Where I rewatch Yugioh GX, Episode 176
Jan. 26th, 2011 07:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cypsiman2So, Seaweed Hair responds to Judai and Johan's incredibly over the top Ho Yay by summoning Clear Vice Dragon. He declares his attack against Flame Wingman, it's attack rises to 4200, Johan cries out to his soulmate, and Judai activates Hero Shield to keep his monster from being destroyed but he still takes 2100 points of damage, but that's okay, Judai is still in the game.
TITLE SCREEN! RAINBOW NEOS, PROTECTOR OF BONDS VS. CLEAR VICIOUS KNIGHT the only bond neos protects is the bond between the producers and their viewers money.
Judai winces, tells Johan he's fine, and draws two cards in accordance with Hero Shield's effect. Well, now Clear Vice Dragon is switched to defense after attacking, and look, it has zero defense points. Seaweed Hair sets a card, and ends his turn. Johan's turn, he says he'll avenge Judai, this pisses off Seaweed Hair, prompting him to rant about how bonds and sympathies are as trash on the ground, soon to be forgotten. Cue flashback to Chibi Seaweed Hair standing in a morgue; why a small child is being allowed to stand in such a place right after the death of their parents, I've no idea; presumably Shin Yoshida has no fucking clue and is therefore going with whatever is most wangsty. End flashback just as quickly, blah blah blah, Johan has Cobalt Eagle attack Clear Vice Dragon, but oh noes, for some reason it bounces off and goes to attack Flame Wingman. Seaweed Hair reveals that he activated his permanent trap card, Attribute Gravity; now monsters have to attack other monsters of the same attribute. Blah blah blah, Cobalt Eagle goes boom and into the spell/trap zone so Flame Wingman's effect doesn't apply, Sapphire Pegasus is also Wind attribute so it has to attack Flame Wingman as well, it goes boom and into the spell/trap zone, and Johan's cries of pain are just really pathetic, his voice actress just isn't even trying at this point. But hey, now that all his wind monsters are gone, Johan can activate his face down Rare Value, getting rid of one of his gems to draw two cards, he sets two cards, and ends his turn. Johan is once more forced to discard his last card, Judai asks if he's okay, Johan is, and Judai takes his turn. Judai attacks with Flame Wingman, but oh noes, now Seaweed Hair activates Attribute Chameleon, so each turn he can change his opponent's monster's attribute until the end phase, so now Flame Wingman is water, so it has to attack Emerald Turtle. Johan's spell/trap zone is full, so he takes 600 damage from Flame Wingman's effect, Judai is plainly pained by this, and sets a card to end his turn.
Blah blah blah, Seaweed Hair prattles on about how terrible bonds are, they should just be forgotten before they can hurt you anyway, and now is the time that Honest decides to come out and mention that Seaweed Hair never got over the death of his parents. Judai is shocked by this, making me wonder what the hell the point of him housing Honest in his soul all this time was, and apparently Seaweed Hair is the easily confused type, as he insists that his parents forgot him first. And now comes the sad music to let us know that we're supposed to by sympathetic to Seaweed Hair; it's a good thing that it's there too, or else there wouldn't be any reason whatsoever to be sympathetic towards the pathetic twit. Once again, Chibi Seaweed Hair staring blankly in the morgue, and two guys just stand around, talking about how much it sucks to be that kid, and not lifting a fucking finger to even get the kid out of there. And then Honests's card drops down from out of nowhere, his spirit appears, blah blah blah, Chibi Seaweed Hair is bizarrely accepting of the idea of a card spirit, and begs the creepy angel not to forget him. You know, I've heard of Touched By An Angel, but this is ridiculous! *Ba-dum-tish!* An unstated period of time later, Seaweed Hair entered Duel Academia, because obviously nothing the least bit important or interesting could have happened in the intervening years, nosirreebob. Also, notice how they don't even say why Seaweed Hair's parents are dead, how they died, anything like that. So goddamn lazy...anyway, Seaweed Hair became fast friends with Fubuki and Ryou, once again explaining why we never heard of Seaweed Hair at all until now, and we cut to Seaweed Hair putting up pictures of all his friends. None of whom were in Osiris Red. Also, we see Hayato in the back, which in many ways just raises too many goddamn questions about timing and continuity, but being that no one gives a shit about that fat slug, I'm not going to waste any more time on him.
