I'm going to be abandoned on the Mexican border, aren't I?
For once, Shorty isn't giggling. Instead he's cursing, pissing and moaning about how Kaiba and Yami played he and his buddy for fools, who never imagined that they might use a reverse combo of Card Destruction and Monster Reborn. Well, you guys never even expected them to be able to work together cohesively anyway, so ANY combo probably would have been somewhat of a surprise, really. Tallie sums this feeling up nicely with a disturbed expression and a question as to how two rivals like them could work together. Necessity? People tend to do things they don't want to and normally wouldn't because they HAVE to, and you've certainly created all the conditions for an unlikely alliance.
Standing beneath his roaring dragon, Kaiba laughs his dorky laugh, saying he finally understands the key element to winning a tag team match. Yami smiles at this apparent new appreciation for cooperation, but I have a feeling he's about to be disappointed.
Kaiba keeps going with it too, calling his revelation "logic", and mocking Yami as a fool for thinking that his decision to go along with the angle of working together has made them friends. Now that Kaiba doesn't owe Yami anything, he says Yami shouldn't expect his Blue Eyes White Dragon to help when he's attacked next. Then he laughs some more, making sure to be extra douchey. Yami glares and grits his teeth at the protracted insult, and their opponents grin in relief that they seem to be at each other's throats again.
As an aside, every time I've seen shorty wear a wide, toothy grin, he's reminded me of someone, but I couldn't quite remember who - until now:
Shorty points at Kaiba and tells him it's his battle phase, but also reminds him that while his pride and joy Blue Eyes White Dragon has 3000 attack points, their Maked Beast still has 200 more points to spare. Meaning, of course, that Kaiba can't win in a fight between the two. Kaiba is suddenly a lot less smug and a lot more nervous/sweaty.
On the other hand, Yami is cool and collected when he unpredictably encourages Kaiba to stop waiting around and attack already. Kaiba gapes at him disbelievingly, and it's Yami's turn to be smug when he assures Kaiba that the Blue Eyes White Dragon will win if it attacks at this moment. Yami then suggests that Kaiba can trust him OR let his dragon go straight back to the graveyard. He is so fucking fierce right now, and it's delicious.
Kaiba stares, laboring under some uncertainty for sure. Shorty is convinced that Blue Eyes will die if it attacks, confused, while Kaiba sticks to the grim prospect of he and Yami not standing a snowball's chance at the equator if his dragon is lost now. Yami smiles at him and tells him to show his courage, chuckling. This kicks Kaiba's overpronounced pride into overdrive, and he throws out his hand, ordering Blue Eyes to attack. He doesn't care if this is just a taunt, because he won't back down from Yami and his superior chuckles. It seems to me that you did it just BECAUSE you thought it was a taunt, Kaiba, not in spite of it. Pshaw. MEN.
Shorty calls Kaiba an idiot for his attack, but for some reason doesn't look too happy about that idiocy. In fact, he looks downright nervous. Shouldn't you be stoked that Kaiba is apparently just throwing away his dragon here, guy? Did... did you read the script?
He explains that in playing Card Destruction, he had to discard a monster whose effect is activated once it goes to the graveyard. Archfiend of Gilfer is shown here as the very card Yami is talking about, the description of which says that ALL monsters' attack is reduced by 500 points when it's in the graveyard. Why didn't this apply to Blue Eyes too? Who cares!! Tallie sure as hell doesn't, focusing on the fact that Masked Beast was weakened by a monster DYING. Kaiba is preoccupied by the implication that Yami was thinking THIS far ahead of the play of Card Destruction, by planning the resurrection of Blue Eyes White Dragon and defeat Masked Beast at the same time. I don't know if "planning" is a good word for the use of two cards that just happen to be in the same hand, but it's a good use of both, I'll warrant.
Kaiba peers at Yami with some combination of awe and fear, and Yami responds to him like THIS:
Kaiba gapes, looking sweaty and distressed. I think he might have an aneurysm? He stops short of that, though, and opts to instead just scoff and look forward again, announcing the end of his turn. Shorty or Tallie (not exactly sure here) knows that they don't have any defensive monsters out there, meaning that his dragon attacking next turn will be bad news. Shorty, looking significantly less happy than usual, says it's his turn and draws a card. He plays "Melchid the Four-Faced Beast" in defense and a face down card, the former of which doesn't look very robust with its 1200 defense points. Yami is looking past it to the face down play, though.
Shorty has regained his cocky grin and is directing it at Kaiba, convinced the face down card is the one that is going to take down the Blue Eyes White Dragon. Once he's established this, he points at Yami and reminds him that it's his turn, along with the fact that he's also going to lose 800 points from the combined effects of Mask of Dispel and Mask of Accursed. Yami loses these points with grace, not even flinching as they leave him by means of holographic smoke.
He looks at his cards and notes that the new hand he's got has some pretty decent cards he can use, including a four-star monster. He slaps a card face down, and summons Alpha the Magnet Warrior, a metal robot-looking dude with directional letters on its knees. Yami orders it to attack, and it launches toward Melchid with sword raised. Shorty growls, but tells himself that he can't waste his face down card on small fry like Alpha, letting Alpha slice Melchid straight in half. He successfully saves the slap back for the Blue Eyes, but the decision doesn't look easy. He's sweating all over the place and grinding his teeth.
Yami says his turn is over, and with a growl, Tallie tells his buddy that if they don't defeat the dragon backing Kaiba, the explosives on their side of the field will come dangerously close to exploding. Shorty doesn't want him to worry, because he claims to have the whole thing under control. All he needs is for Tallie to use one of his monster cards to attack Kaiba, and then Shorty promises he'll take care of the rest. Tallie agrees, looking over at Kaiba before announcing his turn and drawing a card.
