☆mooglecoffee on bsky★さんのイラストまとめ

Once Jamira wins his way into semifinals, we get a flashback. His defeat at Shobu's hand back in episode 2 caused him to be expelled from the Temple, which has no use for weak duelists. Jamira begs to be readmitted, and a Temple member appears with a command from the Master.

Back at the arena, the top cut of the Kanto region Junior Tournament is playing out. Kamiya Tooru, Jamira, and Saruyama Takeshi have all made top 16, with all of them wanting a match against Shobu; but Saruyama gets paired with Tooru and eliminated in the first round.

On to episode 7, this one opens with the Master teleconferencing with Hakuoh after the tournament. Hakuoh expects little from Kirifuda Shouri's son, but the Master sees him as one of many stepping stones for Hakuoh on his way to a higher world. Hakuoh doesn't react to this.

this is the worst dub

The dub recuts this episode with footage from ep 9 to add a scene with the Master, turns Hakuoh's death-dive into a gag, cuts some lines equating Touban and Shobu (but also plays up Shobu's self-inserting into Touban) and adds new CGI sequences to the summons and Holy Awe scene.

In private, Hakuoh tells Knight he doesn't know what the man sees in Shobu--the legendary Shouri's son is just an ordinary, inexperienced duelist. Knight retorts that his inexperience holds limitless potential strength, and Hakuoh dismisses this as just one more thing to step on.

This is also the episode where Shobu falls in love with...er, decides he wants to duel, Hakuoh. For his part, Hakuoh is more interested in Shobu's legacy than Shobu himself--it's the Kirifuda name, and Shobu's father Kirifuda Shouri, that has his eye.

Hakuoh's big play of the match is basically setting up a field of (mostly) high-power creatures that can't attack players, then activating Holy Spark to tap all of Touban's creatures and attack them instead, to gain an insurmountable lead in both tempo and card advantage.

His play style is atypical for a card game anime rival, but appropriate for a mono-white deck: he slowly wears his opponents down by playing blockers they can't get past & tapping their creatures with effects to make them vulnerable to attacks, until they can't fight back.

Hakuoh is supposed to be having fun with the exhibition match, but that's not what his face or body language conveys at all: he's indifferent to (even unhappy with) his opponent's displays and the game itself. This isn't just taking the game seriously as Tooru does.