#bro would also cast fireball for every situation

[slicedmayonnaise]

John's the type of dnd player that comes up with the most ridiculous characters known to man. Barbarian fairy. Merfolk who has a phobia of water. A gnome who was adopted by goliaths and therefore believes he is a goliath and will not listen to reason when you tell him he's a gnome.

[steve0discusses]

Yugioh S2 Ep 29: Everything Explodes, Cranes Fall, Everyone Drowns, Kaiba Gets Real Freakin Weird(er)

Happy Halloween everyone, I’m waiting for the trick or treaters that will never arrive at my house on a hill without any streetlights. As an adult, it’s not really a thing to go party hopping on a Wednesday (I don’t even know why we celebrate Wednesday Halloweens, they’re the very worst ones), so, lets talk about a ghost story tonight and recap a very long episode of Yugioh.

Bro was just steeped in excitement for my reaction on this one, because this is his favorite episode, I guess, and he did tell me “listen, this is peak Yugioh. It’s all downhill from here” and I was like “when were we uphill? Have we not been launched rapidly downhill straight from a Sonic-the-Hedgehog-style spinner since this series has started, whisking Yugi’s Grandpa’s soul through a VCR tape? Isn’t watching this series spiral out of control the whole point?”

Anyway, he gave me fair warning and I’m still not quite sure what happened this episode.

I mean I know what happened, I was here, I watched it, I watched it again to cap it, wrote some copy, edited it over with bro a bit, talked it out...

I’m still not sure what happened this episode.

Again, I get WHAT happened...it’s more...I don’t get...the laws of physics? Or Why certain people did certain things or...this episode, but that’s OK because it splattered all over the wall into this Rorcshach Test...and I don't know if the writers even want to bother explaining it. I mean...why bother at this point? We’re watching Yugioh. The main character is 50-99% definitely a ghost, don’t think about it.

First off, Marik’s boat.

Not pictured here: this room of this boat only has three walls. Marik is facing a steep drop into the sea, meaning that if there’s an rain or any waves or whatever, it just crashes directly into this room. If anything picks up the boat and kinda slams it around a bit, you just fly right out of this room and right out the back. I don't get this boat. I don’t get how you keep this room clean and free of nasty ass seagulls.

I don’t like boats and I don’t spend too much time on boats, so if this is normal and natural boat behavior, my bad.

In case you forgot, Joey is about to murder Yugi.

Every character on this show has run out of ideas and is onto their very last wit.

It’s just a whole lot of everyone pointing a card-shaped gun at each other and themselves and just shouting at the top of their lungs.

(read more under the cut)

And then the show does a sweeping half-episode review of every duel you have seen so far that had a Joey cameo in it. I mean...I guess it works. But it kinda feels like one of those filler episodes of Friends where they couldn’t come up with new content so they just did a “remember this cool thing that happened last season? haha, this isn’t a real episode” and so initially I was like “bro, I dunno if this episode is going to be as weird as you say it is.”

And so Joey decided he’s not going to kill his friend, but don’t be fooled, he’s still going to punch out many more people in the episodes to come, I am absolutely sure of it.

This is the first time Yugi’s decided to attempt to mind wipe someone without using Pharaoh. Aw. Kind of sweet, look at him grow up to be just like his Ghost Dad.

PS I just realized this, but why didn’t Yugi just mind wipe Joey!? It’s been heavily implied that he already has so many times--this seems like the one time Joey would have been totally OK with it. If I had a Marik situation in my brain, I would have been like, yes, please use the pharaoh ghost to break my brain into pieces, I’ll figure that whole recovery situation later, but at least I won’t be a murderer.

But whatever, they’re going to do it without magic, although Friendship is also magic in this universe. But the semantics are better.

Yugi uses his millennium cell phone signals to face chat with Marik. Kind of. This was probably just a visual analogy. I never know with this show, although Pharoah really did do a Shadow-world face chat with Pegasus last season like it wasn’t any big deal. Twice.

This whole 4 episode arc was just Yugi realizing last minute that Marik was wasting everyone’s time.

And once Yugi’s baited Marik into killing him before the time runs out, Joey lit up with bolts of crazy ass electricity as the Power of Friendship mindwiped saved Joey.

Almost half this episode is when the clock is at 30 seconds. There comes a point when you have to explain why your clock got stuck. Anyways, lets see what else we can do in 30 seconds:

So what will be the plan of Seto Kaiba, boy genius? What is this great master plan of the boy who can hack any system, who has a computer installed into every piece of clothing he owns down to his dockers and socks? The boy who once hacked a satellite and used it to crash all of the digital security systems in North America?

