How Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Links Gives Fans Closure for Their Favourite Forgotten Characters

Yu-Gi-Oh! The hit phenomenon that spawned a card game, a second card game, a manga, a second manga focused on the card game, an anime focused on the first manga, an anime focused on the second manga, and a hit soundtrack released on a McDonalds Mighty Kids Meal. And, of course, we can’t forget the topic of today’s article: the mobile game Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Links.

With Yu-Gi-Oh! having spent the past two years celebrating its 25th anniversary, I wanted to take a look at its characters. Specifically, how a game like Duel Links picks up where the shows left off, fills in blanks the creators left behind, and even brings closure to thousands of heartbroken children of all ages, long after the anime left their stories behind.

But What Even Is a Duel Link?

Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Links is a mobile game released in 2016 in Japan, and 2017 worldwide. At a time where a middling game from 2015 was Konami’s only competition against unofficial dueling simulators, Duel Links was a surprise. It was a version of Yu-Gi-Oh! which allowed you to play as your favorite characters, collect cards, and duel your friends.

Well, kinda.

It wasn’t quite Yu-Gi-Oh! Rather, Duel Links ran on a simplified rule set and a much smaller card pool. In many ways, it was a game designed for “Yugi Boomers”, a fandom term referring to a group of people who prefer older, simpler formats of the card game. Specifically launching with only characters from the original anime, it felt like an appeal to nostalgia. It wouldn’t be until much later that other spin-offs would be brought into the show, with each series getting its own “world.”

The timeline in Duel Links is a little bit wonky, but typically each world serves as a sequel to their respective shows. And it is in these sequels where we find the unfinished stories of abandoned characters finally brought to their conclusion.

A Second Chance

Which characters am I talking about? Well, take Lulu Obsidian, whose entire character arc in the Yu-Gi-Oh! Arc-V anime amounts to little more than her getting locked in a tower, needing to be saved (twice), and eventually getting absorbed into another character. She barely has a chance to interact with most of the cast. Thanks to the magic of Duel Links, though, she’s resurrected (or should I say “Monster Reborn-ed”) as her own person. 

Or, how about Pegasus J. Crawford (Maximillion Pegasus in the English adaptation), creator of Duel Monsters who, at the end of the Yu-Gi-Oh! manga’s first arc, is unceremoniously murdered off-screen by the series’ overarching villain. A character who absolutely terrorized the series’ main cast ends up butchered without a second thought.

Clearly, this was a regrettable choice in hindsight, because in the Yu-Gi-Oh! anime, he’s only defeated, and goes through a redemptive arc. Duel Links does bring him back, albeit with a twist. As Duel Links follows the continuity of the Yu-Gi-Oh! manga, Pegasus being alive is a major contradiction. One that actually gets acknowledged by Pegasus himself, where he has the chance to openly taunt his would-be assassin, telling him that he’s already too late. A man obsessed with resurrecting his beloved from the dead, now laughing at his own fate. 

Viewers of the English dub for the Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds anime aren’t left wanting, either. The final arc of 5Ds was heavily edited in the west, with several episodes completely excised and a premature ending slotted in. The end result left fans understandably disappointed, as they missed out on so much regarding the series’ final antagonists. Indeed, the adaptation largely skipped Iliaster’s Four Stars of Destruction, humanity’s last survivors who sent robot versions of themselves back in time, in order to prevent a genocide that wiped out their future by any means necessary. 

The actions they take in the anime are reprehensible. They’re willing to wipe out hundreds of thousands of innocents to prevent their future from occurring; horrific acts, albeit ones driven out of tragic desperation to prevent the horrors they suffered. But through their encounters with the protagonists, they find a sort of redemption. In return, the protagonists learn about the horrors that await them if they fail to correct the timeline, and vow to fix the present to save the future.

Duel Links showcases the true ending to 5Ds, previously limited to the subtitled version of the anime, and even wraps it up in a lovely, neat little bow. A final cutscene was featured at the end of a 5Ds event, unique to Duel Links, which saw the Four Stars of Destruction reunited once more, actually hopeful about the future of the world.

And speaking of endings, did you know Jaden died in the Yu-Gi-Oh! GX anime?

“Rainbow Neos vs. Yubel Ultimate Form” was the final episode of the GX Dub. The climactic showdown between Jaden and Yubel, Season 3’s overarching antagonist. Jaden, having learned that he and Yubel have been friends across many lifetimes, and having inadvertently caused Yubel’s fall into darkness, merges his soul with Yubel, ensuring they will be together forever…

And thus, Season 3 ended on the series’ 155th episode. If that number sounds strange, it’s because Japan ended Season 3 on its 156th episode. The final episode of Season 3 never received an English dub, and ends on the absolute bombshell that the main character perished.

In a dub that actively worked to remove as many of the darker elements as possible (the most notable being referring to the act of dying as being “sent to the stars”), this was a genuinely shocking move by 4Kids. This little canon change could have been rectified in Season 4, which reveals Judai and Yubel are alive and well and merged to become one being, save for the slight issue that Season 4 never got a Western release. Oops. 

The Yu-Gi-Oh! GX anime didn’t get an official English subtitled version until 2015, when it was picked up by Crunchyroll. And while I imagine a fair few people did end up watching the show’s actual ending, there would have also been tens of thousands who closed out the show, heartbroken. 

