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

VS Ed (Part 1) - E-Heroes VS E-Heroes

Out of an attempt to decide which of them is the true Hero user, a duel begins between Judai and Ed.  Judai lands the first strike with Flame Wingman, but Ed immediately summons Phoenixguy from the same Fusion Materials for a draw between them.  The battle heats up further into a battle of high-level E-Hero fusions as Shining Flare Wingman takes on Shining Phoenixguy, all while Ed refuses to approve of how Judai is so nonchalantly inspired by his Heroes.

VS Ed (Part 2) - The D-Heroes of Destiny

Judai’s duel versus Ed continues with Ed activating his Clock Tower of Seclusion Field Magic, which eerily marks the hour of destiny.  He goes on to summon his D-Hero series of Monsters one after the other–a group of Monsters said to freely manipulate time itself with destiny as their guide, and which are more advanced than even the E-Heroes.  Judai suffers by way of a combo which deprives him of his own Heroes as they’re thrown several turns into the future, only to be manipulated into attacking by the enemy upon their return.  And at last, the D-Hero imprisoned within the Clock Tower shows himself…

So, there are several duels I’ve been looking forward to revisiting as I finalize my subs, and these two episodes, which give us the first real match between Judai and Ed, are easily in the top ten.  After I first fansubbed Season 3 in late high school and circled back to Seasons 1 and 2 while I was in college, I eventually burned these episodes onto a DVD and kept flicking them on whenever I was bored–safe to say a lot of the dialogue sounds pretty familiar by now, lol.

That’s how well these episodes hit, though–after he just took out the Kaiser without even lifting a finger (as Venomas6 pointed out on NAC in a great analysis on the episode, Ed literally won without ever inflicting his own damage on him–every single LP the Kaiser lost was his own doing), it’s our first real look at Ed as a character and what drives him beyond just the pro duelist prodigy we’ve been told he is; we dig more into his belief in fate (which we’ll circle back to once we learn more of his dynamic with Saiou), and of course, we touch onto the biggest difference between him and Judai while also planting the seeds for some further development down the line (the “D-Hero imprisoned within the Clock Tower” bit, for example, hinting at the DD duel later on and the assessment he makes about Ed).  Between that, the duel itself being our first look at these new Destiny antiHeroes, Judai’s second loss (😲) which sets up some introspection for a few episodes, 59′s pacing in general, “YEEHAWWW”… What’s not to love about these? (Besides how the dub handled a lot of the dialogue around a “hero’s burden” [which, hello Season 3 foreshadowing] or made Ed’s dad “disappear”–though it’s funny we totally forget about Junko and Momoe in 59 lol)

In terms of animation fixes, 58 saw a couple of little footage fixes that were missed by the animators, but 59 saw a fair amount of that and card fixes–all told, I did 18 different fixes for the latter, which is why these kinda took a while to finish lol.  List below the cut, as usual. (EDIT 10/18/21: I went back and tackled fixing Judai’s Hero Kid being shown as a Normal Monster before it turns white after Judai loses and refinalized 59 accordingly, since I opted to do it for the flashback in 67; fixed it in 59 first, then applied most of the work in 67–I included details on this below.)

Enjoy, folks! With these done, I’ll be getting work started on GX 60 and Fubuki’s antics to try and get that out soon-ish; having already revised the script for GoldenUmi’s release of the Duel Selection episodes (where they remastered fan-favorite episodes from each series) on NAC a while back, it shouldn’t take too long, and then I’ll go and finish up my 5D’s Dub-Uncut mini-project with 5D’s 29.  Stay tuned~

(Check out my handy masterpost with streaming links to my subs here)

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shysheeperz:

yugiohoutofcontext:

:

edo: i use a d-hero deck bc they are all i have left of my father who was murdered.

judai, who uses an e-hero deck, bc they are himbos and he is gay: i use my deck for a reason also.

yugiohoutofcontext:

houseofcardgames:

Can we talk about the fact that when The Fool spread darkness to one of Judai’s cards in season 4, the specific card it infected was polymerization

This is the same exact card that held all of Judai’s trauma from when he was possessed by the supreme king’s power in season 3– to the point where he had to stop using it because the memories it brought on was making him physically sick. When he finally used it against Johan!Yubel, he had to fight off being physically sick from the trauma it unlocked.

When season 4 rolls around we learn that the adversary Darkness is essentially the negative emotions, the anxiety depression and all of that that people carry with them, and that it can infect duelists’ cards if they associate them with negative emotions. Judai’s deck is fine at first because he has a strong bond with his deck and the spirits, as well as protection via Yubel’s soul fused with his own, but when Saio snuck the darkness infected Fool into his deck the one card that it affected was the one card that was shown to carry his past trauma. And once again, it ends up making him physically sick to carry with him to the point of nearly collapsing.

This probably seems very obvious, but this means that Judai’s darkness is 100% the fear of losing himself again. And if you ask me, it hints at the possibility that he very well could lose control of the gentle darkness power he holds and become the supreme king again. In fact it may be Yubel themself that prevents this, as at the start of the final duel against true Darkness, Judai’s eyes(full of rage and hatred no doubt) turn the supreme king’s golden color before Yubel’s multi chromatic eye color.

I had a final point but I lost it but I’ll just leave off with this being one of the reasons why Judai is and will always be my favorite yugioh protagonist. His character development is just. Some of the most extensive I’ve seen in the franchise so far, and is actually very relatable to me.