Episode 6: The Beautiful Harpie Lady

Pegasus sits at his elegant dining table, checking his ornate pocket watch. The duels have begun, he says to himself, and only the strong will survive. Those with insufficient skill will fall by the wayside....

Japanese Pegasus, however, has his mind only on Yugi. "Will you come to the Castle?" he wonders.

Cut to our gang, with Joey in the lead. "Bring 'em on," he says. "I'm going to challenge the next player we see." Yugi, Tristan and Téa are doubtful—there are tournament-level players here, and Joey'd better be careful. But Joey runs ahead to stand on a cliff overlooking the ocean, proclaiming himself the next Duel Monsters Champion!

Okay, Japanese Jounouchi is nowhere near as boastful as US Joey. "It's my turn now," he says. "I need to find someone to challenge." And when he runs to the cliff, he simply tells everyone to come and look, it's so beautiful here. Everyone's exasperated with him, not because he's overconfident, but because he's taking time out to enjoy the view.

Then he turns reflective: he really needs to be champion, for his sister's sake....

We see Baby Joey and Serenity in flashback, getting off the bus to go to the beach. The happy kids play in the surf and build sand castles. Little Joey tells Serenity he'll bring her back to see the ocean again some day—even if their parents do get divorced. Promise? she asks. And he pinky-swears he will.

Present-day Joey renews his promise to his sister—he'll win the tournament and pay for her eye operation, and show her the ocean again.

The gang look out over the island, and see Duel Monsters arenas everywhere. Yugi encourages Joey to look around and choose an opponent on his own level. Joey considers what kind of field would be best for his cards, and concludes that the meadow area where they are is ideal. (In the Japanese, Yugi doesn't give advice about choosing a weaker opponent—it's only Honda and Anzu who think Jounouchi had better start out slowly. Yugi's advice is actually for Jounouchi to choose his playing field carefully.)

Then they hear a familiar voice—it's Mai Valentine, taunting the player she's just beaten, and laughing as he runs away in tears. She greets the gang, sees Yugi's three Star Chips, and says she's ready for another duel. But the player she challenges is—Joey! She says he's only in the tournament because Yugi gave him one of his Star Chips, and her motto is to take out the weakest player first! (Japanese Mai isn't quite so insulting to Jounouchi, but she does say that she wants to increase her Star Chips by taking on a weaker opponent before dueling Yugi.)

Téa thinks Yugi ought to take on Mai in Joey's place, but Yugi says it's up to Joey whether to accept the challenge. (Japanese Yugi tells Jounouchi he has to accept the challenge.) And Joey's not backing down.

Joey and Mai take their places in the dueling arena, each betting one Star Chip. Joey thinks the meadow will be to his advantage, but then he sees the arena's field—turns out it's 40% mountain, 40% forest, and only 20% meadow. Joey freaks a bit, but Yugi reassures him that he'll still get the field power bonus on the part of the field that's meadow.

Before the duel begins, Joey asks Mai a question: why does she duel? For the perks, she says, all the luxuries the prize money can buy. Joey tells her she's selfish, dueling for things, while he's dueling for the people he loves.

He opens with Masaki, the Legendary Swordsman, then Mai goes into her psychic act, keeping her hand cards face down and choosing Harpie Lady (in the early episodes, she's called "Harpie's Lady") (and the subtitles call her "Happy Lady") without turning it over. Joey attacks, despite the fact that his monster's attack is lower. Yugi warns Joey that land monsters are at a disadvantage against flying monsters, one of the nebulous rules of the early episodes. In the Japanese ep, it's explained a little more clearly: Joey's monster loses its field power bonus attacking Harpie Lady on her own turf, and he loses 590 Life Points. (Although he would have lost the battle anyway, since Masaki's attack was lower than Harpie Lady's even with the power boost.) Yugi exhorts Joey to think before he moves, but Joey's rattled when Mai again plays a card face-down without looking at it.

Joey plays another land monster and attacks again, losing another 390 points. Mai sets another card, telling Joey it's an equipment card, and Joey sets a monster face-down in defense.

