Where I rewatch Yugioh GX, Episode 148
So, last episode just before Hell Kaiser Ryou would be screwed out of the victory he'd earned. Today, we will see all the myriad ways in which he'll be screwed, including one that will just blow your mind, in the same a shotgun blows out your brains.
TITLE SCREEN! THE ULTIMATE DRAGON SHOWDOWN! CYBER END VS. RAINBOW DARK no matter how often the show tries to say otherwise, the only ultimate it achieves is in sucking.
Oh wow, what a shock, the dust settles and Yohan took no damage from the second attack. Yohan says that it was really close, but sie activated hir trap card Rainbow Path; send one random Gem Beast from your spell/trap zone to the grave, in this case Ruby Carbuncle, to negate one attack, and then add one card with "Rainbow Dragon" in its name from your deck to your hand. Blah blah blah, both Ryou and Yohan are impressed with one another, and Ryou ends his turn. Yohan takes hirs, and since sie has all seven Advanced Gem Beasts on hir field or in hir grave, sie can special summon Rainbow Dark Dragon from hir hand. It is a very slight palette swap of Rainbow Dragon, even lazier than the redesign of the Advanced Gem Beasts. Lots of noise from the Peanut Gallery, flash of Ryou's still beating heart, and then Yohan has Rainbow Dark Dragon attack Cyber Barrier Dragon. Since it's in attack position, Ryou activates its effect to negate Yohan's attack, but oh noes, with Advanced Dark on the field, when Rainbow Dark Dragon attacks it negates the effect of the opponent's monster. Thus, Cyber Barrier Dragon is destroyed, Ryou's heart could give out any minute, and he's got just 200 life points left. And then Yohan sets another card to end hir turn. Blah blah blah, Ryou begs his heart to hold out just a little longer, he wants to kill the ultimate monster, and then he draws his next card. He then sacrifices both of his Cyber Dragons to activate Photon Generator Unit and special summons Cyber Laser Dragon from his deck. Then he activates its effect to destroy a monster with greater attack power than its own, Rainbow Dark Dragon. Yohan is all shocked, but then activates Rainbow Dark Dragon's effect, sending a Gem Beast from his spell/trap zone to the grave to prevent its destruction. Then Ryou sets his last card, and ends his turn.
Yohan's turn, he declares his attack, and Ryou activates his permanent trap card Cybernetic Hidden Technology; he sends one Cyber Machine monster on his field to the grave to destroy the opponent's attacking monster, and end the battle phase. Cyber Laser goes away, Yohan sends hir last remaining Gem Beast on the field to the grave, more noise from the peanut gallery as apparently the notion of wearing down your opponents defenses flies right over their heads, and Judai blathers a lot of drivel. Ryou than points out to Yohan what he's accomplished, forced Yohan to use up all of hir Gem Beasts and now he's got nothing left to protect Rainbow Dark Dragon. However, Yohan points out that Ryou's used up all the cards in his hand and on his field, so there's no way he'll be able to capitalize on this. Cue long boring speech that the animators try to spice up by giving Ryou some very weird facial expressions. Basically, says he's going to die, he has no future, and now he stands beyond joy of victory and fear of defeat, or something like that. Yohan is unimpresed, sets a card, and ends hir turn. Blah blah, and Ryou takes his turn. He draws and summons Cyber Valley, which has zero attack and defense. Ryou explains that it has three effects, and he'll use the second to remove it and Cybernetic Hidden Technology from play to draw two cards. He gets two spell cards, one of which is Overload Fusion, and he uses it to remove all five Cyber monsters in his grave from play to summon Chimeratech Fortress Dragon, which is completely from its real world counterpart; in the real world, its attack power is equal to 1000 per monster used in its fusion summon, which by the way is done by contact fusion ala VWXYZ. Here, it has an attack power of zero, and when it attacks, the damage calculation is skipped and 400 damage is automatically done to the opponent. Also, it gets to attack once per monster used for its fusion. Is it any wonder that this was changed for the real version?
In any event, Ryou attacks four times, dropping Yohan to 300 life points, and then attacks one last time for what should be game.
EYECATCH!
