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

lucidiux:

Rewatching GX, and I just wanted to point something out here; Shou is clearly and audibly very upset about this, but Judai seems to brush this off rather quickly. You could argue that Judai is simply trying to cheer him up, or get him to overcome his fears, and you may be right to some degree, but I think we can all agree that there are much friendlier methods of doing this. Instead, he brushes Shou’s anxiety off, rather than addressing it, which is rather invalidating and proves that Judai is more interested in his own self-fulfillment than the state of his friends/friendships. 

Now, maybe this isn’t the greatest scene to prove this point, since the ‘Benkei’ in question is Kenzan, who turns out to be pretty much harmless, but Judai doesn’t know that. And yes, the bridge which they’ll have to cross is on their way anyway (meaning they’ll have to face Kenzan at some point) but he seems to treat this fact like a game. He’s not doing a service, or defending the academia’s dueling honor;

He’s doing this for himself.