Toppa Bashin – Episode 39

Righto, so I broke the great laws of my time, to spare myself the pain of having to guess whether or not this episode was going to actually be relevant, I watched the episode preview.

I know, I have betrayed you all, its a real shame, but at the very least its given me some invigoration knowing that this episode.

IS ACTUALLY RELEVANT!

This is a bit of a lengthy title, and despite its sheer length, fails to actually tell me what the fuck is going on with this episode.

Oh that’s kind of cool, the Kyoto Isekai Dome is Red in colour, which contrasts from the original Silver Isekai Dome in wherever our cast normally goes.

And given J debuted his Red X-Rare in Kyoto its thematic of J’s change in X-Rare.

Apparently we have a new battle stage for this tournament, the Team Match Battle.

I wonder if they’ll explain the rules or if we’re just supposed to figure it out, though I suppose if its anything like the Exchange Match it will just be that.

Aww geez, don’t tell me the Team Match Battles are going to be predominantly Tag Battles.

Tag Battles are so far removed from the standard that it’s hard to analyze, and that’s on TOP of the fact that the show already ignores basic math after jumping a bunch of turns ahead.

I will say these promotional posters of Jack Knight are fucking awesome. If the whole show was animated the way he looks in the non-rose picture I’d be enjoying myself a ton more.

But this is like 2008-2009, I am asking a bit much.

With the exception of Striker, notably everyone is wearing variants of their design that don’t change much besides ensuring that the arms are less sleeved.

Smile arrives to taunt them, I guess he wouldn’t be able to help himself after he flat out TOLD them to not bother getting in their way, I suppose he’s trying to gauge what’s continuing to drive them and to see if he can sway them away from their goal.

Also look at Meganeko’s face, she looks about ready to throw Nanarin at him at a moment’s notice.

Or worse yet, drop Nanarin entirely and just beat the shit out of him.

Oh right, Smile makes some kind of comment like “This is what I’m stuck with every day” I think in reference to the fact that he’s part of their Batosupi Club, even though he’s entering with the Numbers.

And of course, Smile is proverbially tooting his own horn because he’s finally gotten what he wanted, the opportunity to team up with Jack Knight, which given he and Jack Knight are likely to be the strongest members of their team, is going to be a key problem for most teams to deal with.

Smile takes this opportunity to scare the pants off of Seven, knowing he’s the meekest of the group.

Team is only as strong as their weakest link, might as well damage what you can.

Granted, the Team re-assures Seven not to worry about Smile and they resolve to win the Tournament, as they do.

Its a lot of frames and a lot of nothing that isn’t already obvious in this scene, so I don’t feel the need to cover it.

It appears our villains are organizing where to build the next domes across Japan.

We still haven’t figured out what exactly these domes are for to be honest.

We’re in Episode 39 and we still don’t know what the grand plan is here, by the time they announce what it is it might already be too late for them.

At least we know that the Domes have a purpose other than the Tournaments they’re holding, and for each Dome to function properly, Battles have to occur.

In a rare moment of Uchuuchouten doing… well, fucking ANYTHING.

He actually states that the Cornerstone’s Light can hide in ordinary people, and that the Tournaments can be used to draw them out.

But don’t they know the holders of every Cornerstone at this moment in time? Besides maybe Card Sensei’s, is there a need to “Draw them out” when you know where they are?

In other news, this is the first Championship that has Blue available.

So not only do you need a way to deal with losing cards, that strategy also can’t rely on you losing lives.

If Mikafar Turbo wasn’t completely wrecking the actual game this would be an actual conversation people could have.

Meganeko says its a good thing they have Seven, before Seven seems to seemingly vanish.

Its evident this is because he’s changing into his Galaxy persona, he’s not confident otherwise.

Ah, Seven has gone all the way to Uchuuchouten’s place for some bizarre reason. Is he also turning in his resignation like Card Sensei?

God the guy really can’t keep a leash on his designated Blue people.

I see Eight has attended the event in her “Sexy Queen” outfit.

Oh shit, Seven left because he’s going to play on the side of the Numbers Elite?

Awww that’s not cool.

I should have expected this, given that HE IS Number Seven but to think he’d chicken out and be so needlessly obedient.

I guess Seven doesn’t want to betray those who are representing him and his club.

I can’t tell if he’s trying to use that as an excuse to not participate as part of the Numbers Elite, or if he’s having such strong self-esteem issues that he doesn’t feel like he shouldn’t be a member of Numbers Elite.

Could be both, he’d make an excellent replacement for Number Two, Michael Elliott may have a hand in Batosupi’s card pool but god is he straight awful at this game.

