Taking place ten years after the events of the original Yu-Gi-Oh! series, Yu-Gi-Oh! GX follows a new generation of duelists including a young boy named Judai Yuuki (Jaden Yuki) who attends Duel Academia (Duel Academy), a school founded by Seto Kaiba that trains duelists in the field of Duel Monsters. Judai/Jaden makes various friends and rivals and takes on many challenges alongside his Elemental Hero deck and a Winged Kuriboh card given to him by Yugi Mutou.
Yu-Gi-Oh! GX is produced by Nihon Ad Systems, Inc., and directed by Hatsuki Tsuji. Scripts are prepared by an alternating lineup of writers–Shin Yoshida, Atsushi Maekawa, Akemi Omode, Yasuyuki Suzuki–with music arrangements by Yutaka Minobe. Takuya Hiramitsu is in charge of sound direction, supervised by Yūji Mitsuya. Character and monster designs are overseen by Kenichi Hara, while Duel layout is overseen by Masahiro Hikokubo. The "GX" in the series' title is short for the term "Generation neXt". "GENEX" was conceived as the series' original title, as can be evidenced in early promotional artwork. It also refers to the GX tournament that takes place between episodes 84 and 104.
The program is divided into episodes classified as "turns". The title sequence and closing credits are accompanied by lyrics varying over the course of the series, with the former immediately followed by an individual episode's number and title. Eyecatches begin and end commercial breaks halfway through each episode; in the first season, there were two eyecatches per episode, usually showcasing the opponents and their key monsters for a given episode while in later seasons, a single eyecatch appears with only the duelists. After the credits, a preview of the next episode, narrated most frequently by KENN and Masami Suzuki, is made, followed by a brief "Today's Strongest Card" segment.
The 180-episode series was produced by Gallop and aired in Japan on TV Tokyo between October 6, 2004 and March 26, 2008, and was followed by Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's.
It was subsequently licensed by 4Kids Entertainment and adapted into English, picked up by Cartoon Network and 4KidsTV in North America, where it is also distributed by Warner Bros. Family Entertainment (edited version only) and Warner Bros. Television Animation. Like previous 4Kids adaptations, several changes were made from the original Japanese version, including the names and personalities of characters, the soundtrack, the sound effects, the appearance of visuals such as Life Point counters, and the appearance of cards. The story and some of the visuals are also edited to remove references to death, blood, violence and religion in order to make the series suitable for a younger audience. Also any written language text, either Japanese or English is erased or replaced with unreadable content. These edits are also used in various localizations of the show in countries outside of Asia where 4Kids had distribution rights. The fourth season has not been dubbed, as it was replaced by the North American airing of Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's in September 2008.
Dubbed episodes were uploaded onto 4Kids' YouTube page until March 29, 2011, when Nihon Ad Systems and TV Tokyo sued 4Kids and terminated the licensing agreement for the Yu-Gi-Oh! franchise. The series is currently licensed by 4K Media Inc.. Crunchyroll is currently streaming dubbed episodes and began streaming the subtitled Japanese version of the series in August 2015.
MangaA manga spin-off of the series supervised by Kazuki Takahashi and written and illustrated by Naoyuki Kageyama began serialization in V Jump on December 17, 2005. The chapters have been collected and published in nine tankōbon volumes by Shueisha starting on November 2, 2006. The manga is licensed for English language release by Viz Media, which serialized the first 37 chapters in its Shonen Jump manga anthology. The remaining chapters were published straight to graphic novel, beginning with volume 5. The plot of the manga is completely different from the anime and is more of a continuation to the original Yu-Gi-Oh! series with Shadow Games and the Millennium Items playing a major role within the story. There are also new monsters and changes to some of the characters' personalities. Unlike the original Yu-Gi-Oh! manga, all the names used in the English version of the manga are taken from the dubbed anime. A one-shot of the GX manga was released on June 21, 2014 in the August issue of V Jump. The one-shot was written and illustrated by Naoyuki Kageyama. An English version of this chapter was released on December 29, 2014 by Weekly Shonen Jump.
Video gamesSeveral video games based on Yu-Gi-Oh! GX have been developed and published by Konami.
Three games were released for Game Boy Advance; Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters GX Aim to be Duel king!, Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters Expert 2006, and Yu-Gi-Oh! GX Duel Academy.
Four games have been released for Nintendo DS; Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters Nightmare Troubadour, Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters GX Spirit Caller, Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters World Championship 2007 and Yu-Gi-Oh! World Championship 2008. A fifth title, Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters GX Card Almanac, is not actually a game, but a catalog of cards up to 2007.
The Tag Force series has appeared on the PlayStation Portable, which adds the ability to form tag team duels, with the first three games in the series being based on the GX series (subsequent games are based on Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's). The titles are Yu-Gi-Oh! GX Tag Force, Yu-Gi-Oh! GX Tag Force 2 and Yu-Gi-Oh! GX Tag Force 3. The first game was also ported to PlayStation 2 as Yu-Gi-Oh! GX: Tag Force Evolution. So far, Tag Force 3 has not been released in North America. It was however, released in Europe, and its follow up, Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's Tag Force 4, has been released in all regions including North America.
MagazineIn 2007, Eaglemoss productions signed a deal to release a magazine based upon the Yu-Gi-Oh! GX franchise named Yu-Gi-Oh! GX Ultimate Guide.[12][13] This series of issues (Priced as 99p for Issue 1, £1.99 for Issues 2 to 60 and £4.99 for the Mini Monsters Special Issue) ran from 2007 to 2009 and totalled 61 issues. Each fortnight a collectable would be included in the form a medal (Academy character or duel monster), a Triang (2x shiny or 1x Holographic) or a miniature monster which would stand on its own platform. In Issue 2 a tin was provided to keep medals and triangs in, along with a further 2 collectable file folders to hold the comics in later issues.