Yu-Gi-Oh Manga: 287 The Father's Shadow

Gracious, it always comes down to daddy-issues, doesn't it? And no, I'm not talking about the ladies whose romantic choices are mocked in blatantly misogynistic terms of how one supposes she relates to a paternal figure, oh no. I'm talking about the direct and obvious connection between a male character's motivations to be great/powerful/dominant/etc and the superior light in which he places his father. Guys in stories are constantly drawing inspiration from their fathers' successes while simultaneously wanting to punch that asshole for how distant and demanding he was. It's a prolific trope, probably because a lot men in real life have a bit of the daddy-issue bug too, but they're too busy projecting that onto women who won't date them instead of admitting to it upfront so they can get on with their protagonist's story arc. 

Or they write it into their totally-not-them protagonist in a long-running series about friendship. And cards.

If proto-Kaiba's performance is any indication... Maybe?

Thief!Bakura says that if he loses, Yami can have his head, but if he wins, he's going to take Yami's life, finery, and the Millennium Items. Yami glares at him, and I like to think it's because he's weighing the worth of thief!Bakura's head against all the things the guy is demanding if he wins. Seems to me that Yami would be getting next to nothing out of his win, but that may be just me. Akhenaden points and raves about how apparently thief!Bakura has no respect, asking how he can say such things to the divine king, and promising that there will be no mercy for him. Clearly we have another Honda here who needs a minute to catch up. Dude, your questions and statements have already been answered if you bothered to LISTEN, alright? 

Sorry, I've got very little patience for people who refuse to acknowledge that they've been given all the information they could ever need to draw logical conclusions and therefore instead draw all the most ILLOGICAL ones. Can't imagine why that is.

Yami calls out to thief!Bakura, asking him why he wants the Millennium Items, to which question thief!Bakura scoffs. He lifts the rope tied around the mummy's neck that he's been dragging around this whole time, suggesting that Yami should ask HIM instead. Yami gapes in shock at this gesture, Priest Seto identifying the mummy as the former king like he's just NOW seeing it. Is he? Did no one notice this fucking mummy on a leash before this moment? Thief!Bakura chuckles, one of his feet propped on the wrapped back of the former pharaoh. Calling him a barbarian, Priest Seto asks how the thief dares to step on the body of Pharaoh Akhenamkhanen, threatening to flay thief!Bakura to the bone. Again, I feel like this question has already been answered, but whatevz. 

My concerns pale in comparison to Yami's after all.

This also hits Yami like an emotional bombshell in a ground zero already LITTERED with shells - he's learning so much in so very little time he probably wouldn't be able to retain that name of his even if someone said it to his face right now. 

Akhenaden steps forward to give thief!Bakura a little bit of a history lesson; he says the previous king ruled for 40 years, put an end to the wars between countries and brought peace to the land. Thief!Bakura interjects with a sarcastic comment about how it was peace for THEM, maybe, but Akhenaden continues on as though not interruption. He claims that the reason that the previous pharaoh made the Millennium Items was because he wished for a millennium of peace for this war-torn country. Don't know why he thought explaining the reasoning behind the NAME of the items was pertinent information...

Someone exclaims that they know this story, that the old pharaoh left them the seven items imbued with the power of justice and righteousness to purge all the evil and sinners in land. The propaganda was really effective here, huh? Laughing, thief!Bakura demands not to be made to laugh ANYWAY at the concept of justice tied to these items, and asks if they don't know the truth. He asserts that the Millennium Items are forbidden artifacts of dark magic, with the evil power of darkness dwelling within them, and that the one who owns all seven of them can forge a pact with the dark spirits of the afterworld. Mahado immediately dismisses this as absurd, Isis questioning the phrase "dark spirits of the afterworld". The cosmology isn't quite lining up, apparently. Thief!Bakura's grin has twisted into a grimace as he asks if they've ever heard of the village Kul Elna. Akhenaden DEFINITELY recognizes it, looking shocked at its mention. 

Overlaying an image of a disheveled temple's inside, thief!Bakura says this village is now a ruin, but tells of a secret shrine hidden there housing the tablet of the afterworld.

... Sounds cool? Not really, but I'm trying to be supportive of his goals.

