Anyway, Jonouchi is standing triumphantly a short distance away from the defeated Esper Roba, who is curled up on the ground with his cards scattered all over the place like a baby throwing a fit. Someone in the crowd remarks on how Roba lost to such a n00b (lol) as Jonouchi dismisses Roba's "psychic" powers, since he won. Jonouchi goes on to note that he has experience with REAL psychic powers and that's how he knows that Roba doesn't have them. Roba growls as he pushes himself up, face half-hidden as he roughly wipes his cheek.
Jonouchi demands that they get on with those tournament rules and that Roba give him his rare and puzzle cards. Roba is speechless in grinding his teeth at first, glaring out of the corner of his eye at the unfriendly silhouettes of the spectators behind him. He yells at them all not to look down on him while a tear escapes his eye. Dude, you'll need to stand up if you don't want people to look down at you. That's just how up and down work. He asks them if it's fun for them to look down on a guy who lost, if it makes them feel better, and if they're thinking that at least they're not a loser like him. He insists that he's not like them, though, and is a special chosen person with powers.
Geez, KT, this is a tad cruel, don't you think? Creating this character who thinks he's the main character with magical powers when this is the only time he's EVER going to be relevant to a side story to the main one? That is some cold shit right there.
Jonouchi points to his head with an incredulous expression, asking if this is why Roba thinks he hears voices from space. Despite the very mean start to Jonouchi's speech to Roba, he tells Roba that he's not looking down on him, because all that happened was that he had better luck in this situation. He insists that no one there think's Roba's a loser, but I'm pretty sure that SOMEONE in that crowd does. Gamers can be mean fuckers. However, Jonouchi points out that if anyone is looking down on Roba, it's Roba himself. Roba looks shocked by this comment, before telling Jonouchi to shut his trap. Jonouchi assures him that all he's saying is Roba shouldn't hate himself, but Roba blurts a curse and shouts that he can't lose, rather insistently. He has Jonouchi staring, though he's looking rather patient as he does. A bit like Yami when he's being given a speech.
But before you go, you should know that EVERYONE gets picked on. EVERYONE. Even those people you think are so popular and everyone loves them are getting DAILY insensitive comments from someone in their lives that makes them feel put-down and self-conscious. It is going to happen no matter what you do or how you act or what you look like or what your tournament record is. You cannot avoid it, it is inevitable.
Hell, it's also inevitable that you will or have been at some point the one to pick on someone else. This is because all you little buggers are so new to life and navigating it that you're insecure in who you are right now, and you'll want to distract yourself and others from this by pointing out someone else's perceived flaws. It happens, and some of us get in the bully or victim roles a bit deeper than others, depending on the levels of our security at the time. But, make no mistake, this is something that will continue to take place until you and those around you realize one day that it's okay to be yourselves because no one else is paying as close attention as you are and being a dick doesn't actually make your shit not stink or make you feel better. Until that day, just try to remember that you're not alone, that you'll get through this, and that you'll one day have too much to be farting around with to pay ANY attention to what others have to say about you.
Now get lost and wait a few years before coming back here. I don't want to be the reason your parents wonder when you got such a potty-mouth.
And now that THAT rant is out of the way, we can come back just in time to see Jonouchi's stare as he tells Roba to stop whining already. He tells Roba that this is Battle City, and all he needs to do is get up and fight another day. Jonouchi stoops and holds out his hand for Roba to take, repeating his command to get up. Roba looks up at the offered hand for a moment before slapping it away, yelling at Jonouchi to get lost because he doesn't need any pity from him. Jonouchi grits his teeth and shakes his stinging hand, scoffing and giving up the cause of cheering Roba up by telling him to do whatever the hell he wants. As Jonouchi turns to stomp away, he hears a crackling voice that pleads with "big brother" to stand up.
Jonouchi whips around again, getting a bit freaked by the fact that he's hearing voices when no one is talking that he can see. The voice again urges its big brother not to give up, and Roba isn't reacting much, but Jonouchi is frantically looking for the source of the voice above him, gaping. He wonders if it's from space, but gasps when he hears a voice beside him as well.
Finally, Roba stands, and his brothers come running toward him to embrace him. He apologizes, saying he deserved to lose because he had made them do all that stuff for him. Jonouchi fumes about how Roba's BROTHERS were the source of his "psychic powers", but a moment later is fighting back emotional tears as he asks himself how he can possibly hate them. Eh, don't bother trying, Jonouchi. He did a douchey thing, but he's not deserving of hate.
Later, Roba stands before Jonouchi and finally admits straight up that he lost, prepared to hand over his rare card and puzzle card. Once he has these, Jonouchi advises Roba that he really needs to show his brothers how to play fair, and Roba agrees. He says the next time they face each other, Roba won't use any tricks. One of Roba's brothers promises that Roba will beat Jonouchi with pure skill next time. Jonouchi turns to go, telling them that he's looking forward to that next match.
He turns back briefly, though, to say that he has friends in this town and Roba has his brothers.
They each wave goodbye to each other, and Jonouchi celebrates his new rare Jinzo card with a little skip and jump.
In the North District of the city, someone is asking someone else what they're talking about, because some rare card they're being presented with doesn't even compare to their own. That someone strikes me as very familiar in the next panel, hovering over a guy protesting that he agreed to the ante before they started their duel.
Oh, I know!
Because Nagumo insists that he changed his mind about what he and his defeated opponent agreed upon before. He reminds the random sap he beat that he won the duel, and as the loser, the random sap has to do whatever he says. That's... not a logical interpretation of the ante rule, dude. He offers the random sap the option of giving him a card equal in value to his own rare card, paying 100,000 yen, or getting beaten so badly he'll never duel again. Those are some great choices, but you forgot to list the one where you fuck off and try to remember the last time you stole a toy from another kid. Think REAL hard now.
