Predictions and Observations:
The Seventh Shadow Rider

Wow! Back with a vengeance! Here goes: I warn folks to get comfy, because this could go on and on!

Firstly, I’m dreadfully sorry about that; I didn’t know that the episode was showing today, and I told people Tuesday. I really really hope nobody missed it, and if they did, never fear, because I plan to ep-guide this posthaste and will happily send it out.

The Small Stuff: Everything too short for its own paragraph, random questions, and comments:
Why was Chazz that hungry?
Sheppard called a meeting of the keykeepers and former keykeepers just to say that Banner was still gone?
Chumley may be onto something- it’s hard to function on an empty stomach, and if they’re hungry they should go find some food first, *then* go spend the night out in the woods!
Banner *would* have looked for them- remember Monkey See, Monkey Duel, when he looked for Chazz?
How did they get into Banner’s room?
What was Alexis doing visiting the Obelisk Blue guys’ dorm?
Jaden really seems to miss Banner. So do the others, but Jaden really seems down about it. I wonder why?
It’s so funny how when Crowler says “the rest of the gang”, the four of them know what he means.
During the course of the lesson, Crowler is marked with the Mark of Amnael. Will that factor into the final battle, or is it just a weird teaching-related injury?
How could Zane have known about Sheppard’s meeting with the keykeepers and formers when he wasn’t in Banner’s subbed class, considering what I spelled out below about Crowler’s day off?
At the meeting with Sheppard: Yeah, Chazz, don’t go there. Alexis is a bit sensitive about the subject of people getting ‘realmmed, especially without a duel.
But what about the guy with the long beard and the weird accent?
What’s with the flying snakes? This seems to be a suspiciously weird part of the forest.
Apparently, Pharaoh is female. Another go figure. Chazz did say “she” at one point though.
Chazz doesn’t seem too terribly fazed standing on top of water.
Chazz seems to like catchphrases: latest addition, it seems, as of today, is “The Chazz is on the job.”
I wonder how much of a freakout that six-pillar light show of doom will cause?

How long has Banner been gone? They’re just starting to realize now how serious it might be. We know that he’s been gone since before Duel Monsters Spirit Day, meaning a few days at least. But it seems to have been a new phenomenon that his class had a sub. So what about this: Because Duel Monsters Spirit Day was such a huge and apparently school-sponsored event (note the costumes and well-planned events), it was a day off of classes or two as well, meaning that the Duel Academy students had a three-day weekend. Therefore, for chronology’s sake, it might’ve run thus:
Wednesday Night: Alexis vs. Titan in the Abandoned Dorm
Thursday Morning: Atticus has returned, and the group go to classes. Perhaps it’s a day they don’t have Banner’s class, or it’s a day set aside to prep for Duel Monsters Spirit Day. Atticus probably goes to Chancellor Sheppard, etc, does the whole song-and-dance to get re-enrolled
Friday Morning/Early Afternoon: Events of Duel Monsters Spirit Day. Banner has now disappeared either in the midst of independent setting-up projects for Duel Monsters Spirit Day or some time after classes and before the next morning. But maybe give that an extra day because It seemed to be slightly old news then, they mentioned it in passing. Indeed, it was taken as older news than it’s being taken now. Huh.
Then over the weekend they don’t have any classes with Banner, so this is on a Monday and it’s news to them that they’re having a sub (it doesn’t seem to ever occur to someone until they take a seat, because I, at least, am in a different frame of mind when I’m at school and think of school-pertaining things more readily). Who managed the Slifer dorm for the past few days then? Apparently when Jaden, Syrus, and Chumley tried to tell on Chazz they expected Banner to be there, so it couldn’t have been too close to classes even though they overslept, because Banner has classes to teach and it would have been normal for him to be gone by then. I dunno, the continuity on this bugs me, but I have a feeling that it’s just a plot device, deal with it.

Crowler says that it would have been his day off. There are a few problems with that. For one, the schedule I spelled out above would say that everyone already had a day off, so why is Crowler getting one? For another, we saw in Doomsday Duel I that since Banner brought the four student keykeepers in his class and Crowler arrived along with Zane, that Crowler was teaching a class with Zane in it at the same time Banner was teaching Jaden, Alexis, Chazz, and Bastion. However, this could be refuted by saying that since Crowler and Zane both live in the Obelisk Blue guys’ dorm, they could have had a free period and therefore since Crowler is the Obelisk boys’ equivalent of Banner (he was at the welcome party, the guys in The Maiden in Love were going to report Jaden to Crowler, and it’s pretty much common knowledge that Obelisk is Crowler’s dorm) Crowler would have been the one to tell Zane and they would have come from the same place and therefore arrived together. So it’s possible Crowler could have had the day off.

