Predictions and Observations:
Showdown At Sundown I and II

Episodes Aired: December 4, 2010
This Post Posted: December 10, 2010

Aha! Blame it on the freaking *cactus cider*. *That's* why everyone's so insane around here! It's the quenchiest little town of dyne-crazy idiots in all the YGO-verse! (All fans of Avatar The Last Airbender, please feel free to follow up with more cactus juice jokes of your own!)
... Who lit Barb on fire?

Lots of alliteration last episode; that was the one thing I facepalmed about after I sent out last week's post. Having missed something like that until then, guaranteed I've started to crack up in preparation for finals. Check it out, two important lines made additionally memorable through use of alliteration and assonance: "the Law of the Land is that Duels can only be waged During Dusk" and "if only my Baby Brother lotten were Hanging His Hat in town right now, he would take that Creep Kalin, and Duel him Down into the Dirt". Then there's also that Malcolm calls Radley a "Rat" twice. Which in fact, given how well he's taking getting shipped off to his own mines, you bet he is... But yeah, alliteration, the use of the same letter or sound at the beginning of adjacent or closely connected words.

Here's where I talk about that kid. That kid needs a name. I don't want to just keep calling him "that kid" when there's so much to say about him.

"You and your sister should leave this place..." I find it very interesting that Kalin's the one who reveals to us that his little fan has a sister; it says also that Kalin knows about this kid's family and cares enough to tell them to get out while they have a chance.

If that kid's dad was a duelist, it explains a lot about why he sees what he does in Kalin, and why he has a different view of dueling than the rest of this nasty little town. And why he only falters, not gives up, even when a duelist like Kalin says that dueling will ruin his life.

"Sorry, kid. Anyone who's shipped off to that mountain is *staying there*." Because Kalin himself wants to be shipped off and be stuck there forever, so he wants to believe that.

"What I do here, I do for myself, and that's all." In other words, I'm not doing this to send people to the mines, I'm not doing this because I like you or because I care that what I do benefits you. Don't pour me another round of cactus and praise me, that's not why I'm here.

Okay, someone send the other former Dark Signers some antidepressants, and fast! But seriously, we've met two out of five former Dark Signers: Carly can't remember a moment of it, and Kalin's overwhelmed with feelings of guilt over the whole thing. Anyone wanna bet Misty, Greiger, and Deevac aren't having some serious *issues* as well? Any worries Misty might have don't seem to show in her modeling, though; we *have* seen one of her ads this season.

What's wrong with Kalin's chest? Why is Kalin so weak? Is he already sick with something? Are we going to find out how or why? Between the obsession with his last duel and the chest pains, I wanna introduce him to Zane Truesdale...

It occurred to me this morning, one of the qualifications for becoming a Dark Signer, excepting cases of losing a duel, was a good revenge story; the other was, apparently, a near-death experience. Carly fell from the top of the Arcadia Building; Misty was in a car crash that sent her to the hospital; Greiger got pushed into the Reactor; and Kalin... was just grumpily sitting in his Facility cell? Did he have this chest thing back then, and is that what the Dark Shadows preserved him from so he could take his revenge?

Kalin also says that his path should be rife with "plague, disease, and misery", mentioning illness twice. Perhaps this also hints that he's sick with something dire?

I'm realizing that an Infernity deck is also fairly fatalistic: you have to use immediately whatever you draw in order to keep your hand empty, so what move you make is based a lot around what you draw and if you draw something you're not expecting, your plans could change very suddenly because of that. Not using what the world gives you, whatever it gives you, bears heavy consequences for the user of that deck. Then again, it's been argued before that draws are dictated by fate, dictated by the cards themselves, or dictated by the player's own willpower-- a lot like life, really.

Well, we've got some very strong reiteration of our themes of fate and justice: the fine line between justice and revenge, how justice can be truly achieved, and so forth; and we never seem to get tired of the destiny argument around here, especially not with a Dark Signer around. Ultimately, these also lead back to our theme of freedom: do we have the power to choose our own actions freely, and can one ever be truly free from guilt?

