Toppa Bashin – Episode 24

Back here again, it’s been like a Year now. And I’m in a Battle Spirits mood after the recent stream and I want to talk about cards.

There’s a Video up reviewing this episode but uh…

Well while only 2 people voted, no one apparently enjoyed the Video format all that much, so I guess I’m back to doing this written!

Which is fine, I can talk about far more than I would be able to normally.

Since there’s a divide between redoing them and just continuing, I’m just gonna re-do them so there’s a complete record on this Blog.

Anyway! The Episode title! Spring Batosupi! A Yellow Storm!

I can’t imagine what colour is going to be on feature today, and given Meganeko’s recent new crash course into Battle Spirits, I can’t imagine WHO might be playing it.

Bashin’s being Bashin as per usual, about as Docile as a Cat with a Rocket up it’s ass.

Bashin proceeds to run down a hill and the momentum prevents him from stopping.

I’d say “Lets hope to dear god he crashes” but I’ve watched this episode before!

…And my hopes are not so easily recognized.

The Speed Star pulls up and Hayami is absolutely surprised that Bashin was able to get up by himself.

Especially since there’s a Tournament today and Bashin fell asleep for the last one.

I shall simply hang my head given that we’re not watching a timeline where Bashin never got up for the tournament…

Or ever for that matter, give me THAT series.

Didn’t Bashin get completely destroyed in the last tournament by J’s 2nd X-Rare, The Gigantic Thor?

An X-Rare he received MID-TOURNAMENT by the way after getting mollywopped by Smile.

I guess he’s got the pride of 2nd place?

Meganeko is busy doing what Meganeko should have done from Episode 1. Signing the contract papers that demand she involve herself in the plot better.

And you didn’t bother to ask where your 12-year old grandchild with no other parents to speak of might be going all on her own?

I could harp on about how ridiculous it is to ask a dog that can’t talk if they want to pray but treating your pet no matter what it is like an actual person is probably the best way to interact with your pet.

“God! Give me the courage to play Card Games”

I wonder if there is a “Batosupi-No-Kami”

And can I suplex them?

What is a God if you can’t wage war against it?

Card Sensei makes an EXCELLENT Play on words here since “First” and “Last” are complete antonyms.

Guragurii the Turtle decides to chew him out for saying something so freaking corny.

Captain this is a Cartoon, it’s not like a Live action movie where that shit is super cringe, this is the BEST place for that sort of thing.

Also shomentoppa, I resist my inner grammar nazi only for your brilliance.

On the other end of the spectrum, the Antonym for Antonym is Synonym.

And Meganeko is apparently a synonym for “Irrelevant to the plot”

I complain about this in the video but Meganeko’s favourite colour is Yellow, her entire attire, design and DECK revolves around that colour.

The problem with adopting an alias centred around that name is that it makes it HELLA obvious what’s in your deck BEFORE you even start, making it so that your opponents have an edge over you.

Thankfully I believe that the Yellow cards were relatively new according to the anime thanks to J having trouble due to not recognizing them whatsoever. Meaning if J struggled so badly against a colour he wasn’t familiar with, then the average joe is probably going to get melted even if they know a Yellow deck is coming.

Guragurii believes Card Sensei should dabble in his Student’s decisons, by having him go completely against his colour scheme and go by the alias of “Master Yellow”

I guess that’s a good way to stand out… If standing out is your aim, and from what I can guess that’s NOT the aim because Meganeko doesn’t want to be noticed by Bashin.

As my friend Iffy would say
“YOU DIDN’T READ YA PAMPHLETS!”

This is an interesting statement that raises questions about the ethical nature of the Nazo-Otonas.

Well, doesn’t raise too many since we know they’re supposed to be evil as they’re under the control of King Uchuuchouten.

But it does make you wonder about the extent of their control. The “New X-Rares” are promptly given out by the Nazo-Otonas when beaten by powerful Card Battlers, but for what intent do they actually impose this rule?

Nine’s fixation on Bashin and Smile/Elliott’s fixation on J means that they probably each have an interest in the Cornerstone holders for particular reasons and want to see them succeed.

Smile is fairly clear in that he wants to Team up with J to defeat Uchuuchouten, but who knows what Nine wants with Bashin.

