So, let’s talk about VRAINS S2 and Homura Takeru
So season 2 of vrains aired this today! I think a lot of us are really excited by all the new content and characters and stuff that we’re getting. New OP and ED both have stunning visuals, that first episode had so much going on with the plot and setup, we’ve got tons of new and old characters running around, I think we can say that there’s lots of enjoy right now. The fandom is at an all time high and things feel as alive as they did when things started up last May.
But, as has become the case with all fandoms, some people just can’t seem to take things at face value and must jump to conclusions with the meager info we have. So let’s just tackle this stuff head-on and dive into the mess. Yes, we’re talking about our new boy, Homura Takeru. As well as some other stuff about the new season.
WARNING: THIS WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS UP TO EPISODE 1 OF SEASON 2 OF YUGIOH VRAINS
So some people really love Takeru, because of his design, because he’s being setup up as Yusaku’s friend (whatever that actually means), because there’s been some theorizing that he’ll be another lost child. And plenty of other people hate him vehemently, saying he’s going to be another Vector, that his character setup feels cheap, he seems predictable and it’s all been done before. Some of this is simply jumping the gun and hardly based on any evidence.
So what do we know about Takeru, according to canon information?
When the new characters were released it was said that he would be a friend/ally to Playmaker and that he would have an A.I. named Flame. So taking this at face value entirely, he’s going to try to befriend Yusaku. No real implication that it will work or that he’ll be anymore of a friend than Kusanagi has been to Yusaku. Questions that arise from this are obvious. Why does he want to befriend Yusaku? Is he connected to the Lost Incident? How did he get that A.I.?
These questions have no answers in canon yet, anything to do with them is just theory and speculation. You can, you should in fact, have and state your theories and your headcanons but the moment you start trying to push these theories on to other people is the moment that you are crossing a line.
So then we move on to the OP and ED. There’s lots of stuff happening in the OP and ED of this new season, omg. Check out this link to watch them for yourself. So you can see, Takeru is everywhere. The OP starts with Takeru (as Soulburner) surfing through the vrains with Playmaker. We move to Yusaku walking (possibly to school), Naoki and Aoi both pass him by but he doesn’t give much of a reaction. Not that he reacts negatively or actively avoids them, he takes note of them and just kind of looks unconcerned for anything. Naoki pats Yusaku on the shoulder and then pass him by while Aoi just walks by without acknowledging Yusaku too much at all. Time for some speculation of my own here, this seems like a metaphor for how people are still sort of passing Yusaku by. No real proof though, so go off I guess. Anyways then Takeru comes into the scene, you see him actually slow down a bit to keep pace with Yusaku and throw his arm over Yusaku’s shoulder. This shows Takeru is making some effort to really keep up with Yusaku’s pace and befriend him as we were told before but we also see Yusaku looking a bit confused.
Yusaku’s not really reciprocating anything, but he’s not pushing him away yet (theory: maybe he wants someone to try and be his friend, he tried with Revolver only for it to fail and Revolver to run away and maybe that has emotional affected Yusaku). You get a quick shot of what we later figure to be Takeru’s duel disk and have some other scenes of Go and Kusanagi, Go has hung up his charisma duelist outfit and Kusanagi is just out at night alone. Both are very isolated but that’s a talk for another day. We get a quick scene that shows Ai yelling/bickering with Flame but Flame is unaffected, this is probably just to setup the kind of relationship they will have through the season. They seem to be sort of friendly enough that they can argue but not really be fighting at the same time. You have a shot of Takeru grabbing his cards to put into the duel disk (which serves to confirm that he’s using an older model duel disk, like Yusaku except he decided to trick out the disk lol) and it morphs into Yusaku. Note that the background looks similar behind them but the colors actually shift so I’m inclined to believe Takeru has his own vrains transformation room thing. You have a room spin around Yusaku, shot of Akira, the Queen, and some very concerning stuff with Jin and Shoichi and then we come to this scene (sorry for the lack of brightness on this one):
Some people think this might be Takeru but you could also argue it’s a relative. Either way, it points to a bigger arc and some kind of reveal with Takeru in the coming episodes (Takeru’s secret life as a gangster anyone??? lol). We have lots of stuff happening after that, there’s some stuff with Playmaker being chased around but you should note he’s all alone during this. Lots of cool scenes with Haru and Bowman (who in fact seems to be using the same duel board as the glowy yellow guy from s1e1, someone hit up me with those theories please) and a pretty wicked pan up shot of the KoH (they lived b*tches!), which is obviously these just to show that they are in fact still around and will play a mysterious part in the coming events. By the time we came back around to Takeru he’s in his Soulburner getup and seems to be on the opposite side from Playmaker (also notice the cool fire in his hands, if they’re gonna give the lost children supernatural powers I am down for that!). Not sure what’s going on there and it could either be that this is their first meeting or much later in their friendship but we’ll have to wait on it I guess. More scenes, some stuff with Go and Blue Angel, all looking stunning bc the artwork on this OP is fantastic. There’s one flash of a scene with Takeru hanging with Yusaku and Shoichi at the hot dog truck, but again nothing large. He seems happy and Yusaku is just sort meh, eating his hot dog. Shoichi on the other hand seems rather excited for Takeru to be around and the A.I.s are bickering again.
