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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

>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!"

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.

19:10 The Japanese's version of last turn is more clear on this. The monsters summoned does not need to be the original monsters it's just whoever still has a monster on the field wins the duel. So, if you have a cyber jar set for example. It would play out like this: The two monster battle, and cyber jar is flipped destroying both monsters, both players then reveal their top 5 cards of their deck, and then one of 4 things will happen. Option A: Only player 1 revealed a monster(s), so they win the duel Option B: Only player 2 revealed a monster(s), so they win the duel Option C: Both players revealed a monster(s), but because the two original monsters already have performed a battle this turn which means that no further battling will take place and the effect of last turn moves the game to the end phase where the duel will end in a draw. Option D: Neither player reveals a monster(s), which then results in a draw as neither player has a monster on the field.

So can we also talk about how, Noah summoning Mokuba infront of Kaiba's winning attack, to make Kaiba call off the attack and end his turn... basically the same as what Kaiba did to Yugi at Duelist Kingdom? 😂

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.

If Kaiba had attacked with Thunder Dragon first, Noah would still have brought in Mokuba to save himself.