The Battle Spirits Commentary Archive
Giving my thoughts on every Episode of Battle Spirits
This is going to end badly, isn’t it?
— Robert “Verus” Goddard
This is the first post on my new blog. Here I’ll be writing Commentary on the entirety of the Battle Spirits series, with each episode Documented with Images, Commentary, Memes and of course, Deck Discussion and Interesting Gameplay, I’ll even recreate the gamestates and decks incase the topic comes up using Vassal! So stay tuned for it!
Right, this is a post I really didn’t want to god damn make but I have to bring it up because it affects this blog.
I released a post on the 6th of September 2025 for Episode 3 of Brave, I have not published anything since, the reason might not actually be visible if you are not UK-based.
And this is that reason:
If you don’t know what this is, this is an Imgur placeholder, all of the images I post on this blog are usually hosted by Imgur.
This is now what I see whenever I view any page on my blog without using a VPN to spoof my location to appear as if I’m connecting from somewhere else.
This is because as of September 30th 2025, Imgur has blocked any and all UK access to it’s website.
Why?
Well if you’re not in the UK and don’t look at the news often, the UK back in July began enforcing something known as the Online Safety Act, sometimes referred to as the OSA.
To summarise, the Online Safety Act is something put into place because the Government wishes to keep those under the age of 18 safe from being exposed to what it deems “Harmful” content online. If you are a parent, you may understand this to mean things of an adult nature that your child shouldn’t be engaging with.
As part of this enforcement, the Online Safety Act puts the onus on anyone hosting a Website that UK citizens can access and has a non-zero chance of hosting anything inappropriate for minors, or offensive, to force them to reconfigure their website to verify the ages of their users, how they do this is determined by an entity called Ofcom, which is the UK’s Communications Regulator
Failure to perform this will have Ofcom impose fines on that company for every day that they do not comply. And Success results in the average UK citizen getting blocked from these websites unless they identify themselves.
Now, this might sound all fine and dandy in theory, Websites are forced to bear the responsibility of protecting children on the internet, right?
In practice however, the following problems arise
Issue #1: Technical Capacity
Not every Website is hosted by a company, and even if it is, not every company hosting a website has the funds and capacity necessary to implement the technical requirements to exist on a UK netspace. This Act gives Ofcom essentially free reign to tell a Website what it must do to comply or face fines and this can be beyond the scope of what that Website can actually achieve.
As a result, in order to avoid fines, they will do what Imgur did, and simply block any and all UK access, meaning they have plausible deniability that they are serving a UK Audience at all.
Issue #2: Privacy
If you are accessing a website that hosts content of sensitive natures, it can be reasonably presumed that you would like to access it anonymously, the OSA forces a prospective user to confirm their age which the act only does by forcing a user to waive their right to privacy.
In other words, households that do not contain children whatsoever (and therefore computers able to access these websites have no danger of being accessed by a child) are being inconvenienced by an act for the sake of children they do not have and may never keep in their house.
Issue #3: Responsibility
It should be the right AND responsiblity of the parent to decide what content is acceptable for their child and protect them from content that is not, infact, parental controls already exist for many devices that allow a parent to dictate what content a child is allowed to access and before anyone says “Well, you can’t block everything”, there is such a thing known as a “Allowlist” where rather than banning specific sites, you allow them, and these can be updated as a Parent is asked and given the opportunity to verify these sites for safety.
Issue #4: Reach and Authority
The 4th and final issue is that Ofcom essentially has to contact every single website hosting company in the world, not just in the UK, and demand they conform to the Laws imposed in the UK or risk getting fined by an outside country.
First of all, the reach is too large, Ofcom cannot achieve this, there is too many websites on the internet and too many companies to contact, it is impossible. This means they are going to target Websites with the highest traffic, websites who have the funds to implement these restrictions, but websites that don’t, and don’t care, which are far less safe and host far more offensive content, those aren’t going to be blocked, and that is what people are going to be herded towards, especially rebellious children who might be hunting for content they’re not allowed to access in the first place.
This means that no matter what, Ofcom cannot block all of the websites they hope to block under this act, and therein lies something else. What if a Website simply refuses to pay the fine?
That was the case with 4chan. A site that prides itself on complete anonymity and essentially zero moderation over the kind of content it hosts. When Ofcom came knocking on 4chan’s door, 4chan refused to implement the requested changes, and when threatened with fines, 4chan retained legal representation.
4chan claims that, as a website based in America, that it does not have to listen to the rules imposed on it by a foreign country. And that the UK cannot just write laws and expect every company in the world, British or not, to suddenly start obeying it. And that the UK definitely doesn’t have the authority to then fine foreign companies for not complying with the laws of a country they are not based in.
Naturally, the UK Government will argue that it has the right to regulate the content served to UK citizens, and that 4chan cannot serve content to UK citizens without it’s government’s say so.
Issue #5: National Security
Though we have been consistently told and promised to that our information is not kept after it is verified, in practice we know this is a lie, as the UK currently suffers several nationally significant Cyber Attacks every week due to the hoarding of the data used to verify these users. Meaning it’s putting UK Adults at risk of having identifiable data stolen by god knows who to keep children safe… Which it doesn’t even do effectively.
How does this affect this Blog?
As I am UK-based, my inability to host images on Imgur makes performing the duties of this blog… inconvenient.
Naturally, at present, VPNs by their nature, allow a user to bypass the Online Safety Act by routing traffic through another region. However, I wrote this blog for fun, and for free, forcing me to purchase a VPN subscription in order to continue it would make this suddenly require a monetary investment in the blog in order to keep it going. I would have to pay to keep doing something I started doing for fun and for free.
And while a VPN may work for me for a time, though the UK Government does not currently have any plans to ban VPNs in the country, it has also stated that it will saction VPN companies who explicitly advertise the ability for VPNs to bypass the OSA, and that “Nothing is off the table when it comes to keeping Children Safe”, citing that they may potentially ban VPN usage in the country if they feel they are undercutting the UK Government’s ability to enforce their stupid law.
(My personal tinfoil hat theory is that they’re holding off on banning them until the stock price rise from the influx of customers slows to a crawl, then they’ll sell off all their shares and ban them outright)
What can you do?
If you are not UK based, then this issue does not affect you like it does me, I would not expect you to try and lend a hand with an issue you cannot quite feel the scope of. As for the issues of VPNs being a monetary investment, I am not going to ask for donations or put up a Ko-Fi link or anything of the sort, the reason I am not doing this is because it would be what we call “Treating the Symptom but not the Problem”, the issue is that the UK Government has imposed a Law that by it’s very existence makes the Internet worse in this country due to the number of entities that would rather block UK visitors than create verification procedures, and those that do create verification procedures will not be used by as many visitors any way because it would require them to effectively tell their Government their internet search history… All in the name of “Protecting Children” which the act does not do effectively due to herding them towards non-compliant, far more harmful websites.
I refuse to ask for donations to keep this blog alive when all the UK government needs to do is ban VPNs like they’ve been threatening to do for the entire thing to fall down again. It would be short-sighted of me to do, and you can’t afford to be short-sighted with other people’s money.
If you are a UK-Reader of this blog however, then my only request for you is to contact your local MPs indicating blogs like this one who regularly host images on free places like Imgur who now have the undue burden of potentially having to replace every single image onto a new hosting website just because the host is now blocked in this country, and then having to do it everytime Ofcom discovers the next highest traffic image hosting website and the cycle starts again.
Inform them that the responsibility of ensuring the Internet is a safe environment is an issue under parental purview, not the Government’s, and that this Act actually undercuts them by herding users towards far more dangerous websites than they would have had the act not been passed.
What will I do?
I’ve done the best I can, what I plan to do is write to my local MP as well about this issue, but I’m not sure it will have the effect I desire, as my Local MP is unfortunately a Labour MP (the current party enforcing the act) and everyone who was a Labour MP in 2023 voted for the original Draft of the Online Safety Act.
Unfortunately, now that maintaining this blog is officially investing my money as well as my time on account of entities who very clearly do not have my best interests in mind, I will need a bit to seriously consider whether or not I want to keep writing it.
I am unlikely to write another post before the end of this year, if I choose to continue this blog you will see Brave Episode 4 posted at some point, if I do not, I will make a formal announcement.
I will once again remind all readers that though I may take excessive time to post updates, I will never retire this blog without a formal announcement of such.
I am sorry that I had to write this. And I hope that something spectacular happens that results in the OSA’s repeal.
Because this is a stupid act, with stupid rules, and all of it’s existing supporters, whoever they might be, insist on it anyway for the sake of something it sorely fails to achieve. The internet is worse in the UK purely by it’s existence and I do not believe the cost is worth it, we should be empowering parents to protect their children, not trying to do it for them.
If you read to the end, thanks. I hope I’ll return to this blog with good news.
Righto, it’s been a hot minute, it seems like once I break for Christmas it gets really busy until around middle of the year, this seems to be a consistent pattern.
Anyway, before we begin, I have some updates. And It’s mostly bad news
My life is currently becoming a set of diminishing free time- Yes I know what this sounds like, lemme finish.
Because of this, the likely forecast for future series isn’t great, if I keep at the pace I’m going I am going to be sacrificing days at a time for several years trying to cover every episode of Battle Spirits ever released.
What’s even worse is, a new anime was announced! Can you believe it?
My point being, I don’t want to spend the rest of my life doing this, especially considering how much time out of my day it actually takes, it would become untenable, so rather than running myself ragged and running headfirst into what is inevitable, I am going to change expectations.
For the rest of the Otherworld Observation Records Saga, that is, Brave, Saga Brave, Gallet’s Revolution, and Mirage, I will continue to cover those Episode by episode, as this Saga is probably the most iconic Battle Spirits Anime Saga.
However, I will not be covering the other animes episode by episode. I haven’t decided how I will give my thoughts on them yet but I will try to find another metric that allows me to get out my deep thoughts about the show, without
This way, you won’t be denied my thoughts over those animes, you just won’t get an Episode-by-Episode review.
Until then, we’ve got Brave to finish.
First let’s recap, we left off in a 2-part battle in the middle of the Main character, Bashin Dan, facing off against the series’ designated Rival, The Moonlight Barone.
We left off with Barone having summoned The MoonlightDragon Strike-Siegwurm.
Currently, Barone controls said Strike-Siegwurm, along with 2 Gadphants.
On Dan’s field, though tough to see, Dan controls The SunDragon Sieg-Apollodragon, Bladra, and a BattleDragon Elginius.
I covered Strike-Siegwurm’s effects at the end of Last episode, if you want an inkling as to how this card will affect the battle, I recommend you go read the end of the last one.
Barone casually states to Dan that, up until this moment he’s been “Probing”, what he means is he’s been playing rather passively in an attempt to figure out Dan’s style and strategy. He seems to like what he’s dealt with til now.
Dan returns the compliment, noting that the game has reached Turn 6, and neither of them have a particularly clear advantage, therefore Barone’s own play must be equally as notable.
A game can’t last forever though, eventually something explosive has to happen, my favourite parts of Battle Spirits.
Kazan is pressuring his personnel to figure out and determine what Barone is trying to do here, of course they’re not going to get an answer because they’re looking for an Ulterior Motive, which unfortunately Barone lacks.
To make a Long Story Short: No it can’t.
Hyoudo knows Dan well, and so he’s likely feeling an odd sense of deja vu from Barone, a strange familiarity with his general intensity that was present within Dan during their time in Grand-Lolo.
Barone enters the attack step, and swings with The MoonlightDragon Strike-Siegwurm.
Dan currently has 3 lives, if he wants to keep his lives safe, he either has to chump block and lose a spirit.
Or answer Strike-Siegwurm with Magic, not that I’m sure there is a Magic currently in the game that could take out an 8000 BP Strike-Sieg here.
Unfortunately for Barone, this is Dan god-damn Bashin, so he takes from the life.
Dan has 2 lives remaining.
Youth notes Dan’s life count, but Mai says that Dan’s in no danger of losing here, so he’s using the opportunity to get EVEN MORE CORE.
I have no idea what “Next time” is supposed to mean, but presumably, Mai is saying Dan is taking the attack so he can deal with it the next time it comes, rather than blocking it and losing cards for no reason.
Baseless!?
The man literally saved not one but two worlds, at the same time from a guy who hadn’t been beaten in a supposedly fair game… in EONS
BASELESS!?
Ima base my foot in yo ass!
Plym seems to take this to mean that Dan took that attack to suggest he might have a response that he needed the life for. To then discourage Barone from attacking further.
This is Dan’s thought here, he believes wholeheartedly that by taking this attack. Barone won’t feel compelled to move his Gadphants.
Barone however knows something Dan doesn’t. Which means the fact that Barone is even ending his turn here is indicative that Barone knows what Dan is thinking.
…Alternatively he’s probably just holding onto sacrifices incase Dan tries something gnarly.
Dan calls Barone out on this, claiming that he figured Barone wanted to extend the fight as much as possible.
Barone makes no attempt to conceal this fact, and demands that Dan show him everything he’s got to offer.
Rather cheekily, we get a glimpse of Dan’s Hand, he had absolutely zero counters. His hand consists of The Fire Paradise and The CannonDragon Bal-Gunner.
That being said, it’s clear Dan intends to Brave Sieg-Apollo on the next turn.
We get this weird three shot scene of some guy intruding on a night time meeting to inform Geraid that Barone has invaded the Human Territory and is currently engaged in battle with the Clash King.
Naturally, none of the other Mazoku were informed to co-ordinate with this, so they’re probably less than amused at the fact that Barone’s gone off to do his own thing.
Dan Turn 7
And for Dan’s first play of the turn, he’s going to once again talk Barone’s ear off.
Barone knows where this line of questioning is going, and wants Dan to return to the fight.
You can see just how exasperated Barone is with this conversation, he slowly starts putting his hand away because he knows he can’t get out of the conversation.
It’s a very “I guess this is happening” kind of energy.
Well, he absolutely can, but then the other question becomes “Why would he want to”
All he wants to do is precisely 2 things, Square, and Up, in precisely that order.
I feel like Dan cares more about the “process” than the result, honestly.
And in a rather diplomatic fashion, Dan asks to do the one thing that they were always going to have to do from the very beginning.
the one time where asking to speak to the manager doesn’t make you a Karen.
Occam’s Razor, while not always true, sometimes makes for an effective approach to solving any problem. That being that the simplest and most direct option tends to be the most effective.
Kazan doesn’t seem too bothered by this idea, though at the very least, even if the Human forces had considered the option, they’ve been fighting so long that any audience would be unwelcome.
Additionally, there’s a widely known rule when it comes to discussing anything that many business and legal minds always know well, which is “Never negotiate from a position of weakness”
It’s very difficult to come out of a negotiation with favourable terms if you don’t have a perceived advantage, in this case the humans are getting their butts whooped, and the Queen has no need to really let up on the pressure.
In this case however, they now have the aura-farming Bashin Dan, who just whooped Duc’s ass and is clearly capable of taking them on, he can reason from a position of strength.
Dan is aiming for a relationship built on discussion, rather than war, as that’s really the only natural conclusion that will work.
Barone tells Dan to clam it, as he’s not interested in a political discussion, he just wants Dan to punch him in the face.
Naturally, Dan is ALREADY doing as he likes.
Dan resumes his turn, he levels up Bladra and The BattleDragon Elginius to Level 2
Barone is elated that Dan finally took an ingame action rather than talking his pointy ear off.
Dan then follows up by summoning The CannonDragon Bal-Gunner
To which Barone’s reaction is… nightmare-inducing.
Don’t worry, this is my reaction when I see a Brave too, it is my favourite kind of card in Battle Spirits.
Dan has Bal-Gunner Brave onto The SunDragon Sieg-Apollodragon, which becomes a Cost 10 Red Brave Spirit with a Double Symbol and an additional 2000 BP from what it had before. Which currently is 8000 with Sieg-Apollo at Level 2.
Barone is aware of Dan’s keen history, but notes that right now the only thing he cares about is that Dan is a competing Brave-user.
Notably what Dan says here in Japanese I believe roughly translates to “I don’t hate that” which at the very least contextually it means the same thing as the subtitle. Just thought that was notable.
Dan attacks with the Braved Sieg-Apollo, and fires Bal-Gunner’s effect.
One of the Gadphants, namely the one with 3000 BP, is destroyed.
Dan then uses Sieg-Apollo’s effect to Target attack the other refreshed Gadphant, Gadphant rises to 5000 BP thanks to gaining 3000 BP on block, but this isn’t sufficient to defeat Sieg-Apollo.
Unfortunately, Dan waging an attack triggered Strike-Siegwurm’s effect at all levels, causing it to refresh.
Unfortunately for Dan, he wasn’t anticipating Strike-Siegwurm to have such an effect. While the standard Red Siegwurm forces a Battle on every attack it makes, Strike-Siegwurm is capable of taking on any attack made against it.
Dan, rightfully, ends his turn.
Plym protests here, which I will forgive as it’s proven later that Plym actually has no idea how to play this game.
But like Dan isn’t capable of doing anything here, Strike-Siegwurm’s refreshing effect doesn’t only occur once, it’s every attack, this means that any attack waged from a Spirit with a BP lower than Strike-Siegwurm’s will simply not work.
Moonlight Turn 8
Which is precisely the opposite feeling most people get, normally when people are waiting for a card it’s usually frustration they’re feeling because it hasn’t arrived yet.
And Barone summons, yep, you guessed it, a new card!
The GunDragon Phoenix-Cannon, a Red Brave from BS10, notably it has 2 Red Reductions and 2 White Reductions, almost as if it was designed to be used with Strike-Siegwurm.
For the time it’s quite powerful, Clash is an incredibly useful control tool in Red because of the removal of the opponent’s agency to decide how they address attacks. Being able to grant that to Spirits with the only condition being that said Spirit is at least Cost 3 is kinda crazy!
But even more on the control side of things, the true power of Phoenix-Cannon lies in it’s on summon effect, wiping out 2 low BP weenies just by summoning it more than makes up for it’s Cost. Notably, Phoenix-Cannon has no symbols, meaning it does not take lives and doesn’t increase the number of lives the Braved Spirit takes, but given it grants Clash, anyone braving it is definitely not aiming for lives.
Barone uses Phoenix-Cannon’s effect when summoned, destroying Dan’s Bladra and Elginius.
Barone continues, having Phoenix-Cannon Brave to The Moonlight Dragon Strike-Siegwurm.
Barone even raises it to Level 3, Strike-Siegwurm is now a Cost 11 Red & White Spirit with 13000 BP, and much like it’s Red ancestor, it now has Clash.
The guy was very clearly reacting immensely to the concept of Braves, what man who’s clearly such a fan of Braves wouldn’t use them?
Normalize complimenting your opponent’s moves if, trust me it actually helps with being mad because you’re looking at them doing something as cool rather than the pain in your ass it’s going to be.
Barone moves to the attack step and has the Braved Strike-Siegwurm attack.
It’s clear Phoenix-Cannon’s effect to Clash hasn’t been revealed yet, but hot diggity this line annoys me, if Dan had a Spirit to block he’d have to choose, but given he doesn’t.
He takes from the life.
Thankfully, Strike-Siegwurm wasn’t a double symbol, and so Dan only lost 1 life. Leaving him with 1 remaining.
Barone ends his turn. While he has no active blockers, Strike-Siegwurm is a 13000 BP Wall.
He’s also got 3 lives remaining, Barone’s pretty safe, even with only 1 Spirit on his field.
The only issue I have with these 2 Blood Knights feeding each other’s addictions is that I am not one of them.
Dan Turn 9
In a rare instance of needing to, Dan separates Bal-Gunner from Sieg-Apollo.
Braving isn’t a one-way street, just as you would arrange cores freely, you may Brave and de-Brave at will, converting a Brave from it’s Braved State back to Spirit-Form.
There are a few reasons you may wanna do this, either you need additional individual attacks for some reason… or…
…You want to change the Brave.
Dan summons The FangEmperor Cerbelord
The FangEmperor Cerbelord, released with SD03, is a Cost 5 Blue Brave in the Fusion Beast and Emperor Beast families. With a Brave condition of Cost 5 or more, any Spirit Braved with it can refresh itself once by milling 5 cards from your own deck.
This card is, safe to say, nucking futs.
It has a Blue Symbol attached to it, making an automatic refreshing double symbol, plus the mill 5 isn’t a problem when you have recovery magic. And this doesn’t factor in any refreshes that might already exist.
Like, say, some Multi-Refreshing Dinosaur that just so happens to have the same amount of reductions and can ALREADY attack 3 times on it’s own.
As a result of this, Cerbelord is currently limited to 1 copy per deck, even in today’s game!
Naturally, Dan is no longer relying on just the Red portions of his deck to hammer out power, now he’s using Blue traits to give himself more variability, as his current Deck is Red and Blue.
Dan Braves The FangEmperor Cerbelord to Sieg-Apollodragon.
Notably, the trait it grants Sieg-Apollo has nothing to do with Fangs, but is instead a new pair of wings.
When imagining a Brave combining with a Spirit, notably it appears that you can also just grow extra pieces to accommodate it, Sieg-Apollo is now coated in Red and Black armor, and also the stones that indicate the colour of it’s Spirit have become Blue.
Sieg-Apollo is now a Cost 11 Red & Blue Spirit with an additional 5000 BP from Cerbelord, 2 Symbols, and at Level 3, has a total BP of 14000.
As if Dan is also Braved, his Life Lens on his Battle Form has also become Blue.
Dan activates Cerbelord’s effect when Braved, discarding 5 cards from his own deck.
There’s this odd exchange where Kenzo rightfully wonders what the point of discarding one’s own cards would be, and Stella rather condescendingly notes that clearly Kenzo doesn’t understand much about Brave effects, being from 640 years ago.
Ma’am, I don’t see you whipping up a Brave deck and taking on the Mazoku, shut the hell up.
As Dan just attacked, Strike-Siegwurm’s effect kicks in, causing it to refresh.
Unfortunately for Barone, Dan has sequenced very carefully.
In Batosupi, the turn player gets to decide the order in which simultaneous effects resolve, he allowed Strike-Siegwurm to refresh first before using Sieg-Apollo’s.
Allowing it to be target attacked.
With 14000 BP against Strike-Sieg’s 13000, Strike-Siegwurm is defeated, notably, Phoenix-Cannon jumped ship right before destruction.
That’s because when the Brave Spirit is destroyed, the Brave can remain.
Dan notes that one of the best ways to shake a Card Battler, is to wipe out their key spirit. And so in order to try and get his point across to Barone, who’d been ignoring his political pleas the whole time, he aimed for Strike-Siegwurm’s destruction.
Barone, feeling a rather odd mix of emotions, admits that he is rather rattled by Strike-Siegwurm’s destruction, but from the look on his face, it’s clear that he’s still willing to fight in spite of this.
Due to Cerbelord’s effect, Dan refreshes Sieg-Apollodragon.
Dan has enough symbols to claim the last of Barone’s 3 lives.
Dan attacks with the Braved Sieg-Apollo, and uses it’s Lv3 effect to destroy a 9000 BP or below spirit, this destroys Phoenix-Cannon and prevents it from protecting Barone (though it’d be exhausted by now)
Could this be all she wrote?
Wat.
WAT.
What he said.
Blizzard Wall’s effect makes it so that the attacks of opposing spirits can only reduce your life by 1 for the rest of the turn. So in spite of the double symbol, Barone only loses 1 life.
Barone taunts Dan over very clearly not anticipating that Barone had a counter.
Mai highlights the irony in the situation, as Dan used this to put a stop to Gai-Asura’s infinite attack by limiting the amount of lives its constant refreshing could take. But now Dan’s been put on the back by the same card.
…Excuse me? You have a data set of one. Just because Duc didn’t counter doesn’t mean Barone won’t.
Moonlight Turn 10.
Barone summons Northernbeard and Gadphant at Level 2.
Notably, Barone had only 1 card in his hand at the beginning of his turn, meaning he just drew a spirit as well.
This is… Bad.
Dan’s hand consists of 2 Nexuses and a Spirit, no capacity to Counter, additionally Dan’s only remaining blocker is Bal-Gunner.
With only 1 life, and only able to stop 1 of 2 attacks, Dan resigns himself.
Barone asks to continue and Dan coolly notes that there’s no point in asking such a question, if Barone doesn’t proceed he’ll lose immediately.
Barone seems to enjoy that response, given Dan’s just as ready to lose as he is to fight.
Plym has a rather pragmatic outlook on the whole situation.
Barone attacks with Northernbeard, Dan blocks with Bal-Gunner, resulting in it’s destruction.
Barone then launches an attack with Gadphant.
Youth realizes the situation and gets pissed, he already didn’t like Dan because of some kind of belief that members of their own era should protect it, and now he’s gone and lost.
Unfortunately, that all doesn’t change the circumstances of right now, which is that Dan just lost to a Mazoku.
Anyone else getting a romantic undertone?
There’s this pre-end-of-battle conversation that occurs that indicates that Barone is thoroughly satisfied with the battle, because while Dan did not win, he destroyed Barone’s Strike-Siegwurm.
Likelihood is this doesn’t occur very often for poor ol’ Barone.
Dan takes Gadphant’s attack from the Life, reducing his remaining lives to 0.
The Winner is The Moonlight Barone.
After which, Barone just leaves!
No invasion, no nada, He just vamooshed.
I do find it hilariously amusing that a soldier basically walked into their territory, had the equivalent of a fistfight with their newest soldier, won, and then left without doing anything else.
Yeah if I was in a military unit I’d be stumped too.
Don’t worry Stella, I’m also still only half convinced you’re necessary for this show.
Thankfully this show quite nicely highlights that Card Games can’t be so analogous to war, it’s a game, and approaching every situation with a military mindset isn’t necessarily going to yield answers.
Especially when some people are just in it for the love of the game.
Much like how a Duelist falls to their knees in Yu-Gi-Oh!, Card Battlers fall on their backs
Dan is rudely awakened from his little edge-nap by “Pome”, Plym calls it the “Sophia’s Power Unit” but I don’t know if that means that he Powers the Sophia and just has an AI that lets it do other things, or if its a unit that works on the Sophia’s Power.
One can only wonder whether an AI being cute is simply a quirk of how it performs its functions being analogous to a shy animal, and that it’s just a product of Dan projecting Human qualities onto it.
Or if it was designed explicitly with Cute behaviour patterns to make it more easily acceptable to the users it’s meant to work with.
We will never get this answer.
Plym, though extremely young, has an incredibly high level of experience with machines, this enables her to not only be the Sophia’s Mechanic at such a young age, but also comes with the quirk of her having a verbal tick where she adds “Mecha” to all of her words.
Dan seems to be conscious of the risks of losing such serious battles, but since Barone didn’t invade, both Plym and Mai seem to be looking on the bright side of the fact that Dan got something he absolutely wanted out of it, a strong opponent.