Eight appears to be encouraging him not to betray his teammates, which is strange for someone who is obediently following her orders.

It appears that is why it was so loosely mentioned so far before that they needed 6 members so ambiguously, you need 6 members because it will be best of 3 tags matches in the Quarter Final.

So if a member is missing, you’ll likely be disqualified if you lose even ONE match.

It seems they’re trying to discuss who gets paired up with who.

Striker and Bashin have fought together before, so they actually have experience taking part in Tag Matches, this makes them a good combination for the Tag match.

Pink makes the HILARIOUS suggestion that Purple gets paired with Blue.

Up until VERY VERY recently, Blue and Purple have had very VERY little synergy.

The things they aim to do don’t really coincide very well with each other, it’s not Purple’s fault however, it’s Blue’s.

Because Blue is the one-trick pony deck type, its designed to do very specific things well, such as Deck Destruction.

Because they are like that, they can’t mesh well with many other colours without specific mechanisms allowing them to do so.

Every other colour eventually received those mechanisms but Purple did not, up until very recently.

They really haven’t explained why the combination will be good, they just fucking did it

I don’t think Blue has a single card available at this moment that lets them support purple in any way, meanwhile they have cards like DragonSlayBlade Guy which combos with Red, and Construction which combos with Red AND Green.

Bashin has been looking really restless the entire meeting, I wonder if he has a specific preference for a tag partner-

Can I strangle him? Pretty please? Just for 5 minutes.

Bashin eventually gets to a stall and fucking makes WHATEVER THE HELL THIS IS.

JESUS.

Seven is apparently hiding in the bathroom for some… bizarre reason.

It appears we’ve missed a couple frames that I thought were useless, they made a huddle to raise everyone’s spirits and unfortunately Seven isn’t feeling any more courageous after it all, and he’s upset about it.

Self-Esteem issues: Maximum

Galaxy is a recurring character, unfortunately he’s only ever cool in this series because he actually battles.

Seven looks at his clothing before leaving Bashin a card.

I wonder what the card actually is, I can’t think of many other Blue cards that Bashin’s Red deck could get any mileage out of.

And he just fucking skedaddles.

Alright, kind of weird, what was the card-

Oh shit, he left him his X-RARE.

Well, while it isn’t something that will help Bashin’s strategy, its certainly capable of being placed in Bashin’s deck as is, and given that its freaking TITUS, it can probably deck out many players by itself.

We eventually cut back to Meganeko in TEARS because there’s a problem.

Ah, I see the problem. Because Seven has dropped out, they can’t form 3 Tags and therefore can’t participate.

I feel like I’m getting punched in the gut here.

That’s what Smile meant by that line, its weird because he only ever spooks the crap out of Nanao who’s easily spooked anyway.

I feel irritated that I missed that, they need the best luck possible because they need a 6th member in spite of Seven’s expected leave.

I really don’t like when people, in fits of rage, ask questions of which the answers are obvious.

Why the fuck would you detain someone to stop them doing something you had no idea they were trying to do?

And so everyone goes off to search for their missing Blue muppet.

Oh, yeah that makes sense, I completely forgot Numbers Elite are entirely comprised of 5 members up until now, they needed a 6th.

This is certainly a weird bunch, and not a Purple player in sight.

Instead they’ve arguably got 2 Blue players.

In Kyouka’s brief search, she comes across someone looking a little like J and approaches.

Unfortunately, its the return of this idiot, Pseudo-J.

OH BOY. THAT’S NOT GOOD.

Okay, so Kyouka is apparently attracted to Pseudo-J. A guy who serves no other purpose than to look and act exactly like J, her brother.

I DON’T BELIEVE I NEED TO EXPLAIN THE PROBLEMS WITH THIS.

And she got his autograph. Everything about this is weird.

NO.

NO YOU SHOULD NOT BE.

THANK GOD FOR RESCUING US FROM THIS FUCKERY, THIS SCENE COULD NOT HAVE BEEN HERE AND THIS SERIES WOULD BE PERFECTLY OKAY.

Our missing team member has been located, he’s fucked off to play for a completely different team.

And it wouldn’t be possible to call over the student council members to fill in, getting them to Kyoto on this short notice would be quite literally impossible.

Ah yes the ol’ “I punch wall because me mad” trope.

Its not as effective here because god the sound effect is so fucking CARTOONY.

Upon being pressed, Bashin reveals that Galaxy gave his ace card to him.

Aaaaand promptly has an epiphany.

I certainly hope they tell me what exactly it is that Bashin realized about the card that led him to where he’s going at this moment.

