millennial_dandy's reviews
339 reviews

<b>3.75 rounded up to 4</b>
<B>~List of full contents below~</B> 
<center><i>"Believe in what you believe enough to change yourself."</i> (p.228, from 'Ibrahim Something' by Lee Kok Liang) </center>

Short story collections tend to fall into the trap of leaving a reader feeling somewhat neutral just by the very nature of the genre. Unless the theme of the collection has completely missed the mark, I tend to find the ones I pick up to comprise of a few highs and a lot of fine but forgettable stories. 

This collection, 'Twenty-Two Malaysian Stories', has the added layer of including 13 different writers so as to act as a survey of Malaysian authors writing in English at the period of its publication (the late 1960s). This makes it even more unlikely for every story to be a hit. 

That being said, the editor, Lloyd Fernando, did an excellent job putting this collection together. The authors come from a range of backgrounds (men and women from all over the country, from different lines of work, some have poetry backgrounds, some have a long writing career, some are newer), and have very different points of few, but the wistful melancholy of the Malaysian zeitgeist of the 1960s ties everything together. 

As a survey of Malaysian writers, this collection is supremely successful at introducing talented writers to an audience who otherwise might not know where to begin in searching out Malaysian authors. And even if no one author stood out enough to a reader to make them search out their other work, such a reader would still come away, as I did, with a very clear idea of what Malaysia was like at the time, how culture there was evolving, and within what context that evolution and the anxieties and turmolt that come with it existed. 

I was delighted that the writer I connected with the most, Lee Kok Liang, was given the most space in the collection. From his first story, 'Return to Malaya' I was completely absorbed in his point of view, and the tactile nature of his writing style sucked me in every time. They seem to be rather hard to find here in the west, but I'm determined to get my hands on a copy of one of his novels or short story collections because I want more of that. 

Other standouts for me were 'Everything's Arranged' by Siew Yue Killingley and 'Accident' by Maureen Ten. 

<b>Table of Contents</B>
<b>1.</b> Lee Kok Liang: 'Return to Malaya', 'It's All in a Dream', 'When the Saints Go Marching', 'Just a Girl', 'Birthday', 'The Glittering Game', 'Ibrahim Something' 
 <b>2.</b> Kassim Ahmad: 'A Common Story'
<b>3.</b> Siew Yue Killingley: 'A Question of Dowry', 'Everything's Arranged'
<b>4.</b> Yap Kok Keong: 'A Family Quarrel' 
<b>5.</b>Lim Beng Hap: 'Tricked Again', 'Poonek' 
<b>6.</b>S. Kon: 'Inheritance', 'Mushroom Harvest' (this is the only sci-fi/dystopian story)
<b>7.</b>Shirley Lim: 'Journey'
<b>8.</b> Awang Kedua: 'A New Sensation' 
<b>9.</b>Chua Cheng Lok: 'Down by the Sea' 
<b>10.</b>Goh Poh Seng: 'The Temple Bells' 
<b>11.</b>Mary Frances Chong: 'The Jade Bracelet' 
<b>12.</b>John Machado: 'Passing Through'
<b>13.</b> Maureen Ten: 'Accident'

<i>"Ha Ha Ha! My brother and I are flying out of here in our private helicopter! Too bad <b>you</b> don't have one...losers!"</i> 

Finally, we have arrived at the end of the Duelist Kingdom arc: the match between Yami Yugi and Pegasus. 

One of the things I really think the anime adaptation failed to get right was the balance between goofy and sinister that made Pegasus such a good villain in the manga. Like, yes, he's super charismatic, but he's also incredibly intimidating and ruthless, and the stakes of this duel are incredibly high. Excellent set-up for a finale. 

Yes, the 'Pegasus can use the Millennium Eye to read his opponent’s mind' bit is a little repetitive at this point, but at least the payoff of Yami Yugi/Yugi figuring out how to get around it is satisfying since it relies on the unique property of their two minds in one shared body. That being said, all the magic shenanigans mean that this duel isn't really about strategy in the same way many of the other duels have been, so to keep it interesting, we need some good visuals, some banter, and we do get that. 

That being said, the emotional climax of the arc really is the Yami-Yugi/Kaiba re-match, so everything after that, including this duel, feels like falling action leading to the resolution of Pegasus's defeat. And even that defeat feels limp given that the second he loses, Pegasus just kind of slumps in his chair and sighs and says: "My men will get your prize ready, don't worry." And then we immediately go into the exposition of Pegasus's motivation for throwing the tournament. 

We are reminded that the entire thing was really about Pegasus gaining control of Kaiba Corporation, and it's finally revealed that the reason this was something he wanted to do badly enough to go to all this trouble is because he wanted to be able to combine the power of the Millennium Eye with Kaiba's Solid Vision technology to create a life-like hologram of his dead girlfriend/fiancée, Cyndia. 

