Last time on Coherent Cats, we discussed how many people in the United States wrote off Yu-Gi-Oh as a mere fad in the early 2000s. This proved untrue, as it continued with the direct sequel animated series Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters GX from 2004 to 2008 in Japan (2005 to 2008 in the US).

GX takes place at Duel Academy, a private school dedicated to the study and play of the Duel Monsters card game. Duel Academy delegates its students into three hierarchical dorms: Obelisk Blue for the elite, Ra Yellow for the academic, and Slifer Red for the meritless. However, a student can hypothetically rise in rank from Ra or even Slifer by winning duels and improving their grades, which encourages students to climb the social ladder by bootstrapping.

While the original Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters anime includes spectators and casual players in the ensemble, GX narrows down its characters to competitive gamers by taking place at a dueling school on a private island. Even the most minor of characters participate in the game in some way. Men and boys make up a majority of Duel Monsters players in the Yu-Gi-Oh anime universe, which reflects the demographics of competitive trading card game scenes in real life. In a 2023 survey of Yu-Gi-Oh players by HakunaMyData, 87% of the 1659 respondents identified as male. By matching these real life statistics rather than having an equal amount of men and women, the secluded setting of GX limits any recurring female characters to the small number of those studying dueling.

Duel Academy also divides its students into dorms based on gender, distancing boys and girls from each other more than the co-ed school and public spaces of the original Yu-Gi-Oh. Due to the numerous male dorm mates and a lack of female students, GX primarily focuses on male homosociality through friendship, rivalry, and mentorship between boys and men. At the same time, many male characters have crushes on girls that counteracts potential homoeroticism. In turn, many of the female characters have crushes on boys. Girl characters rarely appear for more than a single episode, leaving little room for partnerships to grow from these crushes or the girls to develop as characters.

In this world where characters can openly display their heteronormative crushes, those who deviate from gender roles are met with opposition. When male characters continuously lose at Duel Monsters, others look down on them for not succeeding in a male-dominated game. When female characters participate in Duel Monsters, male characters underestimate them or only see them through a heteronomative lens based on gender roles. Even as individual characters reject gender norms, the structural heteropatriarchy of Duel Academy persists.

The third season of GX changes things up by not only transporting Duel Academy and its inhabitants to another dimension in an homage to Kazuo Umezz’s The Drifting Classroom, but also by introducing more major gender non-confirming and queer-coded characters. At first, an otherworldly genderqueer duel monster who threatens the status quo seems like the perfect villain for the heteropatriarchal world GX spends two seasons building. However, things become more complicated when it turns out the protagonist has a spiritual connection to the monster that can’t be ignored.

In honor of Yu-Gi-Oh GX’s 20th anniversary and the booster set “Phantom Nightmare” featuring the aforementioned nonbinary icon Yubel, let’s examine gender in GX in depth. For each day leading up to the release of “Phantom Nightmare,” I’ll be sharing a case study of a different character in relation to gender roles, with special attention paid to gender variance–behavior, expression, or identity that deviates from gender norms.

This series of posts contains spoilers for all of Yu-Gi-Oh GX; as well as discussion of misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia.

Duel Academy

Duel Academy determines dorm placement based on multiple factors, including an entrance exam. Even though Bastion Misawa and Tyranno Hassleberry excel on their entrance exams, Duel Academy places them into the middling Ra Yellow. In the Japanese version of episode 55, Kenzan (Hassleberry) laments that he couldn’t join Obelisk despite ranking #11 out of over 100 students. In the Japanese episode 2, Hayato (Chumley) posits that students need “good grades going back to middle school” for Obelisk, but this explanation doesn’t line up with reality.

If duelists like Bastion and Hassleberry have enough skill and intelligence to place into Ra, especially a genius in science like Bastion, why wouldn’t they have good grades from middle school? Considering the wealthy backgrounds of male students placed into Obelisk like Chazz Princeton, episode 15’s Harrington Rosewood, and episode 54’s Reggie Van Howell III; the Blue dorm must also take social class into consideration. The English dub makes this subtext more blatant: Chumley says Obelisk students have good grades as well as “connections” in episode 2, and Hassleberry gripes that “you had to go to a fancy prep school to be a Blue” in episode 55. Indeed, episode 54 shows Chazz and Reggie in middle school with uniforms that resemble those of Duel Academy, implying it has a middle school branch they attended. Napoleon (Jean-Louis Bonaparte) explains in the Japanese version of episode 53 that a student “from an outside school” must take the entrance exam, while their middle school graduates don’t. Chazz and Reggie both come from elite backgrounds, suggesting only the wealthy can afford such an education, which locks any lower class aspiring duelists out of Obelisk. The Blue dorm comes with privileges like luxurious housing and exclusive use of dueling arenas.

