With Honda's support, Miho enters a popularity contest against arrogant school beauty Kaoruko Himekoji. Soon Kaoruko resorts to cheating to win, but when she hurts Miho, she incurs the wrath of Dark Yugi.
This episode contains examples of:
- Alpha Bitch: Kaoruko is a spoiled model.
- Berserk Button: Kaoruko hates being reminded of her age. Even though she's a young woman, she's still two years older than Anzu and Miho. Miho deliberately pushes this when Kaoruko acts snotty towards them, stating the contest is more about the tightness of their skin. This leaves Kaoruko trembling in rage.
- Butt-Monkey: Jonouchi enters the popularity contest hoping to scalp the prize, even though it's clear absolutely no one wants to support or vote for him and he only ends up making an ass of himself.
- Early-Bird Cameo: Ryou Bakura first appears here, earlier than he did in the manga.
- Epic Fail: Jonouchi's performance in the talent competition... which involved him dressing in drag and donning Uncanny Valley Makeup. How in the hell he thought this was a good idea is unknown, but he ends up horrifying the audience. One person even throws a pie at him.
- Exact Words: The rules of Dark Yugi's game are that he and Kaoruko will take turns picking from the roses she's got. Kaoruko assumes he means the roses in her bouquet and thinks she's won when he can seemingly only grab the one in her hand. As Dark Yugi plucks the rose Kaoruko had in her hair and defeats her, he points out he said all the roses she had, not all the roses in the bouquet.
- Foreshadowing: Kaoruko's sensitivity towards anyone mentioning her age (even if she's only two years older than Miho and Anzu) sets up how the Shadow Games will punish her with an illusion of how she's a hideous old woman.
- Four Eyes, Zero Soul: One of Kaoruko's unnamed lackeys is a girl with glasses, and in pretty much every scene featuring her the girl's got a rather evil grin on her face.
- Hoist by Their Own Petard: A petal fell from the rose in Kaoruko's hair while she ambushed and drugged Miho. Yugi discovering said petal is what set him off on Kaoruko, and Dark Yugi uses that exact rose to defeat her in their Shadow Game.
- Innocuously Important Episode: While the main plot is unrelated to the overarching story, Ryou Bakura appears here, causing Yugi to wonder about himself and his other self, and Mokuba cameos at the end to signal preparation for the Death-T arc.
- Internal Reveal: Downplayed. It's more like "Internal Suspicion". Yugi is starting to suspect the presence of Dark Yugi, between Ryou's mention of "black-outs" and his most recent blackout.
- Kick the Dog: Kaoruko drugs Miho so she can tear up the latter's dress and make her overall ineligible to compete.
- Pie in the Face: When Jounouchi performs in drag with excessive makeup, he eventually takes a pie to the face among the trash they throw at him. That was the last straw for him as he dives to fight off whoever threw the pie, which gets him disqualified.
- Produce Pelting: On the contest day, Jounouchi gets up the platform and demands everyone vote for him so he can win, but everyone boos and throws trash at him while demanding he gets down. It gets worse when it's his turn at the contest, showing up in drag and wearing excessive makeup, which causes everyone to throw even more trash at him. However, when he takes a pie to the face, he has enough and decides to fight off the crowd in search of who threw it.
- Proud Beauty: Kaoruko is considered to be one of the most beautiful girls in school, especially by the student council's vice president. The popularity contest starts because Honda argues that Miho is much more beautiful. Kaoruko initially didn't care about entering until the vice president suggested she could prove she is the most beautiful girl.
- Pyrrhic Victory: Kaoruko won the contest, but she publicly humiliates herself due to the punishment game she received from Dark Yugi.
- Rapid Aging: Dark Yugi's Shadow Game invokes an illusion of this trope on Kaoruko, making her see a whithered old lady who has long-lost her beauty. Dark Yugi uses this to cruelly demonstrate to her that not even the most beautiful girl in school can fight old age, and her beauty will not last forever.
- Smug Snake: Kaoruko only agreed to the popularity contest when she thought she could put Anzu and Miho in their place, only to realize she might actually lose against them and starts cheating to bring them down. During her Shadow Game she can't help but gloat about how she's going to beat Dark Yugi when it's down to five roses. When she's got one rose left in her hand she thinks she's won as Dark Yugi will have to grab it, and then he reaches towards her and pulls the rose from her hair.
- Something about a Rose: Kaoruko has a distinct rose motif that comes into play with her game with Dark Yugi.
- Villainous BSoD: Kaoruko suffers this, between publicly humiliating herself and the Shadow Game illusion that prophetically shows her beauty withering away with age.