Ok, great, I can get behind this as a motivation. Not sure what is added by getting this reveal at the end rather than up front, but sure. He goes on to quasi wave away his own incredibly villainous and sadistic behaviour by blaming the 'evil intelligence' possessed by the Millennium items.

Yeah, no, I'm not buying it. 

But Yami Yugi is more interested in hearing about the Millennium Items than pointing out the lameness of this excuse, so Pegasus explains how he came to have the Millennium Eye, which involved a trip he took to Egypt, where he met Shadi, and then is ultimately 'tested' and chosen to wield the Millennium Eye. 

And that's basically that on that. 

Bakura summarizes the collective feeling they all ultimately have about this little adventure by saying: <i>"Pegasus is unforgiveable...But I feel sorry for him because of how he got the Millennium Eye." </i>

Well, <i>I</i> don't, but I suppose no one asked me... 

Finally, everyone whose soul was captured by Pegasus is restored, and we get a very sweet reunion between Kaiba and Mokuba, cementing their storyline as the true emotional core of the arc. Yami Yugi comments that Mokuba was the final piece Kaiba needed to complete the "puzzle of his heart" that served as his penalty game after losing to Yami Yugi at the end of 'Death-T'. 

But we abruptly cut away from this for one page to show that while everyone else gathered outside the castle, Yami Bakura stayed behind and forcibly and grotesquely removed Pegasus's Millennium Eye, saying <i>"two down...five to go"</i> -- a sort of reminder that there is a bigger over-arching plot going on in the background that we still don't completely understand. 

Is Pegasus dead as a result of this? I think that's kind of the implication, but it's not clear. 

But who cares, really? We're back with the gang outside, and Mokuba has offered everyone a ride back home in his and Kaiba's helicopter. Kaiba grudgingly agrees, saying that makes them even after Yami Yugi saved Mokuba, but declaring their battle isn't over yet, and that the next time he'll beat Yami Yugi in a 'true' duel. 

And that's how we leave things until the story picks back up in Volume 9.  

Compared with the original, pre-Duel Monsters-centric arcs, Duelist Kingdom is definitely more cohesive, but I do kind of miss how unhinged 'Season Zero' could be. However, in terms of storytelling, this arc is definitely stronger, and really hits its stride with Battle City, so I'm looking forward to it!

<i>"Yugi...There are two ways of losing! A loss where everything truly ends...and a loss which is just a step on the road to victory. I <b>will</b> become stronger from this loss!"</i> 

Duelist, Vol.7 is comprised wholly of the Duelist Kingdom semi-finals: Yugi vs. Mai and Joey/Jounouchi vs. Bandit Keith. 

Needless to say, Yugi's duel against Mai is infinitely more interesting than Joey/Jounouchi's duel against Bandit Keith. 

In the match between Mai and Yugi, we get to see Mai really shine both as a duelist and as a character.  Yugi allows Yami Yugi to take over and duel, but Yami is in large part distracted by Pegasus and unable to concentrate. Even though this results in Mai taking a strong lead, she's frustrated by the fact that her opponent is barely paying attention. She accuses him of being too arrogant to pay attention to the opponent in front of him; too certain of his own victory to pay her any mind. 

Ultimately, she realizes that part of Yami/Yugi's hang-up are the feelings of doubt that still linger after being defeated by Kaiba in volume 5, and there's a lull in the duel as Mai describes what Duelist Kingdom has taught her about herself, and the lessons she's learned since losing to Joey/Jounouchi. Her main takeaway was that there can be courage in accepting defeat. And that only by accepting losing as an option when you step into the arena can you develop strength as a player. 

This unlocks something in Yami Yugi who, in a moment of introspection, realizes that the reason he was willing to risk Kaiba's life in their duel was because he was afraid to lose, whereas Yugi had the clarity to realize that sometimes losing is better. Great character development moment for both of the Yugis, and the first time we get the acknowledgement that Yugi has a strength that his ostensibly stronger, more talented half still needs to develop. 

It's a bit of an extension of the discussion of winning and losing that we got before, but it's such a central message of the series it's unsurprising Takahashi would really try to hammer it home. If you read the Yu-Gi-Oh! manga, you <i>will</i> walk away understanding that losing does not make you a loser, but sometimes winning does if you don't win in the right way. I've said it before and will say it again: given the target demographic for Yu-Gi-Oh! this is such an important message to convey, and even if it can be on-the-nose and a little bit cheesy, I'm glad this was done in such a methodical and consistent way, and that it's a message the protagonist struggles to embody and take on. 

Anyway, getting back to the dueling, once Mai gives her pick-me-up speech, Yami Yugi is back in it and prepared to put his all into the match. With his full heart in it, he's able to turn the tables and defeat her to earn a place in the finals. 

