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

The One With the Zero Love Life

Manjoume can’t hold back his love for Asuka.  Pushed to it by Fubuki, he steals the seven Spirit Gates’ keys and forces Asuka into a duel.  While Manjoume uses the Love Letter and Hidden Feelings cards, he soon becomes crazed about his love.  He keeps Asuka from summoning Monsters with his Ojama Token and Ojama King and is close to seizing victory, but Asuka seeks to turn things around with her Cyber Angel…

*crashes in months later with Starbucks*

Finally have this completed for you folks! Apologies for the hold-up, it’s been a veery busy month, lol.  So, here we have an iconic episode now finalized: Manjoume VS Asuka, fueled in part by Fubuki’s bad habit of being there for those in love.  It’s entertaining for sure, though it does make clear that Manjoume’s feelings were a bit one-sided… 😅 

Part of the delay with this was working on some of the animation fixes I did here, and doing them for 48-49 too since I want to try and work on them next in quicker succession.  List of 47′s fixes below the cut, as usual.

Enjoy! I’ll be working on 48 next as we get the final villain showdown of Season 1 done in Judai VS Kagemaru, which is a good two-parter; I’ll be trying to do a double-release for them, so stay tuned!

(Update [1/24/21]: Revised to make Asuka’s Chapel of Blessings – Ritual Church Field Magic’s name consistent with episode 60, which was just finalized.)

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It’s surprisingly cool to see an official outlet like Crunchyroll acknowledge YGO ‘98 tbh  (Maybe a video highlighting the differences between those manga chapters and that anime in the future? I know fans have compiled the differences going back a while…)

Neat video series they have going here; I have to go back and watch their DM-centric episode (though this one kinda was too despite the title lol), but it’s good that they’re showing a wide audience that there’s more to YGO than the damage 4Kids did to the show.

That said, my one nitpick here…

…is iT’S ARC-“FIVE” not “V” 🤦‍♂️ 

And it should be “ZEAHL” not “Zexal” based on the Japanese pronounciation tho to be fair 4Kids ruined that too lol 

Otherwise, it’s a fun video! (If a tiiiny bit of cringe, lol.) 

I would’ve noted that the reason the cards were edited the way they were was/is to skirt by FCC regulations around advertising on TV animation; something about making sure the cards were sufficiently different from their IRL counterparts.  It’s actually suspected that 4Kids may have been behind getting the ZeXal animation team to switch the realistic card backs they were using back to an anime-unique one, this time the one with the swirl, though I doubt there’s been confirmation (they were known to have influence on the Japanese side of Pokemon, so who knows).  Though it makes for funny situations when reading or changing card text becomes a thing, lol.

I also still laugh at how they handled the end of 5D’s because they edited the footage to make the Ark Cradle ascend back into the sky as Aporia’s defeated, then cut off the episode RIGHT BEFORE SHIT GETS REAL with the sky cracking and the Ark crashing through 😂 

For the casual fan reading, if you’re curious about the changes made to the YGO DM run, yu-jyo.net offers comprehensive episode summaries showing off the changes made to both the dialogue and the footage, which is well worth the time to read.  I had a similar one for 5D’s (and wanted to eventually do GX), and you can check it out on the Wayback Machine here (I’m in the middle of trying to get a new website host to set it up on, lol).  I occasionally do some on my Tumblr too, including a bit of ARC-V! 

(Also not sure Exodia works that way… 😶)

The One With the Evil Final Exam - Part 1

Six of the keys to the seven Spirit Gates have been used.  Judai heads to the Abandoned Dorm, where he finds Daitokuji’s mummified corpse.  The last of the Seven Stars, Amnael, shows himself, and a duel between Judai and Amnael begins.  His foe has a deck based around alchemy, and each time Judai attacks with his multi-Attribute E-Heroes, he’s stopped by the Permanent Trap Elemental Absorber.  Monsters also continue to emerge from Alchemic Kettle - Chaos Distill, waging direct attacks on him…

GX Episode 46: An Earth/Water/Fire/Wind Fusion! Elixirer 

(The One With the Evil Final Exam - Part 2)

The duel between Judai and Amnael continues, and it turns out that Amnael is Daitokuji, as is the mummified corpse.  He confesses that his current form is the result of the power of alchemy allowing him to attach his soul to a doll body.  The field of battle changes as he uses his Macrocosmos Permanent Trap and Helios the Primordial Sun and his second Sun, taking them into outer space, where the planets surrounding them have Asuka, Manjoume, and Fubuki locked away.  Judai takes hits from Planet Alignment just as the third Sun shows itself…

Here’re episodes 45 and 46! If you haven’t already seen, I posted 44 yesterday.  Here, we see the Judai/Amnael duel play out, as Judai deals with the issue of Elemental Absorber blocking his attacks, the revelation that Amnael’s the professor they’ve been worried sick about, and their duel reaching new heights–literally–as things burn up in outer space.  It’s a pretty fun duel, Amnael’s Alchemy Beasts are neat, the whole duel is chock-full of alchemy references–for those newer to the fandom, I recommend some of The Mad Poet’s writings on alchemy references in GX from *checks notes* nine years ago whaaat for some fun trivia–right down to the name Judai gives Elixirer’s attack, “Fusionist Magistery” (”Magistery” referencing the Philosopher’s Stone in meaning, and when attached to “Fusionist” completes Daitokuji’s attribution of alchemy to fusion).

