Saturday 25 August 2018

Cardfight!! Vanguard V - Episode 17 Review



Episode 17 was pretty good all things considered.  The three plot threads that last week's episode focused on are advanced here and we see the conclusion of one of them.  Kai and Tetsu are Cardfighting after last week and the latter reveals that Ren has become so strong that nobody can hope to beat him, let alone give him a good fight.  He says that Kai may be the only person left who could give him a challenge and even then he's unsure of it.  Kai disgustedly says Ren's strength is not that of a serious fight and that he wants no part of PSYQualia before we cut to them wrapping up the fight (with no DI cards spoiled).  This is pretty consistent with how Kai was depicted before as the character has always had a firm belief of winning with your own strength and skill, not without outside forces.  This is what made his decision to play Link Joker all the more interesting in Season 3.

Original Character do not steal.

The other parts of this episode focus on the fight between Misaki and Ren who tries to convince her to join his side/team/provide shipping fuel for the fanbase which Asaka obviously takes exception to and Aichi/Kamui/Kyou going to Card Shops taken over by Team Asteroid.  Kyou pretty much throws Aichi to the wolves so that he can awaken his PSYQualia but the guy keeps winning and quite comfortably at that which I found to be funny.  This part of the episode ends with Kyou sort of telling Aichi and Kamui about the other person who can use PSYQualia: Ren.

"I don't feel so goo-"

The fight between Misaki and Ren is completely one sided as he is able to ride up first and that pretty much is what decides the game.  He rides to Grade 2 first which is as we all expected Blaster Dark and through the power of PSYQualia he is able to critsack Misaki in addition to rushing her down in the early game.  This is further compounded by him riding to 3 first which turns out to be the Dark Dictator and he's able to critsack Misaki again for the win.  Ren leaves the shop (having gotten Team Asteroid unbanned in the proccess) while giving Misaki a creepy glare and that's the episode.

Like I said before the episode was good.  It moved the plot along and is slowly building us up to Kai vs Ren and Aichi vs Ren.  From what people have told me the show is literally following the manga to the letter so Kai is going to get screwed over by his own Vanguard and there will be a healthy amount of Misaki appearances so Misaki fans can feel a little better about her taking the loss to Ren.  The fight itself was actually believable in how it played out as OTT is weak to rush since it doesn't get its ball rolling until the Grade 3 ride and a very real example of just how strong going 1st is in Standard.  Funny how Legion and Stride conditioned us to gun for the opposite.

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