Yu-Gi-Oh Manga: 049 Fight With Spirit, Jonouchi!!, Part 2

... Give me an "OUCHI"! Wooooo, leaving Jonouchi's name unfinished in the last chapter's opening was really bugging me. I'm tempted to tack an "E" on the end of that half-name I just typed, though, because it would be strangely appropriate for where we're beginning this chapter. Tomorrow, he's going to be one big bruise, that's for sure.

And the yo-yos are still coming. Jonouchi promises that he'll make Hirutani suffer double for what he made Yuugi go through. Considering how Hirutani's incompetence made Yuugi's suffering kind of avoidable, I feel like Jonouchi's punishment should be light in comparison to his pity. Hirutani is, after all, still convinced his gang's projectile toys are doing far more damage than they are capable of, and he doesn't seem to think Jonouchi has much of a chance against them. This dude's head is so far up his own ass...

Jonouchi doesn't say anything, though he is hilariously told by one of the punks aiming his yo-yo at them that both he and Yuugi are in for a painful death. Not unless you take out an actual weapon, kid. Jonouchi is falling for the rhetoric, though, beginning to believe that he'll only last a couple of minutes more if they keep attacking him with yo-yos. This chapter is trying TOO HARD to convince me that yo-yos are capable of killing someone, I can't even...

Jonouchi wonders what he can do, and Hirutani makes him another offer: he'll let both Jonouchi and Yuugi live if Jonouchi joins the gang. For a moment, Jonouchi and Yuugi stay silent, but Yuugi speaks up and tells Hirutani that his threats aren't going to work, because Jonouchi will never join up with him again. Jonouchi agrees, saying that he has REAL friends that understand him better than Hirutani, the king of apes, will ever be able to do, and that's much more valuable to him than Hirutani's offer. You realize that by calling Hirutani a king of apes that you've raised him up as a king of humans too, right Jonouchi? Humans are great apes, that's scientific fact.

Hirutani pauses before telling the gang outright to kill Jonouchi and Yuugi. The barrage of yo-yos begin to make contact with Jonouchi once more, and Jonouchi commands Yuugi to stay back. As he does so, he catches a glimpse of something out of the corner of his eye.

Jonouchi holds up the puzzle and says it's time to turn the tables. He encourages the gang to come at him again, bro, as he starts to swing the puzzle around in a circle by its string. The gang complies, but one of them does wonder what Jonouchi is doing swinging that pendant around the way he is. Another tells them not to worry about it and just keep up the attack anyway. The yo-yos can't get to Jonouchi through the puzzle's fan-like motion as he calls the gang members morons for thinking he was just swinging it for his health. Apparently these expert yo-yo kids didn't notice that their yo-yo's aren't returning to their hands, and Jonouchi points this out. In fact, their finger's are being tugged by the stuck toys.

Is... is this a rare instance of Takahashi UNDERSTANDING how physics works??

It took quite a while for Takahashi to get a grasp on that, is all. No, that was actually a pretty brilliant idea, which Yuugi also acknowledges with a grin. Jonouchi pulls the puzzle's string from the tangled yo-yos as he suggests that they take those yo-yo's to "new heights." He drags the yo-yos and their owners still attached to those strings to the hook Yuugi was hanging from and loops the tangled toys onto it, then hoists it into the air so all the gang members are hanging by their fingers. Jonouchi has turned them into human yo-yos! Yo-yos that are screaming that their fingers are being torn off.

Well, guys, if you had thought to put slack between Jonouchi's hold on the yo-yos and your fingers, then you would have been able to loosen the slipknot around your fingers and get away before Jonouchi hoisted the chain. Of course, you can't really expect that level of cognitive function from people who think you can kill someone with your yo-yos in the first place...

Hirutani is gaping in shock, apparently not thinking to stop Jonouchi's actions himself either, but again, cognitive function... Jonouchi thanks Yuugi for the use of his puzzle and tosses it back to him. When Yuugi catches it:

So, uh, Yami, where were you when Yuugi was having trouble figuring out how to get out of being strangled by the puzzle?

Jonouchi and Yami begin running away from the gang members that remain free from yo-yo torture, heading for the stairs to the walkway around the walls. Yami suggests that Jonouchi take on Hirutani while he takes on the rest of them. Hirutani, meanwhile, screams at what's left of his supporters not to let them escape, stating that they're taking the stairs. When the gang members reach the walkway, though, both Jonouchi and Yami aren't to be found. Turns out that Yami had crawled through the broken windows to the feeble tin roof outside. They follow him, calling him an idiot for going to the roof where there's no chance of escaping.

Yami doesn't say anything, just displays a yo-yo in his hand. The gang is shocked, and I'm not sure if it's because he had the yo-yo in the first place, or because he starts throwing it around in expert mode. The gang is impressed with how fast he is as he challenges them to a game.

How is that interesting? It's just "try to stay on the roof."

Jonouchi has been leaning on the side of the building behind Hirutani this whole time, apparently, and calls out to him. He says that it's time to settle which one of them is stronger, once and for all. Close up on Hirutani's eyes as he turns to face Jonouchi. He begins to reminisce about how Jonouchi's challenge is just like how they met. Hirutani, give it up, Jonouchi doesn't love you anymore. Now he just wants Yuugi's babies. Hirutani says that during their first meeting, neither of them were stronger than the other, and Jonouchi admits that he was holding back a little during that fight because Hirutani wasn't as much of an asshole as he is now. But he won't make the same mistake twice. Hirutani chuckles as Jonouchi glares at him.

