Gekiha Dan – Episode 14

It’s good advice for children but as a TCG Player, that sign can’t stop me cuz I can’t read!

Anyway we had like, almost a mini-season finale, that was a whole series contained in that little sequence of 13 episodes.

It’s a good thing we have the whole 50-episode package.

Card Game anime really does lend itself well to long shows. I wish they kept doing them.

anyway, enough bollocking from me! I’m pretty sure you want a show!

So to save me blasting random snippets of text every few frames, I’ll sometimes cover entire scenes like this if they’re small and concise enough to let be as one.

Sergei comments that Viole Mai seems deep in thought and Mai answers saying she’ll put the whole Horizon Ladder situation on her blog when she gets back.

She’s apparently noticed something about her blog however that’s given her some pause.

“Mai’s Cry to Otherworld’s Core”

Interesting episode title, it doesn’t indicate too much, but we do know she’ll be battling this episode as the Spirit on display is Purple.

I will say though, I don’t actually recognize the card on display here. For the sake of being as surprised as you guys are. I won’t look it up prior to it’s debut.

Took Dan a nice 13 episodes to finally resolve himself to be the protagonist of this story and now wishes to take on Otherworld King.

He is asking a particularly important question though, how can you fight a guy you don’t know where to find?

Magisa doesn’t appear to know either.

Magisa does come up on a fairly good idea, given Yuuki had plenty of opinions surrounding Otherworld King and seemed to be quite high up in his ranks, it’s possible Yuuki does know at least WHERE Otherworld King is.

A lot of wondering going on in this episode.

You’ll never guess what there isn’t enough of.

Magisa calms Dan down by mentioning that they should focus on tracking Yuuki down to get their lead on Otherworld King’s whereabouts.

Clackey notes that they should also destroy the other 5 Horizon Ladders as they come across them, should they do so.

Once again, time to compare this show to Toppa. Otherworld King is handled very much the same way as Uchuuchouten. He’s a mysterious character mentioned very early but not revealed until later.

The thing is the plot is almost directly driven by his existence in Gekiha Dan, You have various humans committing atrocities in his name, places like the Red Land left as nothing but wastelands due to his influence, and his power is displayed by the fact that the plot directly misleads the main characters into believing that they had found Otherworld King, only for it to turn out to be one of his soldiers. Suggesting an even higher power.

Uchuuchouten on the other hand, is off-handedly mentioned early and then never touched on again until J does a large series of nonsensical things which eventually turn out to be for the sake of defeating him. And the character gets no background whatsoever until like the last 2 episodes.

And asking “Who is the Otherworld King” is a very good question, since not even us, the audience, know who this mysterious God-like being is.

..It appears Dan did not finish the question and rendered my entire shpeal early pointless.

It appears the “Problem” Mai is having with her blog is that in her attempt to get many pictures of the Horizon Ladder sequence, she found that she only ever took pictures of Dan.

There’s a wee bit of foreshadowing here to suggest something much much later but we don’t even see the culmination of that in this series.

She apparently blames Dan for being so god damn photogenic as opposed to blaming herself for not realizing sooner that she only had pictures of him.

God I could kill for a curry right now.

I recently moved, and well, the cooking in my current living situation isn’t handled by me. I haven’t had a curry in YONKS!

It seems we’ve been interrupted by something.

NOT THE CURRY!

Seeing perfectly good curry in danger, Dan bolts into action

Down in England we call that a nice save.

Oh come on lady, you even caught yourself doing it. They’re all pictures of Dan because you find him to be an interesting person.

You can think people are cool!

That is allowed!

C’mon!

There’s no fucking way she’s doing this out of jealousy!

C’moooooon!

So it looks like we’ve arrived at the Otherworld equivalent of a Car Park… What’s jarring is we haven’t seen a single bloody road at all until now and suddenly there’s a whole transit system EVERYWHERE.

Given all the direct servants to Otherworld King are Humans, its highly probable that plenty of Human knowledge and culture has blended into Otherworld.

…That’s just a train station.

What, and your assault of a giant tower filled with the bad guy’s evil minions wasn’t?

For a world ruled by Battle Spirits, Zungurii is mightily surprised to find that there are card shops anywhere that there would be people.

Ah yes, the Bane of anyone too focused on card games, moving vehicles on the road between them and the nearest card shop.

To avoid echoing “Man it’s a show about card games, what else would they do”, I always wonder what it would be like living in a world where any and every dispute may or may not need to involve whipping out your 40-card deck for a game.

