Discovering the Yu-Gi-Oh Iceberg (Part 2.1) - Bumbles McFumbles Reaction

If I had to guess GX and Jaden weren't liked as much as the original series because it was the sequel series that was specifically NOT the first one. So people didn't like him because he wasn't Yugi. Another guess that I'm less certain of is that the show (at least initially) was a lot more of the "duel of the week" where while there was an overarching story that progressed this didn't stop them from having storylines wher Jaden went up against archetypes like "the sports deck" or "the gambler deck". The overarching premise was also a bit of a reach: the cast were students at a school specifically dedicated to dueling, which even by Yugioh standards this was a massive stretch. And that's on top of some of the individual stories like the dueling monkey named after Joey Wheeler, the kid who's totally not a stoner kept in the school's basement, or that time they fought Christopher Walken's Ginyu Force. Another thing about Jaden is his massive win ratio: he lost only a handfull of times while trouncing the opposition, which didn't really endear him. Of note is that one of the losses was against Kaibaman, a duel spirit that formed from Kaiba's massive, reality-warping ego and his just as big a love for the Blue-Eyes archetype. The first season was also a bit of a repeat of the original's second: three god cards, seven ancient artifacts emblazoned with the Millenium Eye that granted awesome powers, and a tournament to decide the fate of the world. Come to think of it, they never did reuse those Shadow Charms. Probably because if Chazz took the one he had that has the ability to awaken duel spirits and give them sapiense, and sold it to Kaiba, he'd be a trillionaire and would no longer have to be on the show. And with the one Jaden won from that one dude he is now more or less immortal. Kaiba as a guy is just very... extra. Aside from his un-aerodynamic jet shaped like a Blue-Eyes, him inventing holograms just to play card games better, him launching Duel Monsters cards into space so that aliens could learn how to play, him threatening to jump from a castle wall if Yugi beat him in a duel, or all the spoiler-stuff he did in Dark Side of Dimensions, Kaiba is not a man who acts proportionately to anything in his life.

Beriorn