Time for another Episode I’ve already watched, but screw it, I need a complete archive of this stuff on this Blog, and I’ll be damned if I don’t go through with it.
As the subber declared, “SKIP NOTHING”
Besides if I don’t get through this, how will I get to the shows I actually WANT to review.
So rather than bore us all with the details, let’s get into it, Episode is titled “A Flash of Light, Cornerstone’s Awakening”
And with that they’ve spoiled the ENTIRE premise of the episode, good job keeping that suspense writers.
So it appears that there’s some pre-second round speculation, and both Bashin and J are favourites to win this one apparently.
Kiiroko is obviously going to get some notice for defeating the Gunslinger’s Apparition.
And I’m obviously going to get completely vexed by the fact that Smile is suffering from a lovely case of what TvTropes calls The Worf Effect
I have a Video of this episode up on my channel with me reviewing it, HOWEVER I will explain what “The Worf Effect” is here.
Named after Mr. Worf from good ol’ Star Trek, “The Worf Effect” concerns the action of introducing a character as a strong and powerful character, and showing their strength… Before using them as a punching bag to show how much stronger everyone else is.
Its like literary power creep, and the character being the unfortunate sufferer of the Worf Effect genuinely starts to appear weak by audience standards.
In our case, Smile who was shown as incredibly tough for defeating the powerful J has been defeated by Bashin, J with Odin, and new player Kiiroko.
Suddenly the “Gunslinger’s Apparition” isn’t looking so scary anymore.
Your positivity is misplaced.
Well in class he’s also Card Sensei, but personally I like to call him what everyone else in this show is, “idiot”
Card Sensei is insulting Smile like it’s about to be presented to a Judge in court or some shit.
If you’re going to burn the guy at least put some effort into it.
Smile does ask about Card Sensei’s student but Card Sensei avoids the topic, Smile is apparently calling out Card Sensei’s cowardice but I don’t really see at what moment Card Sensei has been a coward?
He trained Smile until Smile developed a new outlook on life coupled with a personality shift into who he is now, and faced him head on before losing.
He left after that and even went and trained Meganeko, I’m really not sure what part of this is cowardly, God forbid he didn’t charge headfirst into a pit of lava.
See what I mean? The minute Smile calls him a wuss Card Sensei just goes “Aight, Square up, bitch”
What part of this is cowardly?
Awwww yiss, more Card Games, and this time its a serious Card Sensei vs Smile.
Seeing battles between side characters like this is really quite rewarding, since you get to see matchups that aren’t just MC’s deck vs X.
It’s one of the most excellent opportunities a card game anime can make use of.
But of course they have a reason to take this where no one’s looking, for they’re about to-
Okay do you ACTUALLY mind? 15 turns is literally a whole set of interactions gone!
ALRIGHT SLOW DOWN THERE CARD SENSEI.
Out of nowhere, and for the first time, they’ve shown off a Yellow X-Rare, namely The ArcAngelia Mikafar from BS02.
So this card is notorious for 2 things in present-day Battle Spirits, the first thing you’ll probably notice about this card is that its BANNED.
That’s right! The most you’ll see of this card in any of today’s game is probably from the Episodes of Battle Spirits that we’re watching!
The second thing its notorious for is the second effect, it has an extremely low power for what it does, but then again it could have 0 BP and still get banned, that second effect is attainable with only one extra available Core, once that’s on Mikafar, you do not pay for Magic, ever.
It was actually so strong that in the extremely limited english release of this game (which only lasted 6 sets) they nerfed this card so that it’s free magic effect only applied while it was attacking, thats significantly better as the opponent gets a flash response between each card and it severely inhibits what magic is applicable to it’s effect but its STILL ridiculous.
And just incase you were having any theories as to whether this 57-set-old-at-time-of-writing card could come off the list? No. No it will never come off. There is far too much Magic in the game now and the simple existence of this card would likely facilitate MANY infinite loops. Its also the reason she hasn’t got a Revival card, which are older cards updated with new effects to make them more relevant to today’s game, as Revival cards hold the same place on the banlist as their originals due to sharing the same name.
