Yugi's Battle City Deck: The Exodia-Killer Combo
Now we're officially covering Yugi's Battle City deck! These two in particular are the cards we're told he puts into his deck the night before the tournament started.
We'll start with the very first new card we see Dark Yugi own when the arc properly starts. And of course, we can't forget its counterpart, the Trap Card Dark Yugi combined it with to take down the Rare Hunter's Exodia!
The first part of that combo is "Card-Pinning Light Sword"! An interesting take on the motif introduced with "Protective Light Swords", and with an illustration perhaps even more evocative than that card's, to boot.
Name-wise, I originally interpreted 「光の封札剣」 as "Card Sealing Light Sword", but all things considered I think I was a little too literal with it back then. As I've said before, I'm very much a novice when it comes to my Japanese interpretation skills, and 封 is a versatile word that can be applied in a lots of ways that aren't very intuitive to me.
I did struggle to come up with a replacement I felt had an appropriate meaning in context. I went with 'pinning' because it reflects the card art and hologram graphics shown on-panel in chapter 154. Part of me wishes I could have found a word that was more tied to the function of the card, rather than its imagery. But as it stands, the current name is distinctive enough to suffice for my project's needs.
One of the fun things about this card is that we see Dark Yugi pull it right from a Magic & Wizards pack during his day out with Anzu!
Set of panels from chapter 149, "Where I Belong".
It's one of the few times we see the characters engage with Magic & Wizards as the commercial entity it surely must be in that world. Previously, the only time we'd seen anyone buy cards was when Jonouchi asked Grandpa Mutou to give him 'a bunch of strong cards' all the way back in the game's debut chapter, "The Cards With Teeth"!
Unfortunately, this sequence isn't without a real-world pretext of sorts. By the time of this chapter's release on 25 October 1999, Konami was well into the cycle of releasing sets for their game. Their next release, the booster pack Vol. 6, would come out a little under a month afterwards. Depending on your level of cynicism, you could say that this part of the chapter was a stealth ad for Konami's game.
You'll notice that this is another card with a picture of a Magic & Wizards card on it! Our next card is the same way. Truth be told, many card illustrations in Yugi's Battle City Deck have this trait!
Just take a look at the other card in this killer combo, under the cut...
