Blair Flannigan (Rei Saotome)’s debut in episode 20, in which she lies about her age to enroll and meet dueling prodigy Zane Truesdale, provides some insight into the gender politics of the three Duel Academy classes in Yu-Gi-Oh GX. In the episode, Professor Banner explains that any transfer student who enrolls mid-term joins Slifer Red despite their grades, which contradicts how all girl students join Obelisk Blue by default. This leaves any potential female student in a double bind, in which they can’t enroll mid-term. The writers of GX somewhat address this oversight with Blair, who disguises herself as a boy partially to obscure her true age–but also because girls can only be admitted to Duel Academy through Obelisk.
Slifer and Ra each only have a single building for their dorms, exclusively for boys, leaving potential female students in them unaccounted for. In the Japanese version, Cronos (Crowler) derisively refers to the Red students as “dropout boys” (in English), defining the dorm by its gender demographic. Season 1 depicts the Slifer housing as dilapidated and their food as rancid, lacking “a woman’s touch” due to only having the lackadaisical Professor Banner in charge. The clean extravagance of Obelisk Blue would appeal more to the stereotypical girl who turns her nose up at dirt. Slifer students like Jaden Yuki and Syrus Truesdale also bond by bathing together, which a girl couldn’t participate in because the majority of onsen in Japan have been segregated by gender since the Meiji Restoration.
GX doesn’t address how Duel Academy would incorporate female Slifer students long term, as Blair leaves the island on a technicality in season 1 and no other girls enroll there. Alexis Rhodes temporarily resides in the Slifer dorm during season 2, using a room renovated by Chazz Princeton while he opts for the standard housing. Blair joins Slifer properly in season 3, but most characters spend the majority of the season across different dimensions with no need to dwell on her situation. By season 4, Blair ascends to Obelisk for her (off-screen) growth as a duelist. Neither Alexis nor Blair’s stays in Slifer indicate a larger shift to admitting girls to the Red dorm, let alone more to Duel Academy.
With Blair enrolling mid-term under illegitimate circumstances, GX avoids the question of her economic class and that of the Duel Academy girls at large. Does Duel Academy place girls from any background into Obelisk by default, or can girls only attend the school if they qualify for Obelisk through wealth? With little information on the prerequisites for Obelisk, the process for its girl students remains even more unclear than the boys shown to have attended Duel Academy’s prep school. Obelisk being defined by class suggests the girls come from elite backgrounds as well, which Blair may or may not fall under.
That fact Blair disguises herself as a boy even though Obelisk takes in girls “regardless of grades” suggests they either don’t accept any mid-term transfers, or female applicants also require an elite background. Both explanations make it more difficult for girls to enter Duel Academy, as part of its structural heteropatriarchy. Either way, Blair apparently doesn’t qualify for Obelisk without nepotism and/or completed middle school records even with an inflated age. We don’t know if she would have those at the proper age for enrollment, either. When she later formally joins Duel Academy, she explains in the Japanese version of episode 105 that the school made an exception for her age because she placed 2nd in the Genex tournament, still leaving these issues a mystery.
Rather than dwell on her class, GX focuses on Blair’s gender. GX reveals it through a scene in which Jaden witnesses her cap fall off her head and her long hair fall out, associating her female gender with a traditionally feminine physical feature. Even though hair can be cut and styled, it plays out like a G-rated version of an undressing scene that reveals a character’s sex through a “definitive” body part. After the long hair reveal and gender exposition, her characterization shifts to more feminine. Blair may have disguised herself as a boy, but fawning over boys and wielding cards with cutesy designs like “Maiden in Love” and “Pikeru’s Circle of Enchantment” portrays her as girlier than GX‘s mainstay female duelist Alexis.
In the Japanese version, Ryo (Zane) remarks that dueling reveals a person’s “personality, as well as the truth about them,” prompting the audience to consider the symbolism of her play style. This philosophy applies to characterization in Yu-Gi-Oh at large, which GX episode 20 uses to express Blair’s gender specifically. Her boss monster “Maiden in Love,” a doll-like human girl dressed in frills, contrasts with her boyish disguise. Like Crowler, the “gap” between her appearance and her monsters makes for a unique duelist. When Blair gets the upper hand by using “Maiden” to take control of Jaden’s male “Elemental HEROes” (with card effects symbolized by the spirit’s “feminine wiles”), she removes her cap and reveals her long hair again. Although the combination of feminine silky hair with her boyish uniform creates an androgynous appearance, her girlish strategy speaks louder. Even after the duel, the spirit of “Maiden” manifests behind Blair in the same pose as her while she confesses her crush on Zane. With the spirit invisible to everyone in the scene but Jaden, the shot portrays the monster as Blair’s inner self hidden by her uniform disguise.
