#and Tea Gardner's brute strength

[steve0discusses]

Yugioh S3 Ep 39: Tea Fight

Hey I just wandered into a random forum on the internet about the deaths that impacted you the most in a series, and I was in there faster than you can say “How many GRR Martin fans does it take to kill off a pregnant lightbulb in a random wedding episode″ (the answer is no one in this entire forum watched anything but anime) and then this one guy stood up in the back of this little internet forum and was just going off about how this one dude died in Yugioh GX and he turned off the TV and like didn’t want to even go back to the season until his students were like “no really, professor, please keep watching Yugioh GX” and he was like “WHAT’S EVEN THE POINT NOW” and it was like...really??? The series where nearly 200 people have died in just the first 3 seasons??? (which I didn’t comment, don’t worry, I just kinda lurked in stunned silence)

So like, lets talk more about Yugioh, which apparently has one of the roughest death scenes in any series that this random adult guy on the internet has ever watched. Course that was GX. I’m pretty sure I take so long on this show that I’ll probably still be recapping Season 3 of Yugioh when I’m dead and reincarnated into some cursed locket that a poor internet blogger wears around their neck.

Which would be shaped like a DVD set of Seaquest, S2. Like sometimes we talk about -sonas and we draw people and characters but what would your puzzle necklace -sona be? (remembering that is has to be cursed, heavy, awkward, and as inconveniently shaped as possible--you can’t just say Gucci or wtv) Because mine is the DVD collectors set of Seaquest, but only S2. Bro says that his is a Comic Sans version of Tolstoy’s War and Peace.

But I digress, so we start this episode knowing that Joey and Kaiba are dueling or whatever--but honestly none of this matters to me. Not at all. This doesn’t matter to anyone because for the first time ever, I finally get to see Tea try and punch out a God. Or a Ghost. Really hard to tell the difference between God and Ghost in this show.

And like, no one else will even witness this event because they’re too obsessed with Joey. So much so, that Yugi makes a staggering observation.

In the actual dialogue of the show, Pharaoh’s response to Yugi’s comment here was “HMMMMMMMmmmmMMHhmmmmmmmm”

and it’s like yeah, hard agree, Pharaoh, hard agree.

(read more under the cut)

Anyways, our very punchable God/Ghost character never came down from atop of Card Mess Mountain, and he’s just been sitting here on his perch trying really hard to just parse what exactly went down over the past few episodes.

Marik right now is me before I write every recap.

So he decides, well if the Rod did something for Kaiba, I guess it should do something for me, thus kind of proving that no one on Earth understands how to use this item anymore. I was kinda banking on the the fact that Marik’s Slightly-More-Evil-Possessed-Ghost-God-Entity-Person was kind of like the only guy who knows what’s going on with these gadgets outside of Bakura, but nah. Not even this guy knows. Now that Bakura’s temporarily vaporized, basically all that these millennium items are now are heavy paperweights that sometimes make your life just super inconvenient.

And I guess it can possess minds but wtv. Had Marik remembered that this rod can possess minds he would have had a much, much easier time in this episode. Of course, we haven’t really seen him possess anyone since Slightly-Better-Marik peaced out, so maybe that’s just something only Slightly-Better-Marik can do?

Ah. There it is.

What sweet catharsis.

She doesn’t actually punch him, which is kind of a shame, but because they can’t show Marik explode like a slo mo frozen giant gummy bear shot with a deer slug directly on screen, this episode is Tea-punch free.

Anyway, during this episode, the Millennium Puzzle develops a neat new trick--which is to set an alarm to remind Pharaoh to check up on his sort-of-not-really-girlfriend for once in his damn lifetime because this asshole will not do it otherwise because he is just waaaaay too busy thinking about cards.

And then it just finally dawns on Yugi that he boarded Murderzone island like 3 hours ago.

And, because this is Yugi, do you think he’ll tell everyone else what’s going on? Do you think he’ll step in and be like “woah woah stop the game for five seconds I just realized Tea might be in huge danger and we all should go and stop the murder.”

Do you think Yugi, for once in his entire life, will finally tell the entire truth to his friends who have constantly given him love and support and who just want Yugi to tell them the entire truth even once? Just ONCE?