Yep, when the DBZ dust settles, Yohan is still in the game; on the last attack, sie discarded a card to activate hir trap card, Rainbow Life; this lets hir negate all the damage sie took up to that point in that turn, and then recovers that many life points. Thus, the last attack did go through, but Yohan had 3500 life points, more than enough to weather the storm. Blah blah blah, Hell Kaiser Ryou will die here, he sets a card to end his turn, Shou whines, and Ryou says that this moment will live on forever. Blah blah blah, Judai explains to Shou about how Ryou's trying to leave behind eternal proof of his life, by dueling some random nobody in the middle of nowhere, with the only witnesses lacking any means to return to Earth and let anyone know what the hell happened. Yeah, that's some brilliant eternal proof of your life, Ryou. Whatever, its not like the writers ever had a single clue what to do with Ryou in the first place, the fact that they've completely forgotten his bonds with Fubuki and Asuka are proof of that. Yohan blathers about how sie will make this eternal moment one of eternal pain, takes hir turn, and declares hir attack. Then Ryou activates his quick spell card Dimensional Induced Explosion; he returns one Fusion monster to the fusion deck, and then each player can special summon as many removed from play monsters to the field as they can. Yohan doesn't get to summon any, while Ryou brings back three Cyber Dragons and Cyber Valley; I'd guess that the reason that he didn't bring back either Cyber Barrier or Cyber Laser is because they can't be summoned except through their respective cards, or some such shit like that. Then Ryou activates Cyber Valley's first effect, removing it from play to end the battle phase and draw one card. Yohan ends hir turn, thinks Ryou is tenacious, noise from the peanut gallery, and Ryou takes his turn.
Guess what? He draws Power Bond! He plays it to bring out Cyber End Dragon with 8000 attack points, flashback montage of every time he's played that card, and not a single cyberdark dragon card in sight. Yep, the writers realized that those cards sucked even worse than Judai's E-Heroes, and so gave up on trying to hype them as ZOMG so powerful. Judai then flashes back to his duel with Ryou at the end of season one, and they just love to drag out their subtext, now don't they? Flashback over, Judai has that stupid grin on his face that this entire season was supposed to get rid of, and Yohan can't believe that Ryou managed to summon a monster with 8000 attack points. Then Ryou suddenly decides that he's going to try and rip Yubel out of Johan, which he hadn't hinted at caring about up to this point. Blah blah blah, there's no good reason why Ryou would care about Johan over Asuka and Fubuki beyond the writers being a bunch of twits, Yubel says this won't work, if sie dies so will Johan, and Ryou declares his attack. Then Yohan activates hir trap, Counter Gem, letting him send every card in his spell/trap zone to the grave, and then take as many Gem Beasts from hir grave to put them into hir spell/trap zone. This gives hir five Gems, which sie then sends right back to the grave to increase Rainbow Dark Dragon's attack power by 1000 per Gem Beast, or 5000. Thus, Yohan's monster is now stronger and when Cyber End finishes its attack, Ryou will lose and die. Yohan goes on about how Ryou will suffer eternal pain, but Ryou activates his Quick Spell card Cybernetic Zone, which removes Cyber End Dragon from play. Ryou falls to his knees from pain, the earth rumbles, and Cyber End Dragon returns to the field, bigger than before and with twice the attack power, or 16000. You know, the exact same amount he got back in the duel that the writers so brainlessly referenced in those super long flashbacks. This has the effect of utterly wrecking what is obviously meant to be Ryou's shining eternal moment of glory.