Yami growls angrily at thief!Bakura, who continues to Captain Morgan all over the previous pharaoh's back while suggesting that might be the REAL reason his current stool made the Millennium Items. Perhaps Akhenamkhanen was after the same evil power as thief!Bakura, and wanted to rule the entire world with the power of darkness in addition to Egypt? This provocative question is ignored by Yami, who loses his shit and stands, demanding that theif!Bakura get his foot off his dad's body. This just pleases thief!Bakura, who notes he's managed to finally goad Yami's butt off that throne, mockingly calling him a "great pharaoh".

And then Shada pops off at this last straw, asserting that death is the punishment for insulting the pharaoh. Totally proportionate reaction, I've gotta say. He yells that he and the other priests will carry out thief!Bakura's execution, who just grins and tells them they're in the way, threatening to get rid of them all at once. Four more giant stones are summoned into the room by the line of priests, Akhenaden leading them in a summoning by calling on the monster ka sealed in the stone slab, spirit ka within his body, and probably all the other weird ghosts in the area. A few arcs of energy shoot up out of the Wedju Shrine in response. 

Meanwhile, Yami stands there, looking ready to start striding across the room at a moment's notice. After giving himself a long impressive title based on all the advising he's done for Yami's father, Siamun assures Yami of one thing.

It's about damn time! 

Despite Siamun's protests, Yami begins walking straight toward the new tablets and Diabound, for all the world looking like he can't even hear anything other than the blood rushing through his eardrums. I mean, he looks PISSED. Siamun cries that it's too dangerous, the ka of the priests and the thief are about to clash, and frantically urges Yami to return to the throne. Indeed, the ka of the priests are flying into their respective stones rapidly. 

But Yami is like a honey badger. 

He don't give a shit.

I mean, a full-on WAR is happening here, and Yami has left all his fucks in his other pants. Which is a shame because I spy a familiar monster that he might have liked to see in this memory world of complete and total head-scratchery thus far.

The monsters of the priests clash all at once with Diabound; no turns, no rules, just chaos. Diabound punches the head off of that dragon thing and hooks the armored dude as it digs fingers into Diabound's abdomen down below. The tail end with the snake head on it chomps down on the panther. Diabound snaps the creature in half with a mere gesture. It's bananas. Thief!Bakura laughs that none of them are a match for his Diabound, as the priests double over at the injuries to their monsters. Mahado marvels in pain at the power of this thing, and is urged by Akhenaden not to give up and keep his ba strong. 

A command to MOVE is given. 

... That was easy.

An indignant thief!Bakura grimaces over his shoulder at Yami, who kneels to pick up the mummy lying on the floor. Looking down at the body in his arms with a grief-stricken expression, Yami is consumed with regard for the mummy that once was his father. Thief!Bakura uses this moment to recover his smooth mocking attitude, suggesting that this is an emotional reunion for Yami, and says a couple of pieces might have fallen off on the trip over. Can he BE any more desperate to be offensive? 

Yami is silent at first.

Shouldn't be too hard. You just demonstrated that the guy is a LITERAL pushover. 

So, what did I think of this chapter overall? I'm digging the ambiguous nature of daddy!pharaoh's identity being set up here. We have two different narratives going: one that paints the pharaoh as a purely sunshine and rainbows ruler who created the Millennium Items to bring peace and justice to the land, and another that paints him as this sinister figure that might very well have created the Millennium Items to build an empire. In the middle is Yami, who can only recall one solitary image of his father, which at first seems a little underwhelming for his reaction. Upon looking over the chapter again, however, I think it works, because that one stationary memory is the ONLY memory he's actually recovered thus far, and as such it's had the emotional impact of a speeding train. Under ordinary circumstances, this particular memory would be one facet of a complicated tapestry of his relationship with his father, but the rest of that tapestry being obscured brings into sharper relief the positive feelings that this single memory dredges up. He now has grounding and stakes in this conflict, a personal connection defined by a solitary moment in time when he was admiring his father for his benevolence to an Egyptian crowd. 

But again, it's a very limited picture of the whole man, and I wonder if this particular memory is "accurate" in the sense that it disproves thief!Bakura's testimony. I'm really HOPING it's not so simple as that; recent events have taught me that people are complicated as hell, and it's hard to reconcile the contradictory aspects of their nature. It's always a treat when stories can afford to give a fraction of that complexity to their characters. 

With KT, it's a toss-up. We shall see.