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(Previously: Episodes 87 and 88 Subbed [Finalized])

(Check out my Subbed!GX Stream Masterpost!)

TURN-89: The Hell Kaiser vs Darkness Fubuki

Ryou, now the Hell Kaiser, has returned to the Academia to take part in GeneX.  His best friend Fubuki, scoping out the situation, decides to confront the Hell Kaiser, hoping to return the favor after he had helped save him from his fall to the dark side before.  At last, Fubuki and Hell Kaiser begin their duel, and Fubuki intentionally uses the power of Darkness, summoning Red-Eyes Black Dragon.  Meanwhile, the Hell Kaiser uses…

TURN-90: The Academia’s Pride

Chronos and Vice-Principal Napoleon, anxious about the Academia’s reputation worsening as their students lose to Pro Duelists, get certain characters to take part in GeneX–as their secret weapons.  Meanwhile, Junko and Momoe were dueling the Pro Duelist Sommelier Parker, and just as they were about to surrender their tough bout, Asuka, thought to have entered the Society of Light, appears.  Asuka then takes over Junko and Momoe’s duel and takes on the Sommelier.

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Next duo of episodes is finalized~

Episodes 89 and 90 are a good time; 89 explores more of Ryou’s personality shift (and how sinking so low fighting with his ideals and then discarding them to actually think of winning now has him obsessed with the feeling that comes with it) and the new Cyberdark deck he took from Samejima, along with showing that Darkness is still very much around despite his defeat to Judai in S1 (mainly because for some reason Fubuki kept the card he was trapped in around, though I suppose logically to avoid Darkness potentially getting to someone else lol) which’ll come into play again in Season 4 (better than never, really).  90′s a fun time with more of the tournament currently going on playing out, we get to see Taizan and Motegi again which is nice, and Asuka shows some of her pre-SoL personality is still in there, like with Manjoume.  Also nice to hear Camula’s Theme again as she takes out Sommelier Parker.  The flashback scene with Ryou and Fubuki is also nice (”Just as this lighthouse guides ships at night, everyone’s feelings were the glow that brought me back”) and it would’ve been nice to get that properly after Fubuki recovered, but it works well here.

Editing-wise, there wasn’t too much to fix in 89, though there was a unique one that I wanted to do my best to fix; 90 saw a bunch of card fixes along with one or two quality-of-watching fixes, plus a big translation edit revamping one of the first on-screen ones I’d done when I first subbed episode 90 back around 2012 that looks pretty good now, if I may say so myself, lol.  Details below the cut, as usual, for the interested!

(As a side-note, Sangre Guerrero in 90 is… interesting; the credits list his name as “サンブレ・ゲレロ”/“sanbure guerrero”/”Sombre Guerrero,” which is what I’d originally used, but then I saw Crunchyroll go with “Sangre,” which isn’t what the katakana would back up [”sangure”]–but the more I listened to Manjoume saying his name, the more it did in fact sound like “Sangre.” It wouldn’t be the first time I’d run into a typo in the ending credits–a lot of the animation staff tend to have typos on their names every so often, so it takes me a fair bit of looking into which spellings end up sticking later in the series to decide on consistency–but it was a potential first for a character name, and Japanese Wikipedia and most sites, along with Yugipedia, had spelled it as “sanbure” pulling from the credits.  Unfortunately, he doesn’t have a profile on the official YGO site, and I don’t think he’d had one on any official Japanese one to verify, being such a minor character.  But “sangre” would make sense given his “hot Latino blood” line [”sangre” being Spanish for “blood”], so, given all that, I went with “Sangre” as well. 

Also, I did end up finally catching that the name for Junko’s VA is Tomomi Yachi and not Tomomi Taniuchi as I’d been using per AnimeNewsNetwork; I was hoping that “Yachi” could’ve been a more recent change, but I clicked into her JP Wikipedia page and saw her blogs going back to the time GX was airing in the mid-00s referencing “Yachi,” and Yugipedia does have “Yachi” too, so… going with that now.  I might decide to revise her other episodes, but having lost my OP/EN credit sub files for S1 and early S2, and given she only finally spoke again in 90 after not doing so for… over 30 episodes, I might just end up leaving it.)

