Yu-Gi-Oh Manga: 328 The End of the World!!

I don't know if I have enough room in my head left to dedicate to this subject. With current world events progressing as they are, the apocalypse has been occupying more and more of my brain-space, and there's hardly a moment that it's not lurking in the back of my mind as a constant source of nervousness. But okay, I'll try, maybe if I can rearrange some priorities here. If I eat my meals a little faster, maybe there will be more time for contemplating the hideous end. I could probably manage with fifteen minutes less sleep at night too? Probably. 

Apologies, Mr. EndoftheWorld, please excuse me while I pencil you in.

At least the kiddos will get to spend their last few minutes WITHOUT this asshole hanging around. Silver linings.

The bystanders all cheer about Yuugi's win, ignoring asshole!Bakura spitting blood everywhere and disappearing in wisps of smoke, but Yuugi has observed as much. He knows that asshole!Bakura has been banished to the shadows for losing the game, not seeming at all bothered by that fact. He was a MAJOR asshole, after all.

Too bad there are several MORE versions of him both in and out of the damn game. It's real difficult to kill a douchbag, I suppose.

Yami has noticed that asshole!Bakura just grimaced, wondering what THAT'S about, while asshole!Bakura bares his teeth at the diorama in front of him. He's real pissed that the version of himself dueling Yuugi in the game was defeated, AND by a mere vessel to boot! Yami is starting to connect some hopeful dots across the table, recalling what Hasan told him inside the game, that his friends were searching for his lost name. Asshole!Bakura guesses that what he's thinking, and confirms that, yes, Yuugi and pals are very close to grabbing that old name of Yami's. This prompts a gape from Yami over the mention of his friends. 

Scowling, asshole!Bakura grumbles about how the pharaoh's name is tied to an ancient secret that Yami doesn't know about, but Yami guesses half-sarcastically that it's the key to winning this game. Asshole!Bakura suddenly gets his grin back as he admits that he WILL be in trouble if Yami learns the name, and it might just turn the tables on asshole!Bakura's advantage in the game thus far. He declares that this whole game is in fact just a big fight over Yami's true name, a battle the Millennium Puzzle has led them to after 3,000 years. Took it long enough for something SO simple, didn't it?

Yami seems in disbelief over the Millennium Puzzle leading them to this specific end, but asshole!Bakura once again confirms this. He elaborates that 3,000 years in the past, the setting the diorama before them is meant to mimic, the battle with the great evil god ended when the pharaoh sealed his soul into the Millennium Puzzle. The puzzle being broken apart for hiding also broke the pharaoh's soul and memories, and his true name was lost, supposedly forever. With an encouraging push to continue with "but" from Yami, asshole!Bakura says that Yami's "partner" appeared with the ability to rebuild that puzzle.

Asshole!Bakura draws attention to the Millennium Puzzle that he's hung over the diorama table, which he says is acting as a projector that streams forth the memories locked inside it all these years - replaying the past by shining the "light of memories" over his big ass diorama. That is... a very complicated function for this ancient artifact to have. Bad as it is for Yami, asshole!Bakura isn't about to let his buddies get to his true name, intending to slaughter them first.

Of course you do.

He calls this third power "Natural Catastrophe". I'm using a lot of scare quotes in this one, and it's unnerving me. Yami is alarmed by the use of the third hourglass, and then a rumbling coming from under the diorama, wondering warily what the HELL is going on. In the diorama in front of him, a massive sinkhole collapses into it, Yami observing that the ground is starting to sink with horror. Chuckling, asshole!Bakura drawn Yami's attention to the fact that the diorama has been built over a giant hourglass. Yami looks over the arm of his chair to find that a lot of sand is now pouring out into the bottom of the hourglass-shaped legs of the massive table. I'm not certain if there's sand sinking into the very center of the table, given int pyramid shape under the table is probably the hourglass asshole!Bakura is talking about. In any case, what a fucking bummer for regular sized Bakura. He had to have worked so hard on this and the asshole is WRECKING it!!

And whoops, are my priorities WAY off base here. 

Oh yeah. There are actual people in there.

Yuugi insists that Yami's name has to be at the back of the alcove as they reach the end of the bridge to it. Almost immediately, they all look up at the ominous rumbling that rapidly grows around them, Jonouchi letting out a questioning noise. They twist around to find the ceiling collapsing in and taking out the bridge they just crossed. Jonouchi shouts about how this means they can't go back, and Yuugi yells that the whole tomb is going down, apparently in disbelief. 

