Predictions and Observations:
Natural Instincts II

Episode Aired: March 19, 2011
This Post Posted: March 25, 2011

P.S.-- I realized right after I sent out that last post that the math stated in the truth table portion was inaccurate in an easily fixable way. There are actually eight out of sixty-four possible outcomes for six duels in a given division that would result in three teams moving onto the bracket, not just two possible outcomes. I'm fairly certain, though, that the five-duels-per-division alteration would be all it would take.

It occurs to me, the Unicorns counted on Crow staying on the track late. They can't possibly have just gotten lucky. How did they *do* that? Did they just see the opportunity? How did Jean tell Andre which deck to use, if they didn't plan this in advance? If Crow hadn't tried to get in one more lap, how would they have pulled off this plan?

"I'm starting to feel bad for that Nimble Momonga..." Like I said, exploiting the weak to empower the strong. That's another theme we may be seeing with Team Unicorn, and Yusei and Jack's working together well with the weaker member of their team, Akiza, may be antithetical to that.

We talk a lot in this episode about anticipating one's opponent. Throughout this episode I get a sense of wondering just who's sneaking up on whom. Who's the final, deciding step ahead of the other, because we keep seeing that both Yusei and Andre are constantly one more step ahead of each other. Were the Unicorns counting on Team 5Ds' getting a new mystery duelist on their team at the last minute, or is that a development even they didn't *anticipate*? Changing it up at the last minute could prove to work in Team 5Ds' favor. Right now, I predict that Team Unicorn are going to try to size up Akiza as soon as possible; they were ready to anticipate Yusei, Jack, and Crow, not her.

Andre won a duel in the Atlantis Tournament using only trap cards? Okay, I get it, we're hyping him, he's bad. Not like Yusei hasn't won a duel without attacking before. The sense I'm getting of Jean's assessment of Andre's skills reminds me a bit of Yusei; he's flexible and rolls with the punches, he uses whatever cards he's got to their full ability, he's good with traps. And hey, speaking of a guy who *loves his monkey*, Jean sure is proud of Andre's skills. As a teammate who enjoys seeing his buddies do their thing, or as a mastermind who made great use of a resource? I think we'll learn a lot about Team Unicorn when we see Jean play, not rhapsodize about other people's strategies.

We haven't seen very many beast-type duelists in 5D's. Usually monsters like this are the province of the Spirit World, as far as we're concerned in this part of the canon; I wonder if there'll be any sort of showdown with these guys that involves Luna, in which she tells them to treat their Nimble Momongas better or something?

I'm noticing a dichotomy of Andre's land-based beasts versus Yusei's birds and flying monsters like Shield Wing and Stardust Dragon itself.

So, Andre's use of Naturia Gaodrake got me thinkin'. Naturia is an archetype we haven't seen in the anime yet; it's a good possibility we'll see more Naturia from Team Unicorn, especially since it follows the pattern Andre's established also of exploiting weak monsters like Nimble Momonga to use stronger ones.

Jack says Andre reminds him of him; how is that the case, if it is? Or is Jack just trying to protect his ego? I do sort of see that Andre has the showoffish thing going; he's the silver tongue of Team Unicorn, the nice face. Jean seems to be the not-so-nice face, and the mastermind. And Breo seems to be mostly just along for the ride.

Yusei played Vision Wind. As promised... the last time we saw Speed Spell - Vision Wind, it was in "On Your Mark, Get Set, DUEL!", our very first 5D's episode. Gosh, it seems like yesterday... Anyway, in that episode we got a bunch of exposition that we never heard anything about again: Yusei won Vision Wind from Trudge on his last day at the Reeducation Center (which probably was his last day because he creamed Trudge, but that much is guesswork), which he spent some time in with Rally. We still don't know when this was-- pre-Enforcers, post-Enforcers-pre-White-Runner, whatever-- nor do we know much about how Yusei first met Rally, Blitz, Tank, and Nervin, or when. Incidentally, we also don't know what's going on with those four *now*. Where did they go, anyway? Come to think of it, the card Vision Wind itself is a speed spell, which may suggest it was won in a turbo duel, suggesting some very unlikely circumstances in terms of time frame. But I could be wrong; maybe Trudge wagered that card because he thought Yusei, a satellite duelist, would never be able to use it if he won anyway.

So Yusei *did* bust out Stardust Dragon. Are we worried? Not overly. Team Unicorn has another thing coming if they think picking apart only Yusei's strategy will win this for them. Even if Yusei's out of action, Jack and Akiza are no pushovers, and besides, the whole point of a team is that it's stronger than the sum of its parts. I think Team Unicorn underestimates the cohesion of a diverse team like 5D's, and I think they'll be our team's first big test of sticking together and playing off each other.

