#greiger

CANON SUMMARY

We first meet Crow in episode 30, four episodes into the DS arc. His introductory fight is with sector security where he's stealing back some cards for the kids of Satellite. This battle establishes two core elements of Crow's character: (1) his plucky antagonism toward the local authorities and (2) his devotion to the kids in his care. Fundamentally, Crow is childlike, pure-hearted, and loyal.

In the next episode, Crow meets up with Yuusei and they fight sector security again. One of the most important conversations vis-à-vis Crow happens afterward, that being the Daedalus Bridge story. As a recap, the story focuses around an unnamed man who tried to build a bridge between Satellite and Neo Domino City. Ultimately, he is unable to complete the bridge, but using the piece of the bridge that was built, the man "flies" from the bridge to Neo Domino using a D-Wheel. It's highlighted that this story is why Crow has added wings to his bike, and befitting Crow's boyish nature, he asserts that the Daedalus Bridge story lives on in him and anyone else who believes in it.

Afterward, Crow is present for Yuusei's duel with Kiryuu | Kalin and takes him to Martha when he wipes out. For the most part, Crow disappears from the plot for a while, only showing up to duel Yeager | Lazar in a low-stakes match. An Earthbound Immortal is summoned nearby, and Crow barely makes it out alive by hiding in a fridge.

Crow learns the kids he's been taking care of were absorbed by the Earthbound Immortals, so he goes to brawl with the first dark signer he can find, which happens to be Bommer after a few episodes of absence.

Bommer, meanwhile, first appeared midway through season 1. His main motivation is his younger siblings and the children of his village, not unlike Crow. Bommer will go to any lengths to make a better life for them, which leads him to work for Godwin in the Fortune Cup arc. During his and Yuusei's duel, Bommer learns that Godwin was the reason his village was destroyed and attempts (unsuccessfully) to kill him. He's summarily arrested, freed, and recruited by the dark signers in season 2.

At this point, we get the same song and dance for Bommer that we got in the previous arc. Bommer wants revenge on Godwin | Goodwin and agrees to become a dark signer to accomplish this. During the duel with Crow, it's revealed that—no, Godwin didn't destroy Bommer's village—it was the dark signers and their Earthbound Immortals all along. So Bommer's been swindled...again.

In the end, Bommer realizes that the spirits of his family are in his Earthbound Immortal, and he's about to make nice with Crow and Yuusei without finishing the duel. Before he can, he gets taken over by dark signer fate magic and is forced to complete the match. Crow wins. Bommer's family is freed. After the duel, Crow is almost killed by a piece of falling rubble until Bommer knocks him out of the way and takes the blow for him, dying shortly after. Thus ends Crow's big dark signer duel.

CANON ANALYSIS

Duels serve multiple purposes in Yu-Gi-Oh. Usually, a character’s first duel is to introduce their deck. We get this with Crow in episode 30 when he escapes Sector Security and—to some degree—in his duel with Yuusei in episode 31 and Yeager in episode 43. (I would argue the Yeager duel was more because the writers needed to have a duel scheduled for those episodes, but anyway). Once we know a character, their duels tend to take on a more philosophical slant. These philosophical duels are critical for Yu-Gi-Oh, as they clarify the worldviews of characters and create emotional tension. Yu-Gi-Oh 5D's is no exception to this: The DS arc was dominated by these types of high-conflict, character-developing matchups. Hence, why I wanted to talk about Crow and his dark signer duel against Bommer.

Unlike with Kiryuu vs. Yuusei or Jack vs. Carly, Crow and Bommer are narrative mirrors—not narrative foils. Crow and Bommer’s connection as characters stems from their mutual devotion to the kids in their lives: Bommer has his siblings and adopted kids which—at the start of the duel—he believes were killed by Godwin; Crow has his own adopted family which were absorbed by the Earthbound Immortals before their duel. In fact, Crow’s loss is what galvanizes him to challenge Bommer in the first place.

In this way, Crow and Bommer are both motivated by avenging children, even at the cost of their own lives. While Crow draws the line at doing damage to others, Bommer doesn’t. That’s the key difference between their philosophies. In a twist of fate, Bommer became the same kind of monster as the ones who took the lives of his family. It’s a nice cautionary tale about hate and revenge. The sad thing is that this doesn’t really relate to Crow much at all beyond the baseline similarity of “avenging my kids.” Bommer doesn't reflect on how he's inflicted the same kind of violence against Crow's family that the dark signers inflicted on him. If anything, Bommer dies happy that his family is safe and is otherwise unaffected by his role in this cycle.

