Yu-Gi-Oh! Vrains

When Aqua got Crystal Heart.

"Lightning cheats like a motherfucker" rings true again! I loved this guy. Genuinely a really good villain character.

I never really thought about it, but it's weird that the Ignis are all so different from the children that created them. From what little we know it seems like Jin was just a normal kid but Lightning is a total douchebag.

If each Ingis represented a aspect of human, then Lighting probably represented the asshole side of humanity, mainly his attitude of seeing other as stepping stone for his goal.

Edited by BattleRaizer on Apr 18th 2019 at 12:04:57 AM

Well, the guy is more or less throwing a giant tantrum, anyway. So he is acting like a brat while trying to pretend he is not.

x3

Aren't they just based off each Lost Child's dueling style (Since that the only thing the kids were tested for.)? Not to mention that with each Lost Child having trauma as a result of the Lost Incident (Specter/Spectre being the exception, maybe Miyu as well but since she's in a coma we don't really know.) I think it makes perfect sense for the Ignises to be different from the child they're based on.

Edited by Chariot on Apr 17th 2019 at 3:29:21 PM

Earth at least was enough like Specter that characters realized it in their duel, excluding the sadism and dickery of the latter. But otherwise yeah the rest don't seem that similar otherwise.

Edited by OmegaRadiance on Apr 17th 2019 at 1:05:20 AM

Evil bastard he is, I can't help but admire Lightning's drive to win and to live. Even Evil has a right to live imo, so Lightning's actions make sense imo. He is not as complex as Kotomine from the Nasuverse, but Lightning is probably the closest equivalent to him and imo one of the better villains of the Yugioh franchise. Wish that he wasn't so much of a dick. Like his involvement in Jin's coma was a bit unnecessary.

I also don't feel to bad for what he did to Dr. Kogami. Dr. Kogami was going to delete Lightning, so it was either him or Dr. Kogami. I may have done the same in Lightning's position.

I would buy this angle a little bit better if the threats to his existence weren't pretty much completely self-inflicted.

Edited by Comun on Apr 17th 2019 at 6:18:46 AM

I wonder how much it actually is self-inflicted. Someone who was born evil, never had a choice as he was destined to always be evil. In Lightning's case perhaps even more so since that is what his program compels him to do. It's like you can't really fault someone with a mental handicap to not understand something or to make decisions aren't really smart. Perhaps not the best analogy and probably a question that Vrains will never ask or something that changes that Ligtning has to be stopped at all costs, but that's the best I could come up with.

It's not like Lightning can suddenly change his program. At least not without performing what I assume would be the human equivalent to brain surgery or maybe even losing his self or identity. Sure, Liigtning's threat would be gone, but doing something like that is still morally iffy.

Though, as I said, infecting Dr. Kogami was another matter, since that was self-preservation. Plus, Dr. Kogami isn't exactly high on my sympathetic people's list. Admittedly, neither is Lightning.

Edited by bandersnitch on Apr 17th 2019 at 3:57:31 AM

Kotomine tried to fight and still sticks to his morals, even after embracing he was still miserable due to said morals.

Lightning has none of that. He's born an evil sick and chose to embrace being an unrepetant evil dick. Fighting ones nature has been done plenty of times, but Lightning doesn't try but relishes in it.

So No Sympahy. He deserves nothing short than death.

Edited by OmegaRadiance on Apr 17th 2019 at 3:57:51 AM

Yeah, Dr. Kogami is the lesser evil by a wide margin. Though I don't think Lightning deserves to die. Then again, I don't think anyone deserves to die, no matter how evil.

While this has less to do with situation and is more Wild Mass Guessing, one could argue that it is because of his program that Lightning enjoys it and doesn't even consider challenging his program. If one can change or challenge one's program, isn't that part of one's program too?

I would like to say more about this, but I don't know enough about A.I.s to discern what the exact relationship between Nature Versus Nurture, self learning and Grew Beyond Their Programming for an AI is. Maybe what I'm babbling is all just bogus.

Edited by bandersnitch on Apr 17th 2019 at 4:08:56 AM

No, no, the whole drive for survival thing is a real part of Lightning and a completely valid point of discussion. It's just the Kotomine comparisons that feel a bit off. If I had to take a Fate/ character here, I would go with Hakuno but even them don't feel quite right in a comparison to Lightning.

This reminds me of the YGO manga having Yami Marik taking credit for Marik's crimes, but actually showing that instead of telling.

x5

I mean I don't think Lightning was born evil? Like he went off the deep end after doing his simulation and finding out he had no chance of a positive relationship with Jin. If anything he went evil because he jumped to conclusions about why that is and Dr. Kogami wasn't helping. Like the most likely reason he wouldn't have been able to have a positive relationship with Jin is because Jin was locked away for his mental health but both Lightning and Dr. Kogami jumped to conclusions and we're here now.

Edited by Chariot on Apr 17th 2019 at 9:00:20 AM

So the worst Ignis basically has a 100% winrate; he didn't even get defeated, he went out on his own terms. That's some delicious irony there.

That it is.

I don't know. I think the whole torturing the poor kid by making him think he was going to be rescued had something to do with it. I'm not even sure Lightning really went crazy so much as he went crazier.

Yeah they made clear he did evil things for fun before this, and Dr. Kogami only ran the simulations just as Lightning was plotting his murder with then virus. Even pointing out if Kogami had continued he would have found he root cause instead of being left to assume it was all Ignis.

Essentially Lightning caused it all, including the creation of the Knights of Hanoi.

Edited by OmegaRadiance on Apr 17th 2019 at 6:39:43 AM

As things currently stand, the only major bad thing in this show that was not Lightning's fault is Kogami torturing children to make said Lightning.

And SOL that sought to profit from it.

Yeah, so they ain't clean, but then you remember that Lightning was created by Kogami, but it's kinda karmic in a really twisted way. He was undone by his own creation, who then made sure to aim the ones looking for revenge at the wrong people.

Hell, since he planned to get rid of the other Ignis to create Bohman even the Ignis world being attacked didn't really backfire on him.

...Lightning got everything he wanted.

As odd as it is for me to say considering I often find Humans Are the Real Monsters to be stale in anime, I'm hoping that when Sol steps up as the new arc villains, it's all them and not some shit from Lightning from the grave.

Itll probably turn out secretly Lightning was based on King all along and nobody knew!

Afterall the Sun(SOL) is a source of Light just like Lightning!

Well no wonder Jin was the most traumatized one ._.

Have you noticed that Konami seems to be going out of their way to not release the villains' cards from this series in real life? Wonder if that's building up to something, or if it's just laziness.

It's not just the antagonists. Outisde of the main cast, none of the characters have had their decks released. And, starting with Cybernetic Horizon, the number of anime cards included in the booster pack has decreased from ~30 to 20, or 18 in Rising Rampage which was likely to make room so they could include support for two older themes in the form of 5 new cards each, a trend that also started with Cybernetic Horizon.

As for why they aren't released, it's possible Konami chose to do so because the anime archetypes are either too small (Helixx, Codebreaker) or have designs that need to be reworked so they can function IRL without being too gimmicky (Sunavalon, Hydradrive).