Tallie summons Nuvia the Wicked, someone he describes as an evil goddess. She doesn't count as a god card? Booooooo, sexist! She's also horrifying, just like the last monster Tallie summoned, with an Egyptian-looking bust mounted on top of a torso sporting a gnashing mouth of its own, two arms, no legs, and a loooong winding tail that looks a little like an exposed spinal column. So many nightmares. Kaiba remains unimpressed, calling it a pathetic card that he didn't know anyone put in their deck above the age of four. Well SHIT, excuse my thinking this card is an actual horror show. I guess REAL badasses are only terrified of the concept of WORKING TOGETHER WITH OTHERS.
Little fucking BRAT.
Ahem. Anyway, Kaiba says Nuvia is no match for his Blue Eyes, while Yami just stares ahead with his arms crossed. You can almost FEEL his urge to roll his eyes here. Shorty grins, expressing some doubt about how much of a fight Blue Eyes will put up. Tallie calls for Nuvia to slither through the air toward Blue Eyes and attack.
Right on cue, Shorty activates that card he had to try so hard not to play earlier, revealing it as Mask of Weakness. Its description says that an attacking monster's attack points will be halved for this turn. Kaiba is hung up on the part where HIS monster's attack points are halved and freaking out, but I'm snagging on the "attacking" part of that statement. Blue Eyes White Dragon isn't attacking; it's being attacked. Very different thing there.
And yet...
Whatever. The light beam is still heading right for Blue Eyes White Dragon's face, and Shorty sarcastically bids it bye-bye. But Yami speaks up, not about to let that happen. Shorty gasps when Yami reminds him that he's not the only one with a face down card. It's revealed to be Mystical Rift Panel, the job of which is to switch the target of an attack. Shorty is in disbelief, and so is Kaiba, gaping yet again at Yami and his protection of him.
Yami is curious to see how the discount phantoms like wearing their own mask, pointing dramatically as the mask reattaches itself to Nuvia instead of Blue Eyes. Free of the mask now, Blue Eyes belches a Burst Stream at its full 3000 points. Tallie's points issue from him in their typical smoky fashion, and he moans about them being reduced to 1700. Shorty asks him urgently if he's alright.
With Nuvia now dead in a burst of dragon breath, Tallie complains that he attacked because Shorty told him to. He tells SHORTY to look at what happened and calls him a little shit. Shorty does NOT like being called a shit, and snaps back that Tallie is a big moron. Oh yeah, that's totally the same amount of burn there. Good job, Shorty.
So, what did I think of this chapter overall? There were two technical issues with two cards in this chapter, and it really reduced the sense the reader is supposed to have about how clever these plays are. The first was with Archfiend of Gilfer, which was supposed to have reduced the attack points of ALL monsters, but conveniently left out one from the effect. Now, this could be only the monsters that exist on the field at the time Gilfer is discarded, but the card should have SAID that, shouldn't it? I'm guessing this is an issue with the translation of these instructions being too long to be readable if put properly on the card in the panel. I'm not convinced they couldn't have come up with a solution to that, though, so I wouldn't have to ASSUME shit about how a card works in order for my understanding of the scene to remain unbroken.
The second instance of a technical error might be, I'm afraid, a bit deeper than a translation issue. Sure, the translation could be a bit wonky where it says that only an ATTACKING monster can have the Mask of Weakness attached to it. That definitely could have happened. But the wider problem here doesn't just have to do with the imperfect description on the card. The fact that Shorty played a monster in defense that, if Yami hadn't already destroyed it, would have rendered the Mask of Weakness moot anyway. The Blue Eyes White Dragon would have destroyed it anyway, even with half its attack points, and there would have been no fucking point. And we know that his defensive monster was important to trapping Kaiba because of how hard Shorty had to convince himself that he had to give it up in order to save Mask of Weakness.
It's possible that the translators made a ton of mistakes on the attack and defense points for the monsters too, but I think it's less of a stretch that this scene was just poorly written to begin with, and the state of poor writing was a factor in the issue with translation. I think it's clear by this point that making up cards and combos in plays is kind of wearing on KT, and we're not even very far into this tournament yet. Hopefully this fatigue doesn't last, because there's SO much further to go.
Also, is anyone else getting a little tired of Kaiba's ridiculous overreaction to the idea of teamwork every time it's brought up? It's understandable that he's trying to maintain some degree of control here, and doesn't want to share it with anyone else, but his expressions show less annoyance with Yami continuously showing autonomy and more terror at the thought of splitting that power. Perhaps, on a level, that makes sense, but it's still too overblown for me to take seriously. All I can do is laugh at this child who is treating this duel like his own personal existential crisis. I'd prefer him to treat it like an ice cream cone that he can't avoid letting his sibling take a bite of, personally.
But that's just me.
I could see Gozaburo leaving someone tied up on the Mexican border and that affecting Kaiba's view of cooperation.
ReplyDeleteYugi's Archfiend card only works on one monster in the actual game, so the effect it displayed was correct as the TCG goes. Not sure what effect the manga intended for it to have.
Kaiba shit talking Nuvia is... pretty fair, honestly. While it's a four star monster with a high ATK (2000), it also immediately destroys itself when Normal Summoned, so it's pretty trash. Good thing it apparently doesn't have that effect in the manga.
Honestly, having a sense of a card actually being garbage outside the manga is a way better power than any of those of the Millennium Items, so I'm gonna give that one to Kaiba. He deserves a little credit where he can get it here.
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