Predictions and Observations:
Fight or Flight

Episode Aired:
This Post Posted:

It's Thursday, and I've finally got my hands on the only recording of this episode that exists online. The picture is blurry, the audio is a minute or two behind the video, but it's finally here! Perhaps soon a better version of this video will be up, I'm rollin' with it, but for now, this is what I got, so my confusion is not unlike the comic-con-camcorder situation. Nevertheless, I press onward. Okay, I have a better one now. And I transcribed it in under five hours. This week, since I have 48 hours to write what I usually work on over the course of a week, I plan to be very deliberate about this (as in focused, not slow); usually I like to allow subjects to simmer in the back of my mind and write about them when inspiration strikes, and I'm still going to get this done by Friday night. If I seem terse in this post, that's why.
Ah, what a week it's been! See, since 4Kids switched the show to the CW, I've been relying on YouTube to get the episode every week because no matter what I try, DirecTV seems incapable of giving me the CW. This week, because the airing schedule changed abruptly to 7am, none of the usual suspects on YouTube were able to get ahold of it. Tensions have been running high, some higher than others, and I think this situation has brought the YouTube Yu-Gi-Oh! community closer together. As for me, I posted on the 4Kids boards about it, asking for some haste getting "Fight or Flight" up on their streaming site, and made some new friends. This week has also been an exercise in overcoming the circumstances, as I'm sure you can imagine.
Since my Saturday morning anticipation lasted most of the week, the people in my life have also begun to be introduced to 5D's; and understand what a huge step that is for me. I have long held Yu-Gi-Oh! as the one thing in my life that I don't ever have to answer for or be right about or do anything but take it as it I see it. I realize that I could be that way with all of life, and my life would be better for it, but sometimes that's really hard to do, and when I keep this to myself it's easy. Sharing it with other people, even my own family, is scary. I watched the Sunday afternoon marathon (A Blast 1 and 2) with my best friend and godfather, and I found out on Tuesday that my dad, who now lives apart from me, *does* get the CW, and so now my new plan is going to his house every Saturday morning for my episode. Ah, the wacky things I do for my canon.

Crow, the new guy. To start with, many parallels to Yusei. Crow's duel is very similar to Pipe Dreams, for one, in that his opponent uses Gate Blockers and overrides control of his runner. Crow also has a duel runner that is unusual for a satellite, and one wonders where he got it. Crow, like Yusei, is a menace to Sector Security and a hero to people back in the Satellite who look up to him. Crow asked, "Now if *Yusei* could make it to New Domino City, why couldn't I?", much like Yusei said in On Your Mark, "Jack didn't stay. So why should I?" Crow's marks are also similar to Yusei's mark, but thicker and heavier. Could that be hinting to us that these two are similar? Or perhaps that what they were arrested for is similar? Do all satellites caught in New Domino turbo-dueling get marks like these? One more thing that occurred to me, all these turbo-duelists are daredevils at heart, even levelheaded, quiet Yusei. Crow certainly fits that. It's key, also, to understand what sets Crow and Yusei apart. Crow's been in and out of the Facility several times, judging form his marks, and Yusei, despite having about as much regard for the law, was only caught once. Overall, Crow seems much more reckless, a firebrand, the kind of street punk Trudge thinks of Yusei as. This is gut, but Crow comes across as a prankster, a trickster, and the mythological connotation of crows is also sometimes that. Crow is also not only a risk-taker, but enjoys it. Yusei takes huge risks when necessary, but for Crow, the bigger the risk, the better. He likes the notoriety, too; he keeps telling the officers chasing him to say that it was he, Crow, who beat them. Could it be that that fondness of almost getting caught gets him into some trouble?
But in contrast and counterpoint to that cunning thief that terrorized the Security guys, we discover Crow's home, the kids whom he gives cards to, and his heartfelt statement that "Every kid should have a dueling deck", an assertion of his love of the game, sharing it with kids who can gain that love without even having the stakes be serious yet. Someone else might give the cards to other duelists in the Satellite, or other adults, because that gives them more power to fight the injustice of the Satellite, but Crow's gifts to the kids say to me simply that he loves the game and wants them to be able to enjoy it, too.
Man, some characters in 5D's get the coolest intros ever. This is where I read into *how* we are introduced to this character and how he's meant to 'land', so to speak. In our very first encounter with this character we already know that he has a unique and powerful deck and duel runner. Definitely a major player in this world where a deck on your wrist is the power to stand up. He has so many marks on his face that they kinda look like warpaint. I note that his main colors are yellow and black, along with that orange hair. This is another instance of yellow and orange, colors that for the most part symbolize noncombatants in the magical end of things, more mundane: Trudge wears yellow, as do Rally, Carly, Yunagi, and probably others. I also note in the flashback to the big war, the unnamed dragon that must be Goodwin's was also yellow. But anyway, I get the sense that Crow is a fight that has little to do with what Yusei came there to accomplish. Since there seems to be some history between them, perhaps Yusei'll let it lie because he's here for more important reasons, or, since I do feel a duel brewing, there will be a duel and that'll be a straight-up magicless duel to counterbalance all the heaviness. Either way, Crow is no Dark Signer, and perhaps he's here to remind us that the Satellite is not simply a land of darkness to be conquered, but Yusei's home, with people there that he knows, cares about, has histories with. The Satellite, no matter what negative energy, pollution, bad magic, whatever, is a place with real people in it, people that Yusei cares about, like his friends, and a few even that could be trouble for him, like Crow.
That's a nice Ride of the Valkyries/Deck of Armor-type intro there; he beat a Security guy pretty handily in one turn, then flew off into the sunrise. Should we be worried that he seems to have a bone to pick with Yusei? Nah...
But what bone is that, exactly? Is it that Yusei left the Satellite, became champion, and now presumes to be accepted as one of them again? Is it that Crow's forays into the City directly help people, with the cards he brought back, while Yusei has nothing to show for his big ambitious revenge mission? Does Crow feel that Yusei, not unlike Jack, abandoned the Satellite?
But I kinda like Crow, don't get me wrong. Like Yusei, his heart's in the Satellite. Whatever this little "you've got a lot of nerve" spat is, I get the feeling that Crow could be a very good ally in the mission that brought Yusei here.

