Jesse Anderson

From Yu-Gi-Oh!

Jesse Anderson, known in Japan as Johan Andersen, is a transfer student hailing from North Academy who enters Duel Academy in the third year. Jesse is Scandinavian in the Japanese version while he is from the South in the English version. Sometimes, people call him, 'Jess' as a nickname.

Excitable and energetic much like Jaden (similarities between him and Jaden are noted in both versions), he serves as one of Jaden's allies. Although a close friend, his disappearance serves a catalyst for Jaden's descent into darkness as the Supreme King of the alternate dimension. Jesse is later possessed by the spirit of Yubel, Jaden's favorite card in childhood, using him and his Crystal Beasts as mediators to act through.

[edit] Character design

Jesse's design incorporates multiple layers of clothing and a wide range of expressions. Depicted here is the duelist in full regalia from the front, side, and rear alongside views of his head from different angles.

Jesse's usual outfit consists of a blue, above waist length, jacket similar with darker blue outlines, white sleeves with frilled cuffs at his wrists, a lavender shirt and black pants which are held up with a white belt. His blue hair juts in backward and down directions. He carries an Academy Duel Disk on his left hand.

[edit] Character Biography

Invited along with his fellow overseas champions from around the world by Chancellor Sheppard, Jesse's the most secretive of his identity, even with those he’s supposed to be traveling with. Although he doesn’t board the ship that’s supposed to take the champions to their final destination, Adrian expects that Jesse would appear once they reached Duel Academy. He’s known simply as a "ghost" or the "mystery man" until officially introduced during the school's year-opening ceremony.

He is chosen by Viper to duel Jaden in the first exhibition match of the third year, and the two are unknowingly fitted with Bio-Bands. Just as Jesse is about to be defeated by Jaden, he suddenly reveals the name of the most powerful Crystal Beast: Rainbow Dragon. However, he later confesses that Rainbow Dragon has not yet been made into a card by Industrial Illusions, and that he wishes to find the Roman lithograph from which the concept of his Crystal Beasts was derived in order for Pegasus to finally create it.

After being drawn into an alternate dimension, Jesse and the rest of Duel Academy are contacted by Dr. Eisenstein, who tells them that the lithograph has finally been found. Securing the lithograph's excavation site, Pegasus has the "Rainbow Dragon" card made and sent to the other world via a Duel Energy-powered wormhole, opened in a battle between Jesse and Zane. Jesse later uses the Rainbow Dragon when Jaden fought Marcel, only to learn their real opponent is Yubel, the duel spirit that took control of Marcel. Jesse uses "Rainbow Dragon" to get Jaden and the others out while he remains in the alternate dimension to face Yubel, prompting Jaden and his friends to dive back into a rift left open between the worlds to get him back.

Jesse under Yubel's control.

Although labeled dead by many, he later appears as merely a shadow standing on a cliff near Syrus and Ojama Yellow, but it's later confirmed that the shadow was Jesse in Ojama Yellow's flashback where it spots him. He later reappears in front of Zane and it is revealed that he is possessed by Yubel. After defeating Zane, Jesse challenges Adrian Gecko, in order to retrieve it's lost energy. Jesse is able to easily destroy Exodia in the first turn, and summon the Sacred Beasts one after the other in quick succession, before fusing them to form "Armitael, Phantasm of Chaos". When his Sacred Beast strategy fails after they are all removed from play, he switches his strategy to survival, keeping Adrian's Fog King away from his life points, before being able to destroy it. After Adrian suddenly adds most of Exodia to his hand, with the last piece on top of his deck, Jesse pulls out all the stops and summons Yubel, his ace card, beating Adrian there and then.

When Jaden finally duels Yubel to save Jesse, it is revealed that Yubel actually removed Jesse's soul from his body and placed him inside the Rainbow Dark Dragon before taking over. However, when Jaden activates the "Super Polymerization" Spell Card, Rainbow Dark Dragon is turned back to normal and Jesse is set free, returning to his body. But using its last two cards, Yubel takes "Super Polymerization" using Last Trick and ends the duel in a draw with Thousand Buster.

