Gekiha Dan – Episode 29

Last episode, we had Zungurii play his first battle, and the plot moved precisely nowhere, but it was a cute episode highlighting a number of rookie mistakes a player might make.

This time we’ll be moving back to the plot, as we’ve seen comatose Dan be returned to the group by Yuuki, in spite of the fact that Dan was to be relocated to the Red Horizon Ladder.

Despite the fact that the cast have only been in the Yellow World for a grand total of a single episode, they’re already moving on.

I suppose it makes sense, Yuuki was able to find them using Otherworld King’s resources, so if Yuuki could find them, it won’t be long before anyone else does.

Dan is unresponsive, and not eating it seems.

Dan’s Core is completely shattered, but not entirely gone.

Hah, I actually didn’t recall this bit, but Dan’s Red Symbol is actually repaired by Magisa.

This suggests to me that without Magisa, Dan would have remained in that soulless, broken state until the end of time. Which is a nightmare to think about, since the Otherworld King basically rendered the poor kid functionally braindead.

Restoring his Symbol seems to have restored his soul to his body at least.

He’s even responsive, which begs the question as to why he’s unresponsive now.

In spite of the damage done to Dan’s Soul via his Symbol, it looks like emotionally, he still hasn’t quite recovered from that Battle, Dan needs time to think.

More specifically, time to sort his thoughts out until he’s ready to rise up again as the Red Soldier.

Magisa completely collapses as a result of this though.

Seems like repairing Dan’s symbol was well beyond the limits of what she could do normally with her remaining “Washed out Magic”, but this does mean that this is within her abilities should she have her true magic.

I suppose it makes sense, it’s possible Otherworld King was using Magisa’s magic to shatter the Symbol in the first place.

To that end, the lady needs some SLEEP, having burned all of her energy doing that one spell.

In spite of his non-present state, Dan does have the faculties necessary to actually eat Zungurii’s curry however.

Unfortunately, Dan decides to go the way of Magisa, and fall completely asleep.

Clackey tries to reassure Zungurii and Hyoudo’s worries, saying it’s “Just like the Clash King to overheat” and that Dan will be back once he rests up a little.

The group resolve to ensure that there is at least some leftover curry for when Dan wakes up.

The hell is my leftover curry! I want more curry now and this sucks!

And I just had the stuff 2 days ago and yesterday.

Curry is life.

It appears that Kajitsu can use her abilities as Mother Core’s bearer to locate nearby affiliates of Otherworld King, noting that they’ve found them again.

Mai’s starting to become bothered, noting that it doesn’t matter where they go, they keep being found.

At some point one can only wonder how they’re locating you

Clackey notes that until Dan wakes, it’ll be up to the other Lightbearers to take the active role in battling for the moment, that means we aren’t seeing the return of the Clash King just yet.

Zungurii also intends to assist, having battled recently himself.

…Though judging by the pot and ladels he’s armed with I presume “Doing his best” means in the Kitchen, not the Battlefield.

Mai is mocking this from a gendered standpoint but you can tell from Kajitsu’s face that she has no idea what the fuck Mai is going on about.

Mai certainly has a way of acting like a complete bitch at the drop of a hat.

It seems like Serge knows something the others don’t, pressing some kind of button, and warning the others not to make “Too much noise” so as not to draw suspicion.

This is where the Episode Title would drop, buuuuut I’ve decided it’s probably best not to cover this one as it tends to be a little Spoilerific, and if you’re reading from here and either don’t remember or never watched this show, that would be unfun.

So, proceeding onward.

So everyone up until now has chased The Violet, a Core-powered ship, by Core-powered ship, naturally.

Pantera however is a Core-powered Robot.

And as so, doesn’t even need a crew of pilots or anything apparently

He’s off chasing The Violet on FOOT.

Just the subsequent hilarity of “Yeah he’s a dude in a well tailored suit but y’know, you gotta remember that since he isn’t human and can’t get tired, he’ll just do the most nonsensical superhuman shit ever”

News travels fast among Otherworld King’s forces, it seems Pantera’s already noted Yuuki’s treachery in leaving Dan with the Lightbearers instead of the intended destination.

