Lets ignore everything happening on planet Earth right now and talk about old ass anime, shall we? Yes, my sky turned a horrible end of the world yellow/orange color for an entire day because of a LOT of fire in my state. But thankfully, the winds have changed, the sky is blue...and I can write about Yugioh again.
Last we left off, Tristan, Tea, and Yami stumbled across two fresh corpses. Now, when Joey died a season or two ago (I honestly can’t remember when), we had my favorite storyboarder at the helm just sweeping emotion all over the field and the intense weeping for Joey Wheeler lasted for like 30 minutes. Yugi freaked out in the puzzle headspace for like half an episode and nearly gave up playing cards again, Yami punched a wall and then put a duel disk on Joey’s arm like a funerary send off to the afterlife, Tea started losing her mind and begged Yugi to drop out of the tourney so Yugi wouldn’t die, and Pharaoh was like “yo Tea, Yugi can’t talk right now can we do this later????” And then Tristan, out of nowhere, just started shaking Joey and screaming at him to wake up (and I think he punched him in the face and it got censored? Yo that episode is wild.) Joey got plugged to some Kaiba Corp med bay that had like 2 dozen weird sensors attached to his chest and feet to keep him alive. Serenity was like hyperventilating in the back, just a LOT of stuff was happening all at once.
But this time, with an ordinary animation team, these three kids are so distracted by the other corpse, that they only cry just a little bit before being like “woah what?”
And like this is their second time. Maybe they’ve gotten used to Joey being dead? Maybe they got it all out of their system and are now a lot more accustomed to the fact that they all must die. Several times.
Confronted with this Agatha Christie brand debacle, Tristan makes an incredible reach that is also completely correct. Like this is such an amazing incredible reach.
Hire Tristan as your detective, hot damn. There are like 7.8 billion Orichalcos-possessed people on this planet right now trying to kill Joey Wheeler and Tristan actually called the right one.
Yami never tells us who he blames, but it’s OK, because the show immediately cuts over to Dartz’ silicon valley fortress to tell us without telling us. So while this animation team isn’t as insanely extra as our previous animation teams, they still know how to edit their cuts to work alongside their dialogue just fine.
(read more under the cut)
Lets take a little while to just take this in. Someone took a while to make it, so rather than look at it for half a second before it passes--please lets count the number of floating streets in this scene.
3.
So before when I talked about the history of San Francisco, I mentioned the old Embarcadero, which was a double decker street wrapped around the peninsula. (we still see parts of this double decker set up on parts of the highway to this day.) But what if--they actually have no idea that the Embarcadero was a thing before it fell down in an earthquake?
What if they just...wanted San Francisco to be vaguely cyberpunk in this universe and that floating freeway was supposed to be futuristic and not just an 80′s throwback?
Because there’s 3 streets stacked on top of eachother right here and yo there is no where in the city built like this. This is a Gotham situation where the poors live on the lower levels and the rich just kind of hang out on the top. We have too many Earthquakes in reality to ever support this setup but Yugioh...wow. They went for it.
Also, our art deco architecture isn’t quite in this style as Dartz’ mansion. Mind you, this isn’t full deco, and the structure has more of an ancient world vibe. But...while San Fransisco does have a lot of deco, it’s just different (sorry you’re not really here for the architecture but youknow, I’m an artist so I do think a lot about why concept artists may have gone where they went)
++++++++++RANT ABOUT SF DECO VS COMIC BOOK DECO FEEL FREE TO SKIP++++++++++++++
So I’m not going to dare say this is a mistake on the Yugioh team by any means, since Deco is Deco and who knows when Dartz built that building. But like I’ve seen the SF skyline many times in this show and it’s got some funky shapes in it that are just sooo off to me. They keep drawing a more Futurist New York. Truth is, we don’t have that many skyscrapers in SF.
Most of the pictures you see of scaling buildings are of this one area around the financial district--everything else is...pretty short. So in those photos they very carefully crop out all the really squat as hell buildings on either side of it, to give the impression that our city is super tall, much like a dating app.