They bolt at each other, fists at the ready. Hirutani throws the first punch, but Jonouchi dodges it and lets out a chuckle at Hirutani's shocked face. Then he pulls back his own fist and thrusts it at Hirutani with a yell.

Meanwhile Yami has yo-yos flying at him from all angles, thrown by chuckling idiots. Yami is just aiming his yo-yo at the tin beneath him. A gang member shouts at Yami to die while he tosses that yo-yo as hard as he can, but Yami runs, bending low to the roof, his yo-yo punching holes in it as he avoids blows from the crowd of kids trying to hit him.

First of all, why is Yami's yo-yo so powerful as to put holes in that roof, but his running over it ISN'T? Second, this all seems awfully familiar. Where have I seen this before?

Oh, yeah, that's what it is! I remember now.

The gang members tell Yami that it doesn't matter how much he dodges them, because they'll catch up to him anyway.

He reaches the edge of the roof and stops, looking a little surprised. The gang steps toward him, laughing that he's been driven to the edge and how they've got him now. Yami glares as they get closer to the holes he made in the roof. Eventually they stand in the center of a ring of holes, still gloating that Yami is trapped and how he doesn't stand a chance against their still totally non-threatening toys. Someone suggests to Yami that he just jump off the roof instead.

Yami chuckles, saying that he's not the one who's trapped. He explains that the roof is old and rusty, so it was easy for him to put holes in it with his yo-yo. He doesn't think the newly holey tin can support their collective weight. The roof begins to wobble and creak beneath them, some of them beginning to realize that was the purpose of his aiming below rather than at them. Yami tells them to remember to keep their yo-yos trained on the ground rather than others from now on, just before...

Well, if they survive, I'm sure they'll take that little lecture to heart, Yami.

Jonouchi's fist connects with Hirutani's face, knocking out a few teeth. Hirutani groans, and Jonouchi taunts him by wondering out loud why he got so weak. He speculates that Hirutani got a tad soft by relegating all the heavy lifting to his underlings. Jonouchi didn't notice the paunch at first because of Hirutani's slimming black shirt, I guess. Hirutani growls in response, before noticing the shattered window behind him. He grabs a large shard from the window, crushes it with his fist, and throws the smaller shards into Jonouchi's eyes.

Jonouchi calls Hirutani a bastard, keeping his complaint about glass in his eyes in his head. Hirutani laughs, asking Jonouchi how he likes his little surprise, then commanding him to die. Hirutani hits Jonouchi and he doubles over, eyes still closed. He rubs at his eyes, which is probably the worst thing he could do with glass in them, cursing the fact that he's blind right now. Hirutani grabs another large shard of glass from the window and plots to sneak up behind Jonouchi to stab him in the neck. Jonouchi squints, unable to tell where Hirutani is.

Hirutani is the worst at sneaking. Even worse than Kaiba.

Hirutani is thrown toward the edge of the roof, where he slides off and barely manages to grab onto the edge. Jonouchi complains that he still can't see anything as he stands. Despite his blindness, he's able to see Hirutani clinging to the edge of the roof, gritting his teeth. I guess he's REALLY gone soft, because he can't even pull himself back up onto the roof.

Jonouchi tells Hirutani that he wants to show him some yo-yo moves to finish up the show. Jonouchi proceeds to drag the yo-yo as he did at the beginning of the last chapter, and "lets the dog out," or walks the dog, as his classmates would have told him. The yo-yo "walks" straight toward Hirutani's clinging fingers. Hirutani can't seem to stand the yo-yo's gentle spin on his fingers and lets go of the roof, falling. Jonouchi admits that "walking the dog" is the only move he can do, and he'll need some practice with other tricks.

This all looks rather final, but I doubt Hirutani is actually dead. After all, he survived the electrocution he and his gang suffered in his last arc. The only question in my mind is if Hirutani will return with even lamer weapons.

Yami approaches Jonouchi after he's done defeating that jerk Hirutani, and it looks like Jonouchi sees Yami, so his eyesight must be back! Better go to the doctor, anyway; glass in the eyes is no joke, unlike most of these past two chapters. Jonouchi asks where Nezumi went, and when Yami answers that he's not sure, Jonouchi declares that he's going to kick Nezumi's rat-ass when he next meets him. Then Jonouchi apologizes for getting Yami involved in this nonsense, and Yami forgives him.

I'm not sure if I forgive Jonouchi, though. Talking of what I thought of the chapter overall, I was just as amused by this one as the last one. The only part of it that I was impressed with was the way Jonouchi used the puzzle to stop the yo-yos coming at him. Though it's important to remember that YO-YOS were the weapons he was up against in the first place. I just keep bumping up against the fact that this whole situation that was supposed to be so deadly was built around a round plastic spinning toy that is far from capable of being a lethal weapon. Both these chapters tried so hard to make me BELIEVE that the yo-yos were capable of causing that much damage too, and it just... failed.

Also, this chapter and its brother didn't really add anything valuable or new to the series. It didn't move the story along. We didn't get any new information that was crucial to our understanding of Yuugi, Yami, or Jonouchi. All in all, I think it was disposable, and would have been forgettable if not for its supremely comical content, that I'm pretty convinced was unintentionally so.

All that aside, I can't bring myself to HATE it, like some other chapters. It was MEH, more than anything else. I'll probably hold this and the previous chapter in my memory for a whole two hours before I forget it exists completely.