Overcome Sadness With a Smile!

Behind it's façade of "card games manga", it dealt with themes that are often, voluntary or not, hidden in children's media, despite being realities any person can end up living.

If today, countless of people learned how to continue walking even after a loss, it's a bit thanks to you Kazuki Takahashi.

You just see ALL THE DAMN parallels Sora and Kairi share with Yuya and Yuzu…it just makes your heart want to burst… Both are childhood friends.

One went on a long journey to find the other; Sora searching the worlds for Kairi, Yuya jumping the dimensions for Yuzu. The girls wanting to do their best to develop themselves to help the one they love; Kairi learning to wield her keyblade properly, Yuzu learning Fusion Summoning. Both boys saving the girls from a life-threatening incident: Sora shielding Kairi with his body in an attempt to take Terra-Xehanort’s blow meant for her, Yuya using his acrobatic skills to jump from ledge to ledge to save a handcuffed Yuzu from falling to her death. (While doing so on a pink hippo wearing a top hat, no less.) Both girls saving the boys from a dark fate; Kairi using her light to restore Sora from a heartless back into his normal body and saving him from fading into darkness, and again saving his life so he can save the others at the Keyblade Graveyard, Yuzu calling out to Yuya’s true nature to break him free from the control of his original self, Zarc.

Zarc’s essence wasn’t hatred, or anger, or any of that.  His essence was fear.  I think it was fear the whole time.

Fear of being alone.  Fear of not being needed.  Fear of being hurt.  He spends his entire duel protecting himself, as Sawatari says, and even just a few episodes ago, we saw Yuya calling out the Battle Beast for the same reason: building up more and more walls, protecting himself against everything – but also closing himself off to the world around him.

“I wanted revenge: I wanted to put fear in those who used me as a spectacle,” Zarc says.  Zarc was afraid – he was terrified.  He loved dueling and he loved his monsters with all of his might; dueling was probably the world to him.  But in any kind of field like dueling would be in that world, it all rides on your ability to please the crowd.  To lose meant that the crowd wouldn’t need him anymore.  To not do as they wished meant that he would be abandoned.  That was too frightening for him.

So he became stronger and stronger and stronger, and he grew more resentful even as he became more terrified.  One slip up and he would be abandoned.  One mistake and the crowd would move onto something else.

And even when he became strong enough to even destroy the world, still, he was afraid.  He and his monsters became one not out of a lust for power, but out of the fear that what they had would be taken away from them.  Becoming one made them feel as though they were so powerful that nothing could hurt them.

And so, instead of running around the field with his monsters, Zarc became one with them – forever immobile, barely moving, simply standing above it all and trying to pretend that he was above the fear that still fueled him.

There’s a reason that the show’s theme is “Take a step forward with courage.”  Zarc couldn’t step forward.  He was too afraid.

But Yuya could.  He wasn’t afraid to leave his walls behind and move past them back into the world.  Zarc closed himself off.  Once upon a time, so did Yuya.  But then Yuya opened himself up to everything, and he gained courage.

And that is why Yuya was the only one who could heal Zarc.  Because he knew what it was like to hide himself inside a fortress where no one could touch him.

What have you done with the real Celina.