There is so much to be said about Sora– so okay, first and most obviously, look at Sora’s continued inability to understand kindness. Yuto has the opportunity to kill him this turn, and refrains. How does Sora interpret this? He’s making fun of me.
But I think it’s more than that. I think Sora’s entire worldview is based on strength, a dog eat dog world of not just losers die, but that they deserve to. The weak are less than human. They’re prey. So that these scum that don’t deserve the air they breath, unless they can prove it through combat are sparing him is the most jarring thing to him. He can’t comprehend it because his worldview is based on his strength, and he has to be strong.
This is part of why he’s so adamant that he didn’t lose– he couldn’t have lost, he’s still breathing. In real combat you don’t get another chance, both him and the Heartland crew have been saying that. So, Sora’s still breathing? It wasn’t a loss. But that he’s so desperate and crazy about it– he’s trying to make things fit back into the way it’s supposed to be. Otherwise he has to acknowledge he was wrong, or, if he doesn’t, that he deserves his death for being weak. That’s what happens to losers.
And, speaking of losers– I’m going to digress to talk about how fucking weird Sora’s speech pattern is. For those of you who don’t speak Japanese or aren’t terribly familiar with the nuance of the language, Sora has some weirdass quirks. First, KONO BOKU. Boku is a first person pronoun typically used more casually, by young men, but it’s not a terribly confident or arrogant “I”. But the KONO makes it weird– it means “this”. You’ll see it in characters like Theif King Bakura, with his KONO ORE-SAMA, which is the most rude and arrogant you can be. Sora uses KONO BOKU while talking to the heartland crew, basically saying that even though he’s not the ORE-SAMA type, he is still extremely condescending to them. Also noticable– he uses a lot of aitsu, yatsu stuff when talking about them– not omaera, temera, ect, which would be rude but like are ways you refer to a group of people. Those are not people terms. Those are like saying THAT. How could that beat me. It’s extremely dehumanizing. When Sora actually uses a person term to refer to them, it’s kimi-tachi, which fits his usual “boku” stuff. So, they’re beneath him but not worth his hate. Sora is adamant they’re playthings, he has no feelings but enjoyment out of this, and his speech pattern all lines up with that too.
But it’s also becoming less and less true, because how can he not hate these people that are breaking apart the ground he stands on? Sora is pissed off in the second half of the fight against Shun, and pissed at Yuto too. There’s a disconnect, there.
And, a small aside– Sora’s insult for the XYZ users is makeinu. Or, loser dogs. Being a loser, being weak? It’s the worst thing he can think of. You know who else used that term a lot in YGO? Kaiba Seto. Kaiba Seto, who was also raised to think losing means death, and that being weak was the worst possible thing a person could be. He’s someone that used mediocre as an insult, too. I’m not saying it’s a direct connection, but I am saying it’s a pretty damning nail in the coffin for the argument that this is how Sora’s mind works.
