Yu-Gi-Oh Manga: 309 Ripples in the Shadows

Where I am, we're still dealing with the dreary and chilly springtime rains. The days are mostly cloudy, dumping rain on us for a good majority of our waking hours, which of course makes the ground and brown, sloppy mess. I run on the cold side, so this weather keeps me bundled up in oversized hoodies all the time, even though I'd rather be prancing around in sundresses by now. Still, there's one thing that I appreciate about the linger chill; I get to fully enjoy my brand new boots I just got for my birthday. They're lined in soft wool so they keep my feet nice and warm, and while the block heels have me teetering around about two inches taller than I am normally (which is already rather tall), they make the best splashes in the puddles outside. I feel like a little kid again, fascinated by the big ripples I'm making through the water around me. 

My guess is that thief!Bakura is getting a DIFFERENT kind of joy from these ripples than the childish kind I'm getting on my end.

A convenient little label on the next panel zoomed out to show the tablet thief!Bakura is fondling in the middle of a small dais in a dark room calls this the ruins of the Hidden Shrine. Sounds like a secret location in a video game. Still kneeling at the tablet, thief!Bakura reiterates how he sealed part of his soul in the Millennium Eye, and predicts that it's only s matter of time before the kingdom falls, what with the pharaoh dead and all. Allegedly. He also expresses his certainty that the remaining five items would make it back to this slab even without his help, but presumably he just wanted to move the process along to avoid dying before these inanimate objects inch their way back into their molds. 

Once the items have all come back home, thief!Bakura anticipates gaining the shadow power of Zorc Necrophades (calling him the "Great God of the Underworld", though there are a couple of actual mythological figures that filled that role before he did), and then stealing the world with an army of ghosts from Kul Elna at his back. Sounds like a party, but not one I would ever want to go to. 

Meanwhile, at the palace with its damaged obelisks, guess who's pissing and moaning that they haven't found the pharaoh yet? No surprise it's Priest Seto, and even when the kneeling soldiers try to tell him that the search party hasn't actually come back yet, he yells at them to find Yami, even if they have to drain the Nile to do it. Oh, didn't expect the guy named for SET to be scrambling to find the pharaoh like ISIS right now. Super unexpected. 

Hanging his head slightly, Kalim wonders out loud if it could be that their pharaoh fell to thief!Bakura. Next to him, Siamun pauses to glance at him, then says that Shada is still out with the search party. He also worries about more items than the ring getting into thief!Bakura's hands, and that only four of the original six priests sworn to protect the pharaoh are left in the palace right now. Siamun, we know you're secretly a badass, dude, you could TOTALLY step in. Sure, you don't have a Millennium Item, but you can work around that!

The only good throne, in my opinion. But then again, nobody really asked. 

Priest Seto is throwing a full-on mantrum, yelling that the pharaoh HAS to be alive, and his dream to protect Egypt is still strong. He demands that they not lose faith the pharaoh will return, and he's starting to sound WAY more like Yuugi than Kaiba now? Unless this is a ruse in which he's laying the concern on REAL thick, or he and Kaiba have way less in common than I expected. Akhenaden thinks at Priest Seto that faith and dreams are not enough to protect this country, and that he needs POWER to do so, which is definitely not wrong. He cites the power he raised 15 years ago as an example, selling his soul to the shadows in the process, a variety of images from the previous chapter flashing in his mind. 

Isis, not the goddess, but the priestess, hovers her palms around her Millennium Necklace, her eyes closed in concentration. Siamun seems to have changed positions in their huddle so he's next to HER now, asking what she sees. She opens her eyes, but they're downcast, and describes a ripple in dark waters and a reflection of the shadows, or one that will fade soon. Vague and opaque, just like any good fortune-telling experience. She warns them that if two or three ripples overlap, they will collectively drown them in a great swell of tragedy. Siamun pauses again, then asks if this is the future of their land, and Isis confirms that this chain of events has already begun. In despair, Akhenaden complains that the divine order of Ma'at upheld by the Millennium Items has already begun to unravel, all by the hand of one thief. Maybe considering the products of your blood magic as integral to the fabric of the universe is very... bad, dude.

Suddenly, Isis's eyes widen and she declares she knows what will prevent the tragedy. Apparently, the answer is a "vessel" to hold that swell, and though I don't know what that means, Akhenaden seems pretty shaken up about it. Priest Seto considers the "a vessel" phrase, and Kalim and Siamun (side by side again) stare tensely at her. Siamun is moving around this room a LOT for an old dude.

