This Panel Has Quickly Become A Contender For My Favorite Of The Series So Far

this panel has quickly become a contender for my favorite of the series so far

large tsukasa bias heads up for this post lol, but mostly marvelling at the narrative and evocative power one panel can have because like. god. this panel is SO good. it's so simple!! and yet!!!! even my first time through it made me pause because there's such a palpable energy to it--which, having finished the chapter like 7 times over now haha, i can now say is very strong calm before the storm energy.

i love how this panel functions as like, a thesis statement for tsukasa. he's so perfectly centered, looking head on, his koku joudais on either side of him, the panel cut off right under his stab wound. this panel reads like a portrait.

and the feelings this one single expression evokes!! he's so at ease, and it makes the audience so not at ease.

because we know what "tsukasa" means. we know what tsukasa can do. and the panel immediately proceeding this tells us: akane and the clock keepers don't know what "tsukasa" means. this panel is like a stinger score in a horror movie as a character heads straight into a threat they can't see, while the audience sees the threat plainly but is helpless to warn them.

i especially love this panel coming off of all the chapters we've just gotten. we've seen so many shades and states of tsukasa in the past few chapters, including a very new state:

i've been puzzling over these panels all month, trying to figure out what felt so... distinct? about them, and 109 gave such good context for them. 108 tsukasa feels new because he is a tsukasa we hadn't seen before! this is a tsukasa who lost. but the energy in these 108 panels is really illuminated by the above panel from 109. this is not only a tsukasa who lost, but a sore loser! yet, not actually too deeply bothered; honestly, the best term i can think of here is butt hurt lmao. like. he's not actually scared, he's just sulking. 108 tsukasa looks like he lost a board game, or like he came up against a video game boss he's having trouble defeating--and in this panel from 109, he looks like he just figured out how to win. he's been puzzling over how to get out of this situation, huffy over not getting it immediately when normally he blows through challenges like this, and now he sees his checkmate.

in fact, i think there's a comparison to be made between this 109 panel, and this 92 panel:

the same symmetry, the same smile. centered in the frame, looking head on, undaunted, his koku joudai on either side of him. in his element. putting all his puzzle pieces together, and having fun with it.

i love the line "tsukasa. my name is tsukasa." coming right after such an out of character loss, and right before his return to how we first meet him, how he's been this whole time.

and one last panel comparison, just for the sake of breaking my own heart:

by himself, just tsukasa. not yugi tsukasa, no official title of yorishiro given to himself like the other three get, just tsukasa. this is not the first cage he's had to break himself out of, and he knows he'll find a way out of this like he found his way out of hanako's boundary, even if he has to figure it out himself, just tsukasa.