Duel Alchemy, to all appearances, *is* nonsense, rubbish, twaddle, man, talk about Crowler the walking thesaurus. So I’ve often wondered also why Banner was teaching them it. This factors into the question below regarding what Chazz, Jaden, Sy, and Chumley were discussing around the campfire, also. Is it possible that Banner was just biding his time to do something nasty and in the meantime teaching them utter garbage as a cover? Then again, because Crowler thinks it’s such drivel, this could be another reason for the rivalry between Banner and Crowler (other than the fact that they’re heads of opposing dorms, Crowler doesn’t like Pharaoh [Tag Team Trial II and Duel Off I] or any animals really and Banner’s a self-declared animal lover [Monkey See, Monkey Duel]…).

Chazz seems to fancy himself a bit of a detective. First that super-cool bit of sleuthing he pulled on the Dark Scorpions, and now this! However, I think Chazz may be missing a few crucial clues, like those muddy shoes (where has Banner been walking around lately?) or that listening device. I mean, what would their professor be doing with a listening device or radar of some sort? I don’t, however, think that the ball of lint, toenail clippings, or breakfast crumbs mean anything much. I’m sure that the ‘Tree’ note was important, but I doubt it was a code. How many other people at Duel Academy rhyme with ‘tree’? Chumley, Dimitri, Belowski, and Mindy are the ones I could think of. Is Chazz going to swoop down on Alexis’ giggling pal and Ra’s class clown too? The other things I noticed was that the cloth-covered object outside the Slifer dorm seems to have been paid some attention to in drawing the episode, so I think that its prominence might possibly be interpretable as foreshadowing. The next clue: a topographic map of Academy Island. I’m sure it was Academy Island because of the separate little island. And I’m sure it was a topographic map because of the outlines drawn on it- they indicate elevation. Every five meters or whatever is a different line, showing how steep it is by their distance apart, as well as indicating by labels the approximate elevation of a given point. Anyway, why a topographic map of all kinds of maps? Then again, it’s possible that the map also indicated forest density, and that may be what Banner was after. Why did he mark it like that? I’d like to think it was because he knew something about this mysterious foe, but I’m almost sure that he is said foe, because the seventh shadow rider won Chazz and Alexis’ keys and they disappeared and the gates lit up on their own, but the seventh shadow rider pulled the sixth key from a pocket or something and placed it in himself. It would not have worked if the ownership rules hadn’t been adhered to properly, and he wouldn’t have put it in had he won it in a duel. This does not bode well.

Who *is* the seventh shadow rider? He duels in silence and self-generated shadows and mist; he sets traps without even a turn in which to do so; he carries a book shadow charm and leaves the victims’ strewn cards or possessions in evidence along with the Mark of Amnael symbol but no empty shell. Banner’s clothes were found with the Mark of Amnael beside each one. Atticus’ room was wrecked, its owner vanished, and the Mark of Amnael was there, too. Too bad Crowler didn’t offer an illuminating word about what the twaddle he was reading said; we don’t really know anything about this Mark of Amnael other than it’s a symbol used in alchemy and it’s a dot with a mostly-closed circle around it. Wait- if it’s actually an alchemy symbol- to the Internet! How interesting. I searched for “Amnael” and found nothing, but in searching for alchemy runes, I found a closed circle with a dot in the middle, the symbol for Sun. So, this Amnael thing is an incomplete, a fractured sun? A symbol of darkness, quite logically, then… It’s also the symbol for Gold. A closed circle and dot is on the inside of the shadow charm book, where one would usually find the text. This Shadow Rider, whoever he is, is significantly more cunning than their past foes, not that he exactly needs it. There’s no other reason to target Atticus except to draw Alexis into a duel. Moreover, this foe is more powerful. I wonder what that meteor card is…? I have a feeling we’ll learn more about it than we really want to know, but for now, the valkyries ride again, because we’re just as clueless about this seemingly unbeatable card.

