Yu-Gi-Oh Manga: 256 God vs. God!

Fabulous! There's nothing I love better than a couple of gods having at it with one another, but not for the spectacle of the thing. Oh no, this is the one time I feel confident looking elsewhere while the overpowered jerkwads are otherwise occupied. Usually they're using their vast resources and influence to pick on us in the strata below, sometimes turning us against one another for their own benefit. But when they take swings laterally, we can focus on working together and getting things done while the powers that be are bickering.

I hope they keep fighting. Maybe continued spats will mean even MORE oil pipelines thwarted.

Have at it, guys. I'll just be over here, NOT organizing strikes and boycotts on Kaiba Corp products...

All this looks rather impressive up close, but down on the level of the blimp, parked at the foot of the tower, the cartoony-ness of it really stands out. Ishizu is standing at a porthole beside the still unconscious Rashid's bed, looking out at the war of the gods, the time of which has finally come, and strangely does NOT think of how ridiculous it looks. She just thinks on how it's all happening just as was foretold 3,000 years before, under the sign of the three hidden gods, which must have been referenced by that tablet she introduced to Yami and Kaiba, considering it makes an appearance in her memory. Ishizu is convinced that if Yami does not win this duel, his lost memories won't ever be restored, since the three god cards are required to open THAT door. That WOULD make things tense, if there were any doubt in my mind at this point that Yami is going to win.

Ishizu thinks the enemy standing in Yami's way is just a test of the gods, and even the evil that's overtaken her brother Marik. If you ever needed proof that the gods are serious fucking dicks, inflicting lifelong trauma and horror on a kid so some OTHER kid can get a lesson seems like some pretty final evidence. Because the edgiest edge to ever edge just HAS to make an appearance every chapter now, we're shown other!Marik chuckling at the scene from inside his wall at the top of the tower, anticipating finding out which god manages to win. Then we're back down in the blimp again, where Honda has paused fretting over what could still very well be his dead buddy by this point and gone to a nearby porthole as well, to demand everyone look at Yami's Slifer and Kaiba's Obelisk getting ready to show down. Ryuuji, Anzu and Shizuka all look up in alarm, the former expressing some disbelief. Anzu runs to the window, her constant worry now shifting to Yami.

Honda makes an exclamation, Anzu gives her remote encouragement, and I guess Honda decides that Jonouchi should get his dead-ass up and see this too? No, really, he goes over to the side of the cot, grabs a fistful of Jonouchi's shirt, and demands that he stop sleeping and start cheering for Yami. The denial is VERY deep. As Honda pulls the limp Jonouchi into a sitting position, Shizuka whimpers a request not to be so rough with him. Honda, of course, assures her with force that it's okay, and he wants Jonouchi to see this. The doctor, who is still sitting bedside monitoring the EKG, begins to protest, but Honda tells him to shut it, for his dead friend wants to see their other friend's duel. Anzu holds out her hands like SHE'S going to be the spotter, as Honda drags Jonouchi to the window.

It's a bizarre moment, folks.

And getting all the weirder.

Atop the tower, Yami glares up at the massive Obelisk, because it's impossible to tell the difference between valiantly standing one's ground and concentrating very hard on NOT shitting your pants. Kaiba is doing calculations - counting the two cards in Yami's hand and concluding again that this only gives Slifer 2000 attack points. However, he seems unsure about putting on his usual smug attitude about it.

Caution that is warranted, it seems. Yami says that the moment Obelisk was summoned, Slifer's special ability was activated. Kaiba recalls the name of said ability with a little sweatdrop: Summon Lightning Shot. It's a good thing they remembered, because I sure as hell didn't.

Better haul ass, then. Clock's a' ticking.

Kaiba acknowledges that for this one turn at least, his and Yami's gods are evenly matched and if they attack, they'll just kill each other. He's pretty certain Yami planned this; he knew Slifer's special power would weaken Obelisk, so he was just fine having two cards instead of three. But he COULD have had three if he hadn't played a card face down, and been capable of beating Obelisk with his own god. Kaiba knows that when Yami draws a card on his turn coming up, Slifer will have 3000 attack points, but by that point Obelisk will be back up to 4000 points because it can shake that special power of Slifer's. Which I think should be making him question all the more what that face down card could possibly be that Yami thought it was worth sacrificing a whole 1000 points of attack power that could have evened the playing field on a more permanent basis, given that Slifer ALSO could have had 4000 points by that point.