Having your deck with you would be almost as important as having a phone. Which notably I don’t think anyone here has.

For reference, the show is set in 2009 so that could be impacting the frequency of phones appearing, I recall having a very rudimentary phone on me at the time but not an impressive one.

Mai isn’t vibing with the situation and wanders off, Clackey and Sergei both seem to notice she’s in a bad mood.

Meanwhile, wherever the hell Yuuki is.

It seems whatever Dan did to set off Kajitsu’s… “Explosion” lets call it, has reduced her to being bedridden. I certainly hope Yuuki doesn’t see this as an opportunity for revenge.

If for some reason you haven’t tuned in and are watching Episode 14 before seeing Episode 13, you’ll be treated to a nice flashback of Kajitsu going power-mad mid-battle

Seems Kajitsu has regained consciousness.

Ah one of the greatest symptoms that anyone is ill, feelings of uselessness. Ah the sheer sadness I have when I’m taken ill with something as minor as a cold and I just become dead weight.

Yuuki reassures Kajitsu that it doesn’t matter that the Horizon Ladder was destroyed, they can always build another one.

…You and what workforce? You had to enslave half the Red land for it.

Overprotective Older-Brother Syndrome.

Also this scene is entirely pointless because these 2 don’t appear for the REST OF THE EPISODE.

Apparently that’s all we needed to see of that, Kajitsu being okay was apparently important information we all needed to know.

I wonder if it will matter at any other time this episode.

I kid, after all the plot demands the presence of 6 core bearers so keeping 5 in scene per episode is probably a good call, Suzuri not getting much screentime though.

anyway, we’ve cut to Mai looking at some kind of bilboard.

We’re depicting the scene of what appears to be a Samurai movie with a Female protagonist, I presume that Mai’s goal is to be a movie star?

So I’ll cover this, as I said before, Gekiha Dan is a spiritual rewrite of Toppa Bashin, Mai of course takes the spot of Suiren, rather than cast her as a singing idol however, Mai is cast as a super-famous net blogger, apparently even winning a contest with her Purple Talk blog.

But they have obviously gone in a different direction with it, a lot of My Sunshine’s issues have less to do with her as a person and more to do with the fact that her career clashes with her desire to do Battle Spirits.

But here, Mai isn’t having a problem with Battle Spirits, as that’s mostly hard to relate to, she’s having an issue with the fact that Dan appears to be more interesting to her than she is to herself.

She enjoys being the centre of attention, at the core of the action, but Dan seems to be getting in the way of that, and as a result she’s feeling conflicted because by no fault of his own, he’s now taking up space on the “stage” Mai has made for herself.

It’s like self-imposed jealousy, she’s afraid Dan will take what she has made for herself even though she is the one that is allowing him to take it, etcetera.

What do you do when someone is more interesting to you than you are to yourself and that conflicts with what you want to be the reality?

Dan appears to be… playtesting? I’d say working on his deck but he’s not looking at the whole thing.

Dan has agreed to fight until the Otherworld King has been thoroughly removed from Grand-Lolo.

As a result, he’s resolved himself to play as much Battle Spirits as possible.

Dan is understandably not content with the way that battle went, he was in a situation where he had a card that could have won him the game, but that relied on his deck being in a VERY specific arrangement at the time he went to resolve it, he is literally incapable of guaranteeing that will happen next time, or any other time, so he needs to get good enough to be able to handle that situation again without luck.

It’s a good look for the series, Dan needs luck to win but rather than enforcing the plot armor they interrupt the battle due to Kajitsu’s unstable state. Interrupting fights that were surely won is one thing but it’s good because we have no idea what would have happened and Dan here evidently considers the match a complete loss.

Luck plays a role in ALL card games, that is what makes them inherently fun to play.

But being good at them requires a strategy that is consistent and powerful enough to minimize the amount of impact luck needs to have on your game, Luck will do the rest.

This is of course very cool to discuss but ultimately Dan wants to be stronger, which is as Shounen as Shounen gets.

We interrupt this program to give you Zungurii interrupting this program.

And it appears Mai has come to her desired conclusion.

It appears Clackey has tried to get her to discuss the decision but Mai seems to be incredibly adamant about it.

So here’s the thing, Humans operate very strangely, and as a result, the more a person knows that something they believe is wrong, the more they will stubbornly choose to believe it.

This applies to decisions as well, Mai is choosing not to discuss it because she knows the decision she is making is not only selfish but negatively affects the other passengers of her ship.

