#not comparisons

Season 1 and the Core Cast

Professor Chronos: represents the worst of the system, uplifting those already at the top and condemning those at the bottom as a way to reinforce his own status as a professor at the school. This is our best and brightest. You at the bottom will never be like him. You don't belong here. We are better than you. His entire character arc is about coming to value all his students, no matter their rank, and that as a teacher at DA he still has a lot to learn from his students as well.

Judai: the heroic underdog, the one to buck the system. He simply does not care about his low status; he's here by choice, which episode 4 spells out for you by having him decline promotion. I don't need to be at the top, I'm just as good at the bottom.

Judai's rank and how it bears upon his character arc deserves more than the blurbs I'm writing here. More on that to come.

Manjoume: the elite rival, figurehead of the system. Starts out as Chronos's golden child/poster child, used as a prop to reinforce the existing social structures and then discarded when he's judged to no longer be useful (a dynamic that also applies to his siblings, but I'm calling that out of scope for this post for my sanity). It's no coincidence that when he reinvents himself as somebody who hit rock bottom and learned from it to find his worth outside of rank, he embraces a color scheme independent of any dorm. He mostly stays in Red and thrives there, despite his complaints; even when he returns to Blue for real in season 4, the change in rank doesn't change his attitude.

Shou: Originally Judai's buddy in the Red dorm, a lowly Red who did even worse than Judai on the entrance exams (Judai was #110, Shou was #119) to contrast his elder brother at the top of the school's rankings.

In a way Shou is a DA success story in how he starts at the bottom and gradually rises to the top throughout the series. Shou's character arc is overall about his growth as a duelist, motivated by his respectful dueling philosophy but shown with his rank as he changes dorms each season. Even in season 3 when he achieves Blue offscreen and voluntarily demotes to Yellow, that too is tied to his arc: he doesn't feel he's earned the Blue rank until he has a stronger grasp on his respectful dueling, and by season 4 he's confident enough that he has earned it - to the point where his brother, once the pinnacle of dueling and Blue's ace student, acknowledges that Shou has surpassed him.

Hayato: Judai's other Red buddy, and as I've said in previous reviews the best representative of the average Red student. He's been failed by a flawed system that judges him by metrics he doesn't excel with, taking away his love for the game until Judai's example helps him rediscover his true strengths and passions. Demonstrates that students can have strengths outside the system - Hayato eventually discovers his calling as an artist and remains in the dueling world as a card designer, not a pro duelist.

Asuka: the "good" Obelisk Blue, who helps show that not all students in the Elitism and Bullying dorm are elitist bullies. (Even Momoe and Junko have elitist attitudes and make a lot of digs at Judai's rank, so they're not exempt.) Literally, in episode 2 she comes in to tell off Manjoume and call him lousy to demonstrate she's more sympathetic to Judai. There's also something to be said about how all girls are automatically assigned to Obelisk but. Sigh. Frankly there aren't enough hard details about that bit of lore that I want to get into it for the purposes of this post.

Misawa: the only main cast member in the Ra Yellow dorm at the start of the series, albeit at the top of the Yellow class. Though he's in the middle class, Misawa has high potential in a way that means people expect a lot from him in the future in contrast to his rival Judai, who has high potential that is often discounted because of his low rank. He declines promotion to Blue until he feels he's earned it, but covets the recognition of that higher rank all the same.

And while Misawa after season 1 gets a lot of mixed reviews, there's something to be said about how in season 2 people have higher expectations of Judai and lower expectations of Misawa compared to how they were initially set up. Like Hayato, Misawa ultimately finds his ending outside of the DA school structure (this time with Zweinstein's research and rebuilding with Tania rather than Hayato's card design).

Kaiser: the perfect student. The pinnacle of DA's student body and Judai's first defeat in the series. Despite being an elite of the kind Chronos loves to point to for his own ends, Kaiser willingly breaks the boundary of dorms for his interest in Judai - first suggesting him as DA's rep in episode 21, then requesting Judai as his graduation duel opponent in the season 1 finale. He explicitly draws the contrasts between them: Kaiser, the student who's reached the height of perfection and stands at the top, versus Judai, who's at the bottom but has infinite potential that could surpass Kaiser's perfection.

Despite being at the top, in season 2 Kaiser finds that being at the top of his school, all the acclaim he received and the respect he got as the top Blue student...didn't prepare him for the real world and the pro leagues, and in fact made him less prepared than his brother would have been because he didn't know how to handle failure. Kaiser therefore reinvents himself as Hell Kaiser, but even then he was obsessed with the limits of the perfection instilled in him from his school days until Shou taught him how to evolve.

