"Any card—so long as it exists—has a power that is needed."

The One Where Fubuki’s That Kind of Character

A Cosplay Duel Tournament is happening at the Academy Festival. Asuka dresses up as the Harpie Lady, while Manjoume goes as XYZ-Dragon, but stepping up to duel Judai is a mysterious girl dressed up as Black Magician Girl.  Judai duels this BlaMagi Girl, and he’s cornered as she summons Magician’s Valkyria and BlaMagi Girl herself from her cutesy and surprisingly powerful deck.  The Academia supposedly lacks girls with her abilities, but…

Finally finished! Apologies for the delay, but here’s finalized!42! A fun little episode before we get to the heart of the Seven Stars arc, and one of my favorites.  Also features the first [and only? D:] use of Elemental Hero Steam Healer, as well as Magician’s Valkyria post-Pyramid of Light; it was a neat combo by BMG to use Fire Sorcerer and lead into Dimension Fusion.

The main delay with the episode was the translations/fixes worked on this go-around; being used to 37-41 having at most 10 fixes between them kinda spoiled me, haha.  The bulk of them are hardsub-only translations, with a few ranging from restoring a missing mouth to fixing Judai’s hair in a Quality shot.  List below the cut, as usual, but I did whip up this little video rundown if you’d like to see it that way!

Enjoy, folks! With this done, I think I’ll run in and get 43 done next to make up for the delay, with 5D’s dub-uncut!21 happening after.  I know there’s one shot of Judai I’ll have to fix his hair in, but there probably won’t be too much there.

Fixes/Translations!

1. (T) As Shou runs to set up the duel arena before he trips over the paint buckets, Hayato’s painting the Cosplay Duel Tournament poster; I translated the visible text bubble on it in Photoshop, then masked in Hayato’s brush and paint over it in Sony Vegas.
2. (T) Did this one for 42′s preview while preparing 41, but I stitched up the panning shot of the poster as Shou marvels at it to translate the whole thing, then repanned it into the video in Vegas, masking in Hayato and Shou’s heads over it.
3. (T) The poster again–as Shou runs back to the… dirt or whatever he’s arena-drafting with and throws dirt into the air, I translated the poster in Photoshop again (matched for perspective this time, and editing the smoke in over the text as it creeps in), then threw the frames into Vegas.
4. (T) When Shou comments on Manjoume luring Pharaoh out and Judai gets his attention, we transition to the completed poster; I translated the top “Only at Red” part shown, then threw it into Vegas while masking in the transition over it.
5. (T) For the shot where Shou looks over the poster before turning to ask Asuka about being BMG, I stitched the pan up again then edited it in Photoshop, then reworked the pan into the video in Vegas, masking in Shou’s hair and body while still and as he moved. (Last poster one!)
6. (F) As Judai gets in his first draw during the duel, we lost his mouth in one frame just as he reels his arm back with his drawn card; this was the easiest fix, as I just masked in his mouth from the frame before in Vegas.
7. (F) As BlaMagi Girl gets the crowd pumped before she uses Fire Sorcerer’s effect, she’s sporting her Fire Sorcerer face-down on her Disk; at this point, Judai had already flipped it thanks to his attack with Steam Healer.  I just made a Fire Sorcerer proxy in Photoshop and covered up the face-down card with it in AfterEffects!
8. (T) One of many for this one; after BlaMagi Girl hits Judai with her Valkyrias’ Double Magic Illusion attack, the crowd cheers, and one notable guest in this crowd is one Professor Chronos! He appears sporting a headband that reads “BMG 命”, which could translate as “BMG Fate” or–the one I thought was fitting–”BMG Life” (think #BMGlyfe lol).  Something you’d wear if you happen to love BMG, right? So I thought I’d translate the kanji with a heart.  I blanked it out in Photoshop (as this was a whooshing foreground shot, it involved editing multiple frames to match the coloring of the whoosh in that spot), then placed a heart shape layer next to the “BMG” and duplicated the layer of cover-up whoosh coloring to place it above the heart with 20% opaqueness to replicate the foreground whoosh. (Worth noting: the dub has him wearing a blank headband because of course)
9. (F) This was a first for me, tbh, and I think it came out well! Just after Judai brings out Flame Wingman and we transition to BlaMagi’s turn, there’s a panning shot of the field towards her–with the highlights in Judai’s hair missing early into it.  I’d actually edited the second instance of this in #10 below first before catching that it came earlier too (yay recycled animation), so I just had to take one of the frames I edited and move it into place across a few keyframes in Vegas.  I used the Pen tool in Photoshop to trace out the edges of Judai’s highlights and fill it in, using another shot as reference for the color, then gave it a slight blur and added some noise so it meshed well.
10. (F) Repeat of #9 here, though again, I first edited this instance lol.  This time, it’s after BMG reassures the crowd and they get on Judai’s case again; the above pan is recycled and takes us back to Judai, who reacts to the crowd and gets a bit intimidated (rightly so).  Same process mentioned in #9, except I did try to get as many reference shots as I could in the episode to match the highlights as he turns his head.
11. (T) Repeat of #8 as Shou gets the crowd to cheer BMG on just before her next turn; worth noting, as I did here, that Chronos was just shown without the headband a few seconds before this, and now every shot he’s in from here on out will show him with the headband.  Either a gag, or something I could’ve tackled but thought it’d be too much lol.
    
12. (T/F) As Shou gets the crowd to count down BMG’s attack with a powered-up Black Magician Girl, Chronos shows up again–now wearing the headband as I mentioned in #11–in a split-screen, so that was translated accordingly.  But then, as Manjoume joins the split-screen and it then splits, Manjoume’s half starts moving out a second before Chronos’s does; simply fixed by masking in Chronos’s half (moved a couple pixels over) over a still of the students now behind the split-screen for a frame in Vegas.
    
13. (F) After Judai plays Staunch Defender and then moves to play Hero Barrier to stave off BMG’s attack, for three frames as he turns his Duel Disk while activating it, what looks like Flame Wingman’s card is suddenly hovering in the air before rejoining his Disk a frame later… This is something I usually see on the dub side of things, lol.  I took the three frames and painted some sky over the card in Photoshop, then just threw them into Vegas.
14. (T) As the crowd protests Judai using Staunch Defender to force BMG into battle, Chronos sports his headband; same process as #8 above.
15. (T) As the crowd then gets hit with the realization that Flame Wingman’s effect has doomed her, one last headband translation for the road~