Smile gives Eight crap for losing The TwinRowdy Diranos to Bashin. Though he doesn’t seem too particularly concerned about the loss of a powerful new X-Rare being in the hands of a group that opposes them.

This story is starting to make less and less sense.

WOMAN YOU RAN A COST 7 RED TERRA DRAGON THAT EXCLUSIVELY SUPPORTS TERRA DRAGONS ALONG WITH A RED EXCLUSIVE KEYWORD,

IN A STRAIGHT GREEN DECK.

A THREE-YEAR OLD COULD PLAY CIRCLES AROUND YOU.

“The plan was calculated”

“But boy am I bad at Math”

I complain about this in the Video, but shouldn’t it be the other way around?

Having a High Ranker Pass means that you don’t have to participate in the upcoming Gunslinger, which means that you’re not actually required to be there until the finals. Plus there is a leaderboard of Gunslinger participants with placements at the top, meaning if any High Ranker turns up too late and gets Disqualified you can just take the next person down from the Gunslinger positions to join in the bracket section.

Why give a fast pass to the people who absolutely DO NOT NEED TO BE THERE right now?

Also FAVOURITISM MUCH!?

When you dedicate your entire life to interviewing one awfully specific rich boy celebrity, you’ll find you don’t have much else to do.

Christ if you’ve got nothing else to do just play Battle Spirits, its literally in the title.

Yeah, maybe its because anytime he wants to go literally anywhere Battle Spirits related he gets chased up by a bunch of fuckwits who appear on TV every morning.

OI!

Battle Spirits Heroes isn’t for another 3 seasons!

Which means he’s had plenty of time to plan his entry route in such a way that lets him dodge you completely.

Yeah, people tend to get nervous when you wander around the stadium wearing CLOAKS!

I’m surprised a Security guard hasn’t stopped you for lookign suspicious.

I haven’t done a proper blog post in several months and I’m still never prepared for the sheer dumbassery of this show.

But you might as well tell us what we need to be prepared for.

Now is a good time to review the main cards of each main character because it’s always a good time to do that.

Let’s start with good ol’ Bashin, this muppet has 2 Red X-Rares, the Ancient Dragon Family Siegfried who has Awaken and grants life upon its destruction. And the Terra Dragon Family Diranos who supports Awaken and grants other Terra Dragons the Awaken Keyword (including itself)

These actually mesh well together because being able to Awaken constantly lets you attack at maximum power with each Spirit, with 2 Powerful Awakening X-Rares Bashin can make the most out of few core.

Meanwhile J’s X-Rares are much less meshable with each other. Having abilities for vastly different purposes. Odin initially allowed J to choke out his opponents with defense, a tactic he employed using various Nexuses. Now however Thor makes his strategy shift completely, taking on a more offensive stance by sacrificing more and more Armed Machines.

Notably, Odin is a Machine and thats even more lack of synergy between the 2. Since J received Thor we’ve seen far less of Odin.

Her 2 X-Rares both share a name, The SevenShogun, and her entire strategy revolves around manipulating the core.

So of course, having 2 X-Rares that fiddle with different core arrangements is always good. Especially when used together, Desperado can wipe single-core Spirits off the board, Destlord can get Level 2 Spirits out of the way, and Desperado can put Level 3 spirits in range of Destlord’s effect. Making this a good combination.

Meanwhile… Striker haaaas…

A Single Duke Kingtaurus. Which granted is quite a Powerful X-Rare given it’s got the highest BP value at Level 3 among all the cornerstone holders.

Sadly for a good portion of the start of the Battle Spirits series, since the 1st set only contained 4 colours, only 4 colours got new X-Rares, so since Yellow was introduced in BS02 (the current set this anime is on) and was subsequently given an X-Rare, one of the colours had to be dropped, and that colour ended up being Green.

When your Lizard starts panicking when it comes to the topic of your Idol work, that’s not a great signifier that you’re making the best decisions.

To make irrelevant story short. My Sunshine escaped the Live by turning the chair away and sticking her wig onto a Teddy bear.

Hilariously, this implies that her natural hair colour is Purple.

Righto! Time for the Gunslinger! Quick reminder of the rules!

There are various desks in the Gunslinger Hall and all Battlers have to form a line. They can pick whatever line they like and you’re free to vacate your place in a line to join a new one.

