𓅔 Lost in the Reeds 𓅔

Judai says "I've merely grown up," but clearly he has not. When you're a child, and especially when something very traumatizing happens to you as a child (like, for example, all of your friends dying before your eyes as they all list the reasons they hate you) it becomes very easy to think that being an "adult" is seeing that there's no good left in the world and that everything is evil forever, that acting "grown up" is to stop feeling stupid things like fun or happiness, that "maturity" is being cruel and callous. But in truth, this is just as immature and childish as Judai's previous naive, have-fun-no-matter-what attitude. Because while the world isn't all fun and games, neither is it all evil and hatred. Both extremes represent an incomplete worldview. And we see this when O'Brien says that Haou is just an illusion of Judai's heart, something he made to protect himself. Because that's the reason people take on this attitude in real life; they think they are protecting themselves from the cruelty of the world, when in reality they are also locking themselves away from its joys.

Kaiser's last words to Judai are "you are no longer a child." He does not say "you are an adult/you've grown up," because Judai is still stuck in this in-between state. He is (understandably) distraught over the horrible things he's done and has no idea how to cope with it. Both of the views he held about the world got lots of people killed, which is a rather forward way of telling the audience that both of these perspectives are bad and each "childish" in their own ways. So by now, Judai realizes that he was wrong on both accounts, but he still doesn't know what it is to be an adult... I wonder if he'll figure it out?

Judai goes missing for a while following his fusion with Yubel, and when he returns to DA he now looks older.

Longer hair (without its cute little beansprout), sharper eyes and (later) his turtleneck and badass gravity-defying jacket duly reminiscent of his predecessor, Yugi/Yami (and his successor, Yusei!) who are all in their own rights "adults." This is getting away from my original point, I just really like the way that Judai has to earn his stripes, in a sense. His growth is a really special thing to witness. I also like that we aren't shown what he does/sees while he's missing - growing up is, after all, a private journey, one that each person has a unique experience of.

It's also nice that his journey isn't complete following season 3's finale. Growing up doesn't just happen in a few days, after all. Judai is still callous and depressed in season 4. He self-isolates, is cold towards his friends, and in many ways still has no idea what he's doing.

But with a little help, in the show's finale he regains the thing that he lost: his sense of fun. He realizes that adulthood is a balance between fun and responsibility, not falling too far into either extreme.