I’ll try to stay on topic considering it’s getting late and I still have tons more to say. I’ll get to the point I’ve been thinking of all night: either Banner was bad all along, Banner somehow transformed, or Banner was somehow taken out in some way other than a duel. It seems unlikely that the Shadow Rider could have had the key if he wasn’t Banner. It wasn’t put in the way Chazz’s and Alexis’ keys were. Therefore, the question is, was Banner evil all along, or is he some sort of were-Shadow-Rider? I think it’s very strange indeed that Chazz found his clothes scattered around the forest; why would Banner bother dressing up for no reason? Why would he not want them to know it was him, unless it really, really wasn’t anymore?

Why did the Seventh (I’ve decided to shorten it for sanity’s sake) target Atticus? It had to have been to draw Alexis into a duel. Atticus is becoming Alexis’ equivalent of Mokuba, poor guy. But how come he didn’t just challenge her? To lead her to a place of his choosing? After all, both Alexis and Chazz were lured away from the group before being challenged. Or… to put her on the top of her game before he takes her down? I noticed something strange: both Alexis and Chazz entered their respective duels at the top of their game: Alexis was deeply motivated to win (which as we know from her last duel is her main thing, a reason to win), and Chazz was confident and ready with the Ojama brothers by his side. But why do such a thing, except to freak we viewers out of our minds?

It’s hero theory, which states basically that in the end the hero of the story must take on the villain alone. It’s a bit corny, but for Yu-Gi-Oh! absolutely true. I confess that I had been wondering when Chazz and Alexis were going to lose their keys. We know now that it’s going full-blast to the end now: Jaden is the only keykeeper left, and the Seventh, the only Shadow Rider. It’s down to the wire, it’s wrought with suspense; either “buildings will crumble, light will fade, souls will fall,” or Chazz, Alexis, and Atticus are back and the Shadow Riders are gone for good. I don’t think we need discuss the outcome; of course it can’t end here!

That was one freaky first turn in the duel of Alexis vs. the Seventh: Alexis summoned one of her strongest monsters on the very first move (becoming common, that…), and attacked, when Battle City (now pretty much standard) rules state that you can’t attack the first turn because it’s just not fair to attack the other guy before he even gets a turn. *Then*, even though the Seventh hasn’t had a turn yet, he blocks her attack with some trap out of nowhere. Go figure is an understatement- how does he do that?!

I should be more frantic: two keykeepers just bit the dust within a few hours of each other! The Seventh has already topped Camula, capturing two keykeepers as she did but both in the same night, and we don’t even know his name! Why am I not worried about this?! I don’t know. All I know is that it’s full-blast to the end now and they’ll be rescued soon enough, because our remaining heroes aren’t about to lose!

The Seventh’s shadow charm is a book, a tome with a Millennium symbol on the cover. The little snap there that closes it is a bit out-of-place, but what the hey. What does this Shadow Rider want, that he seals the bodies and souls of his victims in its pages?

All of Jaden, Chazz, Syrus, and Chumley’s flashbacks to Professor Banner concern food. I wonder if that pertains? And Banner’s allergic to chili sauce? Underlines what I said before about his timid acquiescence, considering all that hot sauce he had when Mr. Huffington visited; he wouldn’t even say no if he was allergic!

*Is* Banner a shifty guy? He’s done some pretty shifty things, like send Atticus and his pals, and later Jaden and his, to the Abandoned Dorm, and lead Jaden and the others on that trip to the ruins. I’ve already argued back and forth and upside-down the point that Banner seems to be an accomplice in such otherworldly and dangerous operations, and the possibility of a good reason. But what about the points Chazz and Syrus bring up, about how Banner’s just a bit creepy as well? It could be eccentricity, but it’s a bit overboard for that. I really don’t know. I bet we’ll find out soon enough though! I’ll give it some thought when I have two conscious, awake brain cells to rub together, sorry, folks.

Ojama Yellow sensed trouble—and Chazz, you really should listen to these duel spirits, they know what they’re talking about--, so I wonder if Winged Kuriboh’s noticing anything?

That’s it, sorry it took so long. I was getting back into the groove, and also as long as I had access to the TV I wanted to start guiding it immediately. My apologies for the delay and for the misinformation. Tomorrow’s episode is called Amnael’s Endgame I. I wonder if that means that the Seventh’s name is Amnael, that would fit with the Mark of Amnael and all. Anyway, it’s way late, so later! -Clio