Welcome back, all, for the first liveblog installment for Kasumi: The Last Signer of the new year! To celebrate this occasion, I shall... actually be doing nothing special. Perhaps it was a bad move on my part to have the last chapter before the year end on a cliffhanger. But oh well. Anyway, let’s resolve that cliffhanger right now!
Chapter 6: Haku vs Kasumi P2
Again, the chapter starts with a recap of the previous, a premise which still confuses me because this isn’t a TV series. From what I understand, Kasumi kept a relatively consistent schedule while it was updating; does the author truly have so little faith in those who read this story?
Sasuke comments that the duel is going poorly because Haku is winning, but Tazuna, being reasonable for once, reminds him it’s only by 300 points. I feel the need to point out that Sasuke was the one to state last chapter that Signers could not be defeated because they were so perfect and amazing. And no, it wasn’t just a stupid throwaway line, so I can’t just let go of it. It becomes a plot point later on.
The observers continue to act as if what Sasuke had said wasn’t true (because it isn’t, at least not in 5D’s itself) and wonder who will win. They say that they can only hope it will be Kasumi, and that it’ll be close. If I keep talking about the “Only Signers can defeat Signers” bit, this entry will never end, so I’m not going to restate what I just said.
Haku tells Kasumi that it’s her move, and Kasumi continues her proud habit of non-sequiturs by stating she wants to know what Haku looks like under the mask. He refuses unless she lets him win, which she would of course never let happen because she’s so perfect, and she says that they’ll see if she ends up seeing him without the mask. Why does it matter? Is he suddenly going to have a scar and a dark and troubled past to accompany it?
Kasumi draws to start her turn, and Haku helpfully reminds the audience that Silencer has now worn off, so he can again use traps and spells. However, this helps him approximately not at all, since his field is empty except for his useless traps. Kasumi uses Micaiah to attack directly, but he comes out surprisingly unscathed. When everyone reacts in shock, Haku reveals the dangerous card that allowed him to escape this scenario!
...A Kuriboh? Honestly? The author seriously couldn’t think of anything better than Kuriboh? I don’t even know what to say to this. Even if there was some dramatic tension to this duel before, this would have sent it screeching to a grinding halt. Not only is Kuriboh a bad card, but this implies putting the antagonist on the defensive, which isn’t good storytelling. If the hero has no struggle against the villain at all, there’s no climax or tension! It’s just more of Kasumi effortlessly curb stomping people.
Haku exposits about Kuriboh for the audience, in the process pronouncing legitimate as “lagitement.” I don’t get it, either. However, thanks to Heron Leanne, Micaiah can attack a second time, much to the shock of Haku. Kasumi goes for a second attack, winning the duel!
Oh, wait, no, Haku has another Kuriboh in his hand. Okay, this is moving from contrived to plain stupid. Having a Kuriboh in his deck? It’s a bad card, but sure why not. Having it in his hand when he’s about to lose? More contrived, but still in the range of acceptable. Happening to have two in his hand at that time? The chances of him happening to get both of them within his last couple turns are nigh nonexistent; if he had gotten them earlier, why not use them earlier? I would chide Kasumi in this case for not first checking to see if it was safe to attack by first doing so with her weaker monster, but this is ridiculous enough that I have to say it’s okay.
I hate to keep dwelling on this one point, but what makes it even worse is that he mentions he was lucky to have two Kuriboh in his deck. Exactly two. Not the vague “multiple,” meaning he could have had three and excusing it the slightest amount, but he had the exact amount of Kuriboh needed for the situation in his deck. As if he inexplicably knew this exact situation was going to happen.
I could rant on about this for the whole entry and call it a day, but there’d be no point. Anyway, Kasumi finally manages to get an attack off with Ilyana, dropping his Life Points to 1000. Gee, Sasuke, she sure is driven to a corner, isn’t she? After all, she had to attack one whole time to get out of it!
Due to her psychic powers, the damage causes Haku’s mask to fall off and reveal his true face. In the process, he is revealed to be... androgynous. I’m in such awe at this revelation. He is relatively unaffected by the lightning bolt to the face, though, and immediately draws.