To be entirely fair to Crow here, Bommer wasn't a great opponent from a philosophical stand point: Bommer and Yuusei already had the same betrayal-realization plot point in their duel in season 1. Crow is assigned the unenviable task of doing that same routine with Bommer in season 2. It makes their duel underwhelming and doesn't give Crow's character much to play off of.

Another huge issue with this duel is that Yuusei is there most of the time. In fact, Bommer's last words before he dies are to Yuusei, not Crow. (Bommer asks Yuusei to take down the dark signers for his sake.) The only thing he really says to Crow is to thank him for freeing the souls of his family. Also, it is completely swept under the rug that Bommer willfully became a dark signer to get revenge against Godwin. Prior to Crow and Bommer's duel, Bommer is actively hunting Yuusei in order to duel (and kill!!) him in the name of vengeance against Godwin. The duel doesn't engage with this concept much at all: Bommer in season 1 is a noble person with good intentions, and those intentions are willfully corrupted. Instead, the narrative pulls back and gives Bommer an out. He was merely tricked again into working for bad people, so he is absolved of all his wrongdoings. This idea flies in the face of other messaging in the show, like Aki | Akiza's arc where Aki has to acknowledge her sadistic tendencies despite being manipulated by Divine | Sayer.

Furthermore, compare Bommer's death to the death scenes for Carly with Jack or Kiryuu with Yuusei. The emotional depth could not be more different. Carly changed Jack; Jack changed Carly. Kiryuu changed Yuusei; Yuusei, in the end, changed Kiryuu. Nothing about Crow or Bommer really changed beyond Bommer finally being at peace about his village. Importantly, I think comparing these three dark signer duels is fair here considering that Crow is groomed to be the tritagonist of the whole show behind Yuusei and Jack, respectively. Crow's solo duels must have more philosophical nuance to make Crow's position feel earned to the audience. I believe this is part of why his character fell flat for some viewers.

BRAINSTORMING

As a lot of people have covered before, there are tons of different ways to go about tweaking Crow's character to make him better mesh into season 2. My recommendations are going to be limited to the DS arc exclusively, and I'm going to try to work within the established framework as much as possible—no huge plot alterations or extra fights.

To reiterate, the Bommer match needs a philosophical leg to stand on like the Yuusei and Jack fights do. I'm going to make a case for the following line up, explain how I'd get there, and argue why this type of Crow vs. Bommer fight better fits within the greater moral discussion Yu-Gi-Oh 5D's tries to have in the first two seasons. (We get a similar point about pessimism in the WRPG arc, but stick with me here and you'll see where I'm headed, I promise.)

(Explanation: In canon, Yuusei learns in his duel with Kiryuu that he is too self-sacrificing and that his over-willingness to take the fall for his friends inhibits their growth. In her duel with Jack, Carly learns that her destiny is not dictated for her. She gains the agency to live the way she'd like to, rejecting Misty's perspective in favor of Jack's views on self-determination that he—ironically—learned from Carly.)

There are a few other things I want to try to resolve here. @inkblackorchid made a good point in her post on Crow that the fan reaction to the Daedalus Bridge story was mixed. To some people, it felt like the story was shoehorned in to give Crow a thin connection to Godwin, who is the ultimate baddie of the arc. Obviously, we weren't in the writer's room to know what actually happened there, but if that fan sentiment is common enough, then it means something in the writing felt inorganic.

Another point I'd like to resolve actually deals with Ushio | Trudge's character arc. In between the time we get introduced to Crow (ep 30) and his and Bommer's dark signer fight (ep 51-53), Ushio undergoes a transformation. Ushio meets a Satellite boy, Takuya | Taka, who wants to become a police officer, and after helping Martha around the house, Ushio begins to question his role in the subjugation of these people. Ushio's change isn't met with a counterweight, however. We see Ushio understand the pain he's caused others and how he wants to do better, and everyone else at Martha's is very open to this change. No one struggles with the long-term effects of Ushio's bigotry or acknowledges that work is necessary to rebuild trust. I suggest that Crow fill that role. He's clearly had his fair share of run-ins with the police and has done jail time on multiple occasions. Back-to-back clashes with Sector Security are how we get introduced to Crow, after all!