Oh, Bashin’s angry, time to kick up my feet and watch him completely smash something.

Was that what the card was meant to be? Bait?

Bashin ain’t chilling for nobody right now, time to watch this no-holds-barred beatdown of Galaxy.

And where else would we take it than the endless skies of Isekai?

On Galaxy’s field appears to be a Lv1 Soldier Gustav, and a card I have never seen before.

On checking the wiki, this card is Rabirabi. She just appears to be exhausted.

Both are vanillas, Rabirabi here is a very idol-like Spirit, but it was apparently TOO HOT for the western release of the game while it was there.

She’s given an undersuit to tone her sexiness down because of course this was at a time where we needed to conform to some standard when marketing card games to children.

God forbid a card looked attractive.

Bashin thankfully has cards we’ve seen before, a Lv2 Rhino-Ceros and a Lv2 Bun-Ffalo

5 Lives aside, its also Bashin’s turn.

Bashin goes for a Magic Hammer, he’s going full Blue strat today.

Galaxy loses 5 cards from his deck, at Turn 27 with a 30 card deck, Galaxy will have had 13 Draw Steps, putting his deck to 27.

a 5 card mill leaves Galaxy with 22 cards remaining.

Interestingly, 2 of the cards hit are cards we’ve yet to see before.

But I won’t review them unless used.

Bashin then full attacks, taking 2 lives from Galaxy (5->3 vs 5)

I find that extremely hard to believe but lets see.

A Blue Magic from BS03, Nexus Register.

Ah I remember this strategy, very well, let’s talk about it.

A Powerful draw card for multiple reasons, the issues are its costly and situational, you can toss out ANY nexuses present in your hand in order to draw a card for every one you threw out.

Galaxy is very fun to watch, I will say that right now. He throws out 3 nexuses to draw 3 new cards. I’ll review those nexuses if they come into play, but if I remember this scene correctly, it does.

Oh boy, he drew a pretty nasty card.

The effect is obscured, so I won’t review it until he plays it but its still gnarly.

He’s REALLY fun to watch, he’s a barrel of confidence, over declaring his plays and sounding cool.

And because he doesn’t actually have any powers he gets overly surprised when his “Galaxy Draw” actually DOES yield something.

Galaxy then plays Construction, a card we mentioned earlier, allowing him to play EVERY Red, Green and Blue Nexus currently inside his Trash.

He deploys the 3 Nexuses he just discarded for no Cost, and Levels them all up to Lv2.

Let’s talk about these.

Some nutty old Nexuses from BS03, and what a crazy collection of cards they are.

Rampart of Sapphire lets you cheaply make full use of Spirits with No Printed Effects, while making them easy to level up while making your nexuses invincible when you have them in abundance.

Collapse of the Battle Line is a Crazy Demolish Support card, not only increasing the number of cards lost through Demolish but making it easy to raise them to their maximum level as well through its Lv2.

And finally, H.Q. Filled with Fighting Spirits, a Card that lets you gain Core for destroying the opponent’s deck, while also letting you Demolish from a defensive position, and not just attacking.

Nexus combos be cray cray yo.

We’re being spoiled with cards to review today, aren’t we?

Golem Craft has a 2000 BP Battle boost, but as a main effect, it treats every Nexus with at least 1 Core on it as a Cost 1 2000 BP Artificial Soldier Spirit with no printed effects.

The exchange of course is that the effects of the Nexuses are lost for the turn that you use it, and also gives you the opportunity to destroy the nexuses in battle, unfortunately, Bashin full attacked earlier, leaving his Life open.

Interestingly, they’re represented in the game as Ghosts. Which is kind of cool, the Ghosts are very hard to see on the cards themselves, being Shadowish.

Bashin has to take all the Nexus attacks from the Life.

Galaxy attacks with Gustav but Bashin destroys it with Flame Cyclone.

After the Draw Step and Nexus register, a 40-card deck would have about 18 cards remaining, a Titus combo would be a very easy victory to claim from this position.

Bashin plays a card we’ve yet to see before, Its a BS04 Vanilla of the Fighting Beast Family, all other details are in this image so I won’t review it. Its got a hefty BP at Lv2 however. That thing could square off with a Lv2 Kingtaurus.

Bashin then levels up Rhino-Ceros to Lv3 and attacks.

Galaxy explains that Rhino-Ceros can destroy the deck by being destroyed, as such Galaxy tends towards not blocking it, taking it from the life. (3->2 vs 2)

I’m not sure why they explained the earlier Rhino-Ceros interaction when Rabirabi doesn’t have nearly enough BP to defeat it.

Bashin only has 2 Spirits left, he can’t take all of Galaxy’s lives from here.

