Plot: Anzu secretly gets a job at the local restaurant, Burger World. She doesn’t want Yugi or Jonouchi to find out because they might blab to the school and get her fired. Anzu needs this job to save money because, after she graduates, she intends on moving to New York to study dance.
However, there are more pressing matters to attend to – such as the escaped death row convict who has decided to pay Burger World a little visit.
Breakdown: The anime starts with a scene where Sugoroku reacts to the news that Yugi completed the Millennium Puzzle. He wonders why Yugi hasn’t changed at all when the glyphs on the box explained that the person who completed the Puzzle would get dark knowledge and power. This scene isn’t present in the manga.
Seems a little messed up for Sugoroku to give this thing that is imbued with dark magic to his grandson. It would be a different story if he didn’t actually believe it, but he does, so he pretty much wanted his grandson to be the host of ancient dark magicks without his consent or knowledge….
The escaped prisoner in the manga is known only as prisoner 777, which matches his 777 tattoo and the guy’s heavy belief in superstition and luck. In the anime, he not only gets a name, Tetsu Tasaki, but he also gets a nickname, Tetsu the Hedgehog, presumably because of his extremely spiky hair.
Miho is obviously not part of the discussion about Burger World in the manga since she’s only in the manga for one chapter (and this isn’t it). Honda also wasn’t there in the manga. He takes the time out to remind Jonouchi and Yugi that stopping anywhere on your way home from school is against the rules.
I find it kinda stupid that Miho believes Jonouchi when he theorizes that Anzu became a prostitute for old men for extra cash, especially to the point where she starts stalking Anzu to ‘save’ her.
The anime adds in a failed burglary attempt from Tetsu as well as him getting pissed while eating at a ramen shop. The news report is claiming he’s the prime suspect in a string of bank robberies when he didn’t steal anything.
I can’t help but get a fanfiction vibe off of Miho. Her personality’s not perfect or bland enough to be a Mary Sue, and she certainly doesn’t have the plot impact for that either, unless you have a thing for Honda or Jonouchi, so she comes off as a very inserted character when you read the manga alongside the anime. She’s always just kinda there or doing something other characters are doing. Hopefully that’ll change as the show goes on, but that would just mean we’d deviate more from the manga.
Also, they assume Miho is now Anzu’s fellow prostitute.
Do I have a dirty mind if I laughed when Jonouchi pointed out that Anzu bought a bentou meant for stamina….when they’re theorizing that she’s a prostitute now?
For the record, he was pointing out that they’re pricey and delicious.
And so Honda’s also so stupid as to believe that, just because they had a nice lunch, Miho’s also a prostitute that needs ‘saving.’ *sigh*
They insert another botched robbery from Tetsu. This time he did steal something – Marie Antoinette’s jeweled necklace, but he later hears over the car radio that it was fake. However, thirty jewels did go missing from the same store that weren’t fake. Despite not getting the real jewels, Tetsu gets suspected yet again.
Now Honda’s leaving with the girls and acting suspicious, leading Jonouchi to think he’s probably dating some old rich lady.
They finally decide to follow all of them to get to the Burger World plot. As you guessed, since Honda and Miho weren’t part of anything in chapter four, them getting hired at Burger World is anime-exclusive.
The detective investigating Tetsu’s escape is not present in the manga. Also, this guy could easily pass as Honda’s dad.
Tetsu’s anime design doesn’t include his facial tattoos. From all I’ve seen, I assume he also doesn’t retain his brief personality trait of believing in luck or superstition either. It is very possible that Tetsu isn’t meant to be the guy from the manga given these changes and that his name is never given in the manga, but they kept his face and hair basically the same, so I’m left to assume he is.
In the manga, Tetsu just enters Burger World and holds up the joint, which is kinda dumb for an escaped prisoner, if you ask me. Why don’t you just plaster a giant sign on your face that says ‘ARREST ME!’?…..Oh wait, he kinda already did that with the easily recognizable facial tats.
I think for the sake of extending the run time, they decided to make Tetsu a master of disguise instead, so it’s a mystery trying to figure out who in the restaurant might be him.
The manager (Shown to the left of the detective depicted above) is not in the manga, but I’m sure he’s just an innocent extra. Please ignore his character design, which looks like he just shivved a guy in the alleyway before his shift. He has a sad/worried expression so he’s obviously a good guy.
