Yu-GI-Oh GX spends the first half of its first season constructing a really pointless 'dueling school' premise to do nothing but pointless enemy-of-the-week stuff, and then a season and a half digging itself out of that hole and trying to recapture what made the original series work. Fortunately it has two more seasons after that, with which it goes COMPLETELY bonkers in the best possible way. The final season is also the only time that 4kids straight-up gave up on, so you have to watch the final season in Japanese, during which you will completely understand why 4kids didn't try with that one.
Weirdly consistent trends in GX include 'doing Professor Snape better than Harry Potter did', 'doing Harry Potter better than Harry Potter did', 'giving Joey's deck more respect than the original series did', and 'every time a character gets a big-story-deal upgrade to their deck, the resulting deck is worse than their last one'. Seriously, Neos is a dumptruck of a plan for Jaden, Cyberdark Dragon doesn't help Zane at all in-show and would actually be even worse out of it, all the Society of Light decks suck, and the big dramatic season three reveal that a side character sold his soul for Exodia just gives him a worthless Exodia engine that doesn't work for his deck.
But now I've moved on to 5D's, A.K.A. the 'Card Games On Motorcycles' series. And the motorcycles are a FEINT, because it turns out the series is actually Cowboy Bebop with card games and class warfare.