This of course isn't to say these are the only things they represent. GX toys with roles and character types we expect from DM, splitting Kaiba up into Manjoume (rich rival) and Kaiser (powerful rival and brother) and setting up Misawa as the intellectual rival to Judai's intuitive hero. But each student's rank is a key part of their character when they're introduced, even built into their visual design through the dorm uniforms.

And that's just the main season 1 cast! When we get into the side characters and "filler" episodes there's more!

The tennis captain in episode 15 uses rank as a way to justify why he's a better match for Asuka than Judai is.

The core issue of episode 16 (the duel giant) is that the two Yellow students were bullied by Blue students over their ranks, even a couple episodes after Hayato mentions in episode 12 that most Yellow students not named Misawa also look down on Red students.

At the start of episode 18, the other Yellow students deride Kagurazaka for losing to a Red student (Shou) and mock him about demotion. Kagurazaka is envious of Misawa as the frontrunner for promotion to Blue.

Episode 20 introduces Rei-in-disguise as a Red student, before pulling the gotcha that all transfers start in Red but Rei is already skilled enough to qualify for Yellow. In the same episode, Judai is accused of spying because he's a Red student sneaking into a Blue student's room.

Episode 21 has the reporter sneak into the school and steal a Red jacket, only to get snubbed because now people won't give him the time of day.

Episode 42 (the festival episode with Dark Magician Girl) suggests that even the Red dorm's performances are unpopular because. Well. It's the Red dorm.

Episode 47 sees the school celebrating Judai's victory over the Seven Stars despite his rank, with a student even commenting "Keeping him in Osiris Red is such a waste." The implication is that Judai is an exception to the ranking system, not a sign that the system is flawed.

This isn't subtle! This isn't isolated! The social inequality in the school's dorm system is pointed out again and again. At every rank we can find multiple onscreen examples of how the rankings influence people's attitudes and actions, and at least one example in each dorm whose life has gotten worse because of the uniform they wear. Part of Judai's purpose as a protagonist in early season 1 is to provide a major point against the dorm system's validity as a measure of students' worth, culminating in his duel against Kaiser in the season 1 finale.

There's probably even more than this but I haven't even talked about seasons 2-4 yet. Man. Let's do that.

Season 2

Season 2 brings us Edo, Saiou, Kenzan, and the entire Society of Light plot. Kenzan busts in demanding to know why top score of the exam only lands him in Yellow and not Blue, and upon meeting Judai realizes that he has a lot to learn from a Red student. Shou advances his rank, which comes with developments related to his personal growth and his brother's fall from grace. I've already talked about how Hell Kaiser was born in part thanks to the ways even the school's top student was failed by the school system.

Napoleon is introduced as a character to double down on the dorm elitism, dragging Chronos back in until he develops enough to actively defend the Red dorm's right to exist. They try a variety of obviously flawed tactics to increase the school's prestige, including dismantling the Red dorm (which IMO mirrors how real schools will kick out their lowest scorers to keep test averages up); elevating star students to idol status; and courting star pro Edo Phoenix, hoping his presence at the school adds his prestige to theirs.

Edo's predominantly silver design helps distinguish him as someone outside of the dorm system, because his status as a top pro duelist marks his skill above any other student. Saiou wears an Obelisk Blue uniform - granted status because of his connection to an elite duelist like Edo, and the kind of status he lacked in childhood.

Saiou creates the Society of Light to turn the Blue dorm into the White dorm, in a way elevating White to a status above all three dorms. Of course, he naturally recruits the Blue students, starting with Manjoume who is outright insulted for still being a Red by the Blue students before he kicks all their asses into conversion. And once Blue is mostly done, then they also begin subsuming the Yellow dorm. The Red dorm is largely left alone aside from Judai, because they're still considered the least valuable.

In Misawa's case, Saiou too leverages the dorm system as a weapon like Chronos once did for Manjoume: he makes a point of recruiting every Yellow student besides Misawa specifically to make him feel excluded and lead Misawa to join the Society of his own volition. And it works.

The Domino trip arc also introduces us to characters who are ranked even lower than Red students in the Monarchs, students who failed DA's entrance exam and view even the Red students as elites. (Sugoroku even calls the gathered DA students, the SoL's rejects, "chosen duelists" for managing to get in.)

