Yu-Gi-Oh Manga: 116 Find Yourself!

That's supposed to be a pretty difficult thing to do. Kids with the money and time often go on trips around the world lasting for months to figure themselves out. Adults spend years going through various careers, friends, families, and spouses, scratching their heads the whole way. Hell, this blog is my first proud internet undertaking, having run through a long string of pseudonyms and identities to try and find my place, and that's just ONLINE.

And we're expecting Yami to do it in the course of a single duel? Yeah. Right.

How about your amazing propensity to repeat all your past encounters, Yami? Remember that first duel with Kaiba and how he kept taking out your monsters one-by-one in the way Mai is doing? When should we start calling you Bill Murray?

Jonouchi growls angrily as he repeats the riddle, saying that he told it to Mai, and questioning whether she even knows the answer. She remains cool when she states that she came up with her OWN answer, and Jonouchi scoffs at this. He shouts that he'll answer in Yami's place, telling her the answer is "friendship", and asking what she thinks of that. Smirking, Mai says that Jonouchi's answer is incorrect, and an indignant Jonouchi stomps like a toddler while he asks what the answer is, then. Mai thinks that Jonouchi should know, given he was the one who taught her. The answer apparently lies in how an amateur like Jonouchi got into the finals, but Mai bets that her current opponent won't guess it, though.

Mai reminds Yami that it's his turn, and Yami tells himself it's no time to allow Mai to confuse him while he draws a card. He's determined not to lose the duel. His new card is the Dark Magician, which makes him pretty happy. He thinks the magician could easily beat Harpy's Pet Dragon... if the Mirror Wall weren't still on the table. Yami knows that the Dark Magician's points will be cut in half if he attacks. Congratulations on breaking the cycle, Yami! But Groundhog Day isn't over yet.

Yami looks at the Mirror Force card in his hand, thinking he could set a trap for a trap. He decides to play Mirror Force on the table face down, then plays Dark Magician in defense to end his turn. Yami smirks, silently urging Mai to attack him so all her monsters can be destroyed.

Mai declares it's her turn and draws a card that makes her harpy combo 80% complete, according to her. She's unimpressed with Yami's attempt at setting a trap for her, because she's convinced she's one trap ahead. She slaps down her next card, Shadow of Eyes, the name of which leaves Yami agape. Mai tells him that if he wants to know what it does, Yami should take a look at his Dark Magician.

Oh for fuck's sake! Aside from the fact that this is not how pheromones work... Aside from the fact that this is coming uncomfortably close to those arguments about how women PROVOKE violent attacks upon themselves... Aside from the fact that this is coming equally uncomfortably close to the same twisting of meaning that the Twilight series bestowed upon the term "imprinting"... KT COULDN'T HAVE USED THE "BEAUTIFUL TRAP" TITLE FOR THIS CHAPTER???

I have never wanted to burn the world more than when I caught sight of these two panels.

Yami translates the term "fighting instincts" to mean that he can't defend. Sure enough, the Dark Magician instinctively attacks the harpy. Boys will be boys, amirite? *gag* The magician's attack prompts the Mirror Wall to come back up, and the Dark Magician faces its reflection, halving its own attack points. Yami and the magician both look pretty sick with the situation.

Mai isn't finished. She plays Harpy's Feather Duster again to get rid of the Mirror Force card of Yami's end, rendering it unusable to him.

I'd say he thinks he's well and truly fucked, especially with only 300 points left. We DO actually get a peek inside his head, where he sums up that the Shadow of Eyes card means that his monsters can't defend and when his monsters attack they come up against the Mirror Wall. He knows if this goes on that he'll lose the game.

Pegasus thinks this harpy deck of Mai's is absolutely flawless, and he can sense the doubt and defeat creeping into Yami's soul because of it. Back at plebeian level, Jonouchi is looking downright panicked, asking Yami what's wrong again. Anzu is just amazed at how much stronger Mai seems since when she went up against Jonouchi. Jonouchi is in utter disbelief that Mai is so good at the game, and says he must have just gotten lucky when he faced her.

However, Mai states flat-out that she was playing the game as hard as she could when they dueled, and his victory WASN'T luck. YES! Finally! Someone besides me is going to explain why Jonouchi is actually SKILLED in this game! Jonouchi himself is shocked to hear it, so shocked he's silent, allowing Mai to offer him the truth that she was devastated and in denial when he beat her. She tried to turn her eyes away from the fact she lost, but she still couldn't get his voice out of her head, repeating that damn riddle. Jonouchi, Anzu and Yami all stare at Mai, while she confesses that it took her confronting her true self to finally understand what those words meant to her.

