Cardfight!! Vanguard V - Episode 9 Review

Hey look kids!  It's the best deck vs the most RNG deck!

This was easily the best fight of the show so far.  I have to hand it to the team here as the choreography was right out of how people actually play Vanguard and on a competitive level at that.  The episode focuses entirely on the fight between Kai and Koutei which was something that we never actually got to see out of the original series in this manner (the two did do some playtesting during Asia Circuit's beach episode in which Kai won the majority of their matches) and with the episode being called "Kai loses!!" I was expecting some form of bullshit to occur from Koutei given how rarely Kai jobs to people in the franchise.

Okay so maybe not as RNG if they continue the Burst like gimmick.

Koutei rushes Kai which is a questionable tactic against Kagero in Standard and gets sort of punished when Kai responds by riding Berserk Dragon and mounting a counter rush including swinging at a Rearguard with a trigger powered unit which confuses Morikawa but Koutei goes out of his way to guard since he needs the extra units for his next turn.  He rides Daiyusha and buffs it up to a point that he won't get its bonus crit without a trigger as he doesn't have a booster behind it and swings into a no guard while flipping a crit but doesn't give it to his VG.  People again are confused as he puts the crit on his rearguard but as Kai and Koutei's thoughts tell you it made no difference.  Pushing Kai to 5 was really no different than pushing him to 4 when the RG lane would be lethal regardless.  This way just happens to damage deny Kai a little more and he guy winds up drawing a Heal for turn that would have gone off had Koutei played differently.  Kai remarks that his opponent has been dictating the pace of the game up until this point which makes sense as Koutei is a national level player and the "Solitary Fighter" has yet to make any appearances at the Pro level.

"Kagero is too reliant on its pieces and Waterfall to win its games."

He decides to mount another counterattack with Dragonic Overlord and stacking buffs on it through Force + his Soul Blast skill and charges ahead which Koutei no guards and gets punished for it by Kai flipping a crit to put him to 4.  Kai uses Overlord's ability to restand and swing again which is met by a Perfect Guard to once again the surprise of many of the people watching but Gouki explains something that I've told some other people in the past: using Overlord's restand makes you go -1 in total card economy and against Dimension Police you want to have as many cards in hand as possible.  By risking the Double Crit Koutei was able to bait Kai into reducing his defenses for his major push turn with Great Daiyusha who is by all intents a Raging Form Dragon.

Taking bets on this guy's requirements.  VG at 50k and doesn't hit to get the Superior Ride?

Koutei rerides in battle phase after Kai's Perfect Guard while putting both of his front row attackers to 40k+ with a crit on one of them.  Kai no guards the VG attack (which had Twin Drive btw) and hits a defensive trigger which through the rest of the cards in his hand is enough to barely survive the push.  Kai rips a Nehalem off the top and uses it to make all of his lanes able to hit and swings for 33 with Overlord (imagine if it was a Waterfall he ripped) and breaks Koutei's one to pass with a crit for the win.  Kai wins!

Even the anime thinks DifferentFight's assessment of Kagero is full of shit.

Well played writing team.  The title is one of the older tricks out there as it's meant to make you want to see just how it is that the character it mentions loses/gets killed/etc and I honestly thought Kai was going to lose this one but the man's Plot Armour clearly wasn't going to have any of that.  Still seeing that there was a good amount of competitive technical play in here is a thing of the original series that was sorely lacking in later seasons/G and I hope it continues here.  That all said after the battle is over and the two vow to fight again it's time for the final fight as Team Q4 is up 2-1 and it's Aichi vs Leon.  Brace yourselves people as next week we get to see the Kidani Boner on full display.

Cardfight!! Vanguard V - Episode 8 Review

It's still really jarring to see Leon as a kid.

We begin with Aichi and Emi running late to Card Capital when Leon happens to be driving by and has them picked up.  They explain that Aichi slept in because he was up late working on his deck and talking to his cards to which Leon says he can't wait to have their fight as the trio arrive at a much more crowded shop.  People are exicted for the throwdown between the two teams of 4...except Koutei is late and I'm sure we'll see some funny scene of him showing up at the end of the episode to do that.  Regardless we see some more antics between Kamui, Emi and Nagisa which at this point I'm indifferent to (Emi is just as oblivious to Kamui's crush as she was in the original) with the latter's jealousy being what sets up the first fight; Kamui vs Nagisa.

