Animanga Clash! Yu-Gi-Oh! Season Zero Episode 24 Chapters 36-40 (Part of Chapter 35)

Alright, everyone, we’re finally at the big rematch between Yugi and Kaiba, which technically starts at the very end of chapter 35.

And you want to know how they hype us up for the match continuing in chapter 36?

The very first move is Yugi summoning his Winged Dragon Guardian of the Fortress, which has 1400 ATK. Then Kaiba summons Cyclops which has 1200 ATK, and Yugi beats it because of course he did, and Kaiba loses 200 LP because he was too dumb to put his monster out in defense mode. Then the chapter ends.

Whoo boy I sure am scared of Kaiba and his inability to do math.

The same move occurs in Season Zero (and he declares an attack there, which is proof direct attacks are allowed…..but Yugi shouldn’t be able to attack on his first turn. Maybe he just meant attack mode?) The same move was also included in the 2000 version of their match, but the big difference there is that Kaiba went first, so it doesn’t make him look like an idiot who took a 200 LP hit for no reason.

Before that, though, we have one last brief scene with Mokuba in which he takes a familiar photograph out of his pocket. It’s the same photo that both of the brothers have in the 2000 version where he and Seto are playing chess as kids. He says that, ever since that day, Seto became obsessed with games, like a demon. But maybe Yugi can bring back the brother he used to know.

Gah, what’s wrong with Kaiba’s face?

Another small scene before the duel starts includes Jonouchi stealing one of the phones from the bodyguards who are holding them at gunpoint so he can call the hospital. In a really neat little moment we see that Jonouchi called Hanasaki (Probably when he called the paramedics) to go to the hospital and keep an eye on Sugoroku while all of this was going on. It’s really nice that he trusted Hanasaki enough to do that for them.

Hanasaki says Sugoroku has been in emergency surgery for an hour, and the doctor said it’s a pretty desperate situation.

Still really bummed Hanasaki isn’t in the anime. Hell, remove Honda and Miho entirely and just expand on Hanasaki’s role. It’d be a lot better.

The second person Jonouchi tries to call is Honda, but he won’t pick up.

Onto chapter 36, Kaiba thinks to himself that he let Yugi win that first exchange (Why?) but he still has three Blue-Eyes White Dragon cards that will surely beat Yugi.

On the next turn, Kaiba uses Evil Wormbeast, which has the same ATK points as Winged Dragon. He attacks, I guess as a murder/suicide move, but Winged Dragon has a special ability called Aviation, which gives it a 35% chance of dodging an attack. It does so, and Wormbeast is destroyed, but because their ATK points were the same, Kaiba doesn’t lose any LP.

Just to recap, so far, Kaiba has purposefully put out a weaker monster in attack mode and allowed himself to lose LP for no reason, and he has tried to murder/suicide his monster for no reason, apparently not realizing the ability of a fairly common card, resulting in only the loss of his own monster. (Honestly, I think if the ability is to dodge, the attacking monster should just miss and stay alive, but what do I know?)

This is a rematch. Shouldn’t he be MORE impressive and skillful than the last time they dueled?

Kaiba then summons a monster in defense position, which is not allowed because he already summoned a monster this turn.

In the anime, this turn goes the same way, but, frustratingly, they don’t explain what the hell happened. Wormbeast attacks, Winged Dragon dodges, attacks Wormbeast, and it gets destroyed. No mention of an ability or anything, and they acknowledge the ATK points were the same, so it’s very confusing. He also lays out a monster to block Yugi, but in the anime he lays it out face-down oriented vertically, like it’s in attack mode not defense mode.

In the 2000 anime, this turn was skipped altogether. The defense monster turns out to be Sagi the Dark Clown, which he did use in the 2000 version, but he just summoned it in attack mode instead of wasting a turn putting it out in defense and risking it being destroyed.

Yugi counters this by putting a monster of his own out in defense mode and refusing to attack. (In the manga, Sagi’s in face-up defense mode, so he probably didn’t attack because it has more DEF points than Winged Dragon’s ATK points. In the anime, though, he didn’t attack because he didn’t know what was hidden face-down.)

Kaiba then shifts Sagi to attack mode and uses the Negative Energy magic card, which multiplies a Dark monster’s ATK points by three, which, yes, is still insanely overpowered. The actual card only increases a Fiend monster’s ATK by 300, which is much more reasonable.

