#...kaiba wasnt kidding though

[meggeradraws]

Coffee break! I want that kaiba corp fit;;;

[kaibacorpstocksplit]

where death-t i feel really disappoints me is it does seem like, for a second, that the status quo is going to be challenged. a shadow game victim is back! the shadow game made him worse! and now he’s using his resources to make shadow games of his own! we even start off a little sympathetically with kaiba and the nightmares!

and then it just. doesnt. i think mokuba highlights this the most tbh, in that beforehand atem does not give a shit about this kid and has 0 qualms torturing him and openly wants him dead and then suddenly he’s pulling him from the fire like how could kaiba do this >:( but. you did this first? now suddenly you care? you let a bunch of other people die in the previous games too?? this sudden shift in characterization is really just… there to quickly make kaiba look worse to make atem look better. look how our kind hero rescues the child he left to die a few chapters earlier.

and ive mentioned reading through this with the same mindset i would as like, a cop/csi show. vigilante stories really serve the same purpose- the idea that there’s some people so bad they don’t deserve mercy, and there’s some people so good they can be the judge of that. the more over-the-top evil the villain, the more it justifies the hero’s cruelty- see how all the villains leading up to here are characterized. the audience worries less about dumb things like fair trials when they trust the hero’s moral compass and the villains are just sooo bad.

back in context tho, ultimately kaiba and death-t just serves as a way to reinforce yugi/atem’s own moral authority instead of challenging it. look how kaiba abuses his power with the shadow games, unlike our protag who only punishes actual criminals and is never wrong in his judgements! and it wasnt actually the penalty game that made kaiba worse like we seemed to suggest, kaiba was just evil but Another penalty game will fix that this time :) what really gives them that authority though? what’s the millenium puzzle/real shadow game’s role in this? what does this mean when we find out atem was a pharoah? what does this mean when we find out how the millennium items were made? maybe i’ll be pleasantly surprised by the answers, maybe i won’t. but this is a liveblog so i guess y’all will see me find out!

[thedorkmagiciangirl]

The Missed Thematic Importance of Anzu’s Speech

Okay everyone in the ygo fandom guess who watched Anzu’s speech to Kaiba in the sub and had FEELINGS?

And to be honest, I think all of people miss what she’s saying, especially in the original Japanese since some people are more familiar with the dub.  So I am going to explore what she says, what it means, and how it connects to Yu-Gi-Oh!’s themes as a whole.  Let’s get started.

All right, what should happen first is that we actually establish what she says, right?

Here are her speeches, manga and sub.  I’ll probably make another post about the dub version of her speech later.  I’ll be using the official Viz translation for the manga and the Crunchyroll translation for the sub, which while they have their inaccuracies are accurate enough for our analyzing purposes.

Manga:

Kaiba:Games mean conflict.  A combat between two enemies...It’s the same for all of them!  Cards...chess...the bloodsoaked wars of the human race...all these are different kinds of games...Do you know what God gave to people so they could play games in this world?  A single chip...called life.  When I threw my chip of life on the board...Yugi exposed his weakness and lost the game!

Anzu:That’s not true, Kaiba!  You’re the one who lost! 

Kaiba:What?

Anzu:You say people struggles are a game!  That’s totally wrong!  Facing yourself no matter how tough things get...and keeping up the fight...that’s what games are really about!  You bet your chip of life as if it meant nothing!  You lost to yourself!  When you realized you were going to lose, you didn’t have the courage to keep living!  Listen...real courage is protecting that chip you have in your hands...No matter what!  The moment you give that up is when you lose!

Jonouchi also chips in after this, pointing out that it was Yugi who saved Kaiba’s life when Kaiba was throwing it away.

Sub:

Kaiba:You showed weakness in the end, Yugi.  If you were willing to send me into the abyss, you would’ve won.  As a duelist, you made a foolish choice.

Anzu:You’re wrong!  You’re the one who lost the game, Kaiba!

Kaiba:What?

Anzu:Kaiba, you tried to throw away your most valuable chip: your life.  You lost to yourself!  You didn’t have the courage to face yourself to the end!  Real courage is to protect your chip - your life - no matter what the situation.  You lost when you threw it away!  Yugi saved your chip of life!

Now let’s break it down.  Anzu uses some gaming metaphors here (appropriate for this series) and other roundabout ways of speaking, so let’s put it in more direct words.  What is she trying to tell Kaiba?

Being courageous is being willing to live, and by extension, never giving up on life.  Courage is living with your failures, with loss, and with regret.  This is her philosophy.  Every time a dancer falls, she gets back up and tries again.  Every time someone told her they didn’t believe in her dream (given that she assumed Yugi and Jonouchi would make fun of it, it seems likely that this happened in the past) she keeps working at it anyways.  It’s even similar to what she says following the duel with Johnny Steps.  She yells at him for quitting because as she says, she’ll fail a hundred times but she’ll still pick herself up and keep trying.