I still think having her surrender rather than lose outright was an odd choice. It's not <i>inconsistent</i> with the message that winning isn't all-important, but she also could have just lost to Yami Yugi and that still would have come through. 

Finally, Joey/Jounouchi faces off against Bandit Keith in easily the least interesting duel in the entire arc. Not only is it obvious that Joey/Jounouchi is going to win, Keith isn't charismatic enough as a villain to make it fun to read even knowing the outcome. We get a back story about Keith that literally I defy anyone to claim they care about, and on top of that, his deck is also very meh. 

Sure, we get to see how Joey/Jounouchi has grown as a duelist and actually strategize rather than relying on luck, but it's still a very forgettable duel that just serves to kill time before the match between Yami Yugi and Pegasus.

<b>3.5</b>
<i>"A dramatist must have ideas which are fresh without being fantastic; he must be able to touch the sublime yet remain neutral; and he must know the human heart and make it speak."p.103 </i> 

'Candide', having been written by the pen of Voltaire, might seem unapproachable by virtue of its author sounding so intimidating, but it is not. It's quite possible that this translation by John Butt took some liberties with the language to make it less purple; I don't speak French so I have no idea, but regardless of what may or may not have been 'lost' in translation, the humour of it remains intact. 

This isn't a novella particularly concerned with characterization, but with ideas, and with one idea in particular: suffering, and how it proves or disproves Providence (spoilers: Voltaire did not seem to care much for Providence). 

To this end, 'Candide' reads more like a fable, the characters buffeted quickly from place to place and calamity to calamity. The comedy lies largely in the absurd, over-the-top nature of the cascade of tragedies that befall the titular Candide and his friends and the casualness with which they brush them off. When reunited for the first time with his love interest, Candide exclaims: <i>"So you weren't ravished or disembowelled?"</i> to which she replies: <i>"I was indeed, but people don't always die of those mishaps."</i> (p.39) 

The one respite our protagonist recieves from being beaten, threatened with death, cheated, kicked about, and kept away from his beloved is when he and a companion stumble upon Eldorado, where they stay for a time, basking in an unimaginable paradise where the dirt is made of gold and no one ever suffers. But because he yearns more for his beloved than gold and comfort, he leaves (though not without taking with him a vast, vast fortune that he begins to lose or be swindled out of almost immidiately), and nothing good happens to him ever again. 

There's hardly a single page without at least one witty remark worth a sensible chuckle, and for a book of its age (first published in 1759) it's aged surprisingly well. Certainly, there are...<i>incidents</i>, but though there are some decidedly cringe lines from sympathetic characters ("Northern races are not sufficiently warm-blooded; their lust for women does not reach the mania that is so common in Africa" comes to mind) Voltaire remains fairly empathetic to the 'others' that populate the story which give rise to some surprisingly progressive moments. 

While out and about somewhere, Candide comes across a Black slave lying in the road, and when Candide inquires why he's lying there, the man replies: <i>"Those of us who work in the factories and happen to catch a finger in the grindstone have a hand chopped off; if we try to escape, they cut off a leg. Both accidents happened to me. That's the price of your eating sugar in Europe."</i>(p.85-86)

Similarly, though for much of the story the female characters exist as pretty little trinkets for the men to ogle and pass around (including Candide's love interest), one of them is given a true voice when Candide asks a young woman if she is happy being the mistress of a monk. She says: <i>"My innocence would not have saved me if I had not been moderately pretty [...]This is how I have been forced to continue in this detestable way of life, which to you men seems so pleasing, but to us is nothing but a hell of suffering."</i>(p.115) Because this comes so late in the tale, it necessarily reframes all the scenes leading up to it, and I was pleasantly surprised by that level of nuance in a story this old. Well done, Voltaire: the bar was in hell and you successfully jumped over it. 

All in all, this is a fun little story with a central question still so relevant that Lindsay Ellis made a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62cPPSyoQkE">video essay</a> about it that you should really watch if the theme of satirizing suffering is of interest to you. Further viewing, if you will. 

I had no idea what to expect from 'Candide', but it taught me two things: one, if you find the right 18th century texts, they can be not only readable but quite enjoyable, and two, we do not have to give things grace as 'products of their time' -- if freaking Voltaire was out here being woke in the 1750s, everyone after him could have been too.

<b>3.5 rounded up to 4</b>
<i>"It is not my novel but my idea that I stand up for. There is a great deal in my novel that I am dissatisfied with. But then, I am its father." </i>

The above quote, included in the introduction to this edition, is Dostoevsky hitting on the head the main issue that plagues his meandering brick of a novel, The Idiot. 

If you're looking for a streamlined plot, you are barking up the wrong tree. 

In the introduction, it's mentioned that this novel in particular caused Dostoevsky an immense amount of trouble to put together, and states that there were multiple, multiple drafts, and that even by the 'final draft', Dostoevsky called it finished more so to meet the publication deadline than because he was satisfied with the project. 