And this is all before we take into consideration the bullshit that is Cybernetic Zone; see, your monster comes back to the field with twice the attack power, during the end phase. And is then destroyed during your next standby phase. In short, it is Limiter Removal nerfed to nigh uselessness. In short, if Ryou were to have used either Limiter Removal, or that inane Battle Fusion card, he would have been able to get the same exact attack power, only to practical effect. But instead, we get this inane bullshit about how Ryou was just showing off how big he could make his dragon, and how this is just so shining brilliance. Naturally, I am unmoved. Mind you, Power Bond's damage will kick in before anyone on the show will ever find out about how useless Cybernetic Zone is in the first place, and Ryou loses. Yohan then walks back through the big doorway that just randomly in the middle of the desert for no reason, and everyone runs up to Hell Kaiser Ryou. Judai then yells at Yubel, demanding to know why sie had to kill Hell Kaiser Ryou, but Yohan just mutters to itself that it didn't expect the battle with Ryou to be so taxing, and just tells Judai that sie will be waiting for him at the top. And then sie passes through the gate. Ryou, being a named major character, gets a long time to deliver his dying speech, saying that this is the end of the one who sought nothing but power, and he would not begrudge anyone for laughing at him now. Oh noes, we would never laugh at you, you're our dear friend who never derisively mocked us all as pathetic weak pieces of shit and you most certainly never tried to kill your little brother or anything like that. Your duel was magnificent, and that's all that matters. Judai says that he's ashamed of himself for running away from himself and his power, Misawa says that Judai will shine just as bright as Ryou did, and Ryou says that he won't forgive Judai if he stops at his level. Because its not like Judai did anything unforgivable like getting Fubuki and Asuka killed or anything like that.
So Judai says he'll shine even brighter and make a miracle, and Ryou says he's sure that everyone who's died because of Judai hoped for exactly that. Isn't it fun when people aren't allowed to have even remotely realistic emotional responses? Ryou glows, says Judai isn't a kid anymore, which is a load of bullshit, and then turns to sparkles and dies. Remember how the whole point of the final duel in Season One was that it was wrong and unnatural for Judai to try to change and improve himself as a person and he should just remain a child forever? Inconsistent themes are deliriously joyous, aren't they? And of course, Ryou doesn't have one fucking thing to say to the little brother whose life he put through hell. And everyone is sobbing, except for Tanya, the one token nod to emotional realism in this entire load of shit. End episode.
NEXT TIME! Judai says he'll go face Yubel, Shou says he'll be the one to carry Judai's story from generation to generation, I roll my eyes like a motherfucker, and HOLY SHIT, AMON GETS TO DUEL AGAIN! EPISODE TITLE, CLASH OF THE DEMON GODS! MYTHIC DEMON VS. EXODIA card of the week is replaced by an inane card contest.
Well. At this point, damn near everyone is dead. Among the survivors are Ojama Yellow and Judai. What the hell is wrong with this picture?
TITLE SCREEN! THE ULTIMATE DRAGON SHOWDOWN! CYBER END VS. RAINBOW DARK no matter how often the show tries to say otherwise, the only ultimate it achieves is in sucking.
Oh wow, what a shock, the dust settles and Yohan took no damage from the second attack. Yohan says that it was really close, but sie activated hir trap card Rainbow Path; send one random Gem Beast from your spell/trap zone to the grave, in this case Ruby Carbuncle, to negate one attack, and then add one card with "Rainbow Dragon" in its name from your deck to your hand. Blah blah blah, both Ryou and Yohan are impressed with one another, and Ryou ends his turn. Yohan takes hirs, and since sie has all seven Advanced Gem Beasts on hir field or in hir grave, sie can special summon Rainbow Dark Dragon from hir hand. It is a very slight palette swap of Rainbow Dragon, even lazier than the redesign of the Advanced Gem Beasts. Lots of noise from the Peanut Gallery, flash of Ryou's still beating heart, and then Yohan has Rainbow Dark Dragon attack Cyber Barrier Dragon. Since it's in attack position, Ryou activates its effect to negate Yohan's attack, but oh noes, with Advanced Dark on the field, when Rainbow Dark Dragon attacks it negates the effect of the opponent's monster. Thus, Cyber Barrier Dragon is destroyed, Ryou's heart could give out any minute, and he's got just 200 life points left. And then Yohan sets another card to end hir turn. Blah blah blah, Ryou begs his heart to hold out just a little longer, he wants to kill the ultimate monster, and then he draws his next card. He then sacrifices both of his Cyber Dragons to activate Photon Generator Unit and special summons Cyber Laser Dragon from his deck. Then he activates its effect to destroy a monster with greater attack power than its own, Rainbow Dark Dragon. Yohan is all shocked, but then activates Rainbow Dark Dragon's effect, sending a Gem Beast from his spell/trap zone to the grave to prevent its destruction. Then Ryou sets his last card, and ends his turn.
