#yeah i can literally just eyeball a shot with absolutely zero problem at all

[jonathanrook]

my covert superpower is that i can accurately measure a shot without a shot glass

[steve0discusses]

Yugioh S2 Ep 21: Hey, It’s a Party, Lets All Get Kidnapped!

Ah, it’s been a while since I’ve worked on these. I’m back from my cross-country travels, I’ve overcome my food poisoning because of said travels, and I did like 2 Inktobers so I’m officially allowed to quit and then never do Inktober again till the end of the month so now that’s over with, lets get back to Yugioh. Thankfully, Joey is here to recap for us what has been going on so far in the show, via a phone call to his sister where he literally started off the episode saying this line.

It is episode 21, Joey has run out of excuses, and the crew has decided that now is the time to finally find their friend who definitely is being tailed by a murderer with psychic powers.

Because no one wants to ever call the cops on this show.

I can see why Yugi and Grandpa might not, since Pharaoh may have done some criminal nonsense before he reformed at the end of S1 (I mean Season Zero isn’t not NOT canon) and I can see why Joey might not because bro mentioned that he had some sort of dealing with the mini-Yakuza or something in Season Zero (I look forward to that). Tristan already thinks he is a cop so I can see why he doesn’t either. But maybe Tea should call the police. She doesn’t work at the must-be-18-to-work-here-so-it’s-probably-a-stripper-joint-after-10-PM burger place anymore, she’d be fine. Probably.

I mean they did illegally invade a country last season and was complicit in the removal of that country’s leader’s right golden eyeball so like...yeah...

But now that Yugi has the company of three people inside of his head and Kaiba alongside him--who is always communicating with Mokuba on his jacket walkie talkie (like he went out of his way to make a jacket that has solely one function because it clearly doesn’t keep him warm without those arms--and the function is to call up his little brother and complain about the people who are two feet away and can hear him complaining about them), but this means Yugi actually has more people in his 2-person party than the other crew of 4 people. Anyway, he’s certainly not lonely.

But first we gotta throw Tea’s phone around and have some comedy hijinks.

(read more under the cut)

Tea x Cell Phone giving me more energy than Tea x Yugi but that’s actually true of every teenager and their intense relationship with their phone. Accurate. Hell, it’s true of me as an adult.

I also love how they throw this phone in our face just to remind us how neither Yugi has called Tea or how Tea could easily call Kaiba AKA the guy in charge who knows where everyone is, since he’s in their High School phone book, but wtv. We gotta first sort out who’s gonna pick up Serenity from the hospital although her bandages aren’t even off yet.

We’ve already clarified how dangerous this whole tourney is, and the fact that during these finals they might be ground zero for when the world might actually stop functioning entirely, maybe don’t throw your blind sister into the mix? Girl has enough problems right now. Maybe keep her in the hospital preemptively. Y’all are probably going to end up there anyway. She can book you a reservation.

I do appreciate the Tristan stance in this shot.

Anyway, sensing that the crew might actually do something, Bakura decides to show up and make some mad insane nonsense again. Ah, our wild card, Bakura, our Charlie Kelly.

Lol What? His big master plan is to feign an injury? (I’m assuming this is fake? But he’s also sweating a whole lot? Maybe they had a fight club behind the scenes that got edited out?) But you know, if you’re gonna try to sell a broken arm then wouldn’t you want to like...wear an sling?

Wtv, we’ve already learned from last season that literally all these people are the very worst boy scouts and would absolutely die in the woods. Apparently they would also absolutely die if they had to administer actual first aid rather than vague card magic. I was kinda thinking that Marik miiiight be a better scout from all his tomb runs, but from the looks of it he’s too busy being as incompetently evil as possible to learn how to tie a simple bandage.

Nice that Bakura waited until the moment Tristan left to start being shady again. I guess that Bakura also remembers that one time that Tristan hulk-punched him so hard - in the shadow realm where mere mortals should not be able to even move - that God-Mode-Bakura passed out for like 45 minutes.

I’m a little confused at how this at all works with Marik’s plan, since it’s really not that hard to abduct Grandpa, but o well, this was the plan they went with. They ARE teens after all, and teens kind of live by the mantra of “I dunno, it seemed like a good idea at the time.” I guess it’s less complicated than making sure he watches a haunted VCR tape.