You earn points for every battle you win on the Gunslinger but if you lose a match you’re forced out of your current position, having to rejoin the line or join a new line.

Also there’s a hard time limit of apparently 3 hours for the Gunslinger, meaning you need to have decks that win consistently and fast. This actively discourages slower lockdown centric decks or decks that take forever to go off as you’ll earn less points.

Which once again makes me wonder why the hell you let the High Rankers skip the line at the front of the stadium given they are NOT REQUIRED TO PARTICIPATE.

Ah yes because they need a reason to include the High Rankers in the Gunslinger feature even though it makes absolutely no sense to do so.

Anyway, Smile being Smile, holding the title of the “Gunslinger’s Apparition” is doing Smile things by playing in the format he dominates best at.

Interesting to point out smile’s unique “factor” I guess we’ll call it.

In a card game its a bit hard to differentiate beyond the cards themselves how a player plays differently from each other, and while Smile’s deck hasn’t particularly shown anything interesting to us, the idea they’ve been hitting us with (including Smile’s backstory) is that Smile can play consistently well regardless of how long he’s done it for.

And of course, the players not expecting Smile to lose anytime soon try a different line.

Problem with this strategy is that by sacrificing your position, while you may get the opportunity to get points, if there is no line behind the person in the lead, the person losing can just try again at that same line. (I don’t believe there is a rule dictating that you can’t go back to the same line but it’s never mentioned in show)

Nine is always so god damn philosophical.

Basically Nine anticipates that Smile will endure some kind of event specifically due to his position as the Gunslinger’s Apparition.

Eight indicates these 2 specifically as worrying Nine.

Well the unknown is always scary and anyone with enough willpower to stand out will likely have something to show for it.

And Kyouka’s participating in this gunslinger! Meaning we’ll get to see her play soon!

Such an adorable character design.

Um… Commentator-San…

Cinderella was poor and had 2 asshole STEP-SISTERS.

There is nothing that compares Kyouka to Cinderella.

The cool thing about reserved characters is often times… When they get animated.

Its rare moments like that which can make you love a ticking time bomb, but its a hard balance to strike. Get animated too often and you’ll either be writing the wrong type of character or you get some dissonance between the character’s description and how they’re actually portrayed.

Too little however and you get this:

For the first 90% of the Universe Survival Arc, Jiren’s Arc is a beautiful story of how a fencepost became a Character.

Totally Not Mark

J’s apparently managed to get a moment alone to think about how his Dad was meeting up with Micheal Elliott and Smile.

That’s extremely non-specific.

“You were here, is that why you’re enthusiastic?”

I mean it’s not really all that obvious that he was enthusiastic to begin with, secondly what would him being there have anything to do with him being enthusiastic?

Unless they’re trying to foreshadow something in that stadium area that would be worth being enthusiastic about but its done extremely poorly given J is offhandedly mentioning it.

I guess they managed to salvage the scene by having Elliott react extremely poorly to the notion that he was at that specific location.

I imagine here that Elliott is referencing J’s father given that J has no clue why his father would be conversing with “Two” and “Four” of the Thousand Spirits Group.

Elliott’s confidence in such a statement (meaning he’s aware of how J’s father will act) tells J that something definitely is going on involving his father, which is enough information J needs to confirm his suspicions. Giving him an incentive to find out what it is.

Alrighty, Kyouka’s finally been paired against Meganeko.

Though one of the 2 would have had to have battled already, meaning Meganeko’s deck should be no secret.

Way to sully Smile’s incentive for Gunslinger domination.

He has an edgey design and amazing skills and conduct and they just keep ruining more and more of the character as the series continues.

Bashin is blissfully unaware of how completely and unrelentingly repulsive he is.

J always gets really flustered when it comes to anything concerning his sister.

Is letting people know that you unconditionally love your family that embarrassing?

Kyouka’s addressing of Bashin is ridiculously adorable at various times and the only gripe I have with that is that it’s not directed at any other character besides Bashin.