A guard comes up to Priest Seto and says he has a report, and after the guard passes him a quick mumble, Priest Seto is alarmed to learn that the White Dragon Lady (TM) is awake now. He tells the guard that there's no time, and that she must be taken to the underground at once. He doesn't budge from his place among the other priests, so it looks like she's not going to get the personal escort treatment. 

Ah, the face of a woman who's woken up in a prison cell. I hope she doesn't have the ADDED anxiety of snapping out of her snooze during that freaky battle outside last night. That's heart-attack-inducing shit.

With a clank, a guard opens the door to her cell and asks gruffly if she's done eating, demanding that she get up. Instead, she asks hesitantly where she is. The guard says this is the HOSPITAL WING of the palace (because apparently the palace's sick and infirm need to be locked up like prisoners), where she has been asleep for four days. He further elaborates that she was so weak when they found her that no one was quite sure that she would even wake up, but at the same time, a special doctor had been assigned to her, doing everything he could to get her well while she was out. Hostile to cordial is two seconds flat, this dude, and SUSPICIOUSLY forthcoming with information for a guard. He turns around to lead her out of the cell while telling her that this is all because of Priest Seto, whom she owes her life. She tries out the name haltingly, like she's only just relearning how to speak.  

Elsewhere, two figures are walking down a massive hall between the giant pillars holding it up, Priest Seto and Akhenaden. They've been talking about their star inmate, clearly, because Akhenaden utters an exclamation about a woman who harbors a god. Priest Seto answers in the affirmative, explaining that he and Shada found her with the Millennium Key when they were out on their ka hunt. He mentions that they also have another prisoner who's a witness to that god spirit, failing to mention that the guy is probably not someone they'd consider particularly trustworthy in any other context.

Akhenaden tells Priest Seto that the palace is helpless if something happened to the pharaoh, because they've lost the protection of the three great gods. Priest Seto seems to have let go of the theatrics for the time being, because he just goes along with the hypothetical, saying that they need a ka stronger than those gods, that can bring anyone to their knees. Akhenaden adds that they need a new leader, a new pharaoh, which seems to scandalize Priest Seto for a moment. Picking up the thread of lost protection he started before, Akhenaden says the three gods may only be summoned by the missing pharaoh, and one would need even GREATER power to become the next pharaoh, new gods to fulfill new needs of the country. The conclusion he reaches, of course, is that Priest Seto needs to surpass the power of the gods. Priest Seto stares at him with a very mild shock, maybe sort of getting used to the idea? Akhenaden is absolutely CONVINCED that Priest Seto is the one from Isis's prediction, the vessel that would become the pharaoh. 

I thought the vessel would contain the swell of evil ripples? Do we want a pharaoh who contains evil ripples? 

Eh.

Oh SHIT, what a callback!!

I really hope he dies like an idiot in this context too. Like, I'm not saying I want him to flip out about an infant shitting in his lap, but I do want the past to RHYME with the future, if you're picking up what I'm putting down. 

The, um, proto-butler (?) leads them down the steps that he says go down to the underground prison wing, asking them to watch their step. Akhenaden brings up the rear of their procession down the narrow stairs, holding the wall and complaining that priests like them should have to visit such a place. Says the dude who murdered a whole thief village to make some shiny mystical shit. Proto-butler tells them that the pharaoh doesn't know about this place, which is no surprise to me. Tell me something the guy DOES know, why don't you. According to Proto-butler, the place was locked up since Akhenamkhanen's reign, and he jokes that he had a heck of a time finding the keys to the torture chamber. Punching down much? 

Priest Seto calls him Gebelk, asking him how his ka-extraction operation is going, conversationally. Equipped with more name that he was afforded in the beginning of the manga, Gebelk starts detailing the results to his experiments; hunger and fear are the best stimuli to bring out violence in a man's ka. He's saying that if people are hungry/afraid, their spirits, extensions of themselves, are more likely to lash out. I invite everyone to come to the ONE CONCLUSION you can given such information. Hint: maybe if you made sure that people weren't ever hungry or afraid instead of burying your riches with dead kings, you wouldn't have a supercharged thief with a god-like ka running around fucking up your shit!!!

Ahem. Anyway, Gebelk says that severe torture is way more likely to just kill a prisoner's ba instead, so that's counterproductive. Wow, he's just saying the most obvious shit. Priest Seto says that a spirit ka is made stronger with training and meditation, so he asks what strengthens the monster ka the prisoners have. No doubt no one is bothering to explore the same methods on these monster ka. Gebelk claims that he's had a few casualties, but he's found the answer to that question. This is when they draw up to a door flanked by two guards, and he says the results they seek are behind it. On the other side, they stroll a walkway running the edge of the room, flush with the wall on one side and lining a pit sunk in the middle. The walkway turns at the corner, leading to a dais with a couple of high-backed chairs in its center. 

