Oh my god, I totally misread Flame, he acts like a haughty know it all, but in reality, he is not! He is an actual dork! Soulburner gives me the impression he is more a down-to-earth. He is a lot more expressive, playful, and even clumsy to some extent, and definitely comes across as a friendly guy (unless you are his enemy). And there you have it, we have an absolutely adorable combination! Exactly the type of friend Yuusaku needs!
While Yuusaku and Ai’s dynamics has evolved from savage comments into a friendly banter, Soulburner and Flame’s interactions are a lot more playful. They had plentiful of humorous exchanges, such as Flame being an absolute nerd (in glorious fashion) by correcting Soulburner’s point that he has in fact only explained his name a total of thirty-seven times now, or when he thought they were going to lose, but then acts as if he never said such a thing and Soulburner calling him out on it, or when Soulburner asked Flame to be more sympathetic and tries to act it out. Man I am going to love these two.
And this is great, because that makes me feel so much better about both Soulburner and Flame becoming friends with our favourite duo. I would also like to think we don’t have to worry too much about them betraying them, especially when their purpose of hunting down the enemy who destroyed Ignis’ home. Better yet, I am so excited for how the two very different pairs are going to interact with each other.
Soulburner’s Skill is: Burning Draw, for every 1000 LP that he gives up, he can draw a card. This followed up with revealing a new summoning technique: Reincarnation Link Summon! which had everyone shook. He described it as Link Summoning’s “new potential”, so I guess we will be seeing how other characters will adapt to implement it into their decks as well. The only thing I am a bit worried about though is a potential overkill with various “add-ons” to Link Summonings. Ritual Link Summon is cool, because it’s been freaking forever since we last seen it be used in the series, but it feels like they just put their foot in the door to to potentially using some of the other more commonly used summoning formulas, and honestly that makes me a bit nervous. On the other-hand, it could be executed really well, presenting a lot more opportunities to create more unique and diverse strategies than the basic “Link Summon”.
But what I found to be most intriguing is how Burning Draw is actually physically hard on him, as if it takes a lot of energy to use it. This would be a similar side-effect as to how Yuusaku has to cast himself into a Datastorm, often dangerous, in order to summon a random new monster.
It was quite funny to see him catch up to Playmaker and having Haru set off the security due to illegal access in restricted area, he was like, “NOPE, I’m outta here!” but not without briefly introducing himself as Soulburner to Yuusaku. But poor guy, in the end, despite Soulburner’s help, he was unable to take back Jin’s consciousness or be able to get any useful information out of his new enemy.
His opponents, Bit and Boot merging into BitBoot was strange to say the least. Besides the practical purpose of sparing one less body to animate, it felt as though merging was solely to use that weird “Cheat” of enabling them to use Skill two times. Not to mention, it looks like these two were nothing more than fodders since they have been both fired by Haru (who is definitely trouble, it’s written all over his face). So I have my doubts we will ever see them again after this.
However there was one important factor in this duel: And that is the card, Judgment Arrows. It not only appears to be an “emblem” of the organization they are associate with, but we also learned that the ones who destroyed the Ignis’ World also used that card and cyberse monsters as well. So whoever they are, we now know they are the ones who were responsible for the invasion.
And despite Haru having illegally accessed the Restricted Area to escape, my suspicions of this group being tied to SOL Technologies remains. The reason for that is pretty simple: Had they been able to simply waltz in, that would have been a dead giveaway that they have ties to SOL Technologies. And if we learned anything about the corporation, the higher ups prefer to be remain anonymous to those who serves them. And guess what, the preview shows us Bohman and his “self-proclaimed” brother, talking to a big yellow light where they can only make out the silhouette of a man behind it. It will be interesting to see if the man’s voice rings any bells.
Next week the two duos will finally meet each other! It looks like it will be Soulburner who seeks out Yuusaku, tracking him down on campus with the help of Flame who just pops out, as if screaming “YOu’RE ONE OF US!” Yuusaku is certainly apprehensive about the whole thing, so I look forward to seeing how the two will interact with one another, and (hopefully) find out how long Flame and Soulburner have been together. Also look forward to Ai and Robopoppi reunion! 😀 Now they can spend time together without having to sneak out of the so-called “prison” Yuusaku once kept him in.
Oh my gosh. This was such a great episode with Soulburner putting on a great show by dueling. Soulburner definitely seems quite cool, maybe even more than Playmaker. He’s the opposite of Playmaker being quite friendly like you said to anyone who’s not an enemy. He seems to really want to be friends with Yusaku/Playmaker, or at least join forces to take on the new threat for season 2. Soulburner’s liveliness and passion when dueling made him really charming, not to mention that somewhat cocky smirk of his too. I wouldn’t seriously be surprised if there were any fangirls in Link VRAINS crushing on Soulburner. He’s quite a fine-looking guy with that amazing design of his.
I was laughing this morning with the funny dialogue between Soulburner and Flame. Their relationship is rather reminiscent of Yusaku and Ai’s relationship at the beginning, only to a lesser extent with the hostility and more comedic. One of the lines that really made me laugh was when Soulburner asked Flame not to be so harsh and have more sympathy, only to change his mind when Flame became dramatic. Soulburner doesn’t tell Flame to shut up as much as Playmaker initially did to Ai. Flame was basically comedy gold today for me. When I thought Flame was gonna be the total opposite of Ai and not talk as much, I was totally wrong too. He can be just as cocky and funny as Ai. Now I understand what the voice actor of Flame meant when Flame was the most hot-blooded of all the Ignis. I guess being self-centered and cocky runs in the Ignis family. I wonder what the other Ignis are going to be like once they’re introduced along with maybe their human partners from the Lost Incident. One of the children from the Lost Incident has to be a girl as there’s a blue female Ignis that’s associated with water.