Thanks to Duel Links, though, the heartbreak is averted. Fans are treated to an actual cutscene of Jaden and Yubel, safe after their merger. Years of suffering, finally released in a beautiful moment of catharsis. We even get them as a playable character!

But there’s one more character I’d like to highlight. One who only showed up for a season and across a handful of episodes, but who’s probably one of the show’s most iconic characters. One who, even in Season 4 of Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, was denied a proper sendoff after the absolute hell he went through to save his friends.

Jim Crocodile Cook.

The Power of Friendship

I believe that Jim Crocodile Cook is the greatest character in Yu-Gi-Oh! GX.

He’s got a cool fit, a crocodile with a name that has aged terribly, an awesome magical eye that lets him enter another person’s mindscape, and a deck based around Fossil cards, with a surprising amount of foresight when it came to modern card design (banishing cards from your opponent’s graveyard and burning through your own life points to pay the costs of powerful cards). He also likes fossils. A lot.

He shows up in Season 3 as a sort of dueling exchange student, who quickly gets wrapped in the mystery surrounding the cruel Professor Cobra and his efforts to resurrect his dead son. Following some interdimensional shenanigans and fights against Duel Zombies, he accompanies Judai in his efforts to save fellow exchange student Johan in a quest that sees most of their friends seemingly killed.

His most iconic moment is his duel against Judai, the latter possessed by the spirit of the cruel Supreme King. A brutal, almost entirely one-sided battle that sees Jim badly injured and continually beaten down. Yet Jim refuses to give up. We see that out of every character in this show, Jim is far and beyond the most stubborn. and attempts to use his powers to reach out to Judai, turning the duel around and equalizing the score, begging his friend to come back to him…

Only to fail after Judai uses one of Yu-Gi-Oh!’s most iconic cards for the first time: Super Polymerization, stealing Jim’s monster and launching a brutal assault on both him and Karen. Jim dies, but his efforts aren’t in vain. His spirit lingers long enough to aid fellow exchange student Austin O’Brien in his own duel against the Supreme King, before finally pulling Judai’s spirit out of the maelstrom of darkness he’s trapped in. 

His later resurrection alongside almost everyone else who died does diminish some of the arc’s emotional weight, but we’ll let it slide.

And then Season 4 happens, and outside of a single shot of him waving, he’s gone. Our beloved crocodile boy sails away to brighter shores. The guy who literally gave his life in order to save someone he’d known for a few weeks at most, and Judai doesn’t even so much as call him up to ask how Karen’s doing. 

It’s especially surprising considering both Johan and Austin make a return during the events of Season 4, playing substantial roles in the fight against that season’s antagonist. But Jim’s nowhere to be seen. There isn’t even a single line of dialogue acknowledging his absence. He’s buried and left forgotten, and would remain as such for over a decade. 

This man drives a fossil car. Why would you not bring him back?

Of course, there’s probably a practical reason to this. Season 4 of Yu-Gi-Oh! GX is significantly shorter than its predecessors (24 episodes compared to the 52 of each previous season). Naturally, some things needed to be cut. And it’s not like Jim’s the only one to suffer. Plenty of other characters had unsatisfying arcs. But this was offset by said characters having their cards physically available in the real world. Outside of a few scant cards, the bulk of Jim’s deck was nowhere to be found.

Fossil cards wouldn’t have a tangible physical release until 12 years after their initial debut in the anime. They were released in Collection Pack 2020, after the Fossil archetype skyrocketed to the top of a poll asking players what new cards they wanted to see. And with those cards now existing for real, that meant there was a chance…

Sure enough, in 2022, our favorite crocodile boy finally joined the world of Duel Links, bursting onto the scene with his own event that finally, after nearly 15 years, reveals what happened to Jim Crocodile Cook.

The scene is short, but striking. How the events of Season 3 lingered with Jim. How Jim, the man who stood up to a tyrant who breaks the spirits of those around him by his mere presence, dropped out of his academy and retired from dueling altogether. The man who refused to stay down in the face of impossible odds? It all became too much for him.

But we end on a high note. Jim openly acknowledges his fears of failing to save his friends, and resolves that no matter what threats await him, he’ll be there to fight them once more. 

It’s a genuinely great moment. One of Season 3’s few flaws is that almost no characters other than Judai seem affected by the events that transpired. But here, we’re shown that even the strongest characters walked away with their fair share of scars, but also that even the darkest moments don’t need to sit with us forever.

It took eighteen years, but no one ever said fossilization was quick. 

Just a Little More

Loving side characters is a difficult thing to do. They’re often the highlights of many series, with striking designs, captivating dialogue, and one-off moments that make them shine. But by forging that connection with them, there’s a part of you that knows you’re destined to suffer. They’re not the protagonist. They’re not the rival. They’re not even the plucky sidekick. Oftentimes, the most you can ever hope for is a dramatic final stand or a few minutes in the spotlight. Yu-Gi-Oh! is no exception to this, with an absolutely massive cast of characters fighting for the spotlight. 

But, thanks to the power of trans-media storytelling, a mountain of corporate capital, and a fanbase that simply will not let their favorite character’s story end, we’re entering an unprecedented age of enjoying our beloved duelists long after their final appearance. 

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some cards to grind.

How Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Links Gives Fans Closure for Their Favourite Forgotten Characters – Amity Gilmour