The powered-up Sagi defeats Winged Dragon, reducing Yugi’s LP to 1600. This turn went the same way in Season Zero and the 2000 version.

I can’t help but laugh when Yugi’s so impressed by Kaiba just knowing to use magic cards. I know I’ve probably been spoiled given all the Yu-Gi-Oh I’ve consumed over the years and how much the game has evolved, but it’s still funny that he’s impressed by the use of one magic card.

Yugi starts putting monsters out in defense mode until he can find a way to beat Sagi.

The whole ‘my grandpa’s soul is in this deck’ thing kinda rings a little more hollow in the anime considering Sugoroku is just unconscious. He’s fine otherwise. At the end of the episode, he comes back and isn’t even brought to the hospital or anything.

In the manga and Season Zero, Yugi’s LP get reduced to 1400 at some point before he summons Gaia, which is really weird. Did he accidentally send out a monster in attack mode?

The 2000 version actually fixes this error and returns Yugi’s LP to 1600.

Yugi summons Gaia the Fierce Knight and attacks Sagi, reducing Kaiba’s LP to 1300.

Kaiba’s next draw is the Blue Eyes-White Dragon, which he uses to attack Gaia, reducing Yugi’s LP to 700 in the manga and Season Zero and 900 in the 2000 version.

Yugi keeps throwing out monsters in defense mode, but he knows he has nothing that can beat Blue-Eyes, so his situation seems hopeless.

Kaiba skips attacking for one turn to summon his second Blue-Eyes, stating he’ll attack with both next turn. He does realize he doesn’t need to skip attacking in order to summon, right?

On Yugi’s next turn, after a word of encouragement from Anzu whom he can somehow hear despite her being on the edge of the extremely loud stadium while he’s in the middle in a locked plastic box, Yugi draws and uses the Swords of Revealing Light, stopping Kaiba from attacking for three turns. In the anime, he’s stopped for two turns.

On Kaiba’s next turn, he summons a monster (He doesn’t say what it is, and I can’t see.) in attack position in the manga and defense position in the anime. This didn’t happen in the 2000 version.

Yugi struggles with what to do at this juncture. He may have three turns (two) as wiggle room, but he still has nothing to attack with. Yugi internally apologizes to his grandpa for letting him down, but imaginary Sugoroku gives him a word of advice.

He asks him what he did the last time he felt like this. Yugi says that he completed the Millennium Puzzle. Sugoroku says that all cards have meaning, like the Puzzle. Yugi wonders what he means by that before remembering a time when his grandpa explained the extremely rare monster, Exodia – a monster that is ‘pieced’ together with five cards. No one has been able to summon it before, but all of the pieces are in his deck.

This is basically kept in Season Zero, but for some reason any mention of the Puzzle is removed.

After Yugi draws the Right Arm of Exodia, he sets another card in defense mode. Since Kaiba’s dragons can’t attack, he summons Judge Man to attack Yugi’s monster, even though, like I said, no monsters are supposed to attack while Swords is active. This turn is omitted from Season Zero but is kept in the 2000 version.

Judge Man defeats….*snort*…..Louise…Hahahahaha! I knew that was the Japanese name, but I still can’t get over that.

Two turns left, so Yugi summons Dark Magician to attack Judge Man, reducing Kaiba’s LP to 1000. Kaiba summons his third Blue-Eyes, which is also unaffected by the Swords, and attacks Dark Magician, reducing Yugi’s LP to 200. This turn is also omitted from Season Zero but is kept in the 2000 version. What’s especially funny, though, is in the opening credits of Season Zero you see Yami summoning Dark Magician against Kaiba even though he never actually does it in the Season Zero storyline of their battle (or at all over the course of the show). Good job, guys. Way to communicate.

Instead, in Season Zero, the Swords fall very suddenly, which is really weird. It’s meant to be three turns, they changed it to two, but they only let one turn go by before the Swords faded.

……And, they still screwed it up either way. Kaiba doesn’t attack on the turn he draws and plays the third Blue-Eyes even though all of them are free now.