Crow's runner. Who built it? Could it have been Yusei? If that's the case, why didn't Yusei *fly* out of the Satellite? *Did* Crow just pull a heist from an impound in the City and bring cards back to the Satellite? Is the chasm, the one Crow jumped over, the one caused by the meltdown, the border between the City and the Satellite? What about the big, pretty stretch of ocean we've seen between them before?
But Crow's runner. It seems unlikely that he could manage something like that by himself; he *could* be *another* crazy-good duelist-engineer like Yusei, but what are the odds? Since Crow and Yusei apparently know each other, I'm throwing out there the idea of a collaboration between multiple satellite turbo-duelists, including Jack, Yusei, and Crow. I also notice that the designs of the runners and helmets is somewhat similar.

First Security checked the money vaults, then the deck storage, as the most likely to be robbed.

Which rumors about Yusei is Crow referring to?

We saw a different side of meek little mousy Mina this episode, whoa! We've seen a lot of her being shy and timid around Jack, but we just saw her on the warpath when someone dared to mess with him!

Okay, a lot of exposition, all of it from a character we don't trust. This is the part where I turn on my nitpicking brain and attempt to divine if Goodwin can be trusted at all this week.
Goodwin left us with a cliffhanger-- "Yusei, it's time I told you the truth...". Considering what they were talking about, I added an end onto that line: "... I actually don't give a darn about the Satellite."
Goodwin told us about how the Satellite is kept separate from the City because he's worried the evil magic will invade the City, too. Better to let it chew on the Satellite and leave the 'Chosen' alone. Fine, I can believe that from Goodwin. BUT, his argument has holes in it. The evil magic is already here-- the last two duels against them happened when they tracked down Yusei and Jack in the City!
Goodwin also, note this, led Yusei to believe that he was the *only* one who could save the Satellite, and that he must do it alone. This is even more ironic considering we just found out that the five dragons, and therefore the five Signers, are strongest together!
And, like I said last week, if Goodwin was really ready to talk turkey, he'd start by rolling up his right sleeve. "I'm working on it"! Honestly!
So, what is Goodwin's motive here? If he's not telling the truth, why not and what is he telling instead? Right now I think Goodwin wanted Yusei out of the way; he's back in the Satellite, trying to fight alone an enemy that takes all five Signers, and meanwhile Goodwin has free rein to manipulate the other three Signers and do whatever without Yusei there to be suspicious and have a conscience. Goodwin knew that the only way to get Yusei's nose out of his shady doings was to act like he was giving up the ghost.
Why, though, would Goodwin lie that he was one of the people who supported the reactor's creation? It's something he's ashamed of, something *to* be ashamed of. He could easily be blamed for the state of the Satellite now, from that revelation. Perhaps the truth of the matter can be divined by starting from Goodwin's grief over this; what did it lead him to do? Hey, here's an idea-- did the reactor meltdown do that to his arm?