He activates the effect of Ominous Fortunetelling, pointing to one of Kasumi’s cards and claiming it to be a monster. He’s right, so she takes 700 damage. This villain sure is threatening, being backed into a corner by the main character, getting out solely through luck, and only doing damage to her through what amount to cheap shots.
For the record, no, the author does not get better with the whole “building tension” thing.
Haku then activates Mirage of Nightmare, which lets him draw until he has four cards in his hand, but forces him to discard those he didn’t use at the end of his turn. A few things to note here. First, that’s only vaguely how the card works. I won’t try to bore people with a full explanation, but the cards are drawn at the start of the opponent’s turn, and you have to discard the number of cards you drew at the start of your turn. Second, this card is banned. Apparently, things like ban lists and alterations of card effects will not inhibit the author in the pursuit of poorly-constructed drama.
So he draws the cards, and what he does first is summon Blizzard Warrior, immediately afterward activating Double Summon to perform a second normal summon. He uses this to summon Blackwing - Mistral the Silver Shield, which Kasumi recognizes as a card Crow used. This serves no real purpose, since Haku just uses it as a Tuner for a Synchro Summon, other than him taunting her by saying that other people have the card. Or maybe it’s not a taunt, I dunno. Maybe the author just sucks at deck construction and threw in a level 2 Tuner at random.
Kasumi points out that if he Synchro Summons, he’ll lose, since his monsters being sent to the Graveyard will drain the rest of his Life Points due to Fatal Abacus. However, conveniently enough, the last card he drew was Dian Keto the Cure Master, which he uses to restore 1000 Life Points. Um, author, I don’t think the villain is the one that’s supposed to survive by the skin of their teeth and end up winning due to a lucky draw...
With the restoration of 1000 Life Points, Haku is able to Synchro Summon while still surviving. And summon he does, tuning his monsters to summon Ally of Justice Catastor, in the process Fatal Abacus dropping his Life Points back down to 1000. Also, Haku has a chant for summoning Ally of Justice Catastor. It’s bland as all hell, and I don’t care for it otherwise.
Despite Catastor’s 2200 attack compared to Micaiah’s 2900, Haku decides to attack regardless. Kasumi asks if he’s out of his mind, which is more than a bit strange since he pulled a similar stunt last turn, but in the conflict, Micaiah is destroyed, not Catastor, and no damage is taken by either side.
Haku explains that Catastor destroys any monster it battles, which isn’t the complete truth, but I’ll get into that later. Kasumi takes 500 damage from Fatal Abacus, which everyone takes as a sure sign that she’s going to lose even though her Life Points are still higher than his. Inari asks Kakashi how she can win against such a monster, and he says that she’ll manage. Apparently, the only way to destroy a monster now is through battle. That, or Kasumi has no spell cards or trap cards or monsters with effects that destroy monsters. If the latter is the case, I feel that I must reiterate: the author sucks at deck construction.
For some odd reason, Kasumi assumes that there must be some attribute that Catastor doesn’t automatically destroy. I don’t really follow her logic here; she just suddenly declares it. She doesn’t even take into account any other factors that may lead to a monster not being automatically destroyed, like its type, its attack/defense values, or its position. Nope, it must be the attribute that’s the key!
Naruto protests that she can’t last another round, which is an odd contrast to his normal personality. Oh, also Naruto is still dueling for her. I just thought it warranted a reminder, because it really hasn’t mattered to anything at all after his screw-up that didn’t actually screw anything up, so I almost forgot myself.
Kasumi, not being able to do much against Catastor because Crow sucks at deck construction, switches Ilyana to defense, summons Halberdier Nephenee in defense mode, and sets a card face-down.
As Haku starts his turn, he correctly guesses another card in Kasumi’s hand, causing her to take another 700 damage from Ominous Fortunetelling. Good to know the only way the villain can really put a dent in our hero is through lucky guesses. He is able to draw to fill his hand to four cards due to Mirage of Nightmare’s continuous effect (though he should actually be discarding these cards at this point), and he starts by activating Monster Reborn. This card was also banned at the time. I guess it makes sense Haku would play them, since he’s a villain and doesn’t really care about restrictions, but I would assume that the Duel Disk has some kind of restriction on such cards. I guess I might be too used to the source material, where no banned cards are played.