Blue Eyes’ only effective form: as a vehicle for a real nasty papercut. This will the only time I’ll accept a Blue Eyes win as canon.

I did a lot of math last episode that I don’t want to do right now, but how hard do you have to throw a card to do that much damage, and how fast would Seto Kaiba’s baseball pitch be, and how fast is that compared to the baseball pitches of My Hero Academia? I mean we have the stats on all of these things.

It’s a good thing for every one else on this cast that Seto Kaiba has never figured out what dating is. He would destroy them. Of course this is me saying that anyone on this show knows what dating is. Which they don’t.

Also, off screen he threw himself at the mook who is prone on the bottom right corner there. Kaiba just went ape out of no where. He stood perfectly still for about 3 episodes and then he just completely lost his nut all for...Tea?

Because Mokuba’s like “We owe Tea a favor because she failed to climb a bunch of empty boxes?” Like uhhhh way to really awkwardly over-return that favorrrr

Like we have to address the elephant in the room here wearing about 9 belts on all four of his limbs and torso. Seto may have a God card now, but he’s so enamored by his dragon that he’s still in this awkward phase where he really wants to cosplay as his dragon literally all the time but he’s hoping he can pass it off as normal fashion and no one will notice. Kaiba is clearly more involved with his Blue Eyes than anyone else on this show is involved with any other card.

So, the hell is he doing risking his literally irreplaceable Blue Eyes that launched the events of the entire first season?

I’m sure the creators didn’t intend for this to happen. I’m sure they were like “and then he threw his Blue Eyes, because that would be funny!” but when you break this action down, it makes Seto Kaiba--who is supposed to be The Worst--outshine Yugi this episode.

Like first off--Tea? Yugi x Tea is supposed to be the flagship of the show. But Yugi’s kind of tied up right now, so instead, Seto saved her? That pairing just came out of nowhere. And I’ll be honest with you, Kaiba x Tea makes more sense to me than Yugi x Tea, and that is pretty wild that this show made me think about those two in any context.

I mean, it’s not going to happen, the writers would rather just toss a ton of explosions at it rather than leave any space for anyone to talk to each other and say “What the hell do you think you’re doing!? Did you just seriously do that?!” That conversation would have been absolutely hilarious, but it did not happen.

This crane blew up not once, but TWICE.

PS, we have more proof here that this chair was really just a kinky chair because um...look how easy it is to get out of that thing. This is not a real lock.

And second weird thing about Seto tossing his Blue Eyes...

This entire card arc was about Yugi giving away that puzzle to Joey as this beautiful symbol. Yugi said “Listen, Joey, I’ve known you forever, you’re my best friend and you are the sun and moon to me, have the most precious thing I own, even if you throw it into the ocean and destroy it”

But, then on the other side of the harbor Kaiba’s like “Listen, person who’s name I don’t recall, I don’t really know you, I don’t care about you at all, have the most precious thing I own, and I’ll just throw it out over the ocean myself, and on top of that--I’ll destroy one of my own helicopters, too.”

Makes Yugi’s sacrifice look real chump, I gotta be real. Again, I don’t think this was intentional on the writers part, but it sure is a thing that happened and is canon now.

And then no one thanks him. They thank Mokuba instead. No wonder Seto freakin hates them all so much.

And while I was watching, I was thinking ��well, Seto’s doing all this because he needs to save Yugi to duel him later” much like Seto’s been trying to do for nearly 10 episodes, but that whole thing where Seto followed Yugi around and was like “I will be dueling you after this is over” is no longer a thing. He gave up on Yugi after saving Tea. No explanation.

You know it feels like every 20 episodes or so, Kaiba will do something real nice and then immediately run away from the situation and switch back to being a jerk again. He’s kind of like a reverse Bakura, but without the ability to force everyone to forget. He’ll be awkwardly hanging back here for the rest of the episode pretending like he doesn’t like these people while Yugi’s off being the worst on the other side of the harbor. 

Remember, that Joey’s just snapped out of it, and a low flying helicopter caused a crane to freakin explode behind Yugi without any explanation. Twice. The crane exploded twice.

And then Yugi throws a fireball at himself before the timer hit zero.

I guess he had to do something to show up Seto Kaiba and the only other option left was death.