It seems like Galaxy is being an idiot, but he might be trying to remind Bashin that Galaxy is the one who taught Bashin how to use Blue.

Galaxy cashes in his free Troll, summoning it for no cost.

Galaxy finally plays the Blue X-Rare hiding away in his hand, The MobileFortress Castle-Golem!

BS04’s Blue X-Rare, The MobileFortress Castle-Golem, a Card with very simple but devastating effects.

When Summoned, it destroys 5 cards in the opposing deck for every Nexus you control, for a Maximum of 15. And at Lv2 it destroys a card for every Blue Symbol you have.

This card sees play even today in strategies involving decks that produce a lot of Nexuses. A very interesting deck was a Purple strategy that involved core boosting large amounts of core through transferring it from a Purple Nexus to your spirits before playing Castle-Golem to deck the opponent out.

…Which is an interesting thing to remember right after I said that Purple and Blue had no synergy…

Life never allows me to be sure of anything.

And of the 15 cards Bashin is now losing from his deck only ONE of them is interesting, that being the Blue Magic, Blitz. Bashin doesn’t have many Demolish Spirits and yet runs Blitz which lets you gain core for Demolish Spirits attacking.

For some reason the English version of that card moved its Main effect to a Flash effect and removed its Battle boost effect.

The English release really fucked this game, honestly.

Galaxy levels up Castle-Golem to Lv2 and swings with it, taking a life from Bashin (2 vs 2->1)

Due to Castle-Golem’s effect, Bashin loses 6 cards off the top of his deck as Galaxy controls 6 symbols.

Galaxy notes that Bashin should have ran out of cards by now, but he’s running a slightly fatter deck than normal.

Again, please stop perpetuating this as a strategy, its not useful because you’re directly sacrificing consistency to avoid something you might not even face, something you do to counter blue should not hurt you against every other deck.

Bashin’s in a sticky situation, his deck and his lives are low, and Galaxy only needs to eliminate ONE of them to take the game.

Bashin barely got by since he had equal blockers to Galaxy’s attackers.

It certainly feels like he’s got to win now.

Its a sticky situation but it does look like an interesting one to be in for sure. I can see the fun in that

The best part about being presented with a puzzle in Battle Spirits is how you’re going to get around it, its a unique experience only Battle Spirits has.

In Yu-Gi-Oh, you either have an answer or you don’t. Its very rare that moments such as “How do I break this” ever come up, 9 times out of 10, you either can or you can’t.

In Vanguard, its similar, your choices are rather limited, sometimes the only thing you can do is nothing when presented with a difficult situation, plus there’s the Trigger luck factor that you have to rely on and you might not even be able to.

In Duel Masters its a game of momentum, if you’re falling behind its difficult to make a comeback in a single turn due to Summoning sickness. The same applies to MTG.

No, only Battle Spirits has the type of one-turn comebacks that feel meaningful in the grand scheme of things, and even if the fire of your final turn burns out its still real fun to be a part of.

Time to see how hot Bashin’s fire burns!

Bashin plays Double Draw!

When next turn is sure to be a loss, you don’t NEED to worry about how small your deck is!

Bashin draws Titus and Double Hearts. Galaxy is on 2 Life, Bashin can check him with this combo by forcing him into combat.

Bashin plays The GiantHero Titus.

Its effect when summoned takes out 10 cards from Galaxy’s Deck

A 40 card deck would have 7 cards left.

The GiantHero Titus is brought to Lv2. Now if it defeats a Spirit in battle, Galaxy will lose another 10 cards.

Bashin then follows up with Double Hearts, giving Titus a second Blue Symbol.

Now Galaxy has a choice, he can block and lose 10 cards, or take it from the life and lose 2 lives, and if I’ve calculated his deck’s count correctly, he doesn’t have enough of either.

Galaxy blocks with Rabirabi, but Bashin points out that might not be the best choice.

Titus destroys Rabirabi, and Galaxy loses 10 cards from his deck, running out of cards.

The Deck thins 1 at a time but there are 7 different frames before the last card vanishes, so he did only have 7 cards remaining.

Galaxy looks to see if there is a way to turn things around with his hand, the only opportunity to do so would be to play a card that can return a card to his deck, or otherwise take Bashin’s final life, but the battle has concluded so there’s no way he can do either.

And even if he could do something, his hand is The Illusionist Mirage, a Spirit that brings all your Spirits to the highest level on summon for the turn. And Lead Wall which is a Cost 2 counter that negates the unblockable effect for a turn.

Neither of which will work here.

With no cards in his deck by the time Galaxy’s start step comes, Bashin wins… via a Deck out.

