Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters GX Episodes 95 and 96 Subbed (Finalized)
(Previously: Episodes 93 and 94 Subbed [Finalized])
(Check out my Subbed!GX Stream Masterpost!)
TURN-95: A Ruthless Brotherly Duel -- Ryou VS Shou
Wishing for his kind and respectable brother to be himself again, Shou challenges the Hell Kaiser to a duel. But a callous Ryou conditions it on having a duel in which an electric current will rush through them with every drop in their Life Points. And so, a brotherly duel begins between Ryou and Shou. Shou does develop his dueling--respecting his opponent as always--but Ryou pounces on him, in full command of the Cyber Style's Reverse deck.
TURN-96: The Relativity Field! Judai VS the Genius Doctor
In order to take back one of his important keys, a Saiou struck by the Waves of Light once again sends in an assassin against Judai. The assassin is Zweinstein, a genius physics expert with a deck made logically--Judai's weakest point of all. Zweinstein activates his Relativity Field to start things off. He then summons* a Monster that negates Judai's Fusion, his forte, gaining an edge as the duel unfolds. *This is referencing Singularity Demon's effect in the episode, but he doesn't actually summon it; it's more of a hand-trap he discards to negate Fusion.
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Got my subs for episodes 95 and 96 all nice and finalized!
These two episodes are a great time, but 95 in particular is great. It's the culmination of those little bits we've had of Shou observing Ryou's fall from grace since his loss to Ed, knowing he'd face him one day and preparing himself for it, and the whole time they're dueling, he holds onto some hope that he can turn Ryou back into the big brother he knew--only to realize by the end that Ryou, after what he's seen underground, really is just focused on winning, willing to be as "cruel" or "foul" as it takes if it helps. You do feel for the little guy, moreso when this gets flashed back to in 137 during Season 3 (another favorite, as it's a big development episode for Shou). Also, Judai being a friend and watching over him knowing this was his choice to make, building him up about using Power Bond, rushing over once the duel's over--it's sweet.
96 is also one of my favorites because of the good art/dynamic animation, courtesy of Kyoung Soo Lee's animation team (especially those last few scenes after Judai destroys Relativity Field, but just the Solid Vision putting them in space the entire time). The premise isn't too bad, we check in with Misawa who's realizing that just joining the Society of Light isn't enough for him to make a name for himself, and he bumps into God Einstein Zweinstein who tells him that logic beats "coincidence," before he tries to convey this to Judai and prove his Grand Unified Duel Theory. I like the Dueling Physics idea and the Einstein parody (he won a Nobelly Prize!), and the match between his logic and Judai's intuition--and who doesn't enjoy the randomness of Misawa's extra Eureka moment, lmao. Still a bit meh on it being the last we see of him for a while, but it is nice seeing him when he does come back. (Also, I like how it's not at all mentioned how Ojin managed to get a recording of Chronos calling for Judai to trick him with... very GX lol)
Edit-wise, both episodes had a fair amount of animation error fixes I applied; 95 saw more card-related errors than the quick one in 96, while both had a fair share of more quality-of-watching ones with split-screens, incomplete footage frames, or miscolorings (and in Burstlady's case, another missing shoulder strap). Due to Tumblr’s dumb link limit in posts yeeting them out of the tags used for them and limiting their reach, and since I still wanted a visual element to it, I’ve made a separate post here with my usual fix/edit breakdown for the interested--altogether, that's about 26 between both episodes, which I think I hit sometime in S1 when doing double-releases for a bit, but since most were quality-of-watching things, they were pretty quick to work on for the most part.
Anywho, enjoy! Looking forward to revisiting 97 and 98 next as we circle back to the Pro Leagues and get Ed's best episode of the Season in the process; as Judai put it in 96's preview for 97, "Ed's Wheel of Fortune'll suddenly start to turn..."
