You're kidding. A duelist who doesn't endlessly talk about everything they're doing at any given second throughout the entire game? No wordy descriptions of card effects, no snappy shit-talking, no astonished reiterations of tricky moves? I'll believe it when I see it. If one of these kiddos manages to keep his mouth shut the whole time, I'm guessing the other will compensate by giving TWICE as much commentary. I do think that by this point, KT had gotten a bit more confident in his art and has let it speak for itself quite a lot more than in the previous half of the comic, but I don't know if I buy that he had gotten as confident as this title would suggest. That would be pretty dope, but I'm going into this a skeptic.
And wary. Very wary of that little upside down smiling creep treat. I'm more disturbed by it than I am the skeleton horseman over here. Yuugi is looking somewhat shocked at him though. Jonouchi worries aloud that there's no way Yuugi's jelly-blob can possibly beat the thing, but Honda yells at him to just hang in there. Yuugi appears to steel himself, acknowledging the call to keep on keeping on, and mentally urging Yami to watch, because he's sure he'll defeat asshole!Bakura with his new deck. Not sure if Yuugi has a suspicion that Yami is a player on high that might be able to see him, or if it's just an expression, but off course this would lead to him finding Yami's true name. That in itself would indicate a pretty tough fight won, I suppose.
Meanwhile, asshole!Bakura IS watching his opponent sharply, chuckling over the 500 defense points the gooey monster has and wondering if this is REALLY the deck Yuugi visualized when he dreamed up that Duel Disk. He imagines this will be easy, commanding his Death Knight to ride forward.
Asshole!Bakura thinks at first that he's got that little grinning twit dead to rights, but a moment later is shocked when the Death Knight's sword hasn't cut all the way through it. A growl of frustration escapes the skeleton horseman is the sword bounces back up, leaving not so much as a dent in Marshmallon. It's really a shame I was allowed to see that coming the way I was.
Yuugi mockingly tells asshole!Bakura that it's too bad for him, since Marshamallon is invulnerable to normal weapons, and we're shown the card again as if it wasn't a big flashing spoiler for us before. Yuugi's friends all cheer, asshole!Bakura scoffs in anger, and I pout like the giant baby I am.
Asshole!Bakura recovers quickly from his initial irritation, promising to set a trap that will kill Yuugi instantly with a little chuckle. He sets one card face down, ending his turn on this minor note. Yuugi draws a card, announcing it's his turn again, and looks a little surprised by the card he just picked. He places another card face down, then...
Okay, at least THIS card doesn't appear to be a spoiler.
Jonouchi regards the Silent Swordsman with a perplexed air, admitting he's never seen it before. Anzu has picked up on the fact that the deck Yuugi is using now is different than the one Yami uses, explaining this to the boys and concluding that Yuugi must have built this one himself. It dawns on her that Yuugi isn't JUST Yami's dueling partner, but has been developing his own ability this whole time too. Real sad when the other personality sharing your body has been considered the default will behind your entire partnership for THIS long, honestly.
Asshole!Bakura announces his turn, and as he's drawing his new card, he considers the Silent Swordsman with its 1000 attack one of those really annoying monsters that raises its level every turn. Not a fan, apparently. He considers killing it now, but is wary that it was played in attack position, which to him means that Yuugi WANTS him to be reckless and take it out now. After all, he's noted the two face down cards Yuugi has sitting there, one of which he does not doubt is a trap.
Suddenly, asshole!Bakura yells that he's playing a spell card from his hand.
Jonouchi and Honda are on edge, shouting about how the trap cards on Yuugi's side have been blocked and convinced that the Silent Swordsman is gonna get it. But Yuugi smiles, much to asshole!Bakura's shock, and mocks him again for thinking that EITHER of his face down cards are traps, because NEITHER are. He flips and activates one of them, a card called "Marshmallon Glasses". Looks like a pair of googly-eyed goofy frames that have an image of Marshmallon smack in the center of each lens. The card says that whichever monster is equipped with them only has eyes for the seductive Marshmallon and will attack it every time. And who can blame that monster, really? *shivers*
Yuugi declares that the glasses go on Death Knight, and they look absolutely hilarious on a skull that's otherwise supposed to be intimidating. It's a total horror-killer, and I love it. Asshole!Bakura is not at all as amused as I am, fuming over how the stupid glasses make his Death Knight only see the jelly monster. Yuugi points out and reiterates that now the skeleton horseman can only attack Marshmallon now, because I guess that KT thought this could NOT be overstated.
I can't quite make out what the Marshmallon is doing there - is it clasping little jelly hands above its head in victory, or making some sort of rude gesture? The latter certainly has precedent.
At first, asshole!Bakura is super annoyed, growling about how Yuugi has stopped him with a COMBO of puny monsters. But he's soon grinning again, encouraging Yuugi to laugh while he can, because he's setting up the most powerful trap combo they've ever seen. Not that anyone WAS laughing or anything, but...
He plays another card face down, and again, ends his turn on that. Yuugi accepts this without note, and announces he's about to go. He does consider how Silent Swordsman's attack rises to 1500 due to him leveling from zero to one, but knows he can't defeat Death Knight's 1900 attack until the next turn. Having established this to himself, he breathes an "okay" and begins to pull a card from his hand for his battle phase.
