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steve0discusses · 3 years

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Yugioh Season Zero: The Yo-Yo Crimes of Jounouchi Pt 1

It’s been a while since I visited the many times Yugi should have gone to jail, AKA season Zero, and I’m excited to visit it again.

If you just got here, this is Season Zero, which is very different vibe and a different direction plotwise than the other seasons and you can read the season zero recaps from the start in chrono order here: https://steve0discusses.tumblr.com/tagged/yuugi%20muto/chrono

So be warned, this is a 90′s anime, and it will do 90′s anime things, and I expect y’all reading this aren’t like 12.

Like I said in an earlier post, I wrote this out fully when I was going through the symptoms from my second dose--which PS, is worth it--but those symptoms knocked me out for 10 days. I was kind of a space cadet, and yo, I made some mistakes. Including writing this post out in full and then not clicking “save” on this post and then not realizing I had done that until several days later.

So long story short, I don’t remember what I originally wrote here, but lets all assume it was weird, and didn’t make sense and wasn’t funny. We’ll just assume this was for the best that it was deleted forever.

So this episode is about 2 things: Yo-yos and Jounouchi. Both get used as a tool for violence, and both need to get just a little bit cursed by Yugi to scale it the hell back. So, understandably, we start off this episode with Jounouchi, who has eagerly identified with this off brand yo-yo he apparently got out of a dumpster for being just a huge ass defect.

(more Yo-Yo crimes under the cut)

I see you dodging copyright infringement, Yugioh. Eireboy.

Also whenever I read “Eireboy” I do it in my mind in the same pacing and vocal tones that Pegasus uses to say “Kaiba boy.” Something about it’s conjunction to Yugioh, I see anything with “boy” at the end of it, and it’s voiced by a weird guy with one eye.

So I wrote these caps under the influence of my second dose, just assuming y’all understand the life I lived, but I realized writing this episode...traveling bands of yo-yo performers that go to your school and shill yo-yos with yo-yo shows in the hopes that it will get you so obsessed with yo-yos that you will not join a gang and do drugs and have sex may be just an American thing.

So when I saw a yo-yo episode I was like “Tight! Clearly, the yo-yo clowns have come to town!” and I assumed everyone in this class would be draped in yo-yos, because I just assumed that at some point at School you will get MAD OBSESSED with yo-yos for about 2 weeks.

But in this episode, everyone was like “Jounouchi, why are you playing with a random yo-yo?” and it didn’t occur to me until typing this out just now: only Jounouchi is doing this. He did this unprompted, without the encouragement of a bunch of middle aged performers doing tricks to techno music.

So instead, I have to think of Jounouchi as Ralphie in this scenario, and he just got a official Red Ryder, carbine action, 200-shot, range model air rifle, with a compass in the stock and this thing that tells time for Christmas, but he’s gonna shoot his eye out.

Because yo-yos in this episode are basically guns.

...Kind of like a duel deck was also just a gun...

...or the wands in Harry Potter...

...which honestly...I’ve probably said this before but where I’m from, we just use straight up guns in these elaborate analogies because we freakin have to make the point crystal clear. The moment Ralphie finally got his hands on a bb-gun, he very nearly shot his eye out and broke his glasses. And that scene will haunt me until my dying day...

...but fine, we can use yo-yos, I guess it works, although to me, yo-yo’s are just teachers hoping you’ll become such a dork that no gang will accept you (and then in this universe, it does the opposite? So freakin weird).

The beginning of this episode is Jounouchi trying do his best to impress with his skills, but in actuality, getting very close to clubbing Anzu with a yo-yo. And, while Anzu is the strongest person in Yugioh in the later seasons, I feel like Season Zero Anzu is another level. It’s a serious tempt of fate that Jounouchi is doing, so Honda wisely cuts him off from doing any more of that so she won’t end up strangling yet another person in broad daylight in the middle of school.

Remember your yo-yo safety, children.

