out more lol.  List below the cut~

Enjoy, folks! Think I’ll get to work on dub-uncut!5D’s #21 for a bit, then work on GX 44.  Looking forward to revisiting the Amnael stuff, as it’s some of my favorite Season 1 content!

Fixes!

1. As Asuka reacts to Gamble Angel Bunny about to possibly deal more damage, the screen quickly shoots over to Judai and co, but Judai’s hair highlights look a bit darker than usual; I recolored it by getting the color from a different frame, then using the Recolor Tool in Photoshop over the four frames of movement before reworking it into the video in Vegas.  I originally tried to fill the color in after drawing out a path with the Pen Tool then giving it a Gaussian Blur to blend in, but I thought it still kinda stuck out and it overwrote some of the outline around the highlights.  The recolor still seems a bit off to me, but not as much as the original unfixed coloring.
2. This was more of a Quality of Life fix, but I noticed as Mitsuo was calling his three heads for Sand Gambler post-Second Chance, the split-screens for each coin were zooming to the side differently; as the first two are on-screen and Mitsuo’s face starts slipping in, the first coin’s split-screen and Mitsuo’s move but the second coin’s doesn’t.  I masked out the second and third split-screens to move them manually for 2-3 frames, masking in the border around them.