Yohan's turn, he declares his attack, and Ryou activates his permanent trap card Cybernetic Hidden Technology; he sends one Cyber Machine monster on his field to the grave to destroy the opponent's attacking monster, and end the battle phase. Cyber Laser goes away, Yohan sends hir last remaining Gem Beast on the field to the grave, more noise from the peanut gallery as apparently the notion of wearing down your opponents defenses flies right over their heads, and Judai blathers a lot of drivel. Ryou than points out to Yohan what he's accomplished, forced Yohan to use up all of hir Gem Beasts and now he's got nothing left to protect Rainbow Dark Dragon. However, Yohan points out that Ryou's used up all the cards in his hand and on his field, so there's no way he'll be able to capitalize on this. Cue long boring speech that the animators try to spice up by giving Ryou some very weird facial expressions. Basically, says he's going to die, he has no future, and now he stands beyond joy of victory and fear of defeat, or something like that. Yohan is unimpresed, sets a card, and ends hir turn. Blah blah, and Ryou takes his turn. He draws and summons Cyber Valley, which has zero attack and defense. Ryou explains that it has three effects, and he'll use the second to remove it and Cybernetic Hidden Technology from play to draw two cards. He gets two spell cards, one of which is Overload Fusion, and he uses it to remove all five Cyber monsters in his grave from play to summon Chimeratech Fortress Dragon, which is completely from its real world counterpart; in the real world, its attack power is equal to 1000 per monster used in its fusion summon, which by the way is done by contact fusion ala VWXYZ. Here, it has an attack power of zero, and when it attacks, the damage calculation is skipped and 400 damage is automatically done to the opponent. Also, it gets to attack once per monster used for its fusion. Is it any wonder that this was changed for the real version?
In any event, Ryou attacks four times, dropping Yohan to 300 life points, and then attacks one last time for what should be game.
EYECATCH!
Yep, when the DBZ dust settles, Yohan is still in the game; on the last attack, sie discarded a card to activate hir trap card, Rainbow Life; this lets hir negate all the damage sie took up to that point in that turn, and then recovers that many life points. Thus, the last attack did go through, but Yohan had 3500 life points, more than enough to weather the storm. Blah blah blah, Hell Kaiser Ryou will die here, he sets a card to end his turn, Shou whines, and Ryou says that this moment will live on forever. Blah blah blah, Judai explains to Shou about how Ryou's trying to leave behind eternal proof of his life, by dueling some random nobody in the middle of nowhere, with the only witnesses lacking any means to return to Earth and let anyone know what the hell happened. Yeah, that's some brilliant eternal proof of your life, Ryou. Whatever, its not like the writers ever had a single clue what to do with Ryou in the first place, the fact that they've completely forgotten his bonds with Fubuki and Asuka are proof of that. Yohan blathers about how sie will make this eternal moment one of eternal pain, takes hir turn, and declares hir attack. Then Ryou activates his quick spell card Dimensional Induced Explosion; he returns one Fusion monster to the fusion deck, and then each player can special summon as many removed from play monsters to the field as they can. Yohan doesn't get to summon any, while Ryou brings back three Cyber Dragons and Cyber Valley; I'd guess that the reason that he didn't bring back either Cyber Barrier or Cyber Laser is because they can't be summoned except through their respective cards, or some such shit like that. Then Ryou activates Cyber Valley's first effect, removing it from play to end the battle phase and draw one card. Yohan ends hir turn, thinks Ryou is tenacious, noise from the peanut gallery, and Ryou takes his turn.