It occurs to me that there's a contradiction in Kalin's philosophy here; determinism negates blame. In other words, if Kalin is taking the stance that destiny dictates everything, that means it also dictated the actions he blamed himself for, and therefore he himself is blameless because he could have done nothing else but what he was destined to. This was Roman's argument, and this is one reason why Yusei had such a big problem with Roman's notions of destiny: "You do terrible things, and then you say it's all just *destiny's will*." (ep#57) I don't think that's Kalin's stance on destiny, though. He does blame himself for having made certain choices, and for having been a Dark Signer. He feels that now, having done that, he is destined to suffer, in the name of cosmic justice. Perhaps better put, he's looking for a sign that he is destined to be punished, because it'll tell him that there is justice in the world, and therefore his faith in the world hinges on how much he suffers.

Kalin longs for the suffering that can truly punish him enough to be called justice. Problem is, he's never going to be able to suffer enough to *get to* the point of forgiving himself, of considering himself justly absolved, of being free of that guilt, because he's still stuck with having done what he did, and I think he knows that, too. But he's driven to seek it anyway, so of course he feels trapped and hopeless.

I find the dignity with which he's determined to not only accept but enforce and hasten his fate compelling; he's done finding new enemies for the sake of it the way he did as an Enforcer, done blaming other people the way he did as a Dark Signer, but he's not done blaming himself yet, and I think that's the next step for him; he needs to forgive himself the same way he's forgiven Yusei.

"I've done all I can. Whatever happens now is *destined to be*...!" *Had* Kalin done everything he could, even while wishing to lose? Is that too convenient an excuse for invoking destiny?

Kalin's fate didn't end with being a Dark Signer; the Goodwin brothers' did, but Kalin's did not. He's back on earth because he belongs there, and there's a good reason for it. That is my prediction.

Yusei says that leaving it up to "dumb luck" is unlike Kalin. We *have heard before* that Kalin was the one who "showed us that we have the power to change our situation. And that we could control our own destinies...", according to Jack when we first met Kalin. Which is why it's especially odd that Kalin feels so strongly that his future is dictated by Fate. Roman believed very strongly that life is subject to the will of Fate, and that probably owes a lot to the circumstance of being born a double Signer; I'd imagine becoming a Dark Signer reshaped Kalin's notions about Fate, also. Remember how the Signers struggled with reconciling themselves with this "destiny" of theirs, a destiny given by their Signs; I'm especially thinking of "The Signs of Time", when Yusei and Jack in particular all but shouted at Goodwin when they were told that they were chosen to save the world and they might be destined to fail. Unlike with the Dark Signers, though, the Signers' Signs were also a source of strength and comfort; they were part of something bigger than themselves, they were connected. The Dark Signers arc was all about rebellion against and reconciliation with the concept of destiny, and even beyond that to the idea that there are things that are stronger than destiny: "the bonds that we form really are all that matter in life", Goodwin finally said at the last. I think we're about to test that again, Signer and former Dark Signer; Yusei's bond with Kalin, versus Kalin's meeting his fate.

Kalin characterizes his longing, his imperative to seek justice and redemption as a different form of the wickedness of a Dark Signer; is it also caused by the same? What I'm getting at here is, do the Immortals still have an influence over Kalin, is that what's causing this, and if so, why are they trying to get rid of him? Make him get rid of himself? Chances are, if the Immortals want Kalin out of the picture, it's a net victory for Team Signers to keep Kalin around even if we don't know why yet.

Well, usually I kind of skate around this because the show does too and I write this specifically in response to the dub... but there is a very powerful common thread of the theme of death in the Crashtown arc. The first thing Yusei sees, riding into the area, is a field of duel disks attached to crude metal spikes stuck in the ground; if that isn't symbolic of a duelists' graveyard, I don't know what is. Duelists who lose get shipped to the mines sealed inside a glossy black coffin, metaphorically buried alive. And the mines do have an air of "hell" to them; Kalin definitely sees them that way, which is why he condemns himself to be sent there. A metaphorical and literal underworld.

