Who is Manjoume?

Manjoume is a duelist from Yu-Gi-Oh GX! He's Judai's first rival and his arc involves coming to terms with his shitty family, finding himself amongst other's expectations of him, and being repeatedly brainwashed and then pushed aside to be a gag character bearing the brunt of the narrative.

Favorite Manjoume moment?

Most of my favorite Manjoume moments overlap with my favorite GX Rivalshipping moments, but solo Manjoume is also a treat. I love early Manjoume and his North Academy cult. I also have a huge soft spot for this scene because it's SO gross

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Success in Duel Monsters

Manjoume wins about 53% of the time throughout his run in the show, however, if you factor out his duels with Judai, he wins closer to 70% of the time. This may not sound impressive, but it should be noted that when I played Yu-Gi-Oh Master Duel, I won about 20% of the time with an Elemental Heroes deck. ANOTHER thing worth mentioning is that at North Academy/Duel Academy North, Manjoume beat every single person at the school -- and this is after a montage of him finding cards in ridiculously out-of-the-way places to make up a deck that he plays with on the fly. If these duels were televised, I would bump up Manjoume's win rate by about 200 duels (91% win rate) to rival Judai's 81% win rate (which would . . . realistically be higher if you factor in the Supreme King arc, etc), but nobody's ready to talk about all that.

TL;DR: Manjoume is absurdly good at Duel Monsters (with the confidence to back it up), Judai is just an anomaly.

What the hell is THAT?

I'm so glad you asked. In season 1, Manjoume left Duel Academy after he was defeated by Judai, which led to him taking a boat to get off of the school's island (I know), and subsequently drowning. When he woke up in a submarine, a seaweed-clad stranger entrusted him with a priceless gift: a Duel Monsters card. This is a really good thing since all of Manjoume's other cards were waterlogged when he drowned.

I mentioned earlier that Manjoume (like Judai) can see the spirits that the cards are modeled after: the Ojamas are one such example. Ojama yellow is pictured above! The Ojamas are cowardly, zero-attack duel spirits dressed in red speedos that have taken a shine to Manjoume. They annoy him to no end, but they help to socialize him and keep his win streak up. They were also there for Manjoume when he was invited to a rigged duel against his older brothers. Manga Manjoume has a significantly cooler duel spirit companion called the Light and Darkness Dragon, but I prefer the Ojamas for the way they support Manjoume's underdog narrative.

Videos

Placeholder for my favorite Manjoume videos.

Gallery

Placeholder for my favorite Manjoume fan art.

My GX History

Possibly move to a general Yu-Gi-Oh section? Undecided.

Ships

Manjoume is a fun character, in part due to the ways he plays off of others. I enjoy the fact that he's a different person with every one of his friends. Because of this, his various ships are all interesting to me for different reasons. My main Manjoume ship is Manjoume x Judai (GX Rivalshipping), but I also ship him with Tenjoin Asuka (his canonical crush) and Tenjoin Fubuki (her older brother). Because I'm planning to have a GX Rivalshipping section (eventually), I'll focus on the Tenjoin ships here.

Tenjoin Asuka
With Asuka, Manjoume is chivalrous and kind. Asuka allows him to be a softer, more respectful version of himself. I truly think that Asuka brings out some of the best in Manjoume, which is at odds with the best part of Manjoume that Judai brings out. It's nice to allow Manjoume to feel safe and to drop his guard a bit. That being said, Asuka doesn't seem to return his interest, and Manjoume's kindness towards Asuka sometimes comes off as putting her on a pedestal. He doesn't try to get to know her, he just wants to date her. If Asuka initiated, I would probably ship them a lot more.

Tenjoin Fubuki
Fubuki is a diehard romantic, a surfer, and Manjoume's mentor in the ways of ~love~. You can probably see where this is going. Manjoume greatly respects and admires Fubuki: as his senior, as his mentor, and as his prospective brother-in-law. Often, this admiration comes off as hero worship, which is adorable. I think they'd be cute together. Despite having hoardes of fans, Fubuki comes off as lonely without his sister and is often by himself. Manjoume cheers him up a lot, I think that being together would be good for both of them, despite how much Asuka would suffer from it. Let! The! Gag! Characters! Be! HAPPY!!!

Other

Find a way to fit in the dream my sister had where she was Manjoume after I talked about him too much.

Meta

Favorite posts and such.

Why do you love him so much?

There are so many reasons to love this guy. He's cheesy, melodramatic, and insanely stubborn. He would do anything to prove himself. He has a complex about his rival. He fell from grace. He can see duel spirits. He's a snob who enjoys and expects the finer things in life. He has an art collection that's mentioned exactly once. He's a little shit with a heart of gold. His self esteem is so bad that his god complex over-corrects into whatever this is:

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In essence, I that think he's silly and that being forced into whatever role the narrative wants him has shaped him in unintentional ways. Manjoume isn't a character I want to rescue from a bad show, he's more like the place where interesting ideas go to die, and I think that that's fascinating.

To list a few examples, he starts out as Judai's primary rival, and then he's the main villain's henchman in season two, and throughout all this, he's the only person in Judai's immediate circle who doesn't put him on some sort of pedastal. At the end of season one, Manjoume releases the Three Phantasms trying to impress a girl he became temporarily psychically linked with when he was trapped in a book for the first time. He's brainwashed once in season two, whereupon he becomes Manjoume White Thunder, and then Judai brings him back by reminding him that he never washes his coat(???). In season three, he's brainwashed again, this time as a borderline-flirtatious zombie who just wants to have a good time. I will die mad about the fact that that blue-haired Swede with a terrible sense of fashion replaced his specific narrative niche and forced him into the role of a full-time gag character, but at least that led to us getting to see Manjoume as Judai's voice of reason. This takes us up to the point where Manjoume is trapped in a book a second time, and this time it's fatal.

I'm only on episode 152, so please just let me cope in peace.

Why is he called Manjoume Thunder?

Contrary to what he says, Manjoume is a little rich boy who demands respect from those around him. Or . . . not really. He's just about the only person in Yu-gi-oh GX who expects to be referred to with proper address, which makes him look snooty by comparison. He prefers for peers to use the standard honorific "san" when talking to him, and he enforces this practice by correcting others when they call him Manjoume and saying "it's Manjoume-san", or "It's san". The thing is, he uses the copula だda in his declation, which makes it sound like he's saying サ(sa)ン(n)ダ(da)ー, or the Japanese transliteration of thunder. The nickname sticks and he integrates it into his stage persona somewhere during his brief North Academy arc.

What's with his catchphrase?

Manjoume's catchphrase is a pun based on the way that two parts of his name and one part of his nickname sound like/are numbers. One = 一ichi, ten = 十juu (the first letter in Judai's name!!), one hundred = 百hyaku, and one thousand = 千sen. When we look in his name for these various parts, we find 万man right there in his surname. Next, 十juu is close enough to "Jun" that it works for his first name, and 千sen is close enough to the サ(sa)ン(n) in "サ(sa)ン(n)ダ(da)ー" for that to sound natural as well. Clever!

The figurine

I would kill for this figurine, but I won't pay $300 for it.