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.