Yu-Gi-Oh Manga: 321 The Dark God Awakes!

I suppose one could say that outside the comic too. As I'm writing this, we're approaching the autumnal equinox where I live, and after that, the hours of daylight will be fewer than those of nighttime. A couple of (mostly modern) spiritualities have translated this into a cyclical battle between light and dark gods in which the dark god is winning at this time of year. It's not exactly an ominous thing to those folks, though, rather a natural and normal thing that happens like clockwork. This metaphor probably can't really be appreciated in the event of an actual eldritch horror rising from its fitful slumber. 

Good thing WE don't have to worry about that kind of thing, right?

Only asshole!Bakura could make painful reminiscence even MORE painful. That takes some real shitty talent.

Yami looks understandably alarmed when asshole!Bakura adds that he's got all seven Millennium Items he needs to summon the evil god now. The mold tablet, in-game I presume, glows at the edges of each filled slot around the cradled items. Shit is about to go down.

Soooooo, I heard about this before, but I thought it was just hot-under-the-collar fans exaggerating a bit, and I have to apologize for that assumption now.

Because that is definitely a dragon(ish) penis. What would you even call that? "Penile dentata"? In any case, it sure looks like someone woke up with morning wood. Big yikes. 

ZN's demon god form kind of tucks that hog to the side and kneels, snorting at game!Yami way down below, whose eyes are practically popping out of his skull at the dark god's appearance. ZN the demon god asks who has awakened him, who desires the power of the shadows, etc. 

I've used this GIF before, but I'll be damned if that isn't the exact same energy.

Akhenaden admits that it was him that called ZN's demon god form here, and true to form, ZN leans over and starts a whole-ass soliloquy about how Akhenaden has opened the door of darkness and released his power in this world with the seven forbidden treasures, the heavens will turn black with clouds, the Earth will be crowned with terror, one beat of his wings will peel flesh from men's bones, a breath from his lungs will burn bones to dust, and so on. Not that this one isn't proper scary or anything; I much prefer it to the endless bullshit he spouted when he had Akhenaden's rotting corpse for a form. Anyway, ZN asks for verification that Akhenaden wants a piece of that action, and I kind of feel like that's a moot question at this point. Dude went to some crazy lengths to gather all the shitty items and arrange them in their beds, so I think he's had more than enough time to consider how much he wants this. As expected, Akhenaden prostrates himself before his dark god pretty much immediately and says yes, yes, a thousand times yes. 

Game!Yami still appears to be frozen in the background, and whether he's just thinking it or able to say it out loud, he begs Akhenaden not to do this thing. Unleashing Zorc's power will just doom the world and it's the path of darkness, per game!Yami's perspective. Clearly the point of the thing, but it's pretty shitty for everyone else on the planet, so I empathize with the impulse to try and reason Akhenaden out of it. Both he and player!Yami above think that they HAVE to stop him. 

Asshole!Bakura hums in question, informing Yami that Zorc is still talking at the moment, big fucking surprise, and asks if Yami would like to interrupt Zorc on this round in order to have game!Yami perform an action. He reminds Yami that this is, after all, an RPG, so all that's needed to make a character do something is to tell the GM. Yami wastes no time in holding a card over the diorama that looks like it has a picture of the Dark Magician on it, saying that by the imperial order of the pharaoh, he's commanding the priests to attack, and summoning Mahado's spirit to the field. Asshole!Bakura says that it's fair to use ka cards in battle if there's enough in one's ba gauge, AND declaring imperial order DOES make it possible to attack even when it's not Yami's turn, BUT he's not able to do so now. Yami of course is in irritated disbelief at this, sot asshole!Bakura reminds him that he and the priests are unable to move, all Yami's character cards being paralyzed for several rounds. Then why did he bother pretending that Yami was allowed to tell him when he had an action to perform? There's a reason I call him asshole!Bakura, and it's never been more fitting a name than right now.

Time powers are SO cheap. Emphasis on CHEAP, when asshole!Bakura continues to brag that he has the power to control time, borrowed from his mummy dark god behind him. Yami is tense as he considers this power, assumed to be one of many. At least it's apparently limited to three uses, though I can't wait to find out how asshole!Bakura worms one or two more into the game, because THAT seems like something he would do. 