At the beginning of Season 4, Jesse returns to North Academy but he comes back when Jaden is about to leave Domino City. Though, Jaden's "Polymerization" card was tainted in darkness by Sartorius putting his Arcana Force 0 - THE FOOL in Jaden's deck, and he thought Jesse was Trueman. The darkness only lifted once Polymerization flew out of Jaden's graveyard and Jaden saw that Jesse was really the one he was dueling. Then, they return to Duel Academy to fight the Trueman army in time to witness the defeat of Atticus Rhodes at the hands of Nightshroud. The two of them then duel Nightshroud, and although Jesse is beaten during the duel, Jaden continues, and is able to use Rainbow Neos during it because Jesse was around. Jesse keeps guarding Fujiwara while Jaden searches for the source of the darkness that still covers the world and when he comes back to the duel place, it's strongly implied that Jesse was killed by Nightshroud. However, he is revived with the antagonist's demise.

[edit] Voice/Mannerisms

In the English version, Jesse speaks with a Southern accent. While he was missing, Jaden once even pointed out that Jesse says "y'all" a lot. While he still has his accent in the dub while possessed by Yubel, it is much thinner and his voice is much deeper and darker. At first, his voice went back and forth between electronic effect and no effect, but as of Episode 149, when speaking with his own voice he uses the one with effects exclusively. It's also worth noting that Yubel doesn't usually use her own voice while controling him in the original, but in the dub she uses it a fair amount. At one point, when she told Adrian Gecko about what Jaden did to her, she used her voice and Jesse's added together. When she did, his body glowed blue. He is voiced by Kanako Irie in the Japanese version. His English voice actor is Christopher C. Adams.

Similar to Jaden, Jesse has possessed the ability to communicate with Duel Monster spirits since he was a child. His spirit partner is Crystal Beast Ruby Carbuncle, whom he affectionately nicknames, "Ruby". Although Ruby is seen most frequently by his side, Jesse considers all his monsters a part of his "family," for they themselves selected him as their master.

In addition, he tends to say "Come out!" when summoning his monsters during the Japanese Duels.

[edit] Deck

Jesse plays a Crystal Beast Deck. His monsters are based on seven precious gemstones collected from around the globe for the construction of a lithograph as evidence of Julius Caesar's reign during the time of the Roman Empire. On its return trip, the ship carrying the stones was battered by a storm, and the treasures disappeared into the depths of the ocean. Employing this concept, Pegasus specially designed and created the Crystal Beasts, which have the unique ability to retreat in a crystallized Continuous Spell form to their controller's Spell/Trap Zones when destroyed as means of avoiding complete annihilation. Due to the exclusivity of the cards, the Princeton family once attempted to purchase them using all its assets, but were rejected. Instead, Pegasus awarded them to Jesse at the end of a European tournament (in the English anime, it was a Southern Tournament). The only Crystal Beast card not given to Jesse at that time was Rainbow Dragon, which wasn't even found until Duel Academy was sucked into the alternate dimension. However, when he gets the card, Jesse focuses his strategies around gathering all the Crystal Beasts together to summon Rainbow Dragon.

Aside from Counter Cards, Jesse's Deck does not contain any other specific resources aimed towards directly destroying the cards of his opponents. He feels that a strategy of merely destroying his opponent's cards through effects is far too simple to execute, and thus values battle over cunningness.

Under Yubel's influence, Jesse uses Advanced Crystal Beasts, which, like Jaden's Evil Heroes, are darker versions of his original Crystal Beasts. Some of the cards in this deck were related to the Crystal Beasts and were no doubt already in Jesse's Crystal Beast deck they just weren't seen before his disappearance.

He also uses the Sacred Beasts against Adrian Gecko in a seperate Deck. His Sacred Beast Deck focusses on cards that can duplicate themselves (such as "Triangle Force", "Delta Barrier", and "Phantom Skyblaster") as Tributes for the Sacred Beasts. As with Marcel, several of his cards go by different names in the dub from the TCG. His ace card is "Yubel".