Dr Faker’s secret!
Creative Staff
Story: Shin Yoshida
Art: Naohito Miyoshi
Translation/English Adaptation: Taylor Engel and Ian Reid, HC Language Solutions
What They Say
Kaito and Shark find themselves in an epic duel with Shadow. The fallout from this battle leads to some surprising revelations about the Numbers War. Luna describes Dr. Faker’s plans and the connection with Kaito’s brother, Haruto. They also learn that Yuma’s friend Astral originally came to destroy the world, and that Dr. Faker isn’t actually dead! They’ll have to take their battle straight to Mr. Heartland to get to the bottom of his evil schemes!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Following up on last volume, Yuma ends up taking the bait and takes on Shadow in a duel wherein he gives his life points to Kaito and Shark so they can hang on. Of course this puts our hero at a huge disadvantage as he both starts with a handicap and has an effective time limit. To make matters worse, Shadow turns out to be even more underhanded when he pulls out a Number designed to stall. Fortunately, though, Yuma is able to use the power of friendship to pull out a new version of Utopia at the last possible minute and win the match.
Next up, we come to the core of the volume with a duel between Heartland and Yagumo. With his Land Power field card and Heart monsters, the normally somewhat plain Heartland is actually able to pull out some gaudy flash. However, Yagumo manages to turn the duel into a literal court trial, turning the tables and theming things quite nicely. He reveals that Haruto had his soul sucked out, and Faker died long ago looking for a cure via the Astral World, both things that Heartland took advantage of. With his overwhelming power, Yagumo is then able to triumph in the duel.
Finally, Yagumo manages to strong-arm Kaito into working with him via an underhanded trick, and Yuma gets roped into a big climactic duel at Heartland. Just what is Yagumo planning with this massive and showy event?
In Summary
With some halfway decent revelations and a rather nice central duel, this volume manages to make for at least a solid enough entry into the series. The duel between Yagumo and Heartland is the core of this volume, and it actually manages to mix in some nice reveals and themes rather smoothly, all while playing things surprisingly straight. The other two duels are unfortunately quite gimmicky and weighed down by some rather lame cheating that throws things off quite a bit. At the very least, though, this volume isn’t a total waste. Hopefully as things continue to heat up, we’ll get more duels like the main one here, rather than the junk that appears at the beginning and end. For now though, this should help keep Yugioh fans looking for some decent manga at least somewhat satisfied.
Content Grade: B-
Art Grade: B
Packaging Grade: B+
Text/Translation Grade: B+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Viz Media
Release Date: February 3rd, 2015
MSRP: $9.99