Anywho, enjoy, folks–91 and 92 are on tap for next time, ft. our Grim Reaper one-hit card-slinging-slasher one-off, and Pegasus actually dueling as Chronos and Napoleon duel him for a job worrying they might be fired; should be fun to revisit!

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GX Finalized-Subs!89 Preview - Cries from the Dark

GX Finalized-Subs!90 (WIP): The State of GeneX Medal Play
[UPDATE!]

Spent the past week getting work on finalized 89 and 90 going, and since I only had one quick animation fix to work on for 89, I’m onto prepping 90–as part of that, I’m getting to redo one of my first on-screen translation edits, done way back in 2012-ish when I first subbed 90 using only Sony Vegas and Aegisub, iirc. It’s neat to take another crack at it using Photoshop, though I also necessarily had to redo it due to the differences in video quality (I did also use a DVDRip back then, but it was a more manual encode from a different source, iirc, hence the black bars on the side) and the fact that somehow I thought to encode a hardsub into the raw clip… which I wouldn’t have done now, lol.

So, this is Samejima’s computer screen as he looks over GeneX’s progression with our main crew early into the episode; in Photoshop, I first stitched together the screen he scrolls through (on the left), then worked to blank it, painting over the Japanese for most of it. When it came to the DA circle in the middle with the dorm names, I tried to apply a render off DeviantArt, but between the border on each letter and the text not quite matching up, I opted to instead redo some of the letters (mainly the “ISK” in “Obelisk,” done with Times New Roman, and painting over the bottom of the “B” in Blue, while I copy/pasted part of the “R” in “Ra” over the “R” in “Osiris” to cover up the end of the “count” kanji). Got it fully blank by about Wednesday night.

Then, yesterday, I started adding in the English text and got that knocked out easily (final product on the right, with my last go at it in the middle for comparison); I don’t have the original sub file I used for the text here way back (thanks, failing drive in October), but I did remember using the Corbel font for the header there, then also used it for the “Duel Count,” “Medals Won,” and “Primary Cards Used” text, while I used Arial here for the names. I also lengthened the boxes under the latter to fit “Monster/Magic/Trap Cards” to match the original text. Applied a light blur and some noise on the text, as well as a light drop shadow, and voila. Overall, I think it looks much cleaner than the 2012 attempt, though I wish I could figure out how to make the drop shadow a smidge less blurry, but it’ll do.

So, next steps for this is to throw it into Sony Vegas and redo the scrolling, while applying a light screen flicker (which I’ll do using a solid blue every couple frames with a screen blend).

The kicker is trying to make this work in the follow-up scene after the OP with Samejima on top as he scrolls from Misawa to Saiou (which I managed to; see the update reblog linked above!]:

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(Previously: Episodes 85 and 86 Subbed [Finalized])

(Check out my Subbed!GX Stream Masterpost!)

TURN-87: Fight, Ojama Trio! (Part 1)

Manjoume faces off with a pro duelist, winning overwhelmingly using the White Knight Swordsman he wields as a member of the Society of Light.  Seeing that Judai was watching his duel, Manjoume requests a bout with him, but Judai notices that the Ojama Trio aren’t in Manjoume’s deck.  He tracks down the Ojama Trio’s cards, knowing that Manjoume cared for them, and thinks of using their cards to try and return Manjoume to normal.  And so, with the Ojama Trio in tow, Judai and Manjoume duel at last.

TURN-88: Fight, Ojama Trio! (Part 2)

As a member of the Society of Light, Manjoume uses the White Knight Lord card entrusted to him by Saiou to pummel Judai incessantly.  Meanwhile, Judai fights defensively, using the Ojama Trio cards that Manjoume had cared for.  Despite all the attacks he takes, Judai presses on with the Ojama Trio, who appeal to Manjoume about the fact that they were friends.  And then… seeing the rough state the Ojama Trio have been beaten into, Manjoume at last comes to his senses.