And then we move towards the end and we’re in link vrains again. We make our way back to Playmaker and Soulburner and they are surfing the vrains together, but you should note Takeru’s smile isn’t the same as Soulburner’s. Soulburner is more cocky, self-assured (and needs some help with those eyebrows, like boy please). Make of it what you will but it’s been a running trend that no one is the same in vrains as they are irl. And that’s the entire opening (omfg, my hands were not prepared for this, geez).
So to summarize the OP info, Takeru is actively shown to try and befriend Yusaku. He possibly has fire powers(?) and at some point might duel Playmaker. He will have some sort of a character arc upcoming and that’s been forshadowed in that one scene. Yusaku isn’t shown to hate him but he isn’t shown to like him either. Flame and Ai will have a bickering sort of relationship. This still brings up a lot of the same questions we had when he was announced, all of those are unanswered looking at the content of this OP and so we still have no answers.
Now for the ED (I obviously hate myself bc I should be studying for exams lol). It’s in the same link above so check that and then come back. So the link I gave actually missed a bit of it, there’s this awesome scene where the letters spelling vrains flash across but not the point so we’ll just go with this and just move along. So the first large images of note are these large pan across images, first of Playmaker with Yusaku and Ai and then of Soulburner with Takeru and Flame
These shots actually mirror each other which immediately stands out to viewers as something important. They are also facing in opposite directions which might mean something but it could be simply aesthetic in nature. The actual lyrics of the song makes mention of memories, which probably is important in the context of the lost incident. Speaking of the lost incident, the next scenes actually confirm the big theory many have had about Takeru being one of the lost children. We see a shot of Yusaku being shocked and then a matching one of Takeru.
Aside from this there isn’t a whole of of very interesting shots of Takeru and Yusaku until the end of the ED. You do have 2 shots towards the middle, the first one is just them in vrains and their avatars, and other is also vrains but surfing together and with some monsters too.
These only highlight that they will be spending a fair amount of time together in vrains, which makes sense if they plan to work together. We finally get to the big scene at the end and this one is interesting because you finally see Yusaku reciprocating Takeru’s friendliness. They are in vrains and then they seem to log out and their avatars fade away while they do this arm bump thing. You have a shot of Yusaku smiling and then one of Takeru also smiling. There’s a pretty sunset and you see their on the bridge.
To summarize the ED information: Takeru is a lost child, and there might be some memory stuff coming into play with him. We see one moster, maybe an ace but not sure. Yusaku will at some point be on friendly terms with him and they will work together for some period of time. Some of this can help answer the questions from the intial announcement and OP. Takeru is a lost child and that’s his connection to Yusaku, also giving a reason for wanting to befriend him. Yusaku will consider him a friend at some point but we’re still not sure exactly what that means for Yusaku.
Now let’s look at the content from episode 1, but wait. Takeru never actually shows up in the episode. . One helpful thing from episode 1 is pertaining to our questions on Flame. Ai goes back to the cyberse world to find it destroyed and all inhabitants except Linkuriboh are missing. So sometime in the last 5 years Flame escaped the Cyberse world and ends up with Takeru. Knowing a bit about tropes and how that normally works we can possibly assume that the Cyberse world was attacked recently and Flame only got out during the attack, but that’s still just a theory with no hard evidence.
So this is officially all that we know about Homura Takeru and Flame. While we could spend ages over-analyzing, we must admit it’s not a lot. I think we knew more about Aoi when season 1 started than we do about Takeru. But some people still aren’t happy about what we do know. So let’s now tackle some of the big complaints about Takeru.
1) Takeru’s getting so much screen time in the OP and ED and where are the other characters?
His screentime in the OP and ED isn’t really going to be representative of him in the entire series. Everyone felt a lot more important in the OP and EDs of S1 than they did by the end of the season, at the end it was really just Yusaku, Ai, and Revolver. And let’s not get started on how Kusanagi did very little in S1 as a whole despite having some rather interesting shots in both EDs.
2) There’s the argument that’s Takeru is just being shoved at us as the ‘best friend’ character.