Oh, cheap shot, Andre, counting on the time running out! You're sounding more like Pegasus by the moment (YGep#2), except Pegasus was cool once he was well rid of the Millennium Eye-- what's your excuse?

It's an interrupt that had a slim chance of going back the other way, just like Yusei v. Sherry. Our WRGP rivals are going to give us some impressive duels.

Who are those unscrupulous-looking losers hangin' out in the doorway threatening our team? Did they cause Crow's big crash? When will we meet them in the tournament? Since they're already fairly specifically concerned about beating Team 5D's-- in that they're thinking about it now, not in that they seem too scared-- I wonder if they're in the same division as us?

The first thing I thought of when I saw Akiza timing Yusei's practice runs, was Rally; he used to be the one holding the stopwatch.

So, Sherry identified her first opponent team as "Some bunch calling themselves the Cheerleading Squad". We're hearing about more and more different teams.

Yusei warns Sherry not to "go chasing after danger", to which she responds that danger's chasing her instead. I think it's safe to say they're chasing each other, myself, and if Sherry doesn't even realize that she's chasing too, that could be trouble for her.

I'm noting that Sherry also warns Akiza to be careful. I think Sherry would normally be unimpressed by Akiza, because she's still quite an amateur turbo-duelist, except that Akiza saved her life.

Why are we hearing from Sherry right now? Narratively speaking, that is. It seems kind of random that she'd just decide to swing by. Was it just to ramp up the perceived danger of the tournament a bit?

"Allow me to translate that for you-- he wanted to spend more time with Akiza down at the Pier!" (Even more hilarious, to which Martha then replies, "Well, at least he's doing something constructive...") How *are* Yusei and Akiza doing these days? I have a feeling, with them on the same WRGP team, we'll find out pretty soon. Right now, the question on my mind is this: will the, well, *connection* between Yusei and Akiza hurt Team 5D's? Will any of the other teams pick up on the dynamic there and try to cause some drama? Will Jack start feeling like a third wheel, so to speak?

I'm noting the advice Martha gives Jack in this scene; what can I say, when Martha gives advice, I pay attention. Specifically she gets on his case about his continuing lack of gainful employment. She also advises him to smile more, if he's jealous of Crow and the nestlings' flag. The WRGP is here, and it's going to be a big undertaking for all three of our riders in different ways; will Jack run up against a situation when Martha's advice proves very useful to him?

Okay, now let's talk about what the heck just happened to Crow! What was that card?! Who was that rider?! Did someone set him up on purpose?! Was this sabotage?!

Something fishy's going on here, definitely, but of the three members of Team 5D's, why would anyone pick Crow to sabotage? In other words, I'm sure Yusei or Jack sometimes ride by themselves on the road; why not go after one of them, if you're trying to take Team 5D's out of action, because they're both Speed Circuit champions and Crow's relatively unknown in the pro dueling world? It's like someone wanted to just make things a bit trickier for the most powerful duelists in New Domino, not stop them from competing per se. I wonder if the Directors are behind this, and a Team 5D's with Akiza on it gives them more juice for the Circuit than Yusei, Jack, and Crow, who are more confident after having trained this whole time? Having Akiza on the team will probably have Yusei and Jack working a bit harder, whether Akiza ends up being a weaker link or not. I have a feeling the losers hiding in the doorway we saw earlier are a red herring here; garden-variety annoying toughs don't have magical cards-- they can't even see the magic in the regular ones.

Since it appears to be sabotage, if it's purely tournament-related, either the saboteur knew Team 5D's would get past their division, which means they aren't counting on Team Unicorn sweeping it like most people probably are, or they're doing it for one of the other teams that our guys have to beat to make it into the bracket, which narrows it down a lot.

I've mentioned before how the streets of New Domino have been created in our minds as a sort of frontier, a place where you can meet anyone riding on some random freeway any hour of the day or night. This is definitely more of that.

Pre-tournament shenanigans abound, especially if Crow's accident was intentional sabotage. I ask again-- who's hosting this thing? On whose prestigious watch is all this happening? If Kaiba had been hosting this tournament, I'm fairly certain he would've chased down a few pre-tournament troublemakers personally by now. That we're seeing this much foul play before the tournament even starts bodes fairly ill. Whatever foul play exists before a tournament advertises to us the tournament authority's biases and blind spots; the stuff they either ignore or don't see; and therefore sets the tone for more foul play we're likely to encounter in the tournament itself. At this point, I'd say, if they make it into the bracket, they'd better bunker down in the garage when they aren't at the tournament, lock their doors, keep their decks on their persons and their gear within eyesight at all times, and most importantly, never go anywhere by themselves. This field of competition does not play fair, nor do they play nice.

Bruno told us all about why the teams are three-player. *Will* we see any teams with only two or one members? Will we see any two-or-one-member teams that shine despite the handicap and therefore mean huge trouble?