It appears the lesson Seven wanted to teach Bashin with Titus was that while Blue is indeed a strong opponent, a simple answer to that can be to use a Blue Deck.

While its not a solution that promotes a healthy metagame, it is a solution, if nothing else, a deck will not have an easy time defeating itself.

Bashin tries to get answers out of Galaxy, asking why he’s choosing to put their position in the tournament in danger to play against them.

But Seven resolves to be himself, Number Seven of Numbers Elite.

Bashin can’t bring himself to hate Seven for his decision, if only because its something he wants to do.

Welp while that is nice Bashin it doesn’t solve the problem of the fact that, well, you need a 6th member!

Galaxy shakes Bashin’s hand as Bashin lets Galaxy go on a good note, but leaves a card in it, to lend to Bashin.

The First rule of Nazo-Otonas returns: Defeating a Nazo-Otona awards you an X-Rare.

Eight seems pleased that Seven is going through his duty as a Number.

But I think there is STILL THE PRESSING ISSUE OF A 6TH PLAYER.

Hoo boy, guess we’ll learn which teams got in the hard way.

Oh hey, Pseudo-J has his own team, can’t wait to see him not have any battles.

I’d love to see him actually throw down with a character just to see how good he is though.

The group catch up with Bashin, asking him on Seven’s status.

Bashin announces to them that he’s Number Seven, and therefore will continue to be participating as part of the Numbers Elite.

Strangely though, Team Shomen Toppa’s name is called out despite not having enough members.

it appears Eight was seeing what conclusion they came to, if Seven chose to be a member of Shomen Toppa its likely she’d have been called upon as a Numbers Elite, in this case however Seven chose to be Number Seven, so she’s joining Shomen Toppa to avoid them dropping out.

Its likely Smile was banking on Seven’s betrayal to get Shomen Toppa disqualified before they started, preventing them from having a chance to interact with Jack Knight again, which is pretty scummy all things considered.

The minute someone resorts to underhanded tactics that occur outside the game you know their moral integrity has been completely compromised.

I see the Nazo-Otonas are not happy about this, they’re seeing this as a betrayal, like Card Sensei did earlier.

If I was in her position I’d have done the same as Eight, if they want to prove their superiority they can’t be eliminating opponents they don’t want to battle before they do so. You can’t pick and choose your opponents on the way to number 1.

Smile is… drawn a tad strangely here but he’s got a point, even if they enter they still need to defeat the Numbers Elite. Tis an uphill battle.

I can’t help but feel that they’re missing the irony of using Bashin’s catchphrase.

Though… it could be foreshadowing.

Uchuuchouten gives his usual opening speech, but ends with this slightly altered line, indicating the Cornerstone’s Light.

It appears Jack Knight isn’t even being forced into using his DarkDragonEmperor, winning all of his games with his usual Thor.

Bashin’s Team is in the Best 8 however, so we’re skipping to Best 8 it seems?

Alright, here we go, to the Best 8!

Or not.

God dammit, I got wrapped up in the Episode’s pace.

So we didn’t see any tournament games like I was expecting to see, but we did see Bashin get 2 new X-Rares in the space of an episode, and both of which are Blue.

I wonder what Galaxy will play with then without a Castle-Golem or a Titus? Unless he’s got other copies, Nine did mention the Siegfried he gave to Bashin was not the only one he owned.

Plus they have Elliott, he could probably supply as many as necessary.

It also seems like Bashin’s counter for Blue is… well, Blue.

In this case he’s using an aggressive Red/Blue deck that splits the need to destroy the Life with the need to destroy the Deck, and well, Titus and Castle-Golem are ridiculously efficient at dealing with the Deck by themselves. Its hard to think of what else Bashin would need besides those to consider them as an alternative strategy.

And of course, Batosupi Lecture has a card of the day, The MobileFortress Castle-Golem.

A very powerful card, we see it even today used in certain decks, as such its one of those cards that hasn’t needed a Revival effect (a new version of itself that is functionally the same card but just has a better effect to adjust to recent decks)

Any Nexus strategy that generates tons of cores might have this lying around, and if you’re not expecting it, it will come from 13 years in the past to kick you in the Deck.

In any case, its nice that its on Bashin’s side as opposed to the Numbers Elite’s side, though the Numbers Elite have very few X-Rares that can be considered “theirs” now.

Smile’s ArcAngelia Mikafar, J’s Odin, Thor and Dark Siegfried.

The others have no defining X-Rares to their name. Other than Nine having an awfully similar deck to Bashin.

Guess we’ll see what they’re packing next time. See you then!