Anyway, moving on…
Notably, Card Sensei activates Mikafar’s effect to check cards from his deck equal to the number of his Yellow Spirits, but doesn’t actually explain that he’s doing that, he just kind of picks up a card and reveals White Potion.
Card Sensei makes instant use of Mikafar’s effect to now start throwing out free Magic, first he uses Poison Shoot to level down Smile’s Mikafar to Level 1.
My immediate thought was “Wait, Smile has a Mikafar and didn’t just instantly win the game? How?!” but then I remember that Yellow don’t have a lot of really good Magic just yet.
In this age of BS02, the best card Yellow has currently is Heavy Gate to stop Weenie Rushing, or Chump-Blocking.
At the moment, the best way to use Mikafar is to combine it with Magic of other colours.
Card Sensei then follows up with Flame Dance, who’s effect is described above.
Now, what Spirit did we just mention has incredibly low BP?
Of course, the selection is the now 4000 BP Mikafar.
Card Sensei apparently isn’t done flexing just yet, now using Binding Woods!
We all know Smile uses straight Yellow, so all of his Spirits are exhausted by this.
The drawback to Binding Woods is it also includes your own Spirits in the effect.
Meaning Mikafar herself is exhausted, but if you’ve been keeping up with these posts (I sure haven’t) and remember what Card Sensei JUST added to his hand, you’ll see why this isn’t a problem.
White Potion allows Card Sensei to refresh one spirit, of course Mikafar will be the target.
Let’s review, with this Combo, Card Sensei removed Smile’s Mikafar from the board, preventing Smile from countering for free.
Axed Smile’s entire Board by exhausting it all, and then made up for the downside by re-refreshing Mikafar.
And all that using a 5 card combo using all 5 colours currently available.
The first rule of Card Sensei, you do not fuck with Card Sensei.
Nothing like a sweet badass mentor trope to go with this show, Card Sensei’s been kinda creepazoid up until now but damn he does not disappoint.
Card Sensei just pulled the card game equivalent of a Raging Demon on Smile.
Card Sensei acknowledging Smile’s Strength but indicating that being strong for the sake of being strong isn’t enough to actually do anything useful with it.
Smile, in a very strange turn of events despite his consistent string of losses isn’t actually distraught by any of this.
Perhaps the “Gunslinger’s Apparition” meant more than just a spooky winner, this guy’s like a narrative Zombie, regardless of how much he’s being punted down loser aisle he just keeps coming back completely undisturbed from before.
I am unsure if that’s good or bad.
There appears to be a disconnect between what Smile is and what Card Sensei believes him to be. Card Sensei thinks he’s just trying to accrue Strength but Smile has been targeting his Cowardice and his Kindness as flaws, and wasn’t particularly surprised at Card Sensei beating him quite soundly.
It wasn’t that Smile was calling him weak, he was saying that how Card Sensei was using his strength was incorrect, and Smile did go through a grueling process alongside Card Sensei to rid himself of his own kindness which is the only reason he’s this tough to begin with.
I guess the disagreement is that Card Sensei turned Smile into an unkind monster, and Smile is unsure why Card Sensei dislikes the state he ended up in when Card Sensei made him that way. Card Sensei believes its his fault too.
Oh hey, the updated brackets for the next games are ready.
I see our favourite to win, B.B. has defeated Saku, nice. Let’s see how J fares against Arc-V’s Fusion Dimension Secret Weapon.
I don’t think there’s much useful going on in this scene, Kiiroko is wondering where Card Sensei is, and hides from our Cornerstone Holders who gossip about Kiiroko’s strength
It would indeed be interesting, but we totally need a Suiren Squad involving members of ALL colours.
It’d be like a Power Ranger sequence.
J wishes to hold a thank-you party at his house after the group graduates.
I’m not sure I’d invite these lunkheads J.
I say “Lunkheads” but I just mean Bashin really.
Meganeko just barely escapes from the main cast, because mingling is for nerds.
