Predictions and Observations:
For the Sake of Syrus

First of all, as always, stuff I left out last time. For one, I wanted to ask why Crowler needed to take a picture to catch Jaden at the Obelisk girls’ dorm, but did not and didn’t need to to get Jaden in trouble for the Abandoned Dorm. This suggests that going anywhere near the Abandoned Dorm is a very, very, serious offense, so serious that any testimony that you went near it, like Crowler’s anonymous letter, is enough to get you a visit from the D.A.S. and suspension with possible expulsion. This underlines how mysterious and undoubtedly dangerous the Abandoned Dorm was and still is, and therefore supports my theories about shadow magic at work there.
Secondly, I noticed that Chumley really has become part of the group now. It’s very sudden.
Duel and Unusual Punishment was actually quite a clever play on words. It puns three or four different things. Firstly, “Cruel and Unusual Punishment” is forbidden in the eighth amendment of the United States Bill of Rights (and who says Social Studies class isn’t good for anything?); secondly, they pun on the word “Duel” as they sometimes do in Yu-Gi-Oh!, such as “Duel Identity” (another pun on ‘dual’), and “Déjà Duel;” third, the episode contains a duel and some unusual punishment (the D.A.S…); and lastly, they pun on the word “Dual” because dual punishment is punishing two people. Come to think of it, Jaden and Syrus will be fighting a dual duel to stay in school. I’m a poet and I don’t know it…
Chumley says, “That’s, like, the first thing they teach you in Freshman dueling class!” This says that there is a freshman dueling class, and that students are referred to with high school titles, or freshman at least. So what’s a smart gal like Alexis doing in Jaden and Syrus’ class if there’s a freshman dueling class that they’re in and she’s obviously neither a freshman nor behind? Perhaps their class is Freshman and Sophomore. That might fit. After all, if that class was only or even mostly freshmen, then there would have been next to no Obelisks because all promising freshmen like Bastion begin in Ra. Therefore, this supports that the class shown in A Duel in Love is a freshman-and-sophomore combined class. By sophomores, by the way, I mean second-year students. It’s high school terminology, if anyone’s unfamiliar. I know I had no clue what a sophomore was practically up until I became one.

So…
Chumley’s likes and dislikes, we have found: Koalas, in a major way, food, doesn’t like to run, loves grilled cheese, is afraid of water—wait a minute. He seems to be aquaphobic in The Shadow Duelist I, and yet he jumps into the little lagoon where Jaden was stopping Syrus from rafting away. Maybe he’s really getting attached to these guys.

I can’t place it, but there’s something I like about Zane. Now that I’ve seen him in action, Alexis and Zane don’t seem as much like bf and gf, but more that Zane is very respected for his maturity and dare I say wisdom as much as for his skills. I’ve known people like that, whom you don’t really know very well but who are widely liked and whom you look up to, and when you are upset, you find that they’ve been watching you more closely than you know, because they’re there for you. Zane and Alexis talk about Alexis’ brother, giving me this impression. Alexis, I think, might feel that she owes it to Zane, as a friend and for being there for her, to be there for him when he is upset about Syrus’ arrival at the school, and so she seeks him out back in Duel and Unusual Punishment, and again in For the Sake of Syrus.
So that’s the relationship between Zane and Alexis, but what about Zane and Syrus? Zane seems to be more friendly towards Alexis and even Jaden than to his own brother. Then again, from his statement, “I think Sy chose good friends,” to Alexis, and how amused he sounded made me wonder if it was all just a test, an act to get Syrus to stand on his own feet. Zane is a mysterious character that way. However, I still don’t understand what he was playing at by stopping Syrus’ duel in the flashback. He *bribed Syrus’ opponent to forget it ever happened!* That is serious. Syrus was only about to make a little mistake and take a loss! What Zane did to him was unfathomably worse than simply losing a duel, so you can’t say he was being overprotective. However, it seems to me that Power Bond is a very, very important card to Zane Truesdale; it’s his Card, his trademark, like Kaiba’s Blue-Eyes or Mai’s harpies. Therefore, he may have been protective of the card itself because he wouldn’t let Syrus play it wrong. The relationship between the Truesdale brothers, before the incident with the bully, seemed to be very strong; Zane trusted Syrus with his favorite card in the first place, and it hit Syrus very hard to have his brother do that to him. From the way Zane was portrayed there (and I’m getting into yesterday but now it makes sense), he seemed distant, like he was away most of the time or hardly ever around. However, considering all this, I couldn’t believe that Zane would do that to Syrus. When he said that there’s more to dueling than using a card, I thought, and Zane’s one to talk! If he understands confidence and the Heart of the Cards, and understands that strategy alone doesn’t win duels, how could he do that to Syrus? On the beach he says in no uncertain terms that he doesn’t think Syrus belongs there and it’s about time he dropped out, which doesn’t tally with his disdainful but still valid willingness to duel Jaden. This makes me wonder whether there isn’t something else huge that happened to alienate the Truesdale brothers, who, the evidence shows, used to be pretty close. How did it get to the point that Zane rejects Syrus as a lost cause and a failure? It can’t have been one dueling mistake. Then again, people sometimes treat their family very differently than anyone else. It’s clear from Alexis’ friendship with Zane and how quickly Zane and Jaden become friends that Zane isn’t all bad.
And now, the big one: why were Jaden and Zane both pleased with the duel’s outcome, and what relationship has emerged between the two of them? Zane reminded me in many respects of Kaiba; one was his very strategic dueling style but typical refusal to bring heart or spirit into it, at least not as blatantly, and was having fun, despite poker-faced refusal to show it. I think that the relations between Kaiba and Yugi are similar to those between Zane and Jaden also, and that could be another reason that I began to like Zane. Hear me out: in this duel they found mutual respect for one another. They are not enemies, but count on it that they will clash again because they are worthy opponents. This relationship of subtly friendly rivalry is familiar. Both enjoyed the duel, no matter whether Zane had to admit that he was being given a good match by a Slifer or whether Jaden lost. Both enjoyed it, because both are good sports and true duelists, indeed more so than any other student I’ve seen so far. I also believe that Zane may have been impressed by Jaden’s standing up for Syrus; at Duel Academy, there are plenty of ambitious duelists, but as we all know, the best and brightest are those with heart. Zane must not see much of that, and perhaps has become a bit cynical.
I noticed another main thing about Zane: he agreed to duel Jaden. Most Obelisks wouldn’t. He may have said it’s because “It’s been a while since I went slumming,” which I believe was an insult because a slum is an area of a town where poor and homeless live, so Zane was saying that it had been a while since he had socialized with any inferiors. He may not be as friendly as Alexis, but he gave Jaden his chance and admitted to being impressed. This also supports my point above about Zane and Alexis’ friendship, where I told why Zane was popular. Those who are the best at something or most ‘popular’ may take attention for a short time, but those whom are respected genuinely by all are those rare, honorable people who respect rather than shun even those ‘inferior’ to them and are brave enough to complement where it’s due. Others may take glory, but people like Zane are the ones who are trusted and truly admired. And Zane, as the top duelist in the school, is both. I would say that with someone like this as its role model, Duel Academy is in good hands. However, since he gave Jaden his chance and was fair enough to say he was impressed, it baffles me as to why he treats Syrus so harshly.
A word about Zane’s dueling strategy: He’s very methodical, like I said before. Another thing that says he’s a powerful duelist and is having some fun at least was that he banters in the duel. Not like Jaden banters, more subdued as is his style. But I noticed that none of Jaden’s other opponents that I can recall—not Alexis, Chazz, and definitely not Syrus—are nearly as confident as Zane is, and Zane and Jaden are a cut above the rest in being comfortable enough in their own duel disks to have some fun and go beyond simply trying to throw out a good move. Another thing is how incredibly coolheaded Zane is, like Jaden observes.
I do believe that Zane understood exactly why Jaden had challenged him and more about Syrus than they know. He shows another quality I associate with the legendary duelists, which is the talent of reading people. He understood why Jaden challenged him and wanted to give Jaden the chance. He commented about using and playing cards during the duel on purpose, I think. I even wonder, like I said, if Zane isn’t trying to teach Syrus something else by being distant and even hostile and forcing Syrus to find inner strength and good friends. When Alexis asked, “So what do you think?,” that seemed to imply that Zane was testing Syrus, and getting a measure of Jaden as well, and therefore did not actually hate his little brother. This still doesn’t explain, though, why Zane told Alexis earlier, when no one else could have overheard, that Syrus doesn’t belong at Duel Academy. Perhaps it was something he saw in Jaden that showed him that Syrus was not a lost cause, and made him decide to teach Syrus instead of putting him down. Or perhaps it was Jaden Alexis was referring to, because I’d imagine that Zane would have been curious, like many others, just how good the Slifer who beat Crowler really is.