(EDIT, 3/9/23: Re-uploaded 88 to correct a sub typo I missed before Judai uses Mystic Wok, and also updated “Cyber Dark Horn” in the preview to “Cyberdark Horn” to match its use in 89.)

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New year, new finalized episodes~

My subs for 87 and 88 are now revised and finalized as we get 2023 underway, and it’s a pretty good duo of episodes.  Judai and Manjoume finally have a rematch to settle their score–well, they would if Manjoume remembered what that score was–and in the process, Judai works to snap him out of his Society of Light brainwashing by using the Ojamas.  Of course, he promptly gets thrown under the bus by them once it works, but they did fight hard to save him; Judai even said stuff that was kinda touching! I do still like the bit where Judai tells Manjoume how angry he is with himself that he couldn’t even tell that his friends lost and were in such dire straits that they joined the SoL (a shame the dub wrote that out), and Ojama Yellow–as beat-up as he is–pleading with Manjoume to remember them before he eventually reclaims his sense of self is such a good scene, between Mariko Nagahama’s acting, the music, and the pained “Manjoume…” (ie, “Listen to the guy…”) from Judai in response.  I also do love how Manjoume’s all “If they want to be clean, I’ll be the thorn in their side soiling things a little!” [paraphrasing], as well as the theme of having been through so much of life’s mud that of course no one would come out unstained.  (Also unfortunate that the dub decides to replace his montage of said stains and the Ojamas helping him overcome them with a focus on Society of Light stuff.)

(Also, fun fact: both episodes were screenwritten by Shin Yoshida, who does get some ire in other parts of the franchise, but in GX it’s interesting that he’s actually the screenwriter for a lot of the fan-favorite episodes [he also goes on to write Dark Johan vs Ryou in Season 3, for example]; his writing both helps them feel cohesive. [They had the same Storyboarder in Noriyoshi Nakamura, too.])

Editing-wise, not as many animation/card fixes as I did for 85 and 86, but there were still a fair amount for these two, and 88 did get more in the way of card error fixes.  All told, I fixed up six errors in 87, and eight in 88.  As always, details under the cut below, if curious!

Enjoy! Next up, will be working on 89 and 90, featuring Hell Kaiser Ryou vs Fubuki (which also sets the stage for Shou’s duel against Ryou in the 90s) and getting a little wine-drunk with Sommelier Parker’s duel against Asuka and more GeneX shenanigans.  Have also been looking forward to 90 specifically to re-do one of my earliest on-screen translation edits with the better editing skills I have now, so stay tuned for that. :)

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Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters GX Episodes 85 and 86 Subbed (Finalized)

(Previously: Episode 84 Subbed [Finalized])

(Check out my Subbed!GX Stream Masterpost!)

TURN-85: A Wielder of the God Card The Divine Winged Dragon of Ra?!

A researcher named Franz appears before Judai, who learns from Pegasus and Hayato Maeda–who rushed over from I2 (Industrial Illusions, Inc.)–of his employment with I2 and the threat he poses by using a copy of the strongest card, The Divine Winged Dragon of Ra. Judai and Franz duel, and right as they start, he summons The Divine Winged Dragon of Ra. By all rights, he should incur a punishment from the God, but he controls said God with the Mound of the Bound Deity Magic Card he himself created. It all comes down to the Skyscraper 2 – Hero City Field Magic that Hayato designed for Judai.

TURN-86: The Runway of Dueling

Just as Judai laments his lack of competition, a drum is suddenly struck amid a flurry of cherry blossoms–from which a pro duelist named Kabukid enters the scene, clad in kabuki clothing, and challenges Judai to a duel. Claiming that pro dueling is about dueling to entertain the audience, Kabukid activates his Kabuki Stage – Great Bridge Field Magic to set a flashy stage. Harboring some doubts about such flashy dueling, Judai…

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(EDIT, 1/21/23: Reuploaded 86 with an additional card error fix, as I missed an earlier instance of Dramatic Pose in Kabukid’s hand after its activation that should’ve been New Year Drum; see #3 in the list below if curious.)