Back at the Castle.

Looks like we’re getting a Yuuki centric scene.

It appears Yuuki is conflicted, it looks like he isn’t even particularly sure as to why he returned Dan to his friends in spite of a direct order from Otherworld King.

Yuuki runs into Leon, who mentions to Yuuki that Dan was potentially “aided in his escape”

So it seems like the official report from whoever I guess, is that Dan somehow escaped on his own.

Dan’s state at the time he lost to Otherworld King was privy to precisely 3 people, Yuuki, Pantera and Otherworld King himself, I’m a little surprised Pantera hasn’t put two and two together and made mention of it.

Then again we know that machine has the capacity to lie.

Yuuki mentions that it’s probably just a rumor, and that Leon’s indirectly accusing Yuuki of aiding Dan.

Yuuki just shuts it down, and expresses irritation at whoever’s spreading rumors, thing is Yuuki’s quite stoic about things even when they go against his plans, so a direct dissent towards a rumor that doesn’t benefit him could tip Leon off.

Leon phrases a couple things in weird ways but it could be the subtitling being a bit odd due to a more literal translation.

It seems to me from this exchange that Leon is somewhat surprised that Yuuki doesn’t have more to say to him, considering that Leon just went out of his way to terrorize his Sister in the worst way possible.

Christ this could be the sickest 500 IQ play ever, It’s possible Leon knew that being rampantly negligent of Kajitsu’s safety when attempting to capture her would rile up Yuuki, who cares for nothing else, but the fact that Yuuki hasn’t raised any irritation about this incident, and simply dispelled a rumor calmly could also be a tip off to Leon that Yuuki’s trying to hide something under a guise of calm. The issue is Yuuki should be anything but.

The cleverest deductions are the ones that come up as a result of a lack of evidence, in this case, something that should exist as a result of the facts but doesn’t, in this particular case, Yuuki should be irate with Leon over Kajitsu but hasn’t said a single word about it.

I suppose it’s not enough evidence anyhow, Leon is determined to oust Yuuki as one of the Three Heads, and Yuuki could always hide behind Otherworld King’s statement to not worry about his Sister.

…Well then that sped things along quickly, it looks like Mai left The Violet entirely to intercept Pantera.

Pantera demands that Mai tell him the location of Dan should he defeat her.

Mai agrees to the terms, and a battle is underway.

Gate Open!

Release!

Damn, Pantera doesn’t even give 2 shits about the disobeyed order, he just wants a reason to square off with Dan again

What an absolute chad.

Mai tries to rile up Pantera but doesn’t really seem to get any headway, it seems appealing to Pantera’s anger isn’t going to get anywhere.

I’m glad the hilarity of Pantera entering his battle form by stripping is finally acknowledged, poor Mai got a shock there.

Oh fuck off show.

So not so subtly, the fact that the blush hasn’t left Mai’s face once she realised what she was dealing with suggests one of 2 things, she was embarrassed about her reaction, OR she’s actively interested in Pantera’s physical make up (he is built like a man with decent abs after all)

Now, I don’t think its the embarrassment part, because she’s stroking her hair after saying that there wasn’t a problem, which is something she only does when she’s being dishonest with her feelings, it’s a tell.

I suppose a girl her age would be interested in things like that, and Pantera’s a bit more… exposed than most other battlers but come ooooon.

Ugh… This isn’t the worst thing that happens, trudge through, Ace.

It looks like The Violet is being pursued in spite of Pantera having found Mai, so I suppose more forces showed up.

Serge kicks The Violet into high gear and speeds up.

Kajitsu, Dan and Magisa are flung in many directions, being caught by the other passengers on board.

Also if you’re watching the show, please, look at the animation of Kajitsu flying into Clackey’s arm, it is the most jank thing I’ve ever seen.

Looks like Belga is the one commandeering this particular chase squad, I wonder where Brustom’s run off to then.

Well, the Violet is significantly larger than your ship, what if Serge just suddenly breaks here?

It’d be a risk but I’d hazard a guess everyone on The Violet would survive and your sorry asses would be jam.