Kind of reminds me of a scene from a show called “Metal Family”, where one of the characters notes they could never beat another character at Poker because their “Emotions contradict their actions”
In this particular case, Barone was almost entirely battle-thirsty, and was elated when his key spirit was destroyed. Dan, believing he’d cracked him, tried to make a finishing blow as Barone seemed ready for, only to get countered.
It’s not a perfect comparison, in this case, Barone’s emotions contradicted his situation, he still needed to draw a Spirit to get out of it, but the fact is as Dan gained more of an advantage, Barone continued to get more and more happy, the look of euphoria on his face could have been a false signal that he’d been defeated.
Finally, Dan will play with something that isn’t exactly SD03.
Dan once again resolves to meet the Mazoku Queen.
Meanwhile, somewhere in Asia.
Duc appears to be working on his deck after his battle with Dan. I can make out a few hilarious choices he’s got infront of him. Like Triple Nature Forces!
Card is banned, get over it Duc!
Rugain informs Duc that Barone defeated Dan, Duc however doesn’t seem particularly surprised, it appears Brave-users are so insanely rare, and Barone is a particularly competent one, that Barone actively seeks them out in the hopes of defeating them.
Though given his dialogue in Episode 1, it appears Dan is the first human to try and use Braves.
Rugain is somewhat angry about the same things Youth was earlier (this is a similarity that will come up often)
Barone went directly into enemy territory, came out victorious, and rather than seizing it or taking it over he just left.
Any commander who watched one of their units single handedly bring down a high priority target and then not seize it would be piiiiiiissed.
Meanwhile, Barone’s soldiers note that he should report his victory, but Barone is clearly a Battler first, and a soldier second, feeling that the second he makes this somehow about the War would make the battle a little impure.
He went there looking for a fight, got one of the bests fights of his life, why should he now try to reap rewards he wasn’t even seeking when he got there?
Would be a little greedy.
It appears he’s got a formal order from the Queen to return anyway.
The Soldier, naturally inquires directly to Barone. You had the Human HQ at your feet and yet chose to leave after defeating their most promising warrior, why leave?
Why does one climb Mt. Everest?
“Because it’s there.”
Barone appears to have been suffering from a bit of “stagnation”, he had hit the limits of his strength and didn’t seem particularly interested in fighting anybody.
Dan however not only used a mechanic that he’d never seen a Human use before then, he managed to destroy Barone’s Key Spirit, and that was his 2nd battle with it.
Barone is definitely not feeling very stagnant anymore, a new challenge has arisen.
It appears that Barone has committed 2 very serious acts of disobedience, one appears to be disobeying a direct order from the Queen, and another is not capturing a high value target as a Prisoner of War.
a Rather grating voice can be heard out of shot.
Say hello to a person we’ll be seeing wearily often, This is The Darkness Zazie.
I’m sure this particular detail isn’t relevant for the show, but Zazie here rules Slovakia.
And it appears the Queen’s Court is a bit of a place of prestige, even rulers of countries can’t just waltz in.
As can be hopefully observed from Zazie’s rather exaggerated statements, Zazie’s personality is actually hard to discern. Because he overly exaggerates his words and actions, it can be clear to see that he’s being dishonest about how he actually feels. He’s essentially acting badly on purpose.
The thing is, we can tell a person’s intentions by cross-referencing how they act when honest, with how they act when dishonest, we however have absolutely zero metric to determine what Zazie is being dishonest about because his exaggerated behaviour makes him always appear dishonest. Making it near impossible to determine what he’s feeling, which also makes it difficult to determine what he wants.
You can trust precisely nothing that he says, but then it’s impossible to know what to believe from his statements, now one might think the solution would be always disbelieve him, buuut that opens the door for further dishonesty, because then he can force you to draw false conclusions by telling you the truth.
It’s very difficult to deal with people like Zazie, because the only one who knows whether or not to believe what he’s saying is him.
It appears Zazie has some corrupt proposal that we’re not going to hear for the rest of this episode.
Youth echoes Rugain’s thoughts on Barone, he’s glad it wasn’t an invasion but he genuinely can’t see what the benefit of the act was.
Kazan, Kenzo and apparently Clackey all seem to be of the opinion that Barone was just looking for a fight for the fun of it, Clackey and Kenzo are from a time where this game actually is just for fun, so the possibility is easy for them to accept.
It’s clear that this loss wasn’t just to hand Dan an L, it was to completely de-structure the status quo.
if Dan had beaten Barone then, the takeaway would be “Oh cool, it’s a Brave-user, Dan wins, man, Dan is strong“
Instead, Barone got the win, and by a very SLIM margin, which doesn’t actually indicate that he’s stronger than Dan, but he’s of equivalent strength and just happened to be on the right end of a coin toss.
Additionally, the rammifications of a battle “for fun” are being explored here. Even though Barone and Dan had this bout for the hell of it, Dan losing has spurred Youth into wanting to fight himself because he already had no desire to let Dan be the saviour of the future, but now Dan’s just proven (in Youth’s mind) that he’s not actually up to the task. This lets us kickstart Youth’s growth as a character.
Additionally, Barone acting on his own has started some political issues back in his own right, when the game is used to determine so much more than who wins and who loses, you don’t get to play for fun.
Because why would you play for fun when winning can earn you so much more? And especially when people are playing for you, you absolutely don’t want them choosing not to reap rewards that benefit you.
This fight that had otherwise “zero” stakes, just kickstarted a character development arc, and a sequence of events we do not quite know the rammifications of yet.
That is excellent writing. And that’s of course leaving alone the fact that Dan is now going to adjust his deck. Brave’s battles feel so much less stagnant than Gekiha Dan’s and we’re soon going to see why.
Our card of the day appears to be Cerbelord but there’s nothing more I can really say about it. Instead let’s talk about the decklist that I wasn’t able to show last time.
According to the official websites which are officially down now (but I made this well before those went down, and those decklists are still available on batspi.com)
This is Barone’s current decklist. From the looks of things it’s a deck that focuses on producing high power spirits while forcing battles by forcing the opponent to attack, Sai-Drigan and Barone’s only White Nexus support this idea. Additionally it allows Barone to be aggressive thanks to Strike-Siegwurm’s auto-refresh and apparently the inclusion of Monokerok, a card that can block while exhausted.
His only 2 Red Spirits are Rainydle and Tyrannoid, the latter of which can get quite high BP values with a low spirit count, which can support attacking AND blocking.
Dream Ribbon and Dream Chest are just removal auto-includes, and Blizzard Wall is standard defense.
What’s curious here is Destruction Barrier, a Magic that destroys any non-Tribute spirit when they damage your life, I suppose this is used as a “get off me” button when a Spirit too strong for Strike-Siegwurm to defeat comes along.
Otherwise, it’s pretty simple, and it’s simplicity means its strategy can be implemented quickly, and quick implementation of a strategy means you can set the pace for the fight. Likely why Barone took so many victories.
In any case, I finally got this episode out, I’m sorry for making you all wait so long, I’ll see you all in Episode 4.
Buh-bye!
Just Ready Go~
You are ever free~
God the opening is so good, I actually didn’t talk about the ending last episode however.
The ending to this anime is a song called “Netsuretsu ANSWER” by DAISUKE GOD-DAMN ONO
Who is also, coincidentally, the voice of Clackey Ray
On the topic of Voice Actors, first of all, I love them to bits, and I love voice acting myself, problem is I have terrible stage fright, don’t quite have the mic and I have no idea what kind of studios are in the UK to enable me to take such a job. So if anyone wants to help me with that, please do so because I suck.
Til then, on my Youtube Channel I’m currently doing a nonsensical voiced playthrough of the Phoenix Wright series, which is always an excellent place to start.
Anyway, this isn’t what you came for, you came for another Episode of Brave after like a month of waiting, so let’s go!
The show feels the need to give us a mild recap of events before actually showing us what’s happening.
I’m sure we don’t need a refresher, it’s 2650 AD, the 27th Century.
Humanity’s warring with Mazoku, for some reason explicitly called the “Otherworld Mazoku”, likely because “Mazoku” can mean many things so they need to explicitly note that the Demons are the ones from Otherworld.
The important bit here is this gathering of nobles here, it seems that in spite of the Mazoku’s boasts of their own savagery, they’ve produced a monarchy system, this probably explains why Brustom was so well-liked as Blue King, each individual Mazoku having much strength probably lends itself to a race of Kings.
And the Mazoku are ruled by a Queen.
What I’ll note here is the sheer variance of the people present, as I mentioned earlier, most Otherworld Tribes had rather similar appearances, the Gurii Tribe were a Monkey-like people, the Ryuki Tribe were… whatever the fuck those were, etcetera.
But the Mazoku are ALL varied, most have horns, some don’t, large variance in skin colour.
Apparently they also suffer from Estigmatism given that guy with the glasses back there.
This… admittedly incredibly attractive lady, is the Queen of the Mazoku, Gilfam.
This is our episode title, to talk about it would be to spoil more about it, so I’ll let you stew on that while we get to the rest of the-
Holy moly, While under normal circumstances I’d attempt to refrain from making reference to the rather bountiful assets Gilfam has here. Clearly the animators did the opposite.
In any case, her design is very obviously intended to be as attractive as possible. For what purpose I’m not sure as this is only apparent with Gilfam specifically, everyone else is drawn rather modestly save for… One character maybe?
This is one of those situations where I need to say what I said for Number Eight in Toppa, clearly the animators enjoyed drawing that.
…Actually after doing some digging, Gilfam is voiced by the SAME LADY who voices Number Eight.
What is it about this actor requires them to give her incredibly sexually attractive characters?
This Mazoku at the front is as of yet unnamed but we’ll see him a lot, notably neither he nor Gilfam are Card Battlers.
Voiced by the same guy who voiced DOCTOR FRANKER in the previous series, this rather hairy horned Mazoku is Geraid
And he reports that The Hooligan General Duc was defeated by a Human.
Gilfam finds this hilarious and just says that’s unusual, it seems that they don’t hold this as a very large concern on it’s own.
Ah, it seems Geraid has clicked onto the problem with the situation though, the issue wasn’t Duc losing it’s who he lost to.
Remember, Bashin Dan is HIM.
It’s clear their Monarchy isn’t founded on lineage, I don’t see any particular family of Gilfam anywhere when normally Monarchies use the Right of Birth to create new Kings or Queens.
Anyway it’s nice that there’s a few Mazoku in the room smart enough to realize that Bashin God-damn Dan is kind of a big problem.
Geraid seems to be treating this with the precise seriousness it merits.
Gilfam seems almost unfazed by the fact that THE Clash King, y’know, the guy who BEAT the dude who almost ran the Mazoku into extinction, has suddenly appeared out of buttfuck nowhere and started clapping Mazoku.
That’s not concerning in the least for Gilfam?
She’s either REALLY not a battler, or doesn’t seem to think Dan’s a problem.
And Geraid clearly does NOT care for the suggestion that Dan, someone of such renown, isn’t someone to be bothered by.
Geraid wonders if the Clash King may also cause other Humans under their rule to start misbehaving, after all one Mazoku being defeated by a Human Battler may inspire others to do so.
In this case, when the rule is Battle Spirits, and you have a Mazoku ruled sector, 100% of all unfought battles are won by Mazoku and lost by Humans.
Naturally, Mazoku would prefer not to battle to re-instate their rule incessently.
Gilfam finds Dan’s effect on the humans hilarious.
Gilfam says there’s probably no harm in Dan being about, and Geraid requests direction
We will… just as soon as you change your face. Dan’s about to mince your Mazoku one by singular one and you’re just like “Yeah I’ll give him an audience, bring him here, we’ll have Pizza”
I suppose a Several Hundred-Year old Mazoku can still be quite immature.
“Several Hundred? How do you know? Can’t find a confirmed Age anywhere”
And to that, I give you not only this image, but an exerpt from The Fixer story. I ommitted Gilfam’s entry but she DID have one
In the year 2650, she was a queen who ruled the high mazoku society. At that moment, although she looked like a child, she already gathered every mazoku lingering around the Earth, and rose in Australia in order to control the Core System. She also saved the mazokus who were captured by the Fixer. During the anime series Brave, she was portrayed as a long-living being who knew Magisa. However, due to the preference of the director Tetsuya Ishikawa, she appeared as a loli, but her age was already roughly 100 years old.
Right I’m going to set aside the… er, sheer oddity of Tetsuya Ishikawa’s… preferences causing such a drastic alteration to her past design.
But in any case, Gilfam rescued all the Mazoku and rounded them up in Australia, the Mazoku typically frequented the Purple World, so likely most of them were concentrated in one place.
Because of this, Gilfam, already 100 years old at the time while still looking like a child, would be several hundred years old now.
Mazoku age at very different rates depending on the Mazoku themselves, but it seems due to their somewhat unlimited amount of life, (being able to live for somewhere in the realm of 2000 years like Boomerang Oryo had), this extends to having incredibly long childhoods.
Assuming that she was 100 and that she struck right when Dan left, that’d place her maximum age at 738. Oryo is more than double her age.
Geraid agrees to try and bring Dan, however he asks why.
This…
…Is technically true. Humanity does have cause to believe that Dan is their enemy.
Simply put, he defeated Otherworld King not for the Humans, but for the Otherworlders, then the Mazoku got stuck on Earth and terrorized the Humans, this would not have happened if Otherworld King stuck around.
Dan not only pulled the Mazoku from their home but put them into a space where they could flaunt their power unchallenged, with no Otherworld King to drive them to extinction, they were unstoppable.
So it’s kind of Dan’s fault that they’re in this pickle.
Switching scenes now to Dan and the crew, Dan gets a standing ovation from Chief Kazan’s staff.
Implying they didn’t have difficulty with other Mazoku, but I guess Duc was much more of a brick wall compared to closer matches and that Duc was particularly skilled.
This really feels like a mech anime at times, except it’s card battlers.
Dan says he wants to thank Kazan, as it was Kazan who made it possible to bring Dan back to the Battlefield he missed so much.
Kazan asks if Dan will be Humanity’s Card battler from here on and Dan answers the question with a different question, asking where he should fight next.
He just got here, had the first battle in this timeline, and he’s already raring to go again.
Kazan tells Dan to hold his horses, as Dan’s currently in an incredibly unfamiliar time, Dan needs to know generally what’s going on before he can stay here seamlessly.
in 640 years, any number of standard words may have fallen out of use, or hell, become offensive in that time-
I’m kidding, that’s not what’s happening, nor is it what Dan needs to be caught up on.
Youth starts to show a bit of his personality here, he’s a little pissed off that Humanity went out of their way to drag a guy from the past 640 years into the future to fight a war for them.
I can kind of see where he’s coming from, after all, a guy 640-years out of date suddenly pops in and outdoes everything Humanity have tried to fight the Mazoku with all this time?
It makes it seem like humanity’s regressed rather than progressed.
Youth is missing a key component, Dan isn’t just a random guy.
He is, quite literally, history’s strongest battler.
And in an Era where Battle Spirits progresses somewhat parallel with the past, skill like Dan’s isn’t suddenly just useless, he’s barely even a set out of the loop yet, so naturally he can transition seamlessly from Set 9 to Set 10.
Plym notes that everyone was wanting Dan to come here and fight, and Plym herself thought he was awesome. Or “Mecha-Kakkoii” which is something she likes to say a lot.
Seems Plym is easily enraptured by cool things, so Youth is dismissive of her opinion.
As Dan and the others start moving through the hallways, an Earthquake hits, it appears that this Earthquake has something to do with what Dan needed to be told.
Which will now be explained by a familiar voice! As we saw in the intro in the first episode, Hyoudo Kenzo is here, unfortunately children are typically not allowed to be scientists and so Kenzo’s coat is far too gotdamn long for his height.
Kenzo was studying in Italy, sent there by his Fixer grandfather, the After-War Lord, to protect him after the Fixer started moving against the Bearers of Core’s Light.
As a result, Kenzo’s likely a bit more resentful of his education, and so once the opportunity arose to do something, he decided to come here.
And this lady is someone we’re going to see too much of for my taste, Dr. Stella, who will appear alongside Kenzo in just about every scene he’s in.
She seems to be a modest individual, claiming that someone as young as the 11-year old Kenzo is technically her senior, as going off of birth dates alone, Kenzo’s got a 600-year lead on her.
But in truth, the 2 have an intellectual rivalry going on. As such, Stella has brought back the common joke of having a character especially designated for mispronouncing Kenzo’s name every god damn scene.
For reference, I didn’t find this joke funny the first time, I don’t find it funny now.
What I will say is interesting about it, is that both Stella and Magisa did it intentionally for different reasons.
Magisa was mispronouncing Kenzo’s name to be amusing, it was Malice for the sake of Humor.
Stella is doing it to be mean, she’s using Humor to convey her Malice.
I WILL WORRY
IT IS MY (admittedly self-assigned) JOB TO WORRY
THEY CAN FUCK OFF.
It seems that the explanation for these Earthquakes has something to do with this 8th continent the Mazoku created here.
It’s a pretty good trick, normally if you want someone to come to your country nowadays you need airports, docks, etcetera.
It needs to accommodate Human transport.
But a Continent in the middle of the Pacific Ocean all of a sudden, well I suppose the only way it’s being accessed is via Core Ship.
And well, you’re in Mazoku territory there.
So by establishing control over an empty land, Oct is an effective isolated continent away from the Humans.
It’s a continent due to being a unique landmass separate from all other continents, but ultimately, Oct is only the size of a large country.
They want to be isolated from humans and there are no humans in Oct, perfect place to establish a capital and run a Mazoku-exclusive Monarchy.
Er, hold on it was created in the 25th centry, so at the earliest, 2400 AD.
It bothers me to say that it’s been governed by the queen for “centuries” if there are only TWO centuries in question!
The Core System relies on large, central cores for structures to be built around, in this case, they shoved a large amount of it into the Earth’s core directly.
So, naturally, forcing large reconstructions of landmass to create an extra continent is probably not a good fucking idea, as that’s initiated climate change on an incredibly quick scale.
Stella insults Kenzo by having him say that the Earth is “Sick”, but Kenzo gives a response that a friend of mine (and myself) would agree with.
Spoken language is designed to perform one function, and that is to let you be understood by someone else. What words are chosen are somewhat irrelevant as long as you are able to convey what it is you are trying to say, to someone else.
Dan’s on board with the explanation, the Earth is operating strangely because it’s not in it’s natural form, and has been altered unnaturally.
So, one of the obvious risks of having a race from another series of worlds join your planet is that, creative as they are, they’re completely unfamiliar with how Planets work, as Grand-Lolo is a series of disconnected landmasses that don’t really have a planetary core like Earth does.
So, naturally, the Mazoku:
They figured out how to create Oct, and didn’t bother with the long-term fallouts from that choice.
It seems the Earth itself will be okay, but that’s only after Mother Nature completely obliterates everything on it first. Returning to a primordial state before restarting life over again.
This is generally one of the main “apocalypses” people worry about when it comes to climate change and pollution, The Earth is most likely going to survive us no problem, hell there may even be more of us later.
But we are somewhat more concerned with surviving whatever Mother Nature retaliates with in the meantime, Unlivable weather conditions doesn’t tend to be compatible with life.
Hilariously, Kazan’s previous version of Earth was over-polluted and unlivable because of it, this time however, it’s instantaneous climate change brought about by the Mazoku.
A good question, if it’s 100 years from now then Dan is likely not going to ever suffer the consequences of failure, it means he has more than enough time to put a stop to it.
Unfortunately, the estimated time of death for all life on Earth is one year.
And it’s a rough estimate, it could be even sooner than that.
The Human race simply does not have the time to be fighting this war with the Mazoku.
Back at a different part of Asia, Duc returns presumably, home, as he’s greeted by someone who calls him “Dad”
Duc clearly has an honest relationship with his son, he admits his own loss, but just thinks about where to go from there.
His son appears young, but naturally this could be misleading, as Mazoku have varying lengths of childhood.
Much like Geraid, this small chap will have his name stated later, but there’s nothing significant about the name that warrants us withholding it now.
This child, is Rugain, and you’ll notice his design is not disimilar to Youth’s, having very similar clothing choices and hair colour.
And apparently he’s got a penchant for letting his emotions dictate his actions too, wanting to fight Bashin Dan, regardless of his reputation.
Barone taunts Rugain, saying that he doesn’t have the ability to defeat Bashin Dan.
Bit bold of him to say that after seeing that poor showing from Duc and only witnessing ONE battle, but he’s been fascinated with the chap ever since he saw his Brave.
Rugain, naturally not appreciating this guy butting in with his conversation with his Dad, tells him to suck a fat one.
Duc comments that the only person who should be concerned about defeating Dan is himself, as Duc’s the only one here who’s been defeated by him.
You’ll note that Duc’s incredibly noble here, he’s been open about his loss to Dan, he took his loss well, and simply thinks about how he’ll go about it in future in spite of the surprising circumstance, he doesn’t seem to have any particular vendetta against him.
Duc’s even checking on the general populace, wondering if there’s been any trouble in his absence.
Duc then walks off with his son, mentioning that while Battling, essentially Military might, is important, Rugain also needs the skills to politically unite those they rule to keep them happy
There is liable to be humans under Duc’s rule, and he hasn’t particularly been belittling of any particular human he’s come across, Rugain didn’t say the “Humans” have been calm, or the “Mazoku” have been calm, just “People” which could be both.
This is clearly a scene intended to highlight that Duc isn’t an aggressive despot, he’s actively acting as a world leader, his invasions of sectors and choice to battle Humans for them is simply the rules of engagement, and the orders of his higher ups of which he is to follow.
Or if you’re as crafty as Duc, entire continents, though he hasn’t finished conquering Asia, he controls most of it.
The Narrator gives us a small insight that we could already extrapolate from the actions but it’s good to have clarification, Mazoku spread their rule over humans, using Battle Spirits as a replacement for Military might, they expand their territory using Battle Spirits to invade sectors until they’re stopped, naturally, now that Dan has stopped Duc, he’ll have to return for Tokyo at a different time, or perhaps ask Dan to offer it up should some other matter involve their fight.
This isn’t the only reference to the Sengoku era that we’ll see, as Battle Spirits Burning Soul, the 7th Battle Spirits anime, will also reference it heavily.
Barone comments on the fact that the moon is out.
The Soldier here, upon Barone’s re-entry to his ship, tells Barone about Gilfam’s recent widespread order to capture Bashin Dan.
Much like Gilfam was, Barone seems relatively unbothered by the prospect of the man who defeated Otherworld King suddenly arriving to kick hella ass…
And then it strikes me, many of these Mazoku might not have lived that long ago.
It’s entirely possible Barone was born on Earth, having never known hide nor hair of Grand-Lolo.
It’s hard to imagine the strength of a man you’ve never met, and so it can be easy to dismiss.
and off Barone goes…
Dan and Mai have a nice night-time talk outside, admiring the moon.
Dan asks if the door he came through was the same kind of door that “humanity migrated through”
He’s talking about the door of light that Mai opened for them. Dan’s asking if it’s like Mother Core’s gates, and that it’s connected to all the Eras Grand-Lolo was.
Unfortunately, time travel physics are incredibly complex things to workaround, and while time travel has theoretically been achieved to bring Dan to the 27th century, unfortunately, it seems picking a time is an incredibly precise mechanism, as such that rudimentary replication of Mother Core’s Doorway is only connected to 640 years ago, and can’t reach anywhere else. Timewise or spacewise.
Dan was likely wondering if it would be possible to move the Humans to Grand-Lolo, or perhaps go to a potential future to see how they did it last time.
Dan states that he needs to do something about the Earth’s Reset, and Mai notes that he is doing something, after all, he’s been assigned the task of winning battles.
Dan states that battling won’t prevent the destruction, and that he isn’t going to do so just to make the Humans feel a little better before the Earth explodes.
If he’s going to battle, he’s going to do it for a good reason.
Panic strikes, it appears a Mazoku Core Ship has arrived, and given Dan’s staying at the HQ for Humanity’s forces, this is a pretty big deal.
Also that’s Barone’s ship we saw earlier, seems Barone has come to have a look at Dan, even if it means flying into the heart of Humanity.
I have no idea what the levels for this are, so got zero clue how bad this is other than gauging their reactions.
Kenzo probes for Dan’s whereabouts, and Clackey says Dan should be with Mai.
Lolwut, the Mazoku have never once thought of just taking out the Human HQ in Asia?
Either they feel some honourability in War or they’re not feeling superior enough to go charging into enemy territory.
Plym comes out to get Dan, as he’ll likely need to get ready to be fired from a Core bullet, but he simply steps forward.
Well naturally, what else were they going to come for? A McDonalds order?
Okay, show, I appreciate that you’ve made this clear not once but twice, but I’m now less concerned with the fact that this has never happened in the, what, 250 years since Oct’s been instated as a continent.
…But the obvious followup is a little more interesting and not being answered, why have they not attempted to take it?
This question will never be answered, naturally.
Mai attempts to drag Dan away but clearly he’s entranced by Barone’s arrival.
Barone’s title is now offiically stated, “The Moonlight Barone”, pronounced “Gekkou Barone” in the anime.
AND HE RULES ROME.
not even Italy, just it’s capital, ROME.
Stella notes that Barone rarely battles, and usually his subordinates invade for him, calling him lazy as a conclusion.
Kenzo however, is familiar with the type, as the Mazoku leaders are quite similar to Leon in how they gallavant across Core Ships.
So in truth, Barone’s actually rather strong.
This is precisely how all of my interactions with my friends go when I try to be dramatic.
Hilariously, his name isn’t given to him because he only battles under a full moon. It’s much simpler.
The fact that his eyes don’t stay trained on Dan makes it seem like he’s looking at the Camera
I bet you any money someone has kept this screenshot for their own personal validation.
Barone, based on his reactions in Episode 1, is very clearly also a Blood Knight.
Clackey’s clicked that Barone is saying he has no intentions of invading this or any other sector, he’s just here for a booty battle call
Youth is more cynical, he thinks Barone is being a decoy, and infact there’s a different sector being invaded that he’s trying to draw attention away from.
And then they kissed.
Jokes aside, the last thing you want is 2 Blood Knights anywhere within the same Solar System as each other because the second they find each other, whatever use you were getting out of them has been entirely replaced because the one thing a Blood Knight wants more than anything else… Is to find another Blood Knight.
Barone is essentially being presented as a Mirror to Dan here. Dan is completely unmatched by Humans, and Barone, much like Dan, is too strong amongst Mazoku.
As a result, both battlers have no real challenges now.
Dan naturally communicates that he understands, precisely, how Barone feels.
To which Barone says… this.
Hm, this sounds familiar, what could possibly strike such a specific memory-
Oh right
Dan said, effectively, the exact same thing in Episode 1.
“That smile” is going to be Dan’s “I’m going to play Battle Spirits and nothing on Earth or Grand-Lolo is going to stop me” signal, apparently.
Both Barone and Dan feel like they’ve hit a limit to what they can draw out because they’ve had nothing to push them, but now they’ve found each other, at the very least, one of them may be pushed further under these circumstances
Dan tells Barone to get back in his Core bullet, saying he’ll join him shortly.