Rei's re-entry to the series and enrollment at DA during the Genex tournament has her request entry into Osiris Red, the lowest dorm and where female students usually aren't assigned, despite the fact that Samejima points out that her performance easily qualifies her for Blue. Why? Because Judai is there, and that means more to her than the ranking system. In a way Rei follows Judai's example in passively countering the system through choosing to be at the lowest rank.

Kaiser/Hell Kaiser's arc and Genex also show us a glimpse of the pro league, the world of the adults that DA is supposed to prepare its students for, and it's not all that flattering either. Between that and what you see from Professor Satou's backstory in season 3, you can kind of see why Kaiser and Shou ended up striving to start their own league. And speaking of season 3...

Season 3

Season 3 has the fewest incidents of rank relevance, given that most of the season doesn't even take place in a proper school environment. But that doesn't at all mean it's irrelevant.

To start with, season 3 introduces the overseas champions who serve various purposes, individually and as a whole. The most obvious thing is that they're all champions - the best of their respective schools, elite by premise. This is not lost on the central DA students, and Professor Cobra announcing the Disclosure Duels causes both Kenzan and Shou to reflect on their positions as they watch Jim and Amon.

As mentioned previously, Shou self-demotes back to Yellow after these two episodes because the Disclosure Duels and the further increased emphasis on winning (or passion, which seems to be equivalent in this dilemma) is in conflict with his own values as a respectful duelist and he doesn't yet feel he's mastered his dueling style enough to truly meet the standards for Blue.

Meanwhile our Osiris Red Forever boy Judai meets Johan, who is at one angle What Judai Wishes He Could Be (among many other things). Johan's non-DA outfit is blue to Judai's red, coincidentally bearing some resemblance to the Obelisk Blue coat. Their difference in rank comes up when Amon throws his big party, and Judai isn't invited when Johan is because the Red students weren't invited.

There's a lot of emphasis on Judai and Johan's similarities, but through the first half of season 3 we find out that Johan has qualities that Judai doesn't: Johan has a personal ambition for his dueling, which Judai lacks. When the school is transported to another dimension Johan takes charge and helps direct the school's staff on crisis management, whereas Judai mostly has good intentions and determination going for him.

But that's not enough. Season 3 introduces Professor Satou, who resents Judai for fooling around and never realizing that despite his low rank and lack of care for his studies he's still a hero and that sets an example.

Satou points out that yeah, Judai did it! He bucked the system and showed a lowly Red student can do great things! And now he's setting a bad example because he still acts like a stereotypical dropout boy! Great job hero!

And then Yubel hits the plot like a guided missile and drives in the point: growing up means wising up even when it's easier to remain ignorant, and taking responsibility when you have the power to help. While Judai's rank isn't directly relevant to that whole plot, it certainly ties into the lessons he learns. His rank is not a shield for his actions any more than it is a reason to scorn him.

Season 4

In season 4, everybody but Judai moves up from the Red dorm. Judai is the sole Red student left in the school.

The in-universe logistics are kind of questionable, but symbolically it's very meaningful. Judai is drawing back as his friends - the rest of the school, even - move forward. With this move there are no more Red students to treat as the lowest class...except one.

Judai told us back in episode 4 that he'd never leave Red, but it takes on a different context now. This is, at least in part, Judai isolating himself as he works through his trauma and his new reality after everything that happened in season 3. (I've previously written about Judai's season 4 isolation here on my personal blog - partly in the context of fic, admittedly, though my fic is not required reading for either post.)

Funnily enough, even after Satou Judai skips class even more than he used to and uses his rank as an excuse to sit back in the graduation duels. This isn't out of the same motivations driving him to skip class or slack on schoolwork previously, but part of that same self-isolation.

(The Crunchyroll subs translate this as "A Red student like me isn't fit to stand at the top," which emphasizes the element of self-deprecation to this line.)

Judai wore his red jacket with pride and passion, and now he wears it with humility (or something like it). The color of his jacket never changes, but he does for better and for worse.

But that isolation doesn't last. Judai skips class, but his friends know where to find him. Judai tries to sit back and let others have the spotlight for the graduation duels, but admiring juniors want a shot at dueling him while they have the chance. Professor Chronos, who used to plot his expulsion as a dropout boy, takes it into his hands to personally ensure Judai is able to graduate with his friends. When he and Judai have their second duel - the conclusion to the school arc of season 4 - the entire school uses Judai's signature Gotcha gesture to salute him.