Also pointed out by Iffy, because Kyouka and J come from Kyoto, Kyouka has a Kansai-Dialect, specifically “Kyoto-ben”, which is apparently considered to be elegant and feminine dialect. My only question is why J doesn’t also exhibit similar speaking mannerisms to Kyouka (though it might just be me missing the Japanese cues because their voices are so different)

Irregardless, I absolutely love Kyouka’s method of speaking, it suits her really well.

“Can you handle an opponent who’s never played in an official match before?”

I dunno Turtle, Meganeko also hasn’t played in an official match before.

Infact, Kyouka is the BEST opponent Meganeko could ask for.

Why is Kyouka the signal to divest the Robe?

I assume it’s because Bashin is watching but Card Sensei only says to remove the cloak in response to Meganeko being willing to battle Kyouka.

And unless an opponent decided to leave after beating another opponent there is absolutely no reason why Meganeko wouldn’t have had another battle prior to this.

Plot plz.

We can see a “Merat” at the bottom of Kyouka’s Deck. Meaning Kyouka’s using a Red deck. Might as well take a look at her card.

A Cost 2 that can be played for no cost, has 3000 BP at level 1 and 6000 BP at level 2.

…And only has 2 debilitating effects.

Battle Spirits having effects that hurt you is rare but usually there is some great benefit to an effect that applies restrictions or harms your Spirit.

Not only is there no visibly great benefit to Merat’s effects but it has TWO of them. It loses a Core on your Start step meaning you have to keep it levelled, but if you level it then it can’t attack making it super predictable.

“And is also ripping off Suiren”

“And has changed far too little about his base design for it to be an effective alter ego”

Granted I imagine Suiren’s identity was a huge hot topic in an earlier episode and given that she’s a popular female card battler, its the inspiration Meganeko drew from to form her disguise.

It’s just a shame that it lacked some imagination.

If Suiren and Striker are THIS surprised about a recoloured Suiren then they definitely haven’t seen the Sonic fandom.

And we’re at the halfway point, lets use this to review the plot synopsis so far.

It’s the Battle Spirits Championship, and for whatever reason the Nazo-Otonas have some interest in the turnout for this specific Championship.

Irrelevant to what the Nazo-Otonas want, Kyouka and Meganeko are playing their debut matches in the Gunslinger, we don’t know what’s motivating Kyouka but Meganeko is motivated to impress Bashin with her Battle Spirits ability without revealing her identity to Bashin, getting support from Card Sensei.

And J suspects his father due to his father’s involvment with Elliott and Smile.

So far nothing too interesting happening, especially since we’re 24 episodes in and we still don’t know TOO much about what’s happening. J wishes to deal with the Thousupi Group but we have no idea what they’re trying to do that J is trying to prevent.

So far Kyouka has a huge field advantage, having many sufficiently levelled spirits while Meganeko only has 1 spirit.

This would be more concerning if it wasn’t Meganeko’s turn. But since it is, Kyouka is one mistake away from losing.

Luckily for Meganeko, she has the Sealed Spellbook available, not only is that a permanent symbol for reduction but its Level 1 effect allows her to alter field-wide card effects to only affect one side of the board.

What?

WHY!?

The only reason this play would make sense is that Kyouka’s spirits are all exhausted and she needs a Magic to stop Piyon’s attack.

Why else would she risk obliterating her entire board advantage just to stop one little Piyon?

Unfortunately Kyouka wasn’t aware of The Sealed Spellbook’s ability, so she ends up just wiping her own board.

This is a pretty poor victory, for that plan to work, Meganeko had to bet on 2 things:

1. That Kyouka either had no response OR that her only response was Flame Tempest
2. That Kyouka was not aware of the effect of The Sealed Spellbook

It was ONE little Piyon, if Kyouka had used a card like Flame Dance or any other single target removal magic, Meganeko would have lost.

“Surpass” isn’t the word I would use for someone who’s victory entirely hinged on an opponent screwing up in a way that could not have reasonably been predicted.

Your special training which amounted to you throwing out a Flame Tempest because you didn’t think to leave Blockers?

Well given that Kyouka’s “Special training” amounted to effectively nothing we haven’t seen before, the answer would be yes.

Notably with Kiiroko in 2nd place.

Interestingly these are all names but who the hell is “B.B.”?

Apparently Smile’s so fed up with Kiiroko’s placing that he actively throws a fight just to move lines. It’s always interesting when something like this happens because on one-hand, Smile just technically lost a battle to an NPC and a loss is absolutely a loss.

