... What do you mean it's just "Duelist Kingdom all over again"?
Anyway, we start this one up just as other!Marik and his pet god merge to attack the shit out of asshole!Bakura and the regular-sized Marik.
In the blimp below, Ishizu's eyes snap open in alarm, Marik's name blaring in her head. She must still have some remnant of the clairvoyance she says has left her since she lost. Probably should have waited more than two seconds to declare she no longer had any powers, huh? Ishizu sits up in bed, looking expectantly at the door, the jamb outlined in the light from the passageway beyond. It opens, and Ishizu is further alarmed to see it's Anzu, looking glassy-eyed and vacant. Ishizu says her name hesitantly, no doubt pretty freaked out.
Like the douchebag ghost of a vengeful multiple-personalitied jerk he is, he just psychic-yells at Ishizu to go and save Rishid from his murder-twin. That is most normal sentence to type. I'm laughing too hard to breathe, but Ishizu gapes in absolute horror at Marik instead. I guess you had to NOT be there.
Meanwhile, it's half-past NOON? Nah, the translator just accidentally put a "PM" instead of "AM" on the end of 12:30 in the panel of the blimp zooming along through the dark sky. Which is a shame, because I could totally see Kaiba losing track of time hunched over a keyboard in his dark control panel room, and being hideously late for own fucking tournament finals. Or maybe I would just LIKE to see that.
He's still clacking away on that keyboard past midnight, though, plenty teenage-boy-ish enough for now, I suppose. Kaiba's sweating a whole bunch too, as he continues to fret over all the new things he's learning about Ra's special ability. The more he looks, the more he's convinced it really IS an invincible 1-turn winning god card. He wonders if there's a way to beat it, even though his 13% probability run earlier suggests that it's not IMPOSSIBLE.
Kaiba just may not be able to figure out what strategy allows for that scant 13% before he passes out from exhaustion.
Speaking of which, Mokuba wanders into the room behind his big brother to ask if he's really still awake. He encourages Seto to get himself some rest, considering tomorrow is the tournament finals, but Seto just tells him not to worry, and suggests he go to bed first. Mokuba recognizes that Seto's analyzing opponent tactics, and works out that the one card that's causing so much stress must be the Ra god card.
Because Seto's unrelenting stare at the screen in front of him is a little awkward, the mostly ignored Mokuba informs his brother that the blimp's ETA for arriving at their destination is 6:00 AM.
Because the audience needs context for this compensation tower, Mokuba explains that the island it was built on was once Gozaburo's high-tech military island, and is man-made. He stands there reminding his brother how he destroyed the island when Gozaburo died, shifting the focus of the company from warfare to games, as if he wasn't there. Then again, it is a feat that bears repeating; it can't have been easy to do to take an established weaponry company and remake it in an industry that bears little to NO resemblance to the old one. Anyone else would have HEMORRHAGED investors from the whiplash.
Mixing my medical metaphors, but you get the idea.
Seto assures Mokuba that he WILL win on that manufactured island, becoming a real winner once he takes on that hallowed title of Duel King. He's also all fired up about finally conquering the hated reminders of Gozaburo in his own heart. Presumably by winning a card game atop the physical reminder on the ocean. Or something.
As the blimp sails on through the air, other!Marik is walking down the hallway once again, once more drawing the hidden blade in the Millennium Rod with a goofy smirk on his face. He arrives in Rishid's room framed in the doorway, in an almost identical fashion to the way he did before, except when he approaches the bed with the blade poised for the stab, the smirk drops right off his face.
Yet ELSEWHERE, Yuugi has finally gone to sleep, but judging by the sweat on his brow and groans as he holds the puzzle resting on the pillow next to his head, it's a fitful rest. The puzzle itself begins to stir in its power and glow from the eye on its face. Within it or Yuugi's mind, it's not all that clear, we see the two doors that that piece of shit Shadi discovered way back when, the one on the left clean and white, the one on the right dark iron mottled with vein-like tendrils radiating out from the central eye.
The door to the left opens a crack and Yuugi peeks around it at the door across the hall, venturing out to it a moment later and mumbling about a bad feeling he perceives coming from it. He puts a hand on the handle and pauses, thinking that it's the first time he's ever moved to enter his mind-buddy's mind-room. He might reconsider going in entirely if he knew what happened to Shadi when HE decided to barge in without an invitation. But Yuugi DOESN'T know, so he goes ahead and opens that door.