Asshole!Bakura tells him to stop right there, yelling he gets to use a certain card at the very beginning of Yuugi's battle phase - a trap card called "Ghost Beckoning". Both the card shown and asshole!Bakura are in agreement, that this induces Silent Swordsman to attack. Said swordsman lunges forward with an exclamation point to indicate its surprise at moving at some other will than Yuugi's. Jonouchi and Honda again freak at Silent Swordsman's certain death if it attacks now. Yuugi STARTS to declare is use of another card to counter, but then trails off in the sudden suspicion at asshole!Bakura's grin that this isn't ALL there is to the trap.
And indeed, asshole!Bakura turns over another of his face down cards to activate a second trap, much to Yuugi's alarm.
Watching this duel is taking fucking YEARS off Jonouchi's life, I SWEAR.
He yells at Yuugi that he can't let that happen, because, as indicated on the card above, the Silent Swordsman's attack will bounce back and deal twice the damage on Yuugi himself. Yuugi sweats, wide-eyed, while asshole!Bakura says it's too late. He declares that Zoma is already dead as Silent Swordsman rips through it, and it disperses. Yuugi looks on with even more nervousness, Jonouchi helplessly just commenting on how BAD this is. Asshole!Bakura narrates how Zoma is now turning into ectoplasm, and then advises Yuugi to prepare himself for the coming 3000 points of direct damage to the player.
Zoma sweeps around Silent Swordsman, ectoplasmic jaws open wide at Yuugi, whose poop-face is more intense than ever in the face of this attack; he is no longer sweating, though. Anzu whines in concern at Yuugi, the other two bystanders gaping in horror.
Yuugi throws out an arm, and asshole!Bakura grimaces at him out of pure rage and disbelief.
... Pardon?
Yuugi explains that by the power of this card, they've advanced three turns in an instant, and the power of asshole!Bakura's ectoplasm is neutralized. Not certain how this necessarily cancels out the effect that still should have happened three turns ago now, but maybe I'm missing some intricacy regarding how Zoma can't bounce everything back because the turn it's supposed to be acting on is technically already passed? Regardless, it's real ironic that Zorc isn't the only one who gets to use wacky time control powers here! Take that, loser creep god!
Like all our favorite infomercials, Yuugi assures asshole!Bakura that this isn't all. Asshole!Bakura's expression sours all the more as he notes the bigger buffer version of Silent Swordsman, which Yuugi declares has advanced to level 4. It's got a hefty 3000 attack points now, and Yuugi commands it to attack during an extreme zoom onto its serious scarred eye. It lunges forward and slashes the level 4 sword in a criss-cross pattern over the Death Knight, which literally explodes the damn thing into pieces. Asshole!Bakura grunts, his life points reduced to 2900, and cursing that little brat Yuugi.
Anzu, does that actually MEAN anything, or are you just talking out of your ass?
So, what did I think of this chapter overall? The title appears to be drawing a parallel between Yuugi's Silent Swordsman monster and himself, and how his understated role in the story up to this point has been hiding a LOT of power that no one really noticed until this point. I made fun of Anzu in that last line of the recap, but I guess I can kind of see what she was getting at. With Yami being the more front-facing between him and Yuugi, he presented as a lot more boisterous and outspoken, as opposed to Yuugi being a quiet, supportive type. But just because he hasn't been shouting from the rooftops with every step about how much he's capable of doesn't mean he hasn't evolved into a juggernaut himself. He's just been a lot more reserved about it.
I believe any reader who's been paying attention isn't all that surprised by Yuugi's strength and ability here, but it is somewhat cathartic to see his friends finally have the chance to observe and acknowledge this fact. We as an audience have the benefit of a more omniscient viewpoint that allows us insight into Yuugi's growth along WITH Yami regardless of how often he was taking charge in duels. There's obviously a REASON he refers to himself and Yami as PARTNERS, rather than asshole!Bakura's view of regular sized Bakura as a mere HOST. Yuugi and Yami are a team, both lending skill and cunning to every gaming effort, and that has become more apparent as the story has gone on.
But the other characters haven't been able to see that for themselves yet. The scant few times that Yuugi has been the one in charge of the game, he's been actively trying to put the breaks on a game that was dangerous (with Kaiba), or no one else was around to see this (with Ryuji). He's been front and center so infrequently, and fairly vulnerable when he was, so I don't blame his friends for having such a shock when the sensitive, kiddish Yuugi turns out to be a badass. There's been barely any indication to them until this moment that there was another dimension to his growth as a character.
Nor to his enemies - asshole!Bakura gives every impression that he thinks Yuugi's going to be a cinch to pull one over on. As I mentioned above, he views the regular Bakura as a host first and foremost, with the occasional artistic talent to lend to their operation. He doesn't see Yuugi as anything more in relation to Yami either, so seeing him get flustered and frustrated when Yuugi hands him his ASS above is nothing short of DELICIOUS. It's like candy watching it slowly dawn on asshole!Bakura that this is not as easy as he had assumed it would be.
See what happens when you make friends and allies rather than underlings/sentient furniture? Not that asshole!Bakura would be capable of actually endearing himself and his cause to sweet soft Bakura. That kid would recoil at the first word. Hell, he probably DID, and that's why asshole!Bakura didn't bother manipulating him in the nicer way and just went for the repression/memory wipe method for the duration of the story that we saw.
But that's just a little headcanon. Don't mind me.