So off Grandpa goes with Bakura, meaning Gramps is probably going to be a card or some other sort of lifeless husk in a few episodes or so. It was a good run, Gramps.

Honestly, Bakura should just heavily suggest Gramps just go back to work the counter of his Super Gonna Curse You Weasley’s Wizard Wheezly’s, you know, the shop he actually owns. That shop who’s name is canonically “Turtle Game” (good name for a card shop, really gets it across. Great business decision.) And really, it’s been 2 days since he’s stayed open past 9 AM. Does he not pay rent? He seriously might not, we do not know who’s the owner of that house/shop. For all we know it’s Yugi’s Dad who is........somewhere?......

And speaking of missing people, the two most direction-less folks in the universe decided to make this show even longer when they could have easily skipped like 8 episodes if they had just crossed the street. Instead, they’re going to backtrack back to the Shamu exhibit while somehow not overhearing Bakura screaming in his British(?) accent.

Sometimes I’m impressed by all the well placed irony in this show. Here come the two God-characters of the A-team. One has the infinite reaches of technology, the other has the infinite reaches of dark magic. They can do anything except navigate a map and find their friends who are within I assume a 10-block radius.

Now I know, I know, Namu’s an actual name people actually have. Much like Mary Jane. Or AceBluntz420. But forgive me, I am from California.

Also I just went down a rabbit hole of K-pop and the only song I could find that said “tree” enough times was “tree of Sephiroth” which was a pretty good banger but not what I was going for. Again, I’m stymied by my naive, elementary level K-pop education. One day I will be a master of K-pop but I am yet just a newbie with a couple of Black Pink and BTS on my Spotify.

One day I will know enough about Kpop to know which of the songs are about romance and which are about weed but alas, I just like looking at the pretty lights and the pretty colors and the fun dancing like a newborn babe.

But anyway, couldn’t help but notice - THAT’S the name he actually chose for himself, huh?

I mean I looked it up and Namu is also a Buddhism reference in Japanese and that’s probably what the show makers were going for, but safe to say, Marik is clearly not a Buddhist. He is literally in charge of a Pharaoh cult. Well, used to be. It seems like Marik’s just out to destroy his own God. He’d be the hero in really any other anime with motives like that. Hm.

Honestly, if it wasn’t for Marik wanting to vaguely rule the world I’d probably side with him completely, lets be real. Pharaoh is kind of a huge problem. And while I do like Pharaoh now, it took me kind of a while, and if Marik showed up S1 I’d be like “Yes, finally, please kill the already dead insufferable ghost.”

So, Marik decides to become friends with Joey and Tea.

This sure was a lot of work to become friends with Joey and Tea. Did Marik not realize that if they’re also buds with a guy who is possessed by a ghost, they might have low enough standards that he doesn’t need to jump through any hoops?

Marik could have just walked up and said “hey, remember me? From class?” and these two would have been like “yeaaaah” because it’s been so long since they’ve attended that they would have had no idea that he was never enrolled.

Anyways, Pharaoh’s arrived to scream at the top of his lungs about a bomb threat at a theme park.

Bummer that Mako Tsunami finished his act and I guess went back to his home island on the back of another whale he had parked outside the theme park.

Also it says a lot about what this town goes through that Yugi, shouting about how everyone’s going to die, doesn’t seem to perturb a single member of this audience. They’re just like “shaddup, I’m looking at the large dolphin.”

The total amount of time that Marik could handle being friends with Tea and Joey : maybe about 30 seconds.

Which makes you wonder why he even bothered with this charade, but maybe he just wanted to get rid of Bakura because that guys kind of a mess.

And then just when I thought it would never ever actually happen.

It happened.

I don’t recall any era where non flip-phones had little antennae. I think this was kind of before my time. Good. Finally something on this show that I’m too young for.

Jokes on this mook for thinking he could ever crush a Nokia with his shoe. Actually impossible. I’m sure there’s Nokias that have outlived being run over by a Jeep.

Yo my payphones never had digital minute indicators on it. You can even read the numbers on the numpad? And there’s no gum lodged in the coin slot? This is not how I remember payphones.

Yo second thought, maybe those are 33 seconds and not minutes? Eh, what do I know, I’m a millennial, I don’t really remember how those awful things worked. RIP payphones, you were always spooky and the worst. Like honestly if a ghost Pharaoh would live in anything, it would be a payphone. If you ever had to use a payphone with a phone card, then you’d understand that it’s more an unsolvable puzzle than any puzzle pyramid.