The issue appears (to me) to have been a desperate desire to convey particular ideas letting the cart go before the horse of the plot. This resulted in gorgeous monologues by various characters punctuating an otherwise uninspired and convoluted story about protagonist Prince Myshkin and the too large group of unpleasant and wretched people he interacts with in Saint Petersburg. 

We do get the typical unhappy ending to be expected from Fedya, but it loses some of its potency due to the novel collapsing under its own length. The stories connected to the characters never quite seem to pull together or overlap in a satisfying way so that the novel feels like a loosely connected series of vignettes awkwardly stitched within each other rather than one cohesive narrative, lessening the impact of every story within a story. 

That being said, when a given character is brought to center stage so to speak, we do get the great characterization typical of Dostoevsky. In 'Candide', Voltaire defines a writer as someone who "must know the human heart and make it speak", something Dostoevsky even at his worst pulls off with stunning accuracy, and 'The Idiot' is no exception. 

Near the beginning of the novel, Prince Myshkin is asked by a young artist what he thinks she should draw next, and he tells her to paint the portrait of a man about to be executed. He then goes on to describe what he himself saw in the face of a man staring down the barrel of a firing squad (a section that must have provided Dostoevsky some catharsis to write given his own intimate knowledge of such an experience). It's haunting, it's vivid, it's visceral, and I immediately went back to read it again. 

Another stand-out section that exists outside of the main plot is a nearly 20 page monologue given by a side character dying of consumption in which he rails about the wretchedness of facing such an agonizing decline and inevitable death at such a young age. Says he to a party of onlookers in scathing rebuke to Prince Myshkin's attempts to console him:
<blockquote>What sort of morality is it that demands not only your life but also the last deathrattle with which you surrender the last atom of your life, listening to the consoling words of the Prince whose Christian arguments are bound to come to the happy conclusion that, as a matter of fact, it is much better that you should die? (Christians like him always come to this conclusion: it's their favorite obsession). [...] Can't I simply be devoured without being expected to praise that which has devoured me? (pgs. 423-425)</blockquote>
This type of roiling bitterness paired with a sort of wistful longing is the thread that ultimately binds everything together, if not always perfectly. 

One of Prince Myshkin's love interests, Aglaya longs for freedom but knows it is out of her reach, and the bitterness of that often gives way to wrath so intense it verges on madness but without ever fully pushing her over the edge. 

Not so lucky is his other love interest, Nastasya Fillipovna, who ultimately sacrifices her sanity in the pursuit of freedom through revenge that hinges on her own self-destruction. 

We see this same roiling bitterness and longing take a different form in the characters of Ganya, who suffers from "a profound and continual realization of his own mediocrity" (p.471) and the General Ivolgin, an alcoholic who tells increasingly extraordinary lies, seemingly because he wishes his life had been more interesting, and then dies after being forced to admit none of it had been true. 

The only person seemingly unaffected by these emotions is Prince Myshkin, the titular 'idiot', and Dostoevsky's stand-in for Christ. The Prince is, to the reader, obviously not an 'idiot', and therein lies the irony of the title: everyone he encounters suffers because they are unable or unwilling to give up their cynicism and adopt Prince Myshkin's compassionate, gentle, and sometimes naively optimistic outlook; they would not have suffered had they been able to see the world as he did, making them the 'idiots' not to see the solution to their unhappiness. 

This being Dostoevsky, much of the tension is the struggle between what he paints as the cynical coldness of atheism and the warmth of Christianity. Unlike in 'Crime and Punishment,' 'The Idiot' felt a lot less black and white, and some of the strongest moments came when a character challenged Prince Myshkin's faith. Even the conclusion is somewhat more ambiguous than I expected of him. Maybe it's because I myself am agnostic, but I did find Prince Myshkin's little sermons (especially towards the end) to be a tad silly and unpersuasive, since their potency hinges on the reader already being on board with the idea of a god, whereas arguments favoring atheism rely on arguments rather than vibes.  

The reading experience of 'The Idiot' was among the most frustrating for me when it comes to his novels because when he simply let his characters speak, I couldn't put the book down, but when he tried to orchestrate soap-opera-worthy interpersonal drama, it was (pardon my French) dull as fuck, and I really couldn't have cared less about the fates of almost anyone. 

This story had no business being this long, and it does make me a tad nervous going into his next (and last) large novels, but when he's good, he's really excellent, so, just as he would have wanted, I'm prepared to suffer but to be happy about it.

<b>3.5</b> 
<i>"There's a girl sitting out there in the kitchen reading a book and crying. Really crying. [...]I says to her: 'What is it, dearie?' and she says: 'The poor man!' And I says: 'What man?' 'Here in the book,' she says."(p.124)</i> 

Being incredibly transparent, I think I would have liked my reading experience a lot better in a different translation. The translation I read was very serviceable, but I get the sense in reading other reviews of this play that it strays pretty far from Gorky's original style. 