I can’t wait to see Yusaku and Takeru interact at school. I can imagine Takeru is gonna be the opposite of his Soulburner personality being polite, mild-mannered, not as lively, but still quite cheerful and happy. It’s gonna be interesting as Ai’s not gonna be there most likely due to Yusaku leaving his duel disk at home. I mean, I can understand why. Now that Linkuriboh’s been adopted into the family, Yusaku can’t have Ai and Linkuriboh popping out at any time as it won’t be easy to hide a Duel Monster spirit if anyone sees them at school. Good thing Ai doesn’t mind being left at home anymore now that Roboppy’s smarter and he also has Linkuriboh as new company. Oh boy, I also can’t wait to see Ai and Roboppy reunite after 3 months of being and the rivalry between Roboppy and Linkuriboh spark. Plus Ai’s gonna see the rivalry and I wouldn’t be surprised if Ai encourages them to fight over him and whoever gets his affections. In the preview, Roboppy definitely didn’t seem too happy that Ai brought Linkuriboh with him as a unexpected new roommate.
He is a damn fine looking guy <3 Fufu~
//Yusaku can’t have Ai and Linkuriboh popping out at any time//
AHAHAHAHA I CAN SEE IT NOW! LINKURIBOH RUNNING RAMPANT AROUND THE SCHOOL AND HE HAS TO CHASE THEM DOWN!!!
Soulburner and Flame are amazing new duo! And yeah, exactly what Yusaku needs as a friend. I wonder, if Soulburner-Flame are these likeable, will the remaining two Lost Incident victims and Ignis be the same? I’m looking forward to know them. But for now, I wish to know more about Takeru and Flame. In the next episode, I have no doubt that Flame will reveal about the destruction of Cyberse World that Ai doesn’t know yet. Speaking about Linkuriboh running rampant around the school, I know this is just you imagining, but it makes me wondering, can Ai, Flame, and Linkuriboh really be touched outside the network? I mean, aren’t they simply data without any physical body if out in the real world?
By the way, do you still think of Ai as the ‘spawn of devil’ that you referred to him before during the first season?
I do wonder about that too, but seeing how both Ai and Linkuriboh can roam around the house, even if they aren’t touchable, they would be visible, and that would be enough to cause a ruckus, ahahah!
//By the way, do you still think of Ai as the ‘spawn of devil’ that you referred to him before during the first season?//
Nahhh, definitely not anymore. He has come a long way, and now I feel the other side of him we had seen he was probably just being mischievous and flaunting his “ambitions” to impress robopoppi (though he and Poppi together were clever enough to modify Yuusaku’s duel-disk to turn it into a drone).
Seeing people being amazed by such a dull fest, I had to give a brutal assessment on why this episode was just mediocre:
Despite his namesake, Soulburner’s debut duel was incredibly weak and unconvincing, even worse than Playmaker’s debut duel. At least with Playmaker, he could only bring out 2-3 Cyberse monsters before Storm Accessing into Decode Talker because Cracking Dragon was an imposing presence, but with all the swarming & re-bouncing effects Salamangreat monsters could only establish such a weak board (typical for Cyberses) and the so-called “Reincarnation Link Summon” was just a term for “Xyz Change” exclusive to Links which wasn’t something refreshing considering many Xyz Monsters have the ability to Xyz Changing into more powerful forms on their own while Salamangreat Heatlio required a Field Spell to do so which was already an extra waste of space given how Cyberse decks consume your resources very fast and without benefits. I also call bullshit on his Burning Draw Skill which means you can swoop up as many LPs as possible then burn them down to 100LP and draw as many cards for every 1000LP paid which was light years worse than the infamous (& forever banned) Pot of Greed. (This is gonna be a BAD matchup against Trickstars though.) And here come another issue: As much as Soulburner’s voice range was crazy & high (because Kaji Yūki is among the best male VAs) it also made me worried about the already cash-strapped situation of the studios. Given how they’re so many recaps interrupting the flow of the show in the first arc due to countless budget & staff shortages, hiring such a famous but expansive VA is going to strain the backroom staff even more; they better NOT give us a damn recap every 5/6 episodes.
However, I found it hilarious when Bit & Boot merged together and even cheated their way into using their Skill twice, it just reminded me of Kamen Rider Double turning into HEAT!METAL! when they fused, and the manner where they’re fired by Haru was also amusing.
P.S. Should’ve mentioned this earlier, but Homura Takeru looks like a lovechild of Amon Garam (GX) & Akaba Reiji (Arc V).
I can definitely see the Reiji in there. Maybe it’s a Yuya and Reiji love child since he has bits of red hair? XD Reiji was really popular (despite never really duelling that much).
and O.O I didn’t realise Soulburner was voiced by an expensive VA… Damn. I sincerely hope the producers have given them a bigger budget than last time we definitely DO NOT need the constant recaps every 8 episodes. Last Yugioh recap that was half decent was when Yuya got to the fusion dimension. I mean it wasnt great but they tried to integrate Yuya exploring to the recaps which somewhat succeeded but also fell flat in some places.
I can agree with your sentiment. Compared to the previous episode this one felt like it dragged a bit. I think its because it was framed in such a way that we were meant to care about Soulburner. The thing is… had they not advertised him in the openings or in the posters and that we would have NO CLUE who he is and thus why should we care? We have no connection to him in this duel other than he is helping Playmaker and he is one of the Ignis children. We have no insight to his personality before this. so the tension is really not there since we know he is going to win this is just our getting shown his duelling style.
I really think this series needs a duel in the real world and not in Link Vrains. Hell even just a fun episode where they do that.
Oh maybe Takeru will play in the real world with his new BF Yusaku!? xx