"Any card—so long as it exists—has a power that is needed."
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Joey is one of the biggest badasses and you cannot convince me otherwise. Also him using his promises to Yugi as a way to fight back. Fighting for his best bud in the universe. Poetic cinema right here. I love it.
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Today’s Card Is: Nirvana High Paladin
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Now this is a real paradox.
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Jack throwing all the spoilers at Paradox. There’s a very nice throwback all the way from episode 2 of 5D’s here. Jack saying you can’t win just with monsters is exactly the advice he gave to Yusei back then.
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You can really see the timeline split since Paradox has obviously never faced Cyber Dragon Infinity. Ryo’s still in his super edge phase, so it only makes sense he’d be leading the charge. Duel Links has avoided GX S4 outside of some minor references. I always assumed Paradox stole Cyber End from Sho, but I wouldn’t put it past him to snatch it from an invalid Ryo.
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I'm sorry but WHAT is happening in Duel Links??
*CRACKS KNUCKLES* ALRIGHT im certain other people could explain this better than I could (bark at me if any of this is wrong,) but, an attempt at a quick rough tl;dr of it:
so like. an important thing to note with DL is that like….. the in-universe explanation for Duel Links is that it’s one of Seto Kaiba’s new VR New Evolution of Dueling Ego Projects, which like, ok sure, he Makes Those, but what’s a little alarming with this one is that technically (almost) none of the characters In The Game are actually Those Characters Specifically, they’re AI recreations of them with their original self’s memories (that’s already a lot, right out the gate.) (I say “almost” everyone because I think it’s implied DSOD Kaiba and maybe Mokuba actually Are them because it’s Their Game and they’re always product testing it, there might be others though)
anyway another thing with this situation is that, uh, Most Characters in Duel Links Do Not Know They’re AI. They just assume they’re the original guy, that’s just them! Hanging out in this cool new Duel VR! But then sometimes you DO get characters who actively are aware that they’re just code in a video game (Yami Bakura and Bruno 5D’s both comment on it), so you have this really interesting ecosystem of duelists who Are aware they don’t really exist, and duelists who are None the Wiser. absolutely batshit.
and sure this is all well and fine with like, DM and maybe GX characters, ok sure it makes sense Kaiba would be recreating notable duelists of that era, but i cannot stress enough He Is Also Making AI Recreations of Dead People. DL very much takes place post-manga, post-DSOD. But Yami Yugi is There. Yami Bakura and Yami Marik are Very There. Manga Pegasus is there. Seto “I Will Never Learn to Come to Terms With Grief” Kaiba is actively raising the dead in his little VR card game simulator so they can live forever and there’s a 50/50 chance they’ll be FULLY AWARE that they died. JESUS.
There’s also the hulking elephant in the room of Duel Links Has Been Including Characters From Series Kaiba Has Nothing to Do With For Quite Some Time Now–and a lot of those characters are like HEY. WHERE THE FUCK ARE WE. like I SWEAR someone from either Zexal or Arv-C was actively like “hi what the hell is KaibaCorp” so like…Kaiba’s branding is ALL OVER THE VR WORLD EVEN IN THE WORLD’S HE DIDNT EXIST IN. It’s painting this absolute off the rails picture of Seto Kaiba trying to create this virtual multiverse of The Best Duelists From Every Timeline Living or Dead, and half the guys he’s pulling in at this point are like *spawns into a perfect recreation of their hometown with no real idea of who did this* “what in the goddamn.”
like guys from zexal/arc-v are actively IN GAME like trying to figure out why this VR world exists and who created it. It’s absolutely wild and fascinating to watch. excited to see what happens when they add VRAINS world next month?!?!? idk anything about VRAINS really but it’s probably going to make the DL lore even more bananas.
ANYWAY. ALL OF THAT SAID. NOW WE HAVE MAXIMILLION PEGASUS DROPPING IN-GAME OMINOUS SENTIMENTS it’s kind of a culminations of all of the aforementioned shit. Duel Links Pegasus (an AI recreation of manga!Pegasus, who is fully aware A.) that’s he’s dead and B.) that there’s multiple worlds and timelines crammed into this Virtual Reality) has a conversation with Paradox (an AI recreation of Paradox the Bonds Beyond Time Yugioh Movie Bad Guy, who, for all intents and purposes, fully believes he’s the real dude and he wants to kill-die-explode-murder Pegasus SO BAD) breaking down that “hey, this place unites different histories, and if you kill me duel monsters won’t cease to exist. Anyway, I’m not real! Ohoho! This world holds threads of tragedy, Paradox-boy!” <– (not verbatim. but i wish it was.) Meanwhile Paradox is having a sputtering breakdown right next to him. This is a video game to play yugioh the trading card game.