And I guess that Mokuba just felt left out, so he decided to leave his brother and just wander off by himself on a rooftop where there’d be no witnesses?

Mokuba, why are you on the roof? How does everyone in Domino have roof access? And is the internet so bad in this town that you must be on a roof to get any signal?

please admire the leg wraps on this guy’s ankles. They’re like high fantasy legwarmers.

*why ever duel with cards when you can freakin fly*

WOW, KIDS SHOW. That sure is dangling a small child off a helicopter!

And like, Mokuba just hangs there for a while--no joke, he’s just hovering in the background of every shot for kicks and I’m just like...how did this kid’s show get made????? The 00′s was a different time.

This past week I’ve been watching my older brother’s 5 kids and so I’ve been watching their TV shows and youknow The Descendants 2 would have been a very different movie with edgy, rogue helicopters in it. Though I will admit Yugioh could do with a couple more dance sequences. (and Yugioh might legit have better fashion than The Descendants 2, why the hell was Cruella DeVil’s son wearing bright red baggy capri shorts to a cotillion ball? Anyway, I’m putting Descendants on my “possibly recap this later” list.)

I get that the intern who was putting this scene together might not have known about the helicopter incident in the shot right before this when they drew in these people just on the street on their cell but mannnnnnn.

I love the implication that this happens so often to children in Domino that no one freakin cares anymore.

Reminder that Kaiba refuses to believe in magic and has no idea wtf is going on. Like he knows there’s some yummy cards he wants--that’s it. He doesn’t think this is the end of the world, he doesn’t think anyone here is magic. He just thinks Yugi is a super weird kid from Spanish class who's voice keeps cracking and that Marik is some sort of weird mafia boss. He was not expecting this tourney to become kidnapping central and I mean no one could have predicted this next part either.

...

So Marik’s plan, lets just walk through it.

These two loose to Kaiba and Yugi, then these two violently pass out, Pharaoh runs over and shakes up the fat one for a little bit, and then Kaiba and Yugi go to a theme park. These two guys intentionally lost and got beat up for no reason?

And then, he sends the same people who have Already Lost back to Yugi and Kaiba, to use a different deck than the one they used the first time?

Why not use this amazing deck they had the entire time the first time? Why are all of Marik’s plans so roundabout?

I mean I guess they had to lure these two to the roof but not really actually--once you beat Yugi in a game then boom the puzzle is yours so you don’t actually have to...whatever, they’re on a roof and and it’s edgy and it’s scenic and it’s gonna get real Jack Baur on us.

oh man this workaround to “but they never actually go splat because they die before they hit the bottom” which is infinitely worse than actually just falling down.

So seeing no other solution, they decide to endanger the lives of hundreds of people and play this exploding rooftop version of Yugioh.

I mean last season we sure did go through a lot of time trying to get Kaiba off a ledge of a tall building and now he’s just...back on that ledge. Well. OK then. These kids and ledges.

Really was a line in the show that Kaiba listed the only two things these guys have done wrong and it’s like--well they used the wrong deck the first time. That was probably actually a really big thing they did wrong. Also they could have kept Pharaoh in an infinite rock-paper-scissors loop but passed up on the opportunity. TBH these guys make a lot of mistakes but we’ve been over this before, Kaiba can only remember 2 things. Weird that this has become canon, but here we are.

I guess Kaiba suddenly remembered he had a grudge.

He forgot for a few episodes, but the grudge is back. He must have written it on the back of his hand “don’t forget you hate Yugi” and then when he went to  scratch an itch was like “OMG I can’t believe it, I forgot again!”

That bean.

Anyway, next week, on Yugioh:

Does Kaiba’s helicopters get into a helicopter fight with Marik’s helicopters and keep Mokuba dangling there the entire time? Does Joey get to throw a couple mooks over his shoulder like that time he took on 18 ruffians in a warehouse or will these ruffians be too ruffian even for Jo? Will Tea, after her hearts been consumed by darkness, and she becomes a nobody or a heartless or whatever, realize that she’s dating a dark wizard this entire time so it literally doesn’t matter?

Anyways, I mentioned K-pop so here you go, a moment of happy handsome boy Zen in this overwhelming world.