Straight up, Honda’s version of yo-yo safety is to just Never Use a Yo-Yo and that’s the most gun safety thing ever that they’ve slipped into this Yugioh Episode. I almost expected Yuugi to pull a “well, actually, I use a hunting yo-yo to get enough venison to feed my family.” But youknow, he lives in a city, so while Yugioh is pretty weird and Yuugi has to worry about a lot of things--he doesn’t have to worry about that.

This is actually foreshadowing, which I only realized in hind sight, mostly because I just can’t associate a Yo-yo with crime. Joey knowing how to use a yo-yo was foreshadowing that he was absolutely part of this gang in a past life.

Yeah that one went completely over my head the first time and the second time and it really wasn’t until just now that I finally caught it. Hoo boy, sometimes I wonder why y’all let me analyze this show.

Jounouchi decides to confront the yo-yo bandits and everyone else is like “Silly Jounouchi, he’s not gonna do that. That would be stupid.” And...in S0, they don’t know him well enough yet to know that he really is that much of a well meaning dumbass.

I think a S1-5 Yugi would have been sprinting out the door to keep Joey from killing himself (again), but Season Zero Yuugi had hope that Jounouchi would just naturally tucker out and fall asleep or something.

And he was so wrong.

Anzu’s “New Tricks” line was from the dub itself and man that’s a good line. I love Anzu’s sass in Zero.

So, Honda decides to help them find Jounouchi so all of them together could give Jounouchi an intervention for skipping school. This is the same Honda that once skipped school to babysit a tomagachi and said it was because of “Maternity leave,” but don’t worry about the hypocrisy, because from this episode we learned that Jounouchi needs a very short leash.

So this episode is a great Jounouchi episode to explain stuff that still hasn’t been explained in 5 seasons of Yugioh. In S1-5, we don’t get much about his home life other than his Mom left and his Sister lives far away and is like sickly as hell. We know nothing else. But this is the episode where we finally get to find out why Yuugi and his Grandfather decided to basically adopt him from S1 onward.

Yugioh is tackling some pretty heavy territory, but I respect the show for not trying to magically change Jounouchi’s parents like they did to Dartz. Instead, the crew decide to reach out and try to find their friend who clearly didn’t go home last night (and won’t be going back for a while), by checking every alleyway in Domino.

Fun fact Yuugi drops this episode, Domino is one of the biggest cities on Earth. This makes the Battle City Tournament even more crazy when you realize Kaiba shut down several blocks but, it also makes a tiny bit more sense how we have so many Millennium items in one place. (Yet...it still doesn’t explain Bakura and Joey’s accent.) And, I guess if your city is just extra large, you get an extra large warehouse district, too.

Speaking of, they eventually find Jounouchi at his new (but also old) crime antics mugging some random stranger next to this Game store that I just realized was cropped so it looks like it says “GANG.”

Say hello to our crime clown. He’s sort of like a discount joker, and that beanie is...man it is green.

I forget this green exists sometimes, but Season Zero has it as one of their prime colors. Good ol’ Retro Kaiba green.

I’m a little tempted to swatch Season Zero a bit and figure out their full color scheme--it’s really saturated, which is interesting when you compare it to the later seasons which are a lot more muted since...the 00′s were like that, they greyed a lot of colors out. But I’ll do it later if I do, maybe another post for another day.

Jounouchi and Honda, before they moved to the school with Yuugi in it, used to go to the same school and up until now I just assumed they were close friends. But apparently they were a lot more distant than that. I’m sure they met up several times as Jounouchi destroyed stuff and Honda came along in his volunteer janitor outfit to put the stuff the hell back, and maybe that’s how they got to know eachother better?

But basically, Jounouchi was the freakin worst, and Jounouchi’s best friend was Hirotani--this 45 year old 15 year old with the blue pony and turquoise fade--and Honda has SO MUCH hot goss to say about it.

