Yu-Gi-Oh Manga: 061 Don't Draw That Card!!

But if you don't draw that card, how is the story going to move forward? Is Yami going on strike this early in the game? No, Yami, you can't have a raise, a bigger trailer, or a fancy fountain pen with a confetti-filled cap. That's a waste of money, and we all agreed that we were spending the profits on perpetual trips to Disney World as well as a lifetime supply of Captain Crunch cereal. It's in your contract. Stop complaining.

Good man! Way to be professional and keep your contractual obligations! Yami kneels on the floor in front of the screen, glaring at Pegasus's grinning face plastered across it. His friends and grandfather say his name as though it's helping. Yami isn't listening anyway, because he's too focused on wondering how a prerecorded dude on a screen can know which cards he's going to play.

Pegasus asks him why he's looking so gloomy. After all, it's just a game and they should smile and enjoy it. Yami takes this as the most insulting mockery, gritting his teeth. Meanwhile, everyone is still trying to figure out how Pegasus is pulling this stunt, and throw out the desperate suggestion that he was just lucky to call out a card at random and get it right. Yami thinks that they're wrong, because he's a shadow game player, and is well aware of what cards he's going to play.

Sugoroku's mind is racing too. He knows that Pegasus is a "genius" game designer who turned his small gaming company into an empire with Duel Monsters. But that's ALL he knows, because everything else about the guy is a mystery, this being the first time he's even seen Pegasus's face. No... Sugoroku, don't you remember he was at the Duel Monsters tournament finals too? You saw THAT before you saw him on this tape.

Oh well, old men get their continuities mixed up sometimes, I guess. He wonders why Pegasus would be challenging his grandson like this.

You guys remember the rules, right? RIGHT? God help you if you don't remember these damn rules!

Yami thinks that since Maxy-Boy has his Dragon Capture Jar out, he won't be able to use his baby dragon. You shouldn't be trying to do battle with an infant anyway, Yami, even if it IS a dragon. Pegasus encourages Yami to take his time mulling over his next move, and decides to tell Yami that even Kaiba's Blue Eyes White Dragon is powerless against the Dragon Capture Jar. Sugoroku is shocked at this information, but I don't know why. It's a DRAGON CAPTURE JAR, Sugoroku. Duh.

Pegasus tells Yami that it's a brand new rare card he just created, because Duel Monsters never stops evolving and changing, to ensure that kids never stop making it rain money on him. Yami glares, probably resisting the urge to roll his eyes. He then holds out a card called Silver Fang, proposing to challenge Pegasus with that one instead. A snarling wolf creature rises up out of the smoke of the shadow game as Yami announces its arrival.

Pegasus looks cool as a cucumber as he says he knew Yami would play a beast card, and proceeds to lay out Yami's whole plan of playing "Mystical Moon" on his next turn to make Silver Fang more powerful right there in front of everyone. That has to be pretty embarrassing, Yami. Yami's mouth is ajar as he realizes he's been read yet again. Pegasus chuckles, saying that beast cards are weak against fire, so he'll play a card to exploit that weakness.

He calls his card "Genie of the Jar", but the card reads "Dragon Piper". Pegasus, learn the names of your own damn cards! You're embarrassing yourself! He makes himself look even dumber as he says the correct name while he's telling Yami that it's the only card that can release a dragon from its jar. Yami thinks that Pegasus intends to release the dragon he played earlier and take control of it and Pegasus confirms this, calling the piper a genie again. Well, which is it??

Pegasus announces that the dragon's fire burnt Yami's wolf to a crisp, and Yami looks anxious as his life points go down to 1500. Pegasus says he thought Yami was supposed to be good at this game, but he knows Yami's strategy well enough that it hasn't been much challenge. Then he makes a lame joke about a jar or something. Yami isn't taking this mockery lying down, and, growling, he tells Pegasus to suck on his next move as he slaps a new card down.

It's "Great White", which is the Jaws monster that you would expect. Jonouchi and Anzu encourage Yami to take Pegasus down, but they're looking a little worried as they do so. Pegasus looks at his cards a moment before playing a card called "Oscillo Hero #2", which looks a bit like a round circuit board wearing a cape. I don't know. Hey, what happened to Oscillo Hero #1? Shouldn't he be the better guy for the job, considering he's in the first chair?

Sugoroku is thinking this is no good regardless of whether the Hero is number one or two. Since Yami's card is a water card, and Pegasus's card is one of lightening, Great White doesn't stand a chance.

Sugoroku stares at the screen from his position behind Yami, revealing that he can't see the monsters manifest. SEE? This is exactly the sort of thing I wanted for the LAST ARC!! He assumes the imaginary battle must be taking place, though, and it must be incredible. You have no idea, Sugoroku. None whatsoever.

He was right about that muscley shark not standing a chance too. It's electrocuted to a crisp before Yami's eyes and he loses another 200 points. Pegasus just keeps cooking Yami's monsters. Someone put that guy on Chopped.

Pegasus announces the destruction of Yami's monster, and Yami scoffs. He stares at his cards with a frustrated fist raised, wondering HOW Pegasus knows all of his plans. Pegasus makes another lame pun about understanding Yami's SHOCK, but in reality, Yami can't possibly beat him.Yami stares, open-mouthed, then looks down, scoffing once more. Anzu and Jonouchi tell Yami not to give up, before Pegasus says that it's about time that he lets Yami know that he's not just dueling him for shits and giggles. There's method to his madness here; if Yami loses this duel against Pegasus, he has to take part in a tournament that Industrial Illusions is throwing, which will determine who the real duelist king is.

