Yu Gi Oh Zexal Ep 15: What's it like to be a Duel Monster

Yuuma’s grandmother sends him and his friends on an errand outside of town. When they arrive to their destination they soon learn that the old man (who’s friends with Yuuma’s grandma) is the owner of the Duel Lodge. After being told that they have to stay the night, they end up having to clean up because of the mess. Yuuma fed up with cleaning goes to check out where the old man went into and enters a room with carvings of the Legendary Duel Monsters, (Black Magician, Black Magican Girl, Blue-Eyes-White Dragon, Red Eyes, Neos…etc…). The old man then tells him that they can in fact move, in a battle and so he and Yuuma duels. However Yuuma finds himself being put into Black Magician’s body to see what it’s like first hand to be a duel monster. The old man tells him that the reason he did that to show him that duel monsters are also experiencing fear, and that if he treat them like a companion they will answer back and support him. Inspired, Yuuma quickly becomes encouraged and motivated to stick around and learn more. However when a former student, Yamikawa shows up and defeats the old man to a duel – in order to prevent him from destroying the carvings and obtaining the SECRET DECK, Yuuma ends up accepting the challenge to a duel.

Impression:
This was actually rather a very interesting episode, not to mention gave Yuuma a bit of character development. The old man that Yuuma decided to become a discipline of (on the spot),  taught him during their duel that the duel monsters also have a sense of fear. Now that Yuuma had experienced what it’s like to be a duel monster first hand, he changed the way he duels by treating his duel monsters as his comrades and put the priority of protecting them over himself.
I kind of liked how they brought back the original duel monsters for the episode despite they weren’t the actual thing. At first I wasn’t quite sure what they were until they mentioned it was wooden carvings. On to of that, the old man also carved out a bunch of cards in order to make a deck for each of them. O___o;|||
We also learn that one of wooden duel monsters  has a large scar that was recieved from the old man’s previous discipline Yamikawa, who’s an ass who had decided that because he couldn’t win he’d destroy shit. Now that the dick guy is back, he wants to destroy everything that’s left until the old man hands over the SECRET DECK, that is until Yuuma jumps in to stop him and the two ends up dueling.
Now here’s the big thing. We finally got a little more information behind why Yuuma’s sister is trying to prevent him from dueling. But we got the bare minimum of it considering the most important part was cut off when the grandmother interupted while making the point that Yuuma at some point has to ‘find the purpose of death in a duel’ which raises alot of questions. Are his parents dead? If so, is he connected to this incident? What makes it dangerous for Yuuma to duel any more than he already has? These questions are very intriguing, and they are exactly what I’ve been waiting for.
Another major thing that I’m wondering (in fact for a while now): What is the time period of this? Is this before 5Ds era? Is it after? Someone mentioned in the forums I hang around at that if it were after 5Ds and Yusei failed to do what he wanted to do (mind you I’m putting it this way to prevent major spoilers if you haven’t watch it yet), that would be a HUGE twist in development (and I’d probably cry too). Then again this may be an entire different location from Neo Domino City much like GX where the school was on some random island or whatever. Anyhow it was kind of strange to see no 5Ds duel monsters among the ‘legendary’ wooden statues… >_>; I mean come on, Neos was there!!!
I’m definitely looking forward to the next episode. Lets see both Astral and Yuuma (well I guess it’s mostly Astral since Yuuma wasn’t sulking about the entire episode) get back on their feet and WIN! 8D