So in order to try and remove the possibility of her changing her mind and getting what she wants, she is shutting down any attempt at negotiation.

Haha, that’s absolutely a reference to her original incarnation, Suiren. For those who haven’t read the Bashin Toppa blog posts, Suiren is comically well known for just actively kicking people while they’re down and back-handedly apologizing for things they’re not sorry for.

Dan seems to think that perhaps he’s done something that she genuinely doesn’t like, which isn’t quite the self-awareness most would like but it’s self-aware enough that he at least considers it might be his fault.

Unfortunately Dan and Zungurii get into an argument about who’s more at fault.

Mai finds their argument amusing, but otherwise doesn’t bother to entertain their original question.

I’ve never once heard someone liken the refusal to discuss something as “Cruelty” but I do agree with the sentiment, wronging someone without specifying why and refusing to elaborate when pressed could be very much considered cruelty. Not being willing to give a reason can only produce the conclusion that either you know that no explanation would be sufficient to justify it, or you have no reason.

Dan appears to have successfully touched a nerve, Mai responds rather viciously, telling him to shut up.

I take issue with the term “Sweltering” being used as the translation here but I take it that the poor subber in question had trouble finding an adequate translation that would make sense and didn’t want to say “Hot” as that has a different connotation.

For those who haven’t heard the term, “Sweltering” means to be “Hot to the point of being Uncomfortable”, Mai is effectively saying that she hates the fact that Dan has a high energy, hot-blooded personality.

Dan is of course, offended that the reason Mai is leaving has nothing to do with what he’s done but is more to do with a personality she has never clashed with until now.

She’s effectively saying “I’m leaving because I don’t like you, just because you are you.”

So of course, since she’s insisting on being unreasonable, he’s decided not to bother.

I struggle to deal with unreasonable people, because they often need nothing more than time to simmer down from a high tension situation before coming to an understanding, Mai has already “Burst” the bottle of emotions she’s been storing away and by the time she simmers down she’ll be miles away and there’ll be no point doing anything.

So Mai’s temper tantrum here drives me up the wall.

It feels better when you realize she’s 13 and Dan is 12, they’re teenagers, capable of thinking for themselves but not particularly intelligent.

Dan giving up here doesn’t change the situation, so Mai of course takes a potshot at him for it.

We skip to them having left Mai’s ship it seems like, Magisa wants to chat with Mai about the problem but given Mai refuses to discuss it, that’s going to be hard.

It’s an interesting dilemma too, you have a car you enjoy using and there is a person late for work and you have driven them to work before. Due to your past saves, the person now expects you to drive them to work whenever they are late. At some point you make a commitment that prevents you from being available when that person is late.

Are you a bad person for choosing not to drive that late person to work after you establish an expectation that you would, despite having no other obligation?

Obviously Mai is painted as being unreasonable here because she’s refusing any opportunity to negotiate and the reasoning she gave is quite frankly, unfair, but if she had decided that maybe she wanted to focus more on her blog and couldn’t do it with them around, would she be a bad person for that?

Course some might bring up removing Otherworld King as a higher priority but the world’s problems do not automatically become an individual’s problems just because they live on it.

Dan realizes Magisa’s comment about how she wanted to approach the situation was the exact same as he was at the start, Dan made up his mind about going home from Grand-Lolo, so Magisa didn’t push the issue.

the main dilemma here is respecting an individual’s feelings vs what is good for everyone. Bearing in mind that individual is not responsible for those people.

We interrupt this dilemma to bring you an announcement of a series of “Championships”

That’s right lads, we’re going into a Tournament Arc.

And the announcer in question seems familiar if you’ve watched the first series, his hair is a bit different but that is undoubtedly our new Galaxy.

We won’t see ol’ Nanao’s face again, and rather than being referred to as “Galaxy Seven”, he’s now referred to as “Galaxy Watanabe”, merging the 2 personas into 1.

From this point on the series uses these “Charisma Battlers” to act as cameos, often as a host to a tournament.

But enough about our boy Nanao seeing work beyond the confines of the 4th wall, the winner of this tournament will be given an X-Rare.

In addition to the X-Rare prize, supposedly if you win the Tournament, then Otherworld King will grant the winner one wish.

This is a useful prize, seeing as Dan or Clackey can use the wish to meet with Otherworld King, and even if he doesn’t grant their wish to remove him from Grand-Lolo, they can at least fight him.

The Tournament is also being hosted in a different world to the one our cast are in, the Blue World.