He seems to have completely forgotten the existence of Mai and Plym here.
Youth gets incredibly ticked by Dan’s brazen choice to turn his back to Barone.
Dan cannot catch a break with this guy, what is Youth’s damage?
Regardless, the Beautiful Sophia prepares to Launch.
Naturally, the animation for the Core bullet sequence is incredibly long and doesn’t really cover anything, so I’ll be skipping those sequences from now on.
Dan opens the Gate and heads off!
The Battlefield looks blue from the outside when it was pink in Episode 1 before, so you’d expect the interior to not look the same but unfortunately it does.
There is one time where the Battlefield changes but sadly that is the only time.
The Moonlight Barone offers Dan the first move.
Dan Turn 1, Dan summons Morgesaurus and ends his turn.
Barone quickly notes the Red Spirit, naturally if he’s studied up enough on Dan’s history he’ll know Dan has a red proficiency.
Youth takes this moment to ask what’s actually going on, Youth has only ever seen battles where Land or Property was at stake, but he has absolutely no idea what the hell this battle’s about.
Clackey says he ultimately has no idea, but he thinks that Barone most likely challenged him just for the sake of the challenge.
A true “Why does one climb Everest” sort of thing, “Because it’s there.”
Clackey naturally would find that explanation plausible because he’s lived life in an Era where Battle Spirits could be played and infact was only ever played for casual purposes, for the sake of fun.
Youth comes from an Era where Cards are Weapons, and to fight is to fight over something, to him this is kind of no different to 2 people having an actual Sword fight, risking each other’s lives, for fun.
Moonlight Turn 2, Barone summons a new Spirit, Northernbeard at Lv2.
A Cost 3 White Spirit from the ever-elusive BS10! Officially the first card in this series from the new set, and the 2nd card we ever see from BS10.
It’s a simple card, Cost 3, simple BP values and level requirements, and a useful blocking effect that allows Barone to generate core whenever Northernbeard blocks.
The most notable thing about Northernbeard is it’s family, it hails from Giant Beast which isn’t too interesting… But Astral Soul is very notable.
This is because as gimmicks started to shape themselves into reality into the Battle Spirits game and separated “Eras” of sets became a thing, the design team now start to realize they can’t plan around every single card they’ve ever god damn released for whether or not something is broken.
So they use this family as a failsafe, in this case, the Astral Soul family for smaller Spirits, and the Astral Deity family for boss cards. This lets them create cards intended for specific bosses in this Era of sets without worrying about accidentally creating a nasty, unforeseen combo in a previously released set.
Also also, Barone is using White Spirits, only natural the main Rival is a White player as such is the norm up until now.
Barone ends his turn, and Dan decides now’s a good time to make small talk.
Barone looks generally bothered that Dan is asking important questions.
Like “Bro we’re trying to fight, could you like NOT right now?”
It seems the Humans aren’t the only ones aware of the Earth’s impending Reset.
Barone here is speaking for the Mazoku, it’s clear he’s not the only one who thinks this because he’s saying it as if it’s common knowledge.
Mazoku aren’t afraid of the Reset because they’ve spent the last 6 centuries adapting to the Earth’s Environment, and have evolved to suit the Earth now.
This isn’t an unsurprising viewpoint however, even us Humans can sometimes have the kind of hubris Barone is showing here, assuming that our supposed human “penchant” for adaptability will just enable us to survive the very real problem of climate change.
Brave is of course, using the Earth’s very magical reset to embody very real climate change.
Episode title is ONCE AGAIN a spoiler, so dodging that noodle.
Barone’s excuse for why he didn’t care about the Earth’s Reset is very… surface-level, he states an unverified claim with no proof, its the type of explanation one would give themselves if they were trying to ignore an issue rather than solve it.
Youth notes Barone’s seriousness, and begins to believe that he isn’t infact a decoy.
Apparently there’s an Emergency defense option for the HQ that they have on hand.
Dan Turn 3, Dan raises Morgesaurus to Lv2.
And then throws out a Bladra and a BattleDragon Elginius
Elginius is new to us, so let’s run it!
The BattleDragon Elginius is a Cost 1 Blue Spirit from SD03, it has only 1 ability at all levels, which is that both it’s Symbol and it’s Color are treated as Red.
Back in the day, cards like Additional Color had to be ruled on, as a card’s colour and a symbol’s colour were separate, such that older cards that had a colour changing effect also changed a card’s symbol, which enabled that card’s symbols to offer the relevant reduction
During Constellation Saga, they were officially reworded to explicitly state that a change in colour and a change in symbol were not one and the same.
As such, from this point onward, cards always specify that the symbol also changes, this comes up with significantly more recent cards that can treat themselves as another colour but their symbols cannot also be treated as that colour.
Other than that though, Elginius has no other redeemable qualities, it is a Blue reduction that is also a Red Reduction.
Post-Edit Note: I am informed by one lanelanelane that my info is incorrect, the print of Elginius being shown here is the original print, apparently the Japanese text still only states it’s colour. Additionally, the rewording actually didn’t take place until Ultimate Battle Saga, which is 3 Sagas later. Sorry!
This does mean that it helps summon Dan’s ace, which contains 2 blue reductions.
As potentially gauged from the earlier shot, Dan entered the attack step, he swings with Morgesaurus, which gains +2000 BP for attacking.
Barone blocks with Northernbeard, and uses it’s MIGHTY useful ability to gain a core from the Void when it does so.
Barone could have taken a life and left Northernbeard as a Blocker for the other 2 Spirits who couldn’t match it, but it’s clear from this action Barone wants more Core than just what Northernbeard is giving him now.
Morgesaurus and Northernbeard wipe each other out.
Dan sees “No blockers” and full attacks, Barone practically puts away his hand and welcomes the attacks, happily dropping to 3 lives remaining.
Plym is rather elated that Dan now has a perceived “advantage”.
But it’s clear that Clackey’s noticed the same thing I did, that Barone’s choice of block looked very much like he was asking for it.
Moonlight Turn 4, and whatever Barone’s drawn it was enough to get a clear reaction out of him, which seems to put Dan on edge.
Come on man, it’s Episode 2 and you just clobbered another Mazoku who dropped a Byak-Garo on you that you cleaned up with a STARTER DECK.
Chill out
Barone summons… precisely what he said he did, 2 Gadphants at Lv1.
A Cost 2 White Spirit from the Machine Beast family, introduced in BS10.
Gadphant’s a simple Blocker type Spirit that grants BP when blocking, it also has Blue Armor at Lv2, protecting it from Blue’s Cost based destruction effects.
It’s definitely made with The GiantEmperor Alexander in consideration, as at Lv2 it ties with the 6000 BP Alexander.
Barone then summons a 2nd Northernbeard to the board at Lv2.
Dan sees this rather defensive board of favourable blockers and notes from Barone’s expressions and his subsequent actions that Barone isn’t capable of summoning whatever it is he drew just yet. And so needs to buy time.
Barone then asks rather rhetorically whether or not his battle with Duc was “Simple”
Not a shot I’ll show but Barone also notes how he’ll “confirm” Dan’s ability.
Barone suddenly attacks with both Gadphants
Dan makes an expression that Barone seems to read as a response, but Dan decides instead to take from the life.
Dan is brought down to three lives, and Barone ends his turn, leaving Northernbeard to block.
It seems Dan picked up on Barone’s strange choice of block order on Turn 3, telling Barone outright that they both like to take lives to increase core.
there’s some conversation between Plym and Youth that boils down to this conclusion, which seems to just be an indicator for anyone unfamiliar with the game enough to know who’s really winning.
So far neither Dan nor Barone have made any large misplays or taken really large leads at the present moment.
Dan Turn 5, Dan draws his Key Spirit, The SunDragon Sieg-Apollodragon.
Barone notes Dan’s expressions this time, and guesses that he’s probably drawn a Key Spirit.
Firstly, to add more reduction, Dan summons a Bladra.
Dan then summons The SunDragon Sieg-Apollodragon at Lv2.
As Dan currently lacks the required core to actually keep him at Lv2, he takes a core away from the Bladra he just summoned.
Barone is pleased to finally see Dan’s ace again.
Mai comments that the Bladra Dan summoned didn’t stay particularly long.
This will become a running gag across the entire series.
Spirits that can be summoned with 0 cost are in unique positions as they are the only cards that net an actual reduction in the amount of spent core. If you spend even 1 core on a spirit, you aren’t actually reducing the amount of core you’re spending on the spirit you inevitably summon.
SunDragon Sieg-Apollodragon was a Cost 6 Spirit needing 3 core to be at Lv2, with Dan’s current field, he’d have needed 7 core to pull off the summon he just did.
By summoning the Cost 0 Bladra, who only held a core temporarily, that cost was dropped to 6, with say a Cost 1 spirit like Yoroilizardon, Dan would have paid 1 cost to reduce 1 cost, which would have left him in the same situation.
Dan enters his attack step and swings with Sieg-Apollodragon, using it’s effect at all levels, Dan target attacks 1 refreshed spirit.
He chooses the only available option, Northernbeard.
Barone activates Northernbeard’s blocking effect, 1 Core from the Void is added to Northernbeard.
The 5000 BP Northernbeard is destroyed by Sieg-Apollo’s 6000 BP.
Dan ends his turn.
Moonlight Turn 6.
Barone comments on the “beauty” of Dan’s victory.
Barone notes that Dan’s destruction of Northernbeard gave Barone extra core to work with, but notably for this to be true Barone would need to have a 0 cost spirit on hand to provide any extra reduction.
Northernbeard has merely refunded the core he would have otherwise saved Barone by being present on the field, it’s destruction hasn’t changed what this turn could bring.
Barone’s lost 2 lives, had 3 core steps, and gained 2 core off of Northernbeard, he’s working with a total of 11 core this turn. 2 of which are on his Gadphants, meaning Barone has 9 core and 2 White reductions.
Barone reaches for the card he reacted to earlier, Dan notes that he’s about to play his Key Spirit.
Again, no he did not.
Barone summons his Key Spirit, The MoonlightDragon Strike-Siegwurm.
Wait… did he say Siegwurm?
Clackey and Mai are naturally taken aback by hearing the summon of Siegwurm of all things.
Not only that, but a White one.
Plym has no sense of atmosphere, but yes, it is cool.
One cannot fathom what Dan is feeling right now, not only having to face his old Key Spirit, but one fighting for the complete opposite colour to his nature.
Of course, we don’t need to fathom, because Dan clearly shows he’s been well aware he might have had to fight old faces in new coats of paint. Dan’s fighting a name he knows more than anything, but an X-Rare he doesn’t recognise. And he was probably fully versed in his home era’s card pool by the time he left.
Sadly, it’s only Episode 2 and yet its a gotdamn TWO-PARTER!
But don’t think you’ll have to wait til Episode 3 to hear it’s effects, since the card of the day just so happens to beeeeee…
The Cost 6 White X-Rare from BS10, an Armed Machine who also happens to be a member of the Astral Deity family, meaning it enjoys all the fun family-based gimmicks exclusive to the constellation saga.
It has 3 effects, at all levels, it refreshes whenever any opposing Spirit attacks, you heard that right, this thing can block any number of attacks it likes, simply having this on the board at any given time means your opponent cannot swing safely with a weaker spirit, as you won’t even get the benefit of keeping it down.
At Levels 2 and up, when Strike-Siegwurm blocks and wins the BP Showdown, all Spirits with weaker BP are bounced to the hand, this further punishes attacks made on Strike-Siegwurm.
And at worst, at Lv3, an effect Strike-Siegwurm only has when it holds a Brave, at the beginning of the opposing attack step, it can coerce an unbraved opposing Spirit to attack if it can. This naturally ends up being a crazy combination effects as you’ll target the one with the highest BP it can block, and proceed to wipe the board of anything weaker when you win.
It’s a creative design for such a card, a Siegwurm that heavily punishes the opponent for allowing it to win battles, and essentially has a reverse Clash effect when it’s engaged with the Era’s mechanic.
Now to cover my comment from earlier about Northernbeard’s core boosting being meaningless.
Northernbeard held 2 core, Barone’s 2 Gadphants had 1 each, had Dan not destroyed Northernbeard, Barone would have entered his turn with 10 core available, 4 being on his field, and 3 reductions.
He would have been able to summon Strike-Siegwurm at Lv3 no problem by reducing Northernbeard to Lv1.
On his actual turn, he has 11 core, but uses 1 less reduction, and 2 core on his Gadphants.
so with 9 Core spare, he spends 4 of it, summoning a Strike-Sieg with potentially 4 core at Lv3, and 1 core spare, which would have been on the Northernbeard.
In other words, Dan’s attack didn’t change the scenario, but it definitely didn’t hurt him. As the difference between the 2 turns is that Barone is down a Northernbeard he’d otherwise have.
Anyhow, now for our featured decklist!…
Is what I would say if it wasn’t a glaring spoiler, thankfully the featured decklist for Episode 3 is just Dan’s deck from Episode 1 again, which he hasn’t changed here, so I can talk about Barone’s deck at the end of next episode!
Makes me sour as hell as well but gotta keep you lot on yer toes.
See you in Episode 3!
“When watching TV, make sure you’re in a well lit room, and don’t sit too close to the screen.”
Hyoudo Kenzo
“That was Hyoudo Kenzo!”
Our usual warnings which I will only post once, delivered by Hyoudo Kenzo this time around, as Magisa would be a little odd.
Welcome, to the first episode of my favourite Battle Spirits series, Battle Spirits Brave!
The opening theme of Brave is Free, by Karasu and it goes hard.
I won’t cover the Intro too much, as its not so structured and I want to introduce characters as they appear.
But, it’s very clear here that this horned chap on the right here is the main rival.
And of course, we’re now seeing the return of our Gekiha Dan Main character, a Bashin Dan, Stronger than Otherworld King and broken by the Fixer, and all by the age of 14.
Yeah, that’s right, the new cards we’ll be seeing will be part of the Constellation Saga of sets. This series is also set in the future, approximately 640 years after the events concerning Otherworld King, in the year 2650.
If you’re wondering how the hell Dan is alive in spite of being our MC, you’ll see.
The show assumes you know the events of Gekiha Dan, but still contextualizes what it’s talking about, also the character speaking is just a narrator.
If you’re joining us for the first time just for Brave, first of all, Hi, second of all, what happened last time was that some dick called the Otherworld King tried to combine Earth and Grand-Lolo together so he could rule it by dangling Core over their heads, a Mineral that naturally produces Infinite energy ad nauseum. But doing so required forcing Grand-Lolo’s residents, the Otherworlders, under his rule in spite of Otherworld King himself being Human.
From their point of view it was a series of changes that heavily affected Otherworlders, changes they didn’t ask for.
So our Hero, Dan, kicked him in the butt so hard he became dust, the McGuffin of the series, Mother Core was given to an Otherworld Witch turning her into a Goddess, and the worlds were separated again.
This… doesn’t seem possible just from the outset, as Magisa moved everyone before magically dragging Grand-Lolo and it’s residents back.
So that’s either a really big fuck up, or Magisa meant to do that.
…The Mazoku?
Yep, the Mazoku. The most varied race of Otherworlders, and the ones with the most innate potency of Magic too.
This.. is how the Fixers are ultimately destroyed.
So, I ommitted some exerpts about The Fixer concerning the Mazoku specifically, the reason for this is because it spoiled their existence in Brave.
The Fixer wanted Core Energy no matter what, whether Otherworld King was alive or dead, they actually captured some of these guys and tried to hide their existence, to run tests on them in order to understand the Core System.
The Mazoku are the most brutal race of Otherworld however, and Otherworlders are naturally far physically stronger than Humans. These guys didn’t even kowtow to Otherworld King even as their extinction was at hand.
Naturally, on Earth, no such Otherworld King existed, they multiplied, expanded…
And ultimately destroyed The Fixer, who had nothing in the face of their supreme power, and superior technology.
Just as a flex, they made a freaking EIGHTH continent!
Also an interesting use of numbers here, Grand-Lolo consists of 6 world in which Otherworld King tried to make Earth the 7th.
Now, an Earth with 7th Continents now has an 8th, exclusive to the Mazoku.
The humorous irony of The Fixer’s destruction is evident here.
The Fixer couldn’t be controlled by Battle Spirits, only by raw power, so the Bearers of Core’s Light, who wielded cards as weapons, and later their voices, couldn’t defeat them.
The Fixer broke them down… until it eventually faced an enemy it could not defeat with Strength, and could only be controlled by Battle Spirits.
Naturally they either realized their need for this far too late, and were defeated, or they insisted on not bothering at all, and were destroyed.
Either way, fuck the Fixer. Actual asshats and I hate them all.
I’m touching a card right now! Take me there! Come on! I’ll fight all the Mazoku!
Let me be in a world of card games dammit!
And here we meet our first Mazoku.
I’d say he’s one of my personal favourites but I just… really like the Mazoku in general.
Anyway, they do appear to be invading what seems to be a human populated city.
Incredibly strange name, but this guy’s name is Duc. Pronounced like “Duke”
He goes by the moniker of “The Hooligan General Duc”, it sounds weird translated but the Title in Japanese is rather cool, His full title is pronounced like “Boh-shoh Duke”
It seems the Mazoku don’t really do surnames, and so titles are used to identify individuals with similar naming, such as The Firm Heliostom. Or Boomerang Oryo
Seems since the Mazoku happily settle their matches via Battle Spirits, having a 40-card deck is now officially a form of self-defense.
Oh it’s going down, a World of card game wars let’s GOOOO.
So you’ll notice, on the place where the 8th Continent is, you’ll be able to pinpoint both it’s name, and a word under it.
Firstly, we can see here the continent is called “Oct”, which isn’t very fucking creative now is it? Octo is 8 in Latin. Given Japanese pronunciation however, they’ll pronounce the “o” at the end of “Oct”, meaning the continent is going to be pronounced “Octo”, like the bloody Latin word.
The word under it is “Demon Clan”, and the reason for that is because “Mazoku” is used to refer to supernatural beings that are Devilish or Demonic in nature… Quite hilariously the “Mazoku” is also the name of the Demon Clan in Dragon Ball.
No we’re not fighting Namekians, slow your roll.
ITS YA BOY KAZAN,
That’s right, it appears Kazan came from approximately the year 2650, as he is from the future, after Otherworld King’s changes to history, this is probably the world he returned to.
Given that it was dying of pollution before, a losing war with Otherworlders is probably a just punishment for him… and a far better deal given there’s now a clean world to fight for.
No! We lost Shanghai!
I’m glad the Chinese speak perfect Japanese in this show. Though given it’s the future maybe Japanese somehow became the International Language of choice as it’s the one the Mazoku clearly speak…
…In spite of being taught to do so by a Spanish guy before Spain discovered Japan!
COME ON!
And just incase you thought “No it’s clearly a different city”, nope.
Hooligan General Duc just bodied the guy who wanted to throw down with him.
How many times do you have to say “Oh not this fucking guy” before you start to grow fond of them?
Under advice from a guy dressed in immaculate White, Kazan is asked to Call him.
Who you ask? Fuck if we know.
And our first episode title, “Brave! The SunDragon Sieg-Apollodragon!”
Safe to say, the only thing this title indicates is the card that will almost certainly be seen this episode.
I’m on and off about doing Episode titles again, as in Gekiha Dan they had a rather nasty case of spoiling what was going to happen. But I did want them represented in some way
so if you head to the Brave Archive page, you’ll see that I’m going to start using the titles as thumbnails for the episode.
It’s clear what’s going on, isn’t it? The story may take place in the future, but Dan is still in the past.
Put 2 and 2 together, one tends to get 4.
Seems there’s CARD GAMES afoot. That’s that good shit.
As we learned from the story of The Fixer, Dan might not be the Hero of the World anymore, but he’s certainly far and away the greatest battler in Japan.
Given his skill was enhanced by his incredibly high stakes battles in Grand-Lolo and against Otherworld King. Dan is probably having trouble finding anyone who can compete with him aside from Yuuki-
…Oh.
It’s clear Dan’s salary comes from being a celebrity battler, but that also means that poor Dan is kicking ass with the same deck over and over.
This one he used basic Siegwurm.
Also he has 3 lives left.
Dan enjoys taking on all battlers, which is nice.
Hell yeah he is.
That is bullshit.
Kid had 3 cards in hand and you had at LEAST 3 life.
You had Ankillersaurus as an extra attacker OR a blocker.
Kid would have needed an exceptional amount of luck to take that game back.
Look at our brilliant champion, encouraging others to be even better than they were today.
You can tell Dan’s design, while not changing much from his original appearance, the way he wears his clothes and the mildly changed shape of his face clearly shows an increase in maturity.
Apparently Dan has a visit from a “Shinomiya”
There’s also subtle changes in the way he expresses himself and speaks.
While Gekiha Dan would have been incredibly confused, here, Brave Dan is cautiously suspicious. His voice takes a super low tone almost as if he’s ready to lose his temper
Given the Fixer is still active at this time, Dan is normal to be like this, as he might be suspecting a Fixer Assassin.
Outside of the Game room, it’s increasingly obvious that Dan is depressed.
The Fixer don’t dabble in Battle Spirits, so Dan’s depression and anger turns to confusion.
there’s also perhaps the idea that he actually recognizes the voice he’s hearing.
Introducing, Viole Mai, or as she’s called now, Shinomiya Mai. Thankfully we can just keep calling her Mai.
The old Purple Light Bearer, her design has changed drastically compared to Dan’s.
While Dan’s had his design tweaked to keep him looking the same, but more competent, the only part of Mai’s design that hasn’t changed is her facial shape.
Her hair is at full length, she’s no longer clad in purple, instead using a very discreet White and Pink outfit.
The shape of her uniform generally remains the same, as she still has uncovered shoulders and such, but where her shoulders used to be bear they’re now fully covered, and her short skirt no longer fans out completely.
Mai was forced to take down her blog due to The Fixer.
Naturally, as a Bearer of the Core’s Light, Mai has the capacity to keep up with Dan in a battle. So it appears Dan’s rather interested in battling someone notable.
You smell that? That’s the smell of blood in the air.
Because Dan’s giving off the aura of the ultimate character trope, and my favourite kind!
The BLOOD KNIGHT.
Mai’s clearly clicked onto the same thing I did, Dan claimed he was saved by a draw but ultimately he had that game in full control the entire time
Dan’s the biggest fish in the largest pond… And he ate all the large fish.
At the end of Gekiha Dan, Dan claimed he wanted casual battles where nothing is risked.
It appears that while Dan always has fun battling, he now genuinely misses Grand-Lolo.
And this is why this Dan is my favourite protagonist.
I RESONATE with this feel.
ARGH.
You can tell how much he wants it too.
He barely blinks at the prospect, Mai’s just offered him something he’s been asking for, and Dan just goes for it.
Dan is so enticed by the idea of potentially getting an inkling of what he wants that he doesn’t even care about what else is there.
The guy’s probably been prepared to lose his life for a while now thanks to the Fixer, his job has naturally made him required to play the deck he’s so darn well used to,
He’s got no ties to this world, no one particularly close who will miss him, No one at home who will notice he’s gone. Not even his trusty deck that he’s played for 2 straight years can keep him tethered here for even a few seconds longer.
How interesting, Mai uses a Brooch to open a gate, very similar to the ones that connect Earth to Grand-Lolo.
And much like the previous series started, the first episode involves Dan, falling off this exact drop, heading towards a doorway to the unknown.
Except this time he’s leaping headfirst into it rather than being an unwilling victim of it.
That sudden jump must have gotten the adrenaline going, Dan’s checking if Mai’s okay but Mai just seems happy that Dan seemed to be enjoying himself.
Here we have the new design of Clackey Ray, who’s also come to the future.
Clackey Ray also has no more ties to his old home, since his Mother was deported to Puerto Rico, and then subsequently passed away, and Clackey doesn’t know his father, the Bearers of the Core’s Light are the only people he’d care about and he’s got no way of visiting them from Puerto Rico in a hurry, especially not with the Fixers attacking planes.
It’s clear reading this story though that he would absolutely take this job, but he’d be even more pleased that his only friends in the world would be joining him.
Dan has now successfully arrived approximately 638 years into the future, as it would be 2012 when he left.
Oh semantics.
Kazan is one of the first few people Dan meets on arrival to a new world, or in this case, a new time. Again.
The callbacks are already hammy.
It must be quite amusing for Kazan to also be in precisely the same situation he was in before. Fighting Otherworlders with a series of human forces.
Difference is he’s not the aggressor this time.
Kazan confirms that the nature of Otherworld King’s changes remained, causing Kazan’s future to also change.
The world is “better” but rather than irreparably dying of Pollution, it’s mostly ruled by Mazoku.
Grand-Lolo was a world of Otherworlders unfairly ruled by Humans.
Now, we’re in a Future world of humans unfairly ruled by Otherworlders.
Naturally, the situation is still the same, people should not be ruling worlds they aren’t from.
There’s a slight nuance that’s difficult though, the Mazoku didn’t ask to be here, they’re naturally vengeful due to the damn Fixer.
Seems a few other Soldiers were summoned first, but they unanimously decided that Dan was necessary,
Which makes sense, these Mazoku rebelled against Otherworld King who even imprisoned one due to how deadly he was.
So they’d need power similar to Otherworld King’s in order to take them on (which is hilarious considering Humans generally have the edge over Otherworlders, but the Mazoku are an exception as they generally have the edge over Humans)
Trouble in Tokyo, the site of Dan’s first battle.
It’s almost like they’re testing a new machine in a Mecha anime, gives me the same vibes.
With a brand spanking new pilot too.
Kazan explains to Dan that he was called here so that he could battle as Humanity’s savior.
Dan finds the irony amusing that this time he’s fighting for Humans.
Kazan naturally accentuates the pressure of the situation, defeat is pretty unacceptable as every loss means Humanity loses more ground.
Also you can tell by the screen up there that the Mazoku have control of most of the known world.
This ain’t Dan’s first rodeo, and Dan is just itching to get into the thick of the second.
Scary? Quite the contrary, it makes my blood boil in excitement!
Dan naturally needs to cover the problem of leaving too urgently, he wants a new deck, one from this era.
I just gotta say I am nerding out about this screen.
This thing is a highly advanced deck building system. It seems to have all the card details as an easy access, including other windows containing available cards.
Dan’s been given a very standard deck, but in actual fact, it’s a fully-fledged imitation of SD03, save for 2 cards that have been changed on this screen.
There’s a Yoroilizardon and a Futabanea inside the deck, singular copies of each.
Kazan naturally asks Dan if he plans to use Red, which would seem a given, since it’s his specialty.
Kazan doesn’t seem to realize yet, Dan is him.
Offered the option of giving him the collection of Red cards, Dan says no.
“Give me all six”
That’s right baby, in the 2 years since defeating Otherworld King, Dan’s… well, become almost a crownless version of the man, and mastered all 6 colours in those 2 years.
