Each of the pieces with a soul on the board below is apparently channeling their feelings of faith into Yami's dice, and Yami confirms that he's receiving it with a raised fist, and it's all going into his hand.
Asshole Bakura thinks that no matter how hard Yami's struggle is, he and his friends will die in this world with Zork. Though a part of Asshole Bakura's soul has been put into Zork's piece, he knows that as long as the Millennium Ring exists, the rest of it will live on forever. Who is this guy? Voldemort? He's prepared to seal a part of his soul into the dice in his hand with the power of the Millennium Ring too, although he also says he can only do this sort of thing once. What about the Zork piece that has your soul in it too? How did you do that and the dice thing if you could only do it ONCE? Rather than be concerned with his inconsistent blather, he names his dice his doppelganger dice. How cute. And pointless.
Asshole Bakura tells Yami that this is the end, AGAIN, while Yami glares on.
The dice fall, the pieces wonder how they'll fall, Yami prays to the dice to respond to the desires of their hearts, which pretty much proves that he WORSHIPS games, aaaaaaaaand... DOUBLE ZEROES! All the pieces celebrate Yami's super-critical-rolling skills with bragging statements to Asshole Bakura and about how they knew Yami's roll would be the best.
Yami isn't ready to join the party, though, because Asshole Bakura's roll remains to be determined, and if he gets a critical too, they're still screwed. Wait, how are Asshole Bakura's dice still rolling? He rolled at the same time, shouldn't their rolls show at approximately the same time? Asshole Bakura is congratulating Yami on his gaming skills for rolling a critical this late in the game, but he knows he and his friends aren't leaving this game alive anyway. He reiterates how his dice will always roll a super critical 100% of the time, and when the roll is tied, he still wins the whole game. Goodness, what was the point of this panel?? STOP TALKING ABOUT THINGS YOU'VE ALREADY EXPLAINED AT LENGTH, ASSHOLE.
Everyone stares at Bakura's dice as they fall and bounce, apparently in slow motion.
The dice are cracking, and smoke rises from them as though they're evaporating or something. In the rising mist appears the image of Ryou Bakura, and Asshole Bakura recognizes him with a snarl. Ryou's image states that it doesn't want to lose any more friends, even if not losing them means his soul will shatter. Asshole Bakura wonders if when he was sending his soul into the dice, Ryou somehow tagged along with his. As the dice continue to crack, he thinks that if Ryou sent his whole soul into the dice instead of just a part, he wouldn't be able to go back to his body, and it would be suicide for him. He essentially sacrificed himself to destroy Asshole Bakura's roll.
Ryou's image turns around to address Yami and the rest of the pieces, thanking them for believing in him.
Yami thinks he can still feel Ryou's soul, even with the dice exploded all over the board like that. He proceeds to taunt Asshole Bakura by saying that he doesn't see the critical that asshole claimed to have rolled.
An unconscious Bakura collapses onto the table, and the Millennium Ring's rope snaps. It clatters to the floor in its attempt to make a that visual metaphor impactful. Yami leans over the table and shouts Bakura's name; the regular one, not the asshole one. He rounds the table to shake a shoulder and hopefully wake him, while Jonouchi's piece asks how he is. Bakura isn't responding, so Yami bluntly states that his efforts aren't any good. He's dead.
Most of the pieces are all shocked by the news, thinking about how Bakura sacrificed his soul for them. However, White Wizard Bakura states that Bakura's soul is still alive within him, the others turn to him questioningly. He explains that over the course of his playing Monster World, Bakura managed to nurture his character and develop him until he became level 13, and now he intends to pay him back.
The others stare in awe, Honda uttering his in addition. White Wizard Bakura goes on to say to Yami that since he's level 13, his healing magic should be great enough to transfer his soul back into Bakura's body, but he'll need Yami to roll for him to do it, given he's just a lead figure in a game world that can't do shit without the will of a player of Game Master behind his actions. I'm thinking there may be an ulterior motive to transferring his soul into Bakura's body...
Yami says that he'll make the requested roll a critical. White Wizard Bakura says to his fellow pieces that the next time they meet in the game world, he'll be reduced to a level 1 peon just like them. Honda is shocked that he would sacrifice all that XP, but Honda, I think the life of the dude who created him is more important. Besides, how's he supposed to grow anymore without Bakura playing him, hmm?
White Wizard Bakura says goodbye, and Yami rolls that dice. Everyone knows that the roll is going to be critical, and according to them, the dice responded to that knowledge and came up double zeroes. White Wizard Bakura leaps up and waves his little staff, casting his spell over Bakura's inert body. He opens his eyes among sparkly sparkles and looks up at a grinning Yami. Meanwhile, on the game board, Yuugi and friends are appalled that the little White Wizard Bakura has become the inert one. Dudes, your actual real-bodied friend woke up. Shouldn't you be celebrating? Furthermore, shouldn't you be concerned about how you'll get back into the real world too??