But he turns back around and expresses how they have to hurry. He leads them at a sprint into the alcove ahead of them, insisting on finding what they came for no matter what.

Good to know that Yuugi has HIS priorities in order, because at least ONE of us does.

Soon, Anzu is pointing ahead of them to a door she sees at the end of this hallway they're running down. I guess it wasn't just an alcove after all. Whoops. Yuugi yells that the name has to be in that room, and the door begins to crack open for them as if in response. 

Meanwhile, Yami is freaking out above the diorama, shouting out about his partner and everyone else in the sinking sand vortexes in the table. Asshole!Bakura says that they're all probably buried along with the tomb now, and on top of that, Yami's lost the vessel for his soul to return to after all is said and done. Yami's sweating hardcore as he bemoans to himself his loss in disbelief. Giggling once more, asshole!Bakura asserts that Yami can NEVER learn the pharaoh's lost name now. Silently, asshole!Bakura gloats that he actually already knows the name, his little fragment of soul having already found it in the tomb long before the duel with Yuugi, but HE'LL never tell what it is. He gleefully thinks that Yami can just die in ignorance. 

But his internal murmuring over his INEVITABLE victory *ahem* can only last so long. He calls out that the shadow game will continue, announcing that the catastrophic earthquake is worsening, and it won't end until Zorc's shadow power destroys the world. Yami clenches his jaw helplessly across the table.

Not only is this spread FRESH TO DEATH, that dragonish rod looks a little less like a dong through positioning alone. 10/10.

Yami, Hasan, Priest Seto, and the rest of the priests all stand with a determined air. Siamun warns them that if they don't defeat this dark god, the world will be steeped in shadows, their children and lives and souls will be sacrificed to the never-ending evil, and the war on Christmas will be intensified! I added that last part so the cons would care. XD

Yami rallies his recently unfrozen support with a call to get to work. Priest Seto calls Duos forth, Isis summons up Spiria with her own command, and Mana's magician is shown kind of hunched over? I'm guessing she's lending energy to her master again, because otherwise it's a little incomprehensible. Zorc laughs at them all, claiming that the pharaoh will crumble just like the land. Good to see his similes are a little better than his metaphors, though that's a pretty low bar to clear, honestly. 

Final battle let's gooooooooooo!

As dark clouds swirl overhead and the ground continues to fall away to time (Get it? Hourglasses!), Akhenaden laughs, demanding his opposition die along with the pharaoh's memories and fall into the shadows of regret. What was that part about the pharaoh's memories? Is he supposed to KNOW about that in the game world? Woah. Meta.

Yes, I believe we've established as much. Thank you. 

So, what did I think of this chapter overall? I feel like the setup of asshole!Bakura's tabletop RPG here is getting even MORE complicated. Now the Millennium Puzzle is an actual projector, the legs of the table are designed as hourglasses to drain sand from the diorama, and Yami's tomb has a back door leading to his name. The complexity of this room and the diorama were already on the ridiculous side of things, but the whole setup has extended so far beyond overkill, I'm not sure there's a WORD to accurately describe it. To be fair, overkill is kind of the order of the day in most manga, and the level of intricacy involved here DOES go a long way to explain why it took SO long for asshole!Bakura to get on with his ultimate plan, even though he's been gunning for a tabletop RPG clash between Zorc and the pharaoh since early in the manga. Still, it just makes more stark the lack of elaboration of stuff like the Millennium Tome for general story development. I suppose, in a time crunch, it's probably much better to focus on the stuff that the audience came here for (games and gaming content), so I'm going to assume that this was on some level a calculation. 

But in contrast this is also giving vibes of "filler" on some level. In addition to the reiteration that the final fight is starting in the last couple of pages, the impression is that KT's planned layout had to kind of drag out the rest of the chapter so he wouldn't have to actually START that battle in the middle. Some of this elaboration on how the Millennium Puzzle and more discussion on the importance of Yami's true name feels like it's just there to fill some space. Very much in the OPPOSITE spirit of the lean, mean, fighting machine that was the previous duel arc. Especially since WHY and HOW this name is important is still very much obscure. We know it's important, I'm not sure the characters still need to be talking about it unless it's adding to our understanding of the situation somehow. 

Certainly we don't need asshole!Bakura to outright say he's not going to tell Yami the name. Uh, DUH, dude. DUH.