Kalin feels the need to face off against a worthy opponent in battle and lose. Where have we heard this before? If you're saying "The Final Journey", you're right on the nosey. The duel ritual by which Atem is properly freed from the Millennium Puzzle, by which a mighty duelist leaves this world. I think this says to us that Kalin *is* a powerful duelist and relates to the game in that profound way that true duelists do; he's just in a really bad space right now. But he still wants to "leave the world" as a duelist, having been actually bested by someone fit to carry on that respect for the game. I also think that Yusei's right in saying that deep down Kalin loves dueling, which means there's hope.

I'd been wondering why we were seeing Yusei rocking this cool serape, and I just figured out why, costuming-wise, they did that. Yusei's brown serape reincorporates a brown color scheme, an Enforcers color scheme.

"Anything your duelist can do, *ours* can do better!" Hey, there's a song about that in the musical "Annie, Get Your Gun": "Anything you can do I can do better..." If there are any other references to other westerns in this so far, they're flying over my head, though I might pick 'em up later. Except, Lotten's duel runner... I haven't seen Wild, Wild West in at least half my life, but does it remind anyone else of the giant spider robot? I have a feeling there are more references to other westerns that I'm missing; when I figure them out, it's going to be very fun.

JUst how powerful are those undertaker guys, the guys who drive the coffin cart? Apparently they don't play for either side, even though supposedly Radley and Malcolm own the mines before all this goes down, and even more interestingly, there was a little bit of tension in the first part of the duel there between Malcolm and the fellow with the lasso, and note this, Malcolm was the one who backed off. That surprised me. Just who are those guys? I also note, though, that they do what Lotten asks when he tells them to stick around for another coffin. Random thought: are they the guys who said that duels only happen at sunset? Where does that law come from if no duel, not even one between Radley and Lotten, is above it? If it was an agreed pact between Radley and Malcolm, say, it wouldn't have applied there.

And we haven't even pulled out the "quit hangin' around and climb" flashback yet. That one *so* pertains.

So 'Barb' *is* short for 'Barbara'. I'd wondered. With the kinda quirky short nickname-ish names we get in this series, especially in shady locations-- Bolt, Blister, Blitz, Tank, and Crow come to mind-- it might've just been 'Barb'. After all, she *is* pretty sharp. Now I'm noting who calls her Barbara instead of Barb and when: Yusei is the *only* one who calls her Barbara, and only from ep#87 on, when they're getting ready to pull off this plan together. Barb's full first name does become sort of an expression of familiarity; or maybe it *is* just Barb and it's being affectionately lengthened.

But it seems to me that slight differences in speech are the *only* hint we get that Yusei and Barb are getting closer, and to me it seemed a bit of a disconnect that when Barb revealed that she played all of us, everyone acted as though she had seduced Yusei and tricked him that way.

On the other hand, I'm noticing the symbolism of instances of flowers in this series. We generally associate them with affection and closeness; last season we noticed Mina arranging flowers in vases while looking after Jack (ep#6,#29), Akiza walking through the rose garden thinking of her parents (ep#42), and Trudge trying to offer Mina a tulip from Martha's garden (ep#45). This season we've noticed Ellsworth offering Sherry a flower to comfort her the night they fled from her home (ep#72). The two duelists we associate most strongly with flowers are Akiza and Sherry, who have both definitely been designated as contenders for Yusei's heart. Therefore, in light of this new appreciation for the symbolism and theme of flowers in 5D's, I take it back; when I saw Barb pick up the rock that was squishing the dandelion last week, it *wasn't* just a random gesture to indicate candid kindness. It was a reincorporation of Barb's variation on the theme of flowers: she chides that guests should be welcomed with flowers, lifts them up as expressions of kindness (the dandelion) and hope ("hope blooms as well"), and then they become her weapon for the double bluff she pulls during this duel. If flowers are a symbol of affection, our warning that she was leading Yusei on might've been Barb's use of flowers. Barb's declared approach to a situation is "flowers not threats" but her flowers *are* a threat because she likes to hide explosives in them sometimes. It might also have been that the stands of flowers around Barb's door may indicate that she *sells* flowers, and I'll just leave it at that.

