Jack’s initial interactions with Carly feel fairly in-character to me.

We only get what he says to Carly or Mikage (most of which is exposition about Zero Reverse or Team Satisfaction), or Carly’s perception of him.

Also lowkey this line is funny in hindsight because like she does melt his heart later.Įven while they’re watching Kiryu and Yusei’s duel, or even in episode 37, we basically don’t get anything about what Jack thinks. We don’t get to hear Jack mourn his loss of his Kingship when he’s staring at the fountain it’s Carly who narrates his hurt for us.Ĭarly is literally looking at the audience during her internal monologue, suggesting she’s talking to us. She doesn’t know where Jack is trying to go or what Jack’s intentions are for 90% of the episode, and so neither does the audience, and only when she figures it out do we know that he’s heading to the tower. Unlike Jack, Carly does get both internal and external monologues, and the amusement park plot of episode 31 is primarily from Carly’s perspective. Right at the beginning of the DS arc, Carly is introduced and given an amount of protagonist-like focus to rival Yusei’s, especially notable since she does not initially have any clear connections with any of the other established characters (unlike Crow, who gets a comparable amount of focus but is retconned into being revealed to have been friends with Yusei and Jack). I don’t say this as necessarily a good or bad thing, just to be clear. I think this contributes to the foreignness of DS!Jack–after all, Carly did not exist in the FC arc and we as an audience are not used to her perspective on Jack being the primary way we know him. Jack’s first action in the DS arc is to knock down a vase in anger because of his Satellite background being revealed he also reacts similarly angrily when it makes the headlines in episode 31, paired with a flashback of his defeat and Yusei’s words about his pride of being a King, as well as when he hears his fans’ cheers and imagines Yusei’s face very heterosexually in the fountain.īoth the reason for and the impact of not knowing a lot of Jack’s thoughts regarding his loss is, I think, that the audience mainly has Carly’s perspective on him, especially in episode 31. Not to say FC!Jack doesn’t also convey a lot about Jack through his body language, actions, or dialogue, but I think how DS!Jack is characterized relies on it more heavily.įor instance, we don’t get much (or really, any) internal monologue about Jack’s feelings about his loss. This, I think, contributes to why DS!Jack feels different than FC!Jack even right off the bat. Whereas FC!Jack has a decent amount of moments of internal monologue, I feel like there’s relatively little of Jack’s internal monologue for most of the DS arc. More than how he’s characterized himself, I think one of the more subtle but significant differences about DS!Jack is how his personality is conveyed to the audience.

FC!Jack would probably think DS!Jack is pathetic and a disgrace.

He spends the first couple of the episodes unconscious, the third in the hospital with a broken arm. So who is DS!Jack? Well, he no longer holds his King title, he is definitely not unbeatable, and his Satellite origins are revealed to the public. I’m not going to touch on Team Satisfaction and how that retroactively affects Jack’s character because that’s a whole can of worms I don’t care to open. I actually am pretty fine with his characterization for most of the arc. There are some who would argue that the change of lead from Tomioka to Yoshida does change him into a different character, but again, I don’t wholly agree with that. How could the DS arc have done better with regards to Jack?ĭS!Jack is certainly in a much different situation that FC!Jack, and I think the line between character derailment and character development can be hard to draw sometimes.

Cleanx twitter