idc

Just one thing that I’ve noticed about Yusaku so far in the series. Due to Lost Incident, poor kid suffers from PTSD and while this condition affects Yusaku on many levels, I think that what it does to his sleep is the most terrifying one of them all.

Aged only six, Yusaku was isolated, forced to duel, tortured with electric shocks and starved for half of a year. This heavily damaged his mental state and enforced a fear in him, that still haunts him ten years later.

At the very start of the series, Yusaku is seen sleeping in the class and it appears to be like any other normal school nap that so many smart anime characters are accused of (aka. “I sleep in the class but when the teacher asks me to answer a question, I will be 100% right even though I wasn’t listening.”)

And judging from Naoki’s reaction this is something that Yusaku does on a regular basis. 

Considering he helps Kusanagi hack during the night, it’s completely understandable that Yusaku gets extremely exhausted from all the work, both as a hacker and Playmaker. But what do those two situations have in common? Let’s compare them with another one.

The only time that we see Yusaku sleep on his own after the Lost Incident, he suffers from a night terror, reliving the torture over and over again. When Yusaku was held captive he was sleeping all alone so it kinda makes sense that when he sleeps alone, it triggers him to relive those horrible moments of the torture. In school, he’s surrounded by people and in the hot-dog truck he has Kusanagi, so he’s no longer alone. There’s another situation that supports my point.

I know this happens just before Tower of Hanoi arc and an uneasy feeling is a result of knowing something is going to happen. But either way, Kusanagi doesn’t act all that surprised when he sees him which may suggest that’s something that Yusaku does often when he cannot sleep. I mean the fact that he always knows where Kusanagi’s truck might be is because that’s something that Kusanagi tells him (like “In case you won’t be able to sleep again, my truck is three blocks from your apartment and you can come.”) since he probably knows that Yusaku has night terrors regularly.  Heck, maybe that’s how the two of them met like Yusaku was undergoing treatment at the same facility where Jin was treated and doctors told him that he has trouble sleeping. The two of them then might’ve then talked and realized they have the same goal so Yusaku joined him and during first few weeks, Kusanagi saw it himself how long can Yusaku stay up due to being afraid to fall asleep.

メラグ「バリアンモード」

巫女メラグのプロフィール

メラグ「バリアンモード・頭部アングル」

メインキャラクター対比表

ゼアル身長ガイド

RUBS HANDS TOGETHER. you’ve come to the right place.

First: With dub, you miss out on a lot of Kaito’s character because of the voice acting. Kite sounds like a WHISPER-YELLING smoker. Kaito’s voice tends to be level, and as a result there’s times he’ll sound a lot gentler/calmer/cooler than Kite.

Anyway!

“Doki doki” is the Japanese onomatopoeia for a heartbeat. “Kokoro no doki doki” literally means “the ba-thump ba-thump of the heart.” The more common usage in anime fandom is “you make my kokoro go doki doki,” as in, like, “my heart stops when you look at me.” It’s the butterflies in your stomach when you look at your crush or the absolute thrill you get in a good duel (if you’re a duelist or do a sport, you might be familiar with the feeling!).

The relevant scene in the dub maintains the idea behind the Japanese, but doesn’t touch on the feeling. NAC’s subs, incidentally, translated it as “throbbing of the heart,” which was not only distracting, but failed to capture the meaning too, IMO.

Script comparison and brief analysis on Kite vs Kaito behind the cut.