It appears that on Belga’s radar to keep track of The Violet, 2 signals that appear to match The Violet’s have started to appear, which is incredibly odd.

The battle against Pantera appears to have skipped to Turn 3, which is acceptable so long as we can still extrapolate what happened in the previous turns.

Mai deploys a Purple Nexus, The Cursed Shrine.

A very simple Purple Nexus from SD01, so in the same structure deck as Dan’s Siegwurm. At all levels it boosts your Purple spirits by 1000 BP, but with 2 core, at Lv2, any opposing Spirit being exhausted enables you to draw a Card.

Purple have quite a few Nexuses that can apply a deficit to Exhausted cards, either by being exhausted or by punishing them for exhausting, in this case, Mai will gain card advantage if Pantera chooses to be aggressive, which given one of his colours is Red, is very likely.

Mai ends her turn.

The Lightbearers are still being tailed, Zungurii mentions that they need to move faster.

It appears that The Violet has a problem with it’s Core Cooling Device, essentially the Core is overheating which is impacting The Violet’s performance.

Clackey asks where it is, but Serge’s expression suggests that attempting to replace it while in transit, and at this speed no less, would be incredibly incompatible with life.

Unfortunately, Belga’s own ship is now within RAMMING SPEED.

So of course, Serge agrees to inform Clackey where the cooling device is so they can fix it.

okay, we are in officially unacceptable levels of skipping, god dammit.

Waddya mean TURN 6!

AND HOW IN THE HELL ARE YOU SUMMONING A DIRIDALUS ON TURN 6.

God damn.

A DarkDinohound, Pantera’s Battle form still holds all of his lives… that’s 7 core he’s on then, he’d need at least 2 reductions to make Diridalus stick, and even then he’d have to deplete one of them unless it was a Nexus.

But I suppose we’ll never know.

Diridalus attacks.

Due to it’s effect, a 2000 BP or less Spirit is destroyed, seems the target is Humpdump.

…Who promptly just explodes.

It seems Cursed Shrine was raised to Lv2, Mai is allowed to draw a card in response to Diridalus’ attack now.

Notably, Diridalus and Cursed Shrine activate at the same time, when resolving who activates their effect first, it’s the Turn player who gets to choose the order in which effects resolve. This includes optional ones, if Cursed Shrine gave Mai the option to draw a card rather than just drawing one, Pantera could force Mai to make the decision about whether or not to do so before using Diridalus’ effect.

No difference made here but can be a relevant one for different cards.

It seems they’re finally using the “Main attack” wording, which is to say that they’re done resolving all of the stuff they want to do concerning the attack, and that they’re now asking whether or not the opponent wants to block or not.

Mai takes Diridalus to the face.

Mai’s Battle Form had all her lives intact as well, so she’s on 4 lives now.

Pantera attacks with DarkDinohound again, and Mai once again draws another card, it seems she still has a Balam on her field.

DarkDinohound strikes true, reducing Mai to only 3 lives.

We finally get a look at Pantera’s field, he seems to have a Rainydle we didn’t see before this, but as I said before, Pantera could not summon Diridalus on Turn 6 without a life lost, not without depleting at least one of his Spirits.

Judging by Pantera’s 3-card hand and 3-card board, we can assume he did deplete a spirit that wasn’t shown though, as this means Pantera’s lost a card, 4 card start with 3 draws means there should be 7 total.

Mai’s putting on a brave face but that bit of sweat on her head indicates that she’s struggling immensely.

Pantera ends his turn.

Also Cursed Shrine isn’t just for drawing Key Spirits, even if that is the purpose of it in this deck. Cursed Shrine can be used to keep the hand full of Flash responses for when things get a bit hairy, which can make a particularly defensive player annoying to punch through.

Back to what I can only describe as an incredibly well-animated episode of Wacky racers

While one would normally question sending a literal child into conditions like that, Zungurii is the one with the most upper body strength out of the entire group, being a member of the physically powerful Gurii-tribe.

Which means provided a good grip, Zungurii will have the easiest time getting to it.

Jesus, Belga’s expression there making me genuinely worried, he’s presented as kind of a joke villain when pit against Yuuki but otherwise he’s presented as somewhat cruel, if kind of logical.