Also, we see that he has a picture of himself with his parents, and it is seriously goddamn creepy. No, it's not how his parents heads are obscurred so that we can't even remotely connect to them as characters as opposed to naked plot devices. It is that Chibi Seaweed Hair is sobbing his little eyes out. What the hell, man? Seriously, Shin Yoshida, what the hell is wrong with you? I don't even understand what the point of something that messed up is, or what its supposed to mean. In any event, he spontaneously starts crying and going on about how he doesn't want to be forgotten. Umm, Seaweed Hair does understand that his parents died, right? He does understand how that works, right? Because as it is, it appears that right from the very beginning, Seaweed Hair had no connection with reality whatsoever, thus making it impossible to relate to him or understand where he's coming from. Just like Yubel, really. So, with that as the alleged jumping off point, Seaweed Hair starts practicing satanic rituals in his room, and none of his friends, including Fubuki or Ryou, ever stop by and ask him what the hell he's doing. Seaweed Hair cuts himself, a drop of blood falls into the satanic circle, and for some reason it gets a response. I've no idea why. And of course, Honest just stands there and is absolutely useless, because otherwise we wouldn't have a plot for the season. Blah blah blah, Seaweed Hair says everyone would just forget him for no reason at all, takes down all his pictures of his friends, and the creepy picture of his parents who's faces he's scribbled over, and then he puts Honests's card into a case, which for some reason makes him go away. So, if his card being put in that case meant he couldn't stand around in the real world, how the hell did he manifest with a physical body and everything at the start of the season? It is a mystery. And there you have it, ladies and gentlemen, Seaweed Hair's tragic backstory; My parents died, so I decided to destroy the world. Batman, this ain't.
Back in the present, Seaweed Hair goes on about how everyone forgets and abandons you anyway, something that isn't even remotely borne out in his pathetic excuse for a back story, so he decided to do it first, blah blah blah, this is really incredibly boring and vapid like you wouldn't believe. Seaweed Hair takes his turn, switches Clear Vice Dragon back to attack position, attacks Flame Wingman again, and now Johan activates his trap card, Gem Split; he sends a Gem Beast from his deck to the grave, reducing Flame Wingman's attack in half and letting Judai draw a card during the end phase when it is destroyed. This also cuts Clear Vicious Dragon's attack power in half, Judai survives with 250 life points, and he activates Hero Signal to bring out Sparkman. Johan blah blahs about how great the "friendship" he has with Judai is, and oh hey, now Johan can activate Rainbow Gravity to bring out Rainbow Dragon, the monster that's never won a duel, ever!
EYECATCH!
Blah blah blah, Rainbow Dragon can't activate its effect on the turn it is summoned, Seaweed Hair summons Clear Cube in defense, Judai gets to draw a card because of Gem Split, and his card is all glowy and shit. And since Judai now controls the Light Attribute Sparkman, he has to show his hand, Wrath of Neos, Fake Hero, and Honest. Seaweed Hair ends his turn, Johan takes his, realizes that Seaweed Hair's traps are going to force him to attack Judai, so he activates Rainbow Dragon's second effect, removing from play all the Gem Beasts in his grave to return all the cards on the field to their owners decks. So yeah, everything gets reset, except that Seaweed Hair activates Clear Cube's effect, letting him special summon another one from his deck in defense. Johan sets his last card and ends his turn, Judai's turn, he summons Honest with 1100 attack points, Seaweed Hair insists he's already forgotten all about Honest, blah blah blah, creepy codependency is creepy, Judai attacks, Clear Cube's effect brings out another one, and Judai ends his turn. Seaweed Hair takes his, and sacrifices Clear Cube for Clear Vicious Knight with 2300 attack points. Blah blah blah, when the opponent controls a monster Clear Vicious Knight can be summoned with one sacrifice, and when Clear Vicious Knight is his only card, it gains attack points equal to the highest attack power monster other than itself on the field, so it gets to add Honest's attack power to itself. He declares his attack against Honest, Johan activates his trap card, The One Worth Protecting; during the opponent's battle phase, Johan sends a monster from his deck to the grave with higher attack points than the attacking monster. He chooses Rainbow Dragon, damage to Honest is reduced to zero, and then Johan takes damage equal to the attack points of the monster he'd just sent to the grave.
