This duel sort of made me cry for Ed because he’s speaking from experience. His foster father did the same to him, pretended to love him and manipulate his feelings yet only used Ed to hide his secret that he murdered Ed’s biological father for a card that could give him power. He doesn’t want Echo to fall prey to such manipulation like he did.
Ryou’s like “I can’t believe Judai fell even further into darkness than me!”
But Ed is really smart, he’s the first to have figured out that someone had the Brron and the others to set Judai up to this so he’d purposely become an evil overlord. And I bet we can all guess who that someone is.
I always loved Ed and Saiou’s relationship when they first met. Saiou just shows up at Ed’s father’s funeral and claims destiny guided him to meet Ed, something that he was already connected to through the D-Heroes that his father left him. They are complete strangers to each other, yet Saiou shows compassion and kindness, being there for Ed in his time of need.