Did the writer have a change of heart for Belga? Or maybe they switched out the writers at some point?

Zungurii’s made it to the Core Cooling System.

I feel like Murphy’s Law is apt here.

Clackey to the rescue, making a sick-ass catch of Zungurii before he goes to give the Yellow World a kiss at terminal velocity.

Seems that the show chooses to not attempt the tense scene of getting to the Core Cooling System twice, good on them

Sorry what? The thing designed to keep the ship cool breaks down completely if it gets too hot?

what?

It’s meant to inhibit, what do you mean it completely fails to perform it’s function passed a certain level of heat?

Bear in mind an overheating system can have a fully functioning coolant, but it’s obviously not enough to cause the entire machine to fail.

But the coolant breaking beyond that baseline sounds like god awful coolant.

Seems like the Core that runs the ship is now once again fully functional.

Seems like running at standard capacity, The Violet outperforms any Otherworld King issued Core Ship, which given Otherworld King rules this world seems like a bit of an oversight.

Defenses? What defenses?

Did The Violet have like a forcefield they could have used this entire time that just ceases functioning because of bad coolant?

I’m sorry that feels rather significant to fix.

Given that Heat was the problem though it’s possible The Violet’s Cooling system was damaged due to traveling through the Green World’s Forest Fire.

This adds a whole new meaning to “Eat my dust”

…Though it appears they ate a lot more than dust.

Either The Violet took a sharp turn or they were able to jump to another world, which makes Mai’s predicament a little… precarious given she can’t return home.

These turn-skipping crimes are starting to really bloody upset me.

They’ve skipped increments of 3 turns rather than playing out the game, and I would have really liked to see the game.

Mai summons 3 spirits, Balam, Humpdump and Ashtal.

Pantera starts to analyse what’s happening, noting that Mai is summoning nothing but low cost spirits.

…Which seems to me like she’s trying to buy time. Which means that Cursed Shrine isn’t there to help Mai summon her Key Spirit, it’s there to help her amass a board of weenies at basically all times regardless of how aggressive Pantera is.

Looks like she must have tuned her deck for this specific strategy before leaving.

What happens twice will happen thrice…

But that works both in Pantera’s favour and against him.

Diridalus attacks, due to it’s effect when attacking, Humpdump is destroyed.

Cursed Shrine allows Mai to refund the card she lost in Humpdump by drawing a card thanks to Diridalus attacking.

Balam blocks, but it’s BP doesn’t really vibe with Diridalus’, so it’s destroyed.

That being said, a Lv3 Balam could have squared off with a Lv1 Diridalus.

Pantera is once again puzzled, Mai has no Key Spirit, but she keeps running out defenses and getting them wiped out.

Pantera finally clicks, Mai’s not actually trying to win, she’s built a deck that is designed to continually replenish her defenses in order to run up the clock.

The question then becomes why she’s doing this. Why does Mai want to make the fight last longer when it doesn’t proceed to a win condition?

This explains why they made the personally controversial opinion to create a skippy fight, it would be meaningful if Mai were trying to win, but in this case, it’s Turn 14 and Mai has made no advance to complete her win condition, to show the whole fight would be boring.

In which case, I can forgive Gekiha Dan for this, as there’s nothing interesting going on, it’s just a sequence of Mai constantly drawing Spirits, running them out, and then getting them blown up.

I love the smell of new cards in the evening!

Weakness is a Purple Magic from BS03, it’s got a standard issue 3000 BP battle boost to account for the fact that it’s first effect is restricted to the Main Step, however the Main Step effect…

Has the ability to drop an opposing Spirit to only having a single core.

This synergizes well with Diridalus, as it can drop an opposing Spirit’s BP to it’s Lv1 value, which for many Spirits under a certain cost, will be within that 2000 BP range.

Pantera uses Weakness to drop one of Mai’s Ashtals down to Lv1. Where it sits at 1000 BP.

Also as a note, the “High Ranker Battle” theme is playing.

I do very much appreciate the special effects the Magic has on the Spirits.

But the Metal man ain’t done! He follows up with Buster Javelin!

