Thoughts&Observations | Mangá Vol.16-17 Part 2 (Dungeon Dice Monsters Part 2)

I'm warning you already, this post is gonna be huge according to the amount of pictures I selected, it may become comparable to the duel Dark Yugi and Yugi VS Pegasus post...

Plot Summary:

In the previous post we left off Yugi being thrown to a dark room by a security guard in Black Clown store, Yugi finds Otogi Ryuji waiting for him to play the game he designed himself, D.D.M. - Dungeon Dice Monsters- , Ryuji doesn't explain all the rules to Yugi before they even start (tch, figures), Yugi learns all the rules and necessary information by Ryuji and insight through the progress of the game, when Yugi grows more determined, he is starting to catch up, Ryuji reveals he is after his millenium puzzle to become the king of games and his father (Mr.Otogi, the clown) plus Sugoroku backstory between master and pupil.
Yugi starts taking the lead, Mr Otogi irritated by this, he suddenly shows up and breaks the millenium puzzle to break Yugi's will to fight, with this turn of events, the millenium ring in Bakura's necklace senses something wrong with the puzzle and the spirit of the ring comes back again, Honda is walking with his dog and sees Bakura entering the Black Clown store, security guards blocking Yami Bakura and he knocks them out through the power of the millenium ring, as Yugi picks up, Ryuji helps pick them up, Otogi challenges to them solve the puzzle by whoever wins, Yugi starts losing the lead, then Yami Bakura showing his support to Yugi for his own reasons and confirming Yugi is the true host of the millenium puzzle, Sugoroku and Yugi's friends starts getting worried and Honda warned them about Yami Bakura coming back.
Thanks to Yami Bakura giving some encouragement and making sure Yugi's will to fight for his millenium puzzle was back on track, Yugi wins splendidly, Yami Bakura did something to one of the pieces of the puzzle to put a bit of his soul in it to spy on it once the puzzle would be completed and give it to Yugi, Ryuji calling out his father about his revenge and see the error of his ways, mr.Otogi pretended to regret it, he puts the necklace of the millenium puzzle and at this same moment stifles Yugi and drags him to a secret door that can only open from the inside, forcing him to play a forbidden game he played years ago against Sugoroku, allows you to age quicker as you advance the game (Sugoroku won) but as way in trying to kill Yugi and get the puzzle for himself, but before so he nailed the chains of the puzzle to a table where was a board game on top, Mr. Otogi tries to solve the puzzle but as he tries, the millenium puzzle drags him to some sort of labyrinth, panicking for sensing danger and loses balance, because the only light were candle, some of the candles falls and a fire starts...
Yugi and mr.Otogi can't open the secret door, they're stuck, fire starting on mr.Otogi, Yugi advises him to roll on the floor to help the fire disappear, he was surprised by Yugi's kindness after what he has done to him, they start screaming for help, Yugi's friends arrive and Bakura back to normal plus Ryuji, Honda and Jounouchi are able to break the door and save mr.Otogi, but Yugi insists on saving the puzzle, Jounouchi stays with Yugi to make sure they get out alive, Yugi begins solving the puzzle and in a few minutes he completed and lost consciousness, the fire was starting to surround them, Yugi strongly holding the puzzle, Jounouchi desperate, he heard Dark Yugi's voice and seem to have given idea how to unnail the chains and it works, Jounouchi get out of the fire while holding Yugi to bring themselves back to safety.

(what a big summary...)

Key Points:

I find Yugi choices of dices of type of monsters interesting, the black dice has unknown special kind of monsters and unknown, but the known colors monsters types dices gets me thinking, according to the info about types of monsters each color represent, Yugi choses between Warriors and Spellcasters, if we think about it, that's Yugi's deck tendency as well and few others types, to be honest, I would chose the same ones as Yugi.

 

It's very telling how well Yugi's friends know Yugi, they're very sure he is around, another detail about Jounouchi I like, Jounouchi has a pretty good intuition and they aren't easy to fool when comes to Yugi, Jounouchi and Ryou obviously suspect something is wrong and to the readers about some info on Yugi's habits when comes to his hobbies, from how Jounouchi's claims:

"He'd go without food for a day before he'd give up on a game!"