It seems they don’t latch onto the “Wish” portion of the prize and instead decide to use the tournament as a reason to find more soldiers.

I’m surprised they haven’t clicked that they’ve seen all 6… but I suppose Clackey may not know about Kajitsu’s Green Core and Yuuki’s White Core.

Dan laments that Mai seems to be being difficult about most everything.

Clackey’s surprised that Dan is more worried about getting on with her after she basically said a bunch of unreasonable things to him

Dan doesn’t seem to care much for what she said, instead saying that it makes more sense for them to travel together as they all share the status of bearing a Core’s Light.

Clackey raises an excellent point that they just got finished fighting the White Core Bearer who was trying to do something horrific, and claims Dan’s way of thinking would require him to forgive Yuuki. Dan clearly already thought about that, instantly saying he’d forgive Yuuki in a heartbeat.

Clackey points out that Dan said he would never forgive Kajitsu, Dan agrees noting that he’d forgotten about it, before saying that he seems less angry with her and moreso wants to play Battle Spirits with her again.

Dan seems to be placing his faith in the light of the core, enough to be ready to be friends with people he despited not a week ago.

Not certain he’d want to be friends with you after you nabbed the X-Rare he intended to steal and beat him to tears with it.

Clackey shows some admiration for Dan’s unique personality, but remember this line, because it’s actually something that gets upheld later.

Notably this means he hasn’t quite forgiven Yuuki and Kajitsu.

Magisa, being a 4000 year old woman, gets a pass for having expectations of Dan based on his Gender, besides she’s giving him a hug for breaking the expectation.

It appears Clackey has some shit to do.

I guess now we’ve jumped to them hauling their stuff out. Dan’s still a fair bit bitter about their earlier argument that he doesn’t really want to be polite to her.

Even Sergei seems to think Mai is acting a fair bit odd, but she insists on leaving so he doesn’t question it further.

unfortunately when Sergei goes to start the Violet, he finds that the key for the ignition has vanished.

Clackey taps on the window, revealing to have stolen the key and requests to speak with Mai.

Personally this is a good amount of catharsis, Mai is being unreasonable and refusing to actually have a discussion about her actions.

Most might argue that Mai isn’t obligated to discuss what she does with her vehicle (which is effectively operating as her home) but the difference here is Clackey’s being unreasonable in order to force a discussion, Mai was being unreasonable to avoid one.

And while I can understand why a person may not want a discussion about something, I also hate that black and white mode of thought.

It’s one of the few things I’m incredibly intolerant of.

Seems Clackey has decided to take this to the one place where they have to have some kind of discussion, the Battlefield.

And we don’t like people who make massive decisions that negatively affect others while being cagey about the reasons for them.

I chose to do something that we in the music business call “lying through our teeth”

Rex Goodwin – YGO 5Ds One Shot – Card Games for Charity

Battle Spirits is a strange game in the sense that the person who wins the die roll gets to look at their hand before deciding whether or not to go first or second, incredibly strange.

In Battle Spirits Saga, due to the presence of a mulligan in that version of the game, you’re allowed to select whether or not to go first or second after seeing your hand, but BEFORE you mulligan… performing a mulligan before declaring first or second means you must go first.

It’s one part of Mai’s board wiping combo, The Depths of the Nether World.

I’m not sure what Clackey means by this, not starting with your colour sounds like a recipe for overpaid cost.

Naturally there are strategies that can use one colour as an engine to facilitate a card from a different colour.

This links a bit to Mai’s philosophy, she wants to be an actor, which is why the prospect of a movie moved her so during the Horizon Ladder event.

By playing a Nexus, she’s selecting the “Setting” with which she can fight in.

Watch out lads, he’s METAGAMING.

But he summarises the purpose of Mai’s deck quite succinctly, so I’m happy.

Clackey goes on to explain the problem with The Depths of the Nether World for anyone who hasn’t watched Mai play and doesn’t understand why Clackey knows about it.

But I’ll do us all a favor and skip to the part where Mai gets impatient about him thinking.

To a layman, it may seem like a Core removal combo would eat a board like this, but Mai doesn’t have much Core yet, and so she’s likely unable to make many spirits appear while levelling The Depths of the Nether World to Level 2.

If Clackey ended here, she wouldn’t be able to deplete much without the requisite core to play both a Curse Spirit and Level up her Nexus.

The other, equally valid option, is to simply ensure the spirits do what they need to do before they’re depleted.

