Cardfight!! Vanguard

[Hoshikawa-kun]

(Yes, the exclamation points are part of the title)

For the unfamiliar; a new card battle anime started airing in January. Cardfight!! Vanguard is unique in that so far, it's focused on a casual level of play without any elements of saving the world present. It's a joint production between Satoshi Nakamura(Duel Masters), Takaaki Kidani(president of Bushiroad) and Akira Ito.
Yes, the same Akira Ito who did Yu-Gi-Oh! R, Takahashi's understudy. I'm still reeling from Yugi de-spelling someone else's de-spell while they're de-spelling his trap card.

There's currently a wiki for Vanguard at [url]http://cardfight.wikia.com/wiki/Cardfight!!_Vanguard_Wiki[/url], mostly dedicated to the cards. I've seen no word of a translation on the manga, but Bushiroad is licensing the anime to Crunchyroll for subtitling and online distribution.

After twelve episodes, only one fight has involved any of Yu-Gi-Oh!'s holographic craziness, and the main character is far from invincible. Most of the monster fights are imagined in the character's heads rather than made real. If the opening theme is any indication, Aichi(the hero) won't be doing any world saving until he buys some gloves and starts listening to JAM Project.


I've found Vanguard to be a breath of fresh air from other shounen anime. Aichi loses...a lot, but his losses are meaningful, and there hasn't been any filler yet. The characters are well-developed, and I can appreciate a rival that isn't a total rear end in a top hat. I've been thinking about how the shop tournament would conclude, and while it seems impossible that they won't match Aichi against Kai, I'm still wondering how he's going to deal with Dragonic Overlord.

Taking into account Blaster Blade's ability to instantly remove a rearguard, and Isolde's instant-block, Aichi is really running a control deck against someone who's main strategy is attacking more times per turn than the rules allow for. The problem with this is that Vanguard is a game primarily about jousting with the biggest lance, and when you only ever have 4 mana to work from it's kind of difficult to use that ability a lot. He really needs to start running multiple copies of BB and Gancelot.