Who would win.  A team of the main characters or a team with one lost boi?

Unlike the OG series Nagisa plays Granblue just like her brother.  We don't actually get to see what her deck does but she pushes Kamui's shit in pretty quickly while Gouki explains that he trained her "relentlessly" in preparation for this day and as such she should not be underestimated (to be fair, Nagisa is one of the few characters in the franchise to out Trigger Sack Chrono in a fight which in VG world does equate to skill) but Kamui is able to mount a counterattack by going full ham with Perfect Raizer, 3 CB and flips a front Trigger for a full 7 attacks for the win which is actually pretty fucking brutal if you ask me.

This is why you play Damage Control against Novas.

Nagisa obviously loses and starts crying which causes Gouki to go into comically dramatic big brother mode that leads to him calling Kamui a monster more or less (Emi even says she'll scold him later for Nagisa) as well as Card Captial a no name shop which Misaki takes exception to and jumps past a set of stairs to challenge him in her anger.  Time for game two between Gouki and Misaki which will make this our first Protect vs Protect matchup in the anime.

I wonder what DI's version of this will be?

This fight was clever.  I was hoping we'd see Misaki try to outwit a clearly superior opponent since she observed Kamui's fight with Nagisa and her memory would have allowed her to have a good idea of how the Granblue deck works and devise a counter strategy (which she does do to some extent) but this is ultimately foiled by Gouki constantly making her get angry by calling Card Capital a no name shop and she makes some rash plays as a result which get capitalized on when Gouki rides Basskirk and kills her because she threw down most of her hand trying to push.  I almost want to say that Gouki was in control of almost the entire game as save for one moment  he never seemed to be in any position of danger.

What's better: On ride +1, big power and a crit or a smaller but constant power/crit buff and a +1 each turn?

Misaki goes down and Gouki tells her that despite coming from a no name shop she is one hell of a fighter as Koutei arrives in a manner just as I described and is set to square off against and defeat Kai next week. 

Only in the anime would Dimension Police be able to beat Kagero.

Cardfight!! Vanguard V - Episode 7 Review

God I could make another Nova Grappler gets shit on meme out of this.

We begin with a recap of the end of last week's episode leading into the fallout of Kamui accepting Nagisa's challenge for a shop vs shop fight and the news being told Morikawa and co who promptly freak out as Miwa remarks at how much of a mess things have become.  Before things can go any further Koutei of all people walks into the shop which causes another freakout to occur.  Koutei's backstory is talked about (TL:DR he's a really strong DP player) as he explains that he came to the shop at Gouki's request for a team fight...only to find out that he wasn't paying attention to the details and came a week early.

With how bad his sense of direction is this guy really should be voiced by Hikaru Midorikawa.

One more freak out (as well as a recap to Shin and Misaki) later he apologizes and decides to leave before Miwa challenges him to a fight to see how he fares against the Number 3 fighter of Asia which Koutei accepts.  It's Nova Grappler vs Dimension Police and we get some chatter between Emi and Kamui regarding the similarities of the two clans which is something that I've not really talked about at this point.  Compared to the Original Series' handling of the two's interaction Vanguard V is actually doing a good job of establishing a natural friendship between them.  Truth be told Emi was kinda just...there originally and save for the Kamui vs Reverse Rekka fight she really wasn't used for anything other than hilarity regarding his one sided crush on her.  A thing I especially missed last week was how the two immediately stuck together in sticking up for Card Capital which in the case of Emi is touching as she has been there for only a little bit, doesn't play and yet she feels the need to defend it as she likely sees how important the place is to Aichi.  That being said I'm pretty certain she will still remain oblivious to Kamui's crush on her/Nagisas Tsundereness towards him for as long as the series goes because lolrunning gag.