Okay, so let me get this straight. I'm willing to believe Goodwin about the great war, because we had a second opinion-- Luna doesn't dream in lies spun by Goodwin. Five thousand years ago-- which is a significantly longer time frame than we had been thinking before, and could place this anywhere from twenty to a hundred years or more after the Ancient Past events in the original-- this big war happened between the forces of darkness and the forces of light. The five dragons-- Stardust, Archfiend, Ancient Fairy, Black Rose, and Goodwin's dragon-- combined their power to create/summon/empower the Crimson Dragon, which was more powerful than all of them, and together the six fought back the forces of darkness. They only defeated, not destroyed, these forces, and they were sealed underground in the form of the Nazca lines.
How does this relate to what we already know? I notice that there was no mention of the People of the Stars, nor any mention of the five other dragons in the stories about the People of the Stars. In addition, it sounded like the Crimson Dragon already existed in the time of the People of the Stars, and it may not have before the five dragons combined their strength. What if there were two separate battles, one five thousand years ago and another more like two thousand, the last time this happened, with the People of the Stars in pre-Incan Peru?
Say it with me: "Like fries and ketchup?" The balance of light and darkness we learned about in GX states that, perhaps, this war can never entirely be won by one side or the other, because light and shadow are (like the drone said) "two sides of the same coin".
The five dragons were five individual monsters, probably every bit as diverse, dynamic, and independent as the five Signers themselves. What was it, besides perhaps desperation, that caused them to *swear* to defend the world, and to eventually combine their powers?
Ancient Fairy Dragon was taken prisoner by the forces of darkness; how does that show up in like-card-like-duelist symbolism today, besides the fact that AFD's card is MIA?
Now, five thousand years or so later, minus a few, the city of New Domino, then just one city, creates an energy reactor powered by duel energy, and hides it under the city's slums. However, this reactor had a meltdown, and instead ripped the town in half and sowed the land with negative magical energy. One half, New Domino, abandoned the other as a lost cause, infused with dark magic, and went on with life, taking precautions to keep everything in the other half, the Satellite, where it was and away from them.
Well, it seems I was onto something in saying that powering the City with the Crimson Dragon was even more dangerous than having a nuclear power plant. A meltdown! I wonder what caused it? Just trying this for the first time and not being quite sure of their technology? Was it location? Was it a certain duel?
I can't believe I called it! "Hey, here's a crazy idea-- what if New Domino City is powered by duel energy from the stadium duels?" I wrote in the A Blast II post!
This all may have been how it started, but people in the Satellite are not, as the dark magic would imply, inherently evil. The Satellite is not a "barren wasteland of depression"; Yusei's heart is there and so is Crow's. The people in the Satellite are just people, and we do see people-- like Yusei, Jack, Blister, Crow, and many others-- come and go between the City and the Satellite on the quiet. There's no contamination, and if there were, Goodwin could not keep the City and the Satellite airtightly apart if he wanted to, which we've seen firsthand he doesn't mind bending the law for his own benefit. At this point, the City-Satellite schism is just bigotry and fear, justified by apparent necessity.

Is that Power Tool Dragon? Officially we don't know what Goodwin's dragon is, but 4kidstv.com has been hyping a dragon that looks a lot like that called Power Tool Dragon. And from a different angle it looks completely different, but still yellowish. What we know about Goodwin's dragon is that it's yellow, and as I mentioned earlier, yellow usually equals mundane, not magic, in 5D's.