And, as far as Art Deco Gotham-esque skyscrapers go, we got ones like this guy:
Where at a glance it’s like...that’s barely deco (and barely that impressive. This is 1/3 the height of the Empire State building.) Compared to a lot of cities in America, our skyscrapers aren’t as...clearly deco from far away? We don’t have the huge ass humps and long ass gilded lines of the Empire State building or the Chrysler building. You only really get those details when you zoom in.
Our other skyscrapers are kinda understated or modern in comparison. And the reason why we just don’t have many deco skyscrapers is because...our ground ain’t good for building skyscrapers at all, so it took us kind of a while to build up.
Like we got this tower that we built recently (the first skyscraper they built in SF in a good while) and they decided to name it the “The Millennium Tower” which...I know...good job, team, clearly you wanted to get cursed. Well the tower started leaning about 3 or 4 years ago, like well over a foot from it’s original spot, it’s just tilting and sinking away, and people are freaking out because it’s surrounded by other tall buildings so they’re like “damn it we’re gonna dominoes.” The people in charge were like “well...we don’t know why it’s leaning...but I’m sure it’s fine” and it’s like “the ground. It was the ground...you dumbasses” not to mention that it’s clearly cursed by at least one angry Egyptian Ghost but...what do you do?
I would absolutely watch the Yugioh spinoff season about the Millennium Tower and the SF tycoons that got possessed by a ghost and have to play card games to keep their tower from squishing all of San Francisco. Yo you should hire me, Yugioh, I got IDEAS.
Man...Yugioh predicting the future, how did they call the ill fate of The Millennium Tower????
But anyway, most skyscrapers in SF are kind of boring because they have to be sturdy as hell. But, they have some neat modern shapes (like the Transamerica Pyramid--in the shape of A PYRAMID that hasn’t shown it’s face once this entire Egyptian influenced anime)
I mean, come on Yugioh, it’s right there.
Also the hell is this weird UFO on this picture I lifted off of google?
Like I think it’s 4 jets?
I may have lifted this from an alien website, so forgive me, q-anon for lifting your image, I’m trying to talk about architecture in my Yugioh blog.
In fact the only building I (and google) can think of that is both really tall and deco-ey is this one:
And it’s a Marriot hotel built in the late 80′s. And honestly, it looks way more 1980′s Las Vegas than it does Deco. (It honestly looks like photobashing but made real, this is a weird building.)
And I could be wrong and overlooking a very important structure, but most of the city’s really cool art deco buildings are in the form of theaters, libraries, churches, schools, and houses--which are only a few stories tall. They’re gorgeous buildings with cool and different silhouettes, it’s just not very big.
Like I believe this is an old high school?
also a lot of our “art deco” has no idea if it’s victorian, deco, or art noveau so they’ll just hit all of it to see what sticks. It’s a lot more eclectic than other places where Deco is typically more...straight-lined. I kinda hate defining art styles as masculine or feminine but honestly it’s the quickest way to really hit home the difference between a Bruce Timm art deco that you’d see in a comic book, (which is very New York inspired) and what we have in San Fransisco which is really decorative and decadent.
The Yugioh SF just has no curvy nonsense and that really sticks out to me.
Ornate swirls get shoved Everywhere. Willy nilly. Just everywhere randomly. And it sits next to other structures that are modern and simplistic. It’s very San Francisco to have this old world next to new world.
And it makes sense. SF is the other side of the continent from New York, and about as far West as you can go from the movement going on in Europe. So...we made our own take and tl;dr the art deco in our city doesn’t look like Gotham at all.
And, while it’s not as grand or dark or iconic, it’s a good thing. It’s what helps make San Fransisco look really unique compared to other American cities--the fact that we're...short and eclectic. Our district with the skyscrapers is where it’s kinda boring, actually--the good stuff is when you get away from that. Where every little building has a spunky wild personality.
But in a show like this you gotta make it seem more grand and less homely so--they scaled up the buildings a lot more than we really have and homogenized all the stylings into one (and they axed every Victorian swirl because they don’t want to draw that). They really just turned SF into comic book New York--especially since I’ve only seen like...one steep hill since we got here.
