Yu-Gi-Oh Manga: 212 Grabbing the Duel!

I can't help but cringe whenever a story about "grabbing" things is a thing. Yu-Gi-Oh isn't entirely to blame for this; for obvious reasons that we don't need to get into, my distaste for the word has grown over the past couple of years. But to be fair, I've always disliked it. It's never really been a word that one uses as a synonym for positive actions. Jonouchi may be "seizing the duel" like he might "seize the day", but the alternative term makes me question whether or not he asked the duel for its consent before he unceremoniously started groping it.

I mean, Jonouchi DOES have a history of some pretty questionable behavior when it comes to the opposite sex. He hasn't done anything in a while, but who knows, really?

At least they don't seem to have many "assets" for Jonouchi to latch onto.

He seems to recognize how bad he could be fucked up by them anyway, whether provoked by copping a feel or not. Rishid reminds him that he fell into an invisible trap, and proceeds to explain that upon Jonouchi's trespass into the shadowed area, he'll be surrounded by darkness, and the shadow will afterwards turn back into a trap? I'm, as usual, a bit mystified, but I'm sure I'll see for myself what all this is about pretty soon.

With 1850 life points to "Marik's" full 4000, Jonouchi is sweating a bit as he hesitates to choose a card from his hand. He eventually puts a card face down on his Duel Disk and ends his turn. He knows that if he attacks, he'll just be doing what "Marik" wants. It's like he's hearing alarm bells blaring at him. Honda shouts his name desperately from the sidelines, and Yuugi wonders aloud whether the trap monsters were "Marik's" aim to begin with. He says that the Magic Box's effect will end on the next turn, and if "Marik" attacks then, Jonouchi's monsters will be destroyed and he'll lose a ton of life points. Once again, I'm not sure how all of this works, so if we could move along to the courtesy demonstration, that would be just peachy.

Jonouchi stands among his remaining monsters as "Marik" glares, acknowledging that it's his turn.

You don't seem too sure of that, kiddo.

He reassures himself regardless with the knowledge that his face down card is Scapegoat, which provides him with four separate goats as a shield. Beyond that, though, he doesn't see any cards in his hand that can change this situation, so he has to wonder just what the hell he's going to do here. "Marik" orders his three avatar monsters to attack and the snake-things lunge at Jonouchi's side of the platform, which he instinctively flinches from. Yuugi calls out his name in desperation.

But Jonouchi chooses the last possible moment to reveal his Scapegoats, which pop onto the field in front of the avatars to float like fluffly curly-horned bubbles in their way. Jonouchi announces that THEY will take the damage of the snake-things for him, while his friends on the sidelines cheer him one-turn survival. "Marik" hums in what seems like mild defeat.

BUT LOOK AGAIN!

Fuck me, right?

Jonouchi's Scapegoats are fading away as fast as they appeared, and now he can do nothing but grit his teeth at the Avatars right in front of him. As they rush him, Yuugi's eyes are wide in disbelief, but mostly horror.

That looks like it's... uncomfortable.

"Marik" takes stock of the attack, which successfully destroyed Wyvern and Panther Warriors, and gave Jonouchi a bit of a lick in the process. Yuugi is calling out Jonouchi's name once more, because it turns out it was a bit more than a lick. Jonouchi has but 50 POINTS LEFT. He's kneeling on the platform, groaning, while "Marik" tells him that his technique won't defeat the current opponent. Jonouchi continues to hang his head, wordless.

The real Marik internally chuckles at Jonouchi's monsterless state and his low life points, fairly certain that Jonouchi will give up soon regardless of what Rishid does from this point. Rishid doesn't seem nearly as pleased as he closes his eyes and bows his head slightly, thinking it was all too easy. Kaiba wears a stony frown, disappointed that Jonouchi's level is so low. Meanwhile, Jonouchi continues to rest on one knee, hunched over in near defeat. Honda insists that he not give up while Mai urges him to get up, and Yuugi just keeps... shouting Jonouchi's name. Like it helps.

Jonouchi's expression looks a little out of focus, and he starts having fragments of thoughts that he's already had it, or there's no way he can continue. He hovers his hand over his Duel Disk, pretty sure that it's all over, until...

Oh yeah, she still exists! And she appears to be getting through to him too, because Jonouchi's eyes have got their focus back. Even Rishid is paying a little attention, particularly to what Shizuka is saying about being brought out of the darkness and into the light. Am I sensing a little bit of a parallel between these two starkly contrasted characters? THAT would be interesting.

Shizuka whimpers that even if Jonouchi loses, she still doesn't want to see him give up. Mai watches her say this with sympathy, then turns and yells at Jonouchi for being an idiot.

"No matter how much agony you endure, you'd better see this experience through, or you'll make your younger sibling slightly sad! How idiotic would THAT be???"

Jonouchi just continues to stare at the platform beneath his feet in response. At least he seems to have stood now? To top it off, "Marik" has a new question to ask him, and it seems somewhat civil. He just wants to know why Jonouchi entered Battle City in the first place. After a moment of hesitation, Jonouchi says that there's a person here to which he can't lose. Yuugi has a look of recognition for the obvious, and so does Yami's spectral form appeared beside him. Jonouchi says that he must get to where this not-so-mystery person is (because everybody wants a piece of Yami, duh), and in the meantime he's had to face a lot of opponents to get to this point. He claims this as HIS BATTLE CITY.