On the other hand there’s the idea of “Meaningful losses” and this is a situation where Smile as a character isn’t placed under any kind of position to learn from a loss in a game he wasn’t particularly interested in anyway. The result is he lost but the reason he lost is because he needed to in order to get him to where he wanted to go, there’s no lesson here and his opponent is basically being rewarded NOT for their ability but because they just so happened to be the person Smile was playing against when he lost interest.

This is a good example where a prominent character can lose while still maintaining whatever power hierarchy is in place.

Granted Smile’s emotional investment into battling a student of Card Sensei would absolutely trump whatever else he might have been doing at the time.

Does the hair not give it away?…

Shades are not the perfect tool of disguise cartoons make them out to be.

There’s nothing much to comment here, other than the Nazo-Otonas recognise Card Sensei.

Card Sensei is worried about the prospect of Meganeko battling Smile, mostly because it would be an emotionally intense battle for the pair since they are connected through their teacher.

Not to mention Smile’s reputation for not only being the Gunslinger Champion but also upsetting the opponents he beats would be a bad experience for Meganeko who has just started out.

Card Sensei tries to convince Meganeko to back out but Meganeko points out why she wishes to continue, noting not only that she trained for this but also because she wishes to compare her strength against another Yellow player. Dismissing Card Sensei’s belief that she only wanted to Battle Bashin.

Card Sensei’s backstory was told to Meganeko after she discovered his status as Number Five.

So being his current student it’s entirely fair to have the motivation to battle his previous student.

What’s COOL about this is this isn’t a decision involving another person either, Card Sensei doesn’t want her to battle Smile and this has nothing to do with Bashin, its a personal resolve she developed after learning about Card Sensei and studying under him.

Which makes Meganeko her own character rather than simply revolving around Bashin.

Need I remind you that I fucking love Smile’s voice and design!?

2 Students, both taught in the same style, connected through the same Master, one driven by rage against his teacher and the other driven to test her own ability against another Yellow user.

In hindsight, this battle is actually something we can sink our emotional teeth into. The only shame is that Meganeko has done very little to earn such an emotional conflict.

Turn 6? Bit low for this series.

Smile’s voice in combat is so raspy and aggressive and I love it.

Smile summons his HellDog Cerru-Berus and levels it up to Level 3 immediately.

This is an important detail because not only can Cerru-Berus not attack at Levels 1 and 2, but Smile can take control of an opposing Cost 6 Spirit on his Start Step if Cerru-Berus survives.

Smile promptly ends his turn.

Meganeko adds The Fairy Tanya to her board and ends her turn.

If I were her I would have swung with Barball, it only needs 3 cores to match Cerru-Berus’ BP making it enough to threaten Smile because no matter what Barball isn’t going to protect her on her turn.

Might as well get some mileage out of it, or exhaust it to prevent it being useful.

Smile uses Cerru-Berus to take Barball on his Start Step, allowing him to make use of the Spirit and it’s abilities… With the caveat that Smile isn’t allowed to touch it’s core arrangement.

Smile swings with his newly acquired Barball and takes a life from Meganeko.

This is the first time we see the life here so I don’t know how many lives Smile has.

Meganeko now realizing that Barball is useless for blocking starts swinging with it, Smile blocks using a Tanya. Meganeko ends her turn.

Barball is once again stolen from Meganeko and Smile adds Piyon to his field.

Meganeko takes another life from Barball’s attack.

Good on Card Sensei to drop his previous contentions and actually support his student.

Smile makes this show worth watching. There’s nothing quite like the sweet animated appearance he takes on whenever he’s in the heat of battle which seriously contrasts with the way he practically looked like a Zombie in his initial appearance.

Kiiroko decides now is a good time to completely break the boundaries of the genre she’s in and become a Magical Girl, who knows what levels of power this transformation will afford her-

Nevermind, apparently she just has something she can play.

Barball is brought up to level three, giving it a wopping… 7000 BP.

One would think that for a Vanilla, Barball would actually have comparable or more BP than The DragonEmperor Siegfried, toned down only slightly by the additional cost reduction it has. But early vanillas in this game had really poor scores, probably because you had to run just a few in most decks at the time. Nowadays Vanillas are whopping beaters with enormously high BP values.