Favoring rich students makes Duel Academy an aristocracy, not the meritocracy it appears with dorms “based on grades.” Even advancement through the dorms has bias, such as when Crowler arranges for Chazz to re-enter Obelisk all the way from Slifer just to rub elbows with his family’s business in episode 54, while another student would have to test into Ra first. Male students rise to prominence at Duel Academy due to heteropatriarchy, the system that reinforces the dominance of cisgender heterosexual men (so long as they conform to gender roles). On a structural level, “heteropatriarchy focuses on not just how individuals with marginalized identities may be targeted by individual persons, but rather the interlocking systems of oppression that operate on multiple levels to privilege both men and heterosexuality.” Duel Academy only accepts students to Obelisk on account of their wealth, but girls can only be part of Obelisk. If Blue girls also come from elite backgrounds, that prevents the socioeconomic 99% of girls from attending the school at all.

Even if Obelisk accepts girls regardless of social class, their permanent placement in the dorm leaves them out of the system that determines their dueling level and measures their improvement as students. Duel Academy operates under its mythical meritocracy in which boys have their accomplishments represented by their dorm, which can elevate their social standing, but the girls cannot participate in it. Lumping them under one distinguished category does not uphold them all as talented duelists, but rather makes it difficult to determine an individual girl’s skill level–let alone where she ranks compared to the categorized boys in a male-dominated field.

Intentionally on the writers’ part or not, placing girls in Obelisk by default comes across as benevolent sexism, “a set of patronizing attitudes that are seemingly positive yet reinforce women’s subordinate status.” Misogyny toward girl duelists at Duel Academy manifests in both hostile and benevolent ways. In episode 90, Maitre D calls dueling “a man’s job” when he has an upper hand against Jasmine and Mindy, attributing their loss to being female and his prowess to being male in a display of hostile misogyny. In episode 42, a crowd of guys reprimand Jaden Yuki for not “going easy” against a female duelist (actually the spirit of Dark Magician Girl), suggesting women shouldn’t be taken seriously as opponents and they will emotionally overreact to defeat. This attitude comes from benevolent misogyny in that they don’t want to exclude her from the game, but appreciate her participation for the eye candy more than sportsmanship. In both cases, men see women as inferior players.

Once enrolled at Duel Academy, female students become subject to heteropatriarchy. Duelists often battle to prove a point to or make a wager, including male students using duels for heterosexual courtship in which they “win” the right to date a girl. Alexis Rhodes defeats boys interested in her twice, in episodes 43 and 70, but other times she doesn’t even participate in duels over her. In episode 15, Jaden and Harrington duel to determine which of them will be her fiancé and in episode 81, Bob Banter duels Jaden with the ulterior motive of winning her heart. By expressing heterosexuality through victory in a male-dominated field, the system could reward the boys with not only success at school but also an objectified girlfriend in a heterosexual relationship. (Thankfully for Alexis, this never comes to pass.) Girl students may express attraction to boys, even going as far as Atticus’s fans following him around, but they never duel in order to “win” them. Only the vampire Camula in season 1 uses duels for possession of men, as she literally objectifies Zane by transforming him into a doll to keep for herself after he loses in episode 32, which characterizes her as a villain and enemy of Duel Academy.

Residents of Duel Academy enforce heteropatriarchy on an interpersonal level through casual misogyny and homophobia as well. For example, in the English dub of episode 60, the macho Hassleberry asks “who’s he calling a sissy?” when he mistakes Atticus Rhodes’s nickname for his sister Alexis as an insult aimed at him. These sort of quips proliferate the English dub, but the original Japanese version has its own moments of casual bigotry. In the Japanese version of episode 64, Asuka (Alexis) forces a cat to scratch Fubuki (Atticus)’s face for declaring that same-gender “taboo love is thrilling and dramatic” and encouraging her to “learn about other forms of love” when he hears about the rivalry between Sho Marufuji (Syrus Truesdale) and Kenzan (Hassleberry) over Judai (Jaden). She may be annoyed with her brother’s meddling more than anything else, but she nonetheless reacts with anger to the thought of queerness in her friends. Manjome (Chazz) similarly calls the Ojama Trio “disgusting” and smacks them away when they offhandedly call themselves “not men,” i.e. genderqueer, in episode 120.

The institutional and interpersonal heteropatriarchy create an inhospitable environment for students who don’t meet certain standards. For male students, the hierarchical dorms weed out undesirable students by design so as not to reflect poorly on the school. Entrance exam results gather duelists with low scores “in the red” of the dingy Slifer dorm and push them to drop out. Slifer students like Syrus and Chumley don’t live up to masculine gender roles, because they can’t win at the trading card game that determines their place in GX’s society. Their character designs reflect this, in Syrus’s short stature and Chumley’s fatness, which also don’t adhere to a tall and lean masculine ideal.

In episode 9, Chumley’s father says his son will never be a man unless he follows in his footsteps as a duelist, characterizing dueling as a patrilineal pursuit. In episode 50, Chumley finds his calling in card illustration instead and graduates with a job lined up designing at Pegasus’s company Industrial Illusions. He gets a happy ending to his struggle to succeed in Duel Monsters, but it effectively writes him out of the story of GX that focuses on male-dominated competition. Chumley no longer aspires to play competitively or casually, so he no longer belongs in a story that follows such players. He returns again only once in episode 85 to give Jaden a card he designed to assist the “Elemental HERO” archetype, whereas Zane Truesdale (who graduates the same year as Chumley) remains a major character because he pursues the manly profession of dueling.

