Cardfight!! Vanguard V - Episode 4 Review

My apologies for the delay on this post.  I was Judging a Yu-Gi-Oh! Regionals yesterday and didn't get the chance to watch this episode until today.  The wait was worth it as Episode 4 was pretty solid as we finally get to see Misaki do something other than yell at people for being loud and make a strong argument for best girl right out of the gate.

The episode begins with Misaki leaving school and refusing her friend's offer to hang out due to having to work.  The friend notices how unhappy she looks as we cut to Card Capital with Kamui asking Aichi for help with his deck while the latter tries to back out of it due to still being extremely timid much to the chagrin of Emi.  A regular customer comes into the shop asking for a fight and Kamui ends up taking him on while Aichi and Emi discuss him not wanting to fight people he doesn't know before a loud commotion can be seen from the aformentioned fight.  Kamui is outraged that his opponent stole his Perfect Raizer (bruh, the card's not even 1000 yen) who subsequently denies it before Misaki steps in, examines the deck and tells him the card isn't his.  The man argues that she's wrong as Misaki goes into detail that she has seen and memorized the contents of his deck while stating he doesn't need Perfect Raizer before giving the card back to Kamui.  The man flips out over this and begins to rant before being cut down down physically and verbally by Misaki.

 Kaiba wishes he could do this.

He flees the shop while everyone looks at Misaki in awe as Kamui is impressed by her bluff of knowing his deck which she says isn't a bluff.  Aichi and Kamui ask if she is a fighter then which she denies as she's never played the game but having watched everyone fight she is aware of how it functions.  Aichi challenges her to a fight which surprises her given his established shyness but agrees to it after noting how much the game has changed him which causes Shin to flip his shit, give her a deck and set up the fight.

Guess we gotta give Oda something to work with, right?

Misaki kicking people in the head is a running gag of the manga btw.

After this the fight pretty much plays out as it did in the original.  Aichi and Misaki go back and forth in an even manner which takes Kamui by surprise given how much she denied playing the game while Kai comes to the conclusion that she has a photograpic memory which came from her trying to cope with the death of her parents.  The real difference here is how Emi is used as the audience surrogate to explain how OTT and Protect works as she wonders when she'll find the best deck for her (spoiler alert, it's probably next summer).  Kai remarks that something about the game is bothering Misaki as a flashback of her father beating Shin down and telling her he really likes the game while Aichi mounts a counterattack with Alfred Early.  Misaki contemplates this as well as she uses her Protect Gift to block Aichi's Vanguard swing as well as a Perfect Guard on the Blaster Blade he put his two crits on.  Aichi is impressed at her skill as she decides that if Vanguard can change him this much then maybe it can do the same for her as she rerides Imperial Daughter to gain its full effect and calls down a board with the intent to kill him.  She swings with the VG and Aichi guards for a two pass which she breaks through and kills him with a 4 crit swing.  He dead!

Misaki has seen the prices for OTT in Japan by the looks of it.

The fight is over and Kamui remarks that she sacked him but Aichi says it wasn't that, she's just really good.  Kamui balks at this before Misaki challenges him to a fight having had a fire lit in her now that she's faced her issues regarding the game and the episode ends with her leaving school and turns down her friend's offer due to hang out due to work.  While she walks away her friend notices that this time she seems to be happy and wonders what happened.

Overall the episode does a solid job of actually introducing the Misaki character and explaining her backstory but with considerably less drama compared to the original (for now).  The nod to the manga running gag was a nice touch and I'm also happy she won her fight here as I really wasn't looking forward to the possibility of the writers making Aichi never drop a game except against Kai or Ren which was a major issue with Chrono.  I'm also surprised that King of Knights Alfred wasn't shown in this episode as Set 1 is out now and we haven't seen the cover card of the set (or Dragonic Waterfall) yet.  Next week we get Aichi vs Katsumi though he doesn't appear to be playing Spike Brothers so I guess we'll have to wait a bit longer before Juggernaut Maximum or Siegfried are spoiled.  Until next time.

Cardfight!! Vanguard V - Episode 3 Review

They're not even trying to hide the Ho Yay anymore.

