Yu-Gi-Oh Manga: 259 Deck of Glass!

Sounds like a companion piece to one of those infinity pools, looking out over spectacular landscapes from the edge of expensive spas/resorts built on overhanging cliffs. If you built a glass deck around one of those suckers, you could get a truly surreal experience of walking on air before taking a dip in the sky pool. I say "you" because I wouldn't have the guts to enjoy such a thing. I'm not scared of heights in most situations, but everyone has their limits, and I think I would be terribly disturbed at looking down and seeing myself hovering precariously above a lush cliffside. 

Unless we're talking about a different kind of deck. Boy, would THAT be embarrassing. 

Yami's Dark Magician seems to be glaring hardcore down at Kaiba with its razor thin soul patch looking thing (or maybe its some sort of tattoo or paint like the eyeliner extending beyond his actual eyes? I'm genuinely confused by this feature). Kaiba looks back with nervous shock that the magician confronting his Blue Eyes is creates the same dynamic he saw in his totally not-real vision. He recalls said vision, watching his and Yami's ancient Egyptian counterparts making combative gestures at one another while their spectral monsters issue from the slabs of stone behind them. It just happened a few minutes ago for him, so I should hope he remembers it. 

Yami is thinking a little further back, though. He considers the scene carved on the stone he saw in the museum at the beginning of the arc, certain now that it was the memory of a battle that happened long ago. He's sure that if this battle is another piece in the puzzle of memories he's trying to put together (subtle KT, real subtle), then he HAS to defeat Kaiba to remember what he's forgotten. He pulls another card from his hand and shouts his turn isn't done yet. Kaiba glowers at him as he slaps it on his Duel Disk face down, knowing that the Dark Magician can't beat the 3000-point Blue Eyes White Dragon alone. He now has two face down cards, one of which is Magic Formula, to increase a wizard's attack points by 500 to only tie it with Kaiba's dragon. He resigns himself to waiting until Kaiba strikes as his only chance, and ends his turn. 

This is when Kaiba seems confident enough to say that Yami saw that vision too. Because that apparently wasn't crystal clear before this moment. He then starts to lecture Yami on the "truth" of the vision they both witnessed; they both remembered the image of the carving of the king on the tablet they saw in the heat of battle. That's all. What's a little mutual hallucination between enemies, right? Kaiba insists that this was just an illusion from subliminal suggestion. Gracious, MY suggestion that it was a prank pulled by some tech working on the machinery before you all landed on landfill island is a better explanation than that nonsense. 

Kaiba laughs obnoxiously, as if there's any other way for him to laugh, at the notion of Yami being a pharaoh from 3000 years in the past. 

"I'm FREE, because I refuse to acknowledge the cage!"

Yami actually looks affronted there for a moment as Kaiba continues, ranting that there is no light for those shackled to the past, and blah blah blah, something about when Yami turned his back to him, he chose the path of useless nostalgia and defeat? Shit, now I feel attacked just doing this blog as a semi-nostalgic fan. Fuck you, Kaiba. 

He finally decides to take his turn and draws a card, looks at it, then plays it - it's Card of Demise, which allows Kaiba to draw until he has five cards, but he has to discard whatever cards he has in his hand in five turns. Not a bad deal, and it seems to make Yami nervous as a hand-improver. Kaiba reiterates what the card does as he draws more cards, just in case anyone who didn't bother to read the text on the card wanted to know what was going on. You know, someone like me, traditionally.

Kaiba plays a card face down, then evaluates Yami's two face down cards on the opposite side of the platform. He figures one of them has to be a card that increases the Dark Magician's attack. About time this kid used his brains and stopped relying on us assuming he HAD them. He gets real specific with the other card, predicting it to be the Spellbinding Circle trap activated by a potential attack from the Blue Eyes White Dragon. As Yami stares at him in stoic silence, Kaiba continues to chastise him mentally, because he simply CANNOT stop talking, even to himself. He insists that this being their 3rd duel, and his maybe second year obsessing over Yami, he's thoroughly familiar with Yami's strategies by now. He can see through them as though Yami's deck were made of glass. 

He said it, he said the thing! Exciting.

And now, he pulls a card from his hand and thrusts it out at Yami, announcing it's a monster and he's going to summon it. Yami's eyes widen in shock, or at least that's what I assume from the extreme close-up.

I'm sorry, I'm so sorry if I can't take advantage of the unfortunate implications of shortening this poor monster's name, but there are just too many possibilities. I don't even know where to START.

With that, Kaiba believes he's going to take Yami out with one blow on the next turn. Apologies if I don't think you would be satisfied with just ONE, Kaiba, since no man really is. 

Anyway, Kaiba ends his turn, and Yami begins his a bit of a sweaty mess. He's really worried that Kaiba knows his strategy, and it turns out that he WAS actually planning on activating Spellbinding Circle when Kaiba's dragon attacked his magician. If he had done so in conjunction with strengthening the Dark Magician with the spellbook, he would have beaten him, but now the dragon lord over there threw off that whole plan. Yami wonders what he's going to do now, drawing a card with his best confident posturing. 

