Can we talk about how delightful the name of this chapter/card is for a moment? A devil, in some religious respects, refers to a creature that kind of opposes a god, stands on the opposite side of the spectrum in terms of malevolent/benevolent spirits. So, it stands to reason that any player standing in opposition to a GOD card might be the devil in that scenario, and the title "Devil's Sanctuary" really does bring to mind a safe space from the wrath of an angry deity card. It's a little heavy-handed, but still pretty clever, and I love it. 10/10, KT, best title and card name to date.
Just imagine your local mild-mannered priest giving this sort of speech. Just for funsies.
Yami, at his 3300 points, looks quite distressed by the fact that other!Marik and Ra have become one, and it is a rather disturbing image, to be fair. It's even more disturbing for how long other!Marik holds that center note on the "attack" command, long enough for him to have the complete thought that this is it for Yami, and he's about to unleash the one-turn kill. Must be using Ra's massive god-lungs to yell that or something.
When he finishes his extended order, though, other!Marik's eyes bulge at Yami's side of the platform, astounded. He's just noticed Yami has revealed his face down card Devil's Sanctuary, which apparently special summons 1 metal devil at 1000 life points a turn... for some reason. A dark alchemical symbol has materialized on the floor in front of Yami, though, and it's neat. Other!Marik is grinding his teeth over it, as though he knows what's coming, but then describes the magic circle and shape forming in the center in unfamiliar terms.
Meanwhile Kaiba is in disbelief that Yami just HAPPENED to draw that card right when he needed it.
Sounds fake, but okay. Even Kaiba is wearing kind of a grimace at this statement, but I think it's mainly supposed to be shock displayed there.
Other!Marik is trying trying and failing in the next panel to articulate just what this is, looking rather distressed about it. To be fair, I'm also struggling to find a way to describe this weird shiny metal doll that seems to be entirely made up of ball joints stacked on each other. It's also reflecting the single eye of other!Marik remaining in his place as the player on the platform from its smooth mirror head. Kaiba, as the one who knows what the card actually DOES, explains how the card conjures one metal devil, and before he finishes stating just what that metal devil accomplishes, other!Marik has an opportunity to recognize that he's (or the single piece he left behind) is being reflected on it.
And now it's YAMI who launches into an explanation of what's happening here, in the condescending way only a guy who's just reading his card's description for the first time can. He says the metal devil becomes a substitute for the other player, whose life points become its attack points. Yami admits that this costs him 1000 life points to maintain as his Metal Devil acquires a single attack point. It's rather measly power is a version of other!Marik, as Yami exclaims, and therefore attacking it would be attacking other!Marik himself and all the damage goes to him. Kaiba reiterates that the moment Ra attacks the Metal Devil, other!Marik will go into the negative THOUSANDS of points.
Other!Marik growls, grinding his teeth, because it's too late for him to take back the attack he already declared. I guess Kaiba has to continue to claim ultimate credit for this, the card he gave to Yami, because HE'S shown identifying Devil's Sanctuary as the only card that can defeat Ra's one-turn kill move. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you figured it out, smartest smart-boy in the room. Congratz, guy, now climb down from that high horse and roast a marshmallow already.
Uhhhh... we still have a half-chapter left here, so I'm not buying it. Sorry guys.
I don't have long until I can say I told you so. When the attack dies down, and the smoke clears to reveal other!Marik standing there whole and unscathed, Yami is astonished by the Metal Devil that still lingers in the middle of his magic sanctuary circle.
This cockroach emerging from a nuclear blast credits the card Yami gave him in their exchange a little while ago as what separated him out from Ra, De-Fusion. What does it take to KILL this nuisance??
Yami growls internally, irritated and alarmed by the fact that other!Marik's separation from Ra taking away all of Ra's attack points and cancelling out the attack, effectively using De-Fusion to protect himself. Kaiba adds his own two cents here, as though responding to Yami, though it doesn't SEEM he had spoken out loud. Telepathy or bizarrely spoken dialog for the benefit of the audience, Kaiba has observed that other!Marik has also taken all of Ra's attack points as life points, so Devil's Sanctuary has actually worked to his BENEFIT. He scoffs grumpily.
The digital smoke continues to clear, and other!Marik giggles, Ishizu gazing up at Yami with despair, and perhaps some pity. Other!Marik gloats that his body is back to normal thanks to his life points returning to him, drawing attention to how Regular-Sized Marik is all better and whole again and calling him a "tough sucker".
Whatever, that guy hasn't even been a thing in a LONG time.
