Yu-Gi-Oh Manga: 331 The Light of the Soul!

If you didn't read my last post, you won't know that I cut a check for a e-bike last week, so I was bouncing with some excitement for the day when I could take home my new toy once the check cleared. As I write this post, I brought home the e-bike yesterday, and wouldn't you know it? It's raining pretty heavily today and I haven't been able to take it out on the road. If I'm completely honest, I'm a little relieved that I can't do it today, because I had a lot of other things I needed to accomplish today. Besides, I'm just a LITTLE nervous about when I finally go on the asphalt - there are no bike lanes or sidewalks on the stretch leading to town. It's a very short distance that I should be able to make in no time with the pedal-assist, but I'm wary of drivers. Not just the ones that aren't paying too much attention to the road, but the ones who tend to be a little antagonistic to cyclists. 

I'm just repeatedly reminding myself that I've seen PLENTY of people out on their bikes on the road before. 

But there's always the chance of getting blindsided by a more powerful entity, regardless of how much we have prepared, isn't there?

And Siamun looks pretty prepared. He commands Exodia to burn up the dark god with the fire in its soul. Yami questions whether Siamun and Exodia can defeat Zorc, hopeful, but cautious. Zorc seems wholly unfazed by the blast streaming right into his face from Exodia, so that's probably not the best sign. Still the soldiers below choose to interpret this as Zorc being entirely immobilized by the flames covering him. Siamun sweats bullets as he insists to himself that the blast just needs to be a little MOAR. He offers himself up as fuel to the "fires of anger" while his soul still burns. More metaphors that are REALLY not working. Exodia seems to be concentrating just as hard as he is. 

From behind the flames of Exodia's attack, Zorc states that there's not a flame on Earth that can light HIS darkness, and therefore he's impervious to the attack. Subsequently, Zorc invites them to see his power, something called "Dark Phenomenon". It's as edgy as it sounds.

No. Really. 

Is that Exodia getting bisected by some kind of weird Zorc laser? Yes. Is it fresh to death? Yes, again.

Yami yells out in concern at Exodia, while someone narrates how Exodia got split right down the middle. Siamun spits blood with a groan, clutching at his chest, Yami calling for HIM now. Exodia falls, and Siamun grunts in Yami's arms that he gave his best. Yami can only shout his name in his face, but this SURPRISINGLY does not revive him.

Sir, put that away, before you put someone's eye out.

Yami growls as he gingerly lays Siamun down on the ground and yells at Zorc that he could scatter their souls to the wind and they STILL wouldn't stop fighting him, which, sorry to say, is not much of a threat. It would probably be more of a mild annoyance than anything, like a mosquito. Zorc doesn't point this out, instead insisting that Yami can't win, and that he IS the dark. 

... Okay.

Zorc asks Yami what they all see when they throw their lives to the darkness. Nothing? Because it's, you know, dark. He suggests that they see nothing except their own foolishness and regret, which tracks with how eyes work for sure. Zorc says that mortals fear the dark, but it rules them, and they're powerless before the shadows. Yami shouts that this is not true, that the soul in the body is the light of life, and that he believes that it will NEVER go out. You know, I was dreading this reprise parade of terrible metaphors, but now that it's happening, it's not so bad. Could be worse, I guess.

With cruel laughter, Zorc continues his line of questioning, asking the "great pharaoh" (his scare quotes, not mine) if he still thinks he has any way to defeat the darkness personified in front of him now that he's lost his allies and his life force is fading away. Yami responds that even if his body is destroyed, the light of his soul will pass to someone else and his soul will go on and on. Not sure whether to cue "My Heart Will Go On" by Celine Dion or "Highwayman" written by Jimmy Web. I prefer the latter, but either one could work here. Anyway, Yami says that this cycle will continue until Zorc is defeated. 

Zorc laughs at how Yami hasn't seemed to have figured out what he was getting at with his whole speech about the shadows ruling mortals, and declares that it's human who give him power. Yami looks kinda perplexed in addition to the exclamation points that appear above his head. Zorc explains that shadows are born in the human heart, and the only way for men to know themselves in the midst of light is to turn to the darkness to see their own shadows. 

I'm really trying my hardest NOT to be bothered by the worsening abuse of metaphor. REALLY. 

Zorc is of the impression that without his shadows, human beings would be mere drones that never questioned the meaning of their existence. The constant wars and violence between people are, according to Zorc, instincts of mankind and the necessary adjustments that are needed to SUSTAIN life in the long run. OH, I get it! He's one of THOSE. I guess you don't need the internet to spread bad and flawed philosophy if you're literally a malevolent god.

This is a SHAMEFULLY easy round of the "Let's Spot the Internal Inconsistencies" game. Give me a challenge next time!

Zorc holds a clawed hand up to the sky and bids his shadows to come and cover the heavens, summoning a swirl of dark clouds. He also commands them to crawl out of hiding and crush the land, which doesn't SEEM like something incorporeal shadows could do, but the ground continues to crack and heave all the harder, so we'll go with it. The ground under Yami and his soldiers' feet is really roiling now too, and said soldier are crying out to their pharaoh in terror. Yami stands steady regardless, raising a fist at Zorc and yells that he fights for the spirits of those who lost their lives searching for the light, refusing to let the world be swallowed by darkness. They were talking completely past each other before, but they may as well be speaking back-to-back at this point. 