But I’m not sure being caught by your Dog, your Grandfather and your love interest’s parent is much better honestly.
Also she wears the Shades OVER her Glasses!?
To reduce the amount of images in this scene I’ll give some context, Meganeko explains to her Grandpa and Hayami-
Wait a second I literally just realized Hayami’s name is similar to “Hayai” which means fast… And she’s the Speed Star.
This is the most awkward time to be having this revelation but god do I feel stupid.
Anyway, Meganeko explains that if she plays Battle Spirits, she’ll understand what makes Bashin tick, as well as be able to relate to his friends on a level that lets her be part of that group.
So in other words, its peer pressure. Which sucks but at the same time sometimes you gotta make tough choices when the friends you WANT to have are greatly into something you’re not.
Hayami gives a short speech about how thankful she is to Meganeko and that Bashin will be REAL happy about this, before encouraging her to “Just go through with it” to stop her being nervous.
The most validating thing here is getting advice from the object of your nervousness’ parent really. If they’re telling you to go for it, its probably super re-assuring.
I think this show is starting to rub off on me, the last few scenes did not use Bashin as a centerpiece, it really gives the vibe that in spite of being the main character, the World does not revolve around him.
And also in this moment, he’s giving a real big vibe of… Competence?
I think someone spiked my Irn Bru this morning, this is NOT the vibe I should be getting.
Okyo makes some comment to J about her feeling J would be more worried about his father, J’s worries are apparently entirely obscured by his anticipation of battling Bashin.
Okay is it just the way they’ve drawn Bashin here? In just a few comments and episodes they’ve actually made him seem IMPOSING.
Alright, so it’s turn 21 (cue disgruntled turn-skipping noises) and the score is 4-5 in Bashin’s favor.
Bashin’s board consists of:
- The RiseDragon Balmung – Lv3
- Lizardedge
- Eyeburn
While Kiiroko has 2 Piyons and a MelodyBird Crewc, all level 1.
Listen if Bashin has enough core to bring freaking RISEDRAGON BALMUNG to Level 3! (8 cores required) then you can easily tell who’s winning.
Bashin attacks with Balmung, and Kiiroko takes from the life (Life: 4 -> 3)
We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming to bring you: The cost of tossing away your glasses coolly.
At the very least its a nice moment, Card Sensei comments that he can’t teach Kiiroko anything anymore, which is just as well considering she’s graduating from his class.
I wonder what card that would be.
Bashin’s apparently ended his turn, so now Kiiroko gets to show us what she put her feelings into.
Kiiroko strenghens her board with The Fairy Tanya and The FairyQueen Ti-Tanya
I doubt Ti-Tanya’s effect is going to come into play here, at Level 2 or 3 during the opponent’s attack step, she gets lets you move 2 core from your Trash to her at the start of the step.
She’s good for setting up defensive magic.
Ah nice, Spirit Illusion.
She’s going to increase her attacking power for this turn by forcing every Spirit to be Level 3 of any given colour. This card is good given her opponent only uses one colour.
Slight miscalculation on your part though Meganeko, you only have 5 Spirits, and Bashin has 5 lives along with 2 available blockers.
This isn’t going to work, even with a full attack.
Bashin blocks Tanya with Lizardedge and Crewc with Eyeburn, both being destroyed in the process.
And an attack from Ti-Tanya snatches one of Bashin’s lives.
My first reaction is “She really isn’t”, but my second reaction is “Bashin didn’t need to block those attacks”
Could have happily eaten 3 lives and be even MORE set. I have no idea why he felt the need to reduce himself to 1 Spirit (and therefore 1 reduction with less core at his disposal)
Only through his blocks is Meganeko now in a position to win with 5 spirits to 1 and 2 available blockers, but now it’s Bashin’s turn.
See what I mean? She ain’t winnin’ shit.
And THAT’S just a waste of core! But its gonna give him the win anyhow.
You’d think with someone anticipating to play against Bashin all this time she’d have factored in a counter plan for Seventh Crimson instead of using a strategy that plays right into it, using an artificial Level booster which works best when your Spirits have low Core counts.