Other!Marik tells Ra to go back to the graveyard, and squeezes back into his Duel Disk obediently. He puts Monster Reborn back in there too and chuckles with glee about being back on his bullshit again. Jonouchi curses about the possibility of other!Marik using Monster Reborn again on his next turn, bringing back Ra. Less of a possibility and more of a certainty at this point, of course, because we know how much other!Marik loves perpetual plays. Honda is in exasperated disbelief that all this is about to happen AGAIN, which is a sentiment I think we ALL share, so #relatable content over here.
After playing a new face down card, other!Marik ends his turn. Yami begins his turn on a hesitant, sweaty note. He decides first and foremost to maintain his Metal Devil by paying 1000 points for it, bringing him down to 2300, then announces his draw phase without the customary enthusiasm. Other!Marik asks disdainfully what the point is of keeping around a token that can barely attack or defend, but Yami doesn't bother to answer, his hand hovering over the deck in his Duel Disk.
Below the platform, Kaiba is watching closely, wondering if Yami can see the ADDITIONAL purpose to the Metal Devil, other than to negate Ra. Yami draws his card like a pistol in the old west.
Don't worry, Kaiba, I think Yami figured something out.
Though Kaiba is still looking a bit tense after that card is drawn, Yami is confident when he announces he's beginning his turn. Having a god in the palm of your hand will do that, surely. He reveals his face down card, which is "Multiply", apparently confusing other!Marik. Yami explains the card's EXCEEDINGLY simple effect - it's just what it says on the tin, with the condition that the monster's it's multiplying are sitting at less than 500 attack points. This makes the 1-point Metal Devil a prime candidate, as other!Marik observes, and when the one has become three, other!Marik anxiously realizes that Yami is going to use them as sacrifices. Kaiba appears a lot calmer as he silently asserts that Yami has understood the ultimate nature of Devil's Sanctuary as a summoning circle for a god. The irony just makes this card all the better! An epiphany hits Ishizu at this moment too; Yami got ANOTHER god card from Kaiba. Don't mind her, she's just catching up.
Digital whirlwinds surround each metal devil as Yami declares them sacrifices.
At least he gets to get fucking clocked by a giant fist bigger than his body. Must be a wet dream come true for someone so obsessed with pain and subsequent darkness.
So, what did I think of this chapter overall? KT pulled off a tremendous twist there, making the initial move with Devil's Sanctuary work in other!Marik's favor! I'm ashamed to admit that I didn't think he could pull off the climax he set up and make it make sense, but it was almost as good as it promised to be. The fact that the success of the attack depended entirely on whether other!Marik was still lending Ra his life points didn't even occur to me, and the setup with other!Marik taking De-Fusion earlier in the duel so it can pay off here was REALLY a good move.
There are only two TINY issues I have with the mechanics; the first is that it doesn't really explain why other!Marik was able to convert the attack points he put into Ra from the other monsters into life points for himself - since they absorbed by Ra for their attack points, the attack points should have stayed Ra's. He would still have survived the attack, just not with over 4000 life points, so he still could have gloated. The second issue is that, since other!Marik isn't a CARD fused with Ra, I don't know if De-Fusion should have worked on that special effect of Ra's. Maybe a reader who has actual knowledge of TCG can weigh in here, but I feel it's just a LITTLE bit of a cop-out, functionality wise. Writing wise, though, it was a great setup and payoff, as I mentioned before.
I love that there was a hidden, secret use for Devil's Sanctuary, and that Kaiba knew Yami would have the extra card to make it work, because Yami has used it in the past on his Kuriboh. It was more long-game setup and payoff, which this chapter is doing SO WELL! I think it would have benefited from being drawn out into the next chapter, because there was a little drama that KT didn't touch on AT ALL behind Yami having to use 1000 life points every turn to keep Devil's Sanctuary around. In fact, KT didn't even SHOW the sacrifice of life points eating more at Yuugi's spectral form and the pain that would have caused him. Hell, it should have caused Yami some EMOTIONAL pain, just to weigh his options and know that he had to do this, even if it was going to hurt Yuugi. That would have been a very heavy dramatic moment, and it's probably my biggest criticism of this chapter, because KT managed to show OG Marik whole and muttering after Rishid. That he seemed to, in this critical moment, forget about Yuugi and his position in this is rather... disappointing.
Regardless, I am FLOORED at how awesome the multiple setups paid off in this chapter, and I'm looking forward to seeing how this thing wraps up in the next one!