There's not much time left, then...

Mahado leads a charge ahead, Hasan not far behind. When they fly close to him, Zorc muses on how there are only three spirits left, which he can blow away in an instant along with the pharaoh's soul in a single breath. Oh great, he can count. Mahado and Hasan pay little to no attention, attacking the right side of Zorc's face with a Magic Blast and the left side with a Soul Bullet, respectively. His head smoking but showing no discernible damage, Zorc asks if that's all they can do, laughing that it tickles. Fixing a demonic eye on Hasan, Zorc calls them all little flies, which is probably the most accurate metaphor I've seen him utter thus far. 

Then he thrusts out his chest and lets loose some crescent-shaped blasts of Zorc Inferno, to initially push his attackers away.

It's now Yami's turn to spit blood. He stumbles to one knee, and Mahado calls down to him in alarm as he stares unseeingly at the breaking ground beneath him, still drooling blood. Mahado suddenly notices that his body is disappearing him beneath him, dissolving from the bottom up. Yami continues to kneel, barely conscious, while Zorc mocks him with a declaration that the dark god has won the battle of memories. Zorc tell Yami that he's going to vanish into the endless night. Though Yami knows that his soul and ba are fading, he has no energy to react with any strength of emotion, hunched over the ground and expressionless. 

Hasan flies up above Yami and shouts down at him, through a crack in his mask, revealing an eye, nose and mouth, which all point at the near distance with surprise. Four figures are headed toward them in the air, and Hasan recognizes them immediately. While the figures land on the failing earth, Zorc also notices them with a curious hum.

Well, they must not be able to read that true name of Yami's, otherwise they might have switched to it. 

So, what did I think of this chapter overall? I complain a lot about the metaphor issues in this chapter, but honestly, they may come less from the fact that they are very jumbled metaphors and more from the fact that Zorc is a LITERAL personification of darkness. Some of what he is saying isn't meant to be metaphor so much as actual reality, so it can be hard to parse which goes into which basket. 

There are parts of Zorc's shall we say "philosophy" that I can kind of see where he's coming from on. We do, as humans with our developed sense of temporal/hypothetical awareness, give a LOT of consideration to the dark and what's in it. We devote a lot of time and mental energy considering what may, either now or in the future, be lurking out of sight or in the shadows. From worrying about the monster under the bed to fretting about what should happen if a murderer were to break into our home in the dead of night, there are countless boogeymen conjured in our imaginations all the time, and giving too much of our lives dwelling on these WOULD give them a measure of power over us by dictating how we tiptoe around those dark hours. This to some degree seems to be how the ka monsters are manifested as well - when their masters dwell too long in dark places, psychologically, socially, systemically, what have you, they end up creating a spiritual guardian that is either a defensive or offensive response to the particulars of their shady environment. Zorc just seems to be THAT, but turned up to eleven - a collective thought form of ultimate horror. 

This, I get. It makes some measure of sense to me. There's also something to the idea that people can only really know themselves if they understand their dark or less-than-admirable qualities. These are as much a part of who we are as the good ones, and are really inextricable from us, just as the dark is from the light or vice versa. We tend to try to ignore or tamp those down, however, and pretend they don't exist. Acknowledging these qualities and where they come from is actually what we call in my community "Shadow Work" and can be quite therapeutic when paired with the all important therapy and self-control. 

But I get the impression that Zorc is implying that personal catharsis is INDULGING those qualities rather than simply acknowledging their existence and keeping them in check through compassion for oneself. He does, after all, spend pretty much the whole chapter advocating for embracing a permanent darkness over the world. Obviously, this is extreme, and you would EXPECT that from a villain, but it also unfortunately highlights (heh) the same position of Yami, just on the opposite end of the spectrum. Yami does precisely what I mentioned above; he tries to kind of ignore the necessarily dark parts of human beings, not even really trying to refute what Zorc says about shadows of the soul and whatnot. He'd rather just focus entirely upon that soul-light and refuse to even address the argument that there are shadows cast by it. A little bit of toxic positivity exemplified by out protag, unfortunately.

What's more, I am reminded yet again that this comic STARTED with the morality binary flipped: in the beginning, Yami was a DARK spirit dealing out justice, Kaiba represented the LIGHT side of things and he was the worst. Now Yami has migrated over to being another representation of the LIGHT instead, Priest Seto has been shoved into a role of pure and noble service to the light, and we have an ultimate big bad that is dark made manifest, so the morality poles can be set back to the default orientation. I'm just imagining if Zorc had been an evil light god instead, representing all the negative qualities of unceasing glaring illumination. 

Might have been interesting. 

And I just have to point out how abrupt Zorc's declaration of plunging men into an endless dark hell is. There was no lead-up to this with the logic behind this course of action. In fact, if all the wars and violence are caused by all this darkness in men, then it would stand to reason that increasing that darkness to 100% would do the same for those violent tendencies, and well... mortals making all war and no love is probably going to wipe out the whole of the human population pretty fast. And THEN who's going to give Zorc all that sweet, sweet shadow power? 

I feel like he didn't think this through.