With all that said, let's get into some changes.

A HYPER-DETAILED REWRITE

Everything until the Daedalus Bridge story goes unchanged. Crow has his intro against Sector Security, and that antagonism is reiterated during Crow and Yuusei's duels the following episode. Most importantly, this needs to establish Crow's personality baseline. He's quippy, easy-going, and fiercely loyal.

When we get to the Daedalus Bridge legend, things change slightly. Crow still insists on telling the story to the kids, and it's still implied that it's something he tells often. When the kids go to bed and the adults continue discussing it, however, Crow admits that he tells the story less because he believes in the legend and more because it provides a rare sense of optimism for kids in Satellite. Essentially, it's a lie he tells them that he himself doesn't fully believe anymore. This nuance becomes important later.

We skip the Yeager duel for now (We'll come back to it), and everything else stays the same from then on until episode 45 when the signers all head to the Satellite together. This is where we see Ushio undergo his character arc while staying with Martha. In canon, Crow is MIA in this episode, but I propose that Crow actually be there for the majority of it instead. Certainly, Ushio would know Crow from his beat cop days. Have Ushio taunt him when they first meet at Martha's with a, "You finally got out, huh?" and have Crow reply snarkily. Just something to highlight the animosity there and maybe explain why Crow was never mentioned in season 1. We then get into Ushio's arc where Martha drafts him to do chores. In the midst of it, have a scene of Crow playing in the yard with the kids (just to remind us that he's normally a happy-go-lucky guy), and he notices Ushio cooking through the window. Take a second to really show Crow's face: He's perplexed by the change but is also deeply aware of the bad blood between him and Sector Security officers in general.

The biggest change in this episode would be the dinner scene. In canon, Ushio makes the dinner for everyone and Yuusei tells the kids that, if they defeat the dark signers, the bridge between Satellite and Neo Domino City will be completed. Ushio thinks to himself that the Satellite boy Takuya could really be a police officer then. The scene is cut by a lightning strike, and a dark signer is waiting in the backyard to duel Yuusei. End dinner.

I suggest that Crow feature heavily in this scene, even if he doesn't say much. Takuya is super excited that Ushio cooked for everyone. Ushio is bashful about it. Show a moment of hesitation with Crow where he debates if he's going to eat any of this food made by a Sector Security officer and ultimately partakes. The gesture's a silent olive branch that goes unnoticed by everyone else at the table, but we as the audience can tell Crow still has something bothering him.

Yuusei proceeds to talk about the bridge like he does in canon. In the dubbed version (not the subbed), Yuusei name drops Godwin as the one who would build the bridge. At this point, Crow stands up from his chair abruptly; we can tell he's upset. Crow immediately remembers that there are kids right next to him and tries to laugh and excuse himself, saying he needs air. Yuusei clocks that something's up and follows him outside. Getting on his bike, Crow insists more honestly that he's fine and that he's going to make himself useful by looking for the dark signers. Before Yuusei heads back inside, though, Crow suddenly and seriously asks Yuusei if he believes in the Daedalus Bridge legend. Pull the standard anime trope of Yuusei just saying Crow's name and Crow shaking his head, brushing off his own question with an uncomfortable laugh. He puts his helmet on and drives off, telling Yuusei to stay safe.

With Crow gone, the kids all go to bed and Ushio has a moment alone to help clean up dinner with Martha. He contemplates how Takuya could be an officer with the bridge completed, the dark signer appears, and the duel progresses in line with canon.

Given this set up with Crow, we can get a much more interesting duel between him and Yeager now. In canon, this match happens before episode 45 at Martha's, but I think we can afford one (1) episode without a duel in order to slide this matchup further back. We can still have the B.A.D. energy explosion and all of that during episode 44 if need be. Just move Crow and Yeager's battle up to episode 47 after the scenes at Martha's and Rudger | Roman's fight with Yuusei. (Also, drop the fridge scene. If Crow is going to be a signer, have him not be affected by the dark signer magic and show him visibly confused by that turn of events. We clarify in Yuusei's duel at Martha's that signers' souls are unaffected by Earthbound Immortals. Give some foreshadowing that Crow will be the next signer so that that event doesn't come out of left field later on.)

