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.