I usually don’t really do these during weekdays but lets just say today was a day where I felt the need for a healthy distraction.
Ah, it is episode 33. There are...so many episodes in a Yugioh season, guys. I was just not aware. But, here we are at episode 33 and we are finally going to start the finals.
For reals this time, no one’s going to get engaged, no one’s going to randomly murder a bunch of people. We are officially starting the finals this episode.
Sort of.
Man, Kaiba and his butterfly-wing shoulderpads. Sometimes it just looks like he’s just going to gently flutter away.
Also in this stadium with Kaiba and Mokuba is Marik and Odion, who is just as confused as to where the hell everyone went and why the hell Mai just flew by being carried off by a ninja in a jet pack. The hours it must have taken to wait for Yugi’s crew to walk 2 single blocks was enough time for Marik to formulate yet another back-up plan. I want to say this is plan #9.
It’s a good thing Pharaoh can’t read anymore, considering that Marik’s just walking around in a crop hoodie with a tattoo that just reads “SEASON 2 SPOILERS, PHARAOH, DO NOT READ” in hieroglyphs.
But if you wait long enough, even Yugi and his friends will accidentally wander the correct direction and actually show up.
(read more under the cut)
Not a joke, this is actually an unfinished public works project, congratulations, Kaiba Corps, there is nothing that Kaiba won’t try and then fail at, at least once.
Anyways, this shady-as-hell unfinished stadium seems kind of like a good place to get murdered and then tossed into a cement slab. Which honestly, would have been a very likely end to this season, considering what we have been through so far.
Marik decides to sneak around the bleachers, probably on all fours so no one would spot him, jump out a window, and then come in through the front door like he’s not been here this entire time. As he did, apparently he made everything very, very windy. In fact, everyone with a millennium item brought with them a spooooooky gust of wind except I think Yugi, who is probably too short to pull that one off.
Yugi did manage to get the vibe of “something bad is coming” before Marik entered the field, but like...there’s so many bad things at this point, Yugi. So many people that could be. It feels like that might be half the cast. You could say that at any given moment in this season and be absolutely right.
So, after possessing Tea for a second, for...some reason? Did she need threatening? Anyway, after doing that, Namu is in with the gang because literally nothing will prevent Yugi from becoming a friend with you, especially if you are trying to hide the fact that you just tried to kill him by drowning him in the ocean.
Funny how instead of them asking how the hell Namu got away from cultists, they have to fixate on the mystery of “is Bakura good at cards!?” because, and I kinda forgot about this, I guess they don’t remember the last time they saw Bakura play. How far up their own ass is Yugi and Joey to assume that just because Bakura doesn’t brag about cards all day, that Bakura hasn’t been equally good at cards? They kind of deserve this.
Yeah and PS Kaiba absolutely did not check the satellite to get the DL on why the hell Bakura got so many cards. Dayjob Saruman I guess went home for the evening so...although that shadow game was definitely being recorded on a computer, we’ll never know what that mess looked like on Kaiba’s end. Like there’s just three duel disks covered in ectoplasm hanging out in the cemetery and no one seems to have noticed?
Like for a competition that was huge about security and tech, they only seemed to watch the God Cards players and then Mokuba randomly monitored Joey Wheeler for some reason. That was it. That was all the people the Kaiba’s cared about.
So although Marik and Odion and Bakura could probably take on everyone right now. Like riiiight now. They decide not to because, well, I nearly forgot about someone that I was really looking forward to seeing again, that’s right, my favorite boy!
AW THERE HE IS!
to quote one of my actual favorite earworms,
Where has this big boy been hiding!? He’s freakin ginormous, but apparently he was just hiding behind a soft cloud or something, in anticipation of this grand reveal in a very sketch unfinished stadium that’s probably being used to bet on bum fights.
Mokuba gets excited for the first time since...I don’t remember if Mokuba’s ever actually been excited before. Like I’m digging through my memories here and no, Mokuba’s been mostly abducted, angry, bored, or scared, this is the first time he’s exuded that pure pre-teen energy.
PS a blimp’s max flying height is 1500 ft, and what surprised me the most about this was realizing that this entire time we’ve been watching this show, we’ve been getting measurements in US metrics. Didn’t realize that before today.
Also, on my wikipedia deep dive into blimps, I found out that like...this is probably not a “blimp,” but actually a semi-rigid airship but...I’m gonna keep calling it a blimp. Don’t @ me, blimp fandom on tumblr.
It’s so good to see more Blimp. Even though...probably the worst place to throw a tourney? Like...how many people are you even gonna fit in there? Like...is this televised? I mean I don’t know how Kaiba’s marketing works for this, honestly, he took over every TV in the city to get people to join this tourney, and now that it’s in full swing no one can watch it?
Whatever, it’s a blimp.
Duke Devlin is still here, despite the fact that I don’t think he’s going to do anything for the rest of this season. I guess they had to promote that gameboy game so his face will just be in the background always although as a dice player he um...he has no purpose here.
In fact it makes no sense, he works with Pegasus who straight up killed Mokuba and Kaiba like a month ago, why are they just letting him on their airship? Whatever.
I dunno, maybe there’s more that Duke will do eventually, but he just seemed like a replacement for Bakura at first--and Bakura’s back now, so why’s he still here?