What’s important about this is that it serves as counter to Kaiba’s philosophy, taught to him by Gozaburo.  Losing.  Equals.  Death.  In Kaiba’s philosophy a loss is final.  It’s the end.  Anzu is telling him that’s wrong, and that a loss is only the end if you make it so by gambling away your chip of life.  Indeed, it’s actually similar to what Mai says to the Other Yugi at the end of their duel in the Duelist Kingdom finals about loss.  There are two kinds of loss, one that is a stepping stone forward and one that is the end.  The difference between a loss that’s a step forward and a loss that’s the end is in your mindset.

Contradicting philosophies are a core element of yugioh as a whole, and duels are really just elaborate metaphors for showing these philosophies come into conflict with each other.

Anzu using the same analogy Kaiba did is also a rejection of Kaiba devaluing life by reducing them to chips to be gambled away.  No, she says, life is not worth so little.  The chip of life is the most valuable.  It’s to be protected.

Now, I know what you’re thinking.  Or I can guess at least.  But, Dork Magician Girl, you’re saying, Kaiba didn’t just gamble away his chip of life for nothing.  He was dueling for his brother, and Anzu didn’t know that at the time!

Good point, I say to you, reader.  But it ignores a few key points as to what happened in the duel.

1. His threatening suicide was not a strategic move.  It was one born of emotion.  Prior to his doing so, he has a vivid hallucination of failing to save Mokuba, and then Kid!Seto, in the manga, glares at him, and in the sub, yells at him.  He was not making a plan to try to save Mokuba.  He was desperate, not thinking things through, and he had other options, as I’ll point out below.  This means his impulse to try to commit suicide was just that, an impulse, and Anzu is right to point out that that should not be your impulse.  It really shouldn’t be.

2. Now this is more up to interpretation, but let me ask you a question. 

Did you think Kaiba thought Yugi would back down, or did he make that plan with the full intent of dying? 

... If he made that plan with the full intent of dying, then Anzu was right on the money, regardless of the limitations of her knowledge.  He was throwing his life away, so he wouldn’t have to live with having failed Mokuba.  And I personally think he was planning on dying.  Remember that Kaiba is more familiar with the Other Yugi than Yugi.  Remember that the Other Yugi was going to go through with it.  It’s ambiguous here what he intended.  But either way, Anzu still has a point.

In a way, it was a win-win for Kaiba; if Yugi backed down, then he won and would have the chance to save Mokuba.  If Yugi went through with it, he would be dead and wouldn’t have to live with his failure.  But the second option is selfish; it gives up all hope of saving Mokuba through another route because Kaiba would rather die than admit weakness.  (Like, he could have told Yugi about Mokuba and probably gotten him to back down that way.  The suicide gambit was not the only way Kaiba could’ve gotten Yugi to back down.  But it was the only way for Kaiba to avoid expressing Actual Human Feelings or depending on someone else to help save Mokuba. Kaiba will do anything to save Mokuba...except depending on others, asking for help, exposing weakness, or talking about feelings.  See the finale of Virtual World Arc 1 where if it wasnt for a Deus Ex Machina he would have gotten Mokuba killed because he was too prideful to go along with Yami’s plan.  Also, he’s deliberately withholding this information from them, though there isn’t a good reason for him to do so.  In the manga he says “I’ll gladly die for the cards” just to make it look like he has no other reason to threaten suicide.  Why?  Because Kaiba, that’s why.)  Anzu calls him out on this, because that is cowardice to be unwilling to face your own loss, which beside his pride, is Kaiba’s main flaw.  He cannot accept defeat, loss, or failure.  She’s right on the money, and we’re gonna go into this more later.

3.Sure, Anzu may not have known about Mokuba...but she still hit the nail on the head about Kaiba’s philosophy.  He’s not able to recover from losses.  He’s hung up on the past.  He can’t overcome grief.

The divide between looking at the past and looking at the future is another central theme in Yu-Gi-Oh!, placed at the forefront in the Battle City Arc.  The Other Yugi’s goal is to find his memories, and in the end he literally relives the past.  However, Seto Kaiba represents the opposing viewpoint, especially in his duel with Ishizu when he rejects her philosophy.

“The future is infinite!”  He says.  “The past is a series of footsteps!”

How ironic then, that in the end, he cannot stop focusing on the past, when everyone else is moving forward.

In the Dark Side of Dimensions movie, Yugi and co. sit atop a rooftop talking about the future.  They talk about their dreams and plans and eventually decide that when Yugi creates his first game, they’ll all play it together.  Meanwhile, Seto Kaiba broods alone in his lab, recreating the past through Atem’s hologram as he’s surrounded by a bunch of “sycophants” as he calls them.  The parallel here is clear.  Yugi is not alone, and he’s moving forward from Atem’s loss.