So as far as the TCG goes, you are absolutely correct that mechanics-wise, De-Fusion does not work that way. When a monster is fusion summoned, you MUST special summon the appropriate fusion card representing that monster from your extra deck after meeting the specific conditions that fusion requires, like playing Polymerization and sendong the appropriate monsters (as fusion materials) from your hand or field to the graveyard. There are fusion monsters that do not require Polymerization like Blue-Eyes Twin Burst Dragon, which can be fusion summoned just by sending 2 Blue-Eyes White Dragons from the field to the graveyard, but again, you still need to special summon the fusion monster card in your extra deck. Specifically, Ra in the real game allows you to give up all but 100 of your life points to give it attack points when it is normal summoned as it's effect. It is not treated as fusion at all and if anything happens to Ra, you do not get those life points back. Funny enough, Ra cannot be special summoned at all in the real game and its effect is MUCH MUCH worse than in the manga, though trying to approximate all of Ra's effects on a single card would be a nightmare, especially because Yu-Gi-Oh! generally does not use keywords like Magic the Gathering and the card sizes are slightly smaller than MTG cards. Recently Ra has gotten a bunch of support in the game with the release of Sphere Mode and Immortal Phoenix which makes the card a lot better and just recently, several cards were released like Millennium Revelation which lets you bypass Ra's special summoning restriction and use Monster Reborn on it, Blaze Cannon, and One With The Sun God which is a permanent trap card which actually allows you to tribute Ra and get back the life points you paid to its effect, basically functioning like De-Fusion does here in the manga. Ra itself is not treated as a fusion still though so you are absolutely correct that the the mechanics don't really work that way. Of course, the TCG's rules and manga's rules are not one-to-one, but even so, it still doesn't really make sense. That aside though, I still really enjoyed KT's writing here and considering some of the nonsense that's happened in this manga, this isn't the MOST egregious thing.
ReplyDeleteWhile Ra has a bunch of effects, it wasn't about approximating all of its effects in a single card. Ra's other forms and support cards aren't released together. Ra's battle mode was released way long ago to those, and the release was the worst adaptations that can be made, no Special Summon (irony), no ATK/DEF from Tributed monsters, no effect protection (instead a brief anti-Summon negation and anti-effect responding to its Summon), just Point-to-Point Transfer that can only be activated on Normal Summon (no any other time), and a removal effect that is all Ignition (can only be used at your Main Phases), targets, and destroys (the only good thing is that it's not once per turn).
DeleteSo Ra was kinda a suicide card, either lose almost all your LP or waste 3 monsters for an 0 ATK monster, on a monster susceptible to any kind of removal. The other forms and supports are released far later, to "fix" Ra making it more playable and not a suicide card, and the idea is giving its missing effects that are far more formidable in the other cards as they won't errata cards. It happened not only to Ra but others too like Armityle the Chaos Phantom (GX's fused form of their own God Cards, the Sacred Beasts), its anime effect is provided by its monster retrain Phantom of Fury.
Regarding Ra not being a Fusion, it can probably make itself treated as a Fusion in its OTK effect, like Gemini monsters changing itself from Normal Monster to Effect Monster by Normal Summoning it on the field.
It must have been WILD when these cards were coming out, because it must have been so obvious to the makers of the game that they wouldn't be able to function the way they do in the manga/anime, but at the same time they had to make their effects recognizable from the source material for them to be good advertisements for each other... To see the manga's cards working nonsensically and then watch the TCG team try to release these same cards in a way that makes sense had to have been a TRIP.
DeleteI'm really sorry for this giant block of text. :^(
ReplyDeleteDon't apologize, this is exactly what I was looking for! I knew I could count on you!
DeleteFusion mechanics are different in the manga though. In real life, there are physical cards of Fusion which has purple border: https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Humanoid_Worm_Drake
DeleteWhile in the manga, Fusion and Ritual monsters (which has blue border in TCG/OCG) aren't physical cards: https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Humanoid_Drake_(manga)
While the TCG/OCG has specific materials required written in the card for Fusion Summon, in the manga Fusions can be done with any 2 or more monsters on the field (not the hand). Only that the Fusion being compartible or not depends. So far the only incompartible Fusion shown is when Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon was fused with Mammoth Graveyard (Zombie-type in manga), living + undead beings.
De-Fusion absolutely does not work here because Ra isn't a fusion monster, Life Points aren't a fusion monster, and Melvin didn't even use Polymerizaation at any point. That's genuinely bullshit.
ReplyDeleteAt least Melvin gets punched in the face (and everywhere else really) at the end of the chapter.
I KNEW IT! Dude deserves to be punched, cheating as much as he is with his hack god card.
DeleteRa can probably treat itself as a Fusion Monster while One-Turn-Kill was used. Card-type changing effect happens, like in TCG/OCG, Gemini monsters normally treat itself as Normal Monster, but it can be Normal Summoned again while it's already face-up on the field as Effect Monster.
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