Haku uses the effect of Monster Reborn to summon Micaiah to his side of the field, in turn increasing the attack of both itself and Catastor. He then uses Catastor to attack Ilyana, but Kasumi uses Ilyana’s effect to redirect the attack to Nephenee. This does so much, since Nephenee is destroyed anyway, and she loses 500 Life Points from Fatal Abacus anyway. This causes her to discount Earth attribute monsters as resisting Catastor’s effect, which I would more count to Nephenee’s defense being 1200 points lower than Catastor’s attack than anything.
Haku almost uses Micaiah to attack Kasumi and end the duel, causing everyone to freak out despite the earlier bile about “Oh, only Signers can defeat Signers!” However, she activates Scrap Iron Scarecrow, negating the attack. After basically everyone calls out to her desperately, it’s more than a bit of an anticlimax.
Haku then uses Mystical Space Typhoon to destroy her other face down, making it ultimately serve zero purpose. However, if he had that, why didn’t he use it earlier? That one face down card could have been any number of things that could have caused him to lose the duel. I would list them, but it would sound more like me boasting about basic knowledge of a children’s card game than anything, so I’ll instead reiterate that the author is stupid and move on.
Regardless, Haku ends his turn, and Kasumi and Naruto make the big hero speech about how this is their last chance, so they have to make it count. Since this is a Yu-Gi-Oh fanfic, they draw just the card needed for this situation, a card called Fallen Comrades, which lets Kasumi draw cards equal to the number of monsters in her Graveyard.
Does the author even realize how many monsters can accumulate in a Graveyard over an average game? In the right deck, this card would let the right player draw basically whatever card they needed! It would be banned instantly! Also Fire Emblem does not regularly employ the power of the party members you get killed.
However, the only monsters in Kasumi’s Graveyard are Leanne and Nephenee, so she can only draw two cards. In that case, why not just give her Pot of Greed? It’s not as if the author has shown any aversion to banned cards already; I guess the only way the author works is “use a banned card” or “make a card more broken than a banned card.”
As she’s about to draw the two cards, though, she feels a stinging sensation in her arm, causing her to collapse and a few people to rush to help her. They see that on her arm, her Signer mark has appeared! Okay, that’s great, I guess. Not particularly relevant to anything at the moment, but cool or something.
She withstands the pain and tells Naruto to draw the two cards, and what she draws causes her to tell Haku that she’s about to win. She first summons Hyper Synchron, then immediately tunes it to Ilyana in order to summon Red Dragon Archfiend, in the process giving a very banal Synchro chant. I would make a mocking remark about using Jack’s card to ultimately win, but I honestly don’t care enough at this point.
The fact that Hyper Synchron was used as the Tuner for a dragon gives Red Dragon Archfiend 800 attack, but Haku asks if she’s willing to take the risk of attacking Catastor. She doesn’t even need to, she could attack Micaiah, and even if the battle doesn’t drain Haku’s Life Points completely, Fatal Abacus wi–
Oh, she’s attacking Catastor. Okay. I should really stop questioning Kasumi’s leaps in logic. Kasumi crosses her fingers, and since she’s the main character, it all works out in the end. Red Dragon Archfiend destroys Catastor, and the resulting battle damage drains Haku’s remaining Life Points. So yeah, Catastor’s full effect is actually that it automatically destroys any non-Dark attribute monster that it battles, which Red Dragon Archfiend coincidentally is. I’m not sure what’s worse, Haku outright denying that there’s an attribute it doesn’t instantly destroy, Kasumi somehow figuring out there’s an attribute it doesn’t instantly destroy, or Kasumi being lucky enough to get the correct attribute. I think I can safely say, though, that the combination of all three makes my head hurt from the stupidity.
As Haku loses, he declares that This Cannot Be!, since he’s never before lost a duel. He must have only played some pretty terrible players, then, since his deck is an incomprehensible mess of nothingness.
As she walks over to him, Kasumi explains that there’s no way a monster could be that powerful, so she knew there had to be an attribute it couldn’t destroy. Um, there are monsters much more powerful than Catastor, even if it did actually have the ability to destroy any monster in battle. For example, the Chaos monsters, which are basically the reason the card game started outright banning cards. And even if it couldn’t destroy monsters with specific criteria, how did Kasumi know it had to do with attribute? I would make a joke about how intelligent she is, but this is beyond a Bat Deduction; it’s outright guesswork. Since she’s the main character, however, her guess is exactly right.