Random sap stutters that this is the best rare card he has, but Nagumo is not hearing it. He smacks random sap around as he's grabbing the card offered, and says he's going to break something of random sap's, but the scan is a bit too blurry for me to see what. Can't be good, though.
Mokuba snatches away the card in Nagumo's hand, ignoring his protests, and informs him that since ante disputes are the most common kind in tournaments, he'll act as a neutral third party. With that, Mokuba rattles off all the illegalities of Nagumo's behavior, from changing the ante after a duel is over to betting for money. After examining the two cards closely, Mokuba says that the comparable rarity of the cards is not a problem here, and there's no reason for Nagumo to not accept the card that was offered.
Nagumo threatens Mokuba with death for messing with HIS rules, because he apparently forgot that HE'S not the one who's putting on the tournament. An easy mistake to make, I'm sure. Of course, someone shows up to remind him just who's in charge here.
Then Seto rips the card right in half, much to Nagumo's horror. He demands to know what Seto is doing, and Seto answers that he wouldn't have gotten that card back anyway as he tosses the scraps of cardboard to the wind. Seto says that he's challenging Nagumo to a duel right here and now, creepy little grin mirroring Mokuba's earlier one. That's where the family resemblance is.
Seto gestures to the briefcase Mokuba has opened on the ground behind him, full to the brim with rare cards that Seto says he's willing to offer up as an ante. Nagumo kneels in front of the case and examines them, confirming with astonishment that these are all, indeed, rare. He asks if these are all his when he beats Seto, and Mokuba says that his brother isn't stingy. Seto elaborates that it's compensation for tearing up Nagumo's rare card earlier. In fact, Seto is being downright generous when he suggests that Nagumo go ahead and take all the rare cards he likes right here and now, to improve his deck for their duel. He says he'll be taking them back if Nagumo loses, though.
Of course Nagumo giggles giddily while he picks out rare cards for his improved deck. I'm not sure he's listening when Seto tells him that his deck has something called a god card, and he wouldn't sell it for 50 billion yen, it's so rare. However, he's willing to include THAT card in the ante too. I stand corrected about Nagumo listening, because he's repeating the 50 billion figure in his head, and I'm surprised there aren't little yen signs popping up in his eager eyes. Regardless of how invisible they are, they're standing in the way of the obvious fact that Kaiba wouldn't be offering ANY of this if he wasn't absolutely sure he's going to win. I'd be running in the opposite direction by this point, but I've also never interpreted an ante rule as a loser having to do anything the winner wants, so...
Nagumo says he's holding Kaiba to their little deal here, thinking that all the rare cards he's picked has made his deck invincible and that there's no way he can lose. After he's declared a start to his and Kaiba's duel, Kaiba is grinning creepily again, thinking that he's going to show Nagumo God. Usually that phrase is figurative, but I wouldn't be surprised if he meant it literally in TWO ways here.
As they're strolling and Mokuba's lugging that suitcase along with both hands, Kaiba looks down at the deck of cards in his hands, thinking that's he's got God right there, but he's also got two cards left to find. Once he finds them somewhere in the city, he'll have the deck of God himself, and everyone will bow down to it. Heh, he wants people to worship his DECK.
Yes, I know, I have a juvenile sense of humor. Sue me.
So, what did I think of this chapter overall? The chapter was kind of awkwardly divided between two parts with nothing to tie them together, which was a little jarring. I understand that there wasn't enough material between the two halves of the chapter to expand and get chapters of their own, but with these two dissonant halves put together, I feel like there should have been SOMETHING to connect them better. In fact, it would have been really easy for KT to have Jonouchi thinking of meeting up with Yami later while he was walking away from Roba, so that we could see directly the similar desires of himself and Kaiba, and contrast how they treat their opponents. I'm already making that comparison and contrast in my head, but that's because I'm an analyst and it's my habit to look for these things. It would have been nice to have the source material more directly make that link between these two characters that are SO different.
Speaking of how these two treat their opponents, Jonouchi's treatment of Roba here is particularly interesting to me. He's not exactly polite in his encouragement, and can be downright mean sometimes, which is a really nuanced way to handle this conversation. It reminds me of how Jonouchi used to be a bully, insensitively jabbing at Yuugi at the beginning of the story because of how kind and gentle he was. That in turn reminds me of how Jonouchi confessed in Death-T that he was only trying to suppress and bury those hated qualities in himself until he realized that he, Yuugi, and the rest of his friends were all in this crazy game of life together. I feel like it harkens back to this moment when he tells Roba not to hate himself and that he's got people to help him through his troubles. Yet, he's still not perfect at being sensitive, so he has a little difficulty expressing it. Jonouchi's behavior and demeanor were incredibly complex here, and I'm impressed with the level of characterization shown.
What I'm NOT impressed with is the two-page spread inserted after the duel between Kaiba and Nagumi. It was beautiful, but it was horribly misplaced. At first I got the impression that KT was going for a mysterious omission, trying to make us more anticipatory for actually getting to see Obelisk up against a human opponent. Then I got the feeling that he got impatient and wanted to show off that sweet panel to us not two pages after he decided to be mysterious. And THEN I thought that maybe he realized a little too late that he was two pages short for his chapter and needed something to fill it with.
Either way, it was sloppy. Either go with the omission, or DON'T go with the omission. And if you decide to NOT go with the omission later, at least insert the new panels showing what you were omitting where it makes SENSE.
Oh hey, it's Eddie Brock. I forgot he came back. He demands the equivalent of $900 from this kid (haha what) and threatens to break his fingers.
ReplyDeleteThat's kind of a specific amount. I'm guessing he lost a bet and owes somebody, lol!
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