Want an example?

This is “Mushatokage” from BS31, the start of an Era of Battle Spirits that is about midway through the game’s current lifespan at time of writing. One will notice that it can easily compete with Barball for BP at its highest level.

We’re currently on BS02 at present however, so I can’t really scream “Power creep!” when the game is still being figured out at this moment in time.

Kiiroko then uses The Sealed Spellbook in Combo with Heavy Gate, to recap, Heavy Gate makes it so both players cannot attack or block with Cost 1 or below Spirits, The Sealed Spellbook takes magic effects that apply to both players and can ensure it only applies to you or the opponent.

Therefore, Heavy Gate becomes one-sided and Smile is the only one unable to use Cost 1 or below Spirits to attack or block with this turn.

For the character that introduced yellow to the series, and displayed its characteristics by beating the ever-loving snot out of J, you’d think he’d be a little more well-versed in its capabilities to not actively make this mistake.

At the same time, BECAUSE Yellow is a relatively rare colour before Smile’s appearance, its also possible he’s just inexperienced at dealing with opposing Yellow users.

And from that, Kiiroko wins the game with a full attack.

This is also covered in the video, but this is going to be the start of a recurring narrative issue that will crop up later, as you can see currently, Smile has been used kind of like a doorstep in order to display Kiiroko’s abilities. This isn’t a crime in and of itself, only in conjunction with a few other things that will be covered later.

To say Smile isn’t pleased is an understatement, currently Smile is giving “Master Yellow” a death glare over his new student.

While I’d love to explore how this could culminate later, we’re in a Tournament sequence right now.

Uchuuchouten gives the same intro he did for the last tournament. I’m pretty sure its word-for-word the same introduction he gave last time.

Starting off this mini-Tourney is going to be Mr. Elliott along with Bashin Toppa, we can all guess how this is going to end.

Which is weird because Mr. Elliott is KNOWN for handing out cards pre-release for the sake of making players stronger, why doesn’t he do the same for himself?

And of course in good ol’ Toppa Bashin fashion, we skip ahead to an unrealistically late turn.

Elliott’s unfortunately having a hard time, having lost 3 lives already.

Only 1 spirit a side, Bashin has DragonicFortress Giga and Elliott only has Shockeater.

Well its clear to see who has the advantage then.

It ain’t a Battle if a character hasn’t drawn their ace, actually very few times in the series does a Character not play their ace, but interestingly there are a few battles that do occur where an Ace is not played.

There’s a temptation to go “BRO WHY ARE YOU SURPRISED YOU OWN THE PRINTING PRESS THAT FUCKING MAKES THEM” but he’s probably commenting on the timing of the X-Rare’s appearance, which is bad. You never want to be ill-prepared for an X-Rare.

And Siegfried takes out Elliott’s penultimate life. Now will Elliott play something fancy and shiny?

Nope, its attack of the Budget crew, Beatbeetle, Hercules-Geo and Gowsilvia are thrown out with Gowsilvia being at Level 2.

And Gowsilvia’s nifty ability kicks in which gives it an extra 4000 BP

At level 2, Gowsilvia has 4000 BP, with the extra 4000 that’s 8000.

Unfortunately, The DragonEmperor Siegfried beats that at Level 3, so fat chance.

Meanwhile the most powerful exchange I think I’ve ever had the honour of hearing come out of Bashin, him flat out calling Elliott WEAK.

I can feel this scene deep in my soul and its one of the few times I actually resonate with Bashin, feeling the need for some excitement only to be denied it, even if you’re in an advantageous position can make the remainder of the game a bit boring.

Bashin quickly levels up his DragonicFortress Giga in order to play Seventh Crimson. Now while this card has been in frequent usage in Bashin’s battles, lemme show you all something I’ve been working on.

A new visual for effects on cards, if a card isn’t in perfectly clear view or is particularly important, I’ll draft up one of these in order to review it, I think its pretty cool and accurately lists all the necessary effects in a way that is easy to read than trying to parse everything in basic text.

Anyway, moving on, Bashin is targeting DragonicFortress Giga to remove cores

Since Elliott’s spirits didn’t have 7 core between them (pretty unlikely when you play 3 spirits in a row), they all get wiped out.

