Our fight between Takuto and Aichi continues as we get your typical villain and hero speeches from them as the latter takes his turn while riding Ark Saver Dragon. He uses it's skill to call Blaster Javelin to the field who takes on the appearance of Naoki which Takuto realizes is due to him once being a PSY-Qualia Zombie. Misaki notices that Naoki himself is not quite there at the moment and that his eyes are doing the PSY-Qualia glow despite not being a zombie anymore. Kourin also becomes like this as Aichi calls Blaster Arrow from the drop zone who happens to be her IMR in EB06. I wonder if this means anyone who was made a PSY-Qualia Zombie still has the power of PSY-Qualia itself in a limited capacity? We'll probably find out next season. Takuto calls Kourin out for being on Aichi's side despite her destiny of being good Takuto's pawn making this otherwise which surprises Suiko and Rekka. Kourin more or less says that even though she's a Called Walker she's also one of Aichi's teammates and Takuto realizes that she's accepted her fate of vanishing should Aichi win the fight.
He also calls Blaster Blade from the Soul and goes on the attack but flips Draw/Crit off his twin drive for the major oof. Naoki + Kourin attack Brandt together and they get PG'd for their effort and I admit that despite all the shit I give this series (and it deserves it) it's moments like this that actually make the "image" concept of Vanguard neat from a narrative perspective. We saw a little bit of this during GNext when Shiranui and Chrono had their big fight in the finale and again when Chrono, Shion and Tokoha did their super overstride or whatever it was that gave W-Slasher his infamous "Tokoha gets pounded" clip and it was pretty cool back then. It also helped THAT scene had Chrono's fight theme from GZ which since I'm on the subject Vanguard V hasn't come anywhere close to producing an OST that could compete with GNext and GZ. Anyway Blaster Blade goes in at 40k and Brandt freaks out because it's Ibuki as the IMR and lets it hit which in turn pisses Takuto off. And I mean he's angry. The guy actually says "MY TURN" in English!
Brandt launches his Senturion Clap Burst attack (while also having a lame voice for a boss card compared to Gyze) which gets PG'd and Takuto decides to attack Blaster Arrow instead. Retiring it causes Kourin to faint while Misaki again tells her that she'll lose her memories if Aichi wins. Kourin just points at Misaki as the turn ends which has both her and myself confused as Takuto declares that the battle on Planet Cray is going poorly while asking just how long does he expect to hang on with the tide of destiny slipping away. On Cray we see Blaster Blade grimly wondering if this is the end when surprise reinforcements from pretty much all of the clans seen on TV appear to help in the fight for Planet Cray! What the fuck is a Tachikaze?
All the clans band together to launch the big counterattack but Planet Brandt is like "lol plz" and decides that today is a good day to die by prepping for ramming speed. Seems like nothing short of a planet buster is going to be able to stop that thing. Or the Neo Granzon. One Degeneracy Cannon should fix up that problem real quick....and probably annihilate Earth and everything else at the same time. One commercial break later and we're back at the United Sanctuary as all the Blasters are sending their prayers to Aichi who is quick to notice this as he declares to protect Vanguard and Takuto realizes that some crazy shit is about to happen...after a really drawn out stand and draw. Seriously it took 15 seconds for him to draw his damn card and yes I get they're tying to build up tension and stuff but that kind of time causes tension to be lost and the scene to be mocked more than anything else. Anyway since at this point we know the contents of EB06 (and most of EB07) Aichi obviously uses those prayers to rip Messianic Lord Blaster off the top.
Takuto freaks out as this MLB (whose summoning scene isn't nearly as good as the first) is the saviour of both Earth and Cray as foretold in the legends or something like that. Aichi calls Blaster Dagger down who Shingo is the IMR of and goes to attack which Takuto throws up 30k shield to guard.
Oh. My. God. Are they going to do it? Is this final play going to pan out as I predicted a while back?
Aichi drive checks and doesn't hit a trigger but Blaster Arrow instead and immediately calls it down on the board much to Takuto's dismay. His second check reveals Blaster Rapier who he also calls down and it takes on the form of Misaki which means the entirety of the Miyaji Vanguard Club + Ibuki are all on the field alongside Aichi as MLB. Oh and it also turns on his skill to gain a bajillion power and 5 crits so Takuto is super fucked.
Takuto is upset as he's now toast despite being so close to Brandt's goal being completed. Then Aichi somehow figures out that everything that has been done so far is because Planet Brandt is lonely? Oh god we're gonna get a friendship speech and an invitation for Brandt to become allies with Cray aren't we. MLB attacks and obliterates Brandt's forces and Ringer itself who dies quite the anime villain death with facial expressions that would not be out of place in an Obari anime. Did he sneak in and handle Brandt's design and animations for this episode when nobody was looking? MLB's attack also smacks Planet Brandt away from Cray which signals the end of the battle for all of the units involved which is met with cheers from all the allied nations. We also get a brief appearance from Harmonics Messiah while Alfred tells Blaster Blade that it's a being that has silently watched over Earth and Cray all this time (oh and he kinda led an army against Gyze and his forces in this other continuity).
