Yu-Gi-Oh Manga: 101 Advance and Retreat

As is the pattern of most battles, and most duels we've seen, for that matter. It's an ebb and flow that attempts to make the winner a bit less obvious. Yami will go into this thing, guns blazing, then he'll have to back up and try the thing from a new angle, and then the big comeback commences. I mean, the comeback isn't in the chapter title, but we can very well expect it. That's the formula, right?

What's this? An actually CLEAR AND CONCISE referral to what has changed about the game here? That's helpful, but considering we might not have needed it explained if the characters hadn't convoluted the matter with their confusing thoughts in the previous chapter, I'd say this is still irritating as all hell.

Anyway, Bandit Keith is leaning in the shade of a wall nearby, chuckling at the interesting fact that either Yami or Kaiba gets to enter the castle depending on which of them wins. Jonouchi is leading the force of encouragement this time around, telling Yami to beat that jerk Kaiba. Yami glares at Kaiba while Kaiba tells him that they share the same objective even though they're enemies. Yami states this objective simply as beating Pegasus, which Kaiba confirms with a smirk. However, he doesn't think that Yami is capable of beating Pegasus, so he says the only way Yami can see Pegasus beaten is by losing to Kaiba now.

Yami glares some more, asking Kaiba to clarify. I thought we've already gone over this with that Bandit Keith story, but it looks like Yami needs a refresher.

I think he's seen it, Kaiba. He reminds Yami that he invented it, and only someone who uses it can defeat Pegasus. There's no doubt in Kaiba's mind that Pegasus is capable of reading minds, whether some trick or actual psychic ability. Regardless, it works, and with his device's ability to hide the face and body with cards, as well as the necessity of standing farther apart, it could possibly put a player out of range of whatever power Pegasus wields. Kaiba designed the machine with the sole purpose of defeating Pegasus, and he shouts that his hands will be the ones to bury Pegasus too.

But wouldn't it be more poetic to have Pegasus dig his OWN grave like in the old west?

Yami smirks as he tells Kaiba to save all that talk until AFTER he beats the opponent in front of him, and calls for a continuation of the duel. He's also doing some weird half-crouch-thing here that doesn't make much sense to me. Anyway, Yami says it's his turn, and considers his move. He knows that his dragon is powerful enough to kill Kaiba's gargoyle, but he also wonders if one of those cards behind the gargoyle won't make it more powerful and destroy his dragon instead.

Kaiba thinks he knows what Yami is thinking, and it looks to him like Yami has grasped the new version of the game he's set up.

And fuck you if you happen to have more monster cards in your hand rather than spells or traps. Fuck you all day long!

Kaiba taunts Yami with a question about what's wrong, urging him to destroy his gargoyle card. Yami glares while Kaiba spreads his arms wide and tells him to trust his instincts if he thinks there's a spell to attack among the cards hiding him. He DOES warn Yami that some of his cards are monsters that will kill Yami's monster if he attacks them. Yami reiterates in his head that it's definitely dangerous to attack without thinking, but he notes that he doesn't have any cards that can power up Curse of Dragon.

Yami comes to the conclusion that the only thing he can do is attack, so he directs the dragon to fuck up Kaiba's gargoyle.

You... didn't though? Don't you remember, Kaiba? You attacked Yami's imp before and brought him down to 1700 points.

Jonouchi and Anzu are ecstatic at Yami's successful attack, and tell him not to be afraid at Kaiba's bluff, respectively. Kaiba announces his turn and draws a new card, only to smirk at it. He explains that losing cards are flicked out of the Duel Disk and while it's possible to reel back in the device to add more cards, it's also possible to keep fighting with what you've already got out there, which he demonstrates by telling his Sword Stalker monster to come out.

Wait a moment, I thought the only monster that could show up at a time had to be on the main card stage. At least, it said above that the only cards that appear as Solid Vision holograms are the ones on the main stage. I even scrolled back up to check, which also reminded me that he was going through all of this in his head. Kaiba just lied to HIMSELF so he could lie to the AUDIENCE.

That's so fucking meta.

