Retributionshipping

7

Retributionshipping is the het ship between Jack Atlas and Carly Nagisa (Carly Carmine) from the Yu-Gi-Oh! fandom.

Canon

Jack and Carly duel together against a Puppet Dark Signer.

Carly is a reporter looking for scoops on the Fortune Cup in order to keep her job. She fails to get an interview with the new King, Yusei Fudo, but undeterred, she tries to find the former King Jack in the hospital where he was recovering from his injuries from his loss during the tournament. At that moment Tetsu Ushio, under the control of the Dark Signers, arrives to take out Jack. Since Jack's arm is injured he can not duel on his own, so Carly helps him. They defeat the possessed Ushio together. Since Jack is trying to leave the hospital, he asks Carly to get him out of there after their duel before falling unconscious, and she takes him to her apartment.

Carly enjoys having him stay with her and she takes care of him as he recovers. She is especially glad when he declines the offer of his secretary Mikage Sagiri to take him somewhere else. She initially plans to write a story about him but keeps putting it on hold. After being pressured by her boss, she tries to interview Jack but he turns out to have snuck out of her apartment. She ends up finding him at a monorail station and gets mad at him for wandering out even though the media is after him and for being ungrateful for her help. Though he tries to brush her off and leave, she threatens to draw attention to him in order to still get a scoop. Ultimately, he agrees to go to spend some time with her in an amusement park where she tries to get him to loosen up so that he will share with her.

However, during their time in the amusement park, Jack unaffected by any attempts to get him to loosen up and is also still dwelling on the recent loss of his title as King. Eventually Carly realizes that he's hurting and begins to wonder if she shouldn't be trying to write a story about him. She runs into a rival reporter, Angela, who is also trying to find Jack, and Carly tells her she won't let her try to exploit Jack. During this time, Jack overhears Angela saying that Carly hates guys like Jack who are arrogant, and he leaves Carly.

Carly searches for Jack in the park but eventually realizes that Jack is trying to go to the tower and finds him there. She deduces to Jack wanted to go to the tower to try to see Satellite, his hometown that he abandoned. Shocked by her understanding, Jack begins to share about his past betrayal of his friends in order to become King and expresses his regrets and realizes it was wrong for him to have abandoned his friends in Satellite. Carly suggests that the old Jack who was defeated by Yusei died, and now it was time for the real Jack to rise and live, giving him a new sense of hope and direction. Jack takes her advice and refused to be led astray anymore, instead walking on his own path. At the same time, Carly resolves to not write any articles that would hurt Jack or any other duelist.

Carly encourages Jack to focus on the future.

Jack returns to Carly's apartment and continues staying with her for some time. Eventually, a Dark Signer appears in Satellite to duel Yusei, and Jack and Carly are flown by Mikage to go watch the duel. During the duel, a powerful monster called an Earthbound God is summoned, causing Yusei to nearly lose and requiring the sacrifice of human souls. Afterward, Jack decides to leave Carly. She protests that she also wants to find out the truth and go to Satellite, but he tells her to stop pursuing that story because she's not a Signer and wouldn't be able to handle it. As he is about to leave, he tells her he wants her to be safe.

However, Carly is upset and lovesick, unwilling to let go of her connection with Jack. After doing some investigating, Carly begins to look into the Arcadia Movement and stumbles upon the truth of director Rex Godwin's past. However, during her investigating, she is discovered by the cult leader Divine. She is killed in a duel with him being thrown out a window only to be resurrected as a Dark Signer. Jack finds her glasses in the wreckage of the Arcadia Movement and is worried, trying to call for and look for her to no avail.

Jack finds Carly's glasses.

While Carly is taken in by Misty Lola and other Dark Signers, Jack unites with Yusei and the other Signers. They learn from Godwin more about Dark Signers and the Earthbound Gods. Jack asks Godwin what happens to those sacrificed to the gods, thinking back to Carly and revealing his mistaken belief that she was sacrificed. He also is shown to have kept and to be carrying around her glasses in his coat. At one point, he takes them out to look at them as thinks of Carly as the person he has to protect. In another scene where the Signers are watching a sunset, Jack is on a roof alone and again looks at her glasses.