Ishizu is here, and while every other time we’ve seen Ishizu, she’s been talking our ears off, the one time she should probably say something, she instead decides to lock herself inside her bedroom and avoid everyone.
I guess she was mostly avoiding Marik so they don’t have a sibling laser fight in the hull of a Blimp. That would have made things so awkward for Yugi and Bakura. Especially Yugi, who still doesn’t know that thing around his neck shoots freakin lasers.
Props the background artists who had to draw billions of small little buildings AKA the worst background in the world to draw. I will go through hoops to avoid drawing even a single building, but to have to sit down and paint just a whole page of buildings that someone’s going to smack a foreground on anyway? Mad respect. If you look closely you’ll see that this artist had to use a ruler and perspective and other annoying tools that take up time and energy. Even using editing tools like using blocks of black color to imitate the look of rooftops and crowded structures, it probably took them a few hours to make the background that went in a .2 second scene.
They’ll probably reuse these buildings later, don’t get me wrong, but oi, I feel for them in my carpel tunnel bones.
Seto keeps telling Yugi that they’re rivals but I don’t think anyone on this show other than Joey thinks of Seto as much of a rival at all. You almost feel a little bad for him, like he’s in a weird...hate triangle, but very much on the loosing end of it.
Next we get a good look at Kaiba’s interior design decisions, and much like his mansions, it’s a lot of very unexpected soothing pastels. Like this is a lot of seafoam blue. How can someone so angry make something so grandma-zen? Is it actually Kaiba’s grandmother who is just slapping down all these paint chips when he’s not looking? I mean it’s got muted pink stools even, with a makeup station.
Tea, Tristan, and Duke have no rooms to go to because they aren’t actually part of this competition, so they’re just squatting around until they’ll probably all end up crashing with Mokuba, the only other person who is not dueling in this competition. Reminds me a lot of the first week of college, where everyone is just coasting dorm room to dorm room and there’s like 10 people there who actually don’t actually go there but want to hang out with their high school friends and they just end up sleeping in your room for 7 days until they read your other friend’s diary, get hella indignant, and then storm off back to California. My apologies to my Freshman year roommate who had to put up with all that girl drama.
And because it’s this show, the men and their bottomless stomachs decide to raid the smallest little mini fridge and you wouldn’t believe what takes up about 1/4 of it
There is so many cheese wheels in this Japanese show, guys. So, I felt like doing a quick google search of Japan and Cheese and it’s just a bunch of ex-pats talking about how the European cheeses most of us are familiar with is harder to find in Japan. So, maybe that’s why? It's a status symbol that he can find round cheeses?
But even if you can only get your hands on a 30$ Swiss wheel every so often (because that really is just Swiss cheese, like lets be real.) how much Swiss cheese can one man eat??? Especially since, looking closely, there is not a single baguette here. No man can eat that much cheese without a bread!
Sorry, stuffing your face full of free cheese you pulled out of your friend’s mini-fridge is also giving me vivid flashbacks to my Freshman year of college.
Also little edit--just realized that flag is flipped 90 degrees from French so that’s probably a Holland flag? Although I looked up European flags and there is...none that have that color order so I don’t know which country they were originally going for.
YO I just realized there’s no curtains on any of these pelvis-height level windows. So, you can’t sleep because of the lights, and you can’t change into pajamas because like--the whole city will see.
Kaiba does seem like the type that would on purpose not install any curtains on any of the windows he’s ever owned, though.
Keto is gone, and now we just have Roland, who is probably too terrified to ever abduct the Kaibas by picking them up by the neck with one arm.
Anyway, in case you were wondering--since the show has decided to make a huge fuss over card prep time--how can they prep for a card game if they only have the cards they brought with them and they don’t know what the other people are even playing or which person they’re playing first?
Kaiba did nothing. He sat there and thought “If Yugi doesn’t even put that God Card in his deck this entire tourney will be absolutely pointless.”
Mai took little sips of milk. Probably paired it with Swiss cheese. Just a huge bite out of a wheel of Swiss cheese.
Odion never found the refrigerator.
Marik took a nap on this bed that looks like it’s just made of foam. Why is this the only one on the show who’s like “Youknow, I should sleep at some point.”
And Yugi’s prep involved talking to himself a whole lot, which explains why none of his friends wanted to stay here for that. I doubt very much Yugi kicked him out of the room. He was probably like “no, stay, stay” in that high pitched-low pitched voice combo until they were like “nooooo I don’t want to be present for your daily seance checkup byeeee.” while slowly backing out of the room.
Yo remember that time we were worried about Bandit Keith stealing the puzzle?
Apparently...Pharaoh could have just sort of done that dizzolving thingy and appeared right back on Yugi’s neck.
And remember that time Yugi handed that puzzle to Joey?
Apparently...Pharaoh could have just sneezed and then bam--right back around Yugi’s neck.
Like remember any time this season that we’ve been like “Oh no, the puzzle! We’re gonna lose it!” no that...that was never a problem.
I mean to be fair when it’s dismantled it might not work but um--apparently you can’t lose an item after it’s decided it likes you. At all. Which is kind of weird because Pegasus totally lost that eyeball, and aren’t all these items property of Pharaoh anyway?
I’ll try not to think about it as this rule seems to only really apply to Bakura.
Anyway, next week--I’m pretty sure the finals are indeed actually starting next week. I could be wrong as I have been every single episode but maybe--probably--the finals are actually going to start. We shall see.