He’s not here as the Red Soldier anymore, so Dan need not be bound by his skill with Red.
In Gekiha Dan, they said the choice of colour didn’t matter, for Otherworld King was skilled in all colours.
Also in Gekiha Dan, Otherworld King and Yuuki stated, that he who defeats Otherworld King, becomes Otherworld King.
…Dan is here after defeating Otherworld King, many of the changes to him seem to liken him to Otherworld King.
This indifference to colour is just a part of that.
Dan notices a Brave card, The CannonDragon Bal-Gunner among the Red cards however, and then removes Yoroilizardon and Futabanea
By subbing in the 2nd and 3rd copy of Bal-Gunner, Dan now has an exact copy of the cardlist of Structure Deck 3, a Red and Blue deck.
After accepting the information, this card database interface constructs a deck of the aforementioned cards and spits it out.
I don’t believe it has the capacity to print cards however due to other things that happen during the series. So this is a physical collection of cards that uses an interface to keep a record of said collection, and assist in deck creation.
Given that War is waged with cards in this Era, it makes sense that expenses were invested to make things like this possible. It means people in this Era should be using otherwise optimized decks.
Also since Kazan returned to the future, it’s possible Battle Spirits was lost sometime during the 640 year gap, but since Kazan returned from a time where Battle Spirits in Grand-Lolo was around BS09, it progressed at the same rate as Dan’s Era, if a little bit further, hence why they’re only on BS10.
It’s a contrivance formed from speculation but it helps get over the “How did the game not change in 640 years?” question that never gets explained.
And now for the ultimate reason that Clackey is dressed the way he is, that’s because he’s actually a ship captain now.
Just like how Gekiha Dan showed many parallels with Toppa early on, this show is actually going to show a ton of parallels with Gekiha Dan very early.
In thisn case, Clackey’s role here mirrors that of Leon, someone who he claimed to “Understand” in the previous series.
But whereas Leon piloted The Golden Lion, this beast of a ship puts the Golden Lion to shame, say hello to The Beautiful Sophia.
No doubt named after Clackey’s favourite card, The GreatAngelia Sophia.
Now we meet some new characters, members of the crew.
This blue-haired chap wearing also blue is Youth Glynnhorn, he’s a Pilot.
And this is Plym Machina.
Youth is incredibly reserved and is basically Sasuke fucking Uchiha at this point.
And Plym is, conversely, incredibly friendly… And surprisingly young for a mechanic of a ship this large.
Plym treats machines like people, so she uses honorifics when referring to them.
While Plym focuses on the health of the ship’s hardware, Mai on the other hand, being the daughter of an IT company owner, uses her skills to manage the ship’s software.
The wonders of technology… But not just any technology.
The Beautiful Sophia, is a Core Ship.
It seems that not only where the Mazoku left here, but they brought with them the methods to either produce Core, or had a fair bit of it on-hand when they were left here. It’s also possible that the blessings of Mother Core on Earth for it’s brief stint of time allowed the core to occur naturally, and the Fixer suppressed it’s existence (as infinite renewable energy means they can’t control it’s scarcity)
Either way, the Core system is in place 640 years later as the norm.
And it does crazy things like manifest an entire segment of the ship.
Off it goes!
It seems Duc’s a rather straightforward individual, the general approach seems to be that he occupies an area and declares it conquered until challenged by a battler for the territory.
Defeating said Battler solidifies control over this territory.
Thus the game of war begins.
It seems Duc’s brought a friend on board for this particular invasion.
I have no idea what civilizations Duc is talking about, I will be honest.
If I’m really lucky, Liri_White in the comments will save me again
The Mazoku seem very keen on expanding territory, however this blonde Mazoku with Duc seems rather satisfied with just a small amount. It’s either incredibly good territory, or the Blonde one doesn’t seem particularly interested in expanding.
Finally, a name-drop!
Naturally you’ll notice these 2 have names based on titles.
The Hooligan General Duc is joined by a Mazoku by the name of Barone (Bah-roh-nay)
From the looks of the Profile Pictures used by good ol’ Soaker, the subber for this series, this is one of their favourite characters.
This of course is the face we saw at the end of the opening being shown as the foil to Dan, that’s because this character is the Rival character for the series.
No more time for that conversation.
Seems Dan has arrived and- BARONE ARE YOU COMBING YOUR HAIR WITH A PLAYING CARD?
COME ON MAN, YOU’LL RUIN THE CORNERS.
So, we’ve spotted the enemy fleet, and it seems for some tactical reason that they need to catch said fleet by surprise.
My guess is, as a single ship, they’re somewhat outnumbered. So they need to set up the Battlefield early and soon to force the Mazoku to go along with it.
After all there’s no particular etiquette involving the acceptance of battles, just that the results must be enforced.
…Huh… This matches up with the rules Otherworld King instated, which essentially states that the results of battles must be enforced. But as we know there are loopholes, such as the fact that battles need not be accepted, and until a result is acquired, parties need not be idle.
I suppose one could say this is indeed an Era built by Otherworld King, especially since they use it’s rule.
Dan is given the order to get going, it’s time for his first battle!
Well he did before, now on the other hand he’s got something to finally do!
Like before it might seem like Dan just romanticizes his times in Grand-Lolo and wants to go back, and this is the closest thing to it, but after reading about the Fixer, you realize that Dan was trapped in a world where none of his actions could affect anything, confined to a world where Battle Spirits promises no pain, and the results don’t matter.
He had to suffer that for 2 years because he was met with the reality that, at least on that Earth, Battle Spirits can’t change a thing.
It’s different now, Battle Spirits is the rule, and he’s in an Era where the Fixers are dead.
My guy’s probably feeling all sorts of things, but most of all, relief?
However, despite seeming to have appropriated the Core System, it seems like the Humans don’t have any control over Magic. As a result, Dan has this mechanical, and entirely practical Battle Form.
He’s probably been ran through how the battle system works here, its not so convenient as Grand-Lolo’s.
The Battlefield was a static series of locations in Grand-Lolo, supplied by Mother Core. The gateways to which Mother Core also supplied.
Mother Core, while connected to Earth, doesn’t shine on Earth, and so Mother Core provides no connection to it’s Battlefield here.
So they have to make do with the existing Core Energy, it’s all Mother Core’s energy so it should produce the same result.
And vuala, you have Core Ships with the ability to spawn Battlefields in the sky.
It seems that The Beautiful Sophia is a novelty among Human ships however, the Battlefield appears to be a trait native to most Mazoku Core ships and the Humans don’t typically have that function on theirs.
The Beautiful Sophia however seems to be able to, which is a good thing given it’s a ship designed to supply Bashin Dan to battle.
With a challenge issued, if the Mazoku start refusing challenges with the Battlefield already up, they’re going to look like they’re running away from Humans.
So, of course, Duc goes to see who the hell they’ve thrown at him.
Given that the Mazoku have taken over most of the known world, and we’re following the rule of Battle Spirits.
this confirms that, in spite of the Humans being normally superior to Otherworlders, the Mazoku are an exception to this rule.
So in the hierarchy of natural strength at Batosupi from strongest to weakest, it goes:
There’s a reason they call it the Core Bullet.
It’s because they’re shooting Dan directly at the battlefield.
No Mother Core, no gates, so they gotta go in manually.
The Battlefield this time reminds me of Isekai from Bashin Toppa, it’s a floating, industrial-built field.
If you’re wondering how Dan lands this thing, here we go, the Core bullet opens up like a flower.
It then folds backwards and around, and Dan’s seat also folds forward.
this allows the Core bullet to fall with Dan in a standing position.
And the Battlefield, which appears to have been modified by the Mazoku, seems designed to perfectly receive the core bullets.
It doesn’t look like Dan necessarily drives the thing Manually.
Because Mai performs a lock-on to the Battlefield before firing.
So it seems like, since the Core bullet’s main function is to slot into the Battlefield first, and be a ship second, it can auto-pilot.
Ah, functionality, we’re in a set of the game where a player can have more than 5 lives, this likely became a problem with Gekiha Dan because the Battle Forms were only designed with 5 lives in mind and couldn’t think of a good way of adding a 6th life at any time.
With these more digital markers they have a bit more freedom.
Ah, we’re finally back, to the Battlefield again.
Also I quite like these Sky fields, they’re more simplistic than Grand-Lolo’s stuff, plus there’s the cool factor of being IN THE GOD DAMN SKY.
This “boy” kicked the crap out of Otherworld King.
…Granted you wouldn’t expect a Human with a lifespan of about 1 century to suddenly be around barely aged 640 years later.
Duc notes that despite Dan being young, he has a Battle Form, and has arrived on the Battlefield, so he’s clearly prepared to fight.
In essence, Duc knows he’s taking on someone competent.
Notably, Dan doesn’t refer to himself as the Clash King. Whereas Gekiha Dan would have done so.
He simply calls himself “Bashin Dan”.
Naturally, he proclaimed earlier that he no longer cared what colour he played with, so a master of all colours would probably not confine themselves to a title as limiting as “The Clash King”
Barone here has a tendency to do these really hard to capture sequences where he’ll rotate his head about his neck as if you were doing a stretching exercise.
Naturally, as Dan is the one who defeated Otherworld King, the event directly preceding the Mazoku’s occupation of Earth, it’s possible he’s rather famous.
Naturally, Mazoku have territories, it appears Duc’s territory is rather large, spanning all of Asia.
Dan declares that if he wins, Duc will be forced to give up Tokyo, and Duc simply says this is the usual fair from Battlers he’s beaten.
So far, Duc’s been given no reason to believe Dan is any stronger than any other human…
Our main character is psyched!
Now for the first move of the game, this time, by a competent Dan!
Given that these cards released with SD03, we’re gonna have a bit to cover.
Anyway, Dan summons Bladra and Morgesaurus.
Both cards from BS03, and will become iconic for Dan’s deck, Morgesaurus is a simple Cost 3 with 2 reductions, with it’s only effect being that it gains 2000 BP when attacking, this means that Morgesaurus can be rather nasty to deal with while it’s attacking, allowing Dan to muscle through typical blockers around the same cost.
Bladra on the other hand… Is the most famous Spirit in the entire game.
No no I’m serious, this card has so many derivations of it, it’s not even funny.
What’s even more hilarious is the memery of the card itself, because the card will almost always, without fail, be used as cost reduction.
This resulted in the card getting swathes of variants, but nothing beats the original… except a revived version that was so strong it got the card limited
that’s right! This cost 0 vanilla, among the rest of them, can only be run at 1 copy, because of the rules concerning Revived cards means that only 1 card of a given name can be run in the deck!
I believe there was a recurring “Joke” that Bladra was in fact limited so it could stop being abused for Cost reduction.
I’ve already explained why Dan is the happiest being in existence at this moment in time.
MAN WHAT TIPPED YOU OFF CLACKEY?
Hooligan General Turn 2, Duc summons The HeavyArmoredBug Caterbarga.
Due to Caterbarga’s effect, all Cost 1 or below Spirits are now exhausted, this causes Bladra to be exhausted…
Not that such a thing was necessary Caterbarga has the highest BP on the field.
Caterbarga’s a spirit from SD01, making it just after BS05.
We’re in BS10, meaning the Spirit was released roughly halfway through the game’s lifespan at this point.
It appears Duc has a preference for older Spirits.
But if he’s so fascinated by history, why doesn’t he remember his own, and who sent Duc to this world…
And more importantly, who defeated the man who sent him here?
Duc enters his attack step, and attacks with Ceterbarga.
Dan takes a life from Caterbarga, dropping to 4 lives.
My inner fangirl is squealing.
Dan had Morgesaurus, which wasn’t exhausted by Caterbarga’s effect
but even if he did have Bladra available, neither Spirit would have survived a block.
In what way?
Mai explains to Youth that Dan’s getting fired up from the fight and Youth finds that odd because losing a life should hurt.
Pain triggers an Adrenaline response, it is possible to become addicted to that Adrenaline. (this is why some people seem chronically violent or unfaithful, Adrenaline can be like a self-produced drug to them)
Mai also explains to Youth that Dan also feels like he needs to fight alongside the Spirits he expects to fight for him.
Somewhat analogous to “If the King doesn’t lead, how do you expect his supporters to follow?” from Code Geass.
Err… Don’t mind Dan, he’s just uh…
Having a private moment… directly infront of Duc.
Jokes aside, it seems that loss of life was necessary to complete Dan’s full resurrection.
Barone seems completely baffled by Dan’s response to pain.
You might think it’s for the same reason as Youth’s confusion… But it’s quite the opposite.
Dan Turn 3, Dan draws The SunDragon Sieg-Apollodragon.
Notably, Dan’s had a single glance at this deck, so he should be fully aware that Sieg-Apollodragon is one of the only 3 hard-hitters in the deck that can win this game for him.
The other 2 are 2 Cost 5 Blue cards that meet certain conditions required for Dan’s deck to function. I’ll go over those later.
Dan summons The SunDragon Sieg-Apollodragon.
Much like Siegwurm, Sieg-Apollodragon climbs in from behind the Battlefield when it’s summoned.
OH GEEZ, I DIDN’T COUNT THE CORE.
I DIDN’T REALIZE BLADRA WAS ABOUT TO GET DEPLETED FOR COST THIS EARLY.
Either way, that completes the summon, Dan’s played the strongest card in the deck.
To review it’s effects now will spoil a much important mechanic that this series centres on, so I’ll manage it then.
Mai notes that while Dan does use 6 colours, it seems he’s most at home using them to support a Red-ace.
It’d be difficult to be the kind of player equally skilled in all colours after all, Dan is most experienced in Red, and to change that would require changing his entire history.
Clackey notes that Dan might already be familiar with his new deck, given how quickly he brought out it’s ace…
But to that I say, dude, it’s basic cost reduction, calm down.
Dan attacks with Sieg-Apollodragon.
Sieg-Apollodragon’s animations very cleanly match Siegfried and Siegwurm’s, just with a new model.
Duc takes a life, lacking blockers, dropping to 4.
Dan attacks with Morgesaurus, taking another life from Duc. Leaving him with 3.
The second Dan got a turn, he summoned a big dragon and full attacked, so Duc asserts that Dan must be exercising a hyper-aggressive playstyle.
Hooligan General Turn 4, Duc summons MachG.
He then summons not quite an oldie, but definitely a goodie from BS07.
The BladeKingBeast Byak-Garo is summoned.
For all the exclamations about Caterbarga being an old but not-stale Spirit, Duc certainly threw out the latest non-Tribute Green X-Rare.
While I won’t be covering every old card that appears, important ones I may once again go-over.
In this case I’ve nothing really to say about Byak-Garo, but I will post it’s effect here as a reminder, given it’s Duc’s current ace card.
Dan wasn’t anticipating Byak-Garo it seems, I suppose now he recognizes how Duc’s been taking games off the Humans now, he has a deck incredibly similar if not an exact match to Kenzo’s.
Duc enters the attack step, and launches a strike with Byak-Garo.
Dan takes another life, dropping to 3.
Duc ends his turn right after Byak-Garo’s attack, causing Plym to wonder why he didn’t attack with his other 2 spirits.
Clackey explains that, even if Duc attacked with everything, he wouldn’t win, and Dan would need only a single Spirit to finish off Duc.
By leaving blockers, he removes this possibility from coming true, the only downside being Dan has more lives to cut through.
He is however, left with less core as a result of this choice.
It’s a safe play.
Dan Turn 5, he raises Morgesaurus and Sieg-Apollodragon to Lv2.
Dan then summons a 2nd Morgesaurus at Lv2.
Bear in mind, Dan only has 2 Morgesaurus in the deck.
Dan then attacks with Sieg-Apollodragon… Target attacking Caterbarga.
Sieg-Apollodragon has 2 effects, this is one of them:
[LV1][LV2][LV3] (When Attacks) You can target and attack an opposing refreshed Spirit.
At all levels, Sieg-Apollodragon is capable of target attacking refreshed Spirits. It’s a little better than your run of the mill standard Clash. As you can select which Blocker you deal with.
Sadly as it isn’t a Clash effect, it won’t mesh with any of Dan’s old cards, which is fine, given Dan doesn’t have any old cards left.
Caterbarga is destroyed, and from Duc’s reaction it appears he wasn’t anticipating a target attack like that.
Sieg-Apollodragon’s effect, much like Clash, takes the agency away from the opponent’s choice between blocking and taking lifes, forcing them to give up Spirits.
Sieg-Apollodragon however, doesn’t even let you select the blocker. Thankfully there is counterplay in the sense that Exhausted Spirits cannot be targeted.
Dan smacks Duc with Morgesaurus, an attack Duc takes from the life, leaving him with 2.
Dan ends his turn.
This scene seems to highlight the differences between the way Plym thinks and the way Youth thinks.
Plym is… I suppose not shallow but she sees things as they currently are and makes deductions based off of them.
Youth is more cynical, figuring that Dan isn’t so ahead as the score seems. He’s likely seen his fair share of advantages get lost incredibly quickly.
Hooligan General Turn 6, Byak-Garo and MachG are raised to Lv2.
Duc then summons Dio-Mantis.
Dan notes that Duc’s been using Green “Consistently”, I suppose Dan’s drawing the conclusion that Duc is using a Pure Green deck, and not an odd kind of Hybrid, if there were another colour present he’d probably have seen it by now.
…How strangely honest, it seems Duc has some honourable traits about him, as he confirms that he is indeed using a Pure Green Deck, Today at least.
It seems Duc is skilled in more than one colour, but such would be true across this entire series, as if Booster Set Saga was defined by pure colour decks and Tribute Spirits.
Constellation Saga is defined by Hybrid Decks… and one other card type.
Byak-Garo attacks, and Dan blocks with Morgesaurus. Morgesaurus is floored by Byak-Garo’s 9000 BP.
Duc’s flustered by Dan’s decision to block here… But it should have been clear that Dan was attempting to do that.
They put down a long-winded explanation but I’ll cover the gist.
In essence, had Dan taken a life, boom, this game would be over.
As Byak-Garo’s Lv2 effect would have returned Morgesaurus to the hand, leaving Dan with 2 lives and Duc with 2 attackers, you do the math.
Additionally, Dan clearly foresaw a Lv2 attack from Byak-Garo, hence he attacked with the 2 spirits that could, and then left a single blocker. Once it blocked, Byak-Garo’s Windstorm would have activated… Except Dan had no spirits to exhaust so by blocking under those conditions, Dan voided both of Byak-Garo’s effects.
Youth is surprised that Dan saw that far ahead, and well, it wasn’t that far.
He saw Byak-Garo then arranged his turn such that Byak-Garo would have the least affect.
Dan then takes an attack from MachG from the life, leaving him with 2.
Duc ends his turn, declaring that Dio-Mantis will wait for it.
Duc’s made a very mild misplay by evening out Dio-Mantis and MachG’s BP values rather than levelling Dio-Mantis (they require the same core to be Lv2), the reason will be stated later.
Dan Turn 9, he draws The CannonDragon Bal-Gunner, the “Brave” he saw in the deck builder.
And Dan summons it, The CannonDragon Bal-Gunner has arrived.
This now plays Brave OST Track 14, and my favourite theme of this series, BRAVE!
I mean, Dan would have won anyway but this definitely makes his options for winning significantly more numerous.
Barone’s also surprised by Dan’s use of a Brave.
First, let’s review Bal-Gunner shall we?
The CannonDragon Bal-Gunner is a Cost 4 Brave from SD03.
Braves are unique in that they have 2 modes of play, they can exist either as a Spirit in “Spirit-Form”, which is the Lv1 BP dictated there, or, like moving core, you can move them to a Spirit in order to Brave.
Dan Braves The CannonDragon Bal-Gunner to The SunDragon Sieg-Apollodragon.
This is Braving, you do so by placing the Spirit in some manner that indicates it’s combined with the Spirit you’ve selected, by default, all the Core on the Brave moves to the Brave Target.
Braves have a Brave Condition, Bal-Gunner’s Condition is Cost 4 or More, meaning it can’t Brave to Spirits that are Cost 3 or less.
Sieg-Apollodragon is a Cost 6 Spirit, so it meets the conditions, allowing the 2 to combine.
You’ll notice beneath Bal-Gunner’s Brave Condition, there is effect text, that effect text isn’t for Bal-Gunner though, that’s the effect it grants Sieg-Apollodragon when they’re combined as Sieg-Apollo’s Spirit effect.
In addition to the effects granted by the Brave, a few more things are transferred to the new Spirit.
These are the Colour of the Brave, the Cost of the Brave, the Red BP-Value listed on the Brave beneath it’s Lv1…
And the Symbols of the Brave.
This means that Sieg-Apollodragon, when combined with Bal-Gunner at Lv2, is:
While it retains the name of the original base spirit and doesn’t receive the name of it’s Brave, the fact of the matter is with Braves, there are many many combinations that one can make, there are as many combinations of Brave Spirits as there are Spirits… multiplied by the number of Braves they can receive.
As such, signifying each one individually is a little excessive, so for simplicity, the show simply calls them “Brave Spirits”
And my number one favourite type of card in the entire game. Braves (until roughly the more recent eras at least) promote a unique kind of gameplay that enables one to produce Spirits that can’t otherwise exist. By innately adding effects or features to said Spirit, you can cover bases that aren’t otherwise covered, or produce unique interactions.
They are incredibly fun to play with.
Duc curses his luck, seeming almost irritated that Dan was a Brave user.
This concept will come up even in future series, For some reason the show seems to indicate Brave Users, and the user of another card type, somewhat uniquely. Usually this is because utilizing Braves isn’t something you can do half-heartedly unlike, say, Nexuses or Magic, which are typically essential for deck building.
If a Brave is in your deck, it must serve some kind of purpose for a combo, there are generically good Braves, but it would then compete for space for other, actual useful cards.
There are however, generic Braves that can kind of work in anything, Bal-Gunner is one of these Braves, being a simple Cost 4 Brave with a Symbol (often the easiest kind of Braves to use).
Dan attacks with Sieg-Apollo and activates Bal-Gunner’s Braved Effect, allowing him to not only draw a card, but destroy a Spirit with BP 4000 or below.
Dio-Mantis is the target, had Duc levelled it last turn it wouldn’t have been susceptible to Bal-Gunner, and Duc could have blocked.
Duc declares to take it from the life, but he won’t get off that easy.
Due to the Brave, Bal-Gunner’s Symbol is passed on to Sieg-Apollodragon. Making it a Double Symbol.
Duc takes 2 lives at once, and is dropped immediately to 0.
Duc has some post-battle banter with Dan, admitting his mistake upon his loss.
In total fairness however it really didn’t matter if Dio-Mantis was Lv2, for a few reasons
Let’s review Sieg-Apollodragon for one of them.
The SunDragon Sieg-Apollodragon is a Cost 6 Red Spirit with, interestingly, the same exact BP values and levels as Siegwurm. It also has the odd quirk of requiring 2 Red Reductions and 2 Blue Reductions, making it best-suited for a Red and Blue Hybrid deck.
Most importantly, at Lv3 it has an effect that only occurs When Braved, these are Spirits that are best-suited to Braves and are designed to wield them, and are at home in the hands of a Brave user…
Had the issue of Dio-Mantis’ BP been important, Dan’s Total core for that Turn 9 was 11. He spent 2 summoning Bal-Gunner, and the core to maintain it went to Sieg-Apollodragon after the Brave.
With 9 Core remaining he could have maintained 2 Lv2 Morgesaurus’ and bring Sieg-Apollodragon to Lv3, this would have enabled it’s When Braved effect to destroy Dio-Mantis, who couldn’t even get to 9000 BP.
AND EVEN CONSIDERING THAT.
Dan had 2 Morgesaurus lying in wait ready to aim for the final 2 lives.
Duc was cooked three ways from Sunday.
As a side note, you’ll notice that Sieg-Apollodragon’s families are a 1:1 match with a specific spirit…
Namely the Key Spirit of Otherworld King, The PhantomStarDragon Gai-Asura
Dan’s new ace card emulating Siegwurm’s powers upfront shares it’s details and origins with Otherworld King’s ace card… huh?
Dan once again re-issues his demand, he wants Duc to… promptly, fuck off.
Duc notes that Dan just completely obliterated his entire career, noting that Dan not once feared a response in Duc’s hand, moved forward with his strategy without blinking.
Quite frankly, he’s stunned that the Humans even had a Card Battler this competent that they’d never heard of.
Dan of course, corrects the assumption, no such Human battler comes close to his caliber.
Nonetheless, Dan is here now, and the Mazoku should be very concerned.
Barone of course, hints a couple things, firstly, what moves him appears to be the same things that move Dan, that is, the promise of battle.
Additionally, he specifies a human brave user as if that’s a novel prospect, indicating that Barone himself is a Mazoku Brave-user.
Notably I believe across the whole series there are only 5 characters who end up using a Brave.
I am citing that number from memory mind you, so if I end up being wrong later I’ll let you know.
Regardless! That is the end of the first episode!
And now for my favourite bit, we do still have Card of the Days, but most importantly!
We have confirmed decklists! At the end of each episode, one of the participant characters, usually the victor of the episode’s bout, will have their 40 cards published, for all to steal and emulate. And this is Dan’s!
…Which isn’t that special because Dan is just using SD03!
For the moment, anyway, He will, eventually not use SD03 but for now, the structure deck is what he’s piloting.
At least the show isn’t shy about showing that he’s just piloting a deck he picked up 2 seconds ago, he changed 2 cards in it.
Also as an unrelated aside, I recreated the screen from earlier, so let me know if you prefer the spacey background or what something a little more in-universe, I can also do a sort of mishmash of both whereby I use the layout of one on the other, same template.
For now, I’ll use the Spacey background one I used earlier as it emulates the images used on
Anyway, interestingly we’ll never see Dan Fire a Nexus from one of these decks in his games despite the fact that he’s running bloody 6 of them. There is a time where he will but it won’t be any of the ones featured here or in his next few decks.
Anyway, that’s all I got for today.
Now for the news
At time of posting it will be the 2nd of December 2024, I will be taking a break from posting until at LEAST January 9th to take some time back after finishing Gekiha Dan, the reason I am taking this break after Episode 1 of Brave and not Episode 50 of Gekiha Dan is to ensure this loose thread gets wrapped up later.
After all, it’s easy to be convinced to finish a candy bar you’ve already started.
Anyway, this means that the next post will not be before the new year! So I’ll see you all then.
Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you soon.
Righto, this post will be the first post concerning Battle Spirits Brave, I’ve said in multiple previous posts that I would do this but if you are only here for Brave, which naturally some of you might be, I will re-explain what I am covering.
After Battle Spirits Brave, the world is only re-visited when an OVA comes out concerning the world created in Brave, that is Battle Spirits Saga Brave.
This story covers events taking place after Brave, but in a set release around the time of the OVA, a series of stories were published.
This story covers the events of the 2 year time gap between Battle Spirits Shounen Gekiha Dan, and Battle Spirits Brave.