Seriously, how did they manage to get back into their bodies? Did Regular Bakura manage to figure out how to use that soul-transferring power of the Millennium Ring himself? White Wizard Bakura's magic certainly didn't work for EVERYONE, otherwise their pieces wouldn't have been crying over White Wizard Bakura's lack of movement. This is literally the NEXT PANEL, and there's NO explanation for how they managed to get out of the game world!! This is so lazy I don't even...
The panel after this one talks about how the friends from Bakura's last school regained consciousness a few days later too, as well as Karita, so maybe the effect of having your soul trapped in the pieces just wears off without the power of the ring to maintain it? Is that why Asshole Bakura wasn't able to come out before, because he spent so much energy and power KEEPING everyone's souls locked up in the pieces? Is it possible that it wears off according to how long the soul has been trapped, so that would be why Yuugi and pals were returned to their bodies relatively quickly as opposed to having to wait several days like the others? I don't know, let's just go with it, because I can't think of any other reason how this could happen, and if I keep trying I might have a fatal aneurysm.
Karita is back to his old self, alright, yelling at Yuugi and his posse to get into the school before he gives them detention. They complain about him in the classroom later, pissing about how he doesn't even know it was them that got him his body back (goddammit, if you're not going to explain HOW, don't fucking take credit) and he wasn't even a very good nameless villager in the game. Regular Bakura comes into the classroom carrying something in his hands and greeting everyone politely. Yuugi wishes him a good morning too, while Jonouchi asks after his hand and if he got that bandage off yet. Jonouchi's always concerned about everyone's health, because he's the best. Bakura confirms that he's all healed, and tells them that he wants to show them something. Everyone wonders out loud what it is, with varying degrees of confused on their faces.
Bakura holds up the box he's holding, saying he made it himself, with an injured hand and everything. Yuugi and Jonouchi grin, because it's so darn cool. Bakura tells them that this diorama is a symbol of their friendship and unity while fighting the monsters together in Monster World.
So, what did I think of this chapter overall? I was so stoked during first part of it, because of how the last chapter ended. The tension was so high that I was really looking forward to what the resolution would look like. I think it's great that this ending to the game wasn't so drawn out as Yami's last turn in his second duel with Kaiba, because the time-management of that chapter was terrible, and I was a little nervous it might turn out like that.
And as long as I'm starting with the good things about this chapter, Bakura being willing to give up his very EXISTENCE if it meant that Yuugi and friends would be safe was really moving. And how he managed to sneak himself into Other Bakura's plan yet again to pull it off was just astounding. It showed that he worked incredibly hard to fight his possessor at every turn, was smart enough to think up innovative new ways whenever Other Bakura blocked him from another, and was powerful enough to keep up the effort even after all the roadblocks he faced. Bakura doesn't look it, but he is one TOUGH DUDE.
But it also just convoluted things more in terms of how these souls work, in game and out, especially when White Wizard Bakura brought him back. It seems that Bakura's soul was transferred into White Wizard Bakura through the completely mundane, non-magical means of developing him as a character in his game. Is this just a thing people do on accident all the time, or was this an effect bestowed upon him by the Millennium Ring? It's also implied that this took place over a long period of time rather than the one go that was implied earlier when Other Bakura was cursing that Ryou made an NPC without his knowledge. If it was over a longer period as White Wizard Bakura said here, how would Other Bakura not have known about it? He was present for all those games that Ryou was playing his character in, in order to seal up his friends' souls, so he should have been well aware of the White Wizard's existence and the existence of Ryou's soul in the piece, given that he's the spirit of the ring.
Speaking of the logistics of the transfer of souls, Other Bakura stated flat out that part of his soul was projected into Zork's piece in an earlier chapter, but he says that he can only do that ONCE, while doing it again here with the dice. That's a glaring inconsistency that really bugs me, because it obscures just how this Millennium Item works. When your audience is scratching their heads at how one of your important props works, you've gone wrong somewhere and it's not one of those things that can just be brushed off. Especially when this character has been known to do this sort of thing multiple times throughout the story (according to things I've read online. My memory of the show isn't all that great.)
In the end, these complaints all converge into one about how Takahashi didn't bother to set up concrete rules for how the soul-transfer mechanism was supposed to work. It was a problem early in the arc when the audience couldn't tell whether the pieces were ACTUALLY moving on their own, and struggled to understand how the pieces moving on their own after the souls were put in them was different from how they were moving before. It was a problem with the little NPC monsters appeared to have their own will as well, and the audience wondered which souls were in them. It's a problem now when everyone's souls are released from the pieces and we have no idea HOW.
It's just a clusterfuck, and if Takahashi had made an effort to figure out how the souls were supposed to function in relation to the pieces and the game, I wouldn't have to complain, because this arc was otherwise REALLY COOL. This ending with its dismissive attitude toward the mechanics of what happened is even WORSE than the one I complained about back in Shadi's arc, and that's saying something.
I mean, what happened Takahashi? Did you just have to take a wicked shit before you could actually explain anything, so you skipped all of that in order to spend more time on the toilet?
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