"Guess it's good to know, even way out here, something pure *can bloom*." Now there's an interesting statement, 'cause it's not about the flowers. To me, that line says that Yusei trusts Barb; he's saying that it's nice to know that in a town like this there's someone whose intentions are pure, who is trustworthy and kind. Barb then answers when we return to this scene later, with showing him the explosives hidden in the bouquet, and responding that hope blooms also. That alone might've sent up a very small red flag, because right after Yusei made the statement that connected Barb and her bouquet-- because again, he wasn't talking about the flowers-- Barb reveals that that bouquet is not nearly as pure or kind as it looks. Connecting words to actions, when Barb speaks of hope she's also speaking of the explosives, which also "bloom" in that bouquet; hope as a weapon, as the ability to fight back, is a very YGO-ish theme, but note, also, though, that her "hope" is cheating the stakes of the duel, which is kind of in a gray area as an indication of her character, whether that makes her the kind of person who would cheat in a duel itself.

May I point out that Barb sure can bluff. She never *once* dropped character, and I went back and looked for any hints that I could've missed very closely. Even the theme of flowers established with the welcome bouquet and the dandelion, wouldn't have even started tipping anyone off until it was revealed toward the middle of the first half of the duel that sometimes she hides dynamite in the bouquets. Even then, I might've said that that matches the dynamite already present in the arc, namely Yusei's Nitro Warrior in the last duel. We often see her face during both yesterday's duel and today's, and never once does she hint at showing favor to Malcolm's side, never once does she reveal that the outcome of the duel doesn't actually matter to her. When she first told us Malcolm's name last week, she did show a profound bit of intensity that was one of the things that started me wondering what the subtext was and what her relationship with each of the town bosses might be. That was the only telegraph, and I gather she knew that this was when she'd need to be on her guard because she was likely to slip up. The only reason I even glimpsed this coming at all was because I read really really deeply into the subtext and extrapolated wildly. But I seriously thought I was going to be proven entirely wrong.

I wonder, though, about Barb's *actual* devotion to Malcolm. She played all of us, including Yusei; she's way too smart for Malcolm. Notice how she's acting sweet and baby-talking and pretending to be about as stupid as he is, because she's already shown us that feminine guile is her weapon. If she was winding *Malcolm* around her little finger too, because no one's questioning that being his girlfriend is probably the best status she can seduce her way into in this town at the moment, he's probably so besotted with her he would never ever know. What I'm saying is, Barb appears to be genuinely Malcolm's gal, but she's sure fooled us before, and I think his voicing the intention of renaming the town "Sweetcake-Dewdrop-Ville" may tip us off that a lady as cunning as Barb has demonstrated herself to be would probably get bored with him pretty quickly and we wouldn't know it until she turned on *him* next.

Well, not much family resemblance, actually, for baby brother Lotten. Sure does rhyme with something, though.

Right now, Lotten is the most obvious candidate to stand between Yusei and his goal of getting out of here in one piece with Kalin, because Lotten's the "highest deck" in town as of Kalin's fall and he smells a rat when Yusei's runner goes missing.

I predict a turbo-duel-- Yusei vs. Lotten. We've been getting a lot of standing duels lately, including a big one, and we are overdue for a Crashtown turbo-duel. Plus, that is one scary-looking runner, and I predict we'll see it duel at least once. Which means Lotten is probably going to figure out that Yusei's escaping, but not before Yusei gets out of the mountain and gets his runner back.

What would such a duel look like, though? Where does the personality come into it? The only face-to-face interaction we see between Yusei and Lotten is right before Yusei gets sent to the mines. We see Lotten almost dismissively nudge Barb aside right when she's twisting the knife after having stabbed Yusei in the back ("Why, if you're up to it, I could even make you my *personal servant for life*."), and then top her, in a sense, by making physical contact and lifting Yusei's chin with his hand. But he doesn't really *say* anything except echo the catchphrase (briefly) of a certain messed-up Duel Academy freshman (love ya, Chazz). I'm not really sure what he's really saying-- except perhaps, Barb's betrayal doesn't matter, *I'm* the one who's actually sending you to the mines, because I can and I don't happen to like you, and there's nothing you can do about it.

