Yu-Gi-Oh Manga: 226 The Chosen One

But, Yami isn't playing in this one, chapter. In fact, the guy who just expressed disdain for the very concept of a predestined winner of the duel is playing in this one. Are you mocking him? I mean, don't get me wrong, I can get behind mocking Kaiba all day every day (or every other day, maybe), but I'd be more inclined to pick on his selective use of the term in his own favor. Making fun of a guy who can't escape his fate no matter how hard he works against the tide - lukewarm comedy in a sea of tragedy. Making fun of a guy who says he's been chosen by a god card to avoid admitting that it was given to him, then rejecting the idea that he can be chosen by anyone or anything in order to insist he does all the choosing himself - much funnier. 

After a reiteration of Vorse Raider slicing through Keldo, and Ishizu flinching through the resulting holographic smoke, Kaiba repeats how laughable he finds it that her millennium trinket can predict his future. He's prepared to teach her that the future obeys him, and not the other way around. He's going to EARN that ending, dammit!

The irony of this being that he's the one who will undoubtedly win the duel because the plot cannot move forward otherwise. The future has indeed dictated this, it just happens to line up with what Kaiba wants. For now.

Kaiba and Ishizu stare each other down, still both at 4000 points each. Jonouchi notes this, but thinks that Kaiba's the one who has the momentum now, because he's bringing the "power deck" with all his toughest monsters. Anzu compares Ishizu's power to Pegasus's, but with a predicted outcome instead of relying on building a strategy around reading Kaiba's mind. She wonders if this means Ishizu already knows who will win, and I would make fun of her for missing the obvious answer... if there WERE an obvious answer, anyway. It's not exactly clear what the Millennium Necklace is telling her, despite the fact that Ishizu herself seems sure that it's the future, so it's still up in the air.

Yami just glares speechlessly up at the platform. Stoic.

Kaiba continues his turn briefly to play a card face down for the anticlimactic conclusion. Ishizu is just as silent as Yami while Kaiba recalls the two cards he's placed face down, Crush Card and Shrink. You'll recall that his plan is to shrink his Vorse Raider's power and subsequently infect Ishizu's deck with a virus that will destroy all her big attack-heavy monsters that he still has no real reason to believe are a large part of her strategy. He's just assuming. Because he's an ass.

Ishizu declares her turn and immediately closes her eyes. No, it's cool, she can totally afford a little nap there in the middle of a match. Her dream-vision shows her Kaiba gloating that he's activating Shrink and Crush Card in order to destroy her deck, while all the monsters she hasn't yet summoned go up in smoke. She opens her eyes again, assuring Kaiba that she can already see that future, even if it's only silently, and thinks that even a duelist of his ilk will be powerless when faced with the power of her Millennium Necklace.

As she summons a buff dude in a golden Egyptian-esque helmet with a cobra's head adorning its front she calls Mudora, she's prepared to show the audience the future she's foretold.

Ohhhhh, maaaaaaan, I wish it would happen...!

I guess it's such a fun image that it's in there twice? I'm guessing that the person uploading this just threw in the conjoined double-page spread, and then the two pages separate for good measure too.

While Kaiba stands there smirking at her from behind his Vorse Raider, Ishizu recalls this very vision is the reason she gave him Obelisk to begin with. Then she asks for Kaiba's forgiveness, silently of course, because normally this kind of predictive power should never be used in a duel, but she's prepared to offer her life to the gods as punishment for being a big cheater. Meh, something tells me that the gods aren't too terribly broken up about it. Maybe it's the lack of weird god lightning striking Ishizu down.

All the same, she thinks she's willing to do anything to save her brother, even for the slightest chance or the slimmest ray of hope. You can't criticize her for that dedication - mad props. Ishizu glares down at Other!Marik, who scoffs up at her in response. She demands that the parasite inside her REAL brother wait for her. Well, it's not like the guy can GO anywhere. You're all flying on a blimp, so....

Those are pretty dope accessories, but they aren't going to help him much, because Kaiba says (as predicted) that the moment she attacks, he's going to activate his Shrink card. He calls this a "trap of hell" and bids she fall into it, even as he shrinks the attack points of his OWN card. It's pretty obvious that there's a tricky reason you're doing this, Kaiba, you don't need to expound upon the fact that it's a trap. Maybe you should keep YOURS shut for once? Just a thought.

Nah, he narrates that Vorse Raider has lost half its attack points, and it issues a weird aura and smoke in response. Yami grits his teeth at the scene above and wonders if Kaiba playing Shrink meant that he was planning on activating Crush Card. Uhhhhhh, DUH? Not sure how much more obvious Kaiba could get here in order for you to waive any doubt, but it's not like the guy is great at subtlety.

Mudora slices Vorse Raider straight down the middle and the very scene that played out in Ishizu's mind a few minutes before happens in real life, with Kaiba's dialogue a little bit different this time. He says that now that Vorse Raider has attack points less than 1000, it has become a carrier of a virus. With a triumphant grin, he says her monsters are dead, both on the field and in her deck. A similar smoke to the one consuming Mudora issues from the seams on Ishizu's Duel Disk. Jonouchi identifies this as the famous deck-destruction combo of Kaiba's, fucking up every monster in Ishizu's possession worth more than 1500 attack points. Yami wonders if she predicted this too. Please, Yami, anyone with EYES could have predicted this. No Millennium Item required.

