#cubemeister

[cubemeister]

2019 12mm Test abandoned lost Place Gießen #Gießen #LostplaceGießen #samyang12mm #abandonedhome #art #lostplace #abandoned #urbex #urbanexplore #rotten #rottenplace #urbanphotography #abandonedplaces #ruins #lostplaces #grime #exploring #cubemeister https://www.instagram.com/p/BuSK_0uAczv/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1wk310o75iq31

[pharaohsparklefists]

Darkside of Dimensions Review

Since I’ve seen it twice now and gotten a few asks, I figured I’d share my thoughts on the new Yu-Gi-Oh! movie with ye.

Spoiler-free summary: I really enjoyed this movie, especially Kaiba’s and Yugi’s characterisation, but the duels dragged. The antagonist was an interesting person but an uninteresting duelist so the big duels against him were repetitive and lacking flair. The animation was mostly gorgeous but did suffer from “eh that character is in the background in this shot, it’s fine if they’re just a misshapen blob” syndrome. The plot made as much sense as YGO ever does: it’s supposed to be in manga canon but there are still inconsistencies and the plot could have used more structure. It’s definitely only welcoming to people who already like YGO, I can’t imagine getting much out of it if you’re not a YGO fan! But if you are, it’s excellent fun!

Now for details!

So the plot, if you haven’t seen it but are interested, is as follows: Kaiba is so upset that the Pharaoh / Atem / Other Yugi is gone that he’s trying everything to bring him back, including creating a near-flawless holographic replica to duel, excavating the pit the Millennium Items fell into to find the Puzzle, and, for some reason, building a space station that is reached by SPACE ELEVATOR which is literally the most ridiculous thing he’s ever done and this is Seto fuckin Kaiba we’re talking about here. However, a group of magical teleporting children have been granted the power to reshape the world into a peaceful Utopia, via a magic cube. This power will be lost if the Pharaoh should happen to be resurrected by any grief-stricken, obsessive teenage billionaires, so they’re keeping a close watch. Meanwhile, their leader, Diva, wants to take revenge on Ryou Bakura because he blames Ryou for the death of their mentor, who turns out to have been Shaadi, of all people. Calling himself Aigami, he inserts himself into Domino High, but has to take time away from his plot to confront Kaiba, who has found the Millennium Puzzle, in pieces. Diva/Aigami fails to prevent him from taking the Puzzle, but does manage to steal back two pieces, one of which he entrusts to his younger sister who immediately gives it to Yugi. Kaiba challenges both Diva and Yugi to a DUEL MONSTERS DUEL SHOWCASE TOURNAMENT, ostensibly to launch his BRAND NEW DUEL DISK SYSTEM but actually to get the pieces of the Puzzle back so he can resurrect the Pharaoh. Yugi tries to explain that the Pharaoh has moved on but Kaiba point-blank refuses to listen. Meanwhile, Diva has evaporated Ryou with his magic cube. Yugi duels Diva and wins, rescuing Ryou from ... wherever it was that he went, and banishing Diva to some kind of sand dimension. Then Kaiba and Yugi duel, but at the last moment, their duel is interrupted and they have to team up to take down ... Diva again, but like, now he’s a lizard and possibly Yami Bakura is possessing him?? Kaiba sacrifices himself for Yugi to have a chance to continue the duel, but Yugi is at the point of passing out, when Atem launches himself back into reality to help Yugi draw and play his last card, winning the duel. Atem and Yugi silently say goodbye one more time, then Atem leaves. Yugi et al graduate from high school, while a delighted Kaiba takes Diva’s magic cube and uses it to visit Atem in whatever dimension Atem exists in now, thereby proving wrong everyone who tried to tell Kaiba to maybe have some chill.

The more I think about the plot, the less sense it makes. It suffers from a typical Late Addition To A Series problem, in that, the if this shit is so important, why didn’t it ever come up during the series? If Shaadi was so invested in his cult of adorable children, why didn’t he ever visit them as a ghost or mention them to the Pharaoh? If the Pharaoh’s existence is so tied to this all-powerful world-altering magic, why didn’t he know about it? If Ishizu and Marik held the secrets of the ancient tablet, why didn’t they mention that shortly after the fated duel between Atem and Yugi, some earnest orphans would be teleporting around to literally destroy everything and remake the world into a Utopia? The Shaadi part especially doesn’t seem to make sense. Especially because the Eye is already missing. 

But anyway. The real story is Kaiba’s obsessive need to duel the Pharaoh one more time, and I really enjoyed how his character was handled. I was worried that this angry, upset Kaiba would have walked back his character growth, but he hasn’t. He’s newly angry and upset, and he’s being a dick, but it’s definitely a post-Battle-City Kaiba on screen, one who’s learned from his relationship with Atem. Despite how raw and angry he is, he listens to Yugi, treats Yugi with respect, and is not only willing to cooperate against a dangerous foe, he’s actually the one who suggests it! 