I wonder if the wings will keep him safe from Sunrise/Takara Tomy?

Now why did I go into that long winded spiel?  Because honestly this fight was basic as hell.  Miwa pushes Koutei to 4 damage but fails to kill him using the Hero deck's tricks and Koutei fires back by calling units that get big and do things at X power (so basically it's the Burst mechanic but not Burst) and wins with Double Trigger.  Honestly it would have been more realistic of a fight to have Koutei win at 2-3 damage to establish just how good of a fight this is but seeing as Miwa rode Ashura Kaiser and actually resolved it's skill (every Nova Grappler player worth their salt will tell you that they always check Grade 1s with Kaiser) I knew we were gonna see some bullshit.

Sorry Misaki.  Until Asaka appears you're going to continue being the Waifu of the show.

After the fight both players get an ovation, Miwa tells Koutei that Kai exists and we cut to said 'Solitary Player' saying he'll participate in the Team Fight.  He tells Aichi and Kamui that since they started this they also must compete which leaves the group with an open slot.  Miwa and Morikawa both argue that it should be them when Misaki tells them to zip it and Aichi asks her to join the team much to her shock.  He points out that her analytical mindset would be of great help to the team and she gets drafted while a name is brainstormed.  Eventually Team Quadriofoglio is decided and shortened to Q4 with its members decided; Aichi Sendou, Kai Toshki, Kamui Katsuragi and Misaki Tokura whether she likes it or not.  I guess she does because next week we have Gouki vs Misaki which I'm quited excited for as it means Granblue cards will be appearing on TV for the first time since...Feburary 2017?  Sweet zombie jesus.

Cardfight!! Vanguard V - Episode 6 Review

No Jillian or Charlene?  I know one person who'll be sad about that.

Episode 6 kicks off the new arc by wrapping up the Asia Circuit in the form of a much younger Leon defeating Gouki to become the champion and thus spare us from having to sit through a retread of that entire season.  Following this we get a bit of focus on Kamui as he talks about his time playing at Card Voyage with his eventual departure from the shop in order to become strong enough to defeat Gouki, Emi convincing him and Aichi to check the place out and the hijinks that ensue from the reintroduction of Nagisa who is just as insufferable as ever.

Nova Grappler vs Standard in a nutshell

Kamui reveals that it was Nagisa who convinced him to go on his journey (albeit as a joke) and he decides to challenge Gouki to show how much he's improved when Leon arrives at the shop with a gust of wind, ends up being challenged instead and we get to see Aqua Force's debut before Tachikaze and Megacolony despite EB01 coming before the Aqua Force Trial Deck.  Leon has another magic wind moment which Aichi and Kai (who is at Card Capital at the moment) notice as we have our first Accel vs Accel match and it plays out like I figured.

Behold my overrated glory!

Both of them play offensive and are able to hit triggers at the times the writers deem appropriate and it's in this fight that we get a good chunk of the Aqua Force Trial Deck spoiled (not to mention there's a shot of Gouki's entire deck on the table and with it almost the entire Granblue lineup of the set) and by the looks of it they get a Burst Raizer clone in addition to another restanding rearguard which is already about as many as Nova Grappler have with a core set yet to be spoiled as Kamui takes the L despite being up 5 damage to 2.  You'd think that Kidani powers had a hand in this but really Nova Grappler is just that glass cannonesque IRL so it's no surprise that Kamui's failed Perfect Raizer gameshot would get punished.  Oh well, there's always Premium.

Aqua Force, Granblue, Dimension Police and the power to out critsack Chrono on one team.  Whew.

The fight ends and Kamui takes the loss pretty hard which makes Nagisa want to console him except Emi does so first and we get to see her swing into full on bitch mode as she rips into him and Card Capital which he and Emi take offense to.  The argument reaches a boiling point with Nagisa challenging them to a 3v3 shop battle with Gouki, the 3rd runner up of Asia Circuit Koutei and herself as Voyage's team which Kamui and Emi accept while Aichi stands there looking stupid and seemingly forgetting his character development of the last couple episodes.  Emi volunteers Aichi regardless which catches Leon's interest and he promptly joins the team to make it a 4v4 which anyone with a brain can see is going to be the reason why Team Q4 gets formed in this continuity.  Kind of lame considering how the circumstances of Team Q4 forming the first time around was the culmination of a major shop tournament leading to a Regional event.