However, I didn’t understand what was said about knowing how to use a card not being the same as knowing how to play it. I suspect it’s this, though: on any card, you can read what it does, and then you know how to use it. That’s elementary. However, there’s an affinity that very strong duelists have with their cards where they know how to play them any which way. They don’t have set strategies and combinations, they simply have a deck that allows them to make a good play with whatever cards they have. This can really be gotten through experience and knowledge of your cards and abilities. As Zane put it, “I’m sure you are (ready). A good duelist is ready for anything.” Zane is illustrating the ability to be flexible in your plays to make the best of every card you get, not just the ones you were looking for. For instance, Jaden’s mud hero. He has to wait to play Kuriboh, but he still makes the best of a bad situation by playing the mud hero. He played Bubbleman originally to get to draw two cards probably, but after that he also turned Bubbleman into a strong defense, all in one move. I’m not sure if I’m being coherent at all in this, but I tried at least.

What was Jaden hoping to achieve from dueling Zane? An apology from Zane? No. A comeuppance for Zane? Partially. What surprised me is that in his challenge or his duel, he never mentioned what he hoped to achieve by defeating Zane. He stated that he thinks he can solve Sy’s confidence issue without ruining his own self-confidence. Jaden was not upset or disappointed at winning at all, in fact, it appeared that he had achieved what he had set out to do, with Sy’s realization of what Zane had been trying to teach him. Therefore, Jaden was intending to give Zane an opportunity to show Syrus what he was trying to teach him, and to make Zane realize that that was what Syrus needed and that he, Zane, did not hate Syrus. But before, Jaden was just going to duel Zane, he seemingly wasn’t concerned that Syrus be there, which was a major thing, I think, in their actual duel. So what happened when they met on the beach there right before the duel? What did Jaden and Zane understand about one another as soon as they met? What passed between them, that made Jaden realize what needed to be done and made Zane accept the duel?

One of the Obelisk boys that dumped water on Jaden had the same voice and similar hairstyle to Alister. Zane’s silhouetted tag-partner in Syrus’ waking nightmare about losing the tag duel had the same voice, and looked exactly like, Tristan. Those are a pair of freaky coincidences or something weird foreshadowed. Very weird. I have no clue what that would foretell.

By the way, I know for an irrefutable fact that that is how you spell Zane; I have a brother named Zane, too, only I’m the oldest! That’s all for now, sorry for the rant, but Zane is a very interesting character. More GX on Monday with—No, wait, scratch that! Yippee! They’re showing it on Fridays now too! So tomorrow will be “Family Business!” As they say in GX: “And *that,* is game!” -Clio