"But to create a better future, we had to take risks in the past." Another instance of the past/future theme. What's the pattern, though? It seems to me to be something about how to move to the future first you need to complete the past. After all,

If the Crimson Dragon had its pick, why did it choose Goodwin? Or the others? Goodwin said that the Crimson Dragon chose Yusei "because (he is) strong and selfless... the Dragon knew (he) would not run from a challenge, or from the darkness that is coming." I think it's also because Yusei has a vested interest; the Satellite is the front line, and so it's no coincidence that two of the Signers are satellites and are familiar with the terrain and care about preserving it. But why did it pick Goodwin, who is perhaps strong, but hardly selfless and likes using people? He isn't exactly the world-saving type, more the "as long as my city is okay, everyone else can stuff it" type. But they've gotten this far. Perhaps, like the Millennium Items, Signs go to people who, with them, will move the action in the right direction, even if those people themselves may not deserve them or earn them fairly.

It kinda looks like the Dark Signers are perhaps holed up in the old reactor Goodwin spoke of. Their dialogue ("where the awakening began") also implied that.

Mina called Jack/Carly vs. Trudge an illegal match. It was dangerous and weird, but illegal? Does Domino have specific laws against sinister magic in duels? Well, this from the canon that brought us the Duel Academy Pledge, including the clause "...unless they plan to take over the world."Or perhaps there's a law against dueling in hospitals, for just this reason? This can't have been good for the rest of the patients, and you'd better hope nobody was in surgery when the explosions started hitting.

I thought Carly was living out of her car? Where are they? Maybe she meant that she was so busy between her blog and her intern job that she didn't often *go* home, though she had one?
Now, the scene with Mina bursting into Carly's apartment and Jack sending her away. Ouch. That was really hard to watch, and Mina must really be hurting right now. And Jack still doesn't get it. He doesn't get it one bit. He doesn't even notice the awkward and painful in that scene. And even though Mina is hurt by what he said, Jack's reasons for leaving have nothing to do with her. He came to the City by doing what Goodwin told him to, and that's how he became champ. He sacrificed everything for that, and that was what made all that sacrifice worth it. That's what made him valuable, made him anything. That was the easy answer. Without his title to protect, Jack thinks he has nothing to lose. Whether or not Jack's a great duelist is not the question; Jack proved that being a great duelist isn't enough, when he stepped on another great duelist to escape the Satellite, and then when he was defeated himself. Being a great duelist isn't enough to be certain about life, or enough to be assured you'll never meet your match. He's just searching his heart for answers, not unlike Kaiba in Duelist Kingdom. And he doesn't notice either Mina's or Carly's feelings.

As a final note on this scene, Carly said the L word. The L word is rare in Yu-Gi-Oh!; most couplings are a bit more understated. I can only name two instances in the original canon of someone saying the word love, and in GX many more with all the crushes flying around. But this triangle between Carly, Mina, and Jack is pretty much official.

I've been noticing that this series contains all of the weirdest ways to travel-- garbage tunnel, air drop, gurney, runner with wings...

The title. There was some fighting here and a lot more flying, between Crow's runner and Yusei's air drop. There was some fighting to fly, as in Crow's duel, and some flying to fight, like Yusei's air drop.

Well, this post was a bit hurried and I'll undoubtedly think of more to say in next week's post, but I AM getting it out tonight, even though I just got the episode on Thursday! I've been working on this practically nonstop, my hands are covered with non-sequiturs I wrote down when I was away from my computer like "where is the chasm?", "Yusei, it's time I told you the truth: I don't give a darn about the Satellite", and "nesting birds"; and I've got a bad sunburn from my silver laptop as I sat in the sun at noon with no sunscreen typing away before the start of my best friend's graduation ceremony. I have a dreadful, bright red burn on my right forearm, but almost no burn on my left; the irony has not escaped me. That's all, and the next episode tomorrow is The Reunion Duel (possibly a multi-parter). 'Til then! -Clio

READ A TRANSCRIPT OF THIS EPISODE HERE

Also from this week:

June 8th, 2009

There is a silent uproar in the online Yu-Gi-Oh! community. This week the air schedule of Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's changed so precipitously that the 'usual suspects' whom we count on to upload our episode on YouTube, those heroes Bleachjah15, lumi29star, and Slifer13, could not catch the episode themselves, much less share it with us. We set a record for how long it's taken one of these episodes to get onto the internet some thirty or so hours ago; it isn't available *anywhere*. Tensions are running high, and most people are being very supportive of these three, especially in the face of *some* of these tensions. I am officially coming out in support of them and the rather thriving YouTube Yu-Gi-Oh! community, and I made this little banner to commemorate this strange episode in our lives. I think it's brought us all closer together.