Predictions and Observations:
Sad But Truesdale

(some ambiguity on the capitalization of the “but”)

To my way of thinking, not very sad, but plenty Truesdale!

Well, we’d found GX’s dino duelist, so it was only a matter of time until we found its insect duelist, too. Now where are the Mako and Espa of the GX crowd?
Same question: Missy vs. Weevil—who would win?
I noticed that the front of Missy’s hairstyle is similar to what I’ve begun calling the “Truesdale Triangle”, because both Zane and Syrus have similar bangs in that same sorta shape.

Man, everyone’s moving in with Jaden! Pretty soon, every single Slifer will have been promoted or whatever, and the only people living in the Slifer dorm will be Jaden’s group of pals, from all the Dorms. Well, Bonaparte would be happy, because that *would* effectively eliminate the Slifer dorm as we know it…
I hadn’t thought that Hassleberry was serious about moving in, so I didn’t even mention it—my bad, I guess.
Did Bastion just move in, too?

Man, Syrus! That came out of nowhere! What was it that really made him take charge today? Was it that he finally realized the source of his fears? Was it Hassleberry’s relentless encouragement? What was it that caused him to place enough faith in himself that he intentionally gave his Power Bond card away for the duel?

Zane would be proud. I think that he’ll be very surprised when he sees his little brother again.

Speaking of which, we learned a thing or two about what happened to Zane after he graduated. Apparently, he’s a “Duelist League Professional”. Now, if I recall correctly, Aster Phoenix was the Duelist League Champion. So what is this “Duelist League”? Is every tournament duelist a part of it? What is its requirements to join?

Three cheers for Hassleberry! How very supportive he was of Syrus in this episode definitely earned him a spot in my heart.

Power Bond again, with a new meaning. Like Jaden said, Syrus can keep it as a souvenir of his bravery, rather than what it was before, which was basically a souvenir of not being good enough. Now that he’s made his own way as a duelist, he can play it with pride. Especially now that he apparently has his own sort of equivalent: Vehicroid Connection Zone.

The GX crowd is getting bigger, in terms of actual characters rather than just one-episode-wonders. Yaaay!

Alexis and the dress—no kidding, that’s taking it too far! He honestly tried to get her to duel in song? Who *haven’t* Crowler and Bonaparte bugged for publicity yet? Jaden remains immune, no doubt because Crowler doesn’t consider himself *that* desperate. I mean, they even went after *Syrus!* Warped kind of a complement. Wonder if Bastion’s up next, or if Crowler got that out of his system in Formula for Success? Wonder if Crowler will come to his senses before Winter Break (bets, anyone? Kidding, kidding…)? Alexis said that he must be stopped, and I’d have to agree. I say, any one of them should challenge him to a duel in front of cameras and the whole school; if he backs down, he’ll lose more face than he’ll gain if he has a dueling pop star in his corner. Any one of them could knock some sense into him easy; I found last year that a good duel reminds him what all of this is really about, which he easily loses track of. Like has been said before, he needs to get out of the classroom more often and duel! Win or lose, things will get better. Oh, by the way—now that Syrus won *and* got promoted, will Crowler and Bonaparte proceed with their plans for him?

By the way, does Atticus know about all this? He seems to have been pretty much out of the picture entirely so far this year.

Crowler’s “I’m sensing sarcasm” line to Bonaparte reminded me so irresistibly of another line that I had to say it:
“ Joey: We goin’ (to fight Dartz) or what?
(Joey, Yugi, and Kaiba start walking through the vortex up to Atlantis, former and latter sniping as usual)
Kaiba: What do *you* think, *genius*?
Joey: I’m detectin’ some sarcasm, rich-boy.”

Chez Chazz—a nice play on words visually. Is this another step to leveling the playing field on these dorms? It could be that by the time this bunch leaves the school, the three dorms will be equal, just as this bunch has always known they were. It’s like what Chazz said the other day (man, that was SO cool…). What I’m trying to say is, Obelisk isn’t the only Dorm with nice stuff anymore; soon no one will be able to tell the difference between the three!

I noted that there was a teensy bit of conflict over where Alexis would bunk: she was going to move in with the crowd in Jaden’s room (which is getting *awfully* crowded), until she saw Chez Chazz. Come to think of it, from the sounds of that place, there’s plenty of room for all of them, if Chazz would let them move into there.

I noticed Bastion finally showed for the first time this year.

The “reality show” bit at the beginning seemed a bit out-of-character for Chazz, or maybe simply a side of him we hadn’t seen that much before.

Speaking of Chazz, so far he’s been in every single promotion duel except this one, and every single promotion duel except this one has not resulted in a promotion. Huh.

Just as a one-liner: check out those funky costumes in Syrus’ vision!

The term “whatevs” seems to be pretty widely used at Duel Academy as slang for “whatever.” I find myself saying “whatevs” now and then as well.

Tomorrow’s episode, the first ambiguous “the” of the year: (The) Demon! Sounds ominous—might we see some more of Phoenix and Sartorius? Hang on—is there a tarot card called the Demon? Nope. So much for that. Anyway, that’s game ‘til tomorrow! -Clio