Back to the real world and Aichi is most definitely the winner of the fight as Suiko tells Takuto that he's been finally freed. A strange light flees from his body as we see in space that Brandt has declared that the fate of its Planet's aimless wandering is over as it now joins Earth and Cray as one of the worlds Harmonics Messiah will watch over now. Ibuki explains as such as he says that Aichi's powers were able to change the fate of Planet Brandt and calls him a Neon-Messiah which is definitely a nod to the Movie. He leaves and Kourin tells everyone what is going to happen to her once she's no longer a Called Walker and tells Aichi that what he just did wasn't wrong before he has a chance to Heroic BSoD. She thanks him instead for freeing and allowing her to return to the life she originally had before being a Called Walker while Naoki declares that even if she loses her memories of everyone they'll still remember her. Suiko and Rekka tells them that it's no use since once they've been freed that the days that Kourin spent with everyone will have never happened but Misaki says she definitely can remember them because of her photographic memory. Kourin is unsure and decides to give her the hairband she's always wearing and we get the extremely rare shot of Kourin with nothing in her hair as we fade to white and the next scene is at card capital.
Kai, Ren and Miwa explain that everyone is able to play Vanguard again thanks to Aichi and Kyou confirms that he has been playing thanks to Kamui while Shin remarks that at last this extremely long day is finally over. The next day we see the Cardfight Club talking about the new predicament of the series in that since Aichi protected Vanguard from Brandt the Club will remain but once Kourin is gone they won't have the minimum amount of members needed to keep it together. Naoki says the club won't let that happen and that they'll participate in the Vanguard Koshien which she should be that due to Ultra Rare duties. Kourin isn't so sure about that as the thinks that once the force of destiny corrects itself she's doubtful Ultra Rare will exist but she also says it doesn't matter since as long as she has her Vanguard deck with her that she'll eventually meet everyone again. The episode ends with Naoki, Shingo and Misaki wearing an armband that she doesn't know why she has but feels nostalgic for while Aichi comes in and notices that there is an empty seat in the room as if it was reserved for someone. He closes the door for the club room and we see that the sign that designates it as the Cardfight! Club is now gone. Uh oh.
Thus we've now reached the end of Cardfight!! Vanguard V Season 2 or what I consider to be the end of it as next week's episode is another clip show with chibi characters which I refuse to watch or review. This season was definitely better than the first in some regards but at the end of the day the same problems that I bitched about in Season 1 repeated here with inconsistent animation, piss poor fights, god awful pacing and an overall poor cast (with the exception of Naoki and Kourin. My Narukami bias aside I feel like these were the two legitimately well handled characters in the show) when you compare this season to it's original counterpart: The Reverse Arc.
OG Season 3 is often touted as the very best of the Original anime and when people said that the PSY-Qualia Zombe arc was just as good as it I was intrigued but now that we've wrapped it up I'm disappointed. PSY-Qualia Zombie characters definitely do not hold a candle to Reversed characters and the antagonist Brandt pales in comparison to the Star Vaders. You had thrilling multi part fights, better versions of the character arcs lightly touched on here and better music too. The animation in Season 3 was pretty bad but the fights themselves seemed to have better impact with them. Dragonic Descendant, Tetra-Drive Dragon, Raging Form Dragon, any of the Chaos Breaker Dragon scenes, Monarch Sanctuary Alfred breaking World End and of course Kai Break Riding Dragonic Overlord the Rebirth against Aichi. That's still one of the best scenes in all of the Vanguard anime.
This arc wasn't nearly as good and as I watched more and more of it the harder it was to continue. I've had people tell me that the show became unwatchable garbage and they dropped it and one of these people sat through RWBY Volume 5 in all of its entirety (I did as well and oof, it was painful)! I've gone over my gripes with this anime repeatedly in these reviews and at this point I just don't watch to do this anymore. I highly doubt I'll be doing reviews of the next season aside from maybe an episode or two that I felt compelled to talk about because at the end of the day this show sucks and the people that think it's fantastic have no fucking standards at all. Granted it's easy to have no standards when you've been hit with repeatedly bad seasons like GNext and GZ but I assure you both of those are leagues better than this drivel. If anyone reading this review likes V then good on you. I didn't and I don't see my opinions on the matter changing anytime soon. This just simply isn't the card battle anime that I'm looking for and now that we're getting set spoilers before the actual cards appear in the anime (which was a major reason that alot of the people I know bothered to watch the reboot) I've got really no further reason to stick around.
With that said until the foreseeable future what you'll be seeing on the Blue Corner - Blog Station will be OCG Tournament Results and any other random thing that piques my interest. Until next time this is Bluestar899, jacking out.
Oh and once again Cardfight! Vanguard V is fucking trash. :)