Clackey makes a full attack with both spirits, dropping Mai to 3 lives from the get-go.

Clackey’s certainly choosing an interesting way of smacktalking Mai… by flirting.

Unable to wage anymore attacks though, Clackey can only end his turn.

Though with those 2 lives lost, Mai now has 7 core to work with, she could very easy play a Curse Spirit AND level up her Nexus.

Looks like Mai doesn’t plan to do that though, she summons The HellFighter Balam at Level 3 which uses up most all of her Core.

So as interesting as that is, she summoned it at Level 3, like its existence here doesn’t mean much if you’ve got nothing to block her with and she won’t level up her nexus.

Case in point, she ends her turn.

As the Nether World Depths only fires 1 core per attack at Level 2, Clackey can raise the Gremly’s to Level 2, and chump block using the ones that get targeted, preventing Mai from gaining any advantage by shooting their core to his reserve.

Interestingly, Clackey attacks with a 2000 BP Froger, Mai has a 5000 BP Balam as a blocker. But given that Mai’s Nexus would just deplete Froger next move, he might as well wage an attack with it and derive whatever benefit he can before it’s depleted.

Balam blocks and quite literally claps Froger.

Now Mai has no defenses, Clackey can continue to weenie rush his way to victory.

Clackey considers leaving a blocker in Gremly, but worries that blocking Balam will activate Curse.

Erm, Gremly would lose to Balam either way, his Curse effect is irrelevant here.

But apparently that little misconception doesn’t seem to stop Clackey from attacking.

And now Mai loses one MORE life, dropping to her last one.

I’m not sure you can, she has 4 cards in hand and will draw a 5th soon enough, if 4 of those 5 cards are spirits she can play, you’re in trouble.

Mai seems to be interested in how Clackey feels about battling her, and Clackey of course, being a womanizer, likens it to a date.

But of course, he opens the discussion by once again bringing up the “Sweltering” Dan.

We can confirm that “Sweltering” was another translation choice used for Clackey’s choice words about Dan before they became more friendly.

I’m not sure why this is being used as the crux of the discussion, the earlier scenes point to Mai just using Dan’s “Sweltering behaviour” as an excuse, if she hated it that much she wouldn’t have blogged so much about him, so why we’ve started running with that as the reason makes no sense.

Mai seems to believe that they’ve found common ground, but Clackey is of course noting that they don’t fully agree because they’re going different ways about it.

Clackey mentions that he was originally like Mai but that Dan has a way of being likeable once you hang around him enough.

Which I’m pretty sure is the problem Mai is having, she’s realizing he’s becoming likeable and she hates it.

Now we get treated to a “Dan’s best hits” from Clackey, this one is when Dan wanted to team up with Clackey to protect the village, noting that they’d be powerful as 2 High Rankers working together.

Then there’s this excellent scene I don’t mind showing again where Dan gives The Dark Lord Jin a powerful lecture.

Clackey claims that Dan isn’t simply being “Sweltering”, he’s being straightforward to the point where others get wrapped up in it.

As I said before, just because you’re right, doesn’t mean you can change someone’s mind.

And someone being wrong about something will more firmly believe what they already do.

Very hard to change someone’s mind once they’re set in their ways at a certain age.

Looks like we’re gonna need some more CORE.

Besides the 1 left on Balam, Mai has about 9 core to work with, and 2 Purple symbols for reduction.

Mai plays 2 Hellscorpio and a Skulldevil, this is already looking bad.

Another member of the “Hell” series, Mai plays The HellFencer Berith

Since it’s a new card, and the one on the cover for this episode, let’s talk about it.

A Rare from SD01, which basically means its not a rare.

It’s only 2 reduction at 5 cost, meaning you’re paying at least 3 for this thing, that’s quite hefty, but it’s effect might make up for it.

When summoned, the effect will blast 3 cores, that’s quite sizeable for a Cost 5, so it’s balanced by the fact that you’re not allowed to fully deplete a spirit with it’s effect.

His effect at Level 2 allows him to remove a core.

This is pretty meh on its own, but it’s almost like it was DESIGNED to be used with Depths of the Nether World, as it’s Infernal Lord family means it will gain Curse from the Lv1-Lv2 effect, and shoot cores with the Lv2. Combined with the Nexus, Berith can deplete 2 spirits on one attack.

Which for a 5 cost spirit… ain’t too bad.

Oh look, the exact scenario I was talking about.

…Huh.