Just narrowly missed getting these out in time for Christmas, but episodes 85 and 86 are finalized! Hope everyone’s having a gentle holiday season, and hopefully these help a bit as these are two of my favorite episodes in Season 2. 85 I definitely remember being pretty hype with Ra–copy or not–showing itself in GX, and both the OST and Pegasus reappearing (as well as some coloring choices in a lot of the scenes to give things a bit more of a grim look [which we saw some of in 82, but it does feel as though the art quality starts to pick up a bit here]) definitely helps add a bit of weight to it. 86 is also a fun one with quite a few Japanese references, and specifically to kabuki theater–so much so that I’d actually popped onto some Japanese-learning forums when first working on 86 back in 2011 for help to decipher some–and has Judai meet someone who’s so into his craft for others that he hadn’t thought of enjoying the process for himself. Definitely is a shame the dub does away with most of the culture nods, understandable as it might be, since the original sound design also adds to the fun feel of the episode, with the drums and vocal interludes here/there, but making Orlando a Broadway actor is probably the best way to adapt Kabukid’s character (though it does make the kabuki callbacks with his deck fall a bit flat). Also got us an OP update as of 85, featuring a disappointed not-Principal Chronos after Samejima’s return [I’ve been waiting to use that new clip since translating the names in the OP as I started finalizing Season 2], as well as one of the few episodes where Judai properly uses Bubbleman’s two effects correctly in 86, lol.)

Interesting as both episodes are, equally interesting (on some level) were some of the animation/card fixes I worked on for them; I fixed up nine errors in 85 and 12 in 86. List below the spoiler, as usual, for the curious! Also including some Translation Notes for 86, as there were a couple of cultural nods throughout.

Enjoy! Next time, it’s a Judai VS Manjoume rematch as Judai tries to undo Saiou’s hold on him, with some help from the O[jama]-Heroes! Shouldn’t stain their friendship too much, hopefully.

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Birth of the ZERO-Turn Kill - Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters GX Finalized-Subs!84 Release Clip

Little YouTube clip I threw up on my channel as a preview for my finalized!84 release! Edited this down enough to not need copyright-block-proofing bars on the video like I usually do, lol. (I put up little clips there as I release these, and you’ll also see clips from the 5D’s “Dub-Uncut” project I worked on [and still am a bit] and other stuff I put up; occasionally I’ll post one of these here.)

The Zero-Turn-Kill’s a pretty cool moment in GX, establishing Saiou’s skill when faced with Ojin’s big Satellite Cannon One-Turn Kill combo (and Judai, being Judai, gives him props for it) while winning him his endgame weapon at the same time. We get other OTKs sprinkled throughout the rest of the franchise (like the WAN TAAN SUREE KIIRU), but it was neat getting one of these.

(Previously: Episodes 82-83 Subbed [Finalized])

(Check out my Subbed!GX Stream Masterpost!)

TURN-84: The Curtain Rises on GeneX! Aim for Number One!

Principal Samejima declares the start of a Dueling World Cup*, a large dueling tournament in which Academia Island serves as the stage for the students and Pro Duelists participating.  Saiou duels a celebrity from a powerful country in Europe, Prince Ojin, who boasts of victory through a One-Turn Kill, and Saiou himself predicts that the duel will end before his turn arrives.  The ATK of the Prince’s Satellite Cannon becomes 4000, and it begins an attack aimed at Saiou…

*“Dueling World Cup” is how the GeneX Tournament seems to have been described in the pre-airing episode summary for this episode.

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Well, then…

After a few unintended hiccups and the resulting recovery–as previously mentioned–episode 84 has finally been finalized! I guess if there’s ever a better time for one to experience hard drive issues, it’d be right as we kick off an obligatory tournament arc, haha.  Principal Samejima, after his duel with Ryou last time, returns to the Duel Academia to announce the start of the GeneX Tournament–one which he’s spent months traveling abroad to organize and bring in some heavy-hitting talent for.  As things kick off, Saiou engages one of those heavy hitters, a prince from a small European country, for a duel to win control of the SOLA laser satellite they’ve launched–one with the power to brainwash wipe out all life on Earth.  It’s a good transition episode, setting up GeneX’s rules and also a key factor in Season 2’s endgame through the introduction of Ojin and SOLA, while giving Shou, Kenzan, and newly-White Misawa some dueling time.  We’ll see that, at some points, it kinda feels like GeneX is on the backburner, but it’s a good backdrop for a few things that’ll happen in this part of the season.