What a thoroughly useless card that plainly only exists to get Johan out of the way so that Judai can take all the credit for himself. But hey, that's what happens when your "character" only exists to prop up the main character. Blah blah blah, Johan makes a pathetic dying speech, Seaweed Hair rants about how useless friendship is, not that he's wrong given the series that he's in, and now Judai takes his turn. He plays Hope of Fifth, draws two cards, plays Oversoul to bring back Neos, and now for the even more contrived permanent spell card Name of a Friend, Judai tries to tell us that friendship will lead him to victory while showing us that being sparkly is what matters, and has Name of a Friend take on Rainbow Dragon's name. Blah blah blah, Judai says that Seaweed Hair hasn't forgotten Honest, he blusters pathetically, Judai says he's sure Seaweed Hair's plot-device parents didn't forget him, shot of that creepy as all hell photograph again, more blah blah blah, I seriously can't care less about how no one ever forgot Seaweed Hair in the face of how he is nothing more than a vapid walking talking retcon who only exists to spout Shin Yoshida's unique brand of drivel. And now Judai plays Fusion to combine Rainbow Dragon and Neos into Rainbow Neos. Clear Vicious Knight gains Rainbow Neos's 4500 attack points, Seaweed Hair's image begins to waver as another voice joins his, blah blah blah, the shadow over Seaweed Hair is fading, and apparently he wants to go back to Honest. No one cares. Judai then activates Honest's effect to return it to his hand, Seaweed Hair screams and writhe while Honest decides now is a good time to feel him up, and now Judai discards Honest to increase Rainbow Neos's attack by Clear Vicious Knight's. Which of course means that Judai didn't need to play Name of a Friend, or fuse Rainbow Neos into being, Neos alone would have been sufficient. Once again, Johan is thoroughly superfluous and useless, nay, counterproductive even. It is amazing how this show is utterly unable to show even one thing that it tells us about, at all.
Blah blah blah, Seaweed Hair asks if Honest really didn't forget about him, not that he ever had any reason to believe otherwise, and now "Darkness" is randomly exorcised and is pissed. Rainbow Neos then attacks and blows up Clear Vicious Knight, "Darkness", and all the Mr. Ts, and for some reason this sticks. Who cares, all they've done for the past four episodes is stand around and do nothing anyway. Johan regains consciousness, Seaweed Hair thanks Honest for believing in him despite the complete lack of any redeeming qualities whatsoever, and for some reason the fact that the Solar Eclipse is still going is significant. I...have no idea why, they never established any sort of connection to that to anything that was happening, it was all just a coincidence as far as we knew. But hey, that's GX for you, never making sense or properly establishing its plot points, ever.
NEXT TIME! Johan wonders why winning a childrens card game didn't move the heavens around to end the solar eclipse that is suddenly important, there is a sound coming from inside the school, EPISODE TITLE, THE COMBO OF TERROR! ZERO AND INFINITY card of the week is name of a friend, not a real card.