That being said, thematically, even in a wonky translation, 'The Lower Depths' has a lot to say, and seems to have stood the test of time on the grounds of both its subject matter and its driving philosophical musing. 

Plot-wise, we're following a short period in the lives of a group of society's outcasts and bear witness to the squalor in which they live and the bleakness of any prospect that things will or even can get better for them. 

Thematically, the central question is the role of hope/optimism in the face of such dire, systemic poverty. Can you escapism your way out of misery? 

In some manner or other, each of the characters explore possible avenues of escape, either literal (as in, impractical dreams of moving to Siberia) or figurative (reading romantic novels). Alcoholics dream of a healthier life of sobriety, and a dying woman wonders whether her impending death is something to dread or celebrate. 

Then arrives Luka, an aging pilgrim who fosters the escapism everyone else is engaging in. He reassures the dying woman, Anna, that the afterlife will be sweet and without suffering, he encourages the alcoholic actor to consider going to a (for all intents and purposes) rehab facility that may or may not exist. 

And with his encouragement of this type of escapism he also brings a call for kindness:
<i>"Somebody has to be kind in this world. You've got to have sympathy for people. Christ loved everybody, and told us to do the same. And I can tell you truly that many a time you can save a person by pitying him."</i> He goes on to tell a story of two thieves he catches trying to break into his home. First, he punishes them by having them beat each other with switches under threat of death. But then he takes pity on them when they beg for food, and the three of them pass a pleasant winter together with the two would-be thieves helping him look after the property. "If I hadn't taken pity on them, now, they might have killed me or done something else just as bad, and that would have meant a trial, and jail, and Siberia. What for? A jail can't teach a person what's right [...] but a man-- he can teach a person what's right, and very easy at that."</i> 

This is where the moral and the philosophy get a bit murky. Because, though Luka is a champion of both hope and compassion, only one of those things could possibly create a material difference in any of these people's lives, and it isn't the one that's internal (hope). But it is complicated. Because what about the case of Anna? No amount of compassion could have prevented her death (though it may have extended her life and the quality of life, which isn't nothing). What, then, was the harm in her comforting fantasies of a perfect afterlife? 

Another character proclaims that the uncomfortable truth is always more valuable than the comforting lie, but in a system where virtually none of these people had the opportunity to raise their quality life in a society with no social safety net, a society not built on compassion, what else did they have but to retreat into fantasy? Is the truth then not an unnecessary cruelty? 

But, then, on the other hand, if a person languors in the comforting lie, in the escapism, then they are unlikely ever to rise up and push for systemic improvement. But, then, on the other, other hand, is it the responsibility of a society's most downtrodden to lift themselves up by means of revolution? 

Gorky leaves us with these and many other questions as the curtain falls on the final act, three of the main characters now dead by accidental killing, by disease, and by suicide. Are they the lucky ones? he invites us to consider. 

The most striking thing about 'The Lower Depths' is how sadly relevant it feels 100 years after its publication. The current addiction and homelessness crises come easily to mind. Refugees have a place in this modern cast. Sex workers, particularly those with identities that intersect with other marginalized identities have their place. 

I look around at my unhoused neighbors, curled up in dirty jackets and blankets under stoops and shop awnings that offer the barest protection from the elements. How can I possibly blame them for choosing the comforting lie over harsh reality when our modern society despises them just as much as Gorky's did? How can I expect a person to give up on whatever form of escapism they have chosen when just as in the case of Gorky's character of Kleshch (the only one to have a job when the play begins), work as it exists below a certain rung of the social ladder doesn't guarantee that you won't end up shoulder to shoulder with a drug addict or alcoholic or consumptive person anyway? 

The bleakness of 'The Lower Depths' is, to me, the rage of Caliban at seeing his own face in the mirror. The question of whether or not the downtrodden (as in, those that are figuratively trodden into the ground by those who make the rules and those who uphold them) should abandon the lies that bring them a spark of comfort or hope is a smokescreen. Why are we focussing on that when the actual solution to abject suffering under poverty is a society operating under a system built on collective compassion rather than punishment and callous individualism?

<i>"I was feeling happy, thinking people might call me a real duelist... But now... If all a real duelist cares about is pride -- I don't want to be like that!!"</i> 

Another A+ entry in the Yu-Gi-Oh! Duelist series. In the first half of the volume, Takahashi slows things down to let the characters get philosophical and actually <i>react</i> to the incredibly intense duel that just happened between Yugi and Kaiba in volume 5. 

This is where we really cement each character's core beliefs that will continue to be built up and/or challenged from this point forward. 