It was very tragic, and for once, Pharaoh wasn’t there to say anything. I guess the Pharaoh batteries have finally run out, and I’ll be real, the lack of Pharaoh in this episode does more to make this sad than if he was there saying how sad he was. It really is just Yugi there at that moment and we rarely get to see Yugi as just Yugi. I guess that was the way he wanted to be remembered rather than just a vessel for a ghost.

To be clear, this took like ten more minutes and the timer was at like 3 seconds for all of that but in context of the show, he died riiiight before both were tossed into the sea.

So this is exactly Seto and Mokuba S1, right? Like Seto was like “I will jump off his ledge to save my brother’s life!” and Pharaoh was like “WHAT TYPE OF ASSHOLE DOES THIS!?” ya, just checking.

So, ways to defeat Yugi Muto:

Threaten to kill yourself, Steal his stuff mid fight, Rock Paper Scissors, or threaten to kill Joey.

I just want to note that before Yugi tossed that fireball, he finally took the duel disk off. He was like “I gotta die, but I don’t want to die in that.”

Joey, who was very upset by Yugi’s brash decision, desperately looked for a way to save both of them did something that I don’t understand at all.

I’m not sure why the Red eyes attacked Joey (I guess it was a special skill?) But--the game’s over! You can’t lose after you’ve won! What even is the rules of this freakin game?

Whatever, it didn’t matter, Yugi absolutely cannot get hit by fireballs, it’s a real weakness for him. He is out for the count and cannot reach his own key.

Serenity, sensing her brother’s bravery, whisks off her bandages, and this is the first thing she sees.

Ya so.........

..........Yugi’s great wonderful sacrifice of his own life.....

....didn’t matter. Joey went in anyway.....

And that’s how Yugi got upstaged by Kaiba, yet again, in the same episode.

At least the person Kaiba successfully saved is here to start screaming at the ocean instead of like...swimming

In Joey’s defense, he was not there for the long, detailed explanation of how the key system works. He didn’t really know it wasn’t a one key fits all situation.

He’d be the smallest Whole Set in the world but the kid cannot sink. Like look at this. Look at how high this kid treads water without even trying. He’s got his armpits out of the water even. Should have given up the cards and gone to polo.

I love how we went through all that work to get Tristan here and he didn’t even do anything. He jumped in, pushed Yugi a little bit (who as I said before is a natural floater, it’s very impressive), and then Serenity did all the heavy lifting because I guess no one else on this show can swim?

Don’t they live in Japan? An Island? Isn’t it a requirement when you live on an island that gets tsunamis every so often that you must learn how to swim? Like I live in California that only has one coast and we learn how to swim real good. Like we learn all about rip tides and water safety, and we all end up doing the part-time lifeguarding job at least once.

Every single one of these people should be in the water and going after Joey, what is this bystander effect nonsense?

Hey so........she’s fully healed now?

RIP Kaiba x Tea, it was a very weird 2 minutes.

Which, if this guy ever dated, would probably be the tagline of all of his relationships.

Yes, this really was the moment Joey realized his sister could see. AFTER she dove in the ocean to pick him out.

This is real nitpicky but I just noticed the pier that Tea was gone is absent in all of these shots. Maybe they didn’t want to draw the aftermath of what happened to that crane.

Seto doing that anime thing where he’s hiding his eyes because he’s gettin freakin emotional in the back.

He’s all over the place this episode...I don’t know what happened.

And then to cap it off, they decided to watch a romantic sunset at the place where they got abducted, held in a warehouse, possessed by a cult, strapped to a bunch of bondage death devices, and then were nearly murdered at.

Also that ghost ship is still there and way spookier at night. Only Yugioh would be like “a perfect happy tapestry for friendship!”

Not only is Pharaoh still inexplicably here, but so is Kaiba. I guess he decided to hang out with them for like an hour until, at the first instance of Duke saying “CAN WE PLEASE JUST EAT DINNER LIKE NORMS!?” Seto very quickly spun on his heels and ran away as quickly as he could.

Ah, so the tourney continues tomorrow...it’s...this wasn’t the finale? Sure felt like it.

I just realized...the only thing you get is the chance to win a bunch of cards and just a title--a title that Yugi already owns, so if he hadn’t gone into the competition, then you’d have two people with the same title.

Like...is this entire tourney just a honeypot? But for cards? Is this whole tourney just a honeypot tourney?

Kaiba really is a cop.

Anyway, if you just got to these reviews, here’s a link to read them from Episode1 Season1, knock yourself out, it’s Halloween on a Wednesday, I know you’re not doing anything else.