Yu-Gi-Oh Manga: 232 The Family of Darkness!!

I feel like I'm supposed to be unnerved by this dark-dwelling family, but actually it's making me somewhat envious. The dark is generally my sanctuary these days, being a little cooler when the sun isn't blazing overhead in this record-breakingly hot summer. It's also the perfect place to get some blessed sleep, because these days of high stress has me craving unconsciousness more than I have in a long while. Days filled with apartment and job searches, as well as packing, getting all my affairs in order for my upcoming move, are perfectly ended by collapsing into a soft bed blanketed by darkness.

But that's just how I feel at the moment. Someone else at some other time and place probably doesn't share my sentiments.

Like these two poor bastards, for example. Though at the moment they seem a bit more concerned by Shadi and his cryptic threats than darkness. As well they should be.

Shadi is still the worst. After dropping this confusion bomb on a couple of kids, he turns around and wanders back into the crowd. Ishizu holds up a hand and stutters out a question about who he is as well as a request to wait, but in a matter of seconds, Ishizu sees with alarm that he's disappeared. Baby!Marik is stuck on the shocking claim of tragedy combined with the pharaoh's will. You know, for a kid who has been brought up in the midst of a literal underground cult built around preserving the personal memories of a god incarnate king, he sure seems a bit confused on the concept of divine will and how it is often invoked to justify horrible shit.

Anyway, back in the present, and on the title page, Yuugi, Jonouchi and Shizuka all gape at Ishizu in varying degrees of shock. Jonouchi seems to be the most disturbed, and she hasn't even gotten to the worst part! Yuugi is having an inner dialog with Yami about how he's pretty sure this man Ishizu is describing in her story has to be Shadi. Yami agrees, and reminds Yuugi of Pegasus too, concluding that Shadi seems to have appeared to everyone connected to those Millennium Items. Except for twitchy Kaiba, that is. He's still blissfully free from Shadi's bullshit. Lucky guy. Yami wonders if Shadi knows the secrets of the Millennium Items.

Hopefully. Otherwise this dude is just going around accosting peoples' minds for no reason at all.

Ishizu resumes her story with a reminder that she broke one of her cult's family's laws in order to show baby!Marik the outside world, which she now says caused the extinction of the Ishtars. As everyone around her stares in rapt attention, and she hangs her head and closes her eyes, I want to reassure her that it'll be alright. Her family will soon be joined by the rest of humanity for entirely unrelated climate reasons, so they'll have some company!

Baby!Marik turns to ask his sister where that man went, insisting she MUST have seen the distinctive key hanging around his neck, which looked an awful lot like the two items their family is charged with protecting. Ishizu cuts him off with a warning call of his name and barks that they can't talk about those things in this world. Baby!Marik stutters an apology, but Ishizu isn't finished with her tirade, demanding that Marik forget all the things he saw in the overworld, including the strange man. He whimpers that he understands, but holds up the picture of the motorcycle he tore from the magazine and implores her to let him keep it. After a moment of angry speechlessness, Ishizu whips around and calls for baby!Marik to come back home with her.

On their way, she's consumed with the certainty that the mysterious man knew that she and Marik were the guardians of the tomb, and that the key he wore was a Millennium Item. Gazing off into the distance, she contemplates who the man is. A long-lost uncle, I'm sure. Unless there are TWO cults centered around protecting Millennium Items. How much would THAT suck?

As they approach the trapdoor back down into their tomb and home, Marik has grown quiet. He watches Ishizu pull open the door, knowing that he's about to return to a dark world only lit by candles. Ishizu begins to lower herself into the hole in the sand, instructing Marik to follow her down. He turns to gaze off across the desert a moment before requesting she wait.

Ishizu impatiently snaps Marik's name again, and Marik dismounts the imaginary motorcycle sheepishly muttering that he knows. While Marik mopes in the background, Ishizu continues her descent, but she freezes again in horror at something just below the trapdoor. It's an hourglass-shaped thing mounted to the wall at one end, with a rope tied around the middle and strung along the wall all the way into the advancing darkness below. She thinks they must not have noticed it in the dark as they were exiting. I guess spending your whole fucking life in the dark doesn't give you any night-vision advantages to seeing that kind of thing, huh?