It’s fine, and it makes complete sense why they did it, (I’m more confused as to why most of California is a Nevada desert so I can easily forgive a San Francisco without the right Deco) it’s just a very different energy.
and honestly...it’s an energy influenced by the tone of the show. Everything has a very dark blue-gray palate, and it’s because it’s literally the end of the world, Joey has died, everyone is sad...maybe it would be out of place to have a building that looks like it sparks joy? The harsh and cold lines do add to the gravity of the situation.
Maybe I would have done the same thing? In the end, the legibility of your story matters more than the accuracy of your story--especially when it comes to TV. Which is somewhat a controversial statement, and there’s exceptions when it comes to cultural stuff. But while the culture of San Fransisco was erased (a culture that they did draw in the beginning of the season! they did show alcatraz, a trolly, and the golden gate!), it is at a point in the show where...all of humanity is being erased anyway. Could also be symbolic? Maybe?
+++++++++++++END OF THE ART DECO RANT+++++++++++++
So anyway, stepping away from lovely buildings and into this gross ass abandoned park, Yami decides he’s gotta get himself to this gaudy ass Batman building ASAP.
He can ride a horse but he absolutely will not ride a motorcycle. Or touch Joey Wheeler’s dead body.
Which is wild because apparently there’s a Yugioh spinoff where all they do is ride motorcycles??? But from what I heard, Yami is not in it. Which is the most wild thing.
So uh...you know how much I love art details, lets take a long look at this one.
AH no.
Nope nope nope nope.
I hate this logo. It looks like an emperor penguin’s eyebrow thingies. Like a face with just four huge eyebrows.
Not sure why we randomly have a new logo. It’s nearly the end of the season, we’ve already shown the Orichalcos logo so many times. Was this episode made earlier in development than the rest? Is that why there were like - I dunno, put this random logo here... Maybe we’ll figure out the rest of the logo later?
I don’t know. This weird logo feels so out of place.
And then because I’m thinking about buildings...maybe it’s influenced by our Shell building?
Maybe? Or not? Just saying you got a round thing with radial lines hovering over a trellis...the possibility is there that they were inspired but had to edit it down for animation? Eh, I’m reaching desperately for anything that looks like San Francisco at this point.
Anyways, the front door of this building is an elevator (????) and in a somewhat confusing set of cuts, out of this elevator comes the murderer herself.
And she’s dead.
SO HAPPY I didn’t have to watch that card game but like...c’mon. There’s no way Mai would lose to Raphael.
Maybe that’s why they couldn’t show it? Because she’s the only person on this show who uses a themed deck with cards that actually sync with eachother? (outside of Pegasus’ toon deck and Grandpa’s voltron deck ((sorry it’s name isn’t voltron, I’ve forgotten the name of the robot that you build out of other cards. Exodus? Exodysseus?
It’s Exodia isn't it? Wtv. 2020′s been a real long one, all y’all.)) )
(don’t ask where the smoke came from, we don’t know. Maybe Yami felt like making it to be more aesthetic. It is a fun visual tic to the show.)
So Yami goes into this elevator instead of anticipating that this is obviously a trap. Like most would just decide to take the stairs instead, but Yami loves falling for a good obvious trap every once and a while (or, in the case of this season--each and every single time a trap is placed in front of him) and so this takes him directly to the fightclub roof of yore.
Ah. We started this season on fightclub roof, in like...2010 or whenever I started this season. Feels like forever ago. How long has the year of 2020 been? 20 years of my life? 40 years of my life? Was I in fact never born before 2020 started? I honestly don’t remember anymore who I was before this year happened. Probably because I inhaled just a hell ton of wildfire smoke and now my brain is a bunch of jelly beans rattling around in a jar.
Anyway, Raphael just hands Yami (by hands I mean throws aggressively) Joey’s dragon card.
A little unsure why he’d do this since...this is the weapon to destroy Dartz. Why are you giving it back to the Pharaoh? But apparently, Raphael did that to prove that he is the murderer of Mai, who murdered Joey and...youknow...the stuff that we know but would be pretty difficult for the people in this show to follow.
