"Any card—so long as it exists—has a power that is needed."
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More people should realize just how much Syrus/Sho grew throughout GX and not judge him just on how he was at the beginning of the series. At the start, he was a lazy student and barely got into Duel Academy. At the end, he was valedictorian, hard working and focused on his studies, and is a very good duelist.
Not sure if it’s been mentioned in some of the reblogs (because thank you Tumblr for changing the note format way back for no raisin), but it’s not so much that Shou was a lazy student as it was that he was lacking self-confidence. When Judai’s all cocky about being #1 despite scoring lower than he did on the Entry Exams, he outright says he’s jelly of him for that–also kind of where his reason for calling him “Big Bro” comes in–and he spends a lot of Season 1 still doubting himself, especially because things didn’t work when he was cocky–as we find out in a flashback–years before. (“I’ll do a handstand naked!”) He gets a boost from his Tag Duel against the Meikyuu Brothers, but it’s not ‘til Season 2 that he starts coming into his own a bit confidence-wise; his duel with Ran/Missy being the tipping point. Then there’s Season 3 and how he’s trying to reconcile dueling respectfully with the Dis-Duels and his development over whether or not he should choose to look after Judai after he’s the Supreme King. And then there’s Season 4 where he picks up an important duel from Hell Kaiser and outright says that they and the Cyber Style won’t give in to Jinzo-using-guy-whose-name-currently-escapes-me, he gets used to the Cyberdark Deck, and even resolves to build a new Pro League with the Kaiser.
Shou grows a lot over the course of GX. :’)