This game is stupid.
With no blockers and 3 attackers, that’s game for Bashin.
I’m going to be as GENEROUS as possible and assume that is because he topdecked Seventh Crimson. But even if he hadn’t, Meganeko’s Spirit Illusion only works for 1 turn, she’d have been stuck for BP for a good while.
Because of course that’s a sensible way of dealing with things, I know its meant to be because “Friends know their friends” but Bashin is a notorious IDIOT. He didn’t give her the time of day and was fully aware she didn’t play, what about her would have tipped you off?
And her disguise was good enough to hide her identity to everyone else so why is Bashin special in this regard?
Intermission, guess we get a mid-episode review of the story so far.
This first half was kind of alright, we’ve gotten 2 fights. Smile vs Card Sensei and Kiiroko vs Bashin.
Smile vs Card Sensei is adequately emotionally loaded, its a Former Student vs Former Master situation with Card Sensei trying his best to get through to Smile, but apparently a losing streak that has lasted god knows how many episodes isn’t enough to sway the chap.
Kiiroko vs Bashin is not quite as impressive, once again, she has every reason to have some kind of plan around Seventh Crimson rather than just playing cards and going brrrr, it makes her victory against Smile look like a fluke and Smile’s meant to be notoriously strong.
It bothers me is all, the person who lost to an idiot did so by being an idiot and said idiot defeated one of the coolest characters this show has.
Now we have Elliott with what appears to be a god damn CIGAR.
I am pretty sure Japan has rules against Cigar depictions in their anime don’t they?
Well if they DID have any, that would certainly skirt around the issue, but also Cigar shaped Chocolate is the most American thing I think this show has shown us.
And this show has a Balding fat dude with what I can only describe as an Elvis Presley getup.
Wait, at what point in this tournament did Elliott face J? He fought BASHIN.
The only other time he fought J was in the booster Draft, which he lost. But that was 6 episodes ago!
His power?
I’m FAIRLY sure this entire tournament has been comparing him to Bashin, J is not uniquely special in this regard, both have 2 X-Rares, the only difference is one is rich but you’re ALREADY affiliated with his father.
So money isn’t the problem, yes he’s a strong battler but only because you’ve supplied him with cards he shouldn’t HAVE yet.
Okay I’m being overly pedantic, this guy IS a multi-time champion after all. It wouldn’t be problematic to say that his loss to Smile was entirely orchestrated by Elliott in order to make J reliant on them for power. And they want him to use their power because he is an effective user of it.
Bashin on the other hand is a wildcard, making J the better choice.
They appear to have skipped over the Striker vs J fight, but given the imaging and the fact that neither J nor Striker’s Decks have changed since last time, I’d say its okay to skip over this fight, it would just eat screen time with nothing new changing the landscape of the plot.
Same here, Bashin has defeated Suiren, the 2 have fought before using the available card pool and we’ve seen Suiren’s X-Rare, there’s little need to re-do what’s already been done.
Now I ain’t no expert in Japanese but THAT to me, looks like a letter of resignation, the question is whether or not its from the Nazo-Otonas or as a Teacher.
That narrows it down.
Hoo BOY, its time for the finals, J vs Bashin. And this time Bashin has TwinRowdy Diranos on his side. This makes this a fair fight once again.
…Its so dramatic and it doesn’t make sense but its SO GOD DAMN COOL.
Rooting for J, purely for that hair effect alone!
Its looking at 5-4 in J’s favour, which makes some sense given J’s a White Player. Defense is White’s JAM.
Bashin’s field is looking kinda spicy, LV3 Taurusknight, Rokceratops and Balmung.
J’s is less spicy, from what it appears to me, Bashin appears to be winning.
And if you’re disagreeing with that because of the Life total, please watch Jaden face Atticus in Yugioh GX
Life points don’t decide who’s winning the duel, its the cards you hold.
Nightshroud – Yu-Gi-Oh! GX Episode 30
BASHIN HAS BETTER CARD ADVANTAGE. THEREFORE HE WINNING.