No Elliott, that would be cheating.

Siegfried attacks, taking Elliott’s last life, giving Bashin the win.

Considering the board state, which consisted of Elliott’s 3 Spirits and Bashin’s 2 relatively high cost spirits, it wasn’t a bad plan for Elliott to hold off for a turn until he could figure out a way to deal with them, but Bashin having a way to sweep the board is pretty overkill.

Well, at least the character themselves don’t seem very strong but you would think a character with access to new cards before they release would be able to try get the edge over Bashin with unfamiliar cards, there wasn’t even an X-Rare played.

Granted, just because Elliott has unfamiliar cards doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll win, but the element of surprise goes a long way in any competitive game.

Now we get a lovely look at J vs Smile’s battle. This battle is a bit of a strange choice for many reasons.

At this point Smile’s bucket of achievements boil down to beating J by introducing Yellow. He’s been beaten by Bashin already and now even Kiiroko, and given J’s near unstoppable nature with Thor, its very clear what the result of this battle will be given its a replay.

Smile here isn’t really shining as a great example of a powerful enemy, which makes me wonder what the purpose of showing this scene is even for, J’s power is already properly cemented, and Smile is already showing to be losing his touch. So what’s the point of this when the result is going to be obvious?

Well, the series has an answer.

J removes all of his Core from The ImpregnableFortress Odin.

In exchange for Thor, whom he promptly proceeded to beat Smile over the head with it and win

In card game anime, how a player treats their own aces is an often important indicator to who they are as a person… sometimes.

In Yu-Gi-Oh!, Arkana, or Pandora for Japanese viewers willingly destroyed his Dark Magicians (his ace) to gain even small advantages and is considered a monster for doing it this way.

Battle Spirits only OCCASIONALLY demonises players for the way they use their own cards, especially if it means winning. But usually Battle Spirits looks to the deck style as a whole before determining a person’s personality through it, as opposed to 1 simple action like J trading in one X-Rare for another.

Smile is undeterred by his defeat at the very least, J’s strength going simply exacerbating his desire to team up with J in order to defeat Uchuuchouten.

But anyway, this battle, while on the outset seemingly pointless, not only serves to highlight J’s reliance on Thor to the EXCLUSION of Odin, but also to show Smile’s position in all this, he’s not slowed down by his string of defeats, merely seeing it as a benefit.

Looking at that bracket, we can see who’s fought and which battles have completed. What I find interesting is that Kiiroko hasn’t fought whoever this “Gaku” is but is still worried about her second match.

Kind of a bit dismissive, this secene would make a wee bit more sense if it showed Kiiroko had actually PROGRESSED to the round against Bashin.

Also nice to see Battle Beast (B.B.) hasn’t completed his round yet, can’t wait for the much awaited Arc-V crossover-

And that’s the end of the episode!

There is some exchange between Kiiroko and Bashin but its just commenting on how she defeated Smile and otherwise adds nothing, the Batosupi Lecture at the end also lacks a card of the day. So I guess I’ll pick out something I found interesting.

At this point in the game where J depletes Odin was a moment I found curious. The reason being is that Berserker-Gun on the board.

Berserker-Gun is not an armed Machine and therefore does not benefit Thor to be on the board, Odin is stronger but J was definitely aiming to end it all that turn. So my confusion lies in why J didn’t keep Odin and simply level it down and beat down Smile with 2 X-Rares.

It could have been to avoid a situation where even if he failed to defeat Smile, he wouldn’t lose Odin, but Smile was forced to block Thor’s attack using Cerru-Berus, and it only applies on the Start Step of the user’s turn, so even with a second Cerru-Berus, Smile wouldn’t be stealing Odin.

One might argue this is an oversight, another might also argue the idea that perhaps J WANTED to discard his X-Rare and that his choice to do so is highlighted by the fact that there was an evidently better choice to be made if he wanted to make it. In a case of information not directly fed to the audience that hints at the mindset of a given player.

But if I were to concede that point I’d be giving this show a little TOO much credit, so instead I’ll just assume the animators looked back at this and went “oh shit, missed that.”

Anyway, thats all from me for today! I’ll see you NEXT episode!