‘Yu-Gi-Oh GX’ duels attract fan base of boys

Some kids – prepubescent and teen boys in particular – express a particular fondness for the Japanese style of cartooning called anime. What once was a rather cultist group of adherents has blossomed into hordes of mainstream fans.

In response, TV networks have moved anime off the late-night schedule and created whole time blocks devoted to this stylized form of animation.

“Yu-Gi-Oh GX,” which premiered earlier this month on Cartoon Network (5 p.m. weekdays, cable channel 42 in Spokane, 75 in Coeur d’Alene), is just the latest in this animation craze.

While it doesn’t follow the traditional anime path exactly, in terms of looks it certainly fits the bill. The characters’ exaggerated features include incredibly round, glossy eyes, flowing locks, long legs and pointed noses. Girls are buxom; boys often wear clothes that hint at traditional Japanese dress.

And most notably, the animation looks choppier than Western programs, because anime runs fewer frames per second than do American cartoons.

This latest version of “Yu-Gi-Oh,” though it has characters and conflicts different from the Kids WB version, still bases its story on dueling card games in order to win dominance. But unlike traditional anime, which feature one long-running, soap-opera-style plot, “Yu-Gi-Oh GX” stories are self-contained.

Little box scores appear on the television screen to add and subtract “life points” as the duelists call forth, vanquish or lose various monsters or special effects. The first duelist to reach zero, after starting with 4,000 points, loses.

The card game theme – with the obvious goal of promoting sales of related trading cards to dedicated viewers – doesn’t quite resonate with older brains, however. After all, why do all these bad guys so willingly give up after losing a card game? And who’s keeping score during the “real life” action of the dueling card players?

These questions may be unanswerable and obviously don’t pose any serious problems to younger viewers. And in the great realm of anime, “Yu-Gi-Oh GX” offers at least marginally more parent-friendly qualities.

The fighting, while cartoonish in all cases, isn’t quite as brazen or continuous as in some cartoons; the characters and plots are easier to track. And if one is looking for a small kernel of educational opportunity, there’s all that adding and subtracting of scores during the duels.