Jack is worried for Carly.

Mikage, who has long held feelings for Jack, notices Jack looking at Carly's glasses and asks him why he is going to Satellite despite not thinking himself friends with the other Signers, having started to suspect his feelings for Carly. When they are finally in Satellite, she confronts him and is about to confess to him her feelings, but he stops her. He tells her simply that he owes Carly, and that is why he's going to help her if she's in trouble.

While at Satellite, the Signers are approached by the leader of the Dark Signers, Rudger, who duels Yusei. After the duel, the other Dark Signers appear, each fated to fight one of the Signers. Although Carly is hooded, Jack notices and recognizes her, chasing after her when the Dark Signers start walking away. He is shocked and confused when he catches up to her. Carly tells Jack that if he wants to know the answers, he needs to go after her later at the hummingbird reactor. As she leaves him, she tearfully calls him her beloved Jack.

Jack learns Carly has become a Dark Signer.

As the Signers each go to duel their respective Dark Signers, Jack goes after Carly at the hummingbird reactor. He first asks her what happened to her and is shocked and anguished when he learns that she was killed by Divine. He tells her that he had thought that she was just sacrificed, so if he defeated the Dark Signers, he might be able to bring her back. Carly soon enters a Riding Duel with Jack. Jack initially holds back, but when Carly attacks mercilessly and hurts him, he realizes that Carly is being controlled by someone, since he knows she's not someone who would hurt others. During their duel, she shows Jack a vision of him losing their duel, dying, and being revived as a Dark Signer through Carly's kiss. As the dark king and queen, they rule an apocalyptic world together. Though it seems he is drawn into this vision at first, when Jack sees Carly's glasses, he snaps out of the vision, realizing that the real Carly would not truly desire a future like that.

Jack finally confesses his love for Carly.

Dark Signer Carly is confused, but Jack says that fate doesn't exist and that she can choose her own path, just as she told him before. Jack eventually is able to help Carly gain control of herself by using a card that gave her the chance to kill or spare him. Briefly, they are able to talk and Carly apologizes, saying she really doesn't want to duel Jack, while Jack affirms his faith in Carly's kindness. However, Carly is possessed by the Earthbound God and forced to continue the duel. Eventually, the possessed Carly summons her Earthbound God, and Jack thinks about how upset the real Carly would be if she saw what was happening. Unable to return Carly back to normal, Jack tells Carly that her compassion changed him from the selfish person he used to be, and that he wants to save her, the one he truly loves.

At this heartfelt confession, he gains the ability from the Crimson Dragon to summon a powerful monster. The real Carly is also able to get through to Jack and asks him to end the duel even at the cost of her own life, which he at first objects to but reluctantly agrees when he acknowledges that it is what she truly wants. Nonetheless, he also tries to end the duel in a tie so that she won't have to die alone. At that moment, through all her might, the real Carly is able to overpower the Earthbound God's control and stop him by committing suicide, right before she tells him that her wish is for him to become a true king who is loved by all and makes others happy.

Jack and Carly embrace as she dies in his arms and finally confesses her love for him.

After the duel is over, Jack cradles Carly as she is near death, putting her glasses on her. Feeling at peace, she tells him she will be cheering him on as he saves the world, they embrace and she confesses her love to him as she disappears, leaving Jack completely heartbroken and shaken from having lost the person that mattered most to him in the world. Godwin, who was the one who manipulated Jack into becoming King in the first place, turns out to be the ultimate villain and Jack duels him with others in a tag duel. Godwin tries to taunt Jack with reminders of how he betrayed his friends, as being a king requires him to be alone. Jack counters, admitting that he was indeed alone and abandoned his bonds, but he also eventually abandoned being the king. However, he says when he had nothing, he was able to gain one small thing, Carly's love, that allowed him to still endure and taught him that no matter how hard he may try, he cannot escape bonds with others. In the end, Carly is brought back to life at the end of the arc along with the rest of the former Dark Signers, her memories of her time as a Dark Signer completely erased.