And how do we end the series? How does Judai take his last steps into recovering the passion he used to feel in duels? Of course it's by facing off against Yugi in a Kuriboh magic timespace pocket and battling none other than the god Osiris, his dorm's namesake.

From episode 1 to 180, the ranked dorm system and the elitist school culture around them influence how we understand many characters' roles and their development arcs over time. Although sometimes this is more subtle context than central plot, it really never stops being relevant in GX ever. And - going back to the original questions that inspired this post - while I think I understand why the GX dub watered these themes down into being about individual grievances, I also think they lose a key part of the show's ideas in doing so.

Differences in Characterization

In some cases, the gap isn’t huge so far. There are some notable differences between Judai and Jaden - Jaden is a better friend and a more traditional heroic protagonist, whereas Judai follows his heart through duels which can come off as more self-centered. This will become more relevant later in the series and this particular gap will widen, but for now at least it’s not a difference that would create a huge divide in understanding between sub/dub watchers.

There isn’t that much to say for Asuka/Alexis and Misawa/Bastion, largely because they haven’t had a lot of major development so far. There was…definitely some weirdness around how they were written during the punishment tag duel in episodes 10-11, and we’ll see if that comes back I guess.

On the other hand, there is a significant gap between how watchers of each might understand Shou and Kaiser compared to Syrus and Zane. This includes how you see the brothers individually - the dub exaggerating Syrus’s patheticness and Zane’s callousness - as well as their collective relationship (worse in the dub, as shown in episode 10-11). And we'll be seeing the consequences of writing out the Marufujis' "respect your opponent" philosophy for seasons to come.

And after the brothers (skipping over the koala in the room for now), to get into the gaps between Chronos and Crowler or Manjoume and Chazz…we have to talk about elitism. As always. 

Differences in Themes

Elitism is pervasive in the sub. It’s present before we even get to the dorm system, with the plucky #110 with a deck of superheroes and an unlucky commute versus the haughty professor with his historied automata. And once we get into the actual school setting, you literally can’t go two episodes without running into at least one moment influenced by elitism and the dorm system. Believe me, I counted: the closest you get is 13-14, the monkey and Jinzo episodes, but even then the monkey episode starts and ends with Manjoume/Chazz leaving the school as part of his whole arc. 

The dub doesn’t eliminate the elitism entirely, but it definitely picks and chooses. Slifer insults? Jokes about roaches in the Red dorm? Yeah we got those. Manjoume/Chazz is being kicked out of the elite class for failing to uphold their standards for success? That’s just a bully getting what he deserves. A whole episode about how the literal middle class (Ra Yellow) is bullied by the elite? Mm…nah, let’s make it about their height. Some of the elitism still gets through, but it’s not shown to be such a systemic problem as it is in the sub and I think that has a very real impact on how you understand the characters.

I’ve previously argued that the dorm rank system and resulting elitism figures into many characters’ concepts in the sub. It underlies Chronos and Manjoume’s entire arcs, and informs several others like Shou or Misawa. The dub removes that context, which could be fine depending on what they add in to fill the gaps…if they do that.

I think they do try to fill it in with Crowler by doubling down on characterizing him as petty and egotistical, making him more openly villainous. It works in isolation even if it’s not as deep character-wise, but given GX is a multi-season anime we’re probably going to start seeing the consequences of that change soon. Episode 26 shows the first sign of Chronos starting to rethink his attitude, which helps lead into his big moment in five episodes where he steps in to protect his students against Camula. Because the dub skips over that moment of reconsideration, Crowler’s in a bit worse of a position to start making grand speeches about how he loves his students.

Chazz, on the other hand, just feels a bit lacking in comparison to Manjoume in my opinion. He’s still fun, but because 4KIDS left out the elitism that frames so much of his arc without adding anything else in (besides trash talk, I guess) Chazz feels more style than substance to me. The dub does try to give him something by having his brothers disown him, but again given they have to deal with Manjoume throwing money around in future episodes I don’t think that’s going to stick.

And I guess what this comes out to is, 4KIDS really seems to struggle with having to deal with series continuity. This isn’t exactly unique to GX (the 4KIDS One Piece dub was notorious for this), and it’s important to note that I am not saying they didn’t care or that they were too lazy to look ahead. In fact, I think the touches they added to the Dimitri episodes (18-19) suggest they did care to some extent. There are plenty of potential explanations for their continuity issues that have more to do with production constraints and differing priorities than lack of care. Because of the amount of research and guesswork investigating that topic would require, however, I choose to focus more on the end results than the reasons they happened.