Yugi has one last turn to draw the final piece and summon Exodia, but the odds of drawing it are extremely low. In his mind, the cards are moving away from him because his fear is causing him to avoid drawing the card. However, images of all of his friends putting their hands together to make the smiley face appear before him, putting their hands on the deck. He remembers what Anzu said about them remembering their time in the block room whenever they felt alone or scared, and his fear finally subsides. He’s able to draw the card, and his bravery is rewarded with the last piece of Exodia.

In Season Zero, because the smiley face was never made, he just remembers his friends in general. However, the 2000 version will restore it.

He summons Exodia, which, depending on the translation, wins him the duel in one of two ways. In the fan translation, it says Exodia just has the power to destroy all monsters on the field. Since Exodia has infinite ATK points, it obviously insta-wins most games. But in the official translation, it just says instant victory is granted to whomever successfully assembles Exodia, which is how the actual cards work. In the anime and in the 2000 version, they don’t explain either of these things (they don’t even show its infinite ATK points) and it’s just assumed that Exodia is so powerful that blowing away all the dragons is enough to wipe Kaiba out.

After Yugi wins, he inflicts his punishment game on Kaiba, the legendary Mind Crush, which destroys the evil in his heart.

Despite Yugi’s win, there’s still a problem. Jonouchi and Anzu (and Johji, who is still sleeping) are still being held at gunpoint by Kaiba’s bodyguards. Jonouchi can’t attack them without risking Anzu’s safety. Out from the shadows, the bodyguards get attacked by none other than Honda, who is without his jacket, so I guess he actually was able to wiggle out of it. *shrug*

He and Jonouchi beat the hell out of the guards, who still try to fight back, but Mokuba calls them off. Honda explains that Mokuba actually saved him. He was trapped in the block room for a long time until Mokuba came and freed him. Everyone is shocked that Mokuba did such a kind deed, but Mokuba explains that he was just returning the favor for Yugi.

As everyone’s reunited, Mokuba starts to walk away before he’s stopped by Anzu who asks why Kaiba wanted revenge so badly. This is where Mokuba gives their entire backstory, which was very partially given in the episode about Daimon.

I’m debating about the placement of Kaiba’s backstory here. On one hand, it is a little better to have Kaiba’s backstory given before he’s defeated so it’s not so abrupt to be like “Yeah Kaiba did *enter long list of evil shit here* But he had a sad upbringing. Please feel bad now.” But on the other hand, Daimon’s never brought up, Yugi never brings up what Daimon told him about Kaiba’s past, and it just doesn’t seem to have weight. The most we get is Mokuba looking at that photo, but we’re never given the context of the photo.

It’s never given in episode 19 either, so here it is. Their mother died when Mokuba was born, and their father died in an accident when Mokuba was three. Their relatives all took and wasted their inheritance, and they were sent to an orphanage. They loved games and played them all the time, especially chess. Seto was a good and happy brother, albeit telling Mokuba to not trust anyone or ever let his guard down, until Gozaburo came around. He went to the orphanage looking to adopt a boy to be his heir. Kaiba knew who he was so he challenged Gozaburo to a chess game. If he won, Gozaburo would have to adopt them both.

Kaiba won, but he cheated.

They became Kaibas from then on. After that, Gozaburo basically tortured him day in and out, forcing him to study, whipping him with a switch, and putting a collar on him to ensure he stayed in line and did everything asked of him. This backstory is at least kept in the 2000 version…well…for the most part. It changes a bit once Noah (who is anime-exclusive) is brought into the picture, but that’s another story. The only major change besides that is that Kaiba didn’t cheat in that version, and they didn’t put a collar on him.

In Season Zero, Mokuba just runs up to Kaiba and get a few more flashes of that photo.

Yugi explains that he destroyed the evil in Kaiba’s heart, and the goodness in him, whatever remains, is in pieces. He will return to the loving brother Mokuba knew, but it will take time. Kaiba has to put together the pieces, like a puzzle. The manga shows an imaginary child version of Kaiba putting a puzzle together and smiling when two of the pieces fit. This isn’t in the anime, neither Season Zero nor 2000 version, and that kinda disappointed me.

Anyhoo….I guess I should talk about the other half of this episode.

Yeah, there was a B plot going on the whole time!

Did you guys forget about Honda and Sugoroku in the death hourglass?