Yami looks perplexed by this term as Pegasus laments how even though he'd wanted Kaiba to come to the tournament too, it looks like Kaiba won't be recovering from his shadow game coma. Pegasus perks up when he changes the subject to how a large sum of money is the grand prize, as well as something else even more valuable that he can't wait for Yami to find out about. What is that? Spending eternity locked up in a playing card?

Yeah, I remember that part of the show at least. Who knows how much it differs from this, though.

Glaring, Yami tells Pegasus that he's not interested in attending any event thrown by him, and asks what happens if he refuses to go. Pegasus insists that Yami can't refuse because he can't beat him, but Yami smiles, then puts back on his glare and raises his fist as he says he hasn't lost the game yet. Pegasus claims he knew Yami would say that and why not, since he knows everything else? He says that they should continue their game in that plucky spirit.

Yami agrees, drawing a card, and wondering silently what Pegasus's trick is for reading his mind. Yami declares that he's going to play a certain card next, but as he's picking it out of his hand, he pauses in epiphany. He realizes that he picked the card he was going to play without thinking about it because he was relying on his sixth dueling sense. That is the most useless sixth sense I've ever heard of. He thinks about the possibility that Pegasus actually planted the suggestion of playing the card in his mind, and he's mistaken that for his sixth sense. It would be indistinguishable from reading his mind from his end, after all. He decides to test this idea by playing a different card than the zombie card he had picked automatically, slapping it on the floor face down.

Looking at his friends and grandfather out of his periphery, Yami asks them if any of them saw the card he played. All of them deny having seen the card, so Yami then asks them to try and divine what the card is with their own sixth senses. They don't think they can, because they're not psychic, but Yami tells them to just say whatever happens to pop into their heads. Commune with your inner Shawn Spencer, guys!

After a moment of consideration, in which everyone looks like they're kind of irritated and skeptical, Sugoroku says that his feeling was getting a picture of a skull. Yami looks shocked, because even though Jonouchi thought of a cool warrior type monster, Anzu agrees with Sugoroku in that she also thought of a skeleton. Yami thinks he was right, because it couldn't be a coincidence that two out of three of them thought about a zombie/skeleton monster. I don't know, man, your sample size isn't very significant...

Yami chuckles, thinking that he knows exactly how Pegasus is reading his hand. Pegasus chuckles too, telling Yami that it's his turn. You waited an awful long time to take your turn, dude. He says he knows that Yami played a zombie card, though he hates to repeat himself. Anzu, Jonouchi and Sugoroku are all shocked, because they recognize the pattern that he's said the same thing that Anzu and Sugoroku had. Jonouchi asks what's going on, but gets no answer as Pegasus plays himself a Rogue Doll, which is supposed to obliterate all zombies with her powers of light.

Yami smirks, it being HIS turn to say that he knew something, though Sugoroku looks a bit confused.

Hasn't that been debunked as even LESS effective than just TELLING someone what to do? Whatever the science says, Yami is convinced that the three out of four of them thinking about zombies proves that Pegasus has been feeding them subliminal messages from the start. A panel focusing on Pegasus's one visible eye is here, but I don't know what its purpose is. Immediately after this, Yami continues with an explanation about how inserting a single frame of an image on the screen is supposed to work, claiming that from the time he built his deck, Pegasus was telling him which cards to choose. This is awfully long-winded and unnecessary...

Pegasus, being prerecorded, heard none of this and claims that he won the battle and the war. Yami mocks his image as he turns over his card to reveal what it was he played. Pegasus's eye appears to widen, so maybe he IS seeing this in real time?

Yami declares that the Rogue Doll is dead, but Pegasus seems perfectly unconcerned about this as he leans away from his exploding monster. He says that he knew this was about the time when Yami should have figured out his trick, thinking that he's passed the Pegasus test. Now he's ready to show Yami what he's REALLY capable of. Meanwhile, Yami points at the screen and tells Pegasus not to be a sore loser, and calls him a cheat. Which, you know, is only too true.

So, what did I think about this chapter overall? Everything is just too convenient here. I can understand that Pegasus would use his new cards that he knows Yami wouldn't have access to yet, and that would give him an understandable advantage. However, he timed out everything in the video JUST RIGHT, always seeming to give Yami the exact amount of time he needs to process a move (or prove a point), like he's sitting right in front of him. No one is that good at reading an opponent, and certainly not when they can't see them.

Granted, this could be a power of that Millennium Eye he's hiding so conspicuously with his hair, but his language suggests that his trick and the reveal of such had more to do with educated guesses rather than clairvoyant abilities. Even if these guesses are enhanced by the eye, they're just a little too perfectly timed to be believable. It seems more like the magic of the storyteller not thinking too hard about a believable strategy rather than the magic of a Millennium Item.

Besides, the whole subliminal message thing is something I roll my eyes at a little these days. I don't know if it was debunked by the time this chapter came out, so I'm not going to say that this is necessarily Takahashi's fault. It's just a bias I happen to have that makes me take the surrounding content less seriously when I see it.

Sorry bros!