Predictions and Observations:
Duel For Redemption

Episode Aired: July 2, 2011
This Post Posted: July 8, 2011

The title-- are we talking a Duel For Redeption I and II, or are we calling next week's ep something else? I like this title; it's well-named, echoing the episode's two real high points in character relationships, the conversation between Yusei and Jack and hte conversation between Dragen, Broder, and Haldor-- Yusei's injunction of "let a duel sort this out", and Broder and Haldor's observation that Dragen's chance for redemption has come. Those are the two points at which we see Jack and Dragen, both proud loners in their own ways, really connect with those who know and care about them. It's when we see the hearts that will guide them through this. The biggest difference between who Jack was back then and who he is now is that now he not only has friends but cares about them; back then Dragen was also fairly alone, because he was suddenly put into the position of taking care of his dad all by himself and afterward he did go off alone, right into an avalanche. Haldor and Broder, he says, made all the difference and helped him find it in himself to carry on; whatever happens in this duel, he'll get over it thanks to them. I get the sense that the deep friendships we see expressed in those two key scenes, echoed in the title itself, will make all the difference in this duel, because they're what both duelists were sorely missing last time around and what both are stronger now for having found. Even the cards themselves are commanding both to duel for the redemption they're seeking, by giving them a chance for a full-on redo.

Hey, looks like Lezar came back from his "vacation"; does that mean Primo's still in the shop?

Well, that's interesting. I'd been wondering if Jack would demand the truth or be too afraid to hear the wrong answer and just convince himself that Dragen must be lying. I'd been imagining him demanding the truth from Mina; wonder why he went for Lezar instead, especially since, as Vice-Director, Lezar would theoretically be harder to get to, though I suppose Mina has more useful work to actually do. And he knows for a fact that Lezar would actually know what Jack's talking about because he was directly involved, while Goodwin might've kept Mina out of the loop. Plus, Mina might've tried to sugarcoat it and prevaricate around it because she knows and cares about Jack and his feelings, while Lezar could care less if he hurts Jack's feelings. Also, we haven't seen Mina or Trudge since we skipped episodes; could it be they aren't around, or something happened?

Jack did demand to know about Dragen, which was gutsy of him when it came to demanding the truth he didn't want to hear. I notice, though, that Jack didn't go so far as to demand whether this was the only time Goodwin blackmailed his opponents, when we all know it probably wasn't.

Lezar mentioned his age. What *is* Lezar's age? Dare we even *ask* that one?

Okay, so Lezar said Goodwin's motivation *was* money, in terms of making sure Jack stayed champ? I'd been predicting it had more to do with power-- with keeping Jack, a Signer, close to the office of the Director-General-- like why Goodwin "invited" Jack to come to the city in the first place, which is a topic we covered extensively during the Fortune Cup (ep#25). Why was Goodwin's administration that strapped for cash-- and why, despite being so, did they so readily offer Dragen enough of it to pay those exorbitant medical bills? Wouldn't they have found a cheaper form of blackmail that would've worked on some other unfortunate duelist? Is even Lezar out of the loop on this one, and was Goodwin doing this for the reason I predicted earlier, making sure Jack got comfortable in his new role in the city so he would stay there and not try anything unexpected?

OMG, It's Atlas Rising!! That looks smaller than a DVD to me; "I heard that movie was goin' straight to DVD." (ep#28) So Bruno *doesn't know* that that movie is a completely absurd fabrication? That's a riot. He does know Jack isn't actually from the Tops, right?

"Wasn't it cute how he rhymed 'baloney' with 'phony'?" Kind of an odd observation. Not sure anyone else would've described Jack as 'cute' just then, no matter what silly rhyme he made, even if they were trying to lighten the mood or whatever. I'm remembering that Luna talks to cards and she's the one who's sometimes perceptive about Yusei's feelings; it's possible that she sees past Jack's losing his temper and can see the cuteness in the situation.