Baby!Marik leans down over the hole from above and asks what the issue is, but he doesn't get an answer. Instead, Ishizu keeps the explanation in her head, that their father set a trap in order to protect the family laws. She finally thinks of Rishid and that relights the fire under her ass. She bolts down below, baby!Marik right behind, wanting to know what's going on. He leaves that trapdoor wide open. I would ask if he was born in a barn, but, you know...

Ishizu mentally asks for her father's forgiveness in a panic, but when she and Marik reach Marik's room, where it looks like an angry tornado hit, she's disturbed by the fact that Rishid is nowhere to be seen there. Marik seems to have a better idea of what's going on here now, and is running his ass ragged looking for Rishid too. He comes across a room with a torch actively burning and is shocked when he looks inside.

Tooooooooooo laaaaaaaaaaaate.

Baby!Marik shouts to his father in horror, and receives a cold look in return out of douchey-dad's periphery. He twists to accuse both his children of breaking the Ishtar laws. He shoves the knife he's holding into a brazier, where another one has already been rendered glowing by the surrounding coals. Douchey-dad holds up the knife again, promising to make them all understand the price for breaking these laws, but he wants to do something else first. He gives the still crouching Rishid a deranged look as he cites Rishid's orphan status and his complete lack of regard for the education bestowed upon him as the reason he couldn't even be a good servant. Yup folks, you read that right, douchey-dad is using the old "I give you a home and an education and THIS is how you repay me?" shtick. He's going for broke in his douchebaggery now.

Sweating something fierce, Rishid stammers out an apology, but douchey-dad declares he's already dedicated to taking poor Rishid's life. Baby!Marik rushes forward and grabs douchey-dad's arm, yelling at him to stop, but douchey-dad whips his arm back, sending the tiny Marik flying into the wall behind. Ishizu kneels next to him, calling out to him and providing a comforting hand as he doubles over in pain.

Speaking of pain, douchey-dad invites Marik to take a long hard look at how much pain Rishid is in, sadistically pressing the knife into Rishid's flesh. Rishid screams in sizzling agony, and Marik watches in utter horror.

Rishid has never not been struck down by all the authorities in his life, has he?

Douchey-dad holds up his glowing steaming knife and says Marik is next, and Marik responds by gripping both sides of his head in pain, doubling over again. No, he's not psyching himself out for the coming agony - the pain is very current. Ishizu says his name in question, but he doesn't answer, sweating and wrinkling the bridge of his nose, grinding his teeth. Even douchey-dad has to pause in shocked confusion at the strange fit his son is throwing. He calls Marik's name too, and this time, Marik straightens, eyes hooded, hair sticking up.

He laughs and offers thanks to his father for killing Rishid, describing it as refreshing. Douchey-dad stutters the beginning of a question about what Marik is doing, but lets it trail while other!Marik turns to observe the family's two Millennium Items sitting in a special display on an altar behind him. He moves to pick up the rod, declaring that it's his from this day on, though douchey-dad yells that he's not allowed to touch the Millennium Items. Other!Marik, of course, is unmoved by this rule, and expresses a sardonic disbelief as he turns to face his father with the rod held aloft. That stylized eye shines from his forehead now.

Douchey-dad begins to lean forward, preparing to address Marik, though he seems even LESS authoritative than ever. Other!Marik hums without concern and points the rod at douchey-dad, propelling the man backward into a pillar with magic millennium force or something. Douchey-dad hangs suspended upright on the pillar, struggling to move but finding he's unable. Ishizu begins to ask Marik what the hell he thinks he's doing, but other!Marik snaps at her to be a good girl and stand back. He backs up his casual misogyny with another magic blast from the rod, pinning her against the wall in much the same manner.

Other!Marik ignores Ishizu's noise of discomfort and advances on his father in the opposite direction, stating that they must do his blood ceremony now. But he's already done the tattoo thing... Oh, oh I get it now. Douchey-dad grits his teeth at the approaching threat, unable to do a damn thing except stutter at Marik to stop as other!Marik laughs and steps closer. Other!Marik pulls the sheath from the blade hidden in the rod.

I've heard of getting a taste of your own medicine before, but this is...

Oh well. You know what they say:

Cut to Rishid still lying bleeding on the floor and hands still bound. Other!Marik now approaches him, saying he must want that identifying tattoo of the Ishtar family, holding up a bloody sheet of something that other!Marik says Rishid can take with him on the road.

Wait, is that just a sheet or...?

