Yu-Gi-Oh Manga: 201 The Final Challengers!!

And just like that, the tension has been diffused, thanks a return to multiple exclamation marks. These little symbols have grown on me in the oddest way, in how they represent a little break in the emotional drama. A little breather wouldn't be unwelcome to our heroes, I'm sure, half of whom could probably use a nap about now. I know I could probably sleep for a few days after an ordeal like this, but I very much doubt they'll get THAT much leeway. Kaiba, after all, will be wanting to jump right into the finals of his tournament.

Somebody should knock Sleeping Beauty back out so everyone else can get some rest.

Oh the boundless energy of youth...

Jonouchi looks down at Shizuka to address her, by his own admission finally having something to say to her. FINALLY something other than a petulant tantrum to push her away in an attempt to "protect" her from bad shit you've done that isn't even your fault? You don't say. Shizuka gives him curious attention so that Jonouchi can state that he's dedicated to using the courage she's given him to earn some glory for her to behold. She seems happy enough by this promise, nodding with a smile, but I'm not sure how I feel about Jonouchi wearing glory for Shizuka just to look at like a trophy. Whatevz.

Mai swans over to warn Shizuka that "heartless situations" may arise, and that she shouldn't pretend to have not seen something unmentioned, even if Mai left the city pretty easily. Now, this is absolute nonsense that I can only parse because of Jonouchi's subsequent protest that he's not going to lose. She's apparently suggesting that if they're matched in the finals, Mai is going to have to beat him, but there's got to be a better way to say that. She's much more cogent when she says to Yuugi that she wants to make this clear; she's a lot stronger than she was before. See, why couldn't you have just said that before?

Rubbing his forefinger under his snotty baby nose, Jonouchi assures Mai that both he and Yuugi were expecting her growth in skill, Yuugi agreeing eagerly behind him. He becomes somewhat more subdued when he says Yuugi's name this time, and renews his promise to straightforwardly and truly duel Yuugi in the tournament, this time with his own duelist status rather than as a proxy. Yuugi and Yami are both smiling, agreeing simultaneously.

Great, now that all this reiteration is taken care of, someone makes the novel suggestion that they all set out for the site for the finals.

This is what happens when you hang out with babies, Mai.

Because Mai is an irresponsible babysitter, she swings out onto a street and cuts someone off who honks at her, but apparently doesn't notice. She asks how many duelists would be in the finals overall, and Yuugi responds that Kaiba said there should be eight participants at the most, talking through Anzu's shoulder jammed against his cheek uncomfortably. Jonouchi makes a serious count of those they know to have made it thus far, himself, Yuugi, Mai and Kaiba. As of yet, they don't know who the other four are going to be, but Yuugi is pretty damn sure one of them will be Marik.

They continue to chat as they speed down the street, asking and answering whether Kaiba intended to start the finals by this time, since the sun has set (yes), and whether it's just the people who won the preliminaries who will know where the finals are located. Mai tersely tells Jonouchi to overlap the six puzzle cards he won on his Duel Disk in order to find out where the finals are, and Jonouchi looks overly excited by the prospect. He kind of lacks the room to do so at this moment, though, and it's a bit late since Mai's already taking him there, but hey, whatever floats his boat.

Yuugi, also lacking the room to do much more than look up, much like the squirming Anzu and Honda next to him, lets out a shocked noise at the sky above. He's spotted Kaiba's helicopter heading in the exact same direction as them and points this out to his friends. From all the way up there, Kaiba has cottoned onto their car being below as well. He smirks, assuming that the bunch of idiots are trying to follow him to the finals, and encouraging that if they're fast enough. He then urges whomever is at the yoke to go full speed ahead and the helicopter.

In the car again, Anzu's phone rings and she answers it on the first. When the person on the other end asks if it's her, she says it is and identifies the caller as Sugoroku. He's beside himself because of the terrible fact that Bakura has disappeared on him. Since the kids are in such close quarters, Yuugi and Jonouchi have no trouble understanding Anzu's panic when she asks about Bakura in a halting manner. Sugoroku is at the hospital, where he took Bakura to treat his injury, but he looked away for one moment and the boy has gone missing. Usually that happens with fucking TODDLERS, but I guess Bakura is just as easily distracted, huh?

Yuugi stares with ultimate poopface at the phone, gaping at the thought of Bakura. The car continues to speed along the road regardless. Look out for wandering white-haired patients on the street, Mai.

This is the place you expect to get murdered, not play a game of cards. And wouldn't you know it, lurking in the unfinished stands, shadowed by the night, is Marik, the wanna-be murderer. He's accompanied by Mr. Rishid, who greeted him with a Duel Disk and a bunch of puzzle cards upon his arrival into Domino. Rishid states that it's about time, and Marik greets him with a question: if he remembers the promise between Marik and his father. Rishid says he remembers, and Marik says this is good, because he plans to pay for an end to the accursed lives his family has endured for 3,000 years with Yuugi's life.