I noticed last week that Yusei's Nitro Warrior represented a formidable piece of old west technology, dynamite. In Yusei's understanding of his plan with Barb, there was also dynamite in the bouquet. Now we see Lotten come on the scene with another special piece of old west technology represented in his dueling, the gatling gun. I wonder if Lotten's any match for Yusei as an engineer?

I note that even Lotten obeys the sunset rule, but the mine cabbies answer to him and Malcolm seems to answer to them.

Here's where I talk about life in the mines. They even took away Kalin's harmonica and nifty black coat and Yusei's serape... It's so sad...

Okay, now we're starting to see how the mines and the harsh injustice Yusei objected to when he first arrived, figures into the larger plotline we've been following with Yusei, Kalin, and the dusk duels. Kalin wants to believe that now that he's been sent to the mines, he's stuck there forever; if Yusei wants to fulfill his intention of saving Kalin from Crashtown, that has become lumped into the larger injustice of the mines. In other words, the mines initially didn't seem to connect to anything else that was going on, but now they completely do.

Kalin's bound to have about fifty enemies around this place somewhere... including the Giant... But those kids' dad is also probably around here somewhere and he *wouldn't* be an enemy of Kalin because his son could probably never admire Kalin if Kalin sent his dad to the mines. I wonder who the dad dueled for, Malcolm or Radley, to get sent here?

Yusei pauses working even more than Kalin does, but Kalin's the one getting whipped. It's probably because he looks weaker, a good victim or example. And speaking of, whipping! Holy cow! That's pretty darn extreme for this canon! My jaw dropped. What *other* lines are we going to cross before we get out of here, huh?!

We see certain key points of life in the mines: One, Malcolm's mine bosses change shifts regularly. Two, anyone who is judged too weak to work is dumped elsewhere and given no food. I have a feeling the former will figure into Yusei's escape plan, and the latter will become a hazard-- Kalin is showing troubling signs of some illness or weakness, and if he gets dragged out, Yusei's escape plans will immediately become far more complicated.

If Yusei can get rid of or disable the collars, a lot of escape plans become possible. Miners seem to outnumber bosses; if Yusei can disable enough collars on strong, able-bodied workers in that mine, they can gang up on a fresh shift of bosses, tie 'em up, stuff 'em in a corner, and have that whole shift in which to escape. Maybe longer, if they take the bosses' bandannas and 'replace' them. Regular shift changes also mean, if the collars can be removed, that someone breaking out of the mine could take off his collar, quietly bop some unsuspecting guard over the head with a pick handle, borrow his bandanna, and walk out the front door when the next shift arrives, if nobody recognizes him and the guards don't know each other that well. Which, unfortunately, they do seem to know each other well, so oh well. This also means it might be possible to go visit the 'too weak to work' pile disguised as a guard.

We begin to see Yusei and Kalin's friendship re-emerging for the first time since the Enforcers; in the mines, we see them look out for each other inasmuch as they're able. Of course Yusei's trying to look out for Kalin, but I wasn't expecting it when Kalin stopped Yusei from doing something dumb when that sick guy, Jordan, got dragged away.

Speaking of which, the sick guy. Jordan. Wasn't he one of the miners whom Yusei observed trying to escape? Wasn't he the guy who threw that pendant over the cliff? He looks similar; it's possible that Yusei noticed the same thing and wants to find a way to have a word with that guy.

How will 'fate' rescue Kalin? Yusei's probably planning on stirring up some 'fate' of his own, because he believes that "life is about making your *own* fate!" Is it too far-fetched to think he'll just knock Kalin over the head with his pick and drag him out through that escape tunnel whether he likes it or not?

Well, that's all for now, everybody. This Saturday's episodes are The Race to Escape I and II; I think I'm right about that turbo-duel... And, ep#85, "Mother Knows Best", is going to be part of next week's post; it's halfway done and I've been working all this in around Finals and much obsession over Crashtown, it's not going to change based on new information all that much, so I'm holding it 'til next week and doing a good job. Next week; promise. 'Til then! -Clio

READ A TRANSCRIPT OF SHOWDOWN AT SUNDOWN I

READ A TRANSCRIPT OF SHOWDOWN AT SUNDOWN II