Its a short story, and naturally I give credit to Ayumu Seiki, the owner of the Battle Spirits Community Server and the one who posted the translations, I will be taking snippets of that information
This story is formatted in chapters, so what I will do is rewrite it to convey the same information but structured so that there is less repetition. I will also convey comments between each snippet, and where I’ve rewritten it. Story in italics, my text will be not in quote fields
I will also only be covering information and chapters that are spoiler free for the lore of Brave, I will not be mentioning anything that spoils details in later series.
This chapter covers the enigmatic “Fixer”, this is posted after Dan however I believe it would be important to cover these guys first, before covering what happened to each character individually.
The Fixer was a shadow world government controlling the global economy, and was also the source of economic inequality and wars. It could also control the energy source. When the Otherworld King appeared, it could feel the threat from the ‘Core Energy’ which the King brought along, so it decided to ally with the King.
This section covers what the Fixer is and their role in Gekiha Dan. This lines up with Kenzo’s explanation, they were an Illuminati-style Shadow Government that controlled economy, any and all conflicts caused by resource, economy, including wars, were caused by The Fixer.
Just to preface, something which is outlined but not mentioned in a nice order, is that upon Otherworld King’s defeat, the Bearers of the Core’s light switched gears and tried to deal with the problem of “The Fixer” by exposing their existence to the world, that was the next “Quest” for the Bearers of the Core’s Light.
The chapter has detailed descriptions of how Dan and the other core bearers were persecuted by the Fixer. At first, it was just rumours and conspiracy theories against them. But then, the US president George Thorman, who supported Dan and turned his back against the Fixer and the Otherworld King, was hit with a scandal about women with ‘undeniable evidence’. This ‘evidence’ was never proven, but even when Dan and the others tried to prove his innocence to the social media, their plans were forced to stop mysteriously, and Thorman was also forced to retire.
You’d think being backed by a US President would give the Lightbearers some influence, but nope, it appears that even though they had a good start, and The Fixer’s vague rumours weren’t gaining any ground, their greatest advocate, George Thorman, appears to have been falsely accused of either taking advantage of women, or adultery… Or both.
The Fixer clearly knew what they were doing with that one, as even today such accusations are taken incredibly seriously. Due to the difficulty in proving these crimes, people are very much inclined to follow a “Guilty until proven innocent” standard and believe the victim until due process shows clear innocence.
Furthermore, the Fixer tried to hide any evidence of the Core System, even erasing information from the dark web. Those who tried to look for information or sell them would be arrested and eliminated. Also, Dan and the others, who tried to expose the Fixer, were also being eavesdropped. Even their parents’ jobs started to have problems. The Fixer used rumours and conspiracy theories to make the situation even worse.
It appears that The Fixer took great pains to suppress the events concerning Otherworld King’s visit, denying the existence of the Core System and burning all evidence it existed. If the beginning to Brave seems depressing to you, it will be because of these guys, as they’re the main foe in this story.
Now that we have a general idea of what The Fixer was doing, the Lightbearer’s role in it, we can cover individuals.
Dan’s father was a normal salaryman, his mother a housewife. However, Dan as a normal boy who simply likes curry and plays BS suddenly became a world hero after coming back from Grand Lolo. It was like he became another person, persuading countries to drop their conflicts and change their policies. It was a great shock to Dan’s mother, and she started to become afraid of him.
Dan talks about his Mother in Gekiha Dan, however it appears that Dan has a very average household, Dad works a standard Job, Mum stays at home, and Dan eats Curry and does basically what he wants.
The sudden return of your son from a long trip to another world, and having actual political sway with their words must have been quite the transformation.
It’s just a shame, the woman who’s curry Dan loved so much before Zungurii’s is afraid of her own son.
Furthermore, there was a shadow government called the Fixer creating rumours through the social media, talking about how the core bearers were just children, they were just the successors of the Otherworlders, they were the underling of the Otherworld King, etc. This caused worries around Dan’s life, including his father getting asked by his colleagues if Dan was safe. Dan’s parents were also getting doxxed by those who believed in the rumours. The two started to argue, eventually divorced. To them, their son was already dead after visiting the other world. So Dan moved to an empty villa owned by the Hyoudo, along with Yuuki.
Dan’s particular victimization at the hands of the Fixer seemed to be the disruption of Dan’s family life, his family was doxxed by the Fixer, and the incoming backlash from just their relationship to the boy caused them to get divorced.
It seems in their fear they blamed Dan for this, his clearly doing the right thing was causing them unnecessary pain, so they disowned him. Believing blindly that the original Dan to have died when he left for Grand-Lolo.
Dan, with no family left, needed a place to stay, and so he chose to go live with Yuuki in the villa we saw in the last episode.
Dan entered the hall of fame through constantly winning in BS tournaments, and received a job related to the game. He was maintaining his life simply with this salary. The only thing that gave him relief was the children challenging him to BS games every day.
Then, in order to avoid getting the innocent children into his incidents, he gave up pursuing the Fixer.
Naturally, Dan’s battles with Otherworld King makes him the strongest battler, he likely was able to compete at the highest of levels, given Kenzo had never lost, even in many many tournaments, and Dan defeated him before being picked apart like Otherworld King, the difference between Dan’s monstrous power and the average battler who never fought for anything in their life must have been Heaven and Earth.
So, naturally, a powerful battler like that probably became what we call a Charisma Battler, an icon to interact with players, which naturally involved Dan battling many many of his fans.
Dan probably saw that getting involved with innocents like this put them at risk, so he stopped pursuing the Fixer… They’d beaten the Clash King.
Her mother seemed to be just a housewife, and her father was a representative of a growing IT company. After the fight against the Otherworld King, Mai believed that exposing her real name would lose her identity back in Grand Lolo, so she asked Dan and the others to not talk about her real name.
As the Fixer continued to apply pressure, Mai was receiving verbal abuse from the internet. Eventually, Mai’s father’s company was affected negatively, and was forced to lower their scale of business.
Mai also decided to close down her blog. The photos which she shared on her blog about Grand Lolo were used for photoshops and made fun of as UFOs and UMAs. Nobody believed these photos anymore.
So, this little tidbit explains Mai’s abilities to program in spite of her age, her Dad’s an IT company rep, so naturally she’s likely been involved with his work in one way or another, especially given she runs her own blog.
“Viole Mai” is not Mai’s true name naturally, its her alias for her blog, it seems she grew attached to “Viole Mai” as a name however, as her identity in Grand-Lolo, not wanting to lose that, she had her friends refer to her by the name she chose, and not her family name.
The Fixer’s plan for Mai is the same for any internet personality, throw a bunch of nasty commenters at her, and damage her father’s company. The ongoing backlash from Mai’s attempt to stop The Fixer caused her to lose hope, so she closed her blog. Now the internet trolls completely deny Mai’s photos of Otherworld, simply using them to make memes out of, no one believing that they truly depict what they do.
So we have Dan, relegated to being nothing more than a Battler, and Mai essentially got cancelled.
Much of what concerns Yuuki is dealt with in a later part of the story, but I will cover it.
After the fight against the Otherworld King, as he had no other family members, he was arranged to live in the empty villa owned by the Hyoudou.
As I mentioned in Gekiha Dan, Yuuki has no living family, and clearly has no suitable residence with which to stay, so Kenzo put in a word for him and allowed him to stay in a Hyoudo-owned villa.
Then, Dan joined the villa after being abandoned by his parents. Dan was very puzzled about how people didn’t care about the chaotic world. Yuuki sighed:
“The Fixer has no relation to their lives, it’s not worth the effort to stand against them… Not everyone is Bashin Dan”
This is the final bit we hear about Yuuki until a different character’s story, it seems Dan was unable to understand why the Humans weren’t willing to assist him. While Battler’s are usually alone, and as such, Otherworld King was defeatable irregardless of support, The Fixer isn’t an enemy you defeat by battling… defeating them requires that the World believe they exist, and the Illuminati always sounds like a conspiracy theory.
His grandfather was actually a member of the Fixer, having a huge impact on Japan’s political and business circles and anti-social organisations. He was called the ‘After-War Lord’. As he also had influence on the election of the Japanese prime minister, he was also called the ‘King Maker’. Kenzou’s father and uncles were also active in the political and business circles. Kenzou loved his grandfather the most.
This explains Hyoudo Kenzo’s rich background, his Grandfather was ONE of the Fixers, this also explains how Kenzo was able to get assuredly classified information enabling the execution of the Brustom Virus.
I do love the nicknames they give Grandfather Hyoudo, “After-War Lord” and “Kingmaker” are excellent titles to have.
After the fight against the Otherworld King, his grandfather asked the social media to not over-reporting the core bearers. But then when Kenzou wanted to expose the Fixer, he was put under pressure instead. Knowing that they were being eavesdropped and aware of the danger, in order to protect Kenzou, his grandfather commanded him to study in Italia for the long term. Although the grandfather was called the ‘After-War Lord’, his power was only limited within Japan.
You’d think having a Fixer on the inside would enable their exposition to be easy, but I’m sure The Fixer have many contingencies in place involving a defector of their own.
For Kenzo’s effort in trying to expose the Fixer, the result is that he was forced to study in Italy, separated from his friends in Japan.
For a Fixer with many admirable titles, Grandfather Hyoudo can’t extend his influence beyond Japan, and Japan is a small country compared to the rest of the world.
His parents were still around, but because his father was very busy in work, their relationship wasn’t at the best state. When the Fixer started picking on them, Suzuri was getting bullied at school again. Contact with him was lost after he sent an email to the other Core Bearers that he went to Singapore.
Suzuri’s story is rather short, but it doesn’t necessarily need to be long. It seems The Fixer caused Suzuri’s bullying to worsen, Suzuri has never had the greatest constitution, and bullying is a nasty trigger for him.
It’s no wonder that he moved to Singapore instead, much like Kenzo, he had to leave Japan entirely.
His mother was Puerto Rican, and was single. His father seemed to be Japanese, but he never met him. His mother had a shop in the kabukicho in Shinjuku City, working along with other Latino and Asian women. Clackey grew up around these women. Knowing that his mother’s business was unstable was how he developed his optimistic personality.
So if you were ever wondering what was the deal with Clackey Ray’s choice of skin colour, this is why, he has a Puerto Rican mother. His odd sense of resignation is due to his Mother, who has to look after Clackey on her own as a single mother, running a business that evidently wasn’t great.
If you’re not familiar with the Kabukicho in Shinjuku, well, I can tell you, cuz I’ve been there…
It’s Japan’s Red Light entertainment district. And if you don’t know what that means… Well I can’t sugarcoat it, it’s a place for sexual entertainment. Host clubs, Love Hotels, etc.
Clackey had a close relationship with his mother, but when the Fixer started putting pressure on them, his mother got tricked and lost both money and the shop. She and the other female workers were sent back to their home countries due to illegal activities. Since Clackey was worried about his mother, he left Japan with her, but she passed away shortly afterwards.
The first of the Fixer’s stated fatalities… the result of forcing their business to close caused Clackey’s Mother to be deported from Japan, he followed her, likely to Puerto Rico, but it seems that things going from bad to worse caused Clackey’s mother to lose her life.
So Clackey, thanks to the Fixer, is both without a Mother, and has no idea who his Father is. Naturally the Fixer also ruins the reputation of those they attempt to destroy, so aside from the Lightbearers, Clackey also really has no friends left.
The Otherworld King was supposed to work with the Fixer and became the Mother Core Bearer, controlling the Core power and ruling over the world. However, his hatred was sparked up again, and he intended to start another Ice Age in order to catalyse the evolution of humans.
This made everything that he had done become meaningless on the surface.
There’s a section here concerning Otherworld King, and I’m not about to ignore it. The story seems to acknowledge the fact that Otherworld King’s stated plan, the steps he took to pursue it, and his subsequent attempt to cause an Ice Age using Mother Core, makes absolutely zero sense.
The stated reason is that he just got angry about it.
After getting pressured by the Fixer, Dan started to research on the effects which King had caused. He suspected that the Otherworld King hated the fact that there was little improvement between the Age of Discovery and the modern age; and tried to persuade the Fixer via the Core System, destroying their profits and creating a new order. Dan mentioned again that the Otherworld King had met politicians all over the world through his theory of Core System solving the problem of energy.
Okay some nuance is added here, Otherworld King appeared to be frustrated between the small amount of advancement in the 500-600 or so years between the Age of Discovery (a span of time between the 15th and 17th centuries) and the Modern Age (2010).
But it’s clear this was the motivation he used to determine the Fixer’s existence, and his subsequent control over them.
After all, many of The Fixer’s methods of manipulation is the control of Human energy, Core energy is sadly infinite and even a single rock can do plenty, wiping out The Fixer’s ability to control it. Not to mention they couldn’t challenge Otherworld King directly anyway.
That’s all that’s stated on him, but now I suppose we move on… To the story of Haga.
And no, not Insector Haga, we don’t even have an image for this guy.
Note, this story takes place after everyone had already given up on The Fixer.
He was a freelance reporter who visited Dan and Yuuki. He claimed that one of his colleagues, who had been investigating the Core System, was arrested in accusation of selling drugs overseas. In order to write a book on the incidents around the Otherworld King, he interviewed Dan and the others who knew about the Core System and tried to bring down the Fixer. Through the internet, Kenzou and Mai found that Haga had been working under a big news report company, and after quitting his job, he had been writing eagerly writing articles, hence confirming his validity.
It appears that “Haga” was a reporter who showed up, wanting to gain aid from the Light Bearers as his own allies were arrested on false charges when trying to investigate the Core System, which the Fixer has put a lethal gag order on.
As Dan and the others had been threatened by the Fixer, they struggled to believe Haga. However, Haga visited them every day, making detailed explanations, and disclosing all his interview records. The Core Bearers were touched by his passion, and decided to work with him.
It seems Haga successfully convinced them to be spurred back into action, in spite of initial suspicion that he might be a Fixer agent, he took great pains to confirm his validity with them.
Haga told them that he knew someone from Kyoto who knew about the Core System, and invited them to come along. However, he was aware that the Fixer was watching them, and told them to take separate transport, only meeting up at the final destination. Dan took the shinkansen, while Yuuki took a flight from Haneda Airport to Osaka International Airport.
For the uninitiated, the Shinkansen is Japan’s fastest bullet train, incredibly well managed, I’ve been told by a tour I was receiving while there that it has an astronomically low accident rate.
In any case, Haga has a friend in Kyoto who knows about the Core System, awfully suspicious, but erring on safety, had Dan and Yuuki take separate transport.
…And here is where things get sad.
Yet Yuuki’s flight failed to land properly, and all 405 passengers in it passed away.
The shinkansen having an accident would be incredibly unusual, and The Fixer wouldn’t be able to explain that one away, however, Yuuki’s flight failing is incredibly foreseeable…
Dan was shocked when he heard about it in Kyoto. Haga told him that Yuuki’s death was no mere accident. He claimed that he had seen a lot of cases where people were eliminated through ‘accidents’.
But more importantly, Haga confirms that Yuuki’s death was very likely orchestrated by The Fixer. Not just Clackey’s Mother, but now an actual Light bearer, the one who didn’t do a thing against them, and the one who very much did not deserve that fate, was killed by The Fixer.
The one who knew about the Core System in Kyoto said that he was frightened and retreated. Haga also said he received warning from the Fixer, and in order to protect his own life, he left Dan.
And even worse, it’s the most direct attempt in which The Fixer has caused a death, once again, using a Sledgehammer to crack a nut, in their aim to kill Yuuki, they also killed 404 innocent people who had nothing to do with any of this. And after getting Dan’s friend killed Haga just bails.
After a while, Mai, who was still investigating, sent Dan an email that although Haga was a reporter, he wasn’t opposing the Fixer. In fact, he had a deep connection with the Fixer, and that from the moment they were contacted by Haga, all the way to the plane crash, was completely scripted.
And the ultimate kicker? Haga was a reporter, and could prove that he was… but he was working for the Fixer, not against them, meaning he completely orchestrated this situation.
He pulled Dan and Yuuki, who had already given up, out of inaction, arranged for them to travel elsewhere, and then killed the one person who had not done a single thing besides taking his flight at Haga’s behest.
Taken from Dan’s exerpts about the incident, there’s more:
Whether Yuuki had died from an accident or an incident was unknown. Dan realised that it was the Fixer’s intention to make him realise the fear of the unknown. It made him remember the Otherworld King. In order to protect those around him, except for continuing to dedicate himself to BS, he had no other choices.
The Fixer killed Yuuki, even after Dan had given up, to send Dan a message about the Unknown, Dan couldn’t live a comfortable life simply by not going after the Fixer, his knowledge of them was crime enough. Dan would forever have to live a life wondering if the next Taxi he’d take had an explosive engine. The next Train having an incompetent conductor and crashing, he couldn’t even leave Japan out of fears the planes and passengers would disappear without a trace.
All Dan could do, is exist, stripped of his ability to fight.
This is all a rather sad story, and while The Fixer clearly win this fight, Brave will show us something that I’ll be able to comment on regarding this story, that may at least put at ease what feelings you might have concerning this.
I can understand that horrible stories like this one might leave one feeling down, so please, do go do something you enjoy today if you find yourself feeling terrible.
…Actually, why wait for the Episode to do it, I won’t say the cause… However.
Over time, and during the time Brave’s main timeline is set, The Fixer have been destroyed. Entirely because of messing with forces beyond their control.
The Fixer, while not defeatable in battle, were destroyed by things they could not fight physically…
…Things that, despite their superior power, prefer to settle their differences in Battle.
So if nothing else, rejoice in the catharsis in knowing that The Fixer who used their strength rather than battling in a fair fight, lost in a contest of strength, against beings more than willing to engage in a fair fight.
And let the knowledge gained here, inform us in what happens next time, in Battle Spirits Brave.
I’ll see you then.
Well it’s been a wild ride, shall we close off with a full review?
Battle Spirits Shounen Gekiha Dan is an excellent successor to what was the growing pains of Bashin Toppa.
The story of Gekiha Dan, in summary, is just an adventure plot, from the first episode it is Dan, Magisa and Zungurii questing to defeat Otherworld King, a role assigned to Dan by the Red Light that he bears in his heart. They explore a world unknown to Dan and so meet many strange people on the way until eventually it culminates into a climactic battle with the man himself.
The second half is a repeat of the first, with distinct differences I’ll get to when I review characters. But ultimately, the plot itself is not entirely complex, the premise is simple and easy to digest, and a simple plot is a good choice for when you’re trying to accentuate the complexities of the characters and the themes more than the actual story.
Dan goes on an adventure to defeat Otherworld King is a single sentence that comprises the story, which is more than I could say for Bashin Toppa, as the “Story” is very difficult to parse in Toppa and doesn’t take any meaningful form until a point where most viewers may have bowed out from it.
After all, Toppa’s premise is similar, “Bashin Toppa must defeat King Uchuuchouten”… But Bashin doesn’t even know who he is until roughly a quarter of the way through the series. And they open with that line from Episode 2.
In any case, the plot of Gekiha Dan is simplistic… but it knows what it is trying to be, and doesn’t try to be anything other than what it is, which makes the story flow nicely.
Here I’ll go over some important to note characters individually:
Bashin Dan, the successor both to Toppa’s name and role, is the Hero of the series. While we see Toppa develop incredibly inconsistently over the course of his own series, Dan’s arc isn’t actually intended to be one of development as his values aren’t wrong they’re just incomplete.
Dan goes over the course of the series wielding his power to defeat Otherworld King in the name of the Otherworlders, but over the first half he’s consistently met with strange people who oppose him for stranger reasons. Otherworlders content and loyal with Otherworld King’s rule, a Light Bearer like him who’s actively assisting Otherworld King instead of the role he should be taking to defeat him. A former Red Soldier who gave up his mission believing it to be impossible. Humans who see no other alternative than to follow through with Otherworld King’s plans as their own future is an uninhabitable mess.
Even Otherworld King starts to make statements that cause Dan to doubt his previously pure convictions and causes him to give up battling when he’s been defeated, his heart too badly damaged to deal with Otherworld King in the manner he is meant to be dealt with.
Eventually however, Dan does the equivalent of putting pen-to-paper, his “Development” is merely putting reason to his motivations and not just instinct, as it is the combination of both instinct and reason that can make actions powerful.
Dan returns to his usual goal, defeating Otherworld King, but he’s now properly evaluated what it means to do so, and his already strong conviction is strengthened by it.
He’s not a Flat character by any means, he’s forced to reconcile with strangeness all the time over the series, but his growth involves just being able to put what he feels is wrong about something int words and conveying it.
Clackey on the other hand, is a Flat foil to Dan, he has no developments that are required of him, as his journey is meant to mirror Dan’s beginning, that being the refusal of the call phase of the Hero’s Journey.
Like Dan does at the beginning of the series, Clackey refuses to join the quest to battle Otherworld King, on the grounds that he must protect the Mimi Tribe personally… And because he’s different to Dan.
But, enraptured by Dan being like himself at the time, convicted and flat, he finds himself coming along anyway.
His development kind of just starts and ends there until Kajitsu, which is then resolved in a single episode, his role in the series is actually quite sad, since he’s an incredibly under-utilized character who’s only development is, like Dan, doing what he was always going to and defend women.
However, the reason this doesn’t stick out like a sore thumb is because, once again, the writers knew what they were doing with the character, Clackey acts as a substitute when nothing creative can come as a result of Dan doing yet another battle, and so Clackey offers a method of having a Yellow deck take the spotlight for an episode, it lets the writers vary what’s going on instead of “Siegwurm go brrr”
While I can accept that this may not have been the intention, never attribute to malice what is adequately explained by incompetence after all, Mai’s role in the 6 bearers is being the Girl.
While Kajitsu is initially displayed as bearing the Green light, she’s then relegated to bearing Mother Core instead, while this was potentially always the plan, Bearing Mother Core is distinctly different from the mission of being a Lightbearer, as upon this reveal Kajitsu does not battle.
This relegates Mai as being the sole female, though with Magisa and Kajitsu in the group, this is diminished somewhat.
As for her actual character, I’m not gonna lie, I fucking hate her.
She is my 2nd Least liked Character in the series, I can get behind that she is a popular person, values her independance, and likes to use Battle Spirits as a way to display her style, to “dye the field her colour”, but jesus christ it makes her obtuse at the best of times and actively a hindrance at the worst of times.
Expressing one’s independance is an important thing for some people, I get that, but if you’re being a nuisance, you’re annoying another person, that’s not very independent is it?
She’ll make it up to me later, as she becomes a much better character.
It’s damn near impossible to talk about the Momose siblings independantly of each other because so much of their dynamic is defined by the other’s presence, this is what makes Kajitsu’s death so significant, because even the viewers don’t know what Yuuki is supposed to do when every single breath he’s taken has been in the service of Kajitsu.
They do however, have 2 different roles, Yuuki is the Rival, he is a semi-antagonistic force that complicates Dan’s quest to defeat Otherworld King. The reason for this becomes clear later in that Yuuki was attempting to use Otherworld King before later defeating him.
As a result, Yuuki who’s been at this longer, gets first stab at the man, and loses, due to being pained by Otherworld King cutting Yuuki off from his other half, it’s entirely possible that were Kajitsu alive to centre Yuuki’s thoughts, Yuuki may actually have succeeded.
The pair are rather tragic, being 2 near-newlyweds being deprived of live right before the moment their marriage was sanctioned, and as a result are cursed to reincarnate under circumstances that disallow them to get their love requited. In their past lives they could not live a married life because they were killed on their wedding day, in this life, they cannot live a married life because they have been born as Human Siblings who cannot and should not be married under normal circumstances.
I like Yuuki, he doesn’t seem to overstay his welcome, and he questions his own motives once he’s been pushed into a situation where he realizes his harming someone he cares about.
Kajitsu on the other hand is.. bothersome, she’s a Human McGuffin, an item of some untold power that’s been given legs and can walk and talk, Kajitsu’s purpose for this is to accentuate 2 things as she currently holds the McGuffin that is Mother Core.
Firstly, that Otherworld King wants it, and Secondly, that it is actively detrimental to have.
I just don’t have any opinions on her as a character, because she’s a function first, and a character second.
As for Yuuki’s relationship to Dan, they have an excellent Rivalry, Yuuki starts from a position of superiority and from there Dan catches up so quickly that by the time they square off again they’re on equal ground, it’s nice, and does what it needs to do.
Suzuri Hideto, the Blue Soldier, acts as a contrast from the other Light Bearers and his role serves to highlight that.
Dan fights for those he cares about
Clackey fights for those he finds attractive.
Mai fights for those watching.
Yuuki & Kajitsu fight for each other.
Kenzo fights because he’s good at it.
Suzuri on the other hand is the only person among this lot who fights purely because it benefits him. White is the opposite of Red narratively in BS, so Yuuki fights for similar reasons on opposite sides to Dan, but if I ask what the opposite of Red is colour wise, most will answer “Blue”
And so Suzuri is meant to be a different kind of Mirror, he fights for completely opposite reasons to Dan, fighting for no one other than himself.
That aside, Suzuri never feels like he overstays his welcome, he doesn’t steal every scene he’s in but he also doesn’t stand out like a sore thumb. And more importantly, his card collector status also functions to give an in-character excuse to have him constantly throw out what could be an optimized deck.
For this reason, I love Suzuri, I think while he isn’t necessary for the story other than the need for 6 characters for each colour, he serves a unique function that no one else does. His difference in contrast to Dan is also why in Episode 30, they pit Yuuki against Suzuri, because they both are opposites to Dan in different ways.
Hyoudo Kenzo is a bit of an awkward situation because his development both starts and ends from his time as an antagonistic force.
So, against Otherworld King is the Red, Purple, and Yellow Lightbearers, and it’s clear that Yuuki serves Otherworld King, and Suzuri, by extension of being appeased by Brustom giving him gifts, and Brustom working for Otherworld King, Suzuri is also against the trio.
So it makes sense that, firstly, the reveal that Kajitsu only bears the Green Light because she bears ALL light necessitates the question of “Well who REALLY is the Green Soldier”
But also to make the numbers match, to have that Soldier be an Antagonistic force.
This makes Kenzo’s introduction absolutely excellent… It’s just everything that surrounds him crumbles after that.
His introductory fight showing him as a genius battler has him battle a possessed Suzuri, when Genius battler vs Genius deck builder should have truly been an excellent first battle. I understand that Suzuri’s disdain over being possessed provided motivation for him to be in the right place and the right time but it squanders Kenzo’s introduction.
Secondly, once he’s defeated, his character arc just kind of ends, he’s used as a facilitator to explain card effects and such but Clackey was already doing that. And then does nothing significant for the rest of the series other than losing to Leon twice.
Trust me, there is absolutely zero function Kenzo serves beyond his defeat that could not be served by a different character, which makes Kenzo stick out like a sore thumb because of the stupid running gag of Magisa pronouncing his name wrong.