Akhenaden is again complaining, calling the room foul and saying its pervaded with a dark aura. Gebelk, gesturing them toward the chairs on the dais, laughs that he believes this is the result of his work here as well. He invites them to have a seat, and for some reason, it's not until they're comfortably sitting that they take a good look at the room and wonder in unison what the balls this is.

Don't know why you're surprised. You fight people with ka too, what did you THINK they were doing down here?

High above the men facing each other on their rickety scaffolding, there's a tri-horned ogre-like monster lunging at an oversized centipede with bony pointed legs and eyes extending too far over its sides and back. Or are those boils of some kind? Either way, Akhenaden acknowledges with alarm that these ka are both mighty, and Priest Seto wears a mesmerized little smile as he watches the fight, looking delighted and yet in disbelief that these men have ka like these. Gebelk corrects Priest Seto - he says that these prisoners had weak ka when he first saw them, but he raised and grew those ka into the titans before them. He also chuckles at the absolute MOCKERY he's made of actual parenthood, because he's just that sleezy. 

Priest Seto asks frantically how Gebelk managed to GROW these things, and he answers that these men have been fighting on and off for about 34 hours, with one rule guiding them from the beginning: 

Well, except that in THIS case, TEN men entered the scaffolding at the beginning, and these are just the only two left. There are still a couple bodies visible on the platform of spikes hanging below them, as you can see in the screenshot above. Welcome to the Thunderdome, I guess.

As they all stare at the ongoing battle, expressions ranging from awe to horror to self-satisfaction, Gebelk concludes that what makes a monster ka stronger is its owner's desire to live. Priest Seto mulls over this lesson.

I feel like there is a GLARING hole in this strategy, but I very much doubt we'll get to see such comeuppance, as much as I'd revel in it. 

While Gebelk is gleefully encouraging them to believe that they can't live unless their enemy dies (and further establishing himself as the REAL enemy they should be going after here), another guard approaches Priest Seto to tell him they've brought the woman down. Priest Seto shifts his eyes to his periphery as she's shoved toward him by one of the guards escorting her. When she gives him an uncertain look, Priest Seto gives her the SLIGHTEST of smiles in return. Has he not considered why they would bring her down here in the first place, or is this seemingly innocuous gesture actually cruel? The woman, just stares at him, again trying out his identity in her head, continuing to turn it over with a slight gape. 

With a rather gummy grin, Gebelk identifies her as the woman who harbors a god. 

Oh, nope, Priest Seto just really didn't THINK that she'd be subjected to some nasty shit down here for some odd reason. He has dipshittery in common with Kaiba for SURE.

So, what did I think of this chapter overall? This dichotomy between monster and spirit ka is so arbitrary, it's kind of laughable. There has still not been one concrete definition given that distinguishes between one or the other, and the only definition by proxy we got was "strong spirit ka can't possibly come from thief". With that in mind, when Priest Seto suggested that developing the monster ka in their prisoners HAD to be different in a tangible way from the vague training and meditation he underwent to develop his own ka, I was questioning this extrapolation all the harder. Why COULDN'T a prisoner just while away any hours in his cell meditating and performing exercises to grow his "monster"? The official answer would probably be that we should ASSUME that the lowly prisoners can't do such disciplined work, and their ka come from a place of fear and hate. But I feel like the more HONEST answer that should be given in this chapter is that there's not time for that. 

Because if the deductive logic of "spirit ka can be developed through training" held, then our girl with the "god" ka should be able to meditate her way to making it a titan to be reckoned with. Yet she was brought down here to meet with her savior and a sadistic maniac to find out how much power she has. I thought Shada already kind of figured that out with the key, but my guess is that what they really want is to SEE the damn thing and know what they're dealing with. No doubt if they felt like they could afford to do so, MY suggestion a while ago to induct her into the priesthood and get her on that passive training track would be Priest Seto's preference. Then again, he's the spiritual progenitor of Kaiba, who never DID live up to the genius he was purported to have. 

Speaking of which, with this chapter, I'm starting to question if Kaiba is this guy's "reincarnation" in the classical sense. Sure, they have a fair amount in common, but that frantic speech about having faith in the pharaoh's return and his lack of consideration for himself becoming pharaoh if Yami never returned until Akhenaden suggested it to him are striking differences. I suppose it's not out of the question that they could still be the same reincarnated soul while being different people - Yuugi and Yami are quite different themselves despite their similar appearances and the talk of sharing a soul in the last arc. Maybe this is a mystic spiral deal? 

Or maybe I'm sick and have a headache, so I'll try not to think about it too hard, lol!