I really get the gist that Honda may not have liked anyone else at his old school, like at all. Like maybe Honda likes cleaning up trash so much because his school was just trash top to bottom.

As is tradition, Yuugi got his tar beat in by Hirotani. Another concussion to add to his list of issues to tell his future therapist that lives in that puzzle he wears around his neck.

I still expect him to do a double cross, but it seems they wanted to keep it a relatable and more realistic fall-out, where Jounouchi has just bounced on them without even a goodbye. He and his Dad had a bad fight, and Jounouchi was like “well so long to all of this and everyone that has anything to do with it.”

In later seasons, Joey is the one trying to save other people. He’s saving his Sister, he’s saving Mai, he’s saving Yugi, but in this season Jounouchi’s friends had to save Jounouchi from himself a few times now.

I like this depth to his character, I’ll be honest. I can understand why S1-5 don’t touch on it, and I don’t think it’s because they didn’t want to have an abusive Dad storyline, because they did that several times over with Seto Kaiba (man the Dad situation in Yugioh is DIRE.) Instead they probably just felt like Season Zero already did it, so why do it again?

It’s just a shame that it wasn’t talked about in the other seasons. Joey makes a lot more sense to me now because we get to see why Jounouchi is so hard set on saving people. S4 Mai Valentine, who ditched everyone and joined a gang? That’s basically a Joey move, and that was why Joey Wheeler was all over that.

Really would have added a lot to that particular arc if the show...actually talked about Joey’s history at all rather than assume I would have watched something that was never released in the States. Instead...it just looked a lot like he had only romantic motivations, which may not have been what they were going for.

Speaking of romantic, check out this sunset. Like the sun is exploding for some reason--just a wild sunset you only see for a still frame before a commercial break.

As Joey, youknow, takes on an entire rival gang single-handedly.

Hey guys, I lived near a pretty big city most of my life and I have been on a roof...once. Just the one time when I was doing an internship in SF with a painter and we needed to take a reference photo of his painting for a gallery (and it was hella sketch, and we weren’t exactly allowed up there). Who are all these people giving teens Roof Access? It’s so hard to get! Even if you live in an apartment of a tall building, I can count on zero of my fingers the amount of times I was allowed on that roof. But TV shows and movies--they freakin love roof gardens and roof hangouts and roof fights.

Am I missing out?? How did y’all get on the ROOF? I know I’m on S5 of Yugioh now and I have seen a lot of roof stuff, but like...is this normal for everyone else? I know there’s schools that have roof sport--that’s common in the city everywhere--but that’s like...specialized roofs with 30 ft chainlink fencing and really good supports to your body doesn’t fall straight through it when you jump too much. The hell is using their normal ass roof?

This gang should have their legs swinging halfway into the floor below them, is all I’m saying, if my roof couldn’t handle our solar heating, then a normal ass roof cannot support a gang fight.

But it does look really, really cool.

Anyway, Anzu does some offscreen snooping and finds out where the crime hangs out, and suggests that we step right into crime zone and just yank Jounouchi out of there. Which is something you would only do and say if you were Anzu and cannot fear death.

If it were Jay’s it would be with an ‘s. That’s how you do a plural Jay. But it’s the 90′s, so we put a “z” on the end of everything that should have been an “s” and that’s how you get the...

I mean, thank you, dubbers, for not saying “Jizz” but for reals...that be Jizz.

Please don’t flag me, Tumblr. (which, PS, I think they turned off the flagbot, Tumblr hasn’t flagged me in forever and I’m so thankful. Mods are asleep, we can talk about anime again)

So even though Honda decided that he was fed up with Jounouchi and didn’t want to save his ass, he decided to give it another go but complete with some new sash. He also did this without telling any of the others, who just kinda spectated him for a little while.

Honestly, if they weren’t laughing at him, I wouldn’t have known that this sash was any weirder than any of his other sashes. I don’t know really know what a school uniform should look like. It’s a shame, I feel like this series has a lot of jokes and puns probably soaring right over my head.