Weirdly possessive. But relatable.

Jonouchi finalizes this statement with the admission that this is PARTLY the reason he entered, but he's done explaining himself to "Marik". Now he has something to say: by the sound of "Marik's" softened communication, it seems to Jonouchi that he hasn't lost yet. His friends and sister grin up at him, calling his name in praise of that newly recovered drive to keep going. Jonouchi continues his inspirational monologue, claiming he wouldn't be able to face the guys he defeated to get here if he were to give up now. Guys like Esper Roba and Ryota Kajiki are superimposed into the background as Jonouchi waxes poetic about how they didn't give up, fighting to the very end. They didn't back down until they lost, and he doesn't intend to either.

But "Marik" states there's no way he can win, an assessment he doesn't appear to take ANY pleasure in. He even seems to implore Jonouchi to just walk away from this while he's still a duelist. What? Would losing this match not make him a duelist anymore? By that logic, the person behind this very tournament... Oh boy, no one tell Kaiba.

Jonouchi ignores "Marik's" argument and announces his turn, moving to draw a new card. He pauses before he does, though, acknowledging that the chances are VERY low he'll draw something useful. Still, he insists that his hands won't give up. Just ask all his female classmates.

Then THIS happens:

Man, I can't help but reminisce back on a time when these transformations between Yuugi and Yami were cooler, more expressive, and it didn't take me literally TWO MINUTES to figure out what was going on.

Jonouchi finally draws a card, enthusiastically despite his low odds, because of Yami's riddled encouragement. An almost telepathic continuation to that encouraging message overlaps Jonouchi's draw, in which it is claimed that a duelist's power comes from the complete faith in the unknown card that is drawn. It's very inspiring. Trust me.

Jonouchi looks at that card, places it and another face down, and his turn ends. "Marik" has given up his moment of empathy, scoffing at Jonouchi's pointless struggle because it can apparently be ended rather easily. To illustrate this, he sets his Avatars on Jonouchi once more, and as they charge at him, Yami sweats a bit at Jonouchi's unprotected stand against them.

But he's not unprepared. He reveals one of those face down cards to be a magic card called "Foolish Burial", which puts a card from his deck into "Marik's" graveyard. Then Jonouchi brings up his second card; Gravedigger. I'm sure you can guess what that one does to the opponent's graveyard. "Marik's" eye widens in stunned disbelief, a rare complex facial expression for him, no doubt. I wonder if it hurts his atrophied face.

The duel with Roba was actually important? Well I'll be goddamned and go to hell!

Also, either you or your trap/monsters sounded like wailing babies there for a second. Might wanna get that checked out.

So, what did I think of this chapter overall? The beginning was a bit of a struggle. This recent string of translations has been really difficult to understand in just a general way, and the readability is quite a bit less than that in terms of getting technical information from them. Translators can differ wildly in the way they interpret names, and that alone has made following what exactly it is that these Avatar trap/monsters DO difficult to follow. I'm still not entirely sure, so feel free to educate me in comments or email if you know more about the card than I do. I'm always up for a lecture.

But, as in most of Jonouchi's duels, KT seems to get that tension up pretty high, pushing the character to his limit. Bringing him down to a mere 50 points was necessary in order to bring his self-righteous goofiness down so we could engage with the actual struggle again. His constant comic relief antics in the face of someone he was supposed to think was a real enemy was a bit grating, so I'm glad we're past that noise and onto the meat of the thing - he's still learning what it means for him to be a duelist, still defining the whole concept for himself and spelling it out, one duel at a time.

Two new aspects of the definition just emerged for him in this one. The first is still a bit on the murky side, because it's linked to Shizuka and I don't know if it'll ever NOT be murky considering she's so easy to just ignore the presence of most of the time. It's not a nice thing, because I really wish she could have a bit of purpose outside of being Jonouchi's motivational doll, but she doesn't bring up a BAD point here. She walked right up to the edge of blindness, and Jonouchi was always encouraging her to never give up on her eyesight, winning the money for her operation and encouraging her to take off the bandages. It would be somewhat hypocritical of him to give up when it looks like he's going to lose an important thing to him as well, and a bit of a jerk move on her part not to return his constant advice to her.

The stronger take-away here was Jonouchi's realization that his relationships with the people he's defeated in the past carry over into the present. Notice how Haga was not present in his fond recollection of the other duelists he beat to get where he is. Haga is trash and we don't ever think about him ever, but more importantly, Haga did not build a positive relationship with Jonouchi at any point or bond with him on the level of a duelist. Haga had to impose himself (in an almost literal fashion with that parasite card) in order to stand on a level with Jonouchi and still lost. The other two opponents could have gone just as far as Jonouchi did, already at a level with him, but Jonouchi was the one who got to move onto the semi-finals, and they all accepted that no matter how much trash-talk they exchanged in the actual duel.

So this wasn't just a good setup and payoff in the sense that Jinzo has returned from the first duel Jonouchi fought in Battle City, but in the sense that it's the expression of a legacy. Roba passed the torch to Jonouchi, and Jonouchi is running with it because it's not just the trophy won in a prior match, but the baton of a teammate. Both Jonouchi AND Roba worked to get Jonouchi here, and the fact that this is manifesting in the way Jonouchi is honoring Roba's part in this duel is just swell. This is turning out to be a beautiful and profound definition of what it means to be a duelist.

I hope we get to see the Legendary Fisherman in this match too.