Predictions and Observations:
Mark of the Monkey IV

Episode Made Available Officially:
This Post Posted:

Deevac's finally calling Leo by his name; I think that telegraphs that Leo's already more formidable than Deevac gave him credit for.

PTD, Leo, and Regulus. I don't know what there is to say about it that I haven't said already, but it's plainer than ever that they're connected, they parallel each other.

The Dark Signers seem to have a pattern of summoning two tokens or monsters to tribute *with* a trap that gets activated by scoring a hit on their dark synchro monster. Deevac did with his Dark Matter trap what Kalin pulled with Damage Translation.

Dark Sage-- how do I put this? -- have you lost weight? *Is* Tarunka the Dark Sage? We actually never got a card-name for him. One thing certain, he does have some connection to the Dark Magician with a helmet like that.

I saw Turbo Booster on the wall in Zeman's castle. O. M. G. Other cards seen sealed by the Minus Curse (I'm working on a list):
Mokey Mokey's up there twice in the same shot...
Key Mace
Unhappy Maiden
Magician of Faith
White Magician Pikeru
M-Warrior #1
Happy Lover
Dancing Fairy
LaLa Li-Oon
Haniwa
Weather Control
Petit Angel
When Luna duels, it always seems to be a trivia contest to recognize all the familiar cards that don't get played.

Cusci Lu can attack directly, too? Wait... what? Okay, what are Cusci Lu's abilities? Okay, so according to the verbatim canon:
"Earthbound Immortal Cusci Lu has twenty-eight hundred attack points, twenty-four-hundred defense points, and can attack your opponent directly."
"It's immune to any attacks, traps, and spells you might throw its way!"
Okay, so it's sort of a cross between Uru's and Ccapac Apu's abilities. -Ish. Kind of. Maybe.
And yet, the twins are taking it apart. Therefore, these abilities are not the all-around foolproof they appear to be. Leo survived its attack once by increasing his lifepoints before it hit him. This does mean, though, that Cusci Lu was able to bypass PTD and declare an attack against Leo directly. Then, the next time Cusci Lu attacked PTD, meaning that unlike Uru it can attack monsters too, right?, Luna activated Limiter Removal, which (I looked it up-- credit to Yugioh Wikia) doubles the atk of all machine-type monsters on Luna's field, then destroys all monsters affected by this during the end phase of the same turn. PTD had 4000 lp-- double the 2000 it had after Roaring Earth weakened it-- to Cusci Lu's 3600 (powered up by Closed Forest and Roaring Earth), so in theory Deevac would've lost 400 lp. Instead Deevac tributed AFD and Luna lost 200 lp instead? That part's a little fuzzy. I looked it up and Cursed Prison's effect is just to summon a monster from one's extra deck under a Spellbinding-Circle whammy, basically. Ergo, is this an ability of Cusci Lu's, to sacrifice another monster on the field to reflect the damage back to the opponent at half? Moot, really, because for this final attack (if it is final) Deevac *has* no other monsters on the field.

I think it's a really sweet moment when *Luna* tells *Yusei* that it's going to be all right. Usually Yusei's the one looking out for everyone, and he can't help but worry. It also reminds me of something I wrote about On Your Mark a while back. The moment I've decided I started really liking Yusei is when he told his friends "It's gonna be all right", even though making it all work out would take a lot from him. Right there, Luna becomes Yusei to Yusei, so to speak.

Monsters in the graveyard are free agents. Very true. That's logically true but it's also important to keep track of the connotations of such things. This reminds me of, say, The Master of Magicians-- once Arkana sacrificed his Dark Magician, it joined Yugi's side in the form of powering up Dark Magician Girl.

So EIs can only use their abilities w/in a field spell? Well, that makes AFD a whole lot of handy, and in Dark Signs, Yusei was pretty much toast from the moment Speed World was activated. Does that make EIs geared to be trouble in turbo-duels especially, or is that an unfortunate happenstance? I do get why-- they're *Earthbound*; they need earth, or field spells. How on Earth would we defeat them if they *weren't* still halfway trapped in the ground? Will the Signers be unlucky enough that we find out?

So this is dragging on *another* episode? Will it be like The Dark One Cometh duel, which ended the duel in part 4 but it was really already over in part 3? That would still, though, make this the first *five*-part duel since the Battle City Finals.

I think, so far, the older Signers are getting shown up in a huge way. It looks like little Luna may be the first to take down a Dark Signer, *and* in her first encounter with one, too! Yusei and Akiza have both skirmished with Kalin and Misty respectively before, and they got burned, badly; this is Luna's first swing at Deevac, and I think she's gonna do it!! Not to jinx it or anything, or tempt the wrath of the whatever from high atop the thing. But it's clear Deevac just got blindsided and this is looking really good. Unless of course he's faking it.

Yusei got Stardust back from Jack the same way, is one of the main things that occurred to me: he took advantage of Stardust's being a free agent while in the graveyard, and when Stardust came back from it, he took control of Stardust away from Jack.

We still don't know, btw, why Deevac is twisted enough to have no qualms about shadow-dueling with a sweet little eleven-year-old girl. Will we ever find out?

New Card Section:
Leo-- Power Converter, equip - when sent to the graveyard, the atk of the monster it was equipped to becomes lp to the wielder, and the atk of the monster goes to 0 until the end of the turn.
Leo/Luna-- Respect Synchron, spell - Brings a synchro monster in the graveyard back from it and to the field of the person who played this card.
Leo/Luna-- Rocket Pilder, equip - When the monster equipped with this attacks, its atk is subtracted from the atk of the monster it attacked.
Leo/Luna-- Pain To Power, equip - converts lifepoints lost by the player of this card into attack points for the monster equipped with this card.
Ancient Fairy Dragon [2100/3000/L7/light], synchro - special ability destroys a field spell.
Deevac-- Earthbound Immortal Cusci Lu [2800/2400/L10/dark] - vague and nasty abilities abound.
Deevac-- Dark Matter, trap - summons two facedown defense mode monsters from the player's deck

Limiter Removal is another old-school card. I know I saw it during GX, and I'm not sure how far back it goes beyond that. Its effect is to double a machine monster's attack points for one turn, then destroy it at the end of the turn.

Another sort of familiar-ish thing is that PTD just pulled a Rocket Warrior except with lifepoint loss.

By the way, I saw Urgent Tuning in Leo's hand earlier and now it isn't in Luna's. That means the twins must have Urgent Tuning facedown. Will it come in handy? What else could they possibly want to synchro-summon?

I do not yet know the title of the next episode. Are we about to hit a nominal and actual five-part duel? The first one since Battle City? BTW, Fighting For a Friend is only a nominal five-parter, in name only, because it encompasses two separate duels, and Village of Vengeance is kind of a mishmash of a shadow game. They don't count, quite. First actual bonafide five-part duel since The Final Face Off. Wow. That'll be the first one I ever post about; this post began even in its most primitive form with WTD's Self Destruction, the first Yugi vs. Atem.

Well, 'til the next one, that's all I got! Still asking 4Kids to explain their grand plans for airing to us groundlings; I'll keep everyone posted. -Clio

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