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A review by millennial_dandy
Yu-Gi-Oh! Vol. 6: Monster Fight! by Kazuki Takahashi
4.0
3.5
"The bomber challenged us to a card game!! Who's a good card player? Is there a gamer here?"p.58
In Volume 6, fresh off of the completion of the 'Death-T' arc, we return to normal for a little while. Or, at least, as normal as things ever get for our heroes.
We're back to the 'villain of the week' stories each centered around a different game that 'dark Yugi' has to win in order to save the lives and limbs of Yugi and co.
By far the most absurd and therefore also one of the most iconic is a chapter where we learn of a gang that beats people up with yo-yos. But wait! This gang is under the control of the leader of Joey/Jonouchi's old gang! Despite having the least menacing premise (yo-yos? We're supposed to find yo-yos threatening?! Like, sure, you could knock someone's teeth out with one and possibly give them a concussion, but it still just seems so absurd), this chapter is the most rooted in reality, and even Dark Yugi doesn't feel much of an urge to use magic, much less a penalty game, to get himself and Joey/Jonouchi out of trouble.
The other notorious episode from this volume is the one where Yugi and Téa/Anzu go on a date to an amusement park and we get this incredibly cursed image of Yugi staring sidelong at Téa/Anzu in a bikini:
Now, as much as this entire sequence ostensibly only exists as fan service, I posit that this, and other such moments, actually make manga Yugi feel like more of a real person than anime Yugi does. Anime Yugi already doesn't get that much to do, and when he's on screen he's often either dishing exposition or being your stock 'naive nice boy'. At least by seeing him ogle Téa/Anzu we know there's something going on up there. Could have been literally anything else, but this is what we got, so we're stuck with it.
Similarly, we get a little bit more Téa/Anzu characterization. When a terrorist announces he's placed a bomb somewhere in the park and will blow it up unless he's defeated in a twisted game of Solitaire, Téa sees this as an opportunity to draw out Dark Yugi, who she's decided she's got the hots for, and she runs off to put herself purposefully in harm's way so that he'll be forced to save her. -- Hey, I didn't say the characterization made her look better .
Finally, in the last chapter, we get introduced to transfer student Ryou Bakura who is immediately established as canonically very hot since he is instantly graced with a legion of fan girlies who tell us so.
But our boy Ryou is a teensy bit mysterious because even though he gets along well with Yugi and co., he won't agree to play games with them even though he would clearly really like to, and there's an intriguing little tidbit about how his transfer to their school had something to do with a game gone wrong. We'll find out exactly what that means in short order --but not in this volume.
At the very end, our heroes invite themselves over to Ryou's apartment to wrestle him into submission i.e. play an RPG with them, and we finally get Dark Bakura on-screen for the first time after a tantalizing little bit of background about the Millennium Ring.
Interesting bit of lore: it's not until realizing that his current host (Ryou) knows the holder of the Millennium Puzzle that he decides to make the arrangement permanent and we get the grotesque image of him embedding the Ring into Ryou's chest. This is also where it's established just how different Ryou's relationship to the Ancient Egyptian Spirit inhabiting his body is when compared to Yugi's. While at this point Yugi hasn't gotten to officially 'meet' Dark Yugi, he at least seems to understand that whatever that's all about, the spirit of the puzzle is there to protect him and those he loves. Ryou on the other hand, not only seems horrified to discover he's been sharing his body with a ghost, but gets forcibly shoved aside and controlled by that ghost, who is not at all concerned with its host's well-being.
At the very, very end, we begin the 'should really have been in the DM anime because it would have been cool and also established the plot better' Monster World arc.
"The bomber challenged us to a card game!! Who's a good card player? Is there a gamer here?"p.58
In Volume 6, fresh off of the completion of the 'Death-T' arc, we return to normal for a little while. Or, at least, as normal as things ever get for our heroes.
We're back to the 'villain of the week' stories each centered around a different game that 'dark Yugi' has to win in order to save the lives and limbs of Yugi and co.
By far the most absurd and therefore also one of the most iconic is a chapter where we learn of a gang that beats people up with yo-yos. But wait! This gang is under the control of the leader of Joey/Jonouchi's old gang! Despite having the least menacing premise (yo-yos? We're supposed to find yo-yos threatening?! Like, sure, you could knock someone's teeth out with one and possibly give them a concussion, but it still just seems so absurd), this chapter is the most rooted in reality, and even Dark Yugi doesn't feel much of an urge to use magic, much less a penalty game, to get himself and Joey/Jonouchi out of trouble.
The other notorious episode from this volume is the one where Yugi and Téa/Anzu go on a date to an amusement park and we get this incredibly cursed image of Yugi staring sidelong at Téa/Anzu in a bikini:
Now, as much as this entire sequence ostensibly only exists as fan service, I posit that this, and other such moments, actually make manga Yugi feel like more of a real person than anime Yugi does. Anime Yugi already doesn't get that much to do, and when he's on screen he's often either dishing exposition or being your stock 'naive nice boy'. At least by seeing him ogle Téa/Anzu we know there's something going on up there. Could have been literally anything else, but this is what we got, so we're stuck with it.
Similarly, we get a little bit more Téa/Anzu characterization. When a terrorist announces he's placed a bomb somewhere in the park and will blow it up unless he's defeated in a twisted game of Solitaire, Téa sees this as an opportunity to draw out Dark Yugi, who she's decided she's got the hots for, and she runs off to put herself purposefully in harm's way so that he'll be forced to save her. -- Hey, I didn't say the characterization made her look better .
Finally, in the last chapter, we get introduced to transfer student Ryou Bakura who is immediately established as canonically very hot since he is instantly graced with a legion of fan girlies who tell us so.
But our boy Ryou is a teensy bit mysterious because even though he gets along well with Yugi and co., he won't agree to play games with them even though he would clearly really like to, and there's an intriguing little tidbit about how his transfer to their school had something to do with a game gone wrong. We'll find out exactly what that means in short order --but not in this volume.
At the very end, our heroes invite themselves over to Ryou's apartment to wrestle him into submission i.e. play an RPG with them, and we finally get Dark Bakura on-screen for the first time after a tantalizing little bit of background about the Millennium Ring.
Interesting bit of lore: it's not until realizing that his current host (Ryou) knows the holder of the Millennium Puzzle that he decides to make the arrangement permanent and we get the grotesque image of him embedding the Ring into Ryou's chest. This is also where it's established just how different Ryou's relationship to the Ancient Egyptian Spirit inhabiting his body is when compared to Yugi's. While at this point Yugi hasn't gotten to officially 'meet' Dark Yugi, he at least seems to understand that whatever that's all about, the spirit of the puzzle is there to protect him and those he loves. Ryou on the other hand, not only seems horrified to discover he's been sharing his body with a ghost, but gets forcibly shoved aside and controlled by that ghost, who is not at all concerned with its host's well-being.
At the very, very end, we begin the 'should really have been in the DM anime because it would have been cool and also established the plot better' Monster World arc.