The hourglass is slowly filling with water. As Honda wakes up and tries to get Sugoroku to come to, the hourglass is lifted to the ceiling. Two figures approach Miho and Jonouchi. It’s Fuwa and Aileen, two of Kaiba’s Shitennou despite the fact that Aileen quit the last time we saw her. They’ve been tasked with, for some reason, challenging Jonouchi and Miho to another game……???? They ask what they’re doing because the deal was, should Yugi win, Sugoroku would be freed, but Fuwa only responds by saying Yugi won’t win….???

The game in question is a real-life fighting game. Aileen gets suited up (via teleporting armor?) in a suit that is controlled by Fuwa. Likewise, Miho is locked in her own, eh, game cabinet? And Jonouchi is suited up in similar armor. He cannot move much unless Miho moves the controls.

Miho struggles with the game but manages to not do too bad. Remember, she beat Jonouchi at a fighting game that one time in that literal, as in I counted, six-second shot in episode 21. I assume that’s what this game is referencing. I can’t think of any other reason Miho would be the player of a fighting game in this place.

It’s actually really hard to understand which character this is for. It’s definitely focused more on Jonouchi, but they specifically say Miho is controlling his every move. After a while of struggling, Miho manages to pull off a special move, but, apparently, in this dumbass game, if you use your special attack, it drastically decreases your HP. Why? There are some moves that do this in some games, but Fuwa acts like that’s a hard rule for all special attacks in all fighting games.

Aileen is downed with a large chunk of her HP gone, but Jonouchi’s is even lower thanks to the stupid special attack rules.

By the way, if the fighters in the arena have their strength reflected in their HP……when was it ever implied that Aileen has any fighting skills whatsoever? Let alone enough to stand up incredibly well to a guy who constantly fights and has fought for much of his young adult life. All we really know about Aileen is that she’s a model who dances and loves board games.

Fuwa activates Aileen’s special move, which reduces Jonouchi’s HP to zero, but, for some reason, doesn’t reduce hers at all. Manure factories can’t match the bullshit that is going on right now.

This means he loses, right? His HP count is absolute zero – animated as such, so it’s not a single-shot art error, and Aileen says it in dialogue. No more.

Well,

to slightly paraphrase My Little Pony,

FRIENDSHIP IS MAGIC, MUTHAFUCKA!

Jonouchi imagines his friends all lending him their strength, which, at the time, is mirroring Yugi getting strength from remembering his friends as he tries to draw the final piece of Exodia.

Jonouchi, and I’m not kidding here, not only gets back up of his own accord, but he also regains his lost HP back to FULL. He uses another special move on Aileen, defeats her, and he wins.

Oh yeah, he also does this special finisher move complete with spinning high up in the air, like an actual fighting game somehow.

I don’t get this game at all. Like literally any part of it. Before they even played, this game made no sense.

So Kaiba put Honda and Sugoroku in an hourglass filling with water, which, considering they were both unconscious when Jonouchi and Miho first got to the hourglass, could have easily killed them in minutes. He told absolutely no one about this to make it into a hostage situation. You’d think he’d tell Yugi to put more pressure on him, but nope. Not a word. Yugi never learns this is happening.

Kaiba had absolutely no way of knowing Yugi’s friends would go searching for Honda and Sugoroku during the duel, let alone that they’d somehow actually find them (they needed the magic of Bakura’s Ring to point them to the right room).

He hired Fuwa and Aileen, for some reason, to not only guard Sugoroku and Honda in this comically large supervillain-esque trap hourglass but also to challenge anyone who happens to enter the room to this extremely high-tech fighting game that requires at least two people, meaning even if he did somehow know one of Yugi’s friends would leave to find Sugoroku and Honda, he had to hope there would be two of them exactly to make this work.

What makes this situation even more confusing is that he hired Fuwa and Aileen for this. Aileen, the person who quit being under Kaiba’s employ and clearly preferred Yugi over Kaiba when she left, and Fuwa, the guy who, last we checked, was ridiculously unlucky. Wouldn’t Sheldon, given his doll/puppet fixation, be a much better choice for the player? I don’t know who would have been the fighter, but Kaiba has a slue of goons he could have used.

Why wouldn’t Kaiba just put them in a windowless soundproof room? He had Honda trapped in the block room. Leave him there. Sugoroku’s unconscious so put him anywhere with a lock. Why would Kaiba allow this game to happen?

