No Going Back Now • lucidiux: lostmyflamingsword: ...

lucidiux:
“ lostmyflamingsword:
“ judais-little-kuriboh-socks:
“ lucidiux:
“ Rewatching GX, and I just wanted to point something out here; Shou is clearly and audibly very upset about this, but Judai seems to brush this off rather quickly. You could...

lostmyflamingsword:
judais-little-kuriboh-socks:
lucidiux:
Rewatching GX, and I just wanted to point something out here; Shou is clearly and audibly very upset about this, but Judai seems to brush this off rather quickly. You could argue that Judai is simply trying to cheer him up, or get him to overcome his fears, and you may be right to some degree, but I think we can all agree that there are much friendlier methods of doing this. Instead, he brushes Shou’s anxiety off, rather than addressing it, which is rather invalidating and proves that Judai is more interested in his own self-fulfillment than the state of his friends/friendships.
Now, maybe this isn’t the greatest scene to prove this point, since the ‘Benkei’ in question is Kenzan, who turns out to be pretty much harmless, but Judai doesn’t know that. And yes, the bridge which they’ll have to cross is on their way anyway (meaning they’ll have to face Kenzan at some point) but he seems to treat this fact like a game. He’s not doing a service, or defending the academia’s dueling honor;
He’s doing this for himself.
Freaking foreshadowing!
I got the impression that Juudai realised that Shou was upset but didn’t know what to do about it.
Then he found out the Shou was upset because Kenzan had beaten him in a duel, and in a continuation of his ‘dueling solves everything’ approach to life, decided that the best way to cheer up Shou was to beat the guy who beat him.
Hence the ‘I get it… It’s all his fault.’ [that you are upset]
It’s Juudai, with his limited social understanding, assuming that defeating the ‘villain’ is the best way to fix everything, even when the problem is emotions not world domination.
Juudai isn’t being selfish, he just doesn’t understand how to help people outside of dueling, and he consistently shows throughout GX that he’s really not good with understanding people outside of duels, so he take a simplistic approach to helping people.
Sometimes this is the exact opposite of helping solve the problem, but he does it with good (if misguided) intentions.
Yes it is foreshadowing, but not of Juudai’s ‘evilness’ but of his inability to cope with his own or other people’s emotions.
This is great, actually. I 100% agree that Judai has problems when it comes to social situations. This is just one of many examples; throughout GX, he was constantly being overwhelmed by social situations, whether it was an overabundance of attention that he couldn’t seem to handle, or the issue he seems to have when it comes to interacting with others according to how the atmosphere should be read. Whether this is because of his isolated upbringing, or a form of autism, I couldn’t say, but I do entirely agree with you on that point.
However, I never said that he was selfish, or “evil”. It is true that he has good intentions, and it’s true that he doesn’t really think he’s doing anything wrong in this situation. In fact, I think a few of us have done similar things like this to our friends in that past.
But that unfortunately doesn’t excuse what he’s doing; Shou is upset, and Judai, whether with good intentions or not, is doing the opposite of helping him with that anxiety. I think it’s probably a combination of the two: that Judai thinks this might be the best way to help Shou, in his mindset, and that it sounds like a great opportunity for a duel. Look at the smile on his face, he seems to be enthralled at the proposition of another duel, compared to the previous boredom which he’d felt simply doing runs for the academia.
However, his excitement for the turn of events, while more for himself than anyone else, is probably because of his difficulties with social situations; he has trouble determining when is the right time and place to be feeling that excitement, and that is the precise reason why he’s had so much trouble throughout gx, and it’s also the reason why Judai stopped feeling that excitement purposefully in his duels during season 4.
I’m 100% sure that most of the time, Judai has good intentions, but unfortunately it leads to a major flaw in him that comes back to bite him consistently throughout GX. He’s not “evil” or “selfish”, not in the least, in fact, he’s the exact opposite of that. Wanting to be good and exciting, fun-spirited friend is often what gets him to the good and the bad places he finds himself throughout life. That’s realistic. That’s good. And it does definitely expose the struggle he has in social situations. But good intentions don’t always lead to good outcomes, and it unfortunately costs Judai a lot in GX.