It got me thinking, it's possible Yugi may have sacrificed his allowances to buy games (I do it often to save money so I can buy video games), he may have done a few times from Jounouchi claim...

I take priority on my lunch if I'm at school or work and save money, it seems Yugi may have a bit of impulsive shopping when comes to games.

Ryou Bakura also has good intuition, he starts getting suspicious of the store and worried, in the panel, he isn't wearing the millenium ring at the same time foreshadowing future events.

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Thoughts&Observations | Mangá Vol.16-17 Part 1 (Dungeon Dice Monsters Part 1)

Duelist Kingdom ended, starts a small arc serving the purpose to introduce a new character, character development for Yugi will keep going, good challenges to test and explore his strength and potential, the same can be said as person as well...
anyway, we're on volume 16 and 17 already, in western prints is Duelist Volume 9 and 10.
There will be three posts about these 2 volumes, just these 2 volumes, there is a lot to write about, Part 1 will be the prologue of Dungeon Dice Monsters, Part 2 will be the game itself and Part 3 will be the Prologue of Battle City, look forward to it, I will keep doing summaries first so I can touch on the details.

Plot Summary:

After Duelist Kingdom, a few weeks has passed, the volume 16/9 starts with Sugoroku sighing, who seems to look distressed about something, Anzu arrives to pick Yugi up, Sugoroku calls Yugi out for Anzu had come to walk him to school, transitioning to Yugi and Dark Yugi, with these weeks and now the spirit and host being able to talk to each other, it happens often Dark Yugi teases Yugi and give him fashion tips, Yugi's mother even has been noticing something, Yugi's reveals to Anzu his new necklace chain representing the bond between Yugi and spirit of the millenium puzzle.
Before Yugi and Anzu go to school, Sugoroku confesses a new game store just opened, close to put Sugoroku game store out of business, the Black Clown, when they're leaving Yugi curious trying to take a look at the display of the new game store, suddenly a clown appears giving children balloons and trying to give one to Anzu and politely refuses, when they leave, the clown and a young boy appears to his side watching Yugi and Anzu leaving, revealing being father and son, who seem to hold a grudge against Yugi and Sugoroku and wants to revenge Sugoroku through Yugi.
The school is about to start and they are possibly on break of a class, there is a new student(the young boy and son of the clown) and is revealed by Honda they moved to 2nd year of High School, the new student seems to be drawing attention to the girls in their class named Ryuji Otogi, Jounouchi gets jealous of him being popular and then Jounouchi starts boasting about his performance in Duelist Kingdom, catching Otogi attention, he challenges Jounouchi to a game, without Jounouchi knowing being a shell game (a rigged game, basically).
Since it were a rigged games, the four aces plus dice and cup, Jounouchi lost all of them, once the deal of the bet was going too far, Dark Yugi interferes, who challenges Otogi to a bit different game from Four Aces, adding the card Joker, in order to make a fair game becoming it a game of sheer luck, Dark Yugi obviously wins, clearing Jounouchi from the deal of the bet.
The Black Clown grand opening day event, there is a lot of crowd, Yugi gets mixed in the crowd being small and pushed and indirectly kidnapped in being unjustly accused of theft, purposely taking away his millenium puzzle and put him in a dark room, technically this was kidnapping, a very planned one, I must say.


Key Points:

 

I love this scene, it doesn't fail me to make me laugh, Dark Yugi teasing Yugi like a sibling usually does, now they're more conscious of one another as an entity of their own, specially Yugi, Dark Yugi is already fully aware he is an entity of his own, the others not fully (Honda, Jounouchi and Bakura will take longer, much longer), Yugi and Anzu are closest to it.

For Yugi talking to Dark Yugi became part of his daily life, as if Dark Yugi being a new member of the family to Yugi (same applies to Sugoroku), this scene reveals Dark Yugi is quite the peachshipper, he knows Yugi has a crush on Anzu to the point of him giving advices, fashion advices (so funny), Dark Yugi also got used to this rather quickly to tease Yugi and calls Yugi not other self but partner, after all all it is 2 entities sharing the same body.