That said.

This bit is extremely speculative (since I am, once again, not even remotely part of the creative team for either version of GX) but early GX feels exploratory to me, poking around at character concepts and plots to figure out what Yugioh is with a new cast of characters. Instead of a single ultimate rival like Kaiba (or Atem), Judai’s got a bunch of them in GX: Misawa is the analytical rival, Kaiser is the powerful rival (and the elder brother), and Manjoume is the haughty rival. Obviously this is an oversimplified breakdown, but the point is that early GX involves a lot of poking around ideas and character concepts to see what sticks. And some things don’t stick! Episode 2 establishes that the arena we see so many duels in is supposed to be for Blue students only. This is never brought up again, and the writers pretend that never happened.

And I think you can see that in the dub as well as the sub. Remember when Chumley was trying out “Duh” as a catchphrase? Remember when there were corny school jokes? While - once again - I’m not a 4KIDS employee and can’t claim to know what was going on during production, as a viewer it feels like the dub is trying out its own ideas and seeing what lands. That isn’t really a defense, just speculation as to why certain things happened knowing I’ll never know the truth unless I sit down with a former 4KIDS employee.

…And, oh yeah. Speaking of Chumley.

The Chumley Section (And It’s Not Just Him)

Yeah, I saved Hayato/Chumley for last because he’s such a victim of the dub I had to quarantine my review about it for several episodes to avoid clogging up the main episode discussion and I need to do the same for this retrospective. People praise how funny the dub is and I get it, but I also think they're highlighting the standouts and forgetting the multiple Chumley fat jokes per episode. Which, like - I'd like to forget those too.

Seriously. If I seem like I harp on the fat jokes it’s because I came in expecting a grilled cheese joke every few episodes and I’d groan a lot about it but I’d have known it was coming. Instead I feel like I’ve been hit on the head with a hammer over 1) how consistent the dub is about Chumley fat jokes and 2) how dedicated 4KIDS was to writing out any of Chumley's character traits besides "fat kid."

I did a formal count of fat jokes in the past 26 episodes for this section, because if I’m going to be a hater about this I’m going to make it properly evidenced hate. I found a total of 49 fat jokes alone over 21 episodes containing Hayato/Chumley* for a mean average of 2.3 fat jokes per episode containing Chumley (median 2, mode 6). If you add in toilet jokes, jokes about his lack of intelligence, and other miscellaneous potshots it’s closer to 3 per episode and there isn’t a single episode that doesn’t mock him at least once. Chumley literally cannot have more than five seconds of screentime without meriting at least one potshot that episode.

And it’s part of a larger pattern. This is obviously a symptom of larger cultural biases, but the dub has a lot of humor that boils down to mocking people for their appearances. I've skimmed over a lot of these jokes because of my personal distaste for them but it keeps happening. Chumley is a walking fat joke. Damon is repeatedly mocked for his smell. The duel giant episode rewrites elitism with short/fat jokes. Dorothy being an older lady in makeup apparently disqualifies her from being counted as a woman. Let's not even get into how the dub mocks Crowler's appearance. Chumley gets it most consistently, but it really just keeps happening.

“Gee, Lace, it's not that deep. It was 2005, can't you take a joke?”

Jokes still have a point! When Harrington makes tennis puns, that communicates he's got tennis on the brain. When Chumley only talks about grilled cheese, that communicates he only cares about food. When the punchline is “haha this person doesn't look normal” it communicates that not looking normal - whatever you define normal as - is worthy of mockery. And if you do that over and over, it starts to feel like you’re making a point of it. 4KIDS isn't allowed to show characters using guns because kids might get ahold of their parents’ guns and try to imitate the cool tricks they see on TV, but it's perfectly fine to make fun of a fat kid every episode and let kids imitate that I guess?

And to be fair to 4KIDS, this isn’t just bad 4KIDS humor. It’s not even unique to bad Western humor. I got really into Persona 4 a little while after my 2000s-era GX days, and as much as I loved some parts of the game - boy did a lot of the humor reek of these same issues, and the weird sexist comedy segments were in the original Japanese script as well as the localization. I mashed through them the same way an average dub GX viewer probably skips over the Chumley fat jokes, but nearly twenty years later if you handed me one of the fancy P4 Brand New Content games I’d be asking myself if it was really worth putting myself through the camping trip or beauty pageants again. This humor doesn’t age well, and honestly it made me cringe back in the 2000s too!