We saw this card in an earlier episode, when used during the Main Phase, it can destroy a Nexus, and if it does destroy one, the user can draw a card.

Cursed Shrine is wiped out, now Mai won’t be able to endlessly replenish her defenses.

This puts Mai in a bit of a pickle if she can’t supply herself with another copy of the Cursed Shrine.

But even so, at least for this turn, Pantera can massively reduce Mai’s resources.

Pantera’s “Red Hot” persona is starting to come out, by preventing the constant resource loop, he’s now intending to force her to meet him head on with what’s currently in her hand. If she can’t meet him with any reasonable resistance, she’s cooked.

It seems Mai’s not that shallow however, she has some kind of contingency for when The Cursed Shrine became the target.

Mai starts off by summoning Skulldemon, I believe we’ve seen this card, it’s a simple Spirit that gets Curse from Lv2 onward.

Mai finally brings out the Curse Champion, The SevenShogun Beelzebeat.

Pantera’s taken aback, this does set him at a bit of a disadvantage, X-Rares tend to be powerful Boss monsters that are worth designing a deck entirely focused on, Pantera hasn’t shown any such card so far, instead using a general strategy with Diridalus at the centre.

Mai activates Beelzebeat’s effect when summoned, now she can resurrect any Spirit cards with the Curse Keyword and summon them at no extra cost.

Mai uses Beelzebeat to revive 2 Humpdumps and 2 Balams, a collective cost of 12.

The Cursed Shrine creating a massive defensive strategy allowing Mai to cycle through her deck of cards by using them as chump blockers is an excellent one for utilizing the effect of The SevenShogun Beelzebeat.

Pantera examines the field, Mai has 6 attackers, and she only needs 4 to make it through in order to win, with only a single Hellscorpio on Pantera’s field, Pantera has no way of defending, he notes that victory is very clear here.

But Mai doesn’t go for it, she ends her turn.

Pantera is taken aback by this, but the motive is clear to the rest of us at least.

The longer Pantera is held up in this battle, the longer the Lightbearer cast have to make distance between themselves and Pantera.

If Mai wins early, Pantera doesn’t get his answer, but then he’s free to go looking for The Violet again.

The Lightbearer crew didn’t jump worlds yet, but they’ve successfully lost Belga’s line of sight.

And in other good news, Magisa’s awake.

It seems we’re getting a Flashback of Mai’s plan from Serge’s memories.

Seems from the beginning they knew that both Pantera and Belga were after them

It seems that the Bitch-sona was Mai attempting to not draw suspicion to herself, and to keep the crew concerned with their tails instead of whoever else was chasing them.

Mai intended to deal with Pantera so that Serge only had to lose Belga.

The Violet comes packaged with a “Dummy Balloon” which resembles The Violet at a distance, which can be used to drop as a decoy, this explains the “2 Signals” Belga was seeing, the 2nd Signal was Mai inside the Dummy Ship.

This is one loyal Butler for sure.

Back to the battle …Erm, thats a summon chant, reserved for Key Spirit-level cards.

What’s he doing?

Dropping a whole ass X-Rare that’s what, and LOOK AT THE ART.

From BS08 onward they experimented a lot with getting cards that started exiting the confines of the card border, as it turns out you don’t need the whole border to confirm all of the card’s rules and contents.

A BS08, Red X-Rare is summoned!

A Red X-Rare Spirit from BS08, it’s The MasterDragonRider Dark-Crimson!

Hailing from the Dragon Knight and Dragon Emperor Families, on-summon it can reveal 7 cards from the decktop, and summon every single Dragon Emperor and Dragon Knight Spirit among them without paying any costs or using Tribute, the only downside is their effects When summoned don’t activate.

All other cards hit the Trash. That’s up to 7 super powerful spirits for no cost as many of the Dragon Emperors and Dragon Knights are High Cost Double Symbol Spirits requiring a Tribute.

If that wasn’t enough, at Levels 2 and up, whenever Dark-Crimson attacks, it can wipe out a 5000 BP or below Spirit for every Dragon Emperor on the field.