What I find interesting about this bond of host and spirit of the millenium puzzle, what would you see in other mangas, you would see the main character is the host and evil spirit is an antagonist - it's very common, in this series case, Dark Yugi is to protect his host and friends and has good intentions, he is a spirit of someone who is already deceased, they get along very well, they behave like siblings even in appearance they look like siblings (it's so cute and very funny).

About Yugi's family, I don't usually mention it, but since it's the last time we'll see his mother, and didn't wrote before, this is my chance, from the times we have seen his mother in the manga and Sugoroku, give us the assumption Yugi lives only with his mother and grampa, but where is his father?, in this excerpt of an interview Kazuki Takahashi reveals he is working overseas on business, which make us realize, from this information, Yugi's father is almost always absent but in some other info about it that his father sends him gifts sometimes, besides being an only child with an absent father, mother and grandfather (likely on his father side, from the looks of it, because his mother doesn't have tricolered hair, Sugoroku as we know a bit more about him, he shares the same hairstyle and tricolored hair, we can assume is just the spiky tricolored hair is genetic, we can assume Yugi's father has the same hairstyle...), mostly raised by his mother and grandfather, Yugi grows up not having much who he can look up to and see as a role model he can relate to, Dark Yugi takes this role for Yugi.

Dark Yugi only thing he isn't currently aware of is how much Yugi influences him, there is a reason why Dark Yugi penalty games becomes softer, it's not just Dark Yugi, Jounouchi as well (a very big influence on him), Honda, Mai, Mokuba and very very very slowly Kaiba, the ones who are most aware are Jounouchi and Honda as revealed in Death-T and this post.

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Thoughts&Observations | Mangá Vol.12-15 Part 11 (End of Duelist Kingdom)

This is about the aftermath of the duel between Dark Yugi&Yugi VS Pegasus, the ending of this story arc...I'll still go for summary first even without a duel and the details later, I can organize my thoughts on the details better...(I think the previous post was a little sloppy).


Update (25/09/2018): I have finished all Duelist Kingdom Arc updates now, 😌, it kinda took me one day...the early volumes gonna take awhile to update because there will be more changes, but not too much since the main story is on it's early stages...



Plot Summary

The last duel of Duelist Kingdom ended, Pegasus releases Kaiba brothers and Yugi's grampa souls, they start to get Yugi's prize ready, Dark Yugi starts asking how much he knows about the millenium items, Pegasus gives a reveals and begins to tell his backstory...
 It all started when he met his lover when they were young blossomed into romantic love, Cyndia died at 17 years, Pegasus haven't gotten through her death, he tried to search to overcame it in Egypt, entering a village of grave robbers where he meets a thief trying to steal the Millenium Ring, it was caught by some other men, Pegasus meets Shadi for the first time, Shadi guessed right about Pegasus's loss, Pegasus shocked by his knowledge, he follows him in secret, inside a normal home of the village, and there was an underground temple, they tested the millenium ring on the thief, he died...the men and Shadi were discussing mysterious matters about millenium items chosen bearers, then they caught Pegasus watching them, so they tested the Millenium Eye on him, he saw the spirit of Cyndia, but couldn't reach her since she was dead and he was still a mortal, end of Pegasus's backstory.
Dark Yugi reflects on the new information, his friends discuss about Pegasus, Mokuba awakes and they reveal to him Kaiba is on the island, Mr.Crocket arrives to give the prize money and Kaiba's duel disk while revealing the reason why Pegasus wanted Kaiba Corp, after they search for Kaiba in the castle and when they're about to try out outside, Kaiba appears, the Kaiba brothers have their brotherly moment, no boats for the gang to leave, Kaiba brothers let the gang and Mai in the helicopter to be even on debt for saving them and the Kaiba Corp, the story arc of Duelist Kingdom ends.



Key Points:

  

Pegasus as a villain can keep his promise, what we usually see most of the time in villains, they don't keep their promise or honour their promise, Pegasus has enough character to do this much, let's picture if was Bandit Keith, he wouldn't keep it, there is characters who wouldn't, Insector Haga, Player killers, despite Pegasus was a coward and cheater (sorry, no mercy), yet he followed his promise to Yugi, he has some calibre to a degree, I'll give him that, but comes from a bit of a cliché source, it will be discussed later in this post.



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