This is verging into general sociocultural discussion, and I entered into this review series knowing that discussing dub GX would invite that. If I had unlimited time/money to get another graduate degree I could probably write an entire academic thesis on dub GX contextualized within 4KIDS production values and constraints, 2000s American pop culture, and TV broadcast standards. However, nobody is funding me for this Tumblr review blog so I’m going to acknowledge those topics would be fascinating to research and also I am not researching them.

* If you care about methodology, I counted jokes relating to food (grilled cheese a given), weight, appearance, or running as fat jokes as well as any uses of “licious” because…well, it’s a fat joke turned into a catchphrase. I discounted episode 3 because Hayato has exactly two lines in five seconds of screen time there and I’m not giving 4KIDS credit for failing to make “Syrus isn’t here” into a fat joke.

So What, Don’t Watch The Dub?

As I've said from the beginning, this review series isn't meant to say "dub bad" or "don't ever watch the dub." I did not commit to 200+ hours of episode and 3+ years of episode analysis to say "hurrdurr dub bad." (I make an exception for the fat jokes.) Everyone should watch what they want according to what they want out of their anime. Some people watch dubs because of accessibility issues, some out of pure preference. Some people watch Yugioh for laughs, some people watch Yugioh because they saw someone talk about deeper themes and symbolism. That’s all fine.

And it’s important to note that change doesn’t have to be bad! The sports poster tennis captain and Dimitri's Dan Green Yami Yugi impression come to mind as things the dub did quite well in my opinion. Occasionally the dubs smooths out a minor plot issue from the original sub script, like Crowler pushing to change the punishment tag duel’s stakes from suspension to expulsion rather than expulsion to...still expulsion. The dub explanation for Chazz’s demotion to Red fits so neatly into previous continuity that I and a friend actually thought it was the original sub explanation only to discover the truth during episode review.

But the fact that the sub and dub tell different stories means that if I talk about how Hayato shows the audience how you don't need to match the traditional depictions of success to find your path in adulthood then only a subset of people who have seen GX will understand what I mean. Someone who’s only ever seen the dub is going to look at me and go "what, the grilled cheese guy?”

If you want to discuss the show with other people, it helps to be aware that some people have essentially watched a different version of the show compared to you and that their understanding of certain characters or plot developments might not be the same as yours. I’ve seen both ends of this gap in understanding. I’ve talked to dub viewers about how the dub cuts certain plot elements that help contextualize why certain characters act the way they do, and I’ve talked to sub viewers about how certain perspectives on a given character make more sense if you’ve seen the dub.

Conclusion

I have a friend who’s been interested in watching Yugioh with me, especially GX since it’s my favorite. The problem was that she would prefer to do it with an English language track. Ideally that wouldn’t have been an issue, but for GX - especially later seasons, but already evident with season 1 - if I showed her the dub it would come out to a different story than the one I know and the one she wants to know. So we just didn’t watch GX until certain things aligned and we ended up starting the sub together. I still point out some of the dub standout jokes and changes where I think she’ll get a kick out of them. (She’s convincing me to watch Jujutsu Kaisen meanwhile, at least once I escape grad school hell.)

I have other friends who watched the entire dub before learning anything about the sub differences, and it’s been really interesting to hear their perspectives. Little details like “Jaden stayed in Slifer because Syrus was there” compared to “Judai stayed in Osiris because he likes the red dorm better” affects how you interpret their friendship and the fact that Shou/Syrus is interested in advancing dorms where Judai/Jaden isn’t. “Chazz is a bully who got what he deserved” compared to “Manjoume got the elitist rug pulled out from under him” affects how you interpret his character development mini-arc. Dorm elitism seems more fanon worldbuilding to dub viewers, and Chazz being disowned by his family seems the same to sub viewers. I’m trying to keep the scope of this post to season 1 only, but I’ve had multiple people comment that reading these reviews helped recontextualize little points about later seasons too.

Factors that I know for a fact must have applied to dub production even as a layperson:

Production timeline: the dub made its debut releasing episodes daily instead of weekly (as in the JP release schedule), the first fourteen episodes airing consecutive weekdays before a two-week break followed by another batch of episodes and so on. Any script has to go through a lot of other processes (S&P approval, line recording, video edits, music, SFX, etc - probably way more that I don't know about as a layperson) contributing to the final products that air on Cartoon Network every weekday. It's unlikely they had a lot of time to write these scripts, and as mentioned in reviews for previous episodes (5-6, 7-8) I don't think they even had time to look ahead of the current episode most of the time.