He’s pretty obviously experiencing grief and not really knowing how to deal with it, since he never explicitly named what Atem was to him; he can only admit that Atem was a rival, so he’s channelled all his energy into the idea that if he could just duel him one more time, he could feel better. But his language is all over the place. He’s obviously angry at Atem for leaving: having repeatedly said that Atem was his worthy rival, he now spits at the hologram!Atem that he was never worthy. Sure Kaiba, he’s so unworthy of you that you spend every waking minute and an unimaginable amount of money trying to see him again. He tells himself he bears painful scars of defeat, but then says that if he could duel him one more time, the pain could be made easier to bear. Surely if the pain is just from losing, then winning would erase the pain? But if the pain is from losing someone you care about, then getting to say goodbye wouldn’t erase the pain, it would just make it easier to bear. When he speaks to Yugi, he identifies them as feeling the same way: he tries to get Yugi to admit “you want to see him too”. As the movie goes on, it becomes more and more obvious that this is about more than a duel, this is about Kaiba feeling loss and grief and needing closure. His feelings and Yugi’s feelings are compared repeatedly. Yugi said goodbye and got closure, he misses Atem “all the time”, but he’s able to move on, he talks about his hopes for the future with his friends. Kaiba didn’t, and isn’t, he has abandoned all his trademark talk of the future and replaced it with grandstanding about how he, Seto Kaiba, can do ANYTHING, because that’s what he needs to believe. He needs to believe he can do the impossible because he needs to do it to see Atem again.

Aside from the fact that he risks everything at the end of the movie to transcend dimensions and the veil of death itself to go and see Atem, he also willingly lays down his life in the final duel, and when Yugi asks why, he says “For him. The Pharaoh.” I mean T______T holy gay subtext, Batman

Also apparently he spent a long time recreating Atem’s “perfectly coiffed hair”, which, let me tell you, Atem’s hair is many things, but you definitely have to be madly in love with him to describe it in flattering terms.

But you know, the thing that made me really hopeful for Kaiba was that, near the end, after Atem had said goodbye to Yugi and left after his brief visit, Kaiba came up and I expected him to freak out: he spent the WHOLE MOVIE trying to see Atem and here Atem had visited but not stuck around to say hi to Kaiba or give him the duel he so vociferously claims he needs, and I thought Kaiba would be furious ... but instead, after a whole movie of snapping and bragging and firing people and being ruthlessly sarcastic, he was finally cheerful. He was smiling. He said “I told you so” but really happily. He wished Yugi and his friends well! The confirmation that Atem was out there somewhere, waiting for Kaiba to find him, was all Kaiba needed to cheer up.

And when Kaiba did show up in Atem’s throne room, Atem’s smile was so warm and sweet! I wonder how much he knew of what was going on - enough to know he needed to show up, obviously. He’s obviously very fond of Kaiba, I’d love to see more of how he felt about leaving without getting to say goodbye. Judging by how pleased he was that Kaiba showed up, he must have been sad. But probably coped better with it. Still, it’s hard to rag on Kaiba’s outrageously unhealthy coping mechanisms when he actually fucking did the thing and somehow wrestled a happy ending for himself from the universe out of sheer stubbornness.

Incidentally, I think the dimension-hopping pod and suit and all was all just for show. It seems the cube works based on willpower - I think Kaiba just needed the tech in place to make himself feel better about using magic. Like, now there’s a spaceship involved it’s clearly Science and not magic. But actually it would have worked just as well if he’d just willed it.

Really, my only major problem with this movie is that the duels against Diva were AWFUL. Especially because Kaiba seems to have given up on everything except dragons in his deck. hologram!Yami vs Kaiba was good fun, and so was Yugi vs Kaiba, but Kaiba vs Diva was hell.

Kaiba: SAY HELLO TO MY BLUE EYES MAXIMUM AWESOME DRAGON

Diva: I SUMMON VJAM, AND THEN ANOTHER VJAM, AND THEN THEY COMBINE INTO GREAT GOOGLY MOOGLY KING GLORBINFLORBIN AND THEN UN-COMBINE (that’s a word) BACK INTO THREE VJAMS

Kaiba: yeah well, I SUMMON  BLUER EYES EVEN MORE DRAGON, PLUS TWO B-LIST DRAGONS

Diva: MY VJAMS COMBINE INTO EYELORD CUBEMEISTER THE FOURTH THEN ATTACK 27 TIMES THEN I SUMMON ANOTHER VJAM AND THEN ANOTHER VJAM AND THEN THEY ALL ATTACK AND THEN I PLAY THREE MORE CARDS AND END WITH THREE VJAMS ON THE FIELD LIKE ALWAYS NO I’M NOT CHEATING

Kaiba: COME FORTH BLUEST EYES YETANOTHER DRAGON!!!1!

me: kill me

But aside from that and the travesty of a wasted opportunity to combine two hot anime men (srsly who looks at Diva and Yami Bakura and decides that a mixture of them should be a lizard in a cheap wig?), it was an extremely enjoyable movie. I can’t wait to get a DVD so I can recap it! I’m not sure if I want to recap as soon as I get it, or wait til I reach a natural break-point... I guess I’ll see where I am when the DVD is released!

[cubemeister]

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[cubemeister]

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[cubemeister]

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[cubemeister]

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[cubemeister]

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[cubemeister]

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[cubemeister]

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[cubemeister]

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