A little bit embarrased he was caught being vulnerable, Honda decides to give us a little more context to why he ever decided to give Jounouchi the time of day in the first place.

They had PE class once, and Honda apparently loves the hell out of PE. Jounouchi ran really fast in a straight line that one time, and that is why he’s trustworthy friend material. He just needs to stop joining gangs, and he’ll be solid.

I have no idea if the fandub put that in there or if that was native to the show, but Miho legit stans Honda/Jounouchi and acts as if she’s off to write some fanfiction about it. Honestly if she did, it would make her so much more interesting of a character.

And so, until next time, we shall have to wait and see exactly what Yami Yuugi is going to do with a freakin Yo-yo and I’m sure it’s all sorts of real effed up. Excited to get there, honestly. A shame it had to happen on the part that isn’t dubbed yet, but I’ve done these subbed before, it’ll be fine!

#Season Zero #Yuugi Muto #Jounouchi #Honda #Anzu #yo-yo #Jounouchi joins a gang #Gotta go save Jounouchi's ass I guess #Miho #she was here too I guess #Just a great Jounouchi episode for the Jounouchi stans out there

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greed-the-dorkalicious · 6 years

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What I assume Yugioh is about based on having seen like less than 20 episodes of it

Because I used to do this every time I started reading a new Jojo part, just to see how much I got right and how much I got wrong. I don’t think anything will ever top “Rohan Kishibe is a high schooler who draws Chris Hart-esque anime art and thinks he’s a pro mangaka and his stand, Killer Queens, is made of bees, but maybe this will at least be slightly amusing. (Also I know it’s kinda late for this but listen, they still haven’t even gotten to Yami’s backstory, I still have genuinely no fucking clue what the actual overall plot of Yugioh is)

Anyway so here are the characters

Yuugi Mutotutotototuto

No for real tho is it Moto or Mutou someone explain this to me please

Looks like he’s 10 but is actually 15 and very short, which is relatable

Sunshine goth

MY SON NOW.

So fucking nice and good and loves his friends

I think uh... I think he’s like mixed race and that’s why his hair is like that? Not that that makes literally any sense whatsoever but I feel like I remember someone saying something like that

I think he’s like the reincarnation of an ancient pharaoh, or maybe just his great-great-great-great-great-great-great-whatever-grandson

Was able to solve the Millennium Puzzle because of this and also probably because he’s good at games idk

The pure-hearted chosen one who can win every battle even if he’s at a disadvantage because he Believes in the Heart of the Cards. Still don’t know what the fuck that even means but I support him so much

Just a perfect boy

I’m willing to bet a large portion of the fandom thinks he’s a boring protagonist. I say this entirely based on the fact that he is a genuinely nice and optimistic person and god knows fandoms can’t handle characters who aren’t assholes

If you talk shit about Yugi I will show up at your house and eat all of your Yugioh cards. This is non-negotiable

Yami Yugi

The ghost of a pharaoh who was just Really Good At Games and maybe some sort of god or something idk. But I guess maybe he has amnesia?

His real name is Atem but nobody calls him that

Also my son now I love him so much I would die for him thanks

Anyway he lives in the Millennium Puzzle and occasionally possesses Yugi’s body and SOMEHOW this completely changes Yugi’s eye shape, makes his hair even MORE complicated and also makes him taller.

A fucking sadistic bitch

But like a good one though. Like I think he’s a good guy, he just needs to learn to Chill The Fuck Out For Once In His Goddamn Life. It’s ok though Yugi will teach him about the power of friendship and then it’ll be fine

Apparently kills people in the manga, which I guess would make him my legally allotted one (1) irredeemable murderboy I’m allowed to stan

Died tragically and violently after he... uh... he uh... he got framed for cheating at go? Anyway so that’s why his ghost lives in the Millennium Puzzle because I guess maybe he wants revenge or something??