Kaiba smiles, assuming Yami thinks he's ahead of him, but very sure that he's several steps ahead of even that. He's real attached to the "glass deck" metaphor, thinking he sees the cracks in it. Be sure to keep that fancy resin away from him so he can't repair them, then. Yami looks genuinely unsure for a moment before he summons Beta the Magnet Warrior in defense. Kaiba sarcastically wonders what's next; if Yami is going to attack his D. Lord with the Dark Magician, and sure enough, after Yami lets out a little growl of frustration, he calls for his Dark Magician to attack the dragon lord. As the magician lunges for the dragon lord, Kaiba's manic expression returns, unable to contain his excitement that Yami fell for his trick. He reveals his face down card to be Magical Trick Mirror to play any spell card from Yami's graveyard. 

Yami is shocked to the core that Kaiba laid a trap; what is he, GOOD at this game now?? Kaiba says that he's activating Monster Reborn from Yami's graveyard, which both he AND the Dark Magician have to gape at Kaiba about. The mirror card on Kaiba's side transforms into Monster Reborn, and Kaiba chuckles darkly, drawing out his announcement of what that lucky monster is that gets a second chance to... show up for this shitshow, I guess. At least Yami appears to be waiting with bated breath. 

Oh, that's a big OOPS. Dark Magician shoots a ball of black magic at Obelisk, and at a 1500-point difference, that's going to be an expensive mistake for Yami. Obelisk holds up a giant beefy arm to deflect the attack, and for some reason Yami is yelling at his magician that its own magic will be shot back at him. No, he's not educating the AUDIENCE this time, but his own MONSTER what lives INSIDE THE GAME and thus should automatically react in accordance with the rules. That is... a weird flex, but okay.

Yami himself is surrounded in dark bolts of electricity and he curls in on himself in pain as his life points drop to 1500. Meanwhile, Kaiba commands the monster he calls a god but treats like a slave to return to the underworld. Then he yuks it up about how Yami has to see now that his weakness lies in being stuck in stupid illusions. Yami grits his teeth and sweats in response, then plays a card face down to complete his turn. Kaiba puts on his most ultra-serious expression to tell Yami that resistance is useless, and he will be crushed on this turn. 

But no-chill-boy just can't help himself. Ultra-serious just ain't who he is, baby.

Yeah man, that sure is how TIME works. 

Yami is currently asking himself the deep questions, wondering just what his lost memories ARE. He's starting to consider that Kaiba might be right; that he might in fact just be wallowing in the past. Or, at least his longing to KNOW about it, if we wanna get technical. But Yami comes to the conclusion that he can't move forward until he knows the answer, to where he came from I presume. He's not super specific about which question he's trying to answer here, but... context, I guess. Yami decides he CAN'T lose here, and that he can see the light shining beyond this duel if he wins. He must grasp that light. 

Kaiba declares his turn and draws a card, smiling in his certainty that this is the final turn. Hand outstretched, he plays Flute of Dragon Summoning, and no points to Yami for being nervous about this magical instrument. Kaiba is in the process of picking MORE cards out of his hand while he says that when the dragon lord plays the flute, all his dragons hear it and obey. 

With the Sinatras and Buble all back together again? 

... Yeah, probably. 

So, what did I think of this chapter overall? I very much enjoy the rare moment when Yami experiences doubt and struggles, so this one struck a chord with me. The fact that he's having to confront issues on multiple levels here is all the better. It's not just that the pendulum has swung back the other way, and Yami has lost all the advantages he seemed to have before, because that happens in most duels. What makes this unique is that Yami started this chapter in the height of spirits after having gotten strong confirmation that he's on the right track to regain more memories. The ending to the chapter really knocks him back on his ass, and demonstrates that, even though he's most of the way to his goal, he's not home free. This is not going to be easy - he still has to earn every bit of what he wants. At long last, he's facing real challenges, so the victory can be satisfying!

The other level of struggle here is how Yami needs to confront how, in a small way, Kaiba isn't exactly wrong. Yes, he takes his focus on the future too far, wrongly believing that if he simply ignores the past, then he's free of it. But he's not mistaken in his assertion that dwelling and being obsessed with the past just holds one back from exploring one's future. The trick, for the both of them it seems, will be to strike that balance of the classic journey; knowing where you came from so you can know where you're going. We've already seen how Kaiba's total rejection of the past creates wild and erratic thrashing on his part in an effort to reject reflections of the past, despite how everything he creates never fails to resemble the formative moments on which they are based. Now Yami is confronted with a sudden obsession with associating the current moment with a prior image, marveling at and clinging to the resemblance between now and the small kernel of past he's been able to grasp, to the point that he's neglected to even think about the future. He was so seduced by his fate that he failed to actually PLAN for a victory for a second, expecting destiny to just kind of... take care of the whole thing for him. Clearly he needs to get his head out of that memory and into the duel in order to win; he needs to work for this, as discussed in the previous paragraph. 

Something else I thought was interesting was how Yami talked directly to the Dark Magician like it was a teammate rather than regarding it as a monster in the game. Of course, Yami has always seen his monsters as more than tools to use in the game, that much has never been unclear. But I don't think I've ever seen him actually TALK to the monsters before like that. Then again, my memory has been shown to be quite spotty, and this IS the 259th chapter I've covered on this series...

One thing is for sure: the Dark Magician was listening to Yami, and looking distressed by the prospect of following through on its attack. The implications here are... many, but there will be time to explore those later.