GX Duel Memorial Album #4

Join our Discord to discuss this article with fellow Duelists

Become a Patron to support us for 12 years of all-volunteer work

So how did we end up with Cyber Dragon anyways?

Turn 33
The Continuous Spell “Genesis Crisis” which was used in tandem with “Vampire Genesis” was intended to be an absurdly powerful card (that I used the effect of, twice, without hesitation), in order to allow Camula’s dark power stand out more and make “Shining Flare Wingman” literally shine even brighter in the Duel… at least that’s what I intended but the combo it enabled was kinda boring (ahaha). I would suggest things like this, but the flavor changes depending on the length and tempo. I regret not being able to make that combo stand out even more.

Turn 34
I wrote the plot and scenario for The Game Boy Advance game “Duel Monsters 8: Reshef of Destruction”, and one of the event characters I included was “Kaibaman”, who I was surprised became an “Official Card Game” card, and I ended up wondering “Could they appear in the anime if we consider them a Spirit? And if that happens, could “Blue-Eyes White Dragon” also appear!?”.

Despite the fact “Kaibaman” is a monster who is completely separate from Kaiba, he ended up being voiced by Tsuda Kenjiro-san, and I remember thinking “It’s gotta be Tsuda-san!”.

Turn 35
When I was ordered by the episode’s script writer, Yoshida Shin-san, to hammer together a Deck with 0 ATK… I was like, how can I make this work (hehe…). Reviving the “Ojamas” only to destroy them with “Thunder Crash” gave Yoshida-san a good laugh too.

Turn 36 & The Water Dragon Question can be found here.

Q. In Turn 23, what Deck did Moetegi Mokeo play before switching to “Mokey Mokey”?

A. Mmm, unfortunately there wasn’t any major documentation on that, but we were thinking about “Slime/Jam” to emphasize the softness angle? But that makes it sound like Motegi met “Mokey Mokey” and had a trist with it… so maybe a more hardcore Dragon Deck? Though, everyone, I suggest you use your own imagination to imagine what Deck Mokeo was using before.

Q. What ideas did you consider for the “Cyber Dragon” theme used by Ryo, Hikokubo-san? I’d love to know how you came up with the cards and his Duels.

A. As Judai’s biggest rival, I knew Ryo’s Deck had to include powerful monsters, so it was extremely tempesting to give him Dragons, but that would make him too similar to Kaiba, and it would bring nothing new to the table. So I ended up proposing ‘why not a Machine-Type Dragon’ as a symbol of new strength? At the same time, I was thinking to myself “How can I make Level 5s more useful?” So I came up with an effect that would allow it to be treated as a Low Level monster with some conditions (*). I wanted Ryo, a third year student, to have a strong impact by bringing out higher Level monsters.

“Cyber End Dragon”… I was originally concerned about not being able to fit in “Ultimate”, but one of the staff members ended up suggesting its current name, and we took that idea and used it. Honestly, now that I think about it, it’s a pretty good name.

(*) In the anime, Cyber Dragon’s effect isn’t a Special Summon, it’s a Normal Summon.

Q. “GX” has many unique Decks such as Ayanokoji’s “Tennis” Deck, how were you able to come up with such odd strategies versus other series?

A. GX was a special time, and especially in the early days, the scriptwriters would put their heads together and come up with all sorts of ideas, and we spent a lot of time discussing whether we could reproduce them in a Duel or not. So there was a lot of excitement on set wondering “Can we recreate X in a Duel?”.