Well, that was Seaweed Hair, a complete and utter waste, a vapid collection of sterotypes, cliches, and bad writing. The absolute lack of any sort of cohesion, effort, or logic in his backstory, which was given to us at the last possible second, is once again strongly reminiscent of Yubel. And again, what the hell was with that extremely creepy photograph? Was...was someone on the animation staff rebelling against how shoddy and badly written and conceived this entire plot line was?
TITLE SCREEN! RAINBOW NEOS, PROTECTOR OF BONDS VS. CLEAR VICIOUS KNIGHT the only bond neos protects is the bond between the producers and their viewers money.
Judai winces, tells Johan he's fine, and draws two cards in accordance with Hero Shield's effect. Well, now Clear Vice Dragon is switched to defense after attacking, and look, it has zero defense points. Seaweed Hair sets a card, and ends his turn. Johan's turn, he says he'll avenge Judai, this pisses off Seaweed Hair, prompting him to rant about how bonds and sympathies are as trash on the ground, soon to be forgotten. Cue flashback to Chibi Seaweed Hair standing in a morgue; why a small child is being allowed to stand in such a place right after the death of their parents, I've no idea; presumably Shin Yoshida has no fucking clue and is therefore going with whatever is most wangsty. End flashback just as quickly, blah blah blah, Johan has Cobalt Eagle attack Clear Vice Dragon, but oh noes, for some reason it bounces off and goes to attack Flame Wingman. Seaweed Hair reveals that he activated his permanent trap card, Attribute Gravity; now monsters have to attack other monsters of the same attribute. Blah blah blah, Cobalt Eagle goes boom and into the spell/trap zone so Flame Wingman's effect doesn't apply, Sapphire Pegasus is also Wind attribute so it has to attack Flame Wingman as well, it goes boom and into the spell/trap zone, and Johan's cries of pain are just really pathetic, his voice actress just isn't even trying at this point. But hey, now that all his wind monsters are gone, Johan can activate his face down Rare Value, getting rid of one of his gems to draw two cards, he sets two cards, and ends his turn. Johan is once more forced to discard his last card, Judai asks if he's okay, Johan is, and Judai takes his turn. Judai attacks with Flame Wingman, but oh noes, now Seaweed Hair activates Attribute Chameleon, so each turn he can change his opponent's monster's attribute until the end phase, so now Flame Wingman is water, so it has to attack Emerald Turtle. Johan's spell/trap zone is full, so he takes 600 damage from Flame Wingman's effect, Judai is plainly pained by this, and sets a card to end his turn.
Blah blah blah, Seaweed Hair prattles on about how terrible bonds are, they should just be forgotten before they can hurt you anyway, and now is the time that Honest decides to come out and mention that Seaweed Hair never got over the death of his parents. Judai is shocked by this, making me wonder what the hell the point of him housing Honest in his soul all this time was, and apparently Seaweed Hair is the easily confused type, as he insists that his parents forgot him first. And now comes the sad music to let us know that we're supposed to by sympathetic to Seaweed Hair; it's a good thing that it's there too, or else there wouldn't be any reason whatsoever to be sympathetic towards the pathetic twit. Once again, Chibi Seaweed Hair staring blankly in the morgue, and two guys just stand around, talking about how much it sucks to be that kid, and not lifting a fucking finger to even get the kid out of there. And then Honests's card drops down from out of nowhere, his spirit appears, blah blah blah, Chibi Seaweed Hair is bizarrely accepting of the idea of a card spirit, and begs the creepy angel not to forget him. You know, I've heard of Touched By An Angel, but this is ridiculous! *Ba-dum-tish!* An unstated period of time later, Seaweed Hair entered Duel Academia, because obviously nothing the least bit important or interesting could have happened in the intervening years, nosirreebob. Also, notice how they don't even say why Seaweed Hair's parents are dead, how they died, anything like that. So goddamn lazy...anyway, Seaweed Hair became fast friends with Fubuki and Ryou, once again explaining why we never heard of Seaweed Hair at all until now, and we cut to Seaweed Hair putting up pictures of all his friends. None of whom were in Osiris Red. Also, we see Hayato in the back, which in many ways just raises too many goddamn questions about timing and continuity, but being that no one gives a shit about that fat slug, I'm not going to waste any more time on him.