Blair presents as a boy only as means to an end for a heterosexual crush, not personal gender expression. Society at large considers tomboyism merely an attempt to gain privileges afforded to boys, as observed by Jack Halberstam in Female Masculinity. GX writes the same narrative, with Blair pretending to be a boy solely to access Duel Academy when she could not as herself. Halberstam also notes that society tolerates tomboyism under the assumption of accessing benefits until adolescence, during which authority figures start enforcing traditional femininity on teenagers assigned female at birth. GX side steps the reality of young women being forced out of masculinity by characterizing Blair as a girl who willingly embraces femininity again once her secret clears up.
Blair’s shift back to feminine presentation reinforces the heterosexuality of her admiration for male duelists, and her infatuation with boys reinforces her female gender identity, in accordance with the heterosexual matrix theorized by Judith Butler. Through the heterosexual matrix, society intertwines cultural norms for gender and sexual orientation. Episode 20 first hints at Blair being female when she nuzzles a card stolen from Zane’s deck, because a crush on a boy doesn’t align with social norms for those assigned male at birth. GX goes on to simultaneously present Blair with girlier gender expression and more crushes on boys, from Zane to Jaden to Marcel. Even while she takes an interest in Marcel during season 3, her crush on Jaden carries on into season 4. The persistence of her attraction to Jaden, sparked in the same episode that reveals her gender, perpetually genders her.
Even when episode 103 reintroduces Blair in androgynous disguise with a mask, pants, and hair tucked under a bandana to enter Duel Academy’s Genex Tournament; the audience remembers her “true” gender based on episode 20. She wields a new egg-themed deck against Chazz, symbolizing her youthful potential as a duelist rather than her femininity. With that said, she swoons and the background turns to fuzzy pastels when Chazz’s advice reminds her of Jaden after their match in episode 105. Once again, her heterosexual attraction to a boy “betrays” her androgynous appearance to reinforce her femininity.
Blair retains a Slifer red jacket upon formally joining Duel Academy, but wears it open to bear her chest and has short sleeves like the Obelisk girls in uniform. She may be one of the only women in GX to not wear a skirt, but the low cut shorts with thigh high socks of her character design emphasize her feminine “absolute territory” in a different way. The boyish twist on zettai ryouiki, Blair’s diminutive height, and her continued use of “boku” in the Japanese version convey that she still has room to grow in terms of femininity; compared to the more “womanly” design and speech patterns of Alexis.
Starting in season 3, Blair continues to embrace her assigned gender and conforms to its gender roles. In the Japanese version, her speech patterns switch from masculine to feminine, though she uses the boyish first person pronoun “boku” and the comparatively girlish “watashi” interchangeably. In a tag duel paired with Kenzan (Hassleberry) in episode 162, Rei (Blair) alternates between masculine speech toward Asuka (Alexis) and feminine toward Judai (Jaden) respectively. She comes across as immaturely unfeminine compared to Alexis, but able to play up her femininity toward her male crush in hopes of getting his attention. As her final featured duel, GX concludes Blair’s part in the story as a girl aspiring for femininity and a heterosexual relationship.
Between her increased femininity and heteronormativity, Blair no longer blurs the line between masculine and feminine after her first appearance. Her crushes don’t distract her from her education, but she doesn’t stand out as a powerful duelist either despite being introduced as a prodigy who could hold her own against Jaden. Like many minor characters of any gender in GX, a lack of featured duels leaves her undefined as a duelist. GX writers use duels to convey the personalities of their characters, as exposited in Blair’s introductory episode, so lack of duels fails to enrich her character in general.
Even though she joins Slifer with the potential to climb the Duel Academy social ladder, minimal duels makes her supposed improvement imperceptible. It misses the opportunity for an arc like Syrus, another student who rises in dorm rank. Instead, her choice of Slifer Red over the default Obelisk Blue plays yet another part in the heterosexual matrix. Kenzan (Hassleberry) asks why she joined Red in the Japanese version of episode 105 and she doesn’t respond, but her focus on Judai (Jaden) speaks for itself. She lives in a male-dominated dorm to be physically closer to her crush, underpinning heterosexuality as her motivation even though she deviates from the social norm of girls exclusively living in Obelisk.
Next time, we’ll look at Alexis and the other named girls of Obelisk Blue!
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