Dark-Crimson itself is a Dragon Emperor, meaning for something that Costs about the same as Diridalus, and has ONE MORE reduction on it, it can hit a much higher baseline than Diridalus can.

Pantera activates Dark-Crimson’s summon effect, revealing 7 cards.

I’d love to review them all, but instead I’ll just link the cards we haven’t seen, in total, he reveals:

• Felarl Slash
• The Meteor Stream Nightsky
• La-Diablord
• The DarkDragonEmperor Siegfried
• Rainydle
• DarkDinohound
• Trident Flare

There is only one Dragon Emperor in this list,

So Pantera summons an age-old enemy, The iconic Spirit of the Nazo-Otonas, the first Tribute Spirit, The DarkDragonEmperor Siegfried!

And to say this old bean doesn’t look great in this new CGI would be a disservice. It is beautiful.

The DarkDragonEmperor Siegfried, the reccurring evil X-Rare that opposed Toppa again and again and again, even appearing as the penultimate hurdle before Catastrophedragon.

Dark Siegfried as it will be hereto referred is an X-Rare from BS04 of the Dragon Emperor family, enabling Dark-Crimson to summon it.

Normally you would need to offer up a Spirit of Cost 6 or more by sending all it’s Core to the Void, but Dark-Crimson voids that condition in addition to it’s entire 9 Core cost, in exchange for disabling an effect on-summon it doesn’t have.

At Lv2 upwards, Dark Siegfried will draw cards anytime it defeats a Spirit in a battle where it was attacking, and at Lv3 is it’s most potent effect, wiping out any and all non-Red spirits that have the misfortune of holding 4000 or less BP.

This is quite nasty, by summoning a single X-Rare, which should already be potent enough, Pantera has accessed a 2nd, much nastier X-Rare, who’s power was otherwise limited by it’s prohibitively high cost, for the low cost of completely free.

If this doesn’t indicate Pantera as the ultimate successor to Nine, I don’t know what does!

Pantera attacks, with Dark Siegfried at Lv3, all of Mai’s Spirits, aside from Beelzebeat are completely wiped out, due to being Spirits that aren’t Red with BP below 4000.

Given that Pantera calls it the “DarkDragonEmperor” Combo, it’s clear that Dark Siegfried is his Key Spirit (HE’S A NAZO-OTONA, JUST ACCEPT IT), and Dark-Crimson is just an X-Rare intended to get him there.

Pantera enters the Main attack, Mai now has to decide what to do.

Naturally, taking 2 lives from a single attack is bad business, Beelzebeat is the one to block.

Which is a shame, had it remained another turn, it’s Lv2 effect would have enabled it to clear Pantera’s board of Spirits.

Sadly, at no level does Beelzebeat even compare to Dark Siegfried’s 12000 BP at Lv3.

Pantera follows up with an attack from Diridalus, which Mai takes from the life, we’ve missed a couple turns but it seems she only has 1 remaining now.

With her board picked clean of Spirits and her hand reduced to a measly 2, Mai has no defense with which to address Dark-Crimson’s attack.

With no such response, Mai has her last life wiped out.

Pantera is the winner.

Pantera immediately moves to ask Mai why she intended to stall for time.

Mai admits that it was to let The Violet, which carried Dan, time to escape, as a result of this reasoning though, Mai has no idea where Dan or The Violet is currently located.

Mai apologizes for lying, but Pantera forgives her immediately, noting that it’s human to do so.

When pressed about why she would risk her life on a lie, Mai simply answers that she wanted to protect and do something for Team Lightbearer.

Pantera then notes that if the question was indeed so complicated, others wouldn’t have been able to answer it.

Pantera then takes after Dan’s words again, thanking Mai for a good battle and offering a handshake.

Mai refuses the handshake, which Pantera accepts.

I understand that Pantera’s lack of offense is due to being either semi-emotionless, or immature enough to not realise the offense they’re intending, but I’d strive to have a stoicness like that, able to just take the disrespect of people on the chin.

Battles on the Battlefield are draining, and an extensive one like that has taken all the energy out of Mai, causing her to collapse.

Back at the ship, Clackey’s apparently livid at the fact that Mai ran off without telling anyone in order to become a decoy.