Ultimately, it’s clear that Kenzo existed to fill a quota, they needed another Green Battler to make up for Kajitsu’s reveal and it’s obviously a last minute inclusion beyond then to include him in all of the events that require all 6 of them.
Absolutely a waste.
Zungurii and Magisa need to be dealt with together, as they are met around the same time and ultimately serve similar functions.
The two exist as guides to Otherworld, and they convey information to us by being reasonable characters to allow information to be spoken.
Zungurii is a child in a world he already lived in, which means that Zungurii will ultimately ask all of the questions about stuff he doesn’t know, namely about Battle Spirits, and of course is the voice for the Otherworlders in any given situation that has anything to do with them. This gives us insights about how the Otherworlders might feel because he’s too young to keep the big thoughts to himself. When Zungurii voices irritation about Humans, its clear that he’s speaking for all Otherworlders, his development is also a mirror to the possibilities that Humans can co-exist with Otherworlders, just not easily.
Magisa exists as a foil to this, she answers the questions Zungurii asks about the game (initially), and answers questions Dan might have about Otherworld, she functions as the guide not only for Dan but also for us to help build the world.
As a result, once Magisa has completed her function, given that the Light Bearers ended up on earth after Otherworld King brought them back, Magisa doesn’t have a function to perform because she can’t guide them. So instead there’s a small subplot about her getting her powers back, something she’s said were quite powerful across the whole series, only to show them off against Leon for one battle. After that, she’s used as the “answer” to the problem posed by Mother Core because she is of similar power to Otherworld King himself.
It’s an excellent way to finish her off as a character.
And finally, the last of the important characters I haven’t given my thoughts about at the end of their run, Otherworld King.
So, as you might have noticed, I mentioned right at the beginning that this guy is my favourite Battle Spirits villain. This is true, but what you might have also noticed, conversely, that later into the show, I start getting increasingly irritated with him.
This is because the character very clearly speaks in a profound manner and acts in accordance with his goals, which could create a type complex villain who is very clearly doing harm, and doing so for a good reason, but is callously disregarding the damage he’s doing rather than not realizing it, or claiming it’s justified.
The thing is the Light Bearers are right to oppose him on principal, Humans have no business forcing things like unison on Otherworlders even if it would benefit them, but naturally the Otherworlders’ lack of understanding of the Light that sustains them complicates the process as Humans evidently have control over whether or not Grand-Lolo thrives even if they aren’t together. And Grand-Lolo should have some kind of control over their own sun which they can only do through interaction with Earth.
It’s a piece of minutiae which makes his goals incredibly profound because while he is very clearly using a sledgehammer to crack a nut, and allowing his bias against the “Barbarian” Otherworlders and the “Immature” Humans to control his actions, it’s hard to disagree with his goal unless you’re Pro-Separation, which Dan was.
It turned Grand-Lolo’s situation into one of politics and that made it interesting. Otherworld King actively is presented as, introduced as, and even seems for a large portion of time, to be reasonable, but also dangerously callous. You almost think if you could make an impasse with the guy he could even be a somewhat cool and incredibly wise ally against an even Greater Evil.
And then this happens.
I’m sure that the writers probably figured it would be more interesting to clearly highlight Otherworld King’s deeper evils, he has a disdain towards Humans that makes him unwilling to act in their benefit even though less than 5 minutes before in the same god damn episode he had just made a deal with The Fixer to provide the Core System as long as they enforce his rule.
And then he just goes “Nope, I don’t like it, Humans can fuck right off”
And becomes a raging madman who decided “Fuck the Fixers I want to hurt the Humans”
They spent so long building up this supposed glorious saint of a villain, who you feel like you could grab a drink with, who in spite of their choices and methods you could probably trust to do right by him.
And they made him a monster, and the only discernable Watsonian reason I can fathom is “Because he was always a monster”
Are you telling me the only motivation to become so old and wise and persist for so long is something as petty as hatred? That the only reason I’d ever get that far is because I was spurred on by despair?
You could say “well Magisa’s the counterpart” but Magisa lived a long life simply because she hadn’t died yet, Otherworlders live insanely long lives, Otherworld King had a reign of at least 2000 years, something he was only able to achieve via Magic.
He doesn’t lose any intelligence, he’s clearly not stupid, his methods don’t change in their cold callousness and how they inconvenience others… But his motivations for me seem to change completely and I could never tell you what the jumping off point was other than he just felt dissatisfied randomly. This is even lampshaded in some areas of the canon where it’s stated that Otherworld King simply “changed his mind” at some point and went off the deep end.
Imagine an alteration to this ending.
It’s just so… Come on!
ugh, sorry, it’s clear I’m probably getting irritated because my image of Otherworld King in my head doesn’t line up with the reality of his character. It can just be so frustrating when that occurs.
My only other gripes with Otherworld King is something I have an issue with involving other characters who supposedly specialize in all colours, Otherworld King is an all colour specialist, but is only shown playing Red, they attempt to rectify this with his new build containing various colours everywhere but ultimately it’s just a Red and Green deck with some off colour Cost 4s. This happens I think twice in the entire Battle Spirits anime, and Otherworld King is the first one to run into it. The second is a Purple player in Battle Spirits Heroes.
Anyway, I’ll get off the Ikaiyo train now, sorry.
The battles from here on are consistent, adhere to the rules, don’t try to jump turns unnecessarily, its a big difference from Toppa and I’m really glad they keep to it for the rest of the anime’s runs.
The only time it gets particularly egregious after is an OVA which is, well, an OVA, so it’s not really a fully fledged anime like this one is.
The decks, while not completely optimized, adhere to the knowledge of the meta at the time, with Victory Fire being a big problem and even having entire episodes centred on planning around the darn thing, many older X-Rares take center stage in their own episodes and the decks that are shown are varied and incredibly creative.
Decisions seem to make sense under scrutiny, it’s all good.
From now on however, I will talk about Battle quality not in terms of accuracy but in terms of flow, because different series have different flows. And accuracy is WELL kept from here on. Something I’m happy we’re well passed.
Anyway, without further ado, those are my final thoughts on Battle Spirits Shounen Gekiha Dan, next up for me is to move on to Battle Spirits Brave, but before I do that, I will be reviewing a small side story that that takes place between this series and Brave.
This is the story of “The Fixer”, which will be covered in the next post.
The reason I would like to do this, is “The Fixer” story is ambiguous and it’s really hard to infer what happened between now and Brave that made Dan and his friends feel so bitter, I want to examine Brave under the lens of having known that story, something first-time viewers wouldn’t have been able to do.
Ultimately though, Gekiha Dan is in a unique place in my heart, mostly because while it isn’t my favourite Battle Spirits series, it is the precursor to my favourite Battle Spirits series in Brave and holds my favourite Battle Spirits villain in Otherworld King. There are so many things that I like about it and yet my preference for other things is very clearly apparent. But it does an excellent job of setting up what the formula is for the rest of the series because it very clearly worked. It was like a 2nd 1st attempt.
Either way, I think I’ve said all I can think about talking about, so I think it’s time to go, much like Magisa, this is farewell, but only until next time. I’ll see you all in the next one.
AAAAAHHH
IT’S HAPPENING GUS, IT’S HAPPENING!
I’d like to jump right in but it feels so wrong to do that for such a special occasion, gosh I dunno what to do.
I suppose if you’ve come this far, the only thing I can recommend is to listen to “Battle! No Limit!” one last time before we move on, sing it if your pronunciation’s good!
And once you’re done with that, let’s move on shall we? Let’s end this thing!
In the last episode, Dan started his final battle with Otherworld King.
However, as Otherworld King continued to endure damage, and stoke the black fumes of his already black heart, Mother Core, Kajitsu’s heart, connected to him, has also blackened.
It’s Black Light has now blotted out the Sun.
From this line, it appears that should Otherworld King succeed now, this situation will kickstart a whole Ice Age.
You know, the thing that wiped out the god damn Dinosaurs?
The cause has been pinpointed to be the effect Otherworld King’s heart has on Mother Core itself
The solution? Have Dan defeat Otherworld King, and take Mother Core back, his pure heart should cause it’s shine to return.
The Episode Title offers no excessive statements, no spoilers, nothing, simply:
“Farewell, Clash King”
Well it’s the final episode, it’s only natural this would be the last time we see the Clash King, at least when this Episode was airing it would be.
Otherworld King Turn 10, he currently has Dio-Mantis (3000 BP), The FlyingIronBeast Gale-Fokker at Lv2 (7000 BP), The JailBeast Gashabers at Lv2 (4000 BP)
And now he summons 2 more Spirits, Erimakilizard at Lv2, and The SnakeDragon King-Gorgo.
The Sky of the battlefield’s been blotted out, now they fight on a darkened field.
Which is pretty awesome actually, I love it when they change up the field.
Otherworld King then raises Gashabers up to Lv3, and ends his turn.
Notably, Otherworld King has 5 attackers, Dan’s field consists of Meteorwurm, Ankillersaurus, Sabecaulus and Byak-Garo.
Byak-Garo however is exhausted, a full attack wins Otherworld King the game, there is likely 2 reasons why he doesn’t.
Dan realizes that summoning a pair of Red spirits now and not attacking is a clear attempt at summoning Gai-Asura with it’s 3 followers on board, as Gai-Asura provides Otherworld King many benefits while Gale-Fokker, Gashabers and King-Gorgo are on the field.
Clash King Turn 11, Dan draws The GiantEmperor Alexander.
As Dan’s gained a single core from last turn, he can perform the same cost this turn without levelling down anything.
I like to think that, as a Light Bearer using his friend’s card, that the Symbols they bear allow them to physically do things like this, having a fellow Light Bearer appear for the sake of a summon.
Dan- No, along with Dan, Suzuri summons The GiantEmperor Alexander.
Otherworld King seems pleasantly amused by this, one can only wonder why.
Alexander has joined Dan’s field
if you’re not sure why Otherworld King is so confident all of a sudden, it’s because he’s clicked that Dan is using the cards of his allies, he intends to let Dan gather all of them, which will allow The Star Creation Place to rob Dan of them, all at once.
Dan then deploys a Nexus, The Sunstone Shrine, which will allow Alexander to use it’s Assault.
However, Dan is 2 core short, so he uses all the core from Ankillersaurus to pay for it.
It also clears the smoke from the sky on his side of the board.
Otherworld King Turn 12.
I can’t be the only one that finds Otherworld King’s board stacked with Spirits to be oddly satisfying, right?
Otherworld King simply raises Dio-Mantis to Lv3, and ends his turn.
It’s clear the 2 battlers are trying to gather power, and Otherworld King wants Dan at his highest before he drops him from the proverbial building.
A convenient turn to draw this, Dan draws The SevenShogun Beelzebeat on the Clash King Turn 13.
Convenient, ay?
Now that Ankillersaurus is out of the picture though, Dan has just enough core to bring this out.
Along with Dan, Mai summons The SevenShogun Beelzebeat
Dan’s wielding the power of 4 colours now, he ends his turn.
Magisa does have a point though, if Dan didn’t waste time summoning Spirits, he could have used Sunstone Shrine with Meteorwurm’s Lv3 a while ago and put a massive dent in Otherworld King’s board.
Otherworld King Turn 14, he brings 4 spirits down to Lv1.
He then summons Sabecaulus.
People out here really running Sabecaulus for that extra 1000 BP aren’t they? Geez.
Otherworld King summons The PhantomStarDragon Gai-Asura, his Key Spirit.
To that end, he depletes Dio-Mantis, represented by it being crushed by the falling Spirit.
And there’s no re-canning those worms.
Both Magisa and Kenzo drop an interesting bombshell that isn’t explicitly mentioned during Gai-Asura’s last appearance, neither Magisa, in her 4029 years of familiarity with the game, NOR Kenzo’s encyclopedic knowledge of Battle Spirits has ever put them into eye-contact with this Spirit.
That is because, before now, the card simply did not exist.
It’s a card from the Future, a creation of Otherworld King’s.
In Yu-Gi-Oh! Terms for broken cards, “Actual Custom Card”
In order to hide the spoiler depicted on the artwork, the card apparently just glows red to cover it’s art on Otherworld King’s field.
Otherworld King takes this moment to explain Star Creation Place’s effect, as Gai-Asura has a BP value equal or more than 8000, Gai-Asura receives the Clash ability.
Otherworld King attacks with Gai-Asura, declaring Clash.
Now Dan is forced to block.
Dan blocks with Sabecaulus, which doesn’t stand a ghost of a chance.
Otherworld King is clearly not comfortable taking core from Spirits yet, as each of his Spirits only have 1 core, meaning he’d have to deplete them.
He can however, sacrifice them in order to have Gai-Asura block, and Gai-Asura is capable of doing all the battling by itself for the rest of this fight.
It steals the strength of others to ensure it can fight alone, trapped in the past through an evolved version of an old ability.
What card could be more fitting for Otherworld King?
Otherworld King is power tripping so hard the outlines he’s drawn with have thickened to Toppa levels.
Clash King Turn 15…
Let’s go! Clackey!
You have no idea how annoying it was capturing that shot.
and it’s perfection.
Along with Dan, Clackey summons The ArcAngelia Isfiel!
While this might seem to exclude Yuuki, first of all, Yuuki didn’t give Dan a spirit, second of all, in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it frame last episode, we know Dan opened with the White Magic he was given by Yuuki.
So in fact, they are all gathered!
Dan has 5 X-Rares, all with a different colour, save for White, and a White Magic in his hand.
It’s safe to say Dan’s using all colours to take on Otherworld King.
Dan ends his turn and unfortunately, time for things to get bothersome.
They’re all unfortunately at Lv1, so Gai-Asura with Clash can destroy them all during Otherworld King’s next turn.
Otherworld King Turn 16, not noted here, but due to Gashabers’ effect, Otherworld King drew an additional card, due to Gale-Fokker’s effect, a Core for it was gained from the Void.
Otherworld King raises Gashabers to Lv2.
And rather idiotically, Otherworld King adds 8 core to Gai-Asura.
This raises Gai-Asura to Lv3.
It’s printed BP is an unnecessary accuracy check, as King-Gorgo adds 3000 to that total, meaning it’s working with 16000 BP
It’d have 13000 BP at Lv2, which is more than necessary to destroy Dan’s board, but Otherworld King needs to rub salt in the wound.
Gai-Asura attacks, thanks to Clash, Dan is forced to block.
Otherworld King activates Ultra Awaken, now by sapping at least 1 core from a fellow Spirit, Gai-Asura can refresh.
However, that is the 10th Core Gai-Asura has received.
A 10th Core for the 10th Set Red X-Rare.
With 10 core, Gai-Asura is brought up to the never-before-seen in this moment.
LEVEL FOUR!
This 4th Level transforms Gai-Asura completely! From the Angelic Winged Lamia it appeared as, to whatever the fuck this Eldritch beast is!
And thus ends the spoiler embargo for the card!
The PhantomStarDragon Gai-Asura is a Cost 10 Red X-Rare from BS10! And the dawn of the new setcodes for X-Rares, beginning the new era again as setcode BS10-X01, before X-Rares continually counted up, but I guess they eventually figured they’d hit triple digits soon, and there was no danger of resetting the number.
Gai-Asura hails from the Astral Dragon, and all new Astral Deity families, a series of families native to the Constellation Saga that the card hails from.
The “Block” system that Battle Spirits uses didn’t use numbers yet, but could be separated into Sagas, and Gai-Asura is the first card we see from an entirely different Saga of sets.
And now the effect, and ultimately, where it’s weaknesses lie. Ultra Awaken is an incredible ability, able to continually refresh.
However, the ability comes with a glaring weakness of the card! Once a core reaches Gai-Asura.
it cannot be removed!
This may offer it resistances to Purple depletion, yes, but it also means that as Ultra Awaken continues to be used, your options diminish.
And Gai-Asura needs other Spirits to steal core from, once it’s alone with all the core it’s hoarded it can’t do a thing.
Keep that in mind…
As for it’s Lv4, well its about to come into effect so I’ll explain then.
But ultimately, its most significant feature, is it’s Lv4… with a BP value totalling 30000.
This thing has a 10000 BP gap between itself and Catastrophedragon! A card with the same cost and level requirement for highest level!
It’s the new Strongest Red X-Rare!
Due to Gai-Asura’s transformation, Otherworld King’s Battle form changes even further!
And it comes with EVEN BIGGER wings!
Levels on a card are rather consistently represented by colours.
Surprisingly, since Battle Spirits was designed capable of assuming cards could have a maximum Level of 2, and no Level 3, adding extra Levels like this is quite easy in card design.
So ignoring obvious card effects that get around it’s BP being 30000 or it’s Level being 4, there’s nothing that can easily clear it in a straight fight on it’s own at present.
Yellow doesn’t get a card that swaps BP values until much later.
Darn, Belga’s thinking.
It really is the end of the world.
This Level revelation took place during Gai-Asura’s attack, so now Dan needs to block this complete freak of an X-Rare.
We get a glimpse of Dan’s hand here, and now we see what card he was given by Yuuki.
The White defense Magic, Blizzard Wall. The card best suited for countering a monster like Gai-Asura.
Dan blocks with Isfiel.
Using Isfiel’s effect, since it attacked or blocked, Dan is allowed to use a Magic at no cost, and god does he need that no cost clause.
If it’s possible for the effect to be used twice, Isfiel can duplicate it here as well, but it won’t apply for this.
Now for this turn, Dan’s life can’t be reduced by more than 1 core from Spirit attacks.
Which means that no amount of attacks can reduce Dan’s life from 2 to 0 this turn.
Gai-Asura is currently the strongest Spirit in the game at Lv4, I need not mention that it’s BP is higher than Isfiel.
Isfiel is destroyed.
Kenzo states that there’s no way their combined X-Rares are coming anywhere close to winning a battle of BP with Gai-Asura, but Mai points out that their core will at least return to Dan’s reserve…
…
HAHAHAHA.
THAT’S CUTE!
Gai-Asura’s effect, granted only to it when it reaches this insane Lv4 state.
Whenever it defeats a Spirit in Battle while attacking, the core on those destroyed spirits is sent to the Void and not the reserve.
Meaning combined with The Star Creation Place, Gai-Asura at Lv4 becomes incredibly nasty to deal with due to it reducing not only your card resources, but your core resources too.
Dan stands to lose 4 more core to the Void this turn, reducing his options immensely.
Otherworld King attacks a second time, and activates Ultra Awaken, sapping a core from a Spirit.
Thanks to it’s gifted Clash, Dan is forced to block.
Alexander is destroyed this time, and Dan loses it’s core to the Void, Dan apologizes to Suzuri for being unable to use Deck destruction as an alternative strategy.
Poor Alexander didn’t get to do anything, and it’s presence actively hindered Dan, but Suzuri tells Dan not to apologize
not like they could have planned around LEVEL GOD DAMN FOUR.
On the 3rd attack, Gai-Asura takes out Otherworld King’s Erimakilizard’s last core, depleting it.
Beelzebeat blocks this time.
But Gai-Asura wouldn’t look out of place in a Souls game, and that one-shot is why.
Otherworld King attacks for a 3rd time with Gai-Asura, depleting Sabecaulus for Ultra Awaken.
Byak-Garo is destroyed, Core 4 has been lost.
Gai-Asura attacks for a 5th time, Otherworld King notably doesn’t use Ultra Awaken this turn, likely due to his only remaining Spirits benefitting him with their existence, King-Gorgo, Gashabers and Gale-Fokker.
Meteorwurm is destroyed, and Dan loses both 5 spirits and 5 core total.
Well, except for an incredibly minute detail you might not have considered there, Otherworld King.
It’ll be Turn 17, Dan would normally have the benefit of 8 core steps and 3 lives lost, but after losing those 5 cores, Dan will only have the benefit of 6 extra core.
So he’ll be operating with 10 core when he should have 15.
Dan declares that all his Spirits protected the 2 lives that he has, so it wasn’t in vain that they blocked.
Through the Blizzard Wall, King-Gorgo attacks and strikes Dan’s life, dropping him to a single 1.
Thanks to Blizzard wall however, Otherworld King’s maddening turn truly is over. As Dan can no longer lose lives due to attacks this turn.
Dan gives due to Yuuki, as his Blizzard Wall is the only reason Dan is still standing right now.
Otherworld King picks a rather odd time to ask an even odder question, he asks Dan what he would do if he had Mother Core, and if Dan would use Mother Core to become Otherworld King.
Dan simply gives a non-answer, stating he’s different from Otherworld King…
…But he doesn’t say that he wouldn’t.
In that moment, a Green Butterfly, likely one of the ones Kajitsu became, arrives, and Kajitsu, despite being dead, but potentially still able to convey her will via her butterflies and Mother Core, speaks to Dan.
Kajitsu reminds Dan that Otherworld King is doing precisely nothing good with Mother Core’s power. There is nothing of value in it, it cannot be allowed to be abused in this way.
Dan states that he knows, and he’s fully aware that Kajitsu feels that Mother Core is not to be used in this manner.
Kajitsu once again says the same thing she’s been saying to Dan since Episode 1, he’s a Cute person.
But she adds an addendum to this statement, stating that he is also a Strong person.
Not sure how that talk helps Dan in any way, but I suppose someone temporarily circumventing Death to offer their support can be a real motivation booster.
Let’s say it like it is. Turn 19 simply isn’t happening.
If Otherworld King gets another Turn, Dan loses, flat out, there is nothing he can do to stop Gai-Asura at this point in time.
Dan’s final life calls for a Miracle.
And one arrives, one we don’t recognize.
First, Dan used Ankillersaurus, a Spirit given to him by Zungurii.
Then, Zungurii gave Dan a Nexus, and Dan created a powerful Clash Combo with Meteorwurm thanks to it.
Now, Zungurii has given him a Magic, the 3 components that form any deck.
Clash King Turn 17! Dan raises Sunstone Shrine to Lv2.
Then, Dan, calling upon Zungurii, uses a Magic.
Zungurii uses the most powerful support card for Astral Dragons, Big Bang Energy!
a Magic from BS09. Cost 4 and Red in Colour.
a 2000 BP Combat trick during Flash Timing, but why would you ever do that with a Main effect like this one?
During the Main effect, Big Bang Energy changes the Cost of all Astral Dragon Spirits in your hand to be the same as your life.
Dan, who’s got barely any cards left, a single life, and is deprived of the core he gained from his lost lives thanks to Gai-Asura, desperately needed a comeback card like this one.
Now all of Dan’s Astral Dragons in his hand have their Costs changed to Dan’s life, a Cost of 1.
And remember, the rules for changing cost preserve reductions!
Meaning with Sunstone Shrine on the field, all his Astral Dragons are now free of charge!
Otherworld King dares Dan to summon an Astral Dragon at this time.
For the final time, Siegwurm comes to Dan’s aid in a time of need, unfettered by silly core costs!
Next, at no cost, Dan summons The SupernovaDragon Siegwurm-Nova!
In Spite of requiring zero core to use, Tribute is a cost that must still be paid, as such, Siegwurm is offered up as the Tribute.
Siegwurm-Nova summon successful! And thanks to Big Bang Energy it still has enough BP to reach Lv3!
Additionally! As Siegwurm was offered as a Tribute, Dan is able to recover cores from the Void until his life reaches 5 again.
And just incase the assists weren’t enough, remember that Siegwurm-Nova was Pantera’s card!
A deck fully comprised of cards supplied to Dan by others throughout the series.
Siegwurm-Nova attacks!
Looking a little concerned there, Otherworld King?
Dan uses Siegwurm-Nova’s effect at Levels 2 and 3, now he can destroy Spirits with a total BP of 10000.
Gale-Fokker, King-Gorgo and Gashabers have a total BP of 11000, so Dan can’t destroy them all, he can however destroy any 2, and so he selects the 2 that aren’t exhausted.
Now if Otherworld King wants to block, he’ll need to use Ultra Awaken and sacrifice King-Gorgo.
Otherworld King goes for it, using Ultra Awaken to refresh Gai-Asura.
But Dan was hoping he would do that.
King-Gorgo is depleted. Removing the last of Otherworld King’s spirits.
Thanks to Siegwurm-Nova’s Lv3 effect, Dan activates Clash!
Now Otherworld King must block with Gai-Asura.
Nova’s BP barely comes to half of Gai-Asura’s, and its destroyed
But that’s perfectly fine.
It might be, and that’s precisely the problem with it!
For once, the first and only time Otherworld King is genuinely confused by anything.
As Dan’s Clash Spirit was destroyed during his own attack step.
Dan can simply send a life to the Void, to have it remain on the field, Refreshed.
Though the animation plays for Nova going to the Trash and coming back during this episode, note that “Remain on Field” effects interrupt the process of Nova going to the Trash.
This means that Gai-Asura doesn’t destroy Nova’s core, as it changes only where the Core is sent after Nova leaves, and Nova did not leave.
Now that Otherworld King’s field is empty, he can’t use Ultra Awaken.
Additionally, Otherworld King has but 2 core available for use, even with all that core on Gai-Asura, due to Ultra Awaken’s downside of Core being irremovable, Otherworld King isn’t allowed to spend it.
It’s the final attack.
Siegwurm-Nova attacks Otherworld King, as the guy isn’t capable of blocking and has no core to make a response possible, he’s forced to take a life.
Siegwurm-Nova holds 2 symbols, therefore, it can destroy 2 lives at once.
With no lives remaining, Otherworld King cannot continue to battle.
The winner of the last battle in Battle Spirits Shounen Gekiha Dan, is Clash King! Bashin Dan!
For a man who claimed that he looked at the entire battle when he last fought Dan some 24 episodes ago…
…He certainly had a hard time looking passed his Key Spirit…
It stole from others to consolidate it’s own power, and once it was finally, truly alone, all it could do was flaunt it’s power, and do nothing else.
Otherworld King, without a moment’s hesitation, makes good on his promise.
Looks like handling that amount of power is going to be a little more difficult than anticipated when it’s hurled at you via LASER BEAM.
Initially struggling with the sudden influx of energy, Dan releases a burst of Flame towards Mother Core so it can answer his wish to clear away the Darkness.
Otherworld King’s damage is reversed almost instantaeniously.
Yeah, imagine piloting a deck with 4 cost 6+ spirits you have no reductions for, one of which you can’t even use the effects of.
Dan’s looking a little worse for wear, he’s burning up completely, the guy’s had 2 seconds experience handling the likes of Mother Core and he just blew probably it’s maximum power trying to undo Otherworld King’s mess.
He is not doing well.
But it seems like Otherworld King is doing even less well than Dan is.
Zungurii can’t even touch Dan right now, he’s too hot to be physically interacted with.
The Symbol of a Bearer reflects their Heart, and Mother Core reflects it’s Bearer’s Heart more than any other. In Dan, it’s pure unfiltered flame.
Magisa reiterates Yuuki’s words but uses slightly different ones, that Mother Core is too strong for a normal person.
Thanks Magisa, at least this clears up the idea that Otherworld King was far from a normal case of bearing Mother Core.
Even in the states they’re in, Otherworld King still seems to have one last thing to say to Dan.