Most ygos have done this so I’m surprised people really care to point out old school ygo tropes but let’s go over it anyways. We don’t know when and how he and Yusaku will actually become friends. The OP and ED mostly just show Takeru trying really hard to be friends and we only have Yusaku even reacting once. He’s not really being shoved into a friendship role, he’s trying to earn it for himself.
And this idea that friendship should be hard for Yusaku because he’s socially awkward? BS, utter nonsense, Yusaku has given up his revenge and the next plausible step for him is to try opening up. After trying so hard and failing to gain Revolver’s friendship it’s possible he could have shut down and given up on friendship but we are shown that he didn’t. We are shown that he wants to move forward in life. I’m not gonna post any screencaps of episode 47 because this is getting too long but you can see it when he lets Ai go. He’s more peaceful than he has been in a long time. This is all a perfect opportunity for him to meet someone who understands his struggles and tries to accommodate that while forming a friendship.
And I just know that someone out there will say it’s too perfect of an opportunity and let me ask you to hold it right there. The theme of the show was to get up and try. Yusaku has failed at something he wanted very badly but he’s still going to try again. If at this point he makes a friend who then turns out to have been using him the whole time, it’ll crush him entirely. While we all joke about the pain ygo puts characters through this would be too counter-intuitive (unless he gets up and decides to try and befriend Takeru like he tried with Ryoken, basically still ending in some friendship there). Theoretically (because we don’t have enough info to be truly certain) the show runners wouldn’t want to put Yusaku through endless pain and so letting him have this first real friend seems like the more plausible route.
3) Another thing I’ve heard, why is Takeru the only lost child shown in ED2? Why not Spectre or Jin?
This one is simple, it’s because we already knew about Spectre and Jin. We know that they are lost children, we know how they turned out. Takeru is there to show that he was a lost child without all the fuss that would include a long arc and lots of hints and clues. We had the great reveal already, first with Yusaku admitting to the details of his time in captivity and then again with Spectre’s bombshell announcement that he was a part of the incident as well. It’ll be too much of the same thing and that will kill any enjoyment about Takeru’s character. Now someone will point out that Yusaku probably won’t remember Takeru from the experiment and that the reveal will still have to happen in some way. We have no confirmation on what Yusaku does or does not remember, he did find Kusanagi somehow, but even if he has no memories the reveal won’t need to be something big or over the top for the viewers. We’ll be more concerned now about how Yusaku will react rather than what Takeru is saying because we know already.
4) He’s replacing other characters
Where do some people even get their ideas, I’ll never know. But okay, so Takeru is being setup as a friend for Yusaku and he’ll be spending lots of time with Yusaku. He’s not going to steal the spotlight from other characters because a lot of his screen time will be with Yusaku. Imagine Yusaku in S1 but someone was always there with him. It’s like having a second Ai around, expect with more freedom to do things. Yes he will likely have to have scenes where he is by himself but S2E1 has shown that lots of characters will be working together and their arcs will be intertwined so less time will be needed per single character.
5) The friendship feels forced
I’m just,,, okay well this OP might be intended to last the whole season much like the one for S1, therefore it’s highly likely the camaraderie we are seeing in the OP won’t be present in the show immediately following Takeru’s arrival. Same goes for the ED, that will last around half the season or so, judging from S1, so stuff has been shown this way to reflect changes to come. Keep in mind there’s a lot that we see in OP2 and ED3, so much more than Takeru that will all come to play at soem point but none of it will be immediate.
6) What about all the focus that Revolver got at the end of S1, they’re shoving that aside for Takeru?
So now let’s talk about what everyone is really concerned about, Revolver aka Ryoken Kogami. Ooh boy, where to start? So there was a lot going on in that last arc of S1, most of it with Revolver. Let’s clear up one thing, REVOLVER/RYOKEN IS NOT THE RIVAL. He’s the villain. At least for now he is, many of us certainly expect that to change and that shot of KoH gives some hope that he’ll be behind the scenes somewhere throughout the season. But yes, let’s talk about Ryoken’s relationship with Yusaku… they have nothing nearly. Yusaku found out he was the special person, tried damn hard to talk him out of the end the world plan, and Yusaku failed. Ryoken has admitted that he wishes he didn’t save Yusaku and one can (and will, I’m sure) argue that Ryoken is only really doing this out of respect and love for his father. That is true, it’s shown in canon but it doesn’t change the fact that he refused to stop. He showed little to no real hesitation about anything he was doing, he believed he was doing this for a greater cause and he wasn’t going to stop if Yusaku hadn’t won. And that’s the key thing here, he really wasn’t going to stop. Some people can say he was conflicted but he still would not have stopped so does it matter if he was conflicted or felt bad? If the plan went through then it certainly wouldn’t matter how bad he felt bc there would be no way to undo it.