The animation work in 46 is also good, and the episode feels like it gets better once they’re in space; things seem pretty well-paced, the music is on-point, and with the lessons Judai’s made to take in from the duel, this duel stands out among those in Season 1.

However, the dub seriously did this series of episodes dirty–most notably in 46.  Where Amnael here is relating alchemy to Judai’s use of Fusion and alluding to his making friends as a form of alchemy, dub!Amnael plants the idea of Jaden’s duels being fixed to get him to this point where his key would be on the line.  It’s a bad writing change because, despite his life being on the line, Daitokuji is still there and is still a Professor to Judai, and he wants to see him do better; 4Kids instead ends up making him look much more antagonistic only to try and undo it towards the end (writing out Daitokuji’s explanation of alchemy’s true use in the process).  I’ll have to get around to a dub/sub comparison for this one…

Some other Translation Notes that aren’t necessary but do enhance the viewing experience:

Amnael’s attack name for Helios Duo Megistus, “Flames of Vulcanus,” refers to Vulcan, “the god of fire (including the fire of volcanoes, deserts, metalworking, and the forge) in ancient Roman religion and myth.”

“What lies below is as above, just as what lies above is as below.” was me making a more aesthetically pleasing subtitle out of “as above, so below,” which is a phrase from Hermeticism; “The actual text of that maxim, as translated by Dennis W. Hauck from The Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus, is: “That which is Below corresponds to that which is Above, and that which is Above corresponds to that which is Below, to accomplish the miracle of the One Thing.” Thus, whatever happens on any level of reality (physical, emotional, or mental) also happens on every other level. This principle, however, is more often used in the sense of the microcosm and the macrocosm. The microcosm is oneself, and the macrocosm is the universe. The macrocosm is as the microcosm and vice versa; within each lies the other, and through understanding one (usually the microcosm) a person may understand the other.^[36]“

As I said in 44′s post, the animation fixes I was working on for 45 were part of the reason these were delayed (along with SOCIAL ACTIVITY), but it was good to get them done; 45 saw five fixes (three card-related), while 46 had three (one card-related).  List below the cut, as usual. (EDIT, 2021: Two new fixes applied in 46, listed in bold under the cut!)

Enjoy, everyone! Thanks for your patience if you were looking forward to these.  With these done, I’ll start prepping a few things for 47 now, but I’ll actually take a little break to work on the next 5D’s Dub-Uncut for episode 22 (I may squeeze in some scripting here/there tho).  Let’s see how I can improve that mess…

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The One With the Endgame Setup (and Underwear)

With Professor Daitokuji missing, worries amount that he may have lost to the Seven Stars, so Judai and the others head to a dark forest to look for him.  Elsewhere, Asuka pursues a missing Fubuki only to duel a mysterious duelist and the last of the Seven Stars, but their overwhelming power gap leads to her defeat.  Manjoume also pursues clues about Daitokuji only to meet the mysterious duelist; they duel but he loses.  Is Daitokuji safe? And what is the identity of this mysterious duelist?

*crashes in weeks late with Starbucks* WHAT’S HAPPENING Y’ALL

But really, apologies for the delay in getting this finalization done for you all! Truth is, 44 was done a while ago, but because this is leading to one of my top Season 1 duels, I wanted to put it out alongside 45 and 46 for a nice triple-feature… but some animation fixes I worked on for 45, combined with work and SOCIAL ACTIVITY happening IRL, made me take longer than expected to finish it up and then knock out 46, which I just did the other day. 😒

This is a good build-up episode for the main Amnael duel coming up in 45 and 46, though! Detective Thunder reprises his duties and we get some shots of a shadowed Amnael being a silent badass.  Poor Mrs. Tome getting mistaken for evil though; she’s one of the purest in this show.  The animation work is also great this episode.

Enjoy, folks! Check out the post with 45 and 46 here~

The One With the Boi

A young man known as “Boy,” a hit in the world of gambling, has stormed into the Academia, selling himself into being a member of the Seven Stars opposition.  The Boy is challenged by his old friend Asuka to a duel.  The Boy’s tactics revolve around dueling by calling coin flips with his Gambler Deck.  He gets two coin tosses through his Second Chance and always guesses his flips right.  However, Asuka has had her eye on the Boy’s one weakness since childhood…

Here’s finalized!43! A nice bit of development for Asuka is always welcome, as it shows us some more on her dueling philosophy, and it was interesting to see an old classmate of hers in the Boy.  I do like how we see hints of his way of thinking and then Asuka calls it out right towards the end.  Also features one of the few uses of the “A Fresh Morning” tune from GX Sound Duel 1 at the beginning, and it’s a really nice track.

Thankfully, not much in the way of fixes this episode! Though the one fix with Judai’s hair in one shot did bug me a little; I flip-flopped between just painting over the miscolored section or just using the recolor tool in Photoshop, and while I went with the latter and it still kiinda sticks out, I do think using the former would’ve stuck out more lol.  List below the cut~

Enjoy, folks! Think I’ll get to work on dub-uncut!5D’s #21 for a bit, then work on GX 44.  Looking forward to revisiting the Amnael stuff, as it’s some of my favorite Season 1 content!

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