Haku’s henchmen move to grab Kasumi anyway, but he stops them, telling them that he must uphold what he said as a duelist. Being a duelist in this world must really suck, being roped into duels to resolve conflicts you could have solved regardless, and having to adhere to the results of the duel despite still being fine afterwards. Haku certainly doesn’t seem that shaken up by all the attacks he withstood, at least.
Haku congratulates her on how less terrible her deck is compared to his, saying that her heritage from the best duelist of Neo Domino City being obvious. How do Neo Domino and Satellite even work into Naruto’s history here? Did Neo Domino just give out packs of trading cards to ninja so they wouldn’t disturb them with their silly shinobi wars?
With that, Haku and his henchmen leave, and Kakashi tells Kasumi how worried he was. She says that Haku now has her respect as a duelist, but nobody cares about that, so Sasuke asks what her Signer mark looks like. She lifts up her arm, to reveal that her mark is not just one part, but the entire Crimson Dragon.
...No. Nonononononono. No. NO. FUCK YOU, KASUMI. FUCK YOU.
This makes no sense from any perspective; even if one took the bullshit excuse that being a Signer is genetic, how would she inherit both of her parents’ marks, much less all of them? I don’t think I want to know about all six of them having some horrendous sexual escapade that made Aki pregnant with the baby of all of them at once. All it does is jam into our heads more that Kasumi is super powerful and special and amazing, as if we needed another reminder!
I was thinking that because this chapter was so much shorter, it would be less painful, then the author throws this shit at me. The worst part is nobody even makes a big deal of it! They’re all just like “Huh, that’s pretty cool,” as if this doesn’t surprise any of them, despite HOW LITTLE SENSE IT MAKES.
I’m trying to calm down from this to keep explaining, but it’s just so stupid.
Anyway, Kasumi affirms that since Haku has backed off, she will be able to duel on her own by the time the situation next calls for it. It would suck if Gato sent anyone else. Or if Zabuza attacked of his own volition. Or if basically anyone other than Haku came after them.
As they all head back into Tazuna’s home, Inari tells Kasumi that her explanation of the Signers, combined with the appearance of her own Signer mark, helped him believe that heroes do exist. So what was major development for him in the manga is resolved in a quick line here. Huh. And why does Inari so easily believe her story, anyway? For all he knows, she could have been lying, and the Signers were the bad guys in that scenario.
Because Kasumi must inspire Inari more than anyone in canon ever did, he then asks if she can teach him how to duel. She accepts and starts by telling him that it’s a game of strategy, and that without strategy she would’ve lost. Never mind that her strategy at the end was essentially ‘SUMMON BIG MONSTER’ -> ‘SMASH LESS BIG MONSTER’ -> ‘WIN,’ and that the composition of her deck is hardly strategic.
Tazuna is glad that Kasumi managed to inspire Inari, and Kasumi looks back into the forest, certain that she’ll meet Haku again because canon dictates that they see him later. She spouts some stuff about making her parents proud, which I felt would have been more appropriate elsewhere, and returns inside, ending the chapter.
I said before that I tend to ignore the author’s notes, but I’ve been focusing on them an awful lot lately. Weird. Regardless, the first thing is that the author announces that Kasumi will be paired with Haku. Isn’t Haku fifteen at this point? And Kasumi ten? So the equivalent of a high schooler is going to be dating the equivalent of an elementary school student. Not creepy.
There’s also the author's statement that the focus of Haku’s deck is to deal damage, as seen through Blast Sphere and monsters that inflict piercing damage. Yep, I sure saw that theme shine through in cards such as Dian Keto the Cure Master and Kuriboh! Even ignoring such cards, ‘dealing damage’ is not a theme! It’s a theme for a deck in the same way the theme of a bad haunted house is ‘scary;’ loosely assorted things that vaguely fulfill the purpose, but have no cohesive whole.
Damn it, this chapter literally gave me a headache. I was hoping its relative brevity would make it more bearable, not less. Anyway, join me for the next chapter, where this saga is resolved in a complete anticlimax!
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