Sadly, when prompted as to why Mai chose to do that without going through a single soul to let them know what was going on, Serge notes that she had already decided on that course of action the second the situation arose, noting that Mai would likely have been unreasonable and adamant about going ahead with the plan even if she had consulted everybody.

Clackey begs to differ, claiming that he would have probably been able to talk her out of it.

Thing is, Mai executed a pretty good plan, if there was a likelihood she would have been talked out of it for sentimental reasons, that could have informed her decision not to run it by anyone else.

Zungurii bursts into tears, the last time a Lightbearer got robbed from them he turned into a husk.

The high emotions of the situation seem to cause Dan to stir, he’s able to muster up some confident words in spite of his weak state, stating that Mai will return, because she bears the Purple Core’s Light.

The fact that even someone in as frail a state as Dan’s is confident of Mai’s safety seems to cheer everyone else up.

To round off this scene, Magisa catches Kajitsu, staring directly at Dan.

I suppose she’s pondering as much as her Brother is, as to why Yuuki saved Dan, defying a direct order from Otherworld King.

We return to the scene of the false Violet, a rather aloof and sick as hell looking woman in dark clothing comes along, noting the Violet as her ship.

Seemingly offended by the Dummy Balloon being there, she destroys the large balloon by slicing it with a card.

Because you know, Cardboard is incredibly sharp and capable of slicing through many thick materials.

Just how thin was that Dummy Balloon!?

It seems this lady is familiar with Viole Mai, and based on her ears, she’s an Otherworlder, infact she seems to have similar features to Serge.

…And even more unsettling, she’s holding a card, we can’t see the text but we can see a name.

The SkeletonSnake Skullpione.

But of course, I’m not going to review that now, so we’ll just have to leave it for next time!

Cuz the Episode’s over!

Ah, nice to return back to the main plot, what I don’t appreciate is the incessent Turn Skipping, I would have rathered a full fight but I understand that the context didn’t allow for such a nasty gameplan to be displayed in it’s entirety onscreen.

It still infuriates me however.

Pantera’s got not one, but TWO X-Rares at his disposal, and one is capable of summoning the other, suddenly Pantera has gone from pitifully efficient with a Diridalus to an active threat.

Notably, both instances where Pantera would have lost were both a result of being in a poor situation well before he was able to summon Dark-Crimson, given he defeated once only on Diridalus, and almost defeated again with only Diridalus. Pantera should hopefully clear that up the next time he fights or this is gonna feel real dumb.

Naturally the Card of the Day is the new BS08 X-Rare, Dark-Crimson.

One of the potent series of cards that can benefit from Dark-Crimson, is the extensive “Sieg-Crimson” series, this is a series of Cost 6 Multi-coloured Tribute Spirits that all carry Double Symbols.

They all share the same effect, a when summon effect (that’ll be voided by Dark-Crimson) that wipes out every 3000 BP or less Spirit, giving Sieg-Crimson a core for each victim, and an effect at Lv3 that boosts it’s BP by 5000 on swing.

These cards appeared as Promos but were re-released in SD04, a Structure deck that came out around BS08, and thanks to being so numerous, can all be summoned off of Dark-Crimson’s effect, summoning 1 Double Symbol to the board like that is already quite nasty, but summoning multiple?

Dark-Crimson has a lot of potential, and due to the ever-growing addition of “Dragon Emperor” and “Dragon Knight” spirits, Dark-Crimson only continues to gain cards it can summon.

One such series of cards even as far as BS36 that could consider using Dark-Crimson was an archetype of Dragon Emperors known as the “FiveGoodDragonEmperors”, a series of multi-coloured Red cards that could all had high original costs but could all be summoned as Cost 5, they gained effects when summoned as their Higher, Original Cost however.

These were also all double symbolled, but could be summoned for cheaper than the Sieg-Crimsons, all had separate effects instead of the matching ones Sieg-Crimson has, and wouldn’t live or die by Dark-Crimson’s effect anyway.

Dark Crimson has plenty of potential, making it an incredibly fun card to use.

Anyway, I’ve nattered on enough, I’ll see you lot in Episode 30! Cya later!