Anyway, he points out how he's placed the second hourglass on its side to stop time, which allowed him to steal the rest of the Millennium Items. He says that's not all, citing the time he turned back time to stop Yami from teaming up with his friends in game as Zorc's power as well. Pretty easily deduced, but Yami looks shocked regardless. Asshole!Bakura suddenly shifts the subject of whether Yami can feel the evil aura coming from the corpse propped up behind him. 

Asshole!Bakura claims that Akhenaden's mummy is ALSO playing the game with him, because OF COURSE he is, and that his soul is one with Zorc's. Yami growls in impotent frustration, while asshole!Bakura warns him not to forget that he still has one hourglass yet.

Big bummer, buddy. 

ZN is indeed still talking, chuckling darkly (heh)that he knew Akhenaden would come there to complete the dark contract with him, begun by Akhenaden's own creation of the Millennium Items. Akhenaden agrees that this was all according to the dark god's will, which somehow spurs ZN into ANOTHER monologue wherein he recounts the order of events, from Akhenaden and company gaining the ability to summon monsters, to trafficking with demons willingly, to the ambitious ones beginning to fight amongst themselves. He says he knew that one day, one of them would gather the items all in one place to awaken the great darkness. Way to pat yourself on the back for the most predictable course of events in the WORLD, dude. It occurs to game!Yami this means ZN made Akhenaden create the Millennium Items so he could be released from the darkness eventually. I guess influencing dipshit morons to break you out of prison is a bit easier than doing it yourself, so that checks out. 

Anyway, ZN holds a glowing orb of light in his clawed palm, announcing that he's giving Akhenaden his power, calling him to become the slave of his soul, and to rule the world. How does a slave rule the world? I don't know, but check THIS out!

Oh, so that weird mask just kind of materialized on his face? Cool.

Reaching toward the glowing column coming out of the diorama, asshole!Bakura announces that Akhenaden became the High Priest of Darkness, gaining the skills of a black magician (not to be confused with a DARK Magician) and leveling up. Yami grunts as the light continues to splinter forth at him. In the game, High Priest Akhenaden and ZN both face game!Yami, and asshole!Bakura clarifies to player!Yami outside it that both his characters are at maximum ba, holding up their cards to show the fact. 

Somebody throw this guy a Mana potion, STAT!

Yami, from his game position, looks up at Zorc's towering form in front of him and knows it's over if an attack comes now. But asshole!Bakura acknowledges with a chuckle that a one-sided game isn't any fun at all, and offers Yami a hint to help even things out a bit. How magnanimous of him. He says that NPCs in the game wander around without input from either player that are pretty much without purpose, such as the city-dwellers, the soldiers that aren't with the pharaoh, and interestingly enough, Yami's FRIENDS as well. Yami sweatdrops, thinking of the group of them standing determined, reciting their names. Asshole!Bakura calls these particular NPCs strange, because they entered the game world without permission and don't fit the timeline or setting, but may in fact be the key to victory for Yami anyway. This phrase piques Yami's interest. 

Unless they HAVE that name and can use it as a LITERAL shield against an attack from ZN, I don't see how that's a useful hint at the moment. Not that I actually expected asshole!Bakura to be HELPFUL at all, but still...

He continues to be the opposite of helpful when he speculates that it's probably too late for Yami's friends to help anyway. As the next panel starts a zoom in on the city streets, asshole!Bakura says that even if they managed to find the ancient pharaoh's name, Zorc is KINDA already here. We get closer to one street in particular, fully leaving the player perspective to get down at the level of the characters, where Yuugi and pals are standing, probably still a bit weirded out by all the frozen folks around them. Yuugi urges them all to look up, where a black vortex is forming overhead. Jonouchi suggests that the sky turning dark is an omen of some kind of danger. You think? Anzu says she has a bad feeling after observing that the townspeople are still not moving one iota, and Honda confirms with a wary glare around him that they're the only ones moving at all. 

Yuugi stares up at the sky, considering the implication of this being a game world as he suspects. He thinks if this is the case, there must be some special significance to their task of finding his counterpart's true name. He is convinced that they have to find it before something terrible happens regardless, barring of course the possibility that the sky's darkening is a sign that something terrible has ALREADY occurred. He starts running, urging his companions to join him, only just noticing that Bobasa (conspicuous in his absence until this moment yet again) has started groaning. Yuugi looks around to find him GLOWING too, alarmingly enough. 