That’s right, in an effort to be polite, he apologizes to Joey for ditching him and then books it without bothering anyone else.

The lengths Yugi will go to be as awkward as possible in order to not make anything awkward.

And then he just books it as fast as he can go and I guarantee that offscreen, everyone just kind of stopped what they were doing, looked at eachother, and Seto was like “Well, now why am I even playing?”

Anyway, atop the tall tall tower that takes like 15 minutes to get to the top of, Marik as Tea is very easily holding their own. And listen, Marik didn’t say any of the next lines in these caps but I can’t stop thinking about how freakin weird this would be for him. I’ve been kinda holding this in for a little while and youknow what? I have to talk about it for just a little bit. Just a little.

Like I usaully just erase any shipping stuff but just...give me a little second to just...touch on this subject. Just a little bit.

And while Marik thinking about dating is absolutely not canon, I’m just saying, going from tombkeeper to living within the body of not-Pharaoh’s-GF must have been a really crazy ride for Marik. Like, he starts out life learning literally everything about Pharaoh lore that is left over from the wastes of time. But, none of it--and I mean none of it--could have prepared him for the High School dating scene of “but should I text him more than twice a day or is that too much texting?” They don’t tell you how to do that in the Pharaoh brand card scriptures that they tattoo on your back with a hot knife in underground Pharaoh school.

Marik went from mole-person who has no human contact to just watching this whole weird thing unfold with Tea and Pharaoh giving eachother hoverhands-of-a-hoverhands hugs, and it must have been just completely wild for him. I’m not suggesting he remotely enjoyed it or didn’t enjoy it, but I’m just suggesting that the thought must have crossed his mind that this would be the last place he ever expected to end up when he picked up the Millennium Rod.

And it’s like, congrats, Marik, your soul went to hell and then you accidentally dated your own god.

I’m sure there’s plenty of fanfics about this already to fill in the gaps, so I won’t go too deep into this but man, Marik could have possessed anyone, and he possessed this girl.

Which again was probably because she’s strangely super strong because then Tea reveals that she could have done this the entire time.

LOOK AT THIS.

SHE DID THIS FROM STANDING. OLYMPIC GYMNASTS CAN’T DO THIS.

And then I guess Marik got sleepy after that much effort and just passed out.

And no one got to see it, Ishizu didn’t see it, Pharaoh didn’t see it.

Who’s here now, PS, Pharaoh finally showed up. That long as hell elevator must’ve stopped like 4 times on the way up for Roland who’s on his break, probably heating up the grill to talk to the other Kaiba Dad Stand-ins and have a Kaiba Dad Stand-In brunch where all they do is talk about sports, dark sunglasses, and if they should send Mokuba to UC Davis or Colorado State.

And so, seeing that Tea is passed out on the ground, Pharaoh jumps to conclusions and it very much looks like we’re gonna get a Millennium Item fight, which we haven’t yet seen Pharaoh even do.

Like, when you think about it, do either of these people even know what they are doing? Like Marik can at least fight a bunch of robots and one stationary computer monitor, but does Pharaoh have any idea that thing can shoot lasers?

Much like a bobcat making itself look really big to fight other bobcats, Pharaoh managed to poof up his hair big enough to spook Marik into actually stepping down. I guess Marik figured he’d have a better time with cards than lasers that neither of them know how to shoot in any general direction.

I gotta say, Pharaoh’s reaction to Marik secretly being in the body of his girlfriend was like “oh. Well we better go save him then before he dies.” and I do appreciate that. He seems secure enough in his own identity to not be bothered by this gender reversal he was not even aware of at the time. How I wish more boys on TV were more secure about that type of thing.

Like obviously this show that has no romance in it will never actually talk about sexuality but just enjoy this moment of zen where this possible lowhanging punchline could have happened and the writers room went “do we have to do the Family Guy/Friends thing?” and they were like “nah.” because Pharaoh canonically would not at all be bothered by this. At all.

Anyway, I’m kinda bummed that they didn’t extend Tea fight out for 3 episodes, but at least I got one Tea fight in before the end of the series.

I can’t believe she did a weird backflip thing off of a rail that was on a tower 300 ft in the air. I can’t believe that was the B plot of this episode.

And here’s a link to read these recaps in Chronological Order.