Bashin has made the executive decision to level up Balmung.
3 Extra core in addition to the 1 it currently holds is needed to get it up to Level 2 but we’re on Turn 19 so there’s plenty of core to go around.
Both Taurusknight and Balmung attack, taking 2 of J’s lives.
Now it’s J’s turn, and he’s adding Baby-Loki and Sacred Mjolnir to his board.
This is a bit of a “Ruh-Roh” moment, given an Armed Machine is what J needs for Thor’s rush.
Guess the real idiot was ME, ALL ALONG.
“Solid” isn’t the word I would use but its turn 21 and J has a number of Cost 2 Spirits. I’m presuming he’s got plenty of Magic available at his disposal to power up his defensive spirits for Bashin’s next attack.
This isn’t exactly the most offensive thing at Red’s disposal either, Bashin deploying Plateau of Duel means he’ll be able to Refresh an Awaken Spirit on J’s Start Step.
That’s pretty good for when you want to be safe AND attack.
And a Level 2 Siegfried makes the perfect candidate to strongarm one’s way into getting free strong attacks through.
I’m sorry. “Organ Pattern”?
What?
Is that like Japan’s version of a Modus Operandi?
Remember kids, Attack Steps are for losers.
Any kind of big push Bashin would have made is now no longer going to happen, at least Siegfried will be able to block next turn.
Granted, Attack Step Enders almost ALWAYS wait for the attack to finish first. So J takes that free core.
Quite hilariously, BS02 had a really nasty Cost 2 Focus, The Artifact Plant is one such card.
Simply put, it’s base effect turns any Cost 2 into an “Armed Machine”
That second effect is no slouch either, getting free core on top of it, it lets you generate enough Core for a counter should Thor fail to punch through everything.
Mjolnir gettin’ levelled up.
Here he is, at Level 3 no less. Which means J’s refresh combo is live.
Notably I don’t think this Refresh combo is going to go as well as J thinks it does… Bashin has 4 lives available, and 4 Blockers because J decided to instantly use Silent Wall to limit Bashin to 1 Attack.
J has only 4 other Spirits, and he’s about to use all of them for Thor as its the strongest… meaning Thor will have at most 5 attacks. That’s only going to snatch 1 life from Bashin if he blocks with everything, meaning Bashin can very much live this turn.
Bashin makes the quick decision to take the excess core from Balmung, levelling it down to Level 1, in order to make Siegfried LV3 for a Block.
This is pretty good, Siegfried will grant Bashin a Life on destruction.
At the moment, its Thor vs Siegfried, and Thor has 11000 BP to Siegfried’s 10000.
So to quickly summarise, again to reduce the number of image spam, J destroys his exhausted Baby-Loki before attacking again with Thor, this time exhausting Sacred Mjolnir to augment its BP to 13000.
Taurusknight blocks this time, being destroyed.
I’m not sure why Bashin is blocking most of these, he’s got 4 lives he should be relatively safe to let some attacks through.
J then decides to attack with Thor and 2 Baby-Lokis, which Bashin all takes from the life.
And thus features a very slight but repairable fuck up, the show portrays Thor as attacking first, and then the 2 Baby-Lokis, and THEN J decides to refresh Thor, however Thor can only refresh at the end of it’s own battle. If J attacks with the 2 Baby-Lokis first however this is fine.
What also confuddles me is Bashin is perfectly capable of destroying a Loki with his available Balmung, this would wipe out one of J’s refreshes.
His Baby-Lokis are Level 1 with 2000 BP, this actually makes no sense not to do here, Balmung has 3000 BP at level 1.
BASHIN PLZ
Okay you are not doing this shit again, Siegfried’s life gain is IMMEDIATE goddammit.
I can’t be having Deja Vu over this because I’ve watched this before right? There’s got to be one other episode where Siegfried’s Level 3 has come into play.
Thank god you didn’t, I’d be losing it if you did.
