Was Noah About To Defeat Yugi/Kaiba? [Virtual World Arc Finale]

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So Noah's Deck Master ability was actually giving us a preview of what Yu-Gi-Oh card effects would look like in 20 years. Neat.

Amazing. He went the entire video without calling the deck master "Noah's Ark."

I know it’s cheesy but Yugi coming into a duel with 400 life points and no hand is one of the coolest moments in the entire show.

The fact that Noah's Deck Master abilities were so broken and the panic look on his face when he looked at the cards in his hands hoping that there was something he can do so he won't lose made this victory all the more satisfying.

11:23 Kaiba didn't finish him off right away because he was trying to finish his Master Duel daily tasks. He's got quotas to fill for how many monsters he needs to destroy and the amount of damage he needs to do lol

When you said Noah's deck master ability was "You can banish all monsters in both graveyards from play", I was like "Yeah, that's pretty broken because Kaiba won't be able to special summon anything from the graveyard most likely". But then you kept listing abilities until Noah had a whole paragraph and I bust out laughing. Noah wasn't even pretending to make things fair.

Funny enough, there is actually a LOT of interesting symbolism to this duel regarding Noah and his two decks. You already mentioned his fixation on gaining life-points, but just the way Shinato's Ark collects the 'spirits' of destroyed monsters has a lot of death-and-rebirth symbolism. Not to mention the way his deck seems focused on repeatedly wiping the field with floods, storms, ice, etc. has a rather biblical vibe, complete with his deck master being an 'ark'. Kid definitely has a god complex. And his second deck has more interesting symbolism. Obviously a 'spirit' deck parallels Noah being an digitally-preserved consciousness (a spirit, basically), but there's also the fact that the spirit monsters are all based in Hindu mythology, which has a central concept of a cycle of reincarnation. Oh, and there's also the irony of just WHO Noah is dueling here in Yami-Yugi and Kaiba: A disembodied SPIRIT trapped in an artificial vessel and a REINCARNATED spirit, respectively :D

The dedication to analyze this long-ass Duel is really admirable. Major props

For April fools you should do a “Was X about to beat Y” video but for Duelist Kingdom and say a bunch of DND-like stuff that the characters could’ve done to stay in the duel

Yugi summoning all 3 of his Black Magicians is probably my favorite moment from this arc

Another mistake Noah made was using Otohime to switch Kuriboh to Attack Position instead of Big Shield Gardna. In the Japanese version, he said he wanted revenge on Kuriboh for attacking him. If he wasn't so petty and attacked Big Shield Gardna instead, Yami would have had 1600 Life Points after his Nutrient Z play. Inaba White Rabbit would reduce him to 900. The Chaos Barrier Field trick would reduce him to 100, then Hino-Kagu-Tsuchi would have wiped him out.

I think the reason that Kaiba didn't set his ring of destruction and ring of defense earlier is because he was being cautious. Noah had a monster that could destroy spells and traps for free, not to mention he had so many field wiping cards (granted the field wiping cars were for monsters), so maybe Kaiba wanted to make sure that he didn't have any more spell/ trap removal. Great video btw.

The whole intrigue of the Yugi portion of this duel, was seeing Yugi use a crazy combo deck of his and Kaiba's cards. But for most of the duel, Yugi just used his own cards until the last turn. I wish the anime had let Yugi utilize more of Kaiba's cards in diffrent ways.

This duel has my favourite form of foreshadowing: The card "Last Turn" that Kaiba used in his half of the duel, its artwork features two of the Spirit monsters that Noah used in his Yugi half of the duel.

>Now I don't know if this is a translation error, but "winning" is a strong word Here's my translation of Yugi's dialogue here: "Perfect victory? What this duel revealed was ultimately your own failure! This turn, Kaiba still had Twilight Zone Dragon on the field: a monster that cannot be destroyed in battle. Had he not summoned Blue-Eyes, Last Battle's effect would have resulted in a guaranteed tie. Kaiba deliberately chose to summon Blue-Eyes rather than take this option – in order to restore Mokuba's soul! Noah! Your soul is selfish to its core; could you have ever made such a choice? You can't so much as connect to one person, and you intend to run Kaiba Corporation? Don't make me laugh!" Looking at the subtitles in your video footage, yes, it was a translation error. He didn't say "would've prevailed"; he said, well, what I wrote (海抜はブルーアイズを召喚しなければラストバトルの決着を確実に引き分けに持ち込めた). Though Kaiba obviously intended to win, and would have had Noah not pulled yet another hax Deck Master ability out of his arse at the last second. I think Yugi missed this point, to be honest. He didn't choose the safe option, but he didn't throw either. Crunchyroll didn't mistranslate this scene, though I'd argue their phrasing "You're the one who actually lost this duel!" borders on it, since Yugi clearly means a philosophical, worthiness-of-character sense, not that Kaiba literally didn't lose according to the effect of Last Turn (which he did), and this doesn't come across the way it does in the original dialogue. A more literal, albeit clunky, translation of this line: "The one who lost in this duel's true meaning was you!"

I do remember early on in YuGiOh video games, Cyber Jar was a staple of Kaiba's decks rather than Yugi's. At least thematically, Yugi's decks are always magic and fantasy based, while Kaiba's are dragons supported by technology. Also, everyone did create a brand new deck for the virtual world, so it is probably most likely that Yugi just did not put Cyber Jar in his new virtual deck.

The "I'm sorry, I'm not done yet" had me wheezing

The biggest heart of the cards moment happens during this duel

Noah’s entire deck is symbolic for his character. It’s really cool to think about.