Mai didn’t use the on summon effect, or level up Nether world Depths…

Lets see, of the 9 Core she had free, she spent 5 of it, and 4 is used up by her new spirits.

Berith resolving it’s effect would be somewhat pointless then, since Clackey could just return the core next turn, so I guess the skipped it for animation’s sake.

Naturally, you can’t do that, Berith’s effect is not optional, it’s forced to activate.

So while I can understand the reasoning behind not resolving the effect, it’s still a procedural fuckup.

To make a long story short, Mai attacks with all her spirits and Clackey, having no blockers takes all of them from his life, losing him the game.

Clackey congratulates Mai on her win.

That fight was rather trash, it was Clackey full attacking until Mai had enough attackers to win.

He was so worried about the Curse combo he forgot he needs blockers to live.

Yeah, cuz he’s an idiot.

Clackey claims it’s fine that he lost before he could play any of his key cards, saying they’d be jealous of Mai, basically he’s being a flirt.

Clackey takes back the jealousy comment and notes that he was so worried about the Curse Combo he didn’t plan for switch to a rush strategy, figuring she would attempt to play into his prepared board state.

If it’s obvious your opponent is playing around your gameplan, and you have a plan B, use the god damn Plan B

I see Mai isn’t too broken up about that diversion.

It appears Clackey’s latched onto the crux of Mai’s perceived inferiority against Dan, and is trying to compliment her unique qualities that Dan doesn’t have, after all Dan is not an avid user of Nexuses.

Skipping along since this episode doesn’t have a lot going on, we jump to Mai having a sulk on the deck of The Violet

To make a longer story even shorter, she reminisces about her moments with Dan and seems to agree with Clackey’s description that “Dan disturbs the pace of others until they start to forget what their own pace was”

Mai resolves herself to remain in Grand-Lolo, agreeing to “dye it her colour”, which can be considered to be a statement claiming she’s going to fulfill her role as the Bearer of the Purple Core’s Light.

As much as Magisa lamented about letting her go, even if Mai isn’t with them, there is still a lot a Core bearer can do separate from a whole gang.

Clackey apologizes to Dan over Mai leaving.

To be honest you didn’t push the point too hard regardless, you vouched for Dan a lot but a stubborn girl like her wasn’t going to take that for an answer.

Maybe if he won the fight she’d be a little more agreeable but full attacking every turn go brrrr…

It appears Dan has become incredibly self conscious about the reason Mai gave for leaving, wondering what it is that makes him “Sweltering”

…What.

There’s no fuckin’ way.

COME ON.

I’m getting Toppa Episode 17 flashbacks, if you’re just going to come back anyway, WHAT THE HELL WAS THE POINT!?

Honestly, you had a fight that was barely even that, didn’t showcase any new effects while still showing a new card, it didn’t DO anything!

The fight wasn’t particularly interesting, it was Clackey full attacking until he lost.

You had a whole tiff that could have allowed you to separate the characters from the group and let Mai do some other things in the background!

Why go through all this hubub just to restore the status quo!?

WHAT WAS THE POINT!?

Magisa if you knew she didn’t “Mean” to treat Dan like an idiot, blow off Clackey when he tried to convince her, and didn’t even give YOU the time of way why the hell did she even drive off in the first place and wait til god damn SUNSET to come back?!

I’ll tell you why, because she TOTALLY meant it and both her AND the writers couldn’t follow through with the decision!

God!

Dammit!

Screw your juice.

Holding my sheer rage back for a bit, this little shot DOES highlight a key difference in Dan and Clackey’s aims, Dan wants to defeat Otherworld King as he’s the prime catalyst for everything that’s happening, Clackey on the other hand doesn’t harbor any specific aversion to the currently mysterious figure but wants to put a stop to the Horizon Ladders.

Dan is incredibly geared towards the upcoming battle while Clackey is focused on the outcomes. After all, Dan’s key trait is his perseverence in this case, and Clackey’s key trait is his own kindness.

And that’s all for now!

I’m incredibly angry since I basically just got Episode 17’d again. The only outcome of this episode was Mai, who’s otherwise not shown any particular aversion to her role as a Purple Lightbearer, now accepting that role.

There was a battle that basically wasn’t a battle.

The Battle did not showcase anything new besides a Spirit that did not show its functionality within the deck it appeared in.

And an entire situation that would have been otherwise worth changing the current status of the party was reversed, potentially because the writers wrote themselves into a corner realizing they had either nothing for Mai to do, or no creative methods to get Clackey and Dan to the Blue World.

See you in the next one…