Yami wonders if Kaiba is planning on turning one of his sub-cards into his new main monster cards. Kaiba launches into teaching mode yet again, saying that the disadvantage to using a sub-card as your main monster is that you can't use the other sub-cards to modify its power. That, and it should be impossible according to the information you mentally espoused before. But, hey, no problem. It's not like I don't trust you to give me or anyone else accurate rules anymore or anything.

The thing about Sword Stalker, though, is that it's able to absorb some of the power of fallen comrades to boost its power as a natural ability, which is exactly what it does to bring its attack up to 2400. Yami is shocked that it can get stronger on a diet of revenge, and assumes this was the real reason Kaiba let him beat the gargoyle so easily. Kaiba chuckles, because now Sword Stalker is strong enough to beat Yami's dragon, and he commands it to attack.

Whoops, what happened? Oh, that's just Yami demonstrating to me that the "Shift" card he used in his last duel is so TOTALLY relevant in other situations! He uses it to switch out Curse of Dragon for a monster who's more up to Sword Stalker's speed, much to Kaiba's bewilderment. The monster Yami switched out his dragon for happens to be Dark Magician because of its higher attack points.

And THAT makes me laugh so hard I can't breathe.

It doesn't help that the sound effect on Kaiba's next action, pulling his Duel Disk back into his hand, is one letter away from being FAP. Seriously, if I don't make any sense in the next few sentences, it's because I'm not getting any oxygen and have likely just collapsed onto my keyboard in a fit of guffaws.

Kaiba narrates adding a new card to his disk, switching the position of his other cards, choosing a new monster for his main stage, and throwing it back out again. His new monster is La Jinn, Genie of the Lamp, which appears as Kaiba tells Yami it's his turn. Yami agrees and pulls his Duel Disk back as well in imitation of Kaiba. He draws a new card, sets it on his disk, and rearranges his cards to put Dark Magician on the main stage. Then he throws back out his line, commanding the Dark Magician to kick La Jinn's floating ass.

But Kaiba's not going to let him get away with that.

The card the rebound hits is Curse of Dragon, and it's destroyed, bringing Yami's points down to 1200. Don't know what Jonouchi has to do with this, but his name appears to be on Yami's life point stats.

Oops.

Jonouchi calls out Yami's name, probably to remind him what it really is. Keith chuckles from his vantage point about how Yami takes one step forward and another back, and is impressed with how entertaining this duel turned out to be. Yami himself applauds how amazing Kaiba is to be able to trap HIM.

I didn't want to steal a line from the abridged series, but...

But we all know this bromance is far from being resolved with a steamy roll in the hay. Kaiba prefers to set a bunch of traps instead, planning another one already, what he calls the REAL trap. He thinks the heart of the world's strongest monster has already started beating in his hand. Generally if a heart is in your hand, it doesn't beat for very much longer, but Kaiba don't give a fuck about how logical his metaphor is.

Thanks for ruining the surprise, jackass.

So, what did I think of this chapter overall? I'm quite annoyed with how flippant the use of language is in the description of these rules. Honestly, it's one thing to be vague and somewhat confusing in wording, obscuring what's really happening with useless and poorly worded thoughts from the characters. It's another thing entirely to outright CONTRADICT what has been said only a couple of pages before. Writing and scripting is a form of communication from author to audience that really requires careful consideration. You can't just slap whatever sounds good on the page and call it good. It has to make sense, so when a writer is scripting out their scene, the BEST POSSIBLE ITERATION of what they're trying to say should be considered.

And the thing is, I'm not even going to blame KT for this, because it's clear that the translation was the thing that was incompetently done in this instance from the fact that they put Jonouchi's name in place of Yami's in the point stats. I don't speak or read Japanese, so I can't confirm my suspicions, but I'm almost CERTAIN that the lack of clarity and direct contradiction was probably due to how little these translators gave a shit in producing a quality translation, and these are the PROFESSIONALS. This is clearly the official translation, and it's absolute garbage that they didn't give enough of a shit to translate properly - not just putting the words in English, but choosing the words in English that conveys the closest possible meaning to the Japanese version.

For fuck's sake, I find myself questioning just about every word I've read in this chapter.

Minus the thing about Kaiba's heart beating faster when he duels Yami. That's definitely too gay to not be accurate.