So, episode 47. Crow would initially be looking for the dark signers around B.A.D. but recognizes Yeager. He's the second-in-command of Sector Security. I'm sure the plot could allow Crow to know who Yeager is. Crow therefore challenges Yeager not under the pretense of believing Yeager is a dark signer but because he has questions about Godwin and his intentions with the bridge. Crow could make a lot of valid points here. If Godwin was capable of building the bridge, why didn't he do it years ago? What changes after the bridge is built? Do all the struggles of the people of Satellite cease to exist and it's all kumbaya afterward?

Moreover, the Daedalus Bridge legend Crow feeds the kids is based on someone from Satellite building the bridge through blood, sweat, and tears. Godwin building the bridge would be a handout from Neo Domino, which hasn't gone through the effort to change its discriminatory views of the Satellite. In fact, Godwin is the literal head of Sector Security, the very people who've worked to subjugate Crow and his friends. Those would be some very complicated, understandable, and messy feelings for Crow to reckon with. In this way, the Yeager-Crow match would provide a huge pay off to the audience since it's the first time we're allowed into Crow's head about any this.

Therefore, this setup establishes Crow as an natural counterweight to Ushio's arc:

Ultimately, the duel with Yeager ends in a similar way to canon with it being interrupted by a dark signer mark—it could even be the summoning of the spider mark during Yuusei and Rudger's match. Worried, Crow checks on his kids, finds they are missing, and heads out looking for a fight with the dark signers as usual.

Here is where I would add the only entirely new scene to this plot line. At this point in canon, all the signers are heading to different terminals to fight their own personalized dark signer. Yuusei is going to fight Kiryuu, and this is where he runs into Crow and Bommer, acting as a weird third wheel for their fight. Instead, don't involve Yuusei at all in the Crow vs. Bommer match. Leave this battle entirely between Bommer and Crow.

However, while both Yuusei and Crow are driving—Yuusei to fight Kiryuu and Crow to (unknowingly) fight Bommer—have Yuusei call Crow up on his D-Wheel. Or have them run into each other separately if their calls can't go through. Either way, Crow needs to be informed that Martha's dead, that the dark signers are waiting for them, and that Ushio was the one who saved Takuya—much to Crow's surprise. Also, we need closure about Crow and Yuusei's earlier conversation. What does Yuusei think about the Daedalus Bridge legend?

Yuusei presents the following opinion: It doesn't matter if the legend is true or not. Sometimes, you just need something to believe in.

This view for Yuusei is strongly supported by canon. In fact, after Martha's death in episode 47, Yuusei tells her adopted family that beating the dark signers will bring back the souls of those who have been lost. Jack quickly calls Yuusei out on this, as Yuusei admits he actually has no idea if that's the truth. It's simply something Yuusei has to believe is real in order to stay sane.

This kind of conversation would dovetail Crow's arc really nicely, and afterward, he goes into his fight with Bommer with that conceptualization of hope on his mind.

(Just an observation, but after Crow finds the kids missing in canon, he literally goes and stares off the end of the Daedalus Bridge. Great place for that conversation with Yuusei.)

For Bommer, I'd do a complete rewrite of his motivations in this match. In canon, he maintains all of his nobility and only is a dark signer under the false pretense that Godwin killed his family. When that pretense is revealed to be untrue, Bommer completely changes and no longer wants to fight Crow. His rationale for dueling is entirely constructed on lies and doesn't unveil any deeper worldview.

Instead, have it be true that Godwin is the reason his family is dead—don't get the dark signers involved in that at all. Bommer is 100% working to kill Godwin and destroy the signers because Godwin truly is a monster who used his village as his own personal Crimson Dragon playground. This version of Bommer would be jaded by society and its power structures and would want to burn it all down. To him, society is beyond saving, and given that Bommer's initial values of nobility and devotion left him vulnerable to manipulation in season 1, Bommer in season 2 would be satisfied with rejecting those values in order to pursue his own brand of justice, regardless of who he hurts in the process.

