☆mooglecoffee on bsky★さんのイラストまとめ

absolute most G Gundam thing I've ever seen in a card game anime

(Yes, he's named after the bean paste.)

Touban is treated as a stand-in for Shobu in this episode, and Shobu empathizes with him as a mono-red player with a near-identical deck and strategy--feeling that Touban losing to Hakuoh is the same as himself losing to Hakuoh.

Hakuoh's opponent is the Chinese champion Touban Jan/Douban Jiang, a pile of turn-of-the-millennium national stereotypes: a spicy chef who dual-wields woks introduced with girls in qipao banging gongs, a dragon of fire, and Bruce Lee noises. Possibly a Fried Ricer gijinka.

This episode also fleshes out the Temple, season 1's antagonists. You have Hakuoh's White Soldiers, the strongest team in Japan; the Temple guards that do the dirty work; and the Master/High Priest, who we've met but don't have a clear idea of what he's up to til now.

The only time Hakuoh genuinely smiles here is when everyone's convinced he's in mortal peril.

It's all for show: his descent slows at the last moment, one of many early hints about the supernatural elements behind the series. But Hakuoh loves the show, and hates when it's over.

This kid is shellshocked. 1000-yard stare, emotionally repressed, reciting a speech about "raising the level of Japan's duelists" with all the enthusiasm of a cat at a dog park. His handlers are always hovering over him, in case he goes off-script.

And then he jumps off a cliff.

Anyway, Hakuoh. He's interesting because we hear about him before we meet him. He's got loads of fans, a poster hanging in the duel arena, the men admire him and the girls adore him, especially Mimi. (That's a slip-up on her part.) But when we meet him, he's totally miserable.

Duel Masters rewatch thread I guess.

This is a series that breaks the 3-episode rule: the "hook" is ep 6, where we meet Hakuoh. You can't just skip to it though, because the previous 5 establish important characters and foreshadow events that would otherwise come out of nowhere.

all my hopes and dreams for Stoicheia are pinned on this band girl

no more smartphones, no more laptops. gimme PETs.