No complaints from her. You'd think that would be a red flag for twitchy Kaiba, but he's too busy to notice. Too busy contemplating his genius sacrifice of one of his monsters and bringing down his life points to 2950 so all of Ishizu's strongest monsters can be dead. Worth it! And he's not done yet; he thinks his deck-destruction combo is only just beginning because he's got an even more powerful card in his hand right now. He plans to use Virus Cannon to wipe out the spell cards in Ishizu's deck now, likening this one-by-one robbery of her resources to plucking every feather from her wings, like the psychopath that he is. He wears one twisted little grin as he savors the thought of bringing Ishizu down with his power deck.

Again, your boner is quite indecent, Kaiba. Put it AWAY.

Ishizu plays a card face down without fanfare and ends her turn in much the same manner. Other!Marik smirks at her and chuckles internally, thinking that Kaiba is making this far too easy for Ishizu, playing right into her hands. Aside from Kaiba being all too predictable, other!Marik is sure that it's only a matter of time before Ishizu plays a certain card that he's not naming at the moment. He questions if Kaiba's convinced he's destroying Ishizu's deck or his own. Oooooooh, cryptic.

Kaiba appears to be making up for Ishizu's lack of gusto with extra.

... I'm not gonna TOUCH that one.

Reeeeeeaaaaaaally not touching that one. A rich powerful guy's name for his junk is his own business.

Unless you're Mick Fleetwood, apparently.

Ishizu must have noticed that self-satisfied smirk on Kaiba's face and drawn the ONE conclusion there can be from the intensity of it: he has drawn Obelisk. She's fairly certain that Kaiba's got won't be bringing him victory today, and when she wins this duel, that god will come back to HER. Like a lost puppy. That also has omnipotence.

Kaiba is contemplating how he needs three sacrifices to summon Obelisk, which means he needs three more turns to make it happen. He's moving right along with his next play; summoning Des Feral Imp, what he calls a death gremlin. The thing certainly LOOKS like it was fed after midnight. He notes that Ishizu has no monsters and is wide open, so orders his new monster to attack Ishizu herself. She flinches back from the swipe the Imp takes at her, but it still takes her points down to 2400. Kaiba sure did make up the difference from his sacrifice right quick.

Ishizu groans, and Kaiba takes this moment to start pontificating again. He says the future is infinite, the past is just a string of footprints, and it means nothing to him. So does the fact that Ishizu gave him Obelisk.

And how does this square off with your insistence that you're in charge of your own future? Usually the only time that people claim to be chosen by a god is also the time that they're trying to convince everyone that they're destined for greatness. From your previous rants, I'd say that's kind of antithetical to your position of anti-fate in this duel. What gives?

So, what did I think of this chapter overall? There's not much going on in the mundane. Kaiba is his usual overzealous self, and Ishizu constantly looks like she's trying not to roll her eyes. It's clear she just can't wait to get past this phase in her plan to save her brother, because Kaiba is never NOT insufferable. He's also just a hurdle to her right now, so it's no wonder she's coming off as a little distracted. Of course, she's the same to him, so it's no wonder to me that he hasn't seemed to notice. Already thinking several moves ahead and entirely too excited.

So excited, in fact, that he seems to be all mixed up inside? I know I harped on this all chapter, but there's some serious contradiction going on in Kaiba's philosophy here. I suppose it's POSSIBLE to have both a sense of responsibility for one's own destiny and a belief that there's a greater purpose to it all through a deity's favor, but that's the kind of reconciling of contradictory ideas that people in real life do because there aren't any THEMES surrounding them and their lives. Ishizu stays in a pretty straight line with her philosophy because she's here representing the concept of fate and a certain outcome. She's calm, collected, and composed because nothing can surprise her - she's seen it all before, and she knows exactly what she needs to do to accomplish that all-important goal of exorcising the demon from her poor brother.

Kaiba, on the other hand, SHOULD be representing the opposite view. Yami thought it best when he thought at Kaiba to surpass his fate. In this duel, Kaiba is supposed to be the foil to Ishizu's straight-laced determinism by pushing as hard as he can past her expectations of him and what her Millennium Item tells her. But at the end, he's smarming about how the god card has chosen HIM to give the victory to? Without invoking his own strong desire to prove he's the master of his own destiny? Seems just a tad like a 180 degree turn to me.

I suppose the point of his last word on the matter could have been similar to a divorced parent bragging about their child's decision to stay with them instead of their estranged ex-partner. I could see that being Kaiba's intention, considering his idea of working hard to his ends instead of relying on fate is gathering as many powerful assets as possible in order to make them work in his favor so he doesn't have to do it himself. In that sense, I can still SQUEEZE him into the mold he's meant to be filling this chapter.

Still, KT might want to make that a little clearer if he doesn't want the metaphors to be muddled.