#this is yusei's fatal flaw

[inkblackorchid]

*cradles his face in my hands, kissing his forehead softly* You absolute IDIOT MY GOD YOU'RE A DISASTER

YOU UTTER BUFFOON YOUR FRIENDS CARE ABOUT YOU DAMN IT

Surprised Pikachu Face

This guy, I swear.

[sojourner-between-worlds]

Half headcanon, half theory? Or something...

So one of the things that always bothered me about the second half of the series is that for about five seconds at the tail end of one single episode we get Yusei recognizing the fact that just maybe Dad isn't actually dead dead, and then it's just...never so much as mentioned. Ever again.

So anyway, I've built a theory about how that all works.

The things we actually know: 1. Papa Fudo is just kinda hangin' out in limbo probably. 2. Momentum is generated from dueling, specifically Synchro summons. 3. Yusei meets Papa Fudo three times, all in near-death experiences, all in some way involving Momentum.

The theory: Papa Fudo is hangin' out in the Duel Monsters Spirit World.

(All in all, not a bad place to be stuck in limbo, really.)

Synchro summons basically opened a door to the Spirit World in a way other types had not previously. The Planetary Gears allowed for that door to stay open, allowing energy to flow freely through it, thus creating a 100% clean and renewable energy source via syphoning it off of another world. (These "open gates" would also allow people like Luna to travel between them.)

If the positively spinning gears "produce" energy, then it makes sense in the final arc why a negative spin would result in the opposite: rather than syphoning energy from the Spirit World, they would be sending energy to the Spirit World. Why in one arc this caused a catastrophe and in the other it didn't is up for debate. I don't have an answer for that. I'm not sure the writers even have an answer for that. The only idea I have is that in the first half, it was an overload of power being sent back crashing into energy trying to come in that caused everything to explode, whereas in the last arc it was a gradual shift and shut down, but that's the best I've got, haha.

Why Papa Fudo got sucked in instead of killed like everyone else is also beyond me, BUT it is stated that the souls of the people killed in Zero Reverse are, in fact, trapped there, as well, though they appear to have lost their agency. Which could actually mean that a lot of people didn't technically die but rather were also trapped there and essentially turned into zombies over time, their souls corrupted by revenge and bitterness.

Further supporting this, is -again- that first meeting. Yusei defeats Rudger, Rudger blows up the bridge, Yusei fall into the old reactor/generator. And where does he end up? This very other-worldly place that we don't actually get to see very much of. We know from Luna, however, that there are a lot of different places that have very unique looks to them in the Spirit World, so its entirely possible that could have been a part of it she had simply never been to before. We also see how easily the Spirit World can be influenced/destroyed by events in NDC, so it's reasonable to think that maybe that desolate place where Yusei meets Papa Fudo was also destroyed by Zero Reverse.

So anyway. Yeah. He's just kinda hangin' out in Spirit World. No big deal.

Let me know what ya'll think, or if I there's some fatal flaw in my reasoning. There probably is, lol.

(Just gonna casually tag @the-kings-of-games because it's not a hc necessarily but also I want to know what you think, lol.)