The school divides male and female students into gendered dorms to reinforce the different social norms between them. Like many  Japanese high schools, it requires boys to wear pants and girls skirts for the uniform based on gender assigned at birth. In these uniforms, students can be categorized by dorm placement as well as gender at a glance. Duel Academy lacks seasonal uniforms, instead opting for long-sleeved jackets and pants for the boys and short-sleeved tops and miniskirts for the girls year-round. As a result, the girls show more skin than the boys regardless of weather, making their fashion stereotypically feminine. Some characters wear personalized uniforms, implying some freedom of expression; but usually in ways that adhere to or even emphasize their assigned gender, such as Hassleberry’s vest that shows off his muscular arms and his combat boots that represent his hardiness. Only Blair Flannigan deviates from pants for boys and skirts for girls by wearing shorts, setting her apart from the other girls.

Vellian Crowler/Cronos de Medici

The design of Duel Academy professor Crowler makes him one of the only other visually gender non-conforming major characters. He dons a coat worn by male Obelisk students accented with pink ruffles, wears lipstick and dangly earrings, ties his long hair into a ponytail, and has grown out fingernails. His femininity doesn’t make his character design “beautiful” like an idealized “pretty boy,” but instead contrasts with his detailed facial features to convey him as “unattractive.” The Japanese version plays up his Italian nationality with an accent and Italian phrases like “mamma mia,” implying his eccentric appearance comes from a cultural difference. Indeed, the archetypal fop that equates effeminacy with high class originates from Europe.

The English dub does not portray him as a foreigner, and draws more attention to his androgyny at times the original does not with jokes about his gender variance. In the Japanese version of episode 53, Kenzan (Hassleberry) calls him and Napoleon (Bonaparte) “old men” much to their chagrin, but “ladies” in English. At first it seems Hassleberry calls them “ladies” like a drill sergeant does mockingly to his recruits, but he calls them “gals” while he leaves as if he actually mistook them for women. Anecdotally, many young viewers of GX in the US were also unsure of Crowler’s gender identity. In episode 1, Crowler objects to being called “mister,” at first implying he was misgendered, then instead insists on being called “doctor” for his PhD in dueling. The line not only misdirects from being called “miss” for a laugh, but also signifies his elite academic status.

In that first episode, GX introduces Crowler as simultaneously comic relief and a worthy opponent. Even without the transphobic jokes about his androgyny in the dub, his gender expression and effeminate mannerisms humorously sets him apart from the boys as well as girls of Duel Academy. Despite his emotional outbursts over tardiness and underachieving, he represents a formidable dueling prowess cultivated at Duel Academy. In his duel against Jaden, Crowler becomes one of many subsequent duelists characterized through their strategies and choice in card archetypes. His “Ancient Gear” cards not only express his age through the rusty machines and his ethnicity through the European castles, but the bulky and rugged monsters also contrast with his slender and frilly appearance. This contrast adds to Crowler’s overall androgyny, while Jaden’s arsenal of mostly male superheroes personifies his place in the story as an unlikely (male) hero. Although Crowler loses to Jaden, their duel offers the first peek at how the androgynous and gender non-conforming characters of GX bring unique perspectives and skills to the game.

Despite having a gender non-conforming person in a position of authority, as the head of the Obelisk boys or at times even the acting headmaster, Duel Academy remains heteropatriarchal at its structure due to its enrollment policies and educational environment. Crowler’s attempts to bolster Duel Academy’s reputation as its headmaster in season 2 involve poaching professional duelists and making the current students into celebrities, specifically by enforcing gender roles. He protects Slifer students out of his growing fondness for Jaden from Bonaparte’s plan to remove them from the school by demolishing their housing, but the root issue of the dorm hierarchy remains.

Even on an interpersonal level, Crowler (initially) acts as an agent of heteropatriarchy by prioritizing Obelisk students born into wealth like Chazz or success stories like Zane, pressuring Alexis into a feminine gender role, and looking down on the Slifer students who don’t live up to masculine gender roles. While at first antagonistic toward the students this way, Crowler eventually warms up to them and vice versa by bonding in dangerous situations. He allows Chumley to join Industrial Illusions despite losing a qualifying duel, he puts his life on the line to protect his students, accepts Jaden’s place in Duel Academy, and more. Rather than a queer-coded antagonist, he develops into a beloved mentor. Over time as GX introduces more gender non-conforming characters, Crowler’s eccentric androgynous appearance no longer characterizes him as an Other. 

From here on, we’ll take a look at gender in GX through other characters:

• 101: Duel Academy and Crowler
• 102: Blair Flannigan
• 210A: Alexis Rhodes
• 210B: Atticus Rhodes
• 310000: Chazz Princeton
• Study Abroad: Jesse Anderson
• Capstone: Jaden Yuki and Yubel

• Animation
• Anime
• Television