To make matters worse, that basically means Yugi didn’t actually save his grandpa – Jonouchi and Miho did. Even if Yugi lost, as long as they won their fighting game, Honda and Sugoroku would be freed. So the tension in the duel between Kaiba and Yugi is dramatically decreased. The only thing really on the line is meaningless bragging rights. I guess Yami might also get a fake punishment game like with Mokuba, but would that even do anything against Yami? He has magic powers. I’m pretty sure he can defeat an illusion.

Like I said, once Jonouchi (and Miho) win the game, Honda and Sugoroku are freed, and I guess Sugoroku just magically gets better because he’s happily standing with everyone else when they meet back up at the arena in the end. I mean, he’s been unconscious for hours, but that’s probably not a concern.

Later, in the manga, outside Kaiba Land, Jonouchi shares the news that Hanasaki called and said Sugoroku’s operation was a success and he’ll be fine. They head off to visit Sugoroku in the hospital with the last line from Johji being that he wants to go to so he can gawk at the nurses. This is Johji’s final appearance. You may all celebrate loudly in the streets now.

Jonouchi is about to ask Yugi a question, but he opts not to. He playfully puts his arm around him and they leave. Yugi thinks to himself that he knew what Jonouchi wanted to say because, for the first time, he finally remembered everything that happened as his ‘other self’ and fighting with his friends that day.

This scene is obviously a tiny bit different considering Sugoroku is both with them and perfectly healthy (And there’s no Johji). Instead, they skip any mention of Sugoroku and just move on to talk about congratulating Yugi. The stuff between him and Jonouchi is kept, though.

The last comparison note is that Bakura got a few random lines that were originally Kaiba’s in the manga, and his evil spirit reveals itself in the very end, proclaiming he’ll be Yugi’s next opponent. Interestingly, in this version, Bakura’s eyes change color when he’s Yami Bakura. They’re green when he’s regular Bakura and purple when he’s Yami Bakura. In the 2000 version, he always has brown eyes.

—————————————–

That finishes off Kaiba’s last appearance in Season Zero.

And it was a sloppy mess. It’s less of a mess in the manga because this duel goes on for several chapters, but in the anime not only is the duel only one episode, but the duel has to be shortened due to them inserting that stupid fighting game section, which, as I said, lessens the tension of the duel. This also forces them to skip turns, which makes some sections like the Swords of Revealing Light not make sense.

The fighting game section was almost depressingly bad. Let me be clear, I love Jonouchi to death. I’m glad they sneaked in another moment for him to get some glory. And I even kinda like this game setup.

However, the execution is awful. They were too cheap to have new characters designed for it, so they recycled two of Kaiba’s old Shitennou, even though it makes no sense for them to be here, they made rules for the game that they don’t seem to adhere to (who’s in control? Miho or Jonouchi? Half the time it seems like Miho, and the other it seems like Jonouchi.) and Jonouchi basically bullshitted his win because he believed in the heart of the….friends. I’d be able to swallow it if he was nearly defeated and then got back up to whup Aileen, but he was at ZERO. He was DONE. He LOST. But for no other reason besides literal friendship, he’s fully healed and allowed to continue.

At the very least, I’m glad that they didn’t choose to focus more on Miho here, because, again, she has no background as a fighting game player. Even given that six-second scene in episode 21, she clearly had no experience with fighting games prior to that. She barely seemed to understand what she was looking at. The fact that she held up as well as she did is a miracle in itself if you ask me, but I’m pretty much choosing to believe most of it was Jonouchi despite them saying he can barely move without Miho. He clearly moves too much without Miho’s input, and Honda just keeps cheering on Jonouchi without even mentioning Miho, which is especially weird for him of all people.

I’m also pretty bummed they left out the stuff about Seto and Mokuba’s past. If the fighting game section was removed, I’m fully confident both the full duel and their backstory could have been included.

But.

Nope.

It’s no real surprise that I’m giving this one over wholly to the manga. It’s so frustrating too because Season Zero CHOSE to focus more on Kaiba throughout its entire run and build the hell up out of this rematch with the Shitennou and whatnot. And when the time finally comes, they mess it up royally. What a shame.

Winner: Manga

Next time, in the manga, we get ship teasing for Anzu and Yami. In the anime, we jump straight into the Monster World arc, which is the final arc of the original manga before it shifts to Duelist, and the last arc of Season Zero, barring the movie.

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