Speaking of people who have a more than average grasp of the situation, let's talk about Yusei. Throughout this episode, when everyone else discusses the Jack situation with him, for the most part he gets really quiet and is doing a lot of thinking that he isn't sharing. To Yusei it is quite obvious that Jack will take personally anyone even noticing the situation and is inclined to settle his own dignity and name his own way, and Yusei agrees with every part of Leo's "maybe we should just drop it" except the "maybe". I really do get the sense that Yusei knows Jack better than anyone else. I feel the most important thing to point out about how well he knows Jack is that he's dueled Jack himself when there was no one watching (that they knew of) and nothing on the line save pride and their own differences, when neither would have dreamed of holding back. He can verify that Jack is not all talk as a duelist even if he talks a lot, but he knows that Jack needs to prove it to himself. I also think that scene between Jack and Yusei tells us a lot about their friendship; Jack wouldn't be that candid with just anyone, and Yusei sees straight past Jack's blowing his top and moping to understand why Jack's upset.

It's the final round course, the one they showed at the Gala. I asked at the time, so I'll say it again: am I seeing things, or are there really loop-the-loops in there somewhere? My other question about the new course: How will they get to the pit booths? My other other question: is this our first time on this course, or did we miss the last one due to some unscheduled time travel (twelve episodes...)?

Winner of this match goes up against Team New World next? Does that mean we're going into a Finale and the winner of the sixteen-duelist bracket thingy gets a shot at them-- or does it mean Team New World completely pulverized the other half of the bracket already? We'll be able to know once we know whether we missed three duels or four in those missing twelve episodes. One thing we do know-- this means Sherry and Ellsworth are out by now; hopefully not the hard way, though knowing them, it quite possibly was. If Trudge ever had a WRGP team, we blinked and missed it. Kinda hard to believe that we missed the entire rest of the bracket, even in twelve episodes. And what on earth did they skip it for-- the Kaibadome doesn't really even have any windows to throw people out of!

I think I missed something with Lezar there. Who are those guys in suits?

Seeing that little scene between the guys from Team Ragnarok before we kicked off the duel gave me the most confidence thus far that we'll get a good match from them. They must be good, to have made it to the Finals, but that says to me they clearly are a solid team.

And we continue on Jack's ongoing journey to self-acceptance. This duel is about a Jack that decidedly has nothing to do with whatever reputation he had as champion; this is about what he is as a duelist without all that, that supposes all that is fake. I see him taking the field stronger than he ever has coming from there, and from a place of searching his deck for the duelist that he truly is under all the theatrics.

I recently had quite a weird conversation about performance vs. results. They aren't the same thing. I'm still pretty confused about it myself, but one thing I am realizing is that it isn't the fact that he lost that Dragen was upset about; it's that he didn't get the opportunity to give his best and therefore feels that he was untrue to himself. It's not the result, it's the performance. If Dragen had played full-out against Jack and still lost, things would've been a lot different between them. Now, by now Dragen says unilaterally that he *would've won*, not just that he could've given Jack a deckuva lot more of a fight than he did; my musing is, has he mixed up performance with results as well, and could that limit him in this duel, when Jack is less concerned with the result? After all, Jack's going into this more or less to find out if *he* would've *lost*, but really to find out if his performance is worthy of results that had nothing to do with it or with him. Ultimately, I predict that if both of these duelists play full-out, and oh they will, then both will be happy with the result, no matter what it is. And that's the way a duel's meant to be done.

"That *wasn't* my top speed!" Does Jack know yet that his engine is alive? I also see the race to start as a small taste of what's coming; Jack hasn't shown Dragen all he's got yet. I predict a Majestic Red Dragon or possibly even some Accel Synchro if Jack picked it up from Yusei in those twelve episodes.

"Not only do Dragen and I want this settled, but a force *bigger* than us wants it settled as well." What bigger force? We know some entities that are fairly close to destiny, such as the Floating Eye or the Crimson Dragon. If something bigger than them wants this settled and influenced destiny, we may be able to guess at why: because the destiny powers pulling for our side to win want these two teams to stand together as allies? Also, it might just be the cards themselves; they've had a heart for a while now, after all, and the Heart does pull for a good match when the duelists are putting some life into it. There's a reason why in a duel the truth always comes out, after all.

Broder called Team 5D's "not the brightest of bulbs". You'd better have some evidence to support your claims, bub, 'cause you'll be backing them up with your lifepoints soon enough. That being said, it's not the first time Team 5D's has been called predictable, and generally I attribute that to good guys being more predictable than bad guys (bad guys might choose to do something nice just to keep you guessing, but good guys don't generally do mean things); you'd think Team Ragnarok, as another bunch of heroes, would have a similar hangup and be more tolerant of such.