They both look around uneasily for a panel, until Yami decides to make some small talk about how shocking it is that his room is a maze. Yuugi denies it's a shock, per se, as it's an understandable outgrowth of Yami not having a concrete memory, and the room shows the lack of certainty about which it the real road in Yami's heart. Yami looks a bit shocked himself at Yuugi's insight, like he hadn't thought of such an explanation himself before. As they stand awkwardly silent once more, Yuugi thinks it's HIS responsibility to help Yami get back that memory that's causing so much confusion in its absence one day, looking determined.
Yami strikes up the conversation again, bringing up the fact that someone trespassed in this room before, which really DOES shock Yuugi this time. No doubt he's a little confused about how one could actually make it in here. It makes more sense when Yami states that it was Shadi, though Yuugi still seems a bit blown away by the information. Don't know why, that guy is always busting into heads whenever he can, the fucking jerk.
With a concentrated glare, meant for Shadi, I'm sure, Yami says Shadi was looking for his true heart's room, the location of which even HE doesn't know. Yuugi wonders what Shadi could possibly want to find in that room, still gaping away. He says that finding the true heart room in this clusterfuck of an entrance hall would be pretty hard to do. No shit.
Asshole!Bakura's smugness has disappeared by the next panel, though, when he admits Yuugi is right about the difficulty in finding the correct room in here. He's been searching ever since this small slice of his soul was placed here through the piece of puzzle he gave back to Yuugi back in the DDD arc. Wow, call-backs to a lot of stuff in the past with this chapter.
With an authoritative stance, Yami tells Yuugi that he'd better go back to his own room and get to sleep. Instead of reminding Yami that he's not his REAL dad, which is what I definitely would have done, Yuugi expresses his remembrance that tomorrow is indeed the finals. Because it's apparently easy to forget. Smiling, Yami promises Yuugi that he'll win, using his own powers to open that door... that they can't find. Yuugi smiles back and nods.
When we zero back in on Kaiba, he's no longer sitting hunched in front of his computer, but standing atop the blimp on the dueling platform, watching the sunrise over the nose the craft. He's far less nervous, chuckling in his dorky way, an indicator that he's feeling a bit less nervous now, I'm assuming. Indeed, he grins, assuring himself that if his feelings on the matter are correct, there is a way to defeat the god card. Wait, wait... Kaiba, you're telling me that you fretted over the problem of beating that card all damn night, and you graduated from absolute despair/uncertainty over it to a cocky little smile with nothing but a FEELING to back it up???
... Good luck with your new coma, kiddo.
So, what did I think of this chapter overall? The newest direct interaction between Yuugi and Yami is just the latest in a string that are saturated with feels. KT shows here what he can do if he stops trying so hard to communicate every little thing with dialog and just lets the relationship play out in the pictures. There is so much awkward tension between the two characters, being so close as to feel the same strange disturbance within their shared experience, but at the same time walking on eggshells around the ultimate resolution of this little adventure they're on. Their communication is stilted, stalled a couple of times, and Yami has to try and jumpstart it again the moment that Yuugi strays a bit too close to the reality of the future that they're facing, with everything from excitement to dread to nervousness.
But there's this level of sweetness added with Yami and Yuugi taking on roles of elder and younger brother, almost. They share the same house (body), yet reside in separate rooms, the younger, meeker Yuugi shyly checking in on his older brother after he notices a disturbance with him, with the older Yami giving Yuugi a gentle push back to his own room like a benevolent authority. It mirrors the Kaiba brothers in this chapter, who even seem to face a similar future. Kaiba is working toward dealing with memories as well, even if he's looking to destroy them, and Mokuba appears to be in the same supportive role of setting his brother free as Yuugi. The poetry of two juxtaposed rivals being set side-by-side like this to show just how much they have in common is a lovely little bit of storytelling.
Minus the clumsy exposition of Alcatraz's metaphorical significance in Kaiba overcoming his adoptive father's influence and abuse. That was a bit of a bummer.
Though not nearly as much of one as Marik and asshole!Bakura's IMMEDIATE reintroduction to the narrative. I know I was not convinced at all that they were gone forever, but KT could have at least TRIED to string along their absence for longer than ten seconds. They didn't even need to be revealed to still be hanging around here. There's this weird implication that asshole!Bakura is the one who caused the "bad feeling" in Yami's soul room, but I doubt it was really him, considering he's been in there for a while now without letting on his presence. And Ishizu could have gotten the tip about Rishid from the Millennium Necklace, or a genuine psychic ability that was actually REPRESSED by the Millennium Necklace in order to make it so she wouldn't win against Kaiba.
On that last point, how did Ishizu and Anzu get big, bulky Rishid out of that bed by themselves? He certainly wasn't going to be HELPING. Girls are ripped, it's canon.
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