Again, you really shouldn't count on that, considering how ineffectual you've been to this end thus far.

But all Marik wants to talk about is the endless rewordings of his need for revenge, this time to the darkness which took everything from him. Rishid just looks forward silently, and I like to think he's rolling his eyes mentally by now. "Yeah, yeah, we've heard this shit a million times before around the dinner table Marik, get over yourself."

[TW: mention of sexual and other abuse ahead] That's just too high of a bar to clear, apparently. Marik scoffs, betting that there's not a single person in this world who has had a dark, terrifying life like his. I don't know Marik, I can think of at least THREE victims of forced detainment in basements with chains and locks, sexually abused for years on end. People who probably also feel horror at falling asleep, just like you, but here you are claiming you're the only one. He recalls being raised in underground darkness, apparently to protect order, and only being able to believe in the bonds of his family. Again, there have been others who have experienced similar situations, Marik.

Rishid doesn't say a fucking WORD, still staring straight into the center of the stadium. Meanwhile, Marik is still chatting away, this time about the pyramids in Egypt that the Pharaohs commissioned. He says their shape isn't simple, but an indication of direction and the sun's path beneath, and the absolute authority of the pharaoh. But what Marik calls "authoritarians" from dark places who worship the darkness came out of the woodwork at a certain point. Magicians eventually created seven tools to seal the darkness, the Millennium Items with the puzzle among them, an upside-down pyramid that is itself a symbol of darkness.

Soooooo, the magicians were against the darkness and the "authoritarians", therefore they were against the pharaoh? Trying to subvert that authority of the symbol of darkness? This whole deal becomes all the murkier when Marik talks about his family sacrificing a lot of things to safeguard the darkness. Are they the authoritarians? I don't know. Marik reveals that his family has a book of prophecies that also records that evil energies as well as the spirit of a boy pharaoh were sealed together in darkness, evil energies that have only recently, after thousands of years, begun to pulsate once more. The pharaoh's soul is meant to reawaken as well, reincarnated to regain his memories, memories that only MARIK has access to at this point.

After his long silence, Rishid asks for confirmation that he'll be playing the role of Marik with all his abilities and obsessive goal of targeting Yuugi. Marik doesn't appear to be paying attention, though, lost in his own insistence that he won't be giving Yuugi those memories. Before that ever happens, Marik plans to bury Yuugi in true darkness with the power of Ra, the Sun God. Well, that seems counter-intuitive. Regardless, he considers this his only path to true freedom.

Down on the field in the center of the stadium, a silhouette of a man is standing straight as a reed. Like one of those little person pieces from the Game of Life. A sure sign that the finals are about to begin. Marik is going to have to wrap this up. He says that the moment the memories are given over to Yuugi, his family are supposed to die in the wake of their finished mission, so their only way of surviving is killing Yuugi and getting a hold of the pharaoh's name. What, it's not part of those all-important memories you have? Of course they're not.

Marik addresses Rishid about the possibility of his failure:

Well, I guess if you're going to die anyway...

Above the man standing on the field below, a helicopter is lowering into the center. Marik smiles about Kaiba's arrival, identifying him as the other one who holds a god card. When the helicopter touches down next to the staunch man on the field, Kaiba steps out and up to him, who is either already holding or has just been given a fan of cards to hold up in front of his chest. He says "they" have been waiting for Kaiba an awfully long time, because it was assumed the boy genius would have found the finals location a lot sooner than this. Kaiba says they took a long, boring detour. His lies amuse the shit out of me because I remember him being quite a bit LESS bored than he's claiming...

Kaiba asks how many contestants have arrived so far, and the man answers two, describing a guy with tattoos on his face and another who actually gave a name: "Namu". Instead of considering the possibility that "Namu" could be the fake-ass name it is, Kaiba is immediately suspicious that the guy with the tattoo on his face is the guy who has the god card Ra, Marik. Because there's no way a guy with a tattoo isn't suspect for something, amrite??

The man hands over one of the cards he's holding, stating that every finalist who arrives must have one for entry, and... apologizes to Kaiba for having to have it? Why would you be guilty for passing out something so innocuous? Does the thing shock its holder every hour or something? Or is this guy just sad that he has to give Kaiba yet ANOTHER card in this tournament with an overabundance of the things?

Who knows? Kaiba takes the card without commentary, a plastic slab with a magnetic strip on it in addition to a Battle City logo. An explanation floats next to the close-up on the card, and I'm not sure who's giving it. Possibly Mokuba, because after a reiteration that every participant will have to have an entry card in order to be taken to the dueling grounds, there being five entry cards left, and the time-limit for arrival being 7 o'clock pm, now about 20 minutes away, Mokuba says that three more contestants are on their way, cross-armed and smug. Kaiba turns and walks away, going to make final adjustments to his deck. He says he'll be back in half an hour.