…Which Dan has put back.
…Well he’s got me there. The fact of the matter is whatever happened to Earth and Grand-Lolo can’t just be undone at the drop of a hat or the snap of a twig.
Even if it is, the fact that such a large scale event occurred, the information derived from it, the fact Otherworld King existed at one point in time will be forever etched into a History that should not have occurred, and that can’t be taken back.
Ah the famous scene…
“The Era you live in will be one built by me“
This is the Era of Dan’s time, which means this is the one Dan will return to. Dan can only return to a World in which Otherworld King existed and caused great damage to.
It wouldn’t be wrong to say that Dan can only live in a time Otherworld King created, even if it wasn’t something Otherworld King explicitly desired.
Whether it was from Mother Core being relinquished, or the fact that his defeat reversed all the Youth he gained from battle, Otherworld King is now dust, barely a spec of him left.
Dan vows to never forget his battle with Otherworld King.
…And to be honest how could he? That shit’s stressful, Dan’s gonna get massive PTSD.
Zungurii panics from Dan’s state, noting that Dan is being destroyed in place of either World.
Dan still stands by what he said he’d do, Bear Mother Core’s Light for as long as he can… Even if he’s about to become unable to do so in the next few seconds.
Dan, if you die, Mother Core probably dies too, and then both the Earth and Grand-Lolo are screwed.
Magisa takes Dan into her arms, telling him that he’s done enough.
Mother Core’s Light is too much for a normal person, but the Otherworld Witch is far from Normal.
Magisa takes Mother Core from Dan, and becomes it’s Bearer, transforming into a large, ethereal state, like a Goddess.
Freeing Dan from his obligation to Mother Core, Dan is no longer burning to death.
Magisa thanks Dan for his efforts, and promises to have Otherworld apply his knowledge in order for the Otherworlders to do their best.
there’s a mild typo here but I don’t blame the subber, the light was at the end of the tunnel here.
Magisa then states that she plans to return everything to it’s proper place, everything and everyone to their own space and their own eras.
Essentially she is undoing Grand-Lolo’s connection to Earth, separating them into individual spaces again, and returning anyone not in their own time back to it. Likely separating Otherworlders from Humans as well.
Magisa’s a nice God though, and gives everyone a chance to say their final pieces to Magisa.
Clackey can’t go 2 seconds without complimenting a woman however, and calls Magisa divine.
Yuuki starts to say his farewells to Kazan, as Kazan is from the future.
Yuuki says that the future Kazan returns to should be a better world.
Kazan acknowledges the possibility, pointing out that Otherworld King’s near world-ending event isn’t something recorded in his history, so Kazan has absolutely zero idea how history begins in his time.
Hoo boy…
I love the sentiment from Kazan here, I really do.
However, knowing what I know about the series, I can tell you, Yuuki gets it rough between now and the next series.
Magisa’s clearly given herself the Domain of Airports, as she’s stating a warning that soon, all Gates connecting Grand-Lolo and Earth will vanish, which will prevent anyone from passing through them ever again.
Serge likes the idea of this, but Zungurii protests loudly.
Naturally, because the best friend he’s ever had who just fought tooth and nail to preserve the livelihoods of Otherworlders including him, is now going to be abruptly and irreversibly separated from Dan.
Magisa informs Zungurii that there’s a massive unrest at the moment, Otherworld King’s sudden introduction of 6 continents and a whole new race of strange aliens has really screwed with people.
They’re spooked, and scared humans are violent.
Magisa will need to separate the bunch until the time is right to re-connect them together again.
Magisa doesn’t like this anymore than Zungurii does, the difference here is just that, age.
Maturity is not giving up your loves of something like parents may tell you, or getting a job or getting interested in adult things.
Maturity is one thing only, how well you cope with adversity.
Magisa was all smiles about doing something she’d otherwise have preferred to not do, but Zungurii, who’s still an Otherworld Child, is not coping well.
In his mind it’s probably something like “We won, so why am I being punished?”
It’s not something I can clearly show in frame, but Zungurii’s “When” comes out incredibly fast, its a retaliation because he thinks Dan is lying and wants certainty, not vagueness.
Kenzo and Suzuri suggest something that’s actually conducive to Zungurii’s desires, stating that if they each tell their own worlds about each other, it may become feasible for them to desire to meet, once the sentiments for each other are of a context of friendship, rather than conquest, they can re-unite as a combined world again
Magisa promises Zungurii that they will eventually come together again, but Zungurii seemingly doesn’t seem to cope and runs off.
Mai gets wistful over Serge, and asks if he thinks she should return to Earth
Serge comments that Mai’s a human Girl, but that shouldn’t stop Mai from being Mai, she should dye the Earth purple this time, rather than just Otherworld.
The lights have gotten brighter, the time for departure is near.
Zungurii calls for Magisa to hold for a little longer, as Zungurii gives Dan a ready made pot of his curry, as it’s the last bit of Zungurii’s homemade Curry that Dan will ever eat.
Dan also decides to give Zungurii something, something he gave up earlier.
The ThunderEmperorDragon Siegwurm.
The cute thing is Zungurii actually receives the card upside down and doesn’t immediately realise what it is, so he has to turn it around.
Dan’s finally given Zungurii something back to cover all those slick cards he gave Dan.
Zungurii then makes one final promise with Dan, that he’ll become a Card battler.
Magisa’s determined this is sufficient, and says her final goodbyes as well.
Acting as a parental figure for the Light bearers who fought for her, and now being literally merged with the Mother of all Core, Magisa states that she loves all of Bearers of Core’s Light. As a mother would children that make her proud.
Hey, a callback to the Episode Title, “Farewell, Clash King”
Remember, it’s never “Goodbye”, it’s just “See you soon”
To think, Otherworld King’s reign might have encompassed the lifetimes of many Otherworlders. After all we know he was in power for roughly 2000 years based on Heliostom’s backstory.
Brustom, now returning to being a Blue King, ruling over Otherworlders, and not serving any humans.
These words don’t have a visible speaker, but they’re beautiful bits of hope, spoken by Magisa.
Some final words from Kajitsu, reassuring Yuuki that they will meet again.
And Dan says his final goodbyes to Grand-Lolo.
Gekiha Dan officially reaches it’s ending, however the end credits show a small epilogue while the original ending theme, “Kimi ga matteru” (Waiting for you), plays.
Dan arrives at a villa that Kenzo appears to be situated at, who chides Dan for being late.
Some context necessary for Yuuki’s situation, he’s probably been gone from Earth so long that he either has no living family capable of housing him due to Kajitsu’s awakening, or anyone who would count has no obligation to take him on, which given the nightmare of his childhood, could be possible.
He does however, have friends, and the Hyoudo-family, Kenzo’s family, are incredibly rich and influential.
As a result, an unused villa owned by them has been given to Yuuki as a permanent residence. He can live a peaceful life while he awaits reincarnation.
Gods, this conversation feels like Deja vu, I feel like I have it with someone anytime I get the opportunity to play Batosupi.
It seems Dan’s last bout with Yuuki was one of rather significant stakes and seriousness.
Dan however, wants to win a new kind of battle, he wants to beat Yuuki in a battle without stakes, without strings, a battle for the fun of it, where nothing happens when you lose.
Dan wants to beat Yuuki in just an ordinary, mundane, battle, for once.
I’m sure Dan can very easily win if you’ve gone back to using old cards like Droiden. Though Yuuki mentioned Hououga shouldn’t battle anymore, its possible he’s reconfigured his Deck to use less Green for this purpose.
Dan however’s still using his brand spanking new Deck it seems.
Magisa may have returned everything to it’s proper place, but Dan’s gifts from Otherworld have remained with him.
The Episode ends here, no Batosupi Corner, no Card of the day, nothing.
Why ruin something so peaceful?
I’ll however leave one thing for this…
An attempt at recreating the Deck Otherworld King used in his final bout, but the cards used don’t make a lot of sense.
Ultimately, this is a Red and Green Hybrid deck, however a common thing that sticks out like a sore thumb is the fact that Gashabers is a card consistently summoned for full cost in spite of what little it does for the deck. Otherworld King has Red reductions for Gorgo, and Green reductions for Fokker, but airs Gashabers out to dry.
Such cards will be easier to use in the next sets, as both BS10 and BSC05 include cards that make themselves Red that can be used to further support Gai-Asura’s 3 Servants. Sadly as I ran out of cards, I had to include Victory Fire and Silent Wall, as they’re common staples seen around this time.
It’s clear that they wanted Otherworld King to wield a deck of all colours, and so focused on ensuring at least every colour was represented in Otherworld King’s reductions of Gai-Asura’s 3 followers, before making the deck work from there.
Anyway, next up is the overarching review of the whole series, that I can make without spoiling anyone on most things…
And then, next up…
We’ll be able to see him.
See you in the next post, and thank you for reading my review of Battle Spirits Shounen Gekiha Dan.
This is it! The Final Battle!
No one wants to lose having come this far!
And if anyone thinks that statement sounds oddly familiar, it means you’ve played Pokemon Stadium, and you’re more than welcome here.
But anything I say now concerning the future of the series is quite literally spoilers, so I’ll let the show do the talking for me.
The only person I’d ever allow this close to my face are probably exactly Magisa or Julian
the rest of you can GIVE ME SOME SPACE.
It seems that there’s trouble in paradise, the Brustom Virus is failing with many many errors
Debugged it already? I suppose it’s the work of a 13 year old, so debugging it this fast using government assets would be possible.
Well that’s completely bricked Mai’s PC, ouch.
Magisa declares that it can’t be a Human counter program, as it wouldn’t mesh well with the fact that this program originates from Grand-Lolo, and asks Serge to verify
Serge confirms it’s a program ripped straight from the Core system, but because Mother Core’s doing a thing, all mass-produced core system ships are being disaffected…
Which for outside is causing them to fall out of the sky.
Yuuki’s ship is submersible however, so it’s possible those mass-produced models are also. The people in those will be fiiiiine…
The Violet, while not appearing mass-produced, seems to use a mass-produced basis for it’s core system.
Its lights work.
But it can’t move.
Yuuki’s ship is custom built, so it’s core system runs differently, that was the excuse that allowed Kazan to move the ship in spite of what was going on earlier.
Tremor-time!
Seems the Tremor outside was Yuuki’s ship finally giving up, since it runs on the Core System I suppose its not immune to Mother Core, just it’s odd nature gave it a little more time than the others.
Quite amusingly, the episode title here doesn’t show any spoiler cards, or have any direct spoilers in the title.
It does show a new card but it doesn’t indicate anything about what it’s doing or even name it.
Significantly better.
It seems both Earth and Grand-Lolo are being negatively affected by the changes to Mother Core being initiated by Otherworld King.
Otherworld King’s aim, as mentioned last episode, is to inflict despair onto the Human race, in order to ensure that it, and the Otherworlders evolve as races the same way he believes he himself as, by doing so, Otherworld King will have catharsis for his revenge, Earth will supposedly be improved in the long run, and Mother Core who’s fate is tied to Earth, will improve it’s function.
It seems Sophia of the Mimi tribe knows about how Mother Core works, which is interesting. She’s able to tell that the rampant damage being caused is Mother Core’s fault.
D’awww, the Gate lady, what’s her face… I’ve forgotten… uhhhh…. Mira?
Yeah, Mira, that was it.
What an interesting dichotomy, Mother Core is directly Linked to the Earth’s condition, as such, changes to one affect the other.
But Grand-Lolo exists under the blessings that Mother Core grants, which means Grand-Lolo’s fate is directly tied to Earth’s, but issues that affect Grand-Lolo do not affect Earth at all.
So Grand-Lolo could be so unduly damaged by Otherworld King and Earth and Mother Core wouldn’t bat an eye.
But if the Earth goes, Grand-Lolo follows after.
It seems that Otherworld King is aware of this though, and mostly doesn’t care, as he wants to enforce darwinism by reducing everyone’s quality of life.
I’m not quite sure how Magisa is listening in on- Wait.
Suzuri has an earpiece, nevermind
Well, he’s damaging it… If he destroyed it, he’d lose access to Mother Core, and then he’d die too.
Belga serving Otherworld King blindly while not knowing a damn thing about what the guy intends to do is incredibly in-character.
Curated Evolution, a Darwinist concept that involves the forced evolution of races by pushing them through increasingly difficult times, those that survive have desirable genes that enable them to survive in those situations and therefore should be preferred and curated.
Essentially culling the gene pool of traits perceived as “undesirable”
Otherworld King believes Despair to be a suitable environment for culling those traits.
It doesn’t work cuz you’d just have the same issue in several million years when the world is “Better” again.
It seems due to the progress already made with integrating the Core into systems around the human world, its damaging the quality of life due to Mother Core’s reaction.
Because of the potential for mass unrest, every single country in the world has declared a state of emergency.
Clackey notes that it’s a bit bloody convenient that the “Dream source of energy” turned out to have potentially world ending properties.
Symbols are linked to the hearts of their bearers, much like Mother Core is linked to both Earth and it’s bearer.
As such, Kajitsu, a pure and gentle soul, allowed Mother Core to be a blessing light. If fragile.
Otherworld King’s resentment however, has resulted in Mother Core being more hardened, yes, but is now destructive in nature rather than supportive.
Oh, damn, I didn’t wanna say it earlier because I didn’t know and couldn’t be bothered to check, but he IS on Everest.
So he can see Mother Core ruin everything for him in realtime
Also what’s that disdain for Belga?
Magisa has Kenzo contact Suzuri.
and Dan confirms Suzuri’s suspicions that a battle is liable to happen, yes, this is a card game anime.
And now it begins, not every protagonist goes through this but some do, and that’s when the protag inherits their friends’ cards.
No idea what the hell Dan’s gonna do with an Alexander in a Red deck but questions for later.
Couldn’t have given him something a bit more… Red? Rather than the Blue af Alexander?
The hell is Dan gonna do with that, I know Yoroilizardon is in BS09, but come on!
Dan’s clearly about as convinced as I am, and asks Magisa how to stop Mother Core without screwing everything up.
It seems Mother Core can’t be sustained on Earth alone, it must have a Bearer at all times.
Dan agrees to take on the role of bearing Mother Core.
Yuuki interjects, stating Mother Core is too strong for any one person to handle, likely based on his experiences with Kajitsu.
…But then how is Otherworld King doing it? That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense there, he’s clearly not feeling too many ill effects as a result of Mother Core’s power.
Rather than focus on that little unexplained detail, Dan asks if Yuuki’s fine for “Kajitsu’s Heart” to carry Otherworld King’s grudge.
Yuuki takes back what he said, and figures that Dan has the resolve necessary to take it on.
Dan notes that if he does take the power however, he’ll become Grand-Lolo’s sun, which isn’t a phenomena observed with the previous 2 bearers of it’s light so not sure where this is coming from.
Magisa interjects, stating that being power for the Otherworlders is her job.
But Dan interjects, somehow telling the 4029 year old Witch who could turn him into paste with a thought what her “Job” is.
Dan starts to wonder about what’ll happen if he’s unable to beat Otherworld King, but.
This time, no solemn thoughts, if he tries to rationalize failure he’ll allow it to happen, thoughts of loss can distract from victory.
…HAH
I know they wanted this to be atmospheric but this angle is NOT helpful
HIS FUCKING NOSE.
Of all the things you plan to send him in, a Jet, a plane, something geared for speed.
You pick a HELICOPTER?
“And we are clearly in no rush to reduce the damage at this time, so enjoy this Helicopter”
Some CARS are faster than freaking Helicopters!
Going with Dan is Magisa, apparently, naturally she probably intends to defend Dan incase Otherworld King gets incredibly petty and tries to take a potshot at him.
Each person here is here so they can encourage Dan in some way, but I want to take special notice of what Mai and Kenzo say.
Mai and Kenzo appear to have lent Dan cards of their own, Kenzo explicitly has stated that he’s handed Dan Byak-Garo. Another Cost 6 he has no reductions for.
Based on this you can tell which Card Mai just gave Dan.
Finally, Dan closes one last loose end, he wants to end this journey the way it began, with him, Magisa and Zungurii.
And now for the final journey, a direct trip to kicking a certain 15th century Spanish man’s arse.
Seems Dan’s looking over all the cards he’s been given, one from each of the Lightbearers.
Alexander, with Sunstone Nexus, Dan can make use of Assault, and it’s Lv2 will be quite useful for removing bodies that Otherworld King can use Ultra Awaken on.
Isfiel, if Dan needs to use follow up Magic like Victory Fire, but lacks the core, Isfiel can make up for what will be it’s inevitably high cost by allowing Dan to use it for free, and repeat it’s effects.
Plus, Holy Life will give Dan more lives, that’s always a plus.
Beelzebeat was certainly a choice, it benefits Curse and Curse only, Dan has no way of making use of this card’s effects.
Byak-Garo’s rather nuts, Windstorm means that Dan can force blocks if he’s able to summon this card early enough, unlikely but very possible.
Once Gai-Asura’s out though, it doesn’t matter how much Windstorm does, Gai-Asura will always refresh.
Yuuki appears to have given Dan something mysterious, however we can tell from the border in the corner that Yuuki didn’t give Dan a Spirit.
Infact, Dan received a White Magic.
Zungurii also wants to be Dan’s power, so he offers one of his own cards again.
Dan apparently takes Zungurii’s favourite card.
In spite of this being Zungurii’s favourite though, Zungurii has absolutely zero idea how the card works.
The rest of the Lightbearers intend to support the US president as best they can.
To which, Belga, tired of being ignored, chimes in, wondering what the hell he’s supposed to do.
Mai fires back, for once telling Belga, who’s never had a distinct and original thought in his entire life, to think about doing something for himself for once.
The Helicopter finally approaches Everest.
Otherworld King has been spotted… And he appears to be doing something.
OSHI-
I suppose when you’ve the power of an all-encompassing sun, something like Helicopters can just be knocked out of the sky.
In order to rescue everyone, Dan opens the Gate, which should drag all nearby participants into the spectator area, sparing them from the falling Helicopter.
And Dan’s animation for entering his battle form plays, for a final time.
…Respectfully, Otherworld King.
What the fuck does that even mean?
Like seriously, what profound thought did you have in your head that made that statement sound like something anyone could parse?
Liri_White Comment:
Liri_White
“You’ve released it, but you won’t be able to handle” — > [To think that you’d be able to use the “release” in such a way]. The point is that he’s somewhat surprised of Dan opening the gate to save himself from falling.
a Post-Edit save by the comments, the lovely Liri_White has added some context to better suit the translation to it’s context, it appears that Otherworld King was curiously surprised by Dan using a Gate Release to avoid certain doom.
Dan’s as confused as I am! He must have clearly been mulling over that one for HOURS and it just failed to land.
Translation: “We didn’t want the weirdness of the final battle being viewed by everyone important AND 2 jobbers”
Otherworld King is clearly off his meds, what the fuck is that face.
He rather respectfully bows to Magisa, though sometimes shows of respect can be the most disrespectful thing a person can do, especially if they’re being humble while sitting in a seat of absolute power.
Zungurii… has literally never met the guy before now, kid must be having so many different thoughts now staring down the source of all his problems and seeing a face he doesn’t even know.
I missed a frame but Magisa took a moment to use her staff to allow for this to occur, its like a frame of her staff glowing.
By using the symbols, the Lightbearers are able to project an image of the battlefield into the sky.
Call him “His Excellency” one more god damn time.
Everyone here has only just seen Otherworld King’s face now, but Thorman’s out here squinting like “What the hell is he wearing?”
By showing the battle, it performs a twofold task, the first is that, as long as the battle is in progress, the Earth AND Grand-Lolo is safe.
The second is that everyone gets to see, in full view, who Otherworld King is.
Even from behind the large amount of man that Brustom is, Suzuri is capable of seeing the battlefield.
Yuuki’s zipped off somewhere in a Helicopter.
I hope to god someone captions this one day in something like imgflip just to make this as funny as possible.
Otherworld King inquires about everyone watching them, but Dan shrugs it off, declaring that their battle is between just the two of them.
Otherworld King asks what the stakes are, it should be obvious but I suppose he’s making sure that his opponent understands what they should be after.
Dan naturally answers with the one thing that matters, if he wins, he’s taking Mother Core.
Otherworld King taunts Dan, suggesting in bad faith that Dan wishes to be Otherworld King, just like himself.
As much of a taunt this is, the rule of Otherworld King is that he who defeats Otherworld King becomes Otherworld King, as Otherworld King is the role of whoever is the caretaker of Mother Core, and therefore, the ruler of Grand-Lolo’s fate.
Dan vehemently rebutts the assumption that he’s trying to become Otherworld King, he simply wants to take back Mother Core’s True Shine for the sake of both Kajitsu and Grand-Lolo. Something that isn’t possible while Mother Core’s Bearer is a black-hearted individual.
It seems Otherworld King has hit upon a contradiction though by striking that nerve, as Dan’s claims about taking back Mother Core’s “True Shine” is precisely what Otherworld King has supposedly been trying to do for a while.
That means Dan is trying to become, for all intents and purposes, a version of Otherworld King.
Zungurii and Magisa seem surprised by this, they weren’t expecting him to risk Mother Core on the battle.
Otherworld King’s struck me as many things but this seems entirely in character for him, risking things he shouldn’t in order to prove his superiority in Battle Spirits is entirely his credo.
Oh come on Magisa, you’re projecting this to the World using an ounce of Mother Core’s abilities, Otherworld King has the REST of it.
The final 40 cards (minimum) for the last match have been set.
Dan draws his final opening hand of this series
It seems to contain a White Magic, Ankillersaurus, an unidentifiable spirit, and The Sunstone Shrine.
The Final battle.
Otherworld King vs Clash King!
Clash King Turn 1, Dan summons Ankillersaurus at Lv2.
The first of Zungurii’s gifts has arrived, the Ankillersaurus he gave Dan.
Dan ends his turn.
Otherworld King draws and his face betrays what he drew, it seems like he’s drawn Gai-Asura already.
Both Dan and Yuuki, who are the only battlers to have SEEN the card before now, both know that Otherworld King has drawn it in his opening move.
It seems Otherworld King’s Red/Green brew is back from his battle with Yuuki, summoning Dio-Mantis at Lv2 and entering his attack step immediately.
The second Otherworld King starts to speak to Dan directly, Dan vehemently declares he doesn’t plan to listen to Otherworld King’s “tricks”
Otherworld King hasn’t quite said a single lie this entire time, but it’s very clear from the outset that he very carefully selected what Truths he told in order to have Dan doubt his own convictions.
Knowing what Dan knows now, he would likely have never been taken in by Otherworld King’s previous success at getting him to doubt himself.
Otherworld King starts by reiterating the connection between Earth and Mother Core.
Yuuki, I don’t believe Dan can necessarily hear you through there, much as the sentiment to not listen to Otherworld King is important.
Is there a Taxi service that can deliver me between whatever the hell this is and the point?
For the most part, Dan concurs with Otherworld King’s premise that both Earth and Grand-Lolo have the potential to be either gentle or violent worlds independantly, based on his experiences between the Red World and Blue World differing from each other.
He doesn’t quite state what this “Inconsistency” is supposed to be exactly, I feel like if it were the fact that only Earth matters when it comes to the fate of both Earth and Grand-Lolo that they’d highlight that more explicitly. Namely that both benefit from Mother Core’s existence but Grand-Lolo is incapable of affecting Mother Core or Earth if it falters.
Otherworld King attacks with Dio-Mantis, an attack Dan takes from the life.
Naturally, the enhanced damage of a battle with Otherworld King is still in full effect.
Dan drops to 4 lives remaining.
Also nice thing about this, no annoying 6 life system like in Toppa. The final fight plays by the RULES.
Just like the first time, anytime Dan takes damage from Otherworld King, the WHOLE SQUAD feels it.
Humans and Otherworlders everywhere are rootin’ for good ol’ Dan.
Otherworld King, now officially the most universally hated man across 2 different worlds, ends his turn.
Clash King Turn 3, seems the other Spirit in his hand was Sabecaulus.
Naturally Dan has 2 cards in his hand we don’t know about still.
Otherworld King takes an attack from Ankillersaurus, leaving him with 4 lives.
This time, the damage from that attack seems to be triggering a reaction in Mother Core, which is causing the local environment to worsen.
It seems that as Dan takes lives from Otherworld King, things will get worse before they get better.
Dan attacks with Sabecaulus, taking another life and dropping Otherworld King to 3, and then ends his turn.
Otherworld King preaches to the populace of the 2 worlds again and Dan wonders what the hell Otherworld King is trying to start exactly.
a Big Ego is… understating it a bit to be honest.
Imagine if Otherworld King heard that, packed his bags, surrendered the game and went “I did all this but god damn if I can’t make friends with a blogger chick, it’s not even worth it”
Otherworld King Turn 4, we get a glimpse at his hand.
At the far left is The PhantomStarDragon Gai-Asura.
From the left to the right its then a Nexus called The Star Creation Place, an unidentifiable Red Magic, The FlyingIronBeast Gale-Fokker, and Erimakilizard.
This hand is kind of ass dawg.
Otherworld King levels down Dio-Mantis and then summons The FlyingIronBeast Gale-Fokker at Lv2.
Otherworld King then moves to attack, and attacks with Dio-Mantis, which Dan, unable to block, takes from the life and drops to 3.
Julian at this moment, seems to be watching the fight from somewhere in Japan.
Clash King Turn 5, Dan draws The StarEmperorDragon Meteorwurm, as if in answer to the fact that Julian’s watching.
Intuitively, Otherworld King realizes Dan’s drawn a powerful spirit.
Dan raises both Ankillersaurus and Sabecaulus to Lv3. And ends his turn.
Zungurii comments that Dan didn’t attack, but…
Gale-Fokker’s effect grants 2000 BP to all of Otherworld King’s Spirits that have 2 or more different colours in their reduction symbols, making Gale-Fokker a 9000 BP blocker on a Cost 4.
Otherworld King Turn 6, he deploys The Star Creation Place.
A Cost 4 Nexus from BS09, and a support card suitable for Gai-Asura, firstly at all levels it ensures that all your Spirits with at least 8000 BP have the Clash keyword, Otherworld King initially only re-appropriated Clash by virtue of using Dan’s deck, this time he’s using a card that would grant it to Gai-Asura, a Spirit who has 8000 BP from Lv1, meaning Gai-Asura will have Clash at all times.
At Lv2, anytime Otherwolrd King destroys an opposing Spirit in battle, using an Astral Dragon (which Gai-Asura is), Otherworld King is permitted to return a Spirit card to his hand from the Trash.
This is a fitting card for Otherworld King, and a useful card for Gai-Asura. By granting Gai-Asura Clash, Otherworld King is doing what he is best known for, Stealing the abilities of others. Before, he copied Dan’s deck and defeated him with his own power, and he was known for stealing Magisa’s magic, and attempting to steal Kurotaru’s poison. Now he has officially stolen Dan’s Clash and made it his own. Clearly intending to wipe out the Clash King with the Keyword he’s named after.
