Now that youre in the final portion of S2, I wanted to share some bits about its production.
That is how... troubled it how, which you may have noticed.
Sorry if this is long af, and for any errors bc Im not a native english speaker.
One important thing to note, is that YGO is an anthology series. Most of the shows have no relation to the others besides maybe some cameos. This was not the case for GX, which was openly a sequel series with several DM characters returning. Or at least that was the idea, ultimately this was sharply toned down.
This caused some problems for S2 in particular. As you already know, the "school trip" arc was original meant to be a movie, but Takahashi scrapped it bc he felt he couldnt integrate well the casts. GX has already build up the figures of DM as basically legendary duelists so a cast meet up would innevitably have most of the GX students fanning over the adult DM characters... which isnt a good look. Even Pegasus, who is a semi recurring character in GX, only duels once (which you already saw). And it was a 2v1, and even with Napoleon and Chronos fighting each other a bunch I cannot overstate how much of an INSANE disadvantage that was for Pegasus, and one of the opponents being Chronos who is in fact strong af, and he still won. Pegasus on a proper 1v1 duel as we've seen would most likely completely destroy all GX characters, MAYBE Judai and Ryo give more of a fight but thats about it. And this is a depowered Pegasus long past his prime as main antagonist. Joey, Kaiba or Yugi well...
S2 was meant to integrate DM more strongly, and you can see it on the scrapped movie, the genex tournament being a redo of battle city, Pegasus and Kaiba showing up more and Saio's entire concept. Saio is basically a big callback to the two possession type of villains in DM, Bakura (outside malevolent force who takes full control of the host) and Marik (magically enhanced split personality who overtakes the original). Saio's type of possession is a middle point between the two, with the CL being the result of an outside malevolent force influencing Saio's core personality until the disconnect becomes too severe and it splits into a separate one who overtakes TR (which we see over the course of S2, the personalities dont split fully until quite a bit into the season).
However all of this DM integration was scrapped halfways through production, and movie had to written out and partially integrated into the season and all of the main DM characters apperances also cut (only Kaiba was kept and it was more fo a cameo). Some cast members in GX were shafted (Asuka and Jun getting possessed and removed from the main cast) to make room for the returning DM characters... The result is a season which was meant to set the stage for DM... with little actual DM content on it.
And... Misawa. Yeah thats a character that DID NOT go over well, fan reaction to the character was really poor in S1 so he was reduced to more of a joke character. His fall from grace into the SoL is I think actually executed fairly well, but his portrayal is overall rather insulting to a character who was once intended to be Judai's secondary rival. This will get even worse in S3. To all 5 Misawa fans out there, Im so sorry.
(The issue of Judai getting rivals... that was also scrapped after S2. Judai is not a competitive person like Atem so most rivalries end up very one sided. And boy did they TRY to give him rivals, with Jun, Asuka, Misawa and Edo. S3 and 4 wont have new rivals just friends)
Overall I think S2 is actually pretty good, big step up from 1, but still a bit of a mess. Oh and Edo wasnt meant to be such an important character, but he had to fill in for all the other cut stuff (you can notice how Edo's storyline only picks up now despite him being a season long presence, with DD only being introduced at the tail end). In the later seasons Edo will be more of a secondary character, as was his original concept.
We dont know the exact details of what happened behind scenes, but Takahashi, -who beforehand was very hands off with the anime series (both dm and gx)- and had only assisted in some character designs and ideation for the scrapped movie, came back in and was more or less THE showrunner at the helm of S3 and 4. And... well a lot of people consider its his best work, ever.
this does explain why this season feels kinda..patchy??
dont get me wrong, i love this season, with the themes of destiny and how they integrated tarot so nicely here (this might be the best instance of tarot being integrated into the storyline so well im impressed), and the themes of destiny v/s fate and how people can be consumed by both their grief as well as entities that possess them. the cosmic horror and the references to so many physics conacepts (i had to brush up on my 11th-12th grade physics again) and how despite it all the human spirit can carry on, no matter how bleak the situation is
but the writting felt kind wonky, like they set stuff up and then just abandoned it in a weird way.
but this explains it. although i do wonder how they planned to integrate the dm cast without it being weird as you said
i mean of past his prime Pegaus could easily solo both Napoleon and Chronos (who has a phd in dueling) in a duel that he was rushing so that he can attend a meeting, then i fear Yuugi would win a duel as soon as laid eyes on his opponent.
with the scene where Judai was talking about Domino City as the "holy hand where Yuugi and Kaiba dueled" you would have expected them to show up, but with GX being about learning and growing as both a duelist and an individual, the DM characters soloing everyone can be only being interesting for a short while and if a GX character does end up defeating a DM duelist, fans would not be happy and it would raise a lot of questions on how truly powerful they are and that would be a big mess
probably for the best that the DM cast was not integrated into GX, but i'm still kinda sad that we didn't get a Yuugi cameo aside from the one in the first ep, even tho everyone was in Domino City and we had whole scene with Kaiba :/
Saio is basically a big callback to the two possession type of villains in DM, Bakura (outside malevolent force who takes full control of the host) and Marik (magically enhanced split personality who overtakes the original). Saio's type of possession is a middle point between the two, with the CL being the result of an outside malevolent force influencing Saio's core personality until the disconnect becomes too severe and it splits into a separate one who overtakes TR (which we see over the course of S2, the personalities dont split fully until quite a bit into the season)
describing Tarot Reader Cult Leader's situation as being a mid point between Bakura's and Marik's possessions makes a lot of sense, there is no other way i would describe it
and Cult Leader influencing Tarot Reader's personality until he splits into two puts a lot of earlier scenes in context when you couldn't really tell what Tarot Reader Cult Leader's deal was.
yeah Misawa was sone so dirty this season i feel so bad for him. i mean the only time we got to see him in a more positive light was for that brief time in Domino City when Bluie and Benkei were captured by Weather Lady
the ep where he joins the SOL was done really well and how he broke out was kind of abrupt and not done was well but in the end it does align with what we know about him so can't really argue about it either
it will get worse in s3???? rip to all 5 Misawa fans, i will light a sented candle for you guys
what??? you mean to tell me that the character who was searching for his father's killer for around 10ish uears and has a direct connection with the main antagonist for this season wasn't meant to be an important character????
well i'm happy that Edo's storyline has been sorted out for the most part, with him avenging his dad and after all that trauma he deserves to chill in the background in his fancy yacht for the rest of the show and make snarky comments towards everyone else
when people say that GX s3 and s4 are considered as Takahashi's best work, it fills me with a lot of expectation and i'm worried that it will not meet what im expecting.
i'm equal parts exicted and daunted to watch it now, but first i need to finish s2 so i can worry about that later
luckily for you, i know what exactly went down behind the scenes:(source? divine intuition)
Takahashi after seeing how gx has so much wasted potential and knew he had to step in:
(this is exactly what happened it came to me in a vision and everything)