Guess what? He draws Power Bond! He plays it to bring out Cyber End Dragon with 8000 attack points, flashback montage of every time he's played that card, and not a single cyberdark dragon card in sight. Yep, the writers realized that those cards sucked even worse than Judai's E-Heroes, and so gave up on trying to hype them as ZOMG so powerful. Judai then flashes back to his duel with Ryou at the end of season one, and they just love to drag out their subtext, now don't they? Flashback over, Judai has that stupid grin on his face that this entire season was supposed to get rid of, and Yohan can't believe that Ryou managed to summon a monster with 8000 attack points. Then Ryou suddenly decides that he's going to try and rip Yubel out of Johan, which he hadn't hinted at caring about up to this point. Blah blah blah, there's no good reason why Ryou would care about Johan over Asuka and Fubuki beyond the writers being a bunch of twits, Yubel says this won't work, if sie dies so will Johan, and Ryou declares his attack. Then Yohan activates hir trap, Counter Gem, letting him send every card in his spell/trap zone to the grave, and then take as many Gem Beasts from hir grave to put them into hir spell/trap zone. This gives hir five Gems, which sie then sends right back to the grave to increase Rainbow Dark Dragon's attack power by 1000 per Gem Beast, or 5000. Thus, Yohan's monster is now stronger and when Cyber End finishes its attack, Ryou will lose and die. Yohan goes on about how Ryou will suffer eternal pain, but Ryou activates his Quick Spell card Cybernetic Zone, which removes Cyber End Dragon from play. Ryou falls to his knees from pain, the earth rumbles, and Cyber End Dragon returns to the field, bigger than before and with twice the attack power, or 16000. You know, the exact same amount he got back in the duel that the writers so brainlessly referenced in those super long flashbacks. This has the effect of utterly wrecking what is obviously meant to be Ryou's shining eternal moment of glory.
And this is all before we take into consideration the bullshit that is Cybernetic Zone; see, your monster comes back to the field with twice the attack power, during the end phase. And is then destroyed during your next standby phase. In short, it is Limiter Removal nerfed to nigh uselessness. In short, if Ryou were to have used either Limiter Removal, or that inane Battle Fusion card, he would have been able to get the same exact attack power, only to practical effect. But instead, we get this inane bullshit about how Ryou was just showing off how big he could make his dragon, and how this is just so shining brilliance. Naturally, I am unmoved. Mind you, Power Bond's damage will kick in before anyone on the show will ever find out about how useless Cybernetic Zone is in the first place, and Ryou loses. Yohan then walks back through the big doorway that just randomly in the middle of the desert for no reason, and everyone runs up to Hell Kaiser Ryou. Judai then yells at Yubel, demanding to know why sie had to kill Hell Kaiser Ryou, but Yohan just mutters to itself that it didn't expect the battle with Ryou to be so taxing, and just tells Judai that sie will be waiting for him at the top. And then sie passes through the gate. Ryou, being a named major character, gets a long time to deliver his dying speech, saying that this is the end of the one who sought nothing but power, and he would not begrudge anyone for laughing at him now. Oh noes, we would never laugh at you, you're our dear friend who never derisively mocked us all as pathetic weak pieces of shit and you most certainly never tried to kill your little brother or anything like that. Your duel was magnificent, and that's all that matters. Judai says that he's ashamed of himself for running away from himself and his power, Misawa says that Judai will shine just as bright as Ryou did, and Ryou says that he won't forgive Judai if he stops at his level. Because its not like Judai did anything unforgivable like getting Fubuki and Asuka killed or anything like that.
So Judai says he'll shine even brighter and make a miracle, and Ryou says he's sure that everyone who's died because of Judai hoped for exactly that. Isn't it fun when people aren't allowed to have even remotely realistic emotional responses? Ryou glows, says Judai isn't a kid anymore, which is a load of bullshit, and then turns to sparkles and dies. Remember how the whole point of the final duel in Season One was that it was wrong and unnatural for Judai to try to change and improve himself as a person and he should just remain a child forever? Inconsistent themes are deliriously joyous, aren't they? And of course, Ryou doesn't have one fucking thing to say to the little brother whose life he put through hell. And everyone is sobbing, except for Tanya, the one token nod to emotional realism in this entire load of shit. End episode.
NEXT TIME! Judai says he'll go face Yubel, Shou says he'll be the one to carry Judai's story from generation to generation, I roll my eyes like a motherfucker, and HOLY SHIT, AMON GETS TO DUEL AGAIN! EPISODE TITLE, CLASH OF THE DEMON GODS! MYTHIC DEMON VS. EXODIA card of the week is replaced by an inane card contest.
Well. At this point, damn near everyone is dead. Among the survivors are Ojama Yellow and Judai. What the hell is wrong with this picture?