Kaiba sneers at Yugi for having shown him mercy and compassion (even without knowing what Kaiba was fighting for), but Tea isn't having it. She gives a somewhat more convoluted version of her speech from the anime. In the manga, both she and Kaiba use an incoherent metaphor to basically argue about who the real loser of the duel is. Kaiba says that it was Yugi because, objectively, that's true: Yugi lost the duel. Kaiba claims that the outcome of winning or losing is what matters; not how the outcome is arrived at. He also claims that winning is so important that it's something on which you have to be willing to stake your life, or you'll always be a loser.* 

Tea pushes back, arguing that the means are more important than the ends. She says the real loser behavior is valuing your life so little that you're willing to gamble it over something as unimportant as being the best: "<i><b>Real</b> courage is protecting that chip [of life] you have in your hands...no matter what!"</i> And Joey/Jounouchi chimes in that it <i>matters</i> that Kaiba only won the game because Yugi chose mercy over victory. That it <i>matters</i> that Yugi valued Kaiba's life more than Kaiba did himself. 

In other words: in the Yu-Gi-Oh!-verse, being strong is very closely tied to a recognition that we are more than the sum of our victories. 

But Kaiba isn't particularly interested in mulling this over because now that he's fulfilled Pegasus's arbitrary demand that he defeat Yugi before he can face Pegasus in a battle for Mokuba's freedom, he's ready to enter the castle. 

In the anime, what follows is a drawn-out panic response from Yugi over the fact that Yami Yugi's moral compass is dangerously close to Kaiba's, and he's freaking out because of his fear of what could happen if he allowed Yami Yugi to duel again. I think that was far more interesting and internally consistent than the version of this in the manga wherein Yugi hesitates to accept extra starchips from Mai because he's afraid that Kaiba's right about him being a loser who can't succeed without Yami Yugi dueling for him(???) and she's like: "no, don't let your pride get in the way of saving your grandfather and take these chips because I want to pay you back for helping me out earlier." And Yugi's like: "Do you know what? Ok." 

Meh. 

But then we get into the Pegasus-Kaiba duel over Mokuba's soul. And honestly, the manga does such a better job developing Pegasus as a villain, because we really get to see just how much he enjoys pretending that Kaiba ever had a chance to rescue Mokuba, how much he enjoys using the power of the Millennium Eye to humiliate him before finally crushing him in the duel and sealing his soul in a 'soul prison'. Considering all of Pegasus's unhinged, sadistic behaviour in Duelist Kingdom, it was kind of a wild decision to rehabilitate him in Waking the Dragons by framing him as a sympathetic side-character. And then the audacity to gaslight Kaiba when he reminds everyone about said unhinged, sadistic behavior. Blech! No.Justice.For.Pegasus. 

But I digress... 

Despite it being ultimately very one-sided, we get a pretty satisfying duel as Kaiba struggles (unsuccessfully) to beat Pegasus at his own game (literally). We also get a teaser for future Blue Eyes lore when Pegasus comments on Kaiba's love for the dragon.

The rest of the volume comprises of some filler involving Tristan/Honda and Bakura running around the castle in the middle of the night and a conversation between Yugi and his grandfather's soul, still housed within a digital camera (I will say it every time: literally why do this?). Yugi is still grappling with feelings of helplessness after his duel with Kaiba, and it’s implied that this is because he doesn't have it in him to be as ruthless as Yami Yugi and he's concerned that Kaiba was right about ruthlessness being a necessary trait for a strong duelist. 

In a very on-the-nose, but still compelling counter-argument, Grandpa lays out the three types of people upon whom the "God of Duelists never smiles." 

<b>1.Cheaters</b>, who will do anything to win. 
<b>2. Cowards</b>, who fear defeat. 
<b>3. The Arrogant</b>, drowning in their own powers. 

And this is the framework upon which the outcomes of most of the duels in the rest of the series are based. You <i>can't</i> win in any of the aforementioned cases, but, we learn, sometimes it's morally correct to lose because your humanity and capacity for compassion are always more important than victory. 

I like it; I think we get some good discourse out of this moral underpinning. 

So, we end the volume with Grandpa reassuring Yugi that his empathetic notion of justice is a necessary counterweight to Yami Yugi’s arrogance and Machiavellianism. 

Let's see how it plays out in Yugi's duel against Mai in Volume 7...


<b>*</b> I do want to point out the plot hole in the logic here created by the fact that Yami Yugi staked his life in the shadow game vs. Shadi in volume 3 to protect an illusion of Joey/Jonouchi. In the sense that, what was the actual difference, considering that Kaiba actually stakes his life here in order to try and save Mokuba? So what exactly what Kaiba being punished for? I think it just got a lil convoluted because of two dueling (forgive me a small pun here) plot threads. Plot thread 1 being: Kaiba needs to defeat Yugi to get one step closer to rescuing Mokuba. To do so, he threatens to off himself if Yugi doesn't throw the match (which, under these exact extreme circumstances is... understandable? Maybe even reasonable?) And then plot thread 2 being: we need to establish that Yugi is a better person than Kaiba because Kaiba values winning over compassion (which is true, but not directly relevant in this duel).