In any case the episode ends with the revelation that Leon, Gouki, Koutei and Nagisa will be fighting against Card Capital and that is one stacked lineup of players to deal with.  Before the original anime started focusing on Psyqualia and Link Joker bullshit Gouki was regarded as one of the strongest players of the show while Koutei and Leon were consistently shown to hold their ground against or defeat the main characters of both the original and G series.  All in all it's an okay episode?  Truth be told I wasn't amazed by this one as the last couple but that may stem from my dislike of Nagisa and Aqua Force putting a damper on things.  I do have to point out what the hell is going on with Aichi here despite growing a pair to make friends with Morikawa and save their school club he immediately reverts back to his "I'm a newb don't pick me" shtick.  If you're going to have him make the effort to grow out of his shrinking violet phase then build upon it and also have him stick up for Card Capital.

Anyway see you guys next week when we get to see another clan that I "adore" in action: Dimension Police.

Cardfight!! Vanguard V - Episode 5 Review

"None of your clans will be featured in the next two episodes."

Episode 5 is an interesting one as it's basically the culmination of what I consider to be V's first story arc as we move onto what seems to be the Asia Circuit arc starting next episode and as such we see the show tying up some loose ends regarding Morikawa.  Since episode 2 we find out that the guy's stopped going to Card Capital and instead plays at the school Vanguard Club headed by Mr. Mark (which is a nice nod to the Link Joker arc of the OG series) which is now in danger of being disbanded as its members' grades are too low for it to stay active.  At the same time Aichi has finally gained the confidence in himself to talk to Morikawa and asks him to come to Card Capital which gets shot down, asks to join the Cardfight Club and ultimately challenges Morikawa to a Cardfight to do so.

"I'm the best player of my 4 man locals!"

What's interesting about this is prior to Aichi's challenge we see inside the head of Morikawa and learn that if the club goes then he'll have no place to play.  Maybe I'm reading too deep into this but given that Morikawa presents himself as the best player around when we know he's not and stopped going to Card Capital after Kai and Miwa smacked him around, perhaps he's supposed to be a jab at the kind of player who doesn't like environments where he isn't the top dog?  These self aware big fish in a little pond type of players actually do exist in real life (hell I've seen a few over the years) and tend to be quite toxic.

In any case the two Cardfight and while it's your now run of the mill Aichi fight to the viewers, we see that in universe the way he's battling is drastically different from what they expected out of him given how meek the guy was beforehand.  Mr. Mark quickly comes to the conclusion that we have in that Cardfight!! Vanguard has changed him for the better as after getting rushed to 5 damage Aichi is seen smiling which confuses everyone until he explains he's happy Morikawa is fighting him seriously before he rides Alfred Early, mounts a counter rush and wins the fight as well as saves the club and asks Morikawa to come to Card Capital with him.  On the way Morikawa asks why Aichi is able to forgive him considering he assaulted him and stole his rare (lol) card to which he explains that because of the events of Episode 1 Aichi ended up going to Card Capital, reunited with Kai as well as made a bunch of new friends.  In essence Morikawa's actions paved the way for the character development that Mr. Mark noted and Morikawa tears up at the end after Aichi offers to play together with him so that they can both improve at the game.  He's likely realized at this point that Aichi is a true friend and definitely regrets everything he's done to him at this point.

And now we have our Tristan for the series.

Emi and Kamui come looking for Aichi who introduces Morikawa to them as well as to the regulars of Card Capital as the episode ends with the two likely becoming friends while we're given a preview that shows Leon, Gouki and Nagisa will be in next week's episode.  I have to point out that Vanguard V is yet to show any of the cards from the Destructive Roar yet episode 6 is going to be spoiling Aqua Force which comes out in the set after this one.  Kidani favourtism is a powerful thing to have indeed.