Crow's right arm was the one injured. Why's it always the right arm? I swear, it is *always* the right arm. Okay, I looked it up, and Bakura's in Battle City was actually the left. But Valon injured his right arm interrupting My Freaky Valentine, and Jack injured his right arm in the final match of the Fortune Cup. Now Crow's dislocated his right shoulder. There's some symbolism to this; generally the left arm wears the duel disk and the right arm draws and manipulates the cards. The side-oriented symbolism would be similar to shield arm and sword arm. In palmistry, I believe, your writing hand is your external self and your other hand is your internal self. And we have yet to see a duel disk designed for a lefty, not even in Noah's Virtual World for Tea, when her duel disk was made out of thin air just for her-- and we actually *do* know that Tea's left-handed, because she drew the friendship symbol on the back of her own right hand. Wild, huh? So as far as we know so far, the left arm is universally the duel disk arm, even for left-handed people, and duelists almost always seem to injure their right arms. It may be that the muscles on a habitual duelist's right side are trained differently than those on their left, because any reflex-related action during a duel pretty much has to happen on the right. In other words, because the right arm has more freedom of movement during a duel, its reflexes are better trained and if an experienced duelist is going to throw out an arm to break a fall, it'll be their right because they're more used to using it.

We've got an instance of rain, which typically connotes a certain harshness in YGO, shaking up of loyalties, of not being able to solve your problems with just cards, 'cause hey, rain gets the cards wet. When it storms in sunny Domino, you find out who your real friends are. Team 5D's faced a really tough situation here, and each of them, especially Crow and Akiza, really rose to the occasion; I think it's safe to say that they've already surmounted the first obstacle of the WRGP.

Wow, check out the tension between Jack and Yusei there over whether or not to drop out of the tournament. Yusei would rather keep trying despite any setback, and Jack would rather quit when he's ahead. Rings a bell; this is almost definitely the same thing these two split over when Jack left the Satellite. Yusei was determined to fulfill his dream of getting all of them to the city together no matter how long it took, and Jack decided to take what he could get while he still could. These kinds of issues are definitely something that Yusei and Jack differ over, and perhaps always will. The heart of that is still there.

Up to this point, as far as we know, Akiza's turbo-dueling education has mostly come from Yusei, who definitely emphasized being able to drift and relax even at crucial moments. Here we see Crow add his style of riding to Akiza's continuing training, urging that "the pavement can *smell* fear!" Right now I'm wondering how Yusei's, Jack's, and Crow's styles of riding differ, and how the best of each will show up in Akiza's style as they complete her education on the run.

Dang, that was decent of Crow. I mean, first the whole tragedy with Pearson and Bolton, now this? Crow's life kinda sucks right now. But in spite of that, he really rose to the occasion and went from crying on the sidewalk in the rain to training Akiza as his replacement just like that. I think Jack was quite incorrect in calling him a "man-child"; Crow's being very mature about all this, especially considering the high hopes he had for this tournament.

Does Akiza have the new runner upgrades? How much would they change how her runner handles? If they would've taken some getting used to-- and more time for that for her 'cause she's still a fledgling turbo-duelist-- then it may well have been a smarter choice on Team 5Ds' part to leave Akiza's runner alone and not give it the awesome new engine upgrades just yet.

How will Yusei and Jack need to change their strategy to work with Akiza's strategy, and how will they keep other teams from picking on a weak link? 'Cause you just know, especially in a tournament as dodgy as this one's been so far, opponents will seek every advantage they can, and Akiza sticks out as Team 5Ds' weak link. She's shorter, smaller, and more importantly she's the only female on her team, when we know from Leo that the New Domino dueling world considers it common knowledge that, "boys duel better than girls do; it's actually a scientific fact." (ep#36) If Akiza got hazed in turbo-dueling class when she first learned, that'll look like cake compared to the WRGP, most likely. Add on to that that she *is* the most amateur rider on her team and she'd probably need her teammates to watch her back through the trickier maneuvers even if the other teams weren't trying to pick on her specifically, which I predict they will. And Crimson Dragon help them if any of the other teams catch on to the chemistry between Yusei and Akiza; that could get very messy indeed.

Hey, we're back in the Kaibadome! Nifty!

How else does the episode fit the title? Who, besides Andre and his monkeys, the obvious meaning of the title, shows some natural instinct, some intuition? What about Akiza, who steps up for the sake of her team, trusting to the bond they share to guide her instincts on the track? Let's see, what about Crow's drilling Akiza on acting without hesitation, on instinct? Okay, I'm reaching, but not that shabby really.

The next episode is entitled "Power Plays". It may be part one of something. 'Til then, everyone, I'm signing off. -Clio

READ A TRANSCRIPT OF NATURAL INSTINCTS II HERE!