'Why Nations Fail' is the first book I've DNF'd in a very long time. And it's not because I think it's twaddle with nothing to say, but in large part because the authors prattle on in an incredibly repetitive way to the tune of over 400 pages when with a better editor, fully half of that page count would have sufficed. I made it through 210/460 plus I skimmed some of their 'conclusion' and 'summing up' at the end, so I swear I gave it the good college try

'Oppressive governments that allow oppressive economic systems' is the answer they propose to the question in the title. This is revealed pretty much right up front, and so the vast, vast majority of the book is devoted to first disproving that failed nations stem fundamentally from any other factors (e.g. geography or culture) and then citing dozens of examples of economies that have risen and fallen as they ride waves of oppression and market capitalism. 

Fine, cool. And they have won a Nobel prize in economics, so to claim they have nothing of value to add would be a bit silly, but even their contemporaries -- other experts in the field-- have raised criticisms that mirror some of the issues I had with the book too. 

A big critique was of the 'source: trust me, bro' approach to questions of why China's economy is doing so well despite being, even by their own definition, extractive and oppressive. Another is the fact that they glaze over big swathes of history in a way that feels dishonest. They discuss how the monarchies in South American empires fell after hundreds of years of endurance as though to say: 'see: it wasn't sustainable.' But then, even in the skimming of the final chapters of the book I did, they don't appear to hold modern countries they deem economic successes up to the same scrutiny. Like, why are they so confident that after 700+ years a 'healthy' capitalistic nation wouldn't fall? Again: 'source: trust me, bro.' 

Their unwillingness to engage in any meaningful criticism of countries like the United States, to me, made their argument much weaker. How much more interesting it would have been to shine the lights of their own hypothesis on the cracks within a system that by all accounts should be the peak of what they say the best type of system is. 

Also, because their focus is on broad strokes, they ignore the contrast that exists in a country like the United States between macro level economic success and individual quality of life. Like, the United States is the richest country on the planet, but in some ways <i>because</i> of how it captures wealth, huge swathes of the people living their lead lives no better than people in the 'failed' nations the authors describe. 

To which I pose the question: 'then, so what is the point of their thesis – to suggest that the health of a nation’s economy ought to be privileged over the quality of life of its average citizen because at least under unfettered capitalism a select few have the motivation to invent new gadgets that will then allow even more wealth to be accrued at the top? And… something something trickle down economics?’ 

Really and truly though, it was the never-ending stream of example after example propping up an honestly fairly simple to grasp idea that made me give up on it. Had it been 250 pages I would have finished it despite my skepticism. 

Just saying.

A very serviceable, if not always supremely readable history of the game. 

Yuri Averbakh does a really good job carefully separating out fact from speculation, and even differentiates between scholarly debate and his own personal feelings about certain theories. 

It's compact, but manages to pack in a lot of detail without getting too, too lost in the weeds. 

As it states in the title, this is a broad history, with each chapter moving us closer to the present, but also broken down into sub-preoccupations: the evolution of the rules, the game pieces, the look of the board, the place of chess within different historical contexts. 

In other words, it's a great jumping off point with a good bibliography to branch out into.

<i>"This cross I've carried...the cross of collectible card game defeat... NOW IT'S YOUR TURN TO CARRY IT!"</i>

Yu-Gi-Oh!: Duelist, Vol.5 is Yu-Gi-Oh! at its best, bringing together all of the magic, the intrigue, the tension, the genuinely high stakes without losing its signature campy sensibilities. Because all these needles were threaded so well in this volume, it's tonally cohesive, it's an incredibly good time, and certain events in this volume feel impactful enough to really stick with you. 

Of course, all this to say: this is <i>the</i> Yugi - Kaiba re-match that remains probably the most talked about all these years later. 

But in order to get there, a few other things had to happen first. 

We finish off the duel with the Paradox brothers in the underground labyrinth. I stand behind what I said in volume 4: it's a lot more exciting and feels like it contributes to world-building in a way the anime fails to convey, so it's pretty engaging even if the stakes don't actually feel all that high. 

The riddle of which door the gang has to exit to get out of the labyrinth also makes more sense in the manga even if it's just as silly. That, if anything, did slow the pacing down. However, it was interesting to get a little teasing re-emergence of Yami Bakura that will come back into play later. 