Okay feeling much better about this now, J was fully aware he wasn’t winning that turn so he prepared Pure Elixir to refresh his Spirits after his onslaught, he’s now got 2 Blockers as Pure Elixir prevents you from attacking with any refreshed Spirits.
Bashin has 2 blockers, J can’t attack, so the move ends.
I feel like I really should have prepared a Counter for the amount of times Bashin draws an X-Rare off of Double Draw.
Its the Battle of the BS02 Baddies from Bat-Town, TwinRowdy Diranos vs The Gigantic Thor.
Bashin raises Rokceratops to Level 3 and Balmung to Level 2
And Plateau of Duel gets raised to Level 2 as well.
For those that don’t remember, rather than Bashin refreshing ONE Awaken Spirit on J’s start step, he’ll now refresh all of them.
So J decides to take on the X-Rare showdown believing Thor to be stronger at Level 3 and Diranos not having it’s Awaken ability just yet (it only grants Awaken to Terra Dragons at Level 2 and 3)
So using Spirit Link, Bashin can artificially grant it Awaken.
He takes all but 1 of the Core from Rokceratops and Balmung to facilitate this, moving Diranos to Level 3, and along with it’s Level 1+ effect, Awaken Spirits get an additional 1000 BP.
So Diranos’ BP total is 10000, J CAN stop this with a Defensive Aura, should he have one available.
No such luck on J’s end, Thor is defeated.
Rokceratops attacks and J attempts to defend with Baby-Loki, only for Rokceratops to make use of Awaken granted to it by Diranos, allowing it to get to Level 3 and gain 1000 BP for a total of 5000.
Get roasted.
Bashin ends his turn there, I’m a little confused because he could have taken a potshot at J with Balmung, as it gets Awaken from level 1 upwards, it would get refreshed by Plateau of Duel and J would be on 1 life.
Ah, J’s hand was flat empty, no wonder Bashin was confident that would work.
Oh, that’s a depressing last card.
Attack Shift is flat garbage without Spirits to use it with, and J’s board is clean of them.
Actually if he had this card a turn earlier he could have saved Thor from Diranos and broken Bashin’s combo.
And with that halfway point, Bashin is officially a Champion.
That fight was actually pretty cool in spite of some base decision making I would personally disagree with, seeing Diranos vs Thor was pretty nice.
The same influence EVERY result has, you get a bunch of meta-nerds making 1-to-1 copies of Bashin’s Diranos deck-
wait shit that doesn’t actually WORK here because its previously established that the X-Rares of Thor and Diranos aren’t actually released to the public, because X-Rares are AWARDED by Nazo-Otonas.
J is happy that he was able to fulfill his promise to Bashin, but is disturbed by the idea that he won’t be able to see Bashin for much longer?
I’m going to either assume that’s due to graduation or because J believes his battle with the Nazo-Otonas are going to pull him away from Bashin.
Yeah with your super-exclusive X-Rares.
Granted J had them too, I’ll let you have this one Bashin.
I too understand well the reason Bashin-kun is absorbed in Batosupi.
But that is the first and last of the things I have in common with that muffin.
Bashin also takes this opportunity to invite Meganeko over to J’s house for a… another tournament.
I DON’T THINK I CAN HANDLE ANOTHER TOURNAMENT RIGHT AFTER THE LAST ONE.
CAN WE PROGRESS THE STORY FIRST!?
Yeah, kinda like that, that’s exactly what I mean but I also kinda mean new cards and characters that we can actually give a shit about.
And that’s it!
No card of the day according to the Batosupi Lecture, they do make mention of the Terra Dragon Combo however.
So I composed a deck focused on Diranos’ effect.
I don’t expect this to be extremely good or anything, nor do I expect anyone to be playing BS02 format but hey, it gives some insight into what I think would be good playing with this kind of card.
More of a “Deck-of-the-day” but hey, who’s gonna stop me?
anyway! I’ll see you for Episode 26 which is the last episode that went up on Youtube, meaning we’re treading new territory from that point on.
See you there!
The Battle Spirits Commentary Archive 