Haldor adds that if Team 5D's *were* the brightest of bulbs, "They'd be running for cover." Is he just trash-talking, as in Team Ragnarok is what they should be running from, or, more likely, is Haldor referring to his scary prophetic visions and saying Team 5D's would never want to be the ones fighting this apocalyptic battle if they knew how bad it is. In which case it must be asked-- if Team Ragnarok *isn't* running for cover, what's that make them? I suppose Haldor would respond to that question: the *real* chosen ones.

Tanngnost and Tanngrisnir are the two goats that pull Thor's famous goat-drawn chariot. He never rides horses; always the goat chariot. Names mean "tooth-gnasher" and "tooth-grinder". His goats can also be eaten then brought back to life. The story goes that Thor and Loki were off on some adventure or other (actually it was the one I wrote about last week, with the fire, thought, and old age) and they stopped for the night and begged hospitality from a nearby cottage. For supper, Thor let everyone cook up his goats, then in the morning he put all the bones back together and resurrected the goats, all ready for another day of travel. However, one of the goats was lame because someone cracked open a leg bone and ate the marrow; Thor was furious, but they reached the agreement of trading the goats for the cottage's two children, who loyally served Thor thenafter: Thialfi and Roskva. [The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Mythology, Cotterell and Storm]

Gullfaxi the horse is equally fast on land, air, and water, but not as fast as Sleipnir, Odin's eight-legged uber-horse. The name "gullfaxi" means "golden mane". It originally belonged to a giant named Hrungnir, whom Thor defeated, then gave the horse to someone who helped him do so. [Wikipedia, Gullfaxi]

Brisingamen is a beautiful necklace, crafted by dwarfs and owned by the fertility goddess Freyja, who wanted it so much that she bought it by sleeping with all four of the dwarfs who made it. Odin disapproved. Everyone identified Freyja with the necklace so much that when Thor had to dress up as her she loaned him the necklace to make it convincing (long story; the gods accidentally promised she'd marry this giant, so they tricked the lucky groom by giving him Thor instead with Loki as "bridesmaid"... then there was some hammer-swinging and the rest is history...). [The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Mythology, Cotterell and Storm]

Okay, who gave the announcer chocolate-covered espresso beans? I mean, some of these lines aren't even making *sense* anymore. And I love how he pronounces 'Aesir'.

I've got a few random notes about the synchro-summon speech for Thor. One: "from the deepest chasms of ice", and remember the location in which Dragen and his dad found the Thor card. I wonder if the other two Nordic Gods' synchro-summonings will also reference the locations they came from-- I especially wonder that about Loki, because that location was downright tropical. Next note. "who wields the quaking power of a pounding avalanche"; this is the second time Dragen and Thor have been identified with avalanches, but usually Thor is identified with lightning, not avalanches. As far as I know.

I'm noticing a lot of our competition have team names that are, by some stretch or other, synonymous with "apocalypse". We had Catastrophe, which is reaching but not far off; now we're up against Ragnarok-- which is Norse for the end of the world-- and New World-- which is a euphemism for whatever the Emperors are up to which ends up, as I understand it, with New Domino getting demolished by a giant temple falling from the sky, thus somehow cancelling out Zero Reverse, and all this leading to Iliaster ruling the world through creative time travel. Close enough.

Nothing new on rune translations. I ran outta time again.

The prize goes to Watchcartoonsonline.com this time. It was a long day of waiting. :( I think the big episode-skipping thing has thrown a lot of people off who keep track of that sort of thing.

The saga of the lost episodes continues. No news yet. I wish 4Kids would post a sign or something that tells us what they're intending. Right now Toonzaki has three out of twelve in subbed version. I'm still holding out for dubs until I get more substantial proof than that, though it's things like that that make me think they may not be planning to dub them at all. If they wait as long to post 'em up as they did for the other times they skipped episodes, we've still got a couple weeks to a month before they'd take any longer with it now, so the chance is still good.

I do not know the title of tomorrow's new episode, but I know that it will be new and it exists. I will post on it next week, on the usual schedule. 'Til then, everybody. -Clio

READ A TRANSCRIPT OF DUEL FOR REDEMPTION