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

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~

A Vengeful Bommer – The Sorrowful Trap, Chariot Pile

Everybody, listen! (or at least everyone interested anyway OTL)

A bit later than I’d hoped, here’s dub-uncut!5D’s episode 21!

So, to catch people up, the official Spanish YGO channel on YouTube flubbed a few uploads of the 5D’s dub such that they ended up uploading a few episodes of the English dub instead of the Latin American dub (21-29)–but with none of 4Kids’s background music! Which meant that I could swoop in and re-insert the original Japanese soundtrack (which I did by matching each track to how it was looped in the episode), but I wanted to do more by also tweaking the dub itself so that not only was it matching the original footage, but the dialogue was more in line with the original dialogue timing-wise (since I couldn’t salvage much of what they changed).  Hence, the “dubbed uncut” gimmick here.

This one was… interesting.  First off, there’s how I had to figure out how to handle the cold open recap, since 20 wasn’t accidentally uploaded BGM-less.  Looking into vocal isolators, I came upon PhonicMind.com and did a test with a quick clip from 20, and it came out surprisingly well! So I got together the audio I needed into one file which I ran through PM and added it into the episode, as seen here.

As for the episode proper, well… While the duel stuff was handled about as you’d expect at this point in 4Kids’s 5D’s–actually, a bit better than average there, tbh–the plot-relevant stuff was… ugh.  They made it so the Staffer who calls up Bommer as he’s reading the email about his village instead calls up “Goodwin’s office” and is surprised to see Greiger there, who’s now “hacking into his files,” edits, in-your-face dialogue, and all.  Since I can’t exactly revoice the Staffer, I had to at least keep that, but I eliminated the in-your-face dialogue so it’s more implied that he’s in there–though as you’re watching this, you should still know it’s Bommer’s own room.  Likewise, I rearranged some of the later dialogue when he’s telling Yusei about his village and mentions the hacking to get around that “hacking” thing.  I also went ahead and translated Bommer’s computer screen to help compliment the dub-uncut thing, though it was a pain getting one of the close-ups cleaned while still keeping the perspective D: And I also thought I’d translate the Key Card sponsor bit since Crunchy still keeps them for some reason, after I cleaned up the Japanese in Photoshop.  Consider it a look at how I’d sub 5D’s, haha.

Speaking of vocal isolating, I also went and sampled some other audio to isolate: I grabbed Rally’s lines from episode 3 to vocal-isolate and echo for the flashback because Rally’s flashback line as-is had the SFX they use for the whooshing-to-and-from-flashback transitions in the dub, and as there’s only a fade as the flashback ends… Related, I also sampled Yusei’s line about summoning Turbo Booster from episode 65 to give it a proper explanation where there should be one, and I nabbed part of the dub’s Junk Warrior chant from episode 87 to throw in.  Let me know what you think about these; I didn’t think they were crazily jarring, but I’m sure you might notice it sounds a bit off compared to the rest of Yusei’s lines here, lol.

Some other modifications I made include recycling one or two “It’s my turn!” lines from Yusei and Greiger for either accuracy or ease in tweaking the SFX to match the original more, using some Duel Links audio for Yusei to the latter effect (Yusei’s “My monster attacks you directly!” to replace “Send his LP to the scrap heap!” over a split-screen SFX), adding a “Whoa!” or two from the MC from a later episode to match JP!MC a bit more, tweaking a later Greiger line to make for an effect explanation, moving a Greiger line to where there wasn’t one thanks to a break to a Card Showcase Interruption, and tweaking some Yusei lines from a later episode for an effect explanation or two.  I also had Yusei shout “Greiger!” as he rides up to stop him from going for Goodwin to match JP!Yusei; dub!Yusei just shouts “No!” which ehhh. 

The music recreation wasn’t too bad, though it did take me a bit to speed up Enemy Attack to match the episode’s use of it at the beginning.  Hopeless Battle does work here, but I still wish we had the official version 😭 I’ve already shared the properly-sped Hopeless Battle on NAC, but I’ll also share this version of Enemy Attack when I post this there.  I also did an alternate take on the Bommer scene at the end where, since “Rage” sounds a lot like “Standstill” from GX, I thought I’d see how it worked.  The answer: surprisingly well!

Overall, happy with how this came out, but lemme know what you think, folks! Going back to work on GX 44 now to get our Amnael showdown started; I’ll probably be doing 45 and 46 shortly after since it’s probably my favorite Season 1 duel.  Then I’ll work on 5D’s 22.  Stay tuned!

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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