Cardfight!! Vanguard V - Episode 21 Review

The long awaited fight between Kai and Ren happens at last and that's pretty much the bulk of the episode.  Leading up to it we get some banter between the two that eventually leads to the discussion of PSY-Qualia, Aichi having it and Kai immediately telling him to quit the game lest he become a cringy edgelord like Ren.  Aichi refuses this as it's because of the game that he's managed to grow as much as he has so quitting it would cause him to go back to being a cringy shy boi which he doesn't want. 

"At least until V-BT03 comes out.  Your deck might be not shit then!"

Ren challenges Aichi to a fight because of his repeatedly mentioned win over Kai to which the man of the hour steps in and explains it wasn't an earnest fight while convincing Ren to take him on instead.  Kai may be purposely downplaying the loss to keep Aichi safe from Ren because he's banged up from his fight with Tetsu but he's not entirely wrong about this.  Misaki like the audience also catches onto why Kai's pretending to be a dickbag and the fight begins with Ren...humming to himself.  Right.  Can't wait to hear how cringy it'll sound in the dub.  Aichi notices how Kai is acting differently than usual which Miwa explains is how he used to be back when he hung around Ren and co which is of course the Kai that we know and worship from the original series.

Misprinted Blaster Blade is looking mighty smug.

The two trade blows and Aichi is mindblown Coldsteel the Hedgeheg exists while we get some more exposition about PSY-Qualia and how it's more than magically stacking the deck.  It also does other things like letting to see into the future and learn of the fight outcome before hand!  It's ability to fuck with the plot is so strong that Kai's ability to flip multiple crits as the story demands it gets sealed and on the Dragonic Overlord he doesn't sack his opponent.  Oh my god Kai's on the ropes!  No seriously Miwa basically says that he's in trouble after this turn.

I'm actually curious which would win the head to head matchup between TDs.

Ren smugly gloats about how Kai can't escape the future that his units have predicted and rides up to BetterAlfred which Aichi is taken aback by as well while we see our two overrated characters stare each other down with dramatic tension while the episode comes to a close.  All in all pretty standard fare as once you get past the absurdity of why we have this fight and the voodoo shit in the fight you have a not bad episode.  We get a little more insight into Kai's character and it's more affirmation that this is not the same guy as the one from OG series.  He's going out of his way to keep Aichi safe from the villains even at what could be considered a risk to his health and he's clearly not happy about what's happened to Ren or the power he uses (though admittedly this also happened in OG).

With that said next week's episode should be interesting as we'll see the in anime debut of Phantom Blaster and...wait is that Dragonic Waterfall I see in the preview!?  Jesus christ talk about cutting it close.  22 episodes and 4 sets into the series and we're finally getting the other good VR from Set 1.