But let's get to the real meat of it. This was a very Kaiba-centric volume, and does an incredible amount of character building, letting us know just who Kaiba in a post-mind crush world is going to be. And he accomplishes an awful lot. He pulls a gun on Pegasus's goons, and gets one of their heads into a vice created out of his own briefcase to give us one of the manga's most iconic panels: 
 <img src="https://64.media.tumblr.com/91271677128c20cba789d9cbc6d8b136/f323b98b2e0c99f0-4d/s1280x1920/161dca64710f818233a0eca7a550c28f1c3f3024.jpg" width="300" height="200" alt="description"/>
Now, we know in no uncertain terms that even 'good' Kaiba isn't going to be operating within the same bounds of civility that Yugi and his friends do. 
Pegasus seems unphased by a turning of the tables he apparently anticipated, and instead strikes at Kaiba's Achilles heel: Mokuba. By threatening Mokuba's life, Pegasus, more out of sadism than actual necessity, gives Kaiba an ultimatum: defeat Yugi in a duel and gain access to the castle or risk Mokuba's safety. Kaiba grudgingly accepts these terms, over which he has no control anyway, but reminds Pegasus that the string of fate he references is tied around his own neck. 

Then: the duel! 

The stakes in Yu-Gi-Oh! have rarely been as high as they were in this duel between Yugi and Kaiba. Weirdly, they're made a bit higher in the anime given that in the manga, Yugi's grandpa's soul is trapped in a video camera he still has access to (I still do not understand this choice on Takahashi's part). But nevertheless, this is pretty well the only time other than perhaps the duel between Yugi and brainwashed Joey/Jonouchi in Battle City where both opponents have equally as much to lose. 

It's also the duel that really shows us who Kaiba is. He doesn't share with Yugi and co. that he's only undertaking this duel to protect his brother, instead letting them believe that for him it's just about lost valor. This is interesting, because had he known what Kaiba was fighting for, Yugi would absolutely have tried to figure out a solution so that it didn't have to be a winner-loser situation. But Kaiba doesn't trust Yugi enough to even let him know this is an option, to his ultimate detriment. And this is a lesson that *spoilers* he never learns. Even in the anime where the extra filler arcs offer the opportunity for him to team up with Yugi and his friends in ways that would have benefited him, he chooses not to every time unless circumstances force his hand. And for this reason, he never wins. 

He does learn half a lesson between the end of Death-T and this duel, musing to himself while battling Yugi: "<i>Can a person be strong when they are shouldering the weight of protecting somebody? </i> 

Everything that happens whenever this is the case for Yugi or Joey/Jonouchi would suggest that 'yes, yes protecting someone else does give you strength.’ But the catch is that in Takahashi's world, there's a proviso: 'Protecting someone else gives you strength, but that strength is only enough to overcome adversity if the burden of being a protector is shared.' A very roundabout way of getting at one of Yu-Gi-Oh!'s central themes: the power of friendship. And, hey, listen, we've all gone through the phase of laughing at how silly and hippy-dippy that sounds, but in the world of Duel Monsters, if you don't buy it, you will never win. 

<i>And then</i> as things are ratcheting up, ratcheting up, and the tension of the duel reaches a fever pitch, Kaiba does something that has divided the fandom ever since: he threatens to kill himself if Yugi doesn't throw the match. 

The reader, of course, knows that this is an act of desperation, because the reader knows the real reason Kaiba is even dueling Yugi in the first place. But Yugi and his friends do not know, and so they assume this is coming from Kaiba's unhinged obsession with winning for its own sake. Nevertheless, they all recognize the threat is serious. 

And Kaiba, after making this declaration, makes it crystal clear where he stands (literally): "If our positions were reversed, Yugi...I would push you over the edge without a second's thought." 

I think the fandom kind of forgets the whole 'Mokuba's life being on the line' thing, because so many people reference this moment the same way Yugi and his friends do, but regardless of where you stand on what he did, it's freaking iconic when Kaiba says: "Yugi! Slit my throat with your card!!" 

And the even wilder thing is... Yami Yugi was going to do it. Unlike his host, Yugi, who would never entertain the notion of hurting another person, Yami Yugi has no moral qualms about doing what it takes to win -- every bit as ruthless in this regard as Kaiba is. And it's only because Yugi intervenes and stops Yami from striking the winning blow against Kaiba's weakened Blue Eyes Ultimate Dragon that Kaiba walks away from the exchange alive and victorious. 

This occurrence of Yugi pushing back against Yami Yugi happens just as Yugi is coming to terms with the fact that he's hosting some other entity within himself, and also marks a turning point in Yami Yugi's ability to get away with his hitherto unquestioned 'eye for an eye' philosophy. And therefore, marks a turning point in the moral compass of the Yu-Gi-Oh! universe. 

From this duel forward, we see Kaiba and Yami Yugi's paths diverge, and we see how they either grow or remain stunted as a result. 

Excellent volume of manga, period. Certainly, a strong entry within the series. 

Can't wait to delve into the fallout of this most epic of duels in volume 6.