If the vortex in the sky wasn't an omen, this DEFINITELY is.

Yuugi and Jonouchi look suddenly sick with horror at the mention of Zorc, and Anzu covers her mouth in alarm. Bobasa reiterates haltingly that he's one of the guards of the mold tablet, having protected it all these years, and then trails off a bit. Yuugi stutters at Bobasa, while Bobasa says with some difficulty that this must be some sort of sign that the Millennium Items have been returned to their designated slots in the tablet. Yuugi is less concerned with what Bobasa is saying than he is with the perception that he appears to be CHANGING. His face darkens and is surrounded with some sort of smoke, its profile completely changing in shape, as he calls to HIS other self, one he calls Hasan, the spirit of the stone tablet. 

That's right! Not only is there a spirit of the tablet as much as there are spirits of the items themselves... IT'S THAT BUFF GUY WITH THE MILLENNIUM ITEM TATTOOS AND THE GOLD MASK THAT FOUND YAMI IN THE CAVE!!!!!

Hasan here says he'll be the one to show the way to where the name of the pharaoh sleeps, having waited to carry out this task for a whole 3,000 years. Dude, and THEN some. I suppose you couldn't have offered anything more concrete than a suggestion of bed rest until this moment?

Nope, clearly had to wait until the damn dragon penis was in our faces. Thanks.

So, what did I think of this chapter overall? It was... A LOT. Where do I even begin? With the massive toothed dick, I guess. It's like one of those horsey sticks that kids ride around to pretend at riding a horse, but unnecessarily sexually threatening. Is this some sort of metaphor for how BONED everyone is right now? I really can't help but question the artistic decision to give this god creature a massive wang with its own mouth, given how fundamentally confusing and weird it is for a children's comic. I understand that what is considered appropriate for kids in Japan is a bit different, but this is taking a cultural comfort with the existence of genitalia to a whole new ODD level. My impulse is to just chalk it up to delirium from KT's known illness from this time, but I don't know if he ever spoke on the matter. 

Questionable character design decisions aside, it was a bit difficult to follow Yami's split consciousness in the game and outside of it - as is implied in the previous chapter, there really is no distinction between the character in-game and the player, so I'm not sure where Yami's perspective really is. It could be that Yami really is looking through both his player and character selves at the same time, but there is no real indication that this is the case. The depiction really seems to support the idea that he just switches between the perspectives to whichever one is the most dramatic depiction at the time. It's a somewhat confusing way to convey this split state of being, especially since Yami and Yuugi's coexistence in a split life has been so intricately portrayed until this point.

I'm getting more and more interested to know just what Yami's true name will do to help him win this game. One of the myths in the Kemetic religion concerns Isis gaining control over the sun god Ra by learning his true name through a trick, in one version of the tale making him back off from the Earth so he'd stop burninating all the people and animals with his intense heat, and in another, to get the power she needed so she could conceive Horus. This story speaks to how a true name contains the true ESSENCE of the named, a concept in a lot of different folklore and religions (precisely why one does not give their name to the fae folk). Now, the story I cited above describes a scenario where someone gains control over someone ELSE using that first someone's true name. Either Yami having access to his own name will give him access to his real and true essence/power, OR asshole!Bakura is trying to TRICK Yami and friends into revealing Yami's name so HE can have Yami's power. Either way, that name promises to add a WHOLE LOT more action to the game, perhaps giving a player more tight control of events or the ability to rival Zorc in power. I'm just speculating, and based entirely on material OUTSIDE of this story, so I wouldn't be very surprised if I was entirely wrong, but it's an interesting idea.

And as far as Zorc goes, I'm still trying to wrap my head around exactly how his identity is intertwined with the Bakuras and Akhenaden. They all appear to be some cross of puppets that do his bidding, vessels for his use, and alternate versions or forms of his. It's clear that thief!Bakura and Akhenaden started out as their own people with their own goals, but Zorc appears to almost ABSORB them and their selves through the Millennium Items, so that they become part of him in an almost hive-mind sort of way. But they all also still appear to have their own wills in some respect? I don't know, it's making my head hurt a little.

In any case, I wonder what horrible trauma is involved with the spirit of the tablet? Is he a former resident of Kul Elna or one of the priests that formed the original team to create the items? Not sure if this is going to be answered, but it's a curious thing regardless.