But the plan didn’t go through and he’s being given a chance now. His father is dead and he’ll have some time to think and regroup. He’s got a lot of potential from here and he servers a specific purpose to the plot. Takeru can’t replace that, Takeru isn’t Ryoken, he’s not the one who saved Yusaku’s life. He might be the first person who Yusaku opens up to and reciprocates. He’ll do the one thing Yusaku could, at that point in time get anyone else to do. He’ll understand Yusaku and he’ll accept Yusaku when Yusaku opens up. He won’t turn him away like Ryoken did. And Yusaku will also learn form this.
All ygo series have had a bit of the ‘coming of age’ theme going on. This is not about Yusaku’s revenge, it’s about his life and how he learns to overcome his obstacles. How he deals with his PTSD and how he finally opens up to different people and learns that not everything is black and white, that not everyone will be what you think they are.
So yeah, Ryoken will come back and he’ll have his arc and his role to play and nothing and no other character will change that. That goes for each and every one of the characters. Aoi, Go, Akira, Ema, Ai, and Shoichi all have parts to play to and none of them could subsitute for another. Aoi’s coma was Yusaku’s first big failure, he felt that pain even when Spectre defeated her. Go was the person to show Yusaku that dueling could be fun even when you lose. Shoichi is the first person Yusaku trusted enough to ask for help in his revenge scheme. This list will grow as the series continues and Yusaku will learn so much from everyone he meets. None of this is being shoved aside at all, but sometimes some characters and arcs need to take a backseat to other ones bc in storytelling their is always a flow, a sequence that must be followed otherwise you’ll miss something important when you shouldn’t.
Let’s all try to remember the people behind this show are experienced and they know what they are doing. Maybe we won’t like what they do but that can hardly be judged so early in the show.
7) But Soulburner is obviously being setup as a villain, I don’t know if we can trust Takeru…
Oh y’all though I was done earlier? So did I but I swear this post is writing itself so here we go. I’ve already gone over everything we know about Takeru at this point and nothing in there really screams he will absolutely be villainous or even have some temporary turn to the dark side. And why should he? I’ve said it earlier it contributes nearly nothing to have him betray Yusaku. And why shouldn’t Yusaku have a friend and be happy? Not everything has to be a struggle, you don’t need to fight for every tiny speck of happiness in your life. What type of lesson would that be? This is a children’s show first and foremost and the point is to sell merch (aka the cards), they’re not going to leave things on a negative note, they’re not going to make everything in Yusaku’s life miserable and impossible. Something has to give at some point and Takeru is a good chance to breathe some new life into Yusaku’s routine and nudge his development along. Also pretty much every friend-turned-villain has been predictable in ygo history. Dennis and Sora are the most recent and so they come to mind but if it weren’t 3 am I could probably think of more. If someone has to go evil then it should be someone that Yusaku is close too but has always over looked. Go and Shoichi are pretty decent candidates for that kind of a role, and Shoichi could really use some development as it is. Having it be Takeru will not help Yusaku.
8) But my ship?!
Listen, I have seen at least 3 people now admit that they don’t like Takeru for shipping reasons. I’m not pointing fingers, and the people I’m referring to are not all from one ship. This isn’t a callout, if anything I want to reassure you. Your ship is your ship. Just because a new ship comes around doesn’t mean your ship will die, and ships don’t need to be canon for you to enjoy them. Heck, this is ygo so even the most obviously hinted ships don’t become canon. You’ve got nothing to fear there. Feel free to ship your ship and stop being threatened by other ships please. You could be the only person shipping your ship but that won’t make it less valid. Likewise even if your ship is the most popular it’s not more valid. All thoughts and opinions are equal. People will ship Takeru and Yusaku, it will happen. People might also ship Takeru with Aoi, or Ryoken. It’s all valid and won’t stop your ship. And remember, platonic relationships exist too. You might have another ship with Yusaku but that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy a good bromance between Yusaku and Takeru. Platonic relationships are everywhere in life and they shouldn’t be ignored.
TL;DR CHILL OUT DUDES AND STOP JUMPING THE GUN, TAKERU HAS A PURPOSE AND THERE IS A PLAN FOR ALL OF THIS STUFF. REMEMBER IT’S A FICTIONAL SHOW AIMED AT CHILDREN AND TRY TO ENJOY THE RIDE ONCE AND A WHILE.
To anyone that reads this thank you. This was long and absolutely insane to type. Big shout out to all my pals on discord who had put up with my saltiness all day and another shout out to all of you in the fandom that don’t care for the drama and are just having fun. Again a reminder that there’s a fair amount of theory and speculation going on in this post and it’s totally cool if you don’t agree but please be civil about this stuff.