like. it’s just absolutely wild. konami could have just said “hey heres yugioh characters from every series. whatever” but no instead they threw in a bunch of mild psychological horror and inter-series friction and existentialism and it’s a freemium video game that i have 600+ hours on on steam. yugioh duel links !
here is trey yugioh zexal questioning what kaibacorp is btw. just to confirm that Yes thats a thing
YES YES YES YES THANK YOU DOE!!! DUEL LINKS SCREENSHOTS THAT HIT DIFFERENT
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The start of Paradox’s event proper repeats his last roaming event. It also shows Judai’s standoff against Paradox from the movie. Again, still not in Venice, but the spirit is the same.
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Today’s anime cat of the day is:
Amazoness Pet Liger from Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V!
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Yusei looking ahead to the final arc, remembering how much grief it gave him last time. Mildly funny, since dub watchers’ll have no clue why he’s worried.
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Onto GX! We never did get to see Paradox stealing the other monsters, so it seems that he used the same method as with Yusei.
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The queen of Ritual Monsters herself, Cyber Angel Benten is here to stay on the limited list a solid decade after her debut.
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Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters GX Episodes 80 & 81 Subbed (Finalized)
(Previously: Episodes 77-79 Subbed [Finalized])
(Check out my Subbed!GX Stream Masterpost!)
A beautiful transfer student named Alice has appeared at the Red dorm. Kenzan goes crazy about Alice, but a doubtful Misawa comes to know of a puzzling rare card with the same name.* That night, Judai finds out that Alice immensely detests duelists and is trying to capture Kenzan, leading Judai to duel Alice. Alice summons zero-ATK doll parts one after another before summoning Doll Chimera, a doll that they haphazardly combine into. With each attack Doll Chimera takes, its parts increase and its ATK steadily rises…
*This part seems to reference the bit from the end of 79 of Misawa researching the Alice in Despairland card–since this was included in one of these episode spoilers from the time, it looks like it really was cut from the episode more last-minute.
Kanda the Quiz King, who has secretly fallen in love with Asuka, happens to find Asuka arguing with Judai and challenges him to a duel. Kanda uses a Quiz deck based around activating the Quiz Hour Permanent Magic. Once he does, he becomes cheery, as if his personality changed, and with each of Judai’s attacks, he presents him with a challenge as a quiz-show host would. Judai clears the test-of-strength tasks, but gets the dueling-knowledge challenges completely wrong, causing his LP to fall…
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Episodes 80 and 81 are now finalized! Two episodes more on the breather side after our Field Trip of Hell, as Judai and co get back to Duel Academia and run into a Duel Spirit from Wonderl–I mean, Despairland, whose card was mistreated and made it want revenge. I do wonder if there would’ve been more nightmare fuel with the shot that was shown in 79′s TV airing that went unused in this episode, but Doll Chimera is plenty creepy on its own too. 81′s a favorite since the premise of Kanda’s deck is really unique, and I always did wish they’d print his cards, lol. It’s also interesting because Kanda’s shy love for Asuka and the way he’s all “If you don’t stop this I’ll have to duel you” to Judai, as I mentioned before, is likely inspired by the Densha Otoko/”Train Man” story, down to the forum posts as he asks for love advice. It was also nice to hear some OST we haven’t heard since Season 1, and Burstlady’s summon animation in this episode is one of my favorites, making her look pretty cool, lol.
Part of the delay here was handling a fair amount of card/animation fixes and translation edits (for 81) between both episodes, including a few big card ones for episode 80; more details below the cut, for the interested. :)
Enjoy, folks! These should be up on NAC in a day or two. Next time, we’ll be tackling episodes 82 and 83–Misawa wanting to join the Society of Light(?!) and the return of one interesting Principal–so stay tuned for those! Once those are done, we’ll be hitting the GeneX arc of Season 2, which I’m looking forward to revisiting.
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AND THEN YUGE PLAYED THIS CARD CALLED POT OF GREED, AND I WAS LIKE, “POT OF GREED? WHAT DOES IT DO?” AND HE SAID, “IT LETS YOU DRAW TWO CARDS!” DID YOU KNOW THAT, KAIBA? AND THEN-
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“People die if they are killed… ”