Boy do I hope that is just supposed to be a sheet blueprint instead of a strip of douchey-dad's back skin. Not only would the latter be disturbing as fuck, it would be the second of two different depictions of skinning off distinctive back markings in two different chapters of two different manga covered on this blog. Consecutively. That would be the creepiest coincidence I have ever engineered and I don't think I could handle it.

Other!Marik raises the blade in the rod over his head to plunge it into Rishid's back, yelling for him to die, but Rishid twists to look over his shoulder and stammer out Marik's name. After a brief close-up on other!Marik's shocked eyeball, Marik collapses to his knees, clutching his head again and dropping the Millennium Rod in careless agony. Rishid says his name again, staring at the fit reprise. When Marik pulls his hands away from his temples, he looks at the bloody mess they've become in confused horror. He starts to ask what he's done, turning to look around the room, Rishid snapping that Marik MUSTN'T look.

But it's too late.

Oh boy, oh yup, that was definitely the skin from douchey-dad's back above. Yikes.

Ishizu and Rishid stand back as baby!Marik cries over his father's mutilated body, no longer tied at the wrists or attached to the pillar in an inexplicable way. What do you mean that's what the ropes were supposed to do, when they weren't secured from the other side of the pillar. KT still doesn't understand how physics work, apparently. As Marik repeats a call to his father over and over again, Rishid just hangs his head and thinks of him in despair. At the drop of one of douchey-dad's earrings, Marik looks up in shock, and see that piece of shit SHADI standing in front of the pillar, looking coldly down at him.

Great, now he's inviting himself into the scene of a horrible fucking tragedy and suggesting to the grieving family that a ghost is responsible for their father's death. Shadi, could you just fuck off forever? At least stop talking, you garbage human.

So, what did I think of this chapter overall? Usually, I try not to feature violence excessively in the recaps, even when it's a feature of the chapter, but it was kind of unavoidable here. The fact that Rishid's near death was the catalyst for Marik's loss of control, and further that the lack of control was so brutal as it was demanded specificity. It highlights the thread of control issues throughout the whole story Ishizu has been telling here. Marik getting a couple measly hours of freedom and becoming melancholy knowing he's never going to be able to do it again. Ishizu planning the event so carefully and still being unable to control for the smaller variables, their father demanding such strict adherence to isolating laws and flying into a violent rage when the children don't fall in line... It's all intertwined in a big web of abuse begetting more abuse for the sake of power dynamics. A long line of fathers and sons who become fathers and demand the privilege of ruling the family with an iron fist because they've "earned" the right to inflict the same garbage they suffered on the next generation. The violence only escalated over the millennia, so it was bound to end up this way, in a big-ass overblown show of dominance, then a less-than-passive backlash from someone who wasn't going to take it anymore.

And that's why I'm more pissed at Shadi than I have ever been. This is evidence that Shadi isn't a mysterious wise-man traveling around to dole out cryptic information; he stands idly by, watches horrible things happen, and then manipulates the survivors to blame the "right" party so the "right" thing happens. Blaming terrible events on the will of a god is the go-to move for religious leaders who want to curb the inevitable questions about why bad stuff happens if the god in question is so benevolent, but it's also a way to infer that there is a way to act on the will of that god as well. It incites, which is exactly what Shadi is trying to do here. The injustice here is the result of several generations of people living in isolation and cult-fervor, and now Shadi is stoking that fervor all the more in the youngest, most violent of the line, encouraging him to think of this as the fault of a third-party whom he's been taught to revere his whole life.

I don't know if this was the intent behind the inception of the Ishtar cult in the first place. I don't know if there's going to be any exposition that explicitly states the Ishtars were always meant to produce a young man so angry and afraid that he would seek out the pharaoh in revenge. I do know that whether this was the original plan or not, it's fucked for Shadi, or the Millennium Items as I'm becoming increasingly suspicious, to capitalize on the pain of this family for ANY ends whatsoever. They're treating Marik like a fucking nuke, pointing him at Yami like it will have a positive net effect. I don't know what kind of three-dimensional chess Shadi/the Millennium Items think they're playing, but it seems to me the Ishtar pawns were VERY poorly handled.

Not to mention Shadi's blaming this on "the pharaoh's will" is an obvious bald-faced lie. If KT has gone this long refusing to acknowledge Yami makes questionable decisions, I doubt he would start introducing the possibility now. Sorry Shadi, not buying it. Take your shitty wares and get the hell out of here.