Episode time: Sub episodes are about 23 minutes long, while dub episodes are about 20 minutes. This means every episode needs to be cut down by a few minutes just to fit.

Censorship: Sometimes within 4KIDS' control, and sometimes not. US broadcast standards wouldn't allow the alcohol in episode 9, for example. Changing it to hot sauce specifically was a decision within their control, but needing to change it at all was not. S&P divisions are famously...picky, as well.

Regarding priorities: while I can't actually know 4KIDS' intent, I've documented the increased number of jokes, quips, trash talk, etc. in the dub over the course of the twelve episodes reviewed so far. Some of this is probably meant to just spice up plain dialogue (just last night I actually was talking about the pros and cons of duelists declaring their game phases every turn with my friend who recently started Sevens sub/dub comparisons at @roadmagictectonicshift yes I am shamelessly plugging my friend) but in general the dub has a visible steer towards comedy.

And I don't think that's a huge surprise, historically speaking. The original Yugioh DM anime aired in the Kids WB Saturday morning block alongside shows like Jackie Chan Adventures (my beloved) and Mucha Lucha. The DM anime had a lot of jokes added to it too - I don't cover DM comparisons, but Yu-Jyo has been around since 2003 so this is pretty easy to verify. GX was dubbed in the same vein, as would every other Yugioh dub up to VRAINS at least (I don't know about the Sevens/Go Rush dubs). I don't think it's a controversial statement that Yugioh dubs want to be funny.

Big social problems like classism are hard to write about in a way that's funny and digestible for the kids. A theoretical seven-year-old won't understand ideas like the golden child versus the scapegoat or the implicit curriculum at play in the funny card games show*, but they will understand a mean teacher who hates the protagonist being a bad guy. It's a lot easier to lean into the latter, and makes for better jokes too!

Rinse and repeat for all kinds of topics. Regrettably, I think this is also a possible (NOT confirmed) explanation as to part of why Chumley turned out the way he did. Hayato's primary character traits are "failed by The System" and "peanut gallery guy." One is whatever and the other is hard to make jokes out of. Solution: focus on his appearance and keep making fat jokes instead!

(...It doesn't excuse the numerous times they added fat jokes where there wasn't even dialogue in the sub, though. Which has happened, and will continue to happen, and which is why I've made multiple memes to cope with how much I hate this aspect of the dub specifically.)

And honestly, whoever's adapting the script may not even realize the subtler incidents of major themes at play. I'm a hyper-invested fan spending multiple hours per episode comparing lines, thinking about themes, and discussing with other hyper-invested fans to produce these reviews. (And I'm still getting little subtleties pointed out to me after all this time!) I'd bet the Manjoume/Princeton bank accounts that whoever wrote the dub script didn't have that luxury. I also have the benefit of having seen all of GX multiple times for full context and retrospective, which nobody in 2005 could have done.

That last point doesn't work so well for things like episode 16 (where half the plot is rooted in dorm elitism and they still rewrite the elitism into something else - I'll get there in a few weeks!) but for episode 12 for example, Manjoume-as-golden-child is implicit background and barely even informs the episode's focus character. It actually took me until I wrote the episode 12 review to realize that was the dynamic in as many words, so I can't really expect a 4KIDS employee on a time crunch to catch onto it.

* I'm not saying kids' shows can't cover this topic - Hey Arnold comes to mind as a show that did it well. But Hey Arnold did it with a full episode dedicated to exploring the concept. This dynamic as implicit background to the antagonist of the Misawa focus episode is a very different context.

TL;DR: I don't think preserving serious themes like structural classism as part of the school system was even fifth on the list of priorities when dubbing GX.

And as I said at the end of the episode 10 review, that isn't necessarily wrong. I'm a fanfic writer who loves character analysis. 4KIDS was an entertainment company producing a show to sell, domestically and abroad. 4KIDS had different priorities and different constraints compared to me, and if their goal was to make a funny dub to sell clearly they succeeded because I've seen a lot of people praise the GX dub's humor. I'm placing the magnifying glass on character and plot because that's what I'm interested in most, but a blog focused on highlighting funniest moments across GX would look very different from this one.