Part of the delay with this one, the aforementioned hiccups aside (which mostly covered October), was handling a few animation and card fixes for this episode; one in particular was a pretty complex one to work on but still came out well.  Details below the cut, as usual, for the curious!

Enjoy, and hope those celebrating enjoyed their time with friends/family this Thanksgiving! Next up, I think I’ll be going back to double releases to make up for some lost time, so 85 and 86’ll be on the way after a short little break the next couple days, though I did begin some work on them already over the last few weeks. (Doing just 84 and then more doubles works nicely, since there are a few two-parters coming up that I’ll be able to get out this way.) Stay tuned!

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GX Finalized-Subs!84 (WIP): Hot Under the Double? Collar

So, as previously mentioned, after the snafus I ran into the past month or two, I’ve gotten to work on finalizing my subs for episode 84–expect that to drop tonight or tomorrow–and one of the animation fixes I prepped for it involves the new character we’re introduced to in this scene: one Prince Ojin. As he’s talking to his assistant Lind about what duelists to expect in Samejima’s GeneX Tournament, he says he’ll bury his opponents with his One-Turn Kill move, but as he’s turning away from Lind to face a nearby desk in the next scene, we see here that the In-Between Animator here kept the initial positioning of his collar behind the collar that’s moving with his head, causing him to effectively have two collars for these four frames of movement (16 frames altogether), lol.

Wasn’t too bad to fix; I removed the initial collar from these frames in Photoshop, then threw them into the video in Sony Vegas, applying a mask around the area I cleaned up to keep it looking consistent, et voila.

(Previously: Episodes 80-81 Subbed [Finalized])

(Check out my Subbed!GX Stream Masterpost!)

82: Misawa VS Manjoume – The Assault Cannon Beetle

As a consequence of being the only one uninvited by the Society of Light, Misawa anxiously wonders if he is being thought of as weak.  He confronts Saiou himself, who says that he will leave the island if beaten in a duel, but Manjoume duels Misawa in his stead.  Manjoume fuses his three new Union Monsters to summon “Assault Cannon Beetle” (ATK/ 2800), using the Ojamas as bullets to reduce Misawa’s LP down to 1600.  Misawa’s intellectual “focus ahead” plays get him far, but…

83: Hell Kaiser Ryou VS Master Samejima

In search of a powerful, locked-away deck, Hell Kaiser Ryou pays a visit to his old Cyber Style Dueling Master–one Principal Samejima–and the teacher and student duel.  Ryou summons Cyber End Dragon right off the bat, but Samejima defends himself with a copy of his Monster.  Playing to the “soft and fair goes far” proverb, Samejima’s Cyber Ogre absorbs the ATK of Ryou’s Monster, its own ATK reaching 4000, but Ryou evades that using Cyber Laser Dragon.  Samejima snatches Ryou’s Cyber End Dragon with a Trap Card, leading to his final decisive moves…

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Episodes 82 and 83 are now finalized! Misawa’s anxiety over the way he’s perceived leads him to join the Society of Light, while Ryou decides he’s come as far as he can with just Cyber End and visits his dojo-master-turned-Principal Samejima for some secret cards.  Manjoume’s Beetrons were actually neat, and while I’m sure I was doubtful of how Misawa joining the SOL made sense years back, I do think it does now given the context of Misawa’s wanting recognition and not being the odd man out (and Ed’s putting it into words also puts a different lens on his early Season 1 self).  For 83, admittedly the Cyber Style stuff does come a bit out of nowhere (the Japanese blog I reference for lines occasionally also thought so lol), but it’s believable enough for GX, and does give us some more background on Ryou’s childhood to juxtapose with his current “I only need victory, respect be damned” self.  Samejima finally making his return after Season 1 as his dojo master was also a bit cool, ngl, and hey, turns out he was working on our upcoming tournament arc!

