Yu-Gi-Oh Manga: 288 In the Name of the Gods

A lot has been done in this context, actions in on every point of the political spectrum for the glory of countless deities, some of them in direct opposition to each other. As seriously as you know someone takes what they do if they declare it in the name of their gods, I can't really give it much credence on my end. It's only too easy for a person to confuse their own concerns for a god's and therefore end up waging a "holy" war for their own benefit. Difficult to tell where a human's interests end and a god's begin, or even if the latter exists in there at all, really.

Same goes for crusades maintained over whole decades in the name of a COUNTRY too. 

Throttling someone for gross abuse of their dad's corpse, on the other hand, is entirely understandable to me. Kick his ass, Yami.

But thief!Bakura isn't convinced Yami CAN; he thinks even Yami can't possibly beat his Diabound, and believes he's going to paint the walls of the palace with Yami's blood. As Yami walks away, Diabound roars at him, and the priests shout warnings that he's too close, and not to turn his back on thief!Bakura. Since Yami is obviously not listening, Akhenaden barks an order for his fellow priests to protect the pharaoh before the monster attacks. Mahado throws out his hands, volunteering to act the hero here, but Priest Seto scoffs that he's not strong enough. 

So he calls on his own "servant", a literal actual fucking bull Battle Ox. I mean, it's got an axe, and armor, and a human torso with muscles, so obviously it will be strong enough against a snake-tailed angry monster. Take THAT Mahado! Anyway, Priest Seto orders his roided cow to attack Diabound as thief!Bakura pouts that they're super noisy fools, and it lunges toward Diabound to cut it in half, as commanded. 

And here is where Priest Seto employs the next part of his plan with call and gesture to someone behind him to make his move: Mahado. Wow, proto-Kaiba relying upon teamwork with someone he just insulted as weak a moment ago? I guess amnesiac reincarnation necessitates a bit of relearning, huh? 

Mahado accepts this order without complaint, directing his ka forward, Magus of Illusion. It's a Dark Magician, except with a nonspecific set of eyes glowing out of darkness under its cap. Come to think of it, the face of the Dark Magician seems to be on Mahado's head, which...

Oh. Oh no.

We'll cross that bridge when we get there. Mahado commands his magus to use its secret power, Spell-Binding Phantasm. It crosses its stubby little arms over its chest at first, building up power, and then points its staff at Diabound, ringing its abdomen with a familiar dark alchemical circle, which apparently is no longer a secret. It also surprises the hell out of thief!Bakura, while Priest Seto mocks him for this loss of his ability to slip away through a wall. Thief!Bakura growls in frustration.

Meanwhile...

He's pretty much on another, much more depressing, planet right now. 

Yami recalls how thief!Bakura gleefully asserted that Akhenamkhanen brought the Millennium Items into the world, and has a little bit of trouble reconciling this claim with his experience with the items. Thinking on everyone who has used the Millennium Items, Pegasus, Marik, and Bakura, he concludes that there's no getting around the fact that there's some kind of evil inside them. Regarding the body in his arms, he insists to his father that he wants to know the truth, wondering if daddy really DID make the items, and if so, why. He closes his eyes in pained concentration, as if he can divine the answer if he broods hard enough. 

Admitting he can only remember a little bit about him, Yami thinks he can feel love radiating from the mummy in his arms regardless of his fragmented memories. "Mad with grief" would be an accurate description here if this assertion weren't almost immediately followed up with the puzzle around his neck glowing and a phrase coming to him from it: "Justice in the name of the gods". Yami is alarmed by the voice, gaping down at his father's corpse, which again I must emphasize he is HOLDING.

At Siamun's hurried instruction to follow him quickly, Yami looks up to find that Siamun has arrived at the spot he'd wandered, a guard armed with a spear facing the battle a short ways away. They return up the stairs and to the throne, at the base of which Yami lays the previous king's mummy, Siamun lamenting the fact that Akhenamkhanen returned to the palace like THIS. Siamun assures Yami that this insult will not go unpunished, with the agents of the gods on the case as they are. Yami is NOT hearing it.

Calm down kiddo, it is perfectly possible for him to be BOTH and many other things. 

Anywho, the monster fight is still in progress, someone shouting not to let thief!Bakura get away. Akhenaden declares that his own spirit ka will finish off the intruder, and sends Gadius forward accordingly. Thief!Bakura laughs that Gadius is the old man's ka, and not because the thing looks like a transformer robot. Diabound hit Gadius once before, and thief!Bakura reckons that Akhenaden's bamuch have been pretty damaged already, as the "Ba Gauge" indicates in the next panel. That's right, a "Ba Gauge" that is more than halfway depleted. What would we do without SOME indication similar to life points?

