I rewatched episode 140 with my friend who is finally watching the end of arc v with me, and i was thinking about Zarc again
Zarc’s essence wasn’t hatred, or anger, or any of that. His essence was fear. I think it was fear the whole time.
Fear of being alone. Fear of not being needed. Fear of being hurt. He spends his entire duel protecting himself, as Sawatari says, and even just a few episodes ago, we saw Yuya calling out the Battle Beast for the same reason: building up more and more walls, protecting himself against everything – but also closing himself off to the world around him.
“I wanted revenge: I wanted to put fear in those who used me as a spectacle,” Zarc says. Zarc was afraid – he was terrified. He loved dueling and he loved his monsters with all of his might; dueling was probably the world to him. But in any kind of field like dueling would be in that world, it all rides on your ability to please the crowd. To lose meant that the crowd wouldn’t need him anymore. To not do as they wished meant that he would be abandoned. That was too frightening for him.
So he became stronger and stronger and stronger, and he grew more resentful even as he became more terrified. One slip up and he would be abandoned. One mistake and the crowd would move onto something else.
And even when he became strong enough to even destroy the world, still, he was afraid. He and his monsters became one not out of a lust for power, but out of the fear that what they had would be taken away from them. Becoming one made them feel as though they were so powerful that nothing could hurt them.
And so, instead of running around the field with his monsters, Zarc became one with them – forever immobile, barely moving, simply standing above it all and trying to pretend that he was above the fear that still fueled him.
There’s a reason that the show’s theme is “Take a step forward with courage.” Zarc couldn’t step forward. He was too afraid.
But Yuya could. He wasn’t afraid to leave his walls behind and move past them back into the world. Zarc closed himself off. Once upon a time, so did Yuya. But then Yuya opened himself up to everything, and he gained courage.
And that is why Yuya was the only one who could heal Zarc. Because he knew what it was like to hide himself inside a fortress where no one could touch him.
But he also knew what it was like to leave the fortress behind. And he knew that the world outside the walls wasn’t so frightening after all.