I really don’t think any detective worth his salt would put civilians in danger, especially teenagers, by making them look for the ARMED ESCAPED CONVICT WHO WAS ON DEATH ROW. And, in the end, he just flashes his badge and asks everyone to show him their legs (Tetsu’s leg was injured upon escaping) anyway, so this was all pointless.
They don’t obey him, but he made the request AFTER the kids looked for themselves by pretending they were retrieving toys.
To extend this even more, they include the fact that the cops lost another escaped prisoner not too long ago and that they never found him – Jirou the Yellow Spider. And, oh my god, guys, he was the creepy as shit restaurant manager. Wow. Color me surprised.
He was the one robbing the places before Tetsu could, based on his in-depth knowledge of Tetsu and being employed at Burger World. He knew what places he was going to rob, but Tetsu had a habit of getting a burger before going out to do the deed, which gave Jirou the opportunity to rob the places before him. Lots of conveniences needed to fall into place for that to work.
Jirou, by the way, becomes the main baddie of the episode, not Tetsu as it was in the manga. I guess I’m okay with this alteration.
Tetsu originally explains that he’s going to blindfold Anzu instead of mute her with the cloth because people are more scared when they’re blindfolded, not muted. That’s why they blindfold convicts when they’re getting executed, not mute them. (That’s not really the reason. Depending on the method of execution, it’s either to prevent any innocent people watching from seeing the executed’s eyes pop out, or to help the executioner and any viewing parties to further detach from the event because the prisoner might look them in the eye.) He takes that opportunity to tell Anzu that he was on death row, which indicates that he almost certainly murdered someone in the past. In the anime, the only line that’s kept is about blindfolding being frightening, and they don’t even keep the comparison with muting there.
By the way, the colors in this episode are the worst I’ve ever seen in the entire series…or anime…or life. I don’t know how anyone greenlit this or slept at night knowing there wasn’t a warning on screen about possibly going blind. Yu-Gi-Oh Season Zero doesn’t exactly have an appealing color palette to begin with, but my god this is horrendous.
Look at this – orange on darker orange striped walls, orange booths, lime green shirts, forest green pants/skirts, red and yellow ties, salmon colored hair – and then there’s Tetsu and his outfit.
Wine colored jacket with a blue and white striped shirt, apple green pants, and his bright yellow on dark swamp green hair. And look, the floor is purple. Fucking PURPLE. It’s like they beat this episode to death with a washed out rainbow.
Just so we’re clear on the situation right now – Jirou escaped prison several months before Tetsu did, altered his face to be unrecognizable as Jirou but still very clearly criminal-y, decided to live an unassuming life for a while then suddenly reverted back to crime once he knew he could pin the robberies on the recently escaped Tetsu.
Here’s what I don’t get, though. There was a report of Tetsu getting hit on the leg by a prison guard, but that didn’t happen to Tetsu, it happened to Jirou. However, this was several months ago, presumably. Why has the bruise not faded yet? And why would Jirou go to the trouble of surgically altering his face to cover his identity but not remove the giant spider tattoo from his back?
Shadow Game
Outside of the opponent being Jirou not Tetsu, the game is exactly the same barring the very end. They each agree to only use one finger of their choosing during the entire game. Whoever uses a finger that is not the declared one, loses.
Jirou/Tetsu chooses his right index finger, the one on the trigger of the gun. Yami chooses his right thumb. Upon the game’s start, Jirou/Tetsu instantly decides he’s going to pull the trigger. However, Yami uses his thumb to ignite a lighter. Jirou/Tetsu’s cigarette has yet to be lit, so he lets Yami’s last gesture be lighting it for him.
He lights the cigarette then drops the still-lit lighter on Jirou/Tetsu’s left hand, which happens to be pouring Russian senowolf vodka, which is 90% alcohol. I initially thought this had to be made up because 90% alcohol is a ridiculous amount, but after some research, there are alcoholic beverages that go even higher, up to 192 proof, which is 96% alcohol. Wow.
Jirou can’t move his hand without the lighter falling, nor can he shoot the gun without the recoil causing the same result. He’s now pouring so much alcohol that it’s getting all over him, meaning he’ll quickly go up in flames if the lighter is dropped.