After the Dark Signers are defeated, a bridge between Neo Domino City and Satellite is built. Jack moves in with Yusei and Crow, often getting expensive coffee at a nearby cafe where Carly will occasionally meet with him. Carly meets Jack again when working on a story about a vicious money trader and later about D-Wheel thieves. Jack resolves both cases by dueling the people responsible. When Jack is suspected of causing opponents to crash in Riding Duel Carly tries to stop stories about it form getting out but is unable to. It turns out that it was a robot imposter. Carly takes pictures of Jack dueling the imposter to prove his innocence. Carly supports Jack in his later duels throughout the series. At the end of the series, Carly disguises herself as a present and tries to go with Jack when he leaves the city to become World King, but he tells her to get out, saying that he is trying to become the top duelist of the world and women will only get in his way.

Fanon

Retributionshipping is one of the more popular shippings. The way Carly and Jack develop together was seen as a good basis for a relationship, and there is significant canon support. It rivals other ships involving Jack.

Many fans of the shipping decry the way their relationship is ignored in the second half of the series, which retcons their confessions of love. Specifically, the series never revisits Jack's feelings for Carly or anything that happened between them while Carly was a Dark Signer. Though Jack occasionally appears with Carly, he is tolerant at best to her affections and completely indifferent most of the time. Despite being integral to Jack's character development, after the Dark Signer arc, Carly is no longer relevant to the plot and becomes comic relief, joining a couple of other women in fruitlessly chasing after Jack; this is even despite the fact that other former Dark Signers are shown to have their memories. A common way that fans explain Jack's indifference to Carly's affections after the Dark Signer arc is that he is reluctant to get to close to her in order to not risk bringing back her painful memories of her time as a Dark Signer.

Fandom

FAN ART

Jack/Carly tag on Pixiv.net

FAN FICTION

Jack/Carly tag on FanFiction.Net

Jack/Carly tag on AO3

Trivia

• Retributionshipping gets its name from when Carly is a Dark Signer and seeking retribution against the Signers.
• Scoopshipping gets its name from how Carly saw Jack as a way to get a scoop as a reporter.
• To this day, it's considered to be one of the most popular and most favorite pairings in Yu-Gi-Oh! Franchise.
• Side games occasionally allude to their relationship even when it is ignored after the Dark Signer arc.
  • Although Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's Tag Force 5 covers events following that arc, it heavily implies Jack still has feelings for her. In Carly's story events, when Jack hears that Carly is pursuing a scoop with the main character in order to support him financially, he gets angry: "When did I ever ask you to provide for me? You have it completely wrong! And what about you two working shoulder to shoulder on a report?" It is suggested that the reasons for his anger are his belief that he should be the one leading and supporting Carly and his jealousy of the main character. Jack also tells the main character to keep Carly safe, saying, "If she gets hurt for any reason, I will never let it go!" Similarly, after Carly and the main character defeat Jack in the last part of her story, Jack says to Carly, "You don't need to think about so many crazy things. Just follow my lead, okay? Don't make me worry about you so much. You are my. . . " (He is interrupted when he realizes Carly has fallen over.)
  • In Yu-Gi-Oh! DUEL LINKS, Jack yells at Carly to go home when she arrives in the Duel Links world, but Crow tells her that he's just worried about her.
• Structure Deck: Pulse of the King - a Structure Deck focused on Jack - has a few references to this ship:
  • One of the new monsters in this deck is Vision Resonator - a Resonator monster (Jack's main series of Tuners) styled after Dark Signer Carly's Fortune Ladies.
  • The deck also comes with the unplayable card King of All - a card that Carly imagined as she was defeated.
  • Additionally, the set that preceded the deck in the OCG saw the printing of Earthbound Release - the trap Carly uses to let Jack win their Turbo Duel.