And with that, we switch our focus to another jerkwad.

Well if it isn't our favorite wandering asshole. And yet ANOTHER throw-away dude from Duelist Kingdom. I'm beginning to think that KT can only bother to come up with new opponents for Yami to face and to hell with everyone else.

Oh well, we came in on the tail-end of Kotsuzuka's re-entry into the series, and he's about to make another hasty exit. After asshole!Bakura calls out some sort of "Spirit Form" attack and some invisible force knocks Kotsuzuka right on his ass, he mumbles that he lost, sweating. Asshole!Bakura points at him and demands a puzzle card from him and also his DEATH. The next panel suggests that maybe asshole!Bakura got exactly what he wanted too, because Kotsuzuka is laying in the foreground, slack-jawed, eyes wide but blank, as Bakura walks off into the background bragging that this card he's just collected can be added to the puzzle cards he got from Kotsuzuka to make a full six.

That seems like a pretty big overreaction.

Asshole!Bakura laughs and licks his lips, anticipating the beginning of what he calls the "Thousand-Year Duel", which ha says will taste like blood. He claims he doesn't want to leave his friends with such an amusing performance, and I'll be damned if I know what the fuck that means. I like amusing performances myself, but maybe he's going for something dull and torturous instead. He WOULD.

Meanwhile, Mai's car speeds up the street and comes upon the entrance to Domino Stadium, the location of the finals for Battle City, according to someone's excited shout. The car skids to a stop within, and one of Mai's boots emerges from behind the door as she steps out.

And then there were six. Bakura makes seven, of course, when he arrives. Will that be all? Somehow I doubt it.

Marik looks absolutely furious with Yuugi's appearance, though his thoughts about this face-off "at last" beginning gives another impression. The whole crowd from the car approaches the man with the MOAR CARDS, all of them implausibly silent. The man welcomes them to the destination of their final duel, and affirms that the qualifications the finals have been verified for Yuugi, Jonouchi and Mai, congratulating the three of them specifically. He offers them each an entry card.

Jonouchi demands to know who the other participants are, but the only response he receives is that whoever they are, they will be gathering with them shortly. A chuckling dumbass behind them states that he's one of them, and it turns out to be BAKURA OH MY GOODNESS!! At least, that's the reaction of Yuugi and Jonouchi. Asshole!Bakura's got himself a bandage wrapped around his injured arm, which appears to still be dribbling blood. He's all on fire to start the damn game already.

Kaiba has returned, apparently, posing with his hand just over the deck in his Duel Disk and looking intense. Awww, has it been 30 minutes already? Mokuba smugly brags that his older brother is the best candidate, and thereby he has to be the winner. Not when there's an electoral college involved, apparently.

And Yami's back in the front. No finals for you, Yuugi!

So, what did I think of this chapter overall. "Reiteration" should have been its name. From Jonouchi's retelling of all those things he already said in one way or another, to Mai instructing Jonouchi on how to figure out the location of the finals, to Marik's broken-record whining about how he has to get his revenge against Yami, to Bakura's meet-up with another person from Duelist Kingdom. This is why the chapter took so long for me to recap, because it's difficult to get through an info-dump on mostly things you already know. Seems a bit redundant.

Though it would be unfair of me not to mention that the chapter was only MOSTLY made up of reiterations. There were a couple of interesting points, one of which being Marik's hints here and there that he's lived a rather unfortunate existence up until recently, and it will all eventually end with death if he ends up doing what he's supposed to like a good boy. If there's no benefit to behaving well, and all the benefit of living if one behaves badly, then what's the point in choosing the former? The way he describes his family's mission is chilling; it brings up images of cults and brainwashed indoctrination. A little ironic, given his own proclivities for brainwashing victims. Or maybe not so much, considering the abused very often become abusers themselves in the long run, in ways very much similar to their own abusers. And there is something to the adage that misery loves company.

I'm not exactly a fan of HOW all of this came out, though. Given Marik is talking to Rishid, and it's already established how he seems to favor the big tattooed guy over the rest of his lackeys, its more than likely that Rishid already knows all this stuff. In a way, this all must be another reiteration for THEM in particular. And all just to get the audience up to speed. It's very clumsy, and throws me right out of the revelation so I can wonder why two people would ever TALK like this when its all been said between them before.

There's also the fact that Bakura ran off so he could get his game on and collect all these puzzle cards. Not sure what his goal is with that. Just to be around for the big event? Seems like he really made a hasty decision cutting himself earlier, then. Couldn't he have just sought out those guys from whom he stole the Duel Disk before and just had a little tussle with them instead, avoiding serious shit and still letting Marik look like the hero anyway?

I'm thinking too hard about this again. Wake me up when we start getting into the new material again.