Mirror Mirror: An analysis of Johan Andersen as a reflection for Yuuki Juudai and Yubel

[heleentje]

Mirror Mirror:

An analysis of Johan Andersen as a reflection for Yuuki Juudai and Yubel, and Yubel’s hatred for him

This essay contains unmarked spoilers for all four Yu-Gi-Oh series. For simplicity’s sake, I will be referring to Yubel with female pronouns. Episode numbers are preceded by DM for Yu-Gi-Oh Duel Monsters, GX for Yu-Gi-Oh GX

Comments

[syntheticpoetic]

I think there are some really interesting points here, especially when you also take into account some of the supports you don't mention (Ryo also compares Judai and Johan in their passionate enthusiasm, even suspecting that Johan has 'the same infinite potential' when dueling him in ep...128 is it? And let's not forget how Johan suddenly goes into rigid high-alert whenever Rainbow Dragon is mentioned--he can be downright unsettling once or twice!). This isn't necessarily to say I agree with everything in here, it's just very well argued

[heleentje]

Hee, thank you! There's a lot I didn't get to mention here (I cut a couple of paragraphs from the first draft for being mostly irrelevant - there was a bit about them having similar appearances, but that's dubious at best)

Good point on that. Johan gets... pushy xD He definitely made himself look like far more of a threat than anyone else, whether he realized that or not (I'm inclined to say no, since Johan's first reflex to anyone being in trouble seems to be 'run towards the danger at high speed and disregard my personal safety'). One of the things I cut was whether Juudai noticed the same similarities or not, hence the rapid bonding, but for that to really work, there would have to be a more tangible connection between Johan and Yubel, which we have no evidence for. Not that I don't have several theories on that - I still want an explanation for that 'Have we met before' line.I kind of wish that I would've been able to add in some Greek mythology... I suppose Rainbow Dragon was a messenger and a harbinger of war, in a sense, but

[syntheticpoetic]

Ahaha, I know exactly how that is. They actually do use the exact same facial lines--you can lay profile shots of them over each other and the only line changes are the eye and hair shapes--but even then, it's hard to say if that's intentional or just Art Crew Of The Day + Generic Anime Face Syndrome

[heleentje]

(ack, late reply, sorry. Busy weekend) Yeah, I noticed that bit, but then again, Ryou has the same hairstyle as Yubel, so I wasn't sure either whether it was intentional or Only Six Faces. Heck, even Bruno has very similar facial structure to the two of them. And I absolutely do not have about three concurrent crack theories running about that, whatever made you think so?Mmm, even with it being Juudai it still seems too fast to me? Or too meaningful, perhaps. Though it might be me fixating on the 'have we met before' line. I agree that they were probably intending to go somewhere with Johan, but had to drop the thread. There are a fair amount of things we just never find out about him: does he have human family? Why was he not on the cruise ship? And one thing that always struck me as odd was in 172, where he sees that Juudai's Fusion card is infected by Darkness, even though no one else had been able to see it before. I want to write it off as being related to seeing spirits, but Manjoume didn't see the Darkness in the cards at the

[kagome1991]

I know this may be an old thread but I wanted to comment on your analysis. I really liked it and for some reason it brought me comfort. You brought up really interesting points as well. I honestly love Judai x Yubel shipping and appears to be more canon than anything else in this series. I'm not knocking spiritshipping (Judai x Johan); I like that ship too but I don't really like when rapid yaoi fangirls of the series make the assumption that Judai and Johan had any kind of romantic feelings for each other other than friendship. What you mention above about Johan treating Judai like a regular guy rather than a hero like his other friends and the fact that they both could see the spirits also made a significant difference when it came to their bond. While shipping is fun and I really enjoy myself when doing so, this is a shounen type of anime/manga. There is no shounen-ai in it and I don't count Yubel since she's a special case of her own and she's clearly female. I thought I would share my 2 cents with you. Wonderful analysis!~

[heleentje]

I'm glad you liked the analysis! As for Yubel, it depends a lot on the version you watched. The dub cut a lot and edited a lot, and it does present Yubel as female, as you mention. However, in the original, Japanese version, Yubel's monster form is consistently presented as intersex. When we look at Yubel as a human, we can't really tell from physical cues. It is worth mentioning, however, that Yubel uses 'boku' as a personal pronoun, which is typically a pronoun used by young or relatively shy boys (Shou also uses it, for reference). While there are exceptions to the rule (Rei is another person who uses 'boku') Occam's Razor applies

[kagome1991]

Thank you for your observation. To be honest I haven't gotten that far with GX but I downloaded the series to watch later. Yeah their relationship isn't exactly straight but it isn't gay either. I don't know what to call it lol but you're right that's it is interesting.

As for Yubel, I read that when Yubel was human she was a girl and then fused with a male dragon monster to become what she is. Is that true? I don't know for sure.

She really is an awesome character. I ship Juudai x Yubel like nobody's business ^^

[heleentje]

Normally I would agree that we can't label JuudaixYubel as either straight or gay - we don't know what gender, if any, Yubel identifies as, so labeling their relationship 'straight' or 'gay' without further information would be inaccurate. This fandom has a bit of a problem with queer erasure, though, and their relationship defies labels; it's one of the reasons I love it so much - it's a giant fuck you in the face of hetero- and cisnormativity