Mai’s voice actor seeing “Mumbo-Jumbo” and being like “Well if I’m doing this, I’m going to commit.“
WE ARE NEVER DUELING DARTZ.
I refuse that a duel with Dartz, in fact, ever happens in this season.
Kind of surprised whenever I see there’s still people left. SF is basically abandoned in comparison.
Thing is...that’s just SF on a holiday weekend.
And then, because Tristan’s in the middle of the street, the rest of the party has to try and run him over.
It is really funny to me that Seto went out of his way to ditch these people so MANY times, but keeps ending up around them again and again, and each time in a wildly different vehicle, each and every time it’s when these guys need a lift...he’s very quickly turning into the group’s soccer mom. Should’ve gotten a minivan.
And then this happens?
I’ll just leave this here:
I’m sure that fanfic writers everywhere rejoiced when Seto reached out a hand to catch Joey’s face from hitting the pavement. In all this was a bizarre animation and now that I’ve figured out my blender settings for the new update, I can finally cap little segments again.
Just don’t you dare flag me, tumblr. Hopefully segments less than 10 seconds long are fine.
Like there was this part where they had to just drag around Joey’s corpse over this rail, and it was Mokuba and Tristan just prying him up there like he were a potato sack and like...
...Joey’s gonna wake up with so many rail-shaped bruises! They do not treat him gently!
Then back on fightclub roof, Raphael made me do a bit of a double take when he accidentally implied the existence of another bean within that Pharaoh bean.
And no, Bakura did not show up at this point.
I would LOVE IT if Pharaoh biffed it a second time and Bakura suddenly took the reigns and was like “Oi loves! that was bloody easy!” but I...have a feeling that this team didn’t actually watch the episodes where Bakura is just vibing in that puzzle piece.
If this never comes back to bite Pharaoh in the ass...
It might never come back guys...I don’t know. How do these writers have this much self control to ignore Bakura for like a full season. How do you do it? I can’t hold a plot twist in for even like 5 seconds. How....how do you do it?
Anyways, now that Seto has Tea who has a map, they walk up to the entrance (I honestly forgot if they drove or walked because knowing this show, Seto would absolutely ignore the car. Either way, the Ferrari isn’t necessary anymore. Written right out of the script. Cars are hard to draw. Get rid of it)
You know, Mokuba’s seen an awful lot of corpses for a kid! Like 20ish corpses if you count the 2 times the Big 5 biffed it. Really should have left him with Rebecca! Youknow, the other kid the same age as him!
But it’s fine, we gotta train Mokuba to suppress that trauma deep, deep down like a proper Kaiba.
Youknow when I started this series I was like “I don’t get why everyone talks about the Kaibas so much, these two seem kinda like whatever” but now I’m on like S4 and like...I’m SO concerned about the Kaibas. With Yugi...whatever...he’s gonna be fine, but the Kaibas? Oh boy. Either one of them could go completely evil and I’d buy it.
And probably root for them.
And I know they won’t go full tilt, I’m pretty sure--but like...they COULD. I can’t say that about the rest of the cast.
Everyone’s made it!
Even joey’s weird coma/dead body for some reason!
Lol also I love this random sci-fi tech water tower next to Tea. What is that?
My drought senses are screaming, is that a huge ass water tower the size of a 4 story building next to Tea? Chances are, it’s got a jet in it or something because this is Yugioh, but...man. At least it doesn’t look like one of those rusty New York rooftop water towers. This show just completely not getting what SF looks like.
Whatever, he can resurrect the leviathan, maybe Dartz can make water?
Youknow, all you have to do to make California worship you forever is make rain. Screw this lizard nonsense. The man can power water. What’s he doing with this stupid snake?
But youknow, Yugioh just never really figures out how to harness the weather. They CAN and they do it all the time. But, do they use it for their benefit? Like freakin never.
Anyway, that’s all for now. I went on a looong rant about SF but maybe I’m just sick of my own house? Been a lot of fire and quarantine over here. It’s been messing with my head a fair amount so thanks for bearing with me and my weird ass update schedule (remember when I used to be productive? Was that just a dream I once had?)
But if you just got here, here’s a link to read these recaps in order, from the beginning way back in S1.