Episode 3 I dare say is where we start seeing significant changes from how this anime will play out from the original.  Mind you it starts off in a similar manner to "Welcome to Card Capital" with Emi Sendou trailing Aichi after noticing something is up with him and stumbling into Card Capital as a result...but after that we jump right into the plot of an entirely different with the debut and first fight of Kamui Katsuragi.  Kamui didn't appear until Episode 6 of the original series!

Resident Butt Monkey at 5 O'Clock

I have to give props to the writers as what they do here is clever; Emi's debut episode when you boil it down just consisted of Aichi smacking Morikawa around while the rules of the game got explained so subbing him out for Kamui while covering the same bases as his debut episode allows for at least one less episode of filler later in the season.

Kamui challenges everyone in the shop to prove he's the strongest fighter and Kai volunteers Aichi who agrees after a bit of convincing.  Kamui is disappointed that he's fighting someone other than Kai but immediately changes his mind when he sees Emi (and immediately becomes smitten with her) conversing with Aichi and vows to take him down while the latter shows that he's manned up since the last episode and gets completely serious in this fight.

"Aichi's deck is more than just Blaster Blade."

The fight is a back and forth affair as Aichi wows the world with his "rare card" Blaster Blade once again while Kamui rides up and reveals the skill of Custom Raizer (who never seemed to land a hit this fight) before to my surprise Aichi rides up to Alfred Early and goes on the offensive.  Kamui gets pushed to 4 damage and counters with Perfect Raizer and we finally get to see the Accel Gift in action as he shits out a full board and goes ham, hitting (and showing off for the audience) double Front Trigger while getting 2 Rearguard stands off his Vanguard swing.  However to his (and my own) surprise Aichi survives his push at 5 damage as he revealed he had 2 15k shields in hand to stop his 42k Ashura Kaiser lane, calls Stardrive Dragon on his turn and flips a crit to win.  Keep in mind that when Kamui and Aichi fought in the original, Aichi lost!  He actually lost a fair bit in the beginning now that I think about it.

Let me tell you about this "Chrono" guy...

Kai asks Miwa if he still thinks Aichi beating him in the last episode was a fluke as he explains that Aichi had his deck built for a long time for the specific purpose of playing against him and as such he likely had an image in mind when constructing it and has also gotten better with every subsequent fight he's had.  I keep having to tell myself that the Kai in this series is not a dickbag as he repeatedly said he believed Aichi would be fine fighting Kamui and was smiling in a "cool" way throughout the episode.  You can tell that this iteration of him is much more sociable what we're used to (or at the very least around the people he's comfortable with) and honestly it makes the character more likable.  Kai's remark also tells us that Aichi already understands the fundamentals of proper Deck Building which is something that I don't think he had a grasp for I want to say about 30 episodes (the cast's deck building sense was shit).

After the fight Kamui finds out that Aichi is Emi's brother and declares him his brother as well while Misaki does a poor job of hiding her interest in playing the game.  The episode ends with Emi asking to be taught how to play in which Shin volunteers Kamui to do much to his delight.

All in all I have to say I liked this episode.  Definitely a step up from the last one in most areas.

Cardfight!! Vanguard V - Episode 2 Review

Episode 2 continues right after last week left off and just like every first major fight in a Vanguard anime this is a gorified tutorial on how to play the game with confirmation of last weeks flashback being true in that Aichi and Kai had known each other when they were kids.

Just like the Aichi/Kai fight of the OG series Aichi gets super excited to meet with Kai again while the latter goes into douchebag mode and tries aggro the shit out of him with Dragonic Overlord + rearguards.  Imaginary Gift is explained and used in a manner that doesn't seem shamelessly tacked on and after getting a 6th damage heal with being gradelocked at 1 Aichi rips the Blaster Blade off the top, rides it and critsacks Kai into oblivion like every Royal Paladin player on Cardfight!! Area.

