>>542215425
The reality is this. Judai's 'friends' in the early seasons sucked (talking about the main cast here, not characters like Edo and Ryo who were good characters but didn't really count as being in Judai's main friend group). They had no real connection with him and they were a fucking stressful burden to keep around. Constantly getting caught, constantly jobbing, constantly putting all of the weight and responsibility onto Judai.
People say that Judai abandoning the old crew for the new ones was out of order but fuck that, he was much happier with the guys from the other schools. They gelled together better, they were more capable, they lifted the burden from him and they just plain had more in common.

The new guys had cooler designs, cooler decks and were better written and not as 1-dimensional as characters like Syrus.