Had a few animation/card and other quality-of-watching fixes I handled for each episode, hence the slight delay, and for 83′s hardsub, I also translated an article Shou was reading about Ryou’s rise as Hell Kaiser.  Details below the cut, as usual, for the curious.

Enjoy, folks–with these done and the GeneX arc about to start, I think the next release will just be episode 84 to set it up and also take a light breather, and then I’ll resume my catch-up double-releases with 85 and 86, which’ll coincide with an update to the OP (plus, that way I also don’t leave half of Judai vs Manjoume or Judai vs Asuka hanging on a cliff later lol).  Stay tuned!

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GX Finalized-Subs!82 Preview: “A ’slacker’?!”

Quick little preview since it’s been 2-3 weeks since my last 82 update, now that I’ve finalized 82’s script~

Also, for good reading, @silvormoon (and others in the notes!) wrote up a great analysis on Misawa’s character here which you can see this scene and his desire to be noticed (which plays into his loss later) factoring into.

Need me some meta analysis of Misawa’s character progression from “You might make a nice rival, #1-kun” to “what’s wrong with wanting your skills to be recognized?” that doesn’t boil down to “they didn’t know what to do with him or his cards so they made him a joke lol”

(Previously: Episodes 77-79 Subbed [Finalized])

(Check out my Subbed!GX Stream Masterpost!)

80: Alice in Despairland

A beautiful transfer student named Alice has appeared at the Red dorm.  Kenzan goes crazy about Alice, but a doubtful Misawa comes to know of a puzzling rare card with the same name.*  That night, Judai finds out that Alice immensely detests duelists and is trying to capture Kenzan, leading Judai to duel Alice.  Alice summons zero-ATK doll parts one after another before summoning Doll Chimera, a doll that they haphazardly combine into.  With each attack Doll Chimera takes, its parts increase and its ATK steadily rises…

*This part seems to reference the bit from the end of 79 of Misawa researching the Alice in Despairland card–since this was included in one of these episode spoilers from the time, it looks like it really was cut from the episode more last-minute.

81: A Quiz Duel?! VS Quizzer Panel 9

Kanda the Quiz King, who has secretly fallen in love with Asuka, happens to find Asuka arguing with Judai and challenges him to a duel.  Kanda uses a Quiz deck based around activating the Quiz Hour Permanent Magic.  Once he does, he becomes cheery, as if his personality changed, and with each of Judai’s attacks, he presents him with a challenge as a quiz-show host would.  Judai clears the test-of-strength tasks, but gets the dueling-knowledge challenges completely wrong, causing his LP to fall…

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Episodes 80 and 81 are now finalized! Two episodes more on the breather side after our Field Trip of Hell, as Judai and co get back to Duel Academia and run into a Duel Spirit from Wonderl–I mean, Despairland, whose card was mistreated and made it want revenge.  I do wonder if there would’ve been more nightmare fuel with the shot that was shown in 79′s TV airing that went unused in this episode, but Doll Chimera is plenty creepy on its own too.  81′s a favorite since the premise of Kanda’s deck is really unique, and I always did wish they’d print his cards, lol.  It’s also interesting because Kanda’s shy love for Asuka and the way he’s all “If you don’t stop this I’ll have to duel you” to Judai, as I mentioned before, is likely inspired by the Densha Otoko/”Train Man” story, down to the forum posts as he asks for love advice.  It was also nice to hear some OST we haven’t heard since Season 1, and Burstlady’s summon animation in this episode is one of my favorites, making her look pretty cool, lol.

Part of the delay here was handling a fair amount of card/animation fixes and translation edits (for 81) between both episodes, including a few big card ones for episode 80; more details below the cut, for the interested. :)

Enjoy, folks! These should be up on NAC in a day or two.  Next time, we’ll be tackling episodes 82 and 83–Misawa wanting to join the Society of Light(?!) and the return of one interesting Principal–so stay tuned for those! Once those are done, we’ll be hitting the GeneX arc of Season 2, which I’m looking forward to revisiting.

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