We now have the ground work for a super interesting philosophical conflict. Crow becomes the only person who makes sense as an opponent for Bommer. Both have lost their families. Both have been hurt by Godwin. And unlike Yuusei, both Crow and Bommer could be painted as people who struggle with believing flawed systems can be rectified. They remain mirror characters like how they are in canon, only Bommer is more solidly an extension of Crow's internal philosophy. While Crow is skeptical of peace, Bommer is outright antagonistic toward it because he's been so thoroughly screwed over. Give me a man who once was honorable and now is willing to destroy society if it means erasing the power structures that have harmed him. That leaves us with duel philosophies that look like this:

With this set up, there's no resolving Bommer's hurt. His family isn't coming back if he loses, and the damage done to him by those in power is something that can't be remedied by him losing a duel. Instead, Bommer has to lose the duel because he learns that his worldview is wrong. He has become the very villain he once professed to hate. In this way, Bommer's trauma parallels Crow's. Nothing can undo the suffering of the people of Satellite, not even completing the Daedalus Bridge. Their connection over pain could be emphasized by Bommer commenting that Crow couldn't possibly understand the suffering Godwin's inflicted on him and have Crow reply that he has his suffering tattooed on his goddamn face.

Through fighting Bommer, Crow has to come to grips with this parallel. If he's not careful, Bommer is who Crow could become, and that reality shakes him to the core. It catalyzes Crow to embrace Yuusei's philosophy on hope. Like Yuusei said, it doesn't matter if the Daedalus Bridge legend is real or not. Change can be won through grit and determination, and Crow has to believe that in order to not fall victim to the same ideologies that corrupted Bommer. In other words, Crow is someone who struggles to imagine a life where he doesn't need his wings, where he can literally walk across a bridge to the place he wants to go. But by the end of the duel, Crow understands that he has to believe it's possible and urges Bommer to believe the same.

The duel essentially unfolds the same way from here on out: Bommer's motion to end the duel is foiled by dark signer magic, forcing Crow to finish him off, and Bommer sacrifices himself to save Crow. Before he dies, he asks Crow to build that better future, choosing to believe that he and Yuusei can achieve it.

In canon, this duel is followed by Yuusei's battle with Kiryuu. Crow canonically watches this match along side Rua | Leo, Ruka | Luna , and—wouldn't you know it—Ushio. Close out Crow's character arc with a more amenable nod to Ushio and a thanks for saving Takuya. There's a mutual understanding from here on out that he and Ushio see eye-to-eye on the need for Satellite and Neo Domino City to bury the hatchet in order to pursue peace. This character arc could also better explain Crow's motivation to join the police at the end of the series. He is more explicitly determined to change the institution from the inside out whereas this motivation is only loosely implied in canon.

With this change to Crow and Bommer's duel, Crow's connection toward Godwin is also more thoroughly explored. Godwin eventually is revealed to be the man from the Daedalus Bridge story, which Crow canonically takes a huge issue with, decrying Godwin for sullying their legend of hope. With a rewrite, Crow's view of the legend is more nuanced, and his faith in unity is now founded in Crow's own sense of self, not the legend. It gives Crow's argument toward Godwin more weight, as we've seen him grow into his current feelings that hope for the future is a choice we all must make.

CONCLUSION

Obviously, this rewrite isn't perfect, and even beyond the DS arc, Crow's character could be further retooled to give him more interesting things to do. That being said, giving Crow a character arc early on could've gone a long way toward making him a more organic member of the Yu-Gi-Oh 5D's cast. In canon, his most compelling character trait is that he spits in the face of destiny by defeating a dark signer while he is a normal person. That concept is immediately dashed when Crow becomes a signer at the end of the arc. Crow therefore must connect with the themes of Yu-Gi-Oh 5D's in a different way if he is going to be a signer.

So, as I said in the beginning, a trifecta of Yuusei, Jack, and Crow meshes better when the three of them embody a different element of the story's core themes.

Yuusei represents sacrifice and unity. He's no longer willing to be a doormat for his friends after his fight with Kiryuu, but he is willing to let bygones be bygones for the sake of a brighter future. This attitude is necessary in order for Satellite and Neo Domino City to move beyond their differences.

Jack represents free will and self-determination. After being manipulated by Godwin's sweet talk, Jack is determined to define who he is and his place in the world on his own terms. Again, this attitude is necessary for redefining the Neo Domino-Satellite relationship later on.

Lastly, Crow more clearly represents hope. He embraces this motif in the source material with the Daedalus Bridge story, but in this rewrite, it is emphasized that that hope isn't some mythical, innate belief. Hope for the world is an active choice that Crow wrestles with and—eventually—adheres to. That dogged hope is essential in order to bring Satellite and Neo Domino City together against the odds. Crow having this kind of arc therefore aligns with the larger conversation of Yu-Gi-Oh 5D's.

What are your thoughts on Crow and/or Bommer? How would you change their fight? Also, who's your favorite 5Ds character?