In the most bizarre anti-bullying aesop I have EVER seen, whenever someone wrongs Yuugi or his friends Yami will show up and completely fucking eviscerate them

Just loves games so much, doesn’t matter what game it is or who he’s playing with or why, he will play any game anywhere anytime and will probably send someone into a coma in the process

In conclusion I’d die for him thanks for coming to my TED talk

Seto Kaiba

The antagonist, I guess

Had green hair but then they took it away. Why did they do that

Very mean, I do not like him. I guess he probably has a tragic backstory and Is Actually A Nice Guy Deep Down™ but I still don’t like him

Like a bazillionaire because he owns Kaibacorp. I have no idea what they do. Maybe they manufacture duel disks? Which are like these things you wear on your arm so you can put cards on it. Like a little table for your arm. I don’t know why this is necessary or special but everyone has one

Obsessed with Yami because he is So Good At Games that Kaiba thinks he’s his true rival or some shit idek

Technically could be compared to Akira Touya but I don’t want to because Akira is a very nice and good boy and Kaiba is at best an Ochi

Joey Jounouchi

Yugi’s bff and for some reason the only one of the Crewgi I ever hear anything about so I’m just going to assume this means he is plot relevant somehow

He is the delinquent who picks up stray kittens in the rain

Looks like an asshole but actually a decent dude

Has the exact same fucking backstory as Dio Brando, but like, isn’t an absolute garbage boy, unlike Dio

Was in a gang when he was a kid, a gang with yo-yos. Except in the manga it wasn’t yo-yos, I forgot what it was. Knives? Or maybe hockey sticks? Maybe hockey sticks with knives taped to them??

Trying his best

Chadhotep

That isn’t his real name. I forgot what his real name is. I tried really hard to remember it but I couldn’t so now his name is Chadhotep

An Egyptian priest, not sure if he’s somebody’s reincarnation or immortal or a time traveler or just a regular guy who has Been Doing This For Generations

Has the Millennium Key, which presumably goes to the Millennium Lock and grants the user the power of fucking Shugo Chara whatever

Not really sure who’s side he’s on tbh

I feel like... he’s what Avdol could have been if Araki had gone more for the “badass pyromancer Egyptian fortune teller” thing like he had in chapter 1 instead of him being a constantly distressed mom friend. Not that this is a criticism of Avdol!! I love Avdol so much, he’s perfect, however I feel like Chadhotep could be like... an alternate Avdol I guess

I think he’s like Knuckles but instead of guarding the Master Emerald he guards the Millennium Items?

Haven’t actually seen him in like 10 episodes since Yami like... fuckin... imprisoned him in his mind palace for all eternity or some shit, is he ok?

Mokona Modoki

Kaiba’s little brother?????????

How

I guess he has like an Emporio Alniño thing going on?

Why is he here. He’s a child. Tell him to go home

I bet he’s supposed to be like 5 and speaks like a 15 year old because nobody knows how to write kids. That or he only looks like he’s 5 and is actually like 14

I don’t know anything about him but Kaiba is a bad role model

Thief King Bakura

I don’t actually know much about this guy because he hasn’t showed up yet but I think he’s the other antagonist?

Presumably the ghost of Yami’s ancient political rival, lives in the... what even is that. The fucking like. The Millennium Tambourine I guess

You know in Death Note when it’s revealed that there’s a whole orphanage full of L clones training to become the next Batman or whatever? He looks like he escaped from there

Presumably wants to steal all the Millennium Items so he can summon Shenron or vore god or some shit. I don’t actually know what all the others are but I’m going to assume there are 7 in total because that’s how magic item sets in anime work

Ok I know I made a Knuckles joke already but this dude legit looks more like a Sonic character than absolutely anyone else so far

And that’s everything I know about Yugioh, thanks. In case it isn’t obvious I took benadryl today and I haven’t been more than 60% awake since then

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