Also, we see that he has a picture of himself with his parents, and it is seriously goddamn creepy. No, it's not how his parents heads are obscurred so that we can't even remotely connect to them as characters as opposed to naked plot devices. It is that Chibi Seaweed Hair is sobbing his little eyes out. What the hell, man? Seriously, Shin Yoshida, what the hell is wrong with you? I don't even understand what the point of something that messed up is, or what its supposed to mean. In any event, he spontaneously starts crying and going on about how he doesn't want to be forgotten. Umm, Seaweed Hair does understand that his parents died, right? He does understand how that works, right? Because as it is, it appears that right from the very beginning, Seaweed Hair had no connection with reality whatsoever, thus making it impossible to relate to him or understand where he's coming from. Just like Yubel, really. So, with that as the alleged jumping off point, Seaweed Hair starts practicing satanic rituals in his room, and none of his friends, including Fubuki or Ryou, ever stop by and ask him what the hell he's doing. Seaweed Hair cuts himself, a drop of blood falls into the satanic circle, and for some reason it gets a response. I've no idea why. And of course, Honest just stands there and is absolutely useless, because otherwise we wouldn't have a plot for the season. Blah blah blah, Seaweed Hair says everyone would just forget him for no reason at all, takes down all his pictures of his friends, and the creepy picture of his parents who's faces he's scribbled over, and then he puts Honests's card into a case, which for some reason makes him go away. So, if his card being put in that case meant he couldn't stand around in the real world, how the hell did he manifest with a physical body and everything at the start of the season? It is a mystery. And there you have it, ladies and gentlemen, Seaweed Hair's tragic backstory; My parents died, so I decided to destroy the world. Batman, this ain't.
Back in the present, Seaweed Hair goes on about how everyone forgets and abandons you anyway, something that isn't even remotely borne out in his pathetic excuse for a back story, so he decided to do it first, blah blah blah, this is really incredibly boring and vapid like you wouldn't believe. Seaweed Hair takes his turn, switches Clear Vice Dragon back to attack position, attacks Flame Wingman again, and now Johan activates his trap card, Gem Split; he sends a Gem Beast from his deck to the grave, reducing Flame Wingman's attack in half and letting Judai draw a card during the end phase when it is destroyed. This also cuts Clear Vicious Dragon's attack power in half, Judai survives with 250 life points, and he activates Hero Signal to bring out Sparkman. Johan blah blahs about how great the "friendship" he has with Judai is, and oh hey, now Johan can activate Rainbow Gravity to bring out Rainbow Dragon, the monster that's never won a duel, ever!
EYECATCH!
Blah blah blah, Rainbow Dragon can't activate its effect on the turn it is summoned, Seaweed Hair summons Clear Cube in defense, Judai gets to draw a card because of Gem Split, and his card is all glowy and shit. And since Judai now controls the Light Attribute Sparkman, he has to show his hand, Wrath of Neos, Fake Hero, and Honest. Seaweed Hair ends his turn, Johan takes his, realizes that Seaweed Hair's traps are going to force him to attack Judai, so he activates Rainbow Dragon's second effect, removing from play all the Gem Beasts in his grave to return all the cards on the field to their owners decks. So yeah, everything gets reset, except that Seaweed Hair activates Clear Cube's effect, letting him special summon another one from his deck in defense. Johan sets his last card and ends his turn, Judai's turn, he summons Honest with 1100 attack points, Seaweed Hair insists he's already forgotten all about Honest, blah blah blah, creepy codependency is creepy, Judai attacks, Clear Cube's effect brings out another one, and Judai ends his turn. Seaweed Hair takes his, and sacrifices Clear Cube for Clear Vicious Knight with 2300 attack points. Blah blah blah, when the opponent controls a monster Clear Vicious Knight can be summoned with one sacrifice, and when Clear Vicious Knight is his only card, it gains attack points equal to the highest attack power monster other than itself on the field, so it gets to add Honest's attack power to itself. He declares his attack against Honest, Johan activates his trap card, The One Worth Protecting; during the opponent's battle phase, Johan sends a monster from his deck to the grave with higher attack points than the attacking monster. He chooses Rainbow Dragon, damage to Honest is reduced to zero, and then Johan takes damage equal to the attack points of the monster he'd just sent to the grave.