Yami looks... strangely terrified by this "true self" phrase. I don't know if he's supposed to look that way or if KT got his expressions mixed up, but... Mai turns to Jonouchi and asks him if he knows how he got as far as he did in this tournament, flabbergasting him for a moment. He begins with a slight stutter as he shouts that it was his friends who got him through, and that's how a bad player like him managed to do so well. Dude, give yourself a little more credit. Mai acknowledges this as correct, though, transforming the slightly negative slant into a statement about how Jonouchi knows his limits instead. Mai says that Jonouchi accepts his weaknesses and works hard to eventually overcome them. She announces that this is the courage of the true duelist, as Jonouchi taught it to her. Jonouchi is totally perplexed, and it's hilarious.

Mai addresses Yami when she says that the courage of a duelist isn't in victory, but in losing.

I find it awesome that Mai is telling Yami the same exact thing Sugoroku did way back before the third face-off with Kaiba. I knew there was a reason they were married in my Sims game.
Anyway, Yami realizes that it was actually YUUGI who wasn't afraid to lose. He hadn't realized or wanted to see it at the time, but Yuugi's strength had made up for Yami's weakness. Yami looks over and sees Yuugi there looking back at him, knowing this is what you can show but you can't see. His eyes flash as he comes out of his head again.

Yami tells Mai that he's proud to have gotten to fight her, and promises that this is where the real duel starts. She chuckles, because she doesn't imagine even HE can turn this situation around. Regardless, Yami is prepared to draw a card for his turn. As his hand hovers over his deck, he thinks that this new card will determine his and Yuugi's fate.

Touching, but still looking a little awkward. Can you imagine trying to jointly draw a card with someone?

The card is Brain Control, which leads Mai's mouth to drop open in surprise as she identifies it as a spell card. Yami confirms this, explaining that the card allows him to take control of one of her monsters for one turn, and it will do whatever he asks. He chooses the pet dragon, and the hologram switches to Yami's side of the table. Mai stares in shock at the dragon before chuckling and saying that it wouldn't EVER attack a harpy, even if it is brainwashed.

Yami informs her that he's well aware of this and will NOT be attacking the harpy.

BOOM! Get ready for a siege!

Yami loads the dragon onto the turtle and puts it in attack, and this is when Mai realizes that the Catapult Turtle's specialty is bringing down walls and fortresses. She did, after all, see it in action back when Yami won back her chips from that superfluous asshole. In response to the attack-mode monster, the mirror wall appears, and Yami counts down to the launch of the pet dragon. Eventually, LIFT OFF!

So, you're saying the stakes are LOW...

So, what did I think of this chapter overall? The fact that SOMEONE acknowledged that at least ONE of Jonouchi's wins in the tournament wasn't a fluke made me really happy. It's about time that someone said it, and for it to have been Mai telling the story about how she herself overcame her own insecurities as a duelist isn't just the cherry on top, but a whole other sundae. She's the one whose pride would be most damaged by admitting that Jonouchi came by his victory against her honest, so that makes the fact that she did that much more impactful.

She also made me smile when she offered the chance to Jonouchi to explain how he got so far in the tournament first. Because he could declare that his friends were supporting him the whole time, Mai could also say that it was because of his understanding of his weaknesses as a player that he could allow them to balance those weaknesses out. You can't get better at something without some conscious effort, and Jonouchi's baby steps in the right direction were only because he had his friends to guide and coax him along. Mai recognizes that, while Jonouchi may have had support and help in their duel, that help was only to remind him that he has friends showing him support, win or lose.

And since she was the one to lose that particular game, she had to realize that her weaknesses had gone unexamined like Jonouchi's hadn't. She had to take a good, hard look at who she really was and what losing meant to her before she could develop the courage it took to face that possibility again. She had THOUGHT she was where she wanted to be skill-wise until she lost to Jonouchi, until she realized she wasn't and had to continue to work for it, and part of that was gathering the courage to face herself and her limitations.

Since Yami has to keep track of TWO different selves rather than just the one, this might have proved more difficult for him. But, Sugoroku offered up another bit of advice to Yuugi before the duel too, helping him understand that he and Yami balance each other out. That should at least have prepped Yuugi from his end, making syncing up the two halves of Yuugi's personality a little easier.

In the end, learning this from Mai is really going to come in handy for the duel with Pegasus, because I have a feeling Yami and Yuugi are going to face a similar disparity in points at first to this one with Mai.