As Akhenaden huffs and puffs, thief!Bakura reiterates in his head that losing your ba will literally kill you, because apparently he knows the audience is rooting around in there. He thinks the priests don't have nearly enough ba to defeat his Diabound, and might even run out just trying to HOLD the creature. Indeed, Mahado is contemplating Diabound's awesome power, and how it's taking all he has to maintain his spell, his little gauge even more depleted than Akhenaden's. Priest Seto's is more than half full, and he makes an impatient noise as he notes that Mahado is running out of magic power/life force. I was the one to add in the "life force" by the way; it's clear Priest Seto couldn't give a hoot. He shouts that they have to combine their attacks now. 

Isis advises her ka Spiria that it is now time - it flies into view as a feather-clad fairy-ish woman, and I'm guessing this is as much of a spotlight it's ever getting. Akhenaden calls for Gadius to strike and kill Diabound, but thief!Bakura just grins. He wonders if they don't get it yet, the fact that he let himself get caught just so he could wipe them all out at once. Aloud, he demands they take his attack. 

Multiple special abilities that give a totally unfair advantage? And you guys doubted this thing was a god, pshaw...

Akhenaden is in total disbelief, wondering out loud just how many secret powers Diabound HAS. He didn't have the primer of the Battle City finals to up the suspension, huh? Poor, poor fool. Diabound flings back its opposition in a whirl of fists, as thief!Bakura bids all those ka of priests to die. It doesn't look like they QUITE got them, though, because the priests are alive. Panting and quite exhausted, but alive. Mahado marvels at the power again, while Akhenaden begins to ask how they're supposed to win. 

He's interrupted by a pair of fancy slippers stepping out into the battle field, a shocking sight for the priests AND thief!Bakura.

They might not be so worried if they knew he's familiar with a much more COMPLICATED version of their ka monster fight thing. Or maybe they would be MORE worried. 

To be honest, I'm not sure which I am at the moment. 

As Yami glares, thief!Bakura recovers from his alarm and laughs about the great pharaoh joining the battle, promising that Yami will join his father as a mummy VERY soon. Thief!Bakura is convinced that no matter what ka Yami summons, he can't possibly beat Diabound, and that goes for everyone else too. Grinning like a maniac, thief!Bakura vows to turn this palace and the city it's in into Yami's grave. Dealing with anyone else, I might have believed it.

But Yami's stoicism in facing the Diabound tail opening its jaws wide in a threat to swallow him is contagious it seems. I'm pretty unworried myself. He thinks on the phrase he divined over his father's remains again: "justice in the name of the gods", Mahado yelling at him to look out. He's still got no ear for this weak shit, though, because he's too busy thinking about what the name of that god is. The Millennium Puzzle glows from where it hangs at his abdomen.

I think we all recognize what that little pictogram up top-left represents by now, but just in case we didn't, the next panel displays the name "OBELISK" in big black bubble letters. You know, because it's fun. As the bean carrying Obelisk arrives, it's so bright, thief!Bakura utters an exclamation and lifts an arm to shield his eyes a bit. He's also getting a little nervous, wondering what this power is that shakes the earth beneath them. Somehow, I don't think Yami is going to be the one to explain tectonic plates to him in this scene.

Akhenaden is in awe, insisting that it can't be, Priest Seto also gaping at the new arrival on the battlefield in the background. Yami calmly states he's going to show off one of the three hidden gods that are also his allies. Daddy was quite the divine ambassador, apparently.

What? Diabound isn't even a "real" god? Can I PLEASE get a set of comprehensive definitions???

So, what did I think of this chapter overall? It's keeping up the tension and emotional investment of Yami pretty high, which I'm always going to be happy with. These points are mostly elaborated upon in this chapter and don't really introduce anything new, but that's not a bad thing, since developing Yami's feelings around his father in particular is pretty key to convincing the audience why he would jump into this fight. Yami's declaration that the mummy was his FATHER rather than the pharaoh was very powerful, because it represented how large of a swell of emotion Yami is dealing with, and gives his father a human tint that the ruler by divine right of a country just doesn't have. He's not some golden statue on a hill, some untouchable standard of godly goodness; he's a MAN who has living loved ones. 

It also has the added effect of reinforcing the role this man plays in the narrative, and how we as an audience are meant to view him as well. We all kind of have a little trouble seeing our parents and anyone OTHER than a parent. Their other identities as people are a little obscure to us as their children, because our relationship to them is front and center in our lives. We can never put ourselves in the place of this former ruler, him being gone, but we can get into Yami's head and understand the love he could derive from even the corpse of his father. That nurturing and rearing never went away, even if the man is no longer around.

I mean, no doubt there is actually a supernatural element of his father's feelings crossing over from the afterlife as well, what with the little message Yami got there too, but I feel like the above is applicable to a real-world set of emotions.