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

Some sad news to report here for fellow GX fans, since I haven’t seen it posted: Hiromi Tsuru, best known for her role as Bulma throughout Dragon Ball but known to us Yu-Gi-Oh! fans for her work voicing Yubel’s female side, has passed away.  The article above goes into some of her other notable work, as well; I’m interested to see what Toei does with Bulma now.

For the GX side, Yubel–a bigender card spirit in GX Seasons 3 and 4–is a spirit that Judai had Kaiba Corp send into space; Principal Samejima later tells us it was in the hopes that the Waves of Darkness would help correct Yubel’s corruption, only to have it made worse by the Light of Destruction taking hold of them.  They return, and proceed to essentially (and with minimal spoilers) make Judai’s life hell out of a twisted sense of love towards him.  And then we find out some interesting stuff related to the two of them that you’ll have to see to believe.  Tsuru also reprises her role in the Super Fusion! Bonds Beyond Time movie, as well as the Tag Force 3 PSP game.

Tsuru plays the role well, and it’s a performance that’s pretty unmatched by their voice actress in the 4Kids English dub (but that’s also because they rewrote them to sound more childish for no reason); that and the way their lines make them come across made Yubel one of my favorite characters in the franchise.  And with Duel Links being a thing, I hoped to hear Tsuru come back when Yubel was eventually added, like we did Kanako Irie when she reprised her role as Johan.

RIP, Hiromi Tsuru.