What a thoroughly useless card that plainly only exists to get Johan out of the way so that Judai can take all the credit for himself. But hey, that's what happens when your "character" only exists to prop up the main character. Blah blah blah, Johan makes a pathetic dying speech, Seaweed Hair rants about how useless friendship is, not that he's wrong given the series that he's in, and now Judai takes his turn. He plays Hope of Fifth, draws two cards, plays Oversoul to bring back Neos, and now for the even more contrived permanent spell card Name of a Friend, Judai tries to tell us that friendship will lead him to victory while showing us that being sparkly is what matters, and has Name of a Friend take on Rainbow Dragon's name. Blah blah blah, Judai says that Seaweed Hair hasn't forgotten Honest, he blusters pathetically, Judai says he's sure Seaweed Hair's plot-device parents didn't forget him, shot of that creepy as all hell photograph again, more blah blah blah, I seriously can't care less about how no one ever forgot Seaweed Hair in the face of how he is nothing more than a vapid walking talking retcon who only exists to spout Shin Yoshida's unique brand of drivel. And now Judai plays Fusion to combine Rainbow Dragon and Neos into Rainbow Neos. Clear Vicious Knight gains Rainbow Neos's 4500 attack points, Seaweed Hair's image begins to waver as another voice joins his, blah blah blah, the shadow over Seaweed Hair is fading, and apparently he wants to go back to Honest. No one cares. Judai then activates Honest's effect to return it to his hand, Seaweed Hair screams and writhe while Honest decides now is a good time to feel him up, and now Judai discards Honest to increase Rainbow Neos's attack by Clear Vicious Knight's. Which of course means that Judai didn't need to play Name of a Friend, or fuse Rainbow Neos into being, Neos alone would have been sufficient. Once again, Johan is thoroughly superfluous and useless, nay, counterproductive even. It is amazing how this show is utterly unable to show even one thing that it tells us about, at all.
Blah blah blah, Seaweed Hair asks if Honest really didn't forget about him, not that he ever had any reason to believe otherwise, and now "Darkness" is randomly exorcised and is pissed. Rainbow Neos then attacks and blows up Clear Vicious Knight, "Darkness", and all the Mr. Ts, and for some reason this sticks. Who cares, all they've done for the past four episodes is stand around and do nothing anyway. Johan regains consciousness, Seaweed Hair thanks Honest for believing in him despite the complete lack of any redeeming qualities whatsoever, and for some reason the fact that the Solar Eclipse is still going is significant. I...have no idea why, they never established any sort of connection to that to anything that was happening, it was all just a coincidence as far as we knew. But hey, that's GX for you, never making sense or properly establishing its plot points, ever.
NEXT TIME! Johan wonders why winning a childrens card game didn't move the heavens around to end the solar eclipse that is suddenly important, there is a sound coming from inside the school, EPISODE TITLE, THE COMBO OF TERROR! ZERO AND INFINITY card of the week is name of a friend, not a real card.
Well, that was Seaweed Hair, a complete and utter waste, a vapid collection of sterotypes, cliches, and bad writing. The absolute lack of any sort of cohesion, effort, or logic in his backstory, which was given to us at the last possible second, is once again strongly reminiscent of Yubel. And again, what the hell was with that extremely creepy photograph? Was...was someone on the animation staff rebelling against how shoddy and badly written and conceived this entire plot line was?