Kai peaces out and Aichi gains some confidence after "beating" the best player out there which shows in the form of being cheerful after school to the point that Emi is suspicious and his mother thinks he has a girlfriend while also being able to look Morikawa in the eye in spite of what happened the next day.  The episode ends with Aichi waiting at Cardfight!! Capital to fight Kai again who shows up while next week Kamui is set to appear.  I can already imagine the shenanigans that will ensue.

Finally!  A main character I can relate to!

There really isn't alot for me to say here as like the last episode this plays out nearly identical to how the first series handled things.  The fight itself is better animated (the music on the other hand...) and we see the changes to the power/crit counter like with any other season while things are explained.  I'm a bit saddened that they didn't have Aichi use the new form of G-Assist when he got gradestuck as this would have been the perfect chance to show it to the viewers and to say "hey look!  we learned from G series!" and rolled my eyes at how the fight played out at points.  I knew Kai was going to lose this but they went about it in the most predictable way with Aichi getting critsacked to near death, riding Blaster Blade and critsacking Kai in response.  Sure it makes sense but the thing is everybody figured this was how the battle would play out the moment Blaster Blade's +1 Crit skill was revealed (no for real, I'm pretty sure both Damage Check and Nexus at Night pitched this scenario) and it makes the end of an otherwise okay fight kind of dull.

My gripes aside the episode was fun and it was cool to see Blaster Blade and Dragonic Overlord back again in full glory compared to the first time around (which is making the wait for Vermillion such agony) plus I chuckled a bit at how Aichi immediately called BS on Kai trying to be an asshole.  The next two episodes should hopefully be much better as usually anything involving Kamui will lead to some kind of hilarity and Misaki's battle will likely be the signal that we're done with V-BT01 season and moving right into V-EB01 and with it see some more dynamic fights/characters.

Cardfight!! Vanguard V - Episode 1 Review

Yes I'm actually going to attempt to do this.  Hopefully it'll pan out and become something that I do on a regular basis barring the occasional week where I simply can't post a review immediately (like being away for a weekend) but for the next while I'll be posting my thoughts on each episode of the reboot of the Vanguard anime on this blog.  Why here and not Youtube?  To make a long story short I wouldn't be able to consistently put up video reviews whereas this blog format is much easier for me to handle.  I might talk about the anime in video form sometime down the line but for my immediate thoughts The Blue Corner Blog Station is where to be.  With that out of the way let's actually kick this off.

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Despite Vanguard V being based on the manga "Stand Up, Vanguard!!" follows a nearly identical premise as "Vanguard of Destiny".  Kai returns after being away for many years and swiftly beats a much more competent Morikawa in a fight who subsequently steals Blaster Blade from super timid Aichi Sendou and loses it to Kai immediately afterwards.  Aichi confronts Morikawa and Kai at Card Capital over the card and ends up challenging Kai to a Cardfight to win it back and with it the episode ends.

Where it differs is how we get to the end as the beginning of the episode shows Kai bumping into Aichi when they were kids and trying to teach him how to Cardfight which not only establishes Aichi's strong feelings for him but also justifies why he even has a deck built despite never playing the game before.  Kai taught him how to build a deck and was the only person who took the time to be nice to him during a period of his life where he was constantly bullied (the original anime would go on to explain that Aichi transferred out of a prep school because it had gotten so bad) which makes perfect sense.  We also get to see a much less hammy Morikawa as in a stark contrast to the character we've seen before he's playing with a properly built deck and has no qualms with kicking the shit out of Aichi in order to steal his Blaster Blade.  We also get to see just how desperate he is trying to sate his ego after Kai smashed it by binge spending on a Booster Box in order to pull the cards needed to get revenge, failing miserably and getting more frustrated.

We've all been here.

This is the aspect of the original anime that I and alot of people liked as we see just normal people playing a card game without any of the fantasy bullshit that t.urned it into an inferior Yu-Gi-Oh!  Now I know that this series will eventually dive into the fantasy nonsense (and I wish it wouldn't) but card game anime just can't do without these tropes but hopefully like Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS this series can make it work.  The writing staff of this episode have definitely shown that they're more capable than the monkeys that wrote GNext to GZ so I'll keep my fingers crossed that we don't end up with another blurst of times.

Until next week.