Yu-Gi-Oh Manga: 236 God's Dark Revival!!

I swear, every time KT references the god cards in a title, he sounds more like a televangelist than the last. He has to make it absolutely clear that these aren't your cuddly new age fluffy bunny gods, oh no. They are at best old testament vengeful, angry jerks, and they might very well go into the eldritch horror territory before too long. Granted, Other!Marik has already been in the Lovecraftian realm of weird since he first arrived, so perhaps KT already has that covered, but perhaps the gods will eventually push this crazy-train off its tracks?

Creating and destroying worlds? Messing around with life and death? Passing wildly unfair judgments on their little creations that they can never understand because a god cannot begin to experience a vulnerable existence dependent upon the support and interconnection between others?

Just a few suggestions. Take your pick.

But before THAT, we join Kaiba in a dark room lit by only by the monitor glowing in front of him, burning his eyes out, no doubt. He's clacking on his keyboard, still focusing on the image he caught of Ra with his satellite, pondering the god card's three special abilities. Probz the three I listed above. He still has NO earthly idea why he was able to read the ancient Hieratic on the card, but he's putting aside that little mystery for the time being, because he has to focus on his more immediate concern of finding out a way to BEAT the damn thing.

All that work he's doing on the keyboard is him running a simulation to see how well his virus deck would do against the sun god deck, and he's alarmed to find the probability is at a low low 13%. Even with his Obelisk, it looks like he can't stand much of a chance. And worst of all, the thing he thinks he has to be most careful about, is this "One Turn Kill". What a coincidence! If you wander out on top of the blimp right now, you could get a nice demonstration of this particular scenario RIGHT NOW!

Kaiba considers the ability that allows for the enemy monsters to shatter and the opponent's life points to run down to zero when all the components for Ra are met, and wonders if there is any way to defeat this horrifying power.

Going back to the drawing board on this puzzle, huh? Kaiba must be hella stumped. He goes over in his head how trap cards are useless against god cards, and magic cards only last for one turn. There's only ONE ability Ra has that the other two do not, and that appears to be, much to Kaiba's chagrin, the ability to special summon super fast. It's apparently not the regular kind of special summoning, either, according to Kaiba. If Ra is in the graveyard, it can be summoned using Monster Reborn, but as he mentioned before, this can only last one turn, and Ra will return to the grave after that. It also can't attack in the same turn it's summoned according to Battle City rules.

Dude, I'm telling you, this shit is being covered RIGHT NOW up top, if you just head up there....

But this is where Ra's quick-attack ability comes in, making the god able to attack the same turn it is summoned. He seems really upset by this, despite him recalling in the next panel featuring the image of the card that the defense and attack of Ra is dependent on its sacrifices, and it won't have ANY attack or defense if it's summoned without them.  This is because he also recalls the hidden ability, with which it can shatter all its enemies in a single second. He groans, clearly uncomfortable with the idea of the condition of Ra being in the graveyard, other!Marik having Monster Reborn in hand, and the one turn kill being activated.

UGH, if KAIBA isn't going to run out to watch the spectacle himself, can I at least see it?? I don't want to miss the whole damn thing because I had to sit in this dark room watching Kaiba mull it over!

Oh thank Obelisk, Slifer and Ra, it's still happening!

Asshole!Bakura appears pretty terrified about this one turn kill thing, as other!Marik declares his turn with his trademarked high-as-balls smirk back in place. He shouts that he's activating Monster Reborn from his hand, holding it out. In response, Ra pops back out of his Duel Disk and he has to announce the special summoned card with the ultimate smugness.

Asshole!Bakura and regular-sized Marik both gape, the former groaning and the latter expresses some confusion about the attack and defense being zero, not to mention the Monster Reborn card only working for one turn, meaning it will disappear before it can attack anyway. Other!Marik chuckles, dropping one of those "what if I told you?" statements: the original Marik doesn't have any fucking clue about Ra's true powers.

And he starts chanting the inscription in hieroglyphs on the card. Asshole!Bakura just gets more nervous seeing him begin his incantation, and other!Marik looks only too pleased with this as he continues in the next panel. In his head, he's reveling in how his host apparently didn't receive the knowledge on the Millennium Rod about Ra's special ability, so he's the only one who realizes it exists. Boy, are YOU going to be surprised when you find out about the one other guy who knows this super exclusive secret.

The chant keeps on going, and asshole!Bakura's alarm (and sweating) compounds when he realizes with disbelief that other!Marik is disappearing. He wonders what's going on, and as other!Marik's body vanishes in patches all over as whisps of virtual smoke, he offers to explain the god card's special ability. Please do, I've been waiting the whole damn chapter for this.

Asshole!Bakura is in disbelief at the fact that he's not the only one who can convert his life points into an offensive strategy. Other!Marik confirms that he really IS beating asshole!Bakura at his own edgy game, and reminds him that he also has the ability to attack real fast, all while more and more of his flesh evaporates into the surrounding darkness. He says that this has been an entertaining battle, but it's the last time asshole!Bakura will see him, given his body will reform when asshole!Bakura disappears. I initially thought this wasn't much of a consolation, considering other!Marik was already mostly invisible when he said this, but then asshole!Bakura stares in alarm, and we get a wider shot of Ra, something new standing out above its beak.

... That's one way to reach enlightenment, I guess.

The blast heads straight for the already piecemeal asshole!Bakura. Other!Marik screams for the remnant he left behind to disappear from his perch, and the original Marik... sure seems to be doing that. He screams while the attack slowly vaporizes he and an asshole!Bakura uselessly shielding his face with his arm. It actually looks pretty agonizing.

And yet, after looking at regular-sized Marik out of his periphery, asshole!Bakura smirks back across the platform at other!Marik. He says that THIS time he lost, and as other!Marik giggles at him, he asserts that he WILL revive and murder the shit out of this darkness-obsessed cenobite wannabe.

Will his new interest in defeating darkness lead him to reexamine his poor relationship with it and work to understand the roots of embracing it with such a stranglehold?

Nah, he'll probably just end up punching himself repeatedly.

So, what did I think of this chapter overall? It's very showy, and I can't deny that I'm dazzled by the trick Marik pulled, fusing himself with his god card in the shadow game. The way the rules of the game played into the style here, as well as how the two players disappeared in pieces as they did, was very pretty. I found myself in the rare position of having to resist pasting EVERY panel in the second half in the blog, because instead of a series of mostly shot/reverse shots, it had a lot to offer that was visually interesting.

And it needed to have that, because in addition to there not being any real stakes to this duel (and the confirmation of such by asshole!Bakura at the end), a lot of the chapter was taken up by Kaiba contemplating in front of a computer. More than there should have been. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad to know that he's onto what other!Marik is capable of, and that he's rather intimidated by it, because it's good to see Kaiba intimidated sometimes. But watching him exposit the information we were going to see play out in a much more exciting way in a few pages was a bit frustrating. I don't want to read the manual, I want to handle the machine.

KT didn't give it all away while making us sit with Kaiba, though. He was vague enough about the nature of Ra's mystery special ability that we still got to be surprised by how other!Marik gave the powerless god any attack power. I can be thankful for that at least. Spending more time with Kaiba than I have to just makes me salty, I guess.

Especially when its his own tournament rules that even makes a quick-attack by Ra something of a big deal, according to the scanlator at least. If it's specifically this tournament that demands special summons such as these can only attack on the next turn, then there's no reason that a quick attack provision should be built into the card. Seems less impressive and more like a contrivance in that way. But I have been known to misinterpret the rules before, and I wouldn't even know where to START looking for evidence of the rule before this tournament with so little time these days, so do correct me if I'm wrong!