Mai plays her equipment card, Cyber Shield. The Japanese Cyber Shield has a spiked breastplate (and so does the equipped Harpie Lady), but the spikes were digitized out of the US version. Heh.

Cyber Shield powers up Harpie Lady to 2190 attack points, and Mai destroys Joey's defense monster, warning him that his next card won't help him either. In the Japanese, she taunts him, per the subtitles, with "You are only my scarificer." Um, okay.

He's completely flustered now, sure that she has ESP and can read his cards as well as her own. Yugi and Téa call out encouragement from the sidelines. Mai tells them to stay out of it, saying that friendship doesn't win duels.

In the Japanese, Mai says if you only play around with friends, you'll never be a True Duelist. I believe this is the first time we hear the phrase "Shin no Duelist" (True Duelist), something that will become a running theme throughout the Japanese version of the series.

Then Yugi's puzzle activates and the spirit of the Millennium Puzzle comes out to encourage Joey, telling him that Mai's deck is weak because she depends on only one monster, powering it up with magic cards.

Mai reminds Joey that if he wants to win the tournament, he'll eventually have to face Yugi in a duel, and what will happen to their friendship then? Uh oh, Joey hadn't thought about that. He remembers the conversation with Yugi on the roof, before they left for Duelist Kingdom, when he told Yugi that they're a team, and they'd rescue Yugi's grandfather together. But his sister's counting on him! What should he do? He closes his eyes, trying to shut out his doubts and concentrate on how to win against Mai.

In the Japanese, this exchange goes differently. Yami Yugi has only one thing to say to Jounouch: "Something you can see, but you can't see." Jounouchi doesn't understand what Yugi's trying to tell him, and Mai laughs at the riddle. When Jounouchi remembers the conversation on the roof, he remembers telling Yugi that "something they can see, but can't see" is their friendship. Still, he doesn't understand how it applies to his duel with Mai. He berates himself, tearing up and telling himself he's useless and he'll lose the duel. And when he closes his eyes, he's thinking about his sister, wondering if she'll go blind.

Then he notices a smell—it's perfume, coming from Mai's cards! And he figures out her trick—she's sprayed her cards with different perfumes, so she can tell which card is which without looking. (Something you can see, but can't see—you can see the cards, but not the smell.)

Now it's Mai's turn to be rattled—Joey's seen through her psychic act. Confidence restored, Joey plays Baby Dragon. But Mai plays Elegant Egotist, creating two more Harpie Ladys! Now she's got three times the attack power. The duplicate Harpie Ladys are also deprived of their spikes.

But she can't attack in the same turn she's used the magic card, and it's up to Joey.

Yugi again encourages Joey to think. Which card in his deck can defeat Harpie Lady? (This is where, in the Japanese ep, Yugi points out that Harpie Lady is Mai's only monster. And again reminds Jounouchi: something you can see, but can't see.) Then Joey remembers the card that Yugi gave him—the Time Wizard (which Yugi had in the Millennium Puzzle box—the puzzle being the thing you can see, but can't see). Yugi told him it would help him out of a tight spot. But he doesn't have it in his hand. He'll just have to trust in the cards....

And he draws the Time Wizard! Triumphantly, he plays it, and a thousand years pass, turning his Baby Dragon into the powerful Thousand Dragon. Mai sends her Harpie Ladys to attack, but they've been aged by the Time Wizard, and lost their strength. The Harpie Ladys are destroyed, and Mai's defeated. (Okay, I don't get this. Thousand Dragon has an attack of 2400, and the weakened Harpie Lady is down to 1300. Mai should lose 1100 points, which would bring her down to 900. But she loses all her life points in this one attack. Unless she loses 1100 points for each Harpie Lady on the field? In the real game you can only attack once with each monster, but... oh well. Anyway, Mai loses.)

Joey tells Mai if she's ever going to be a real champion, she has to learn to care about someone other than herself. Yugi thinks how proud he is of Joey for learning to battle with his head and his heart. And Joey flashes a "V" for victory, while a vision of his sister Serenity fills the sky over his head.