Here’s where the two versions shift. In the manga, Yami gets Anzu away from the danger and Tetsu remains still. However, he opens his mouth long enough to say ‘But….I’m lucky….’ which causes the cigarette to fall out of his mouth, igniting the flames. It’s confirmed that Tetsu burns to death in the inferno. (Also, Jonouchi is bummed he didn’t get to see the guy self-immolate………)
In the anime, Yami gets Anzu away from the danger, but Jirou realizes he can just put down the gun and grab the lighter, which is…..cheating, yes, but Yami kinda cheated first as he had to move some of his other fingers to both drop the lighter and get Anzu away (It should be noted that, technically, Yami cheated in the manga too, he even makes a finger-gun hand gesture when he was still playing – and there it’s kinda worse because Tetsu got a penalty game when he should have won. He deserved it, of course, but it wasn’t really fair.)
Jirou decides to shoot Yami for what he did, but Yami declares a punishment game since Jirou cheated. He’s trapped in an illusion of burning forever instead of it actually happening. It can be argued that this is actually worse because at least Tetsu’s pain ended in the manga.
There’s an anime-exclusive ending with Anzu quitting her job in order to spend time with Yugi, and Miho and Honda getting jobs at the new beef noodle joint because Miho wants to buy clothes and Honda wants to get her out of her clothes.
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Overall, I really like this manga chapter because of how badass and vicious the shadow game is (even if Yami cheated), but I can’t deny that the anime pulled off the overall story much better.
The concept of having two criminals on the loose with one framing the other for their crimes while simultaneously screwing the other out of loot is really interesting. I think it’s a bit unfair that the actual culprit makes his first appearance 2/3 of the way into the episode, but that’s not a dealbreaker. Also, even though Tetsu was a thief and probably an ass, I think we spent too much time with him in the anime for me to want to see him burn to death, so shifting to the other guy is fine with me.
In the manga, Tetsu escapes prison, then the next time we see him he’s holding up Burger World. He murdered a guard while escaping, and we know he was on death row, so he was likely a murderer to start with. That’s why no one’s really shedding any tears for the guy once he dies (though it is insanely odd that Yugi, Jonouchi and Anzu just….don’t react. Or, if they do, react poorly. Yugi doesn’t acknowledge it and says he’s hungry, Anzu thinks about sexy Yami, and Jonouchi, as I mentioned, was just disappointed he didn’t get to watch a guy burn to death….)
With Jirou, it’s a bit odd because we only know him as a thief to this point. Guards did fall in the escape, but it’s unclear if they died, and if they did that would be Tetsu’s doing not Jirou’s. He does attempt to kill Yami at least, but I still think the perpetual hell of constantly being trapped in an illusion of being set ablaze is a bit harsh for the guy who actually did fewer terrible things than his manga counterpart who, in my opinion, got off a tad lighter.
Hehe…lighter.
The only part of the anime that I think gives it marks in the negative category is the added stuff with Miho and Honda. I already don’t care for Miho, and Honda following her like a puppy is just pathetic. The fact that so much of the runtime is dedicated to them stalking Anzu and later Miho and going through the same motions three times was trying my patience. They do a similar thing at the very end, and that almost made me want to give this one to the manga, but I’m choosing to be above that.
Winner: Anime
Final Notes: If you’ll recall, this story was briefly touched upon in the 2000 version of the anime. In a flashback as the group was climbing the stairs to get to Pegasus’ castle, Yugi and Anzu reminisce. She remembers Jonouchi and Yugi randomly coming to Burger World and discovering she worked there. She angrily dumped ketchup all over their meal, as she does here (Though, in the manga and Season Zero she writes ‘I won’t forgive you if you blab’ in the ketchup. And that’s pretty impressive, to be honest) However, there’s no escaped prisoner plot or anything like that.
In the 2000 anime, she later gets a card in her locker telling her to meet someone in the gym after school. If she doesn’t, the person will tell her secrets. She instantly believes it’s Jonouchi or Yugi because they’re the only ones who know her secret.
She goes to confront them but finds a creeper lying in the shadows instead. He attacks her and is about to film a dirty video and/or rape her, but Yugi, somehow knowing about the situation, intervenes. Yugi gets knocked out, as does Anzu, and Yami comes out to play. He challenges the creep to a Shadow game, which is a simple ‘draw to see who gets the better card’ deal. Yami wins and mind crushes the creep, saving Anzu.
It’s a far cry from the badassery of the original story. I get that it was probably too dark for this version, but Yami practically needed sick guitar licks during this Shadow Game. The 2000’s version is pure luck or heart of the cards schmaltz.
Also, as an added bonus, the colors on the uniforms in the 2000 version didn’t make my corneas commit seppuku.
Next time, we’ll catch up with some stuff in the manga that isn’t covered in the anime up to chapters 9 and 10 (Which is covered in episode 3.)
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The Anime Madhouse 