But no, he thinks the next turn is his chance, and ends his turn by playing a face down card of his own. Is this comic still trying to convince me that he's some kind of amazing strategic thinker? Yami at least has logic enough to immediately wondering what the face down card just played is, fretting over if it's a spell card or the trap Life Shaver again. He doesn't dwell, though, and draws a new card, announcing that Slifer's attack power increases. Kaiba boasts that this is just fine by him, because Obelisk's attack power is back to 4000 at the moment too. Yami wonders if he should attack this turn, or if he should worry about a trap, because he doesn't have any cards that can save him if this goes south and Kaiba lowers Slifer's attack points on him. Assuming that Yami's strategy has a card that INCREASES Slifer's points, because otherwise all of this speculating would be moot anyway. 

While Yami devotes more consideration to the face down card, Kaiba has a dorky laugh in his head and tells Yami that his god is no match for Obelisk. Then he pulls an ultra serious face and declares that those who fear cannot command god. That's right, that alarm bell in your head that tells you when to be cautious and helps you not get hurt? It makes you WEAK! WEAK I tell you! Being reckless and out of control is the only way to command the power of a god! After all, when has temperance ever proven to be a more effective strategy than swinging blindly??

Yami ends his turn, not to be goaded by Kaiba. Kaiba scoffs, announces his turn and draws a card. Gritting his teeth, he asks Yami if he's ready, and Yami just glares back at him. He thrusts out a hand and shouts at Yami to feel his god's iron hammer, which is definitely NOT a euphemism, and orders Obelisk to attack.

It looks for all the world like Obelisk has Slifer beat; its fist has punched all the way through the sky dragon's neck. So it really has me scratching my head when Yami down below chooses the entirely too-late moment to reveal his face down card, Pot of Greed, which allows him to draw two cards. Kaiba looks on in lock-jawed horror as Yami draws his cards, just like the card allows. While Obelisk's fist remains firmly in Slifer's mouth and neck, Yami states triumphantly that Slifer now has 5000 attack points and calls out an attack, Thunder Force. Kaiba sweats, eyes wide and beady.

Obelisk screams, Slifer's blast starting to engulf its punching arm and its face beyond. Though one of them is large enough to take up 1.5 pages, this is a scant two panels, and in that span, Kaiba has recovered from his apparent alarm. He chuckles, and tells that fool Yami that he set a trap: Life Shaver. Yami knows that even if it was only face down for a single turn, that's enough to take away all of his advantage, a single card.

How does a perfectly matched brawl usually end in this game? I knew these gods wouldn't last long.

So what did I think of this chapter overall? The visuals were pretty great; most every panel gave you a sense of epic content, even if the content itself was pretty predictable. This isn't necessarily a bad thing - ultimately, despite Kaiba's impressions, the fight of these two rivals is not about who's god card is the strongest, or even really about the god cards at all. They kind of have to be discarded in order for the heart of the matter is revealed. The god cards and their summoning are impressive, but in the end they're just flashy distractions, obscuring the real core of the rivalry between the characters.

Kaiba is completely taken in by their power and strength, to the point of ignoring possible pitfalls, in an almost deliberate way. His comment that one must have no fear to command a god is a kind of admission that he views the power of the god cards as absolute to the point of a REFUSAL to recognize any possible threat. NOTHING can threaten Obelisk in his eyes, because it's the biggest, baddest thing out there, and to worry about it is foolish and wasteful.

But in his appropriately religious faith in his god card and what it will do for him in this moment, this one match, is a failure to understand the true pattern behind his losses in the past. Clearly, he thinks if he has enough raw power, he can beat Yami, but as I mentioned above, that's a very shallow interpretation of their rivalry. It hasn't occurred to him yet that more power, whether in his economic ability to create elaborate tournaments that favor him or in his ability to gather and summon the most awesome monsters in the game, isn't going to afford him any advantage unless he understands WHY he and Yami have to fight like this.

Since we're not AT the part where both he and Yami have to confront their underlying relationship with one another yet, I suppose I found this chapter a tad on the boring side. I was more interested in plowing through it to get to that more meaningful confrontation in the future.

Though the WHOLE chapter didn't strike me as the spectacular scenery on the way to a family reunion. There was a lot of raw emotion in how Honda insisted on dragging Jonouchi over to the window to have a distant look at Yami's fight. The denial that Jonouchi isn't there is real, and even though Honda and company ends up being right in thinking Jonouchi will recover (and we know it), it still breaks your heart a little to see his friends stick so stubbornly to the insistence that they can just snap him out of death.

Even if it takes you a bit out of those hardcore feels when you see the doctor is still there, long after he first declared there to be no hope, monitoring the EKG for NO REASON? Like, why is he still hanging out? I guess the implication is that he's trying to see if that anomaly on the screen comes back, but you'd think he would have shrugged it off after the first few seconds of not seeing it again and leave. So have there been more blips that we as the audience didn't see that kept him sitting there watching? If that's the case, wouldn't he stop thinking of it as an anomaly and start looking for ways to revive the poor boy?

Who knows? He just needs to be there for the reveal that Jonouchi is in fact alive so he can be astonished.