Kaiba is not.

In the end, Seto Kaiba uses his dimension cannon to go to the afterlife, with no guarantee of returning.  He cannot promise Mokuba that he will return.  He reaches the afterlife and reunites with Atem, but he may have killed himself in the attempt.  The ending is ambiguous, up for everyone watching to decide for themselves.

What I believe is that Seto Kaiba chose to live out his philosophy.  Losing equals death.  Just as Anzu warned him, in Duelist Kingdom all that time ago, he gambled away his chip of life.

[vivinightingale]

I feel like Kaiba is only going to notice someone if they A) are a good duelist or B) is nice to Mokuba. Can I request the latter in headcanons where he notices Mokuba has a friend his age that he started hanging out with and maybe they actually secretly make fun of him and his antics even though they respect him? They're always sharing candy with Mokuba or talking about something fun

Mokuba needs a friend that isnt seto!

You became friends with Mokuba during events of battle city. You noticed him watching duels and decided to strike up a conversation with the kid. Little did you both know you were gonna be the best of friends.

After battle city you two would hang out at the arcade and get candy on the way home. At first Seto didnt notice till he watch Mokuba leave one saturday morning instead of watching his favorite cartoons.

He naturally followed his brother to see what he was up to. At first he was surprised to see the two of you haning out, but when he saw the excitement and happiness on mokuba's face he felt something he couldnt explain.

After seeing it he decided to invite you over so you and mokuba could play games in a cooler area (and he could keep a better eye on you two). But boy let me tell you that was a mistake.

Everytime he walked into the room he could hear the snark comments the two of you make. One time you two pulled a prank on him, and it ended with you hiding in mokuba's room while Seto stomped around the hourse spewing threats.

Thought at times you were annoying to him, you brought out a side of mokuba that Seto hasnt seen in years and for that he holds a bit of respect for you.

Along with the new respect you earned there was something else that he couldnt quiet place when he saw you, and he never would have realized it if you didnt go off on joey one day.

Joey was trying to fight with him, seto was just gonna blow it off till you stepped in between them, and went at it with joey.

"You dont know him to judge him Wheeler! He had to do things that others couldnt all for the sake of his family! So maybe you should show some respect for him!"

When he saw you stand up for him he felt his heart beat a little faster and his face become red. He has never heard you be so passionate about him before.

Maybe having you around wasnt so bad after all...

[mincedpeaches]

i’ve come to a realization today after watching 20 episodes of yugioh

i kinda was wondering why i wasnt all over how gay kaiba was in dark side of dimensions (it was pretty damn gay y’all), because that seems like it would be prime shipping shit i’d like, but nope, i was mostly enjoying how extra kaiba was only.

but after starting watching yugioh s4 at what i remember being one of my favorite episodes (the duel with rafael where the pharaoh loses yugi’s soul) and now reaching the episode im at now (where he gets it back) i have realized the reason.

puzzleshipping. puzzleshipping is the reason. 

it’s time to d-d-d-d-d-dump my ass in the garbage.

that being said its not about romance so much even now its just. theyre the most important to each other. over all others. they love each other! and both help each other grow in different ways!! its good. dub kaiba is such a straight up prick that maybe i’d like shipping kaiba more if i was watching the sub where i think he’s a tiny bit more forgiving, but right now its puzzleshipping all the way down.

looking back at all the yami & yugi moments i remember loving as a kid and still remember now its like. wow. duh. ten year old me wasn’t quite there yet but i loved them then too.

so! after finishing season 4 it looks like im off to cherry pick all the good yami & yugi moments i remember and watch them. dubbed still, if only because right now its way easier to watch the dub because i dont have to pay as much attention to the screen. depending on how deep this yugioh rabbit hole goes though, i could definitely..... see an entire sub watch in my future......

[yamiyugilover2000]

Kara was glad to hear that Mokuba was doing just fine well according to Kaiba that is. But she knew that he was more than likely missing her as she too was missing him aswell. She enjoyed being around the kid he brought joy and a lot of meaning to life but why? Perhaps it was because she never had a younger sibling and she herself was the youngest of the three.

Hearing the young man explain how his brother had felt towards him after what he did to her was understandable. If she was in his shoes she too would been angery. "Kaiba, you are always in a foul mood." She joked. "Which I guess is okay at times. Meaning you do mean well when you are."

Kara wondered if he would soon fully be able to be on his feet. And that meant without the cane, even though it was better than seeing him in the wheelchair. Kaiba still wasn't hundred percent yet and it bothered her.

Suddenly her eyes drifted towards his cane. "So..i see you have a blue eyes Cane. You always we're obsessed and fascinated by those, was it personally made?" She asked curiosity. She was trying to find a way to bring back the spark she originally had. She still had feelings for the him but it was rather difficult before then it wasnt. "And if I may ask, where are we going?" She notice as she looked back out the window.

Immobilised