Webtoon Spotlight

Random Spotlight#9: Yugioh Rivals Ranked

Honorable Mentions

Chazz Princeton

Okay, so might as well rip the band-aid off here. All memes aside, Chazz is easily one of the best characters in GX. Mainly one of the things that I do like about Chazz is that he makes the most of his limited screen time. Chazz starts as an arrogant piece of work who gets beaten by Jaden on the regular. You immediately think he is just going to be another nameless joke after being sent to North Academy. Except the absolute mad lad comes back to Duel Academy with a whole ass army chanting his name. And with this development, Chazz pretty much becomes a more versatile and overall stronger duelist that managed to move past the stigma of wealth that persisted in his brothers.

And even in the second season, Chazz keeps this trend up. Sure he spent a large amount of time in the society of light (effectively being another random croney), but when he gets saved by Jaden's darkness holy crap, is it amazing. Because then he proceeds to demolish the entire society single-handedly and wins the entire Genex tournament with his society of weirdos! All these proved that if Chazz gets taken down a peg, he comes back ten times harder with an army of followers. Too bad that after season 2, he pretty much reverts to nothing more than a joke, constantly getting sidelined like most of the cast. It also gets worse when, during one of his last important duels in the series, Chazz decided to give up his pride to throw a duel for laughs. While his relationship with Aster is cool and his Darkness vision very impressive, I kind of wish this was handled more properly. Comedic relief is fine, but Chazz in the first season did have a depth that should have been answered to more. Other than that, I've got nothing to say on his deck since I don't think it's consistent enough to represent him.

Zane Truesdale

Zane is a very interesting character. After winning duels left and right, I like how Zane is the one to give Jaden his first loss. While he didn't play the most important role in the series, I do like the presence and extremely "tough love" approach to both Jaden and Syrus as he you can tell he respects their strength as duelists a lot but needs to have a stern hand in their development for them to grow. His last duel with Jaden is one of my favorites in the franchise, as I liked the ending of him passing the torch to Jaden.

His further development to me is hit or miss depending on your point of view. I love how even though he is one of the best duelists in the academy at that point, Zane still gets defeated by Aster, proving that he is a little fish in a big pond despite all of his skill. I also really like his downward spiral as he begins to shed his former philosophy of seeing every opponent as an equal that could one day challenge him. From the crushing of this philosophy, he becomes the edgiest character in all of GX, which is saying something when you somehow out edge the literal embodiment of darkness and the psychotic gender-confused sadomasochistic demon. A part of me both likes and hates that he doesn't get out of this funk of his in season 2, but I think it works a lot better in season 3.

In that season, I like how not only does Zane pay for the mistakes he's made previously, but I also like how he sort of becomes like his old self again. With this new attitude, it makes the battle between him and Jesse all the more emotional as he ends his life with his original ace card. Or so I thought until the show brought him back for some reason. I mean, I like him an all, but I wish he stayed dead to make his final moments so much better while at the same time giving Syrus more substantial growth. Other than that, Zane was a cold calculated duelist that perfectly embodied his Cyber dragons. But with that out of the way on to the real list.