Additionally, the Lv2 effect ensures that Gai-Asura can not only continue to attack at nauseum, performing essentially a board wipe of any blockers, but also that Otherworld King can continue to recover Spirits that have been used up for Ultra Awaken in order to be used again.
Dan’s surprised to see a Nexus used by Otherworld King, as this is the first and only Nexus Otherworld King will ever use… in this series.
Otherworld King rather impatiently awaits the opportunity to summon his Cost 10 Gai-Asura.
And ends his turn, choosing not to attack this time.
That’d certainly be a plan. Gai-Asura’s incredibly high cost is one of it’s many weaknesses.
Dan drops Ankillersaurus to Lv2 and Sabecaulus to Lv1.
He then summons The StarEmperorDragon Meteorwurm… Though given it’s at Lv1, at 6000 BP, it’s not going to do much about that 9000 BP Gale-Fokker.
Dan does have Sunstone Shrine in his hand, if he’s able to deploy it, he’ll be able to raise Meteorwurm’s Level to 3, and be able to destroy Gale-Fokker along with whatever other Spirits Otherworld King has out.
Dan ends his turn.
Dan literally does not have a Spirit capable of defeating Gale-Fokker and clearly he isn’t willing to sacrifice one just to do damage, that would be silly.
He wouldn’t win, and the damage he would do would just cause Gai-Asura to be summoned sooner.
That is… not an idea that is conducive to winning before Gai-Asura.
Otherworld King Turn 8, he starts fiddling with Gai-Asura’s card again, and asks Dan if Meteorwurm is a Spirit that can’t be defeated (even though it has been before)
Liri_White Comment:
The VocalCommenter Liri_White
“To you, isn’t Meteorwurm a Spirit that can’t be defeated?” —-> “To, you, isn’t Meteorwurm a Spirit that equals defeat?” This makes it seem more like he’s taunting Dan, which albeit boring, does make a bit more sense.
Once again a Post-Edit save by our most vocal reader, Liri points out that, rather than taunting Dan’s Faith, he could potentially be taunting Dan’s history. As Meteorwurm lost in the hands of Julian, Dan’s use and subsequent defeat of Otherworld King’s Meteorwurm in their last match resulted in Dan’s loss.
Hah, the big jackass comments on the fact that Clash is not only an effect suited to Dan, but that the nature of it is also beautiful.
Hm, I wonder why all these compliments about Clash are coming about now?
Post Edit: with the earlier context above, Otherworld King here is clearly also admiring how Dan continues to use Meteorwurm in spite of it failing him multiple times, how the card continues to fight him across different Red Soldiers no matter now many times he destroys the darned thing.
Infact that context brings forth to mind just how much gosh darn matchup knowledge Otherworld King has around Meteorwurm, having destroyed it over and over between Julian, Dan, and gosh knows how many Red Soldiers in that time. We don’t hear of any others but the Bearers of Core’s Light have existed across many generations.
…Otherworld King is many things but pitiable is not one of them.
Erm, I believe not even an episode ago, you called all of the Otherworlders savages, but Humans are immature?
Also where is this coming from?
Is he now claiming that the impact of Otherworld is what made him evolve, rather than the despiar he exclaimed loudly about to Yuuki?
Yuuki now notes that Otherworld King’s little rant here is entering a frame of mind, he intends to attack with great malice, and requires a villain monologue to ensure he does so.
Alright he’s not saying anything new, just waxing lyrical about how he intends to make Humanity suffer as he did, so that they evolve as he did.
What’s different is that it’s clearly directed at humans this time, and excludes the Otherworlders, which is proving that this isn’t some grand plan, he just wants revenge on them.
“Some humans hurt me in my time, so now all humans must suffer as I did.”
Tale as old as time.
Otherworld King summons another of Gai-Asura’s 3 followers in the Batosupi Card Lore.
Otherworld King attacks with Gale-Fokker, and Dan takes another life, dropping to 2.
Outside of the obvious “Doesn’t want to lose a Spirit”, Dan’s currently running with a deck with a number of incredibly off-colour cards he has zero reduction symbols for.
So he needs as much core as possible in order to use them.
Otherworld King ends his turn, he clearly attacked with Gale-Fokker knowing that Dan would likely attack into it using Meteorwurm alongside Sunstone Shrine. So he’s making use of it before it’s inevitably destroyed.
Otherworld King’s calm demeanor is all but a thing of the past, he still speaks in profound manners when he’s not talking about his goals, but when talking about himself…
Well, he just loses himself in the God complex.
Clash King Turn 9, Dan draws The BladeKingBeast Byak-Garo.
Ah I love this shit, they do this in Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds when Yusei’s fighting with Z-One! They do their summon chants in unison!
The BladeKingBeast Byak-Garo is summoned at a full cost of 6.
Hot damn did Dan even have the core? Turn 9 means 4 core steps
4 + 4 + 3 lives lost totals 11. Dan’s Spirits all hold 4 core, leaving 7, he’s just got enough.
As a nice touch here, Dan’s background is now Green!
Plus, Kenzo’s calling his Key Spirit’s attacks.
Byak-Garo attacks at… Lv1!
Which isn’t that useful but okay!
at 7000 BP though it’s heftier than Otherworld King’s highest BP blocker, Gashabers, who sits at 6000 even with Gale-Fokker’s boost.
Not sure if it’s the consistent battles, the strain of Mother Core, or if Kenzo did something special but that one hurt him.
With the 3rd life gone, Mother Core’s Darkness intensifies.
Otherworld King’s wings have begun to spread now.
As Mother Core continues to Darken, the Black “Light” that it spreads blocks out even the Human Sun’s light now.
Also, once again, Otherworld King, touted to be a specialist of all colours, associated with the colour Black.
Jack Knight’s theming has returned in an odd manner.
Dan ends his turn, and it seems not even the Battlefield is safe now.
Whatever’s happening, clearly Otherworld King, His Excellency, Ramiro Alfonso Carlitos de Ferzaduria, Spanish Sailor of the 15th Century and current main antagonist
Is not worried.
But he better fucking be cuz he just ENDED THE EPISODE ON ME.
Right, needless to say, I want to move on to the final episode, as soon as possible.
But of course, you might be wondering, “But BlackAce! Verus! Blogger Person! Random Text on the Internet Talking about Card games! What about the card of the day?”
The card of the day is a card that is not used in this episode, namely, The PhantomStarDragon Gai-Asura
And the reason it’s the card of the day, is because of a hint the preview gives for the final episode.
Namely that Gai-Asura, while it’s Ultra Awaken has strong, has a True form
Indeed, it’s got an ability that it hasn’t yet used, and to use it requires it to exercise something that has not ever been shown on any Battle Spirits card up until this point.
However, that will be for next episode. The FINAL episode.
Sadly today I can’t give you any decklists, to do so for Otherworld King would spoil Gai-Asura, and well, I did Dan’s last episode, plus he’s got a card we haven’t seen from Zungurii still and I don’t want to spoil that.
Hands are tied, you won’t mind if we just hop over to the next episode do you?
See you in the next one ;D
The last episode was an unceremonious 2-parter, so the only thing we can really do here is move on from where we left off, isn’t it?
When we left off, it was the end of Silver Knight Turn 8. Yuuki has an exhausted Grand-Woden and Fjalar, and 4 lives remaining.
It is now Clash King Turn 9, Dan has a completely empty board, a single life remaining, and his Siegwurm has just been destroyed. The last time his key spirits were destroyed he lost his will to fight. Making this a good callback.
Dan’s also got 5 cards before his draw step, so he’s at least working with a full hand and not going in with low resources.
Granted, refilling his board might eat into that total.
Last episode, we learned that Dan’s aim in this battle, is to reverse the damage to Yuuki’s Symbol by inflicting damage to his lives. It’s either an idea from the fact that Otherworld King used that energy to restore his Youth, or it’s a callback to what Julian thought about when Dan was in that state, that battling was the key to restore a broken Soldier.
Dan notes that Yuuki’s likely figured out what Dan’s doing already, having taken damage once and had part of his symbol repaired. But Yuuki’s still fighting hard, because there isn’t going to be a better time to have this rematch.
For once this isn’t a case of “God dammit this isn’t the time”, this match isn’t only a way to restore Yuuki and resolve a rivalry, but it’s also a test to see if Dan has the ability Yuuki doesn’t, as he’ll need such a thing to defeat Otherworld King.
Otherworld King notes Dan’s rather disadvantageous position, he’s staring down 2 Spirits, one is a powerful Tribute Spirit, with an empty board and a 3-life deficit.
Clashing from this position will be difficult anyway, given Yuuki’s board is exhausted.
Otherworld King seems to have noticed he’s been played, and what Dan’s attempting to do with the battle, he’s been very aware of the states of Light Bearer symbols, so he’s likely noticed that first instance of damage started repairing Yuuki’s
Dan summons Erimakilizard and Rainydle, then he deploys The Sunstone Shrine.
It may not be something that works without the Clash effect running, but Nexuses are also permanent symbols that must be removed with effects and not in battle.
With now maximum reductions, Dan uses his 2nd Extra Draw of the game, and draws 2 Dinonychusaws.
He’s now permitted to reveal a 3rd card.
Yuuki wonders what Dan will do if the card on top of his deck isn’t a Spirit.
Naturally the smartass answer is “Well it’ll just go to the top of his deck” but ultimately it means that Dan isn’t getting an important card this turn OR next turn.
Dan reveals the 3rd card, and its a Red Spirit, The SupernovaDragon Siegwurm-Nova.
So it’s added to his hand.
Dan’s lack of a pokerface betrays the benefit of what he was after, but this isn’t useful information as Dan would have been forced to reveal Nova to confirm it was a Red Spirit.
Dan comments that right now, he needs blockers, he wants to summon Nova, but he needs to protect his life AND he actually needs a Tribute for it.
And right now he does nae have one.
Dan summons the 2 Dinonychusaws he drew, both at Lv2.
This sounds so incredibly sarcastic even though it isn’t.
But from Yuuki’s point of view at least, he’s got nothing, if Dan chose to full attack here, Yuuki’s hand is Hououga and Balder. He wouldn’t be doing a thing with it. Yuuki’s lost this turn.
Dan’s figured from this reaction that Yuuki does indeed know that Dan’s trying to repair his Symbol, but the issue is if Dan full attacks here, that’ll be the end of it, and he won’t have shown Nova to Otherworld King.
Something he needs to do to buy him a little good faith, as Otherworld King seems to be being picky about his opponents, having directly challenged Yuuki rather than Dan.
Seems even through expressions alone on a TV screen, Otherworld King and Dan are aware of how the other is currently thinking, Dan ends his turn.
Yuuki’s naturally taken aback, Dan had the game, so he’s wondering why he didn’t intensely attack as the old Dan would have in this situation.
Dan rather obtusely reminds Yuuki that he’s only got a single life left.
Well, as George Washington would (supposedly, the quote is attributed to him) have me believe, the best offense is a good defense…
One can discourage attacking if the risk of the opponent’s failure is instant loss.
Dan says he’s not defending because he thinks he can do it, but that he needs to defend in order to win.
Even if Dan were fighting for Kajitsu’s sake, it’d be easy to let Yuuki sacrifice himself in that scenario.
No, whether it be for Yuuki’s Symbol, or Kajitsu’s resurrection, Dan is fighting to ensure Yuuki is happy too.
For something else, we get to see the progress of Clackey’s battle with Belga.
I see Belga’s still up to his usual tricks, using Thor and Mjolnir.
Berserker-Magnum’s there too, it’s an interesting choice, but good if you’re using Artifact Plant, which can turn Cost 2s into Armed Machines.
I have never heard something so untrue in my life…
Gods, they’re birds of a feather these 2.
They’re having a Bishounen-off
Imagine designing a user interface that has random binary running around in the background.
And before you ask, no, programmers nor hackers tend to parse things in Binary, there’s a concept known as “human readable” which if something generally isn’t, it’s near impossible to work with.
The Virus has been launched into some Government headquarters, we have no idea which. Somehow it will spread across the world… somehow.
Why does it have a designed animation for it leaving when the UI has nothing to do with actual functionality?
Having 6 monitors all connected to cameras across the world is far more plausible than whatever the hell is going on in Mai’s Laptop.
Silver Knight Turn 10, Yuuki summons The ShieldSoldier Balder and raises Fjalar to Lv3.
Yuuki notes that Dan will continue to run out Spirits to his field until he’s able to summon Nova, so Yuuki’s plan will be to keep attacking such that Dan is forced to defend.
Yuuki attacks with Grand-Woden
Dan blocks with Erimakilizard and it’s destroyed.
Yuuki trash talks Dan after that block, lamenting how much card advantage Dan is losing just to be able to summon Nova. He even gave up a Win for it.
Yuuki’s all smiles though, he seems to be enjoying himself.
Yuuki attacks with Fjalar.
With an exhausted Armed Machine, Grand-Woden is refreshed.
Fjalar is blocked by Rainydle, and Rainydle is destroyed.
Grand-Woden attacks for a 2nd time, and Dan blocks with Dinonychusaw, which is destroyed.
So we have a Dan battling like Yuuki, and a Yuuki battling like Dan, they’ve swapped places.
It seems that battling that way is a form of communication however, Yuuki is battling like Dan to mirror Dan’s defensive play to show that he understands what Dan is trying to do.
Yuuki ends his turn.
Dan is worried about the 2 cards in Yuuki’s hand, wondering if Yuuki will try to end the game on his next turn.
I can’t tell if he means the aim of summoning Siegwurm-Nova, or the aim of repairing Yuuki’s core?
The Virus has struck, now Human soldiers everywhere have their systems frozen by a massive, twerking, fat Brustom.
…What about the missiles?
WHAT?
HOW DOES A SYSTEM FREEZE CAUSE YOUR MISSILES TO AUTO-DEPLOY, WHAT KIND OF GOD-AWFUL FAILSAFE IS THAT!?
This show does not understand anything about computers.
What’s even weirder is that the Otherworld forces are able to accurately identify that the Human Government forces have malfunctioning machinery… somehow, while not having any visual on their monitors whatsoever.
Ah, the blame game begins, if they doubt the Core System their faith in Otherworld King will diminish, and the Humans will defy him.
Serge’s observed from the chaos outside that the human fleet are currently having destructive problems.
Now if any of those missiles hits a ship and someone dies, that’s on Mai and Kenzo
That will at LEAST be a manslaughter charge or 2.
Oh jesus christ curse my poor timing I caught Mai’s face on the WORST frame.
Your move, Otherworld Forces.
It seems that the Human forces are successfully distracted, but Zungurii and Kazan, who want to get to Otherworld Castle, still have to deal with the Otherworld forces before they can do so.
It seems that the Core Systems are not so easily connected with each other on similar networks or frequencies that would enable a virus to spread like that, as a result just infecting The Violet with the Brustom Virus wouldn’t cause it to spread on it’s own.
Serge tries to see what he can do about this.
Okay so this does seem to clarify that Yuuki is aware of the fact that Siegwurm-Nova is coming and is trying to win before then.
So now Dan needs to bet on a card coming like right now that will let him summon it.
Dan draws and subsequently uses Reborn Flame
Now Dan can recover a Spirit from his Trash to his hand.
Dan returns Siegwurm to his hand from the Trash.
Additionally, Reborn Flame adds an additional red cost reduction icon to every Astral Dragon in Dan’s hand.
Dan summons Lizardedge.
Finally, Dan summons The ThunderEmperorDragon Siegwurm.
Next, by Tributing Siegwurm…
Levelling down Dinonychusaw and depleting Lizardedge.
Dan summons The SupernovaDragon Siegwurm-Nova
Otherworld King figures that the summon of Siegwurm-Nova means the match is over.
Dan activates The SupernovaDragon Siegwurm-Nova’s effect when summoned.
As a “Siegwurm”-named Spirit was offered up as the Tribute, Dan recovers core from the Void until his Life has 5 again.
Now all the work Yuuki did taking said lives needs to be redone.
Yuuki’s pleased to see Nova.
Dan attacks with Siegwurm-Nova, and Yuuki immediately declares to take it from the life.
Dan activates Siegwurm-Nova’s Lv2 effect when attacking, allowing him to destroy Spirits within a budget of 10000 BP. He selects Grand-Woden, who’s maximum BP is 10000 BP.
Grand-Woden is destroyed.
Alright slow down there it’s not even the game-ending move holy shit what’s with all the HAM.
Yuuki takes Siegwurm-Nova’s Double symbol, dropping immediately down to 2 lives.
The burning flames of Nova gives life to Yuuki’s symbol, repairing it even further.
Dan ends his turn.
Yuuki’s exhausted, and in his exhaustion we can see what his hand looks like.
He has, rather clearly, both Hououga and Ragna-Rock in his hand.
Which is… pretty poor.
Also Dan gets a new, unique eyecatch for the mid-episode break.
Suzuri pokes Brustom to see if they’re finished planting, but Brustom says it ain’t finished.
The best context is no context.
Suzuri laments that for all the X-Rares in the world, planting enough trees in time to get the ball rolling is literally impossible for two people.
And as if to guide Suzuri’s foot into the crevice where he talks from. People show up.
Boomerang Oryo, also known as Ryoko, Heliostom, The 2 female aides of the Blue King.
Gaius Bando, Kako Omasu Hanaji Buu Gaana, Rocchi, Randel of the Ryuki Tribe and Dark King Jin along with the rest of the Deathmatch Group
All came outta nowhere lightning fast-
I’m kidding, that’s a dated reference, but everyone from the Blue World Tournament has arrived to help.
Silver Knight Turn 12, Yuuki draws and summons The IronKnight Yggdrassil.
Due to it’s effect, all Spirits with 3000 BP or less are returned to the hand, only Dinonychusaw fits the bill, so it’s the only spirit returned to the hand.
Yuuki notes however that Dan must have expected such a thing.
Yuuki drops Fjalar and Balder to Level 1.
He then tributes Yggdrassil.
Yuuki summons The DoomKnightLord Ragna-Rock.
With Ragna-Rock’s effect when summoned, as Yggdrassil was the tribute, Ragna-Rock gains 6 core from the void, bringing it up to Lv3 instantly.
Yuuki uses the spare core to raise Fjalar and Balder back to Lv2.
With Ragna-Rock at Lv3, Yuuki has enough attacks to do a total of 6 damage to Dan’s lives, and Dan has zero blockers.
He does however, have a single card in his hand we don’t know about, other than Dinonychusaw.
Yuuki enters his attack step, and moves first with Fjalar.
Dan takes from the life, and drops to 4.
Yuuki notes that this turn, he should be able to defeat Dan.
Which as I noted above, is true, he should in theory.
Dan’s not concerned in the slightest however, he just cares about the fight.
Yuuki attacks with Balder but the second he does prompts Dan to use the last unknown card in his hand, Flame Cyclone, which destroys Balder.
Unable to finish off Dan and unwilling to give him more core than necessary, Yuuki ends his turn.
Literally no one cares what you see right now Otherworld King, wait your turn, cool shit’s happening.
Yuuki looks at the Hououga in his hand before stating that this is probably fine.
Yuuki sees his own defeat in sight.
Elsewhere, Clackey has managed to defeat Belga, I wonder how close that was.
No, Belga won instantly and then tripped on a Lego on his way out.
Of course Clackey won, what?
Clackey concurs that he won, but that Belga was stubborn.
However it’s over now, so Belga must now concede and retreat his forces.
Yeah that kind of flies in the face of Otherworld King’s rule, Belga’s really saying “yeah fuck you, you don’t have the firepower to enforce the verdict of the match”
When Belga gives the order to fire however, nothing happens.
Whatever Belga tried to do, it was clearly unable to function because of the Brustom Virus.
Get wrecked.
Clash King Turn 13, Dan raises Siegwurm-Nova and Sunstone Shrine to their maximum Levels
Dan attacks with Siegwurm-Nova
It’s Lv3 status grants it the Clash effect. Now Yuuki is forced to block it.
Yuuki, naturally, has only one choice he can make, he blocks with The DoomKnightLord Ragna-Rock.
Due to Ragna-Rock’s effect, Fjalar is now refreshed.
This is one of those sequences where I could not possibly convey the sheer amount of awesome going on in any number of frames.
I will say however, if you can do so, watch the episode.
2 Cost 9 Tribute Spirits with Double symbols battle it out at Lv3 with equal BP, therefore, Both are destroyed.
Yuuki could exhaust Fjalar to have Ragna-Rock win, but then he’d fall victim to what happens next.
Dan activates the Sunstone Shrine’s Lv2 effect
Since a Clash Spirit was destroyed during Dan’s attack Step, he can send one of his own lives to the Void in order to have it remain on the field in a Refreshed state.
“Remain on Field” effects in the anime are represented less as a failure to destroy but more accurately as “Destroyed but resurrected immediately”
Nova attacks once more.
Yuuki, knowing that Dan would resurrect Siegwurm-Nova using Sunstone Shrine, blocks with the Fjalar he left refreshed.
Dan however, has the out, using Meteor Storm.
Siegwurm-Nova defeats The Artifact Fjalar.
And due to it’s effect granted to it by Meteor Storm, Yuuki is now dealt damage equivalent to Nova’s symbols, reducing him to 0.
Yuuki’s symbol is fully restored to it’s original shine.
And Clash King Dan is the winner!
With Yuuki’s symbol restored, Dan explains that doing so was his entire plan from the start of the battle, Yuuki asks Dan to forgive him for being so much trouble, presumably over needing this kind of battle-therapy in the first place.
By breaking down a person’s symbol, and then reconstructing it, you can cause a Light Bearer to undergo a large amount of self-reflection in a rather short time.
Seems like the side effect of this however is frontloading all the relevant stress and trauma associated.
But naturally, Dan wanted to take advantage of this, it’s not that he doesn’t care about Kajitsu but Kajitsu is just a little lower on the list of priorities.
Yuuki finalizes his thoughts and comes to his conclusion, Kajitsu is dead, and right now there is something far more important than resurrecting her.
Otherworld King perceptively notes that even if Yuuki can revive Kajitsu, that would sacrifice his mission to protect the world as a Bearer of the Core’s Light.
Thanks to Dan, Yuuki’s now looking at the bigger picture, and Otherworld King isn’t what he should be focusing on, it should be putting a stop to the Chaos he’s inflicting.
Otherworld King says the equivalent of “I dare you to try” before summoning forth the power of Mother Core.
The sudden change in Mother Core’s Light has caused the Core system to fluctuate in a way that disrupts The Violet’s systems.
Including the lights, this causes a blackout.
But if it’s disrupting the core system, then The Violet shouldn’t be the only one affected, as Magisa notes
Mai and Kenzo tune in to Kazan’s ship again, checking to see if his ship is okay.
As the Ship is a custom-built model and not a mass produced one, the Core System is handled a bit differently and thus is resistant to the effects Mother Core has on the Core System in general.
Mai points out that given this is the case, they should be able to get to Otherworld King’s castle now as the humans are disrupted by a Virus and Otherworld forces are being disrupted by their own boss.
Kazan gives the order, onto Otherworld King’s castle!
George Thorman likens the events transpiring with Mother Core to be like having a 2nd Sun.
Otherworld King uses Mother Core’s power, which seems to manifest as him reducing every thing he’s hoarded inside the Wisdom Gate to sand, and absorbing it.
One could say he’s internalizing all the physical wisdom he’s accumulated.
This seems to result in Otherworld King being able to activate his enhanced Battle Form outside the Battle System.
And then he just fucks off
…
I’m messing around, this is not how this goes, but it would be hilarious if it did.
Otherworld King once again solidifies his God complex, declaring that he is the only existence that matters when it comes to Earth.
He then states that the World is going to change immediately, so there is no need to rebuild it.
And then he leaves!
It was at this moment that Dan knew.
…He fucked up.
Unfortunately Dan has this lovely thing called Dumb luck, known in the narrative business as Plot Armor.
and Zungurii’s arrived to help through the convenient hole that Otherworld King left.
So, Otherworld King’s castle seems to be crumbling to pieces, all that wisdom, just gone.
Also we can all agree whoever was in that Core ship is absolutely bloody dead, right?
We have casualties.
You know I get the feeling that for Otherworld King this is precisely like deleting all of his deck recipes in his favourite card game sim so he can start over from scratch.
It is just as painful.
Zungurii was a hero today, he was able to do something for Dan other than make him nice spicy hot curry.
Yuuki comments that this is the first time since he’s lost Kajitsu that he genuinely feels like she’s been freed from her burden rather than being painfully excised from it.
Yuuki lets Dan know about the last card that was in his hand, and Dan asks why Yuuki never summoned it.
I… I really don’t think there was ever a good opportunity to do so, Raw summoning a Cost 10 spirit generally doesn’t go well, every single play Yuuki made was more optimal than that.
Though it was in Yuuki’s deck before this, Yuuki notes that the card should probably not battle anymore.
Hououga isn’t a great card in Yuuki’s deck anyway, but it’s a fair way to keep his sister’s memory at peace, by ensuring at least her copy of Hououga is no longer used to fight.
Dan asks when precisely Yuuki realised that Dan was trying to restore his symbol.
Yuuki showed signs of knowing before he lost, but it seems like he didn’t fully believe it up until Dan defeated him. Only then did he realise that Dan had intended on that the whole time.
And now for something completely different.
Local man climbs a mountain and then screams at the sky.
Using his powers, Otherworld King forces the Core System to do as he said it could to George Thorman, forcibly accelerating the decay of Earth by instantly finalizing mass pollution, degradation and climate change.
It is through this despair inflicted by him that Otherworld King hopes to force the Earth to undergo Humanity’s evolution, so that they feel the despair he did, so that they ascend the same way he did.
This ends the episode.
First note, Dan using Flame Cyclone instantly ruins the deck recipe I created for Dan’s current deck yesterday, now I have to remake the darn thing.
I suppose it is appropriate however, as the Card of the day features Siegwurm-Nova’s on-summon effect concerning the restoration of lives.
Not only that, Dan’s deck will undergo a somewhat unique change for the next battle specifically, so what I display here will be my attempt at Dan’s final deck of Gekiha Dan.
For reference, this covers the collection of episodes since receiving Siegwurm-Nova from Pantera, up until the start of his next battle with Otherworld King.
The only real “wut” here is the fact that Dan doesn’t have a single battle trick, but with the way the deck is composed it doesn’t really need one, as Sunstone Shrine allows his big Clash Spirits to simply attack again when they unceremoniously lose.
Dan’s deck really varies at the beginning of the series but since his revival after being defeated by Otherworld King it’s remained relatively consistent.
I presume the preference for doing it this way is to ensure Dan is as far removed from Bashin as possible, as all the cards he uses aside from Flame Cyclone, Buster Spear, Lizardedge and Siegfried are cards released in SD01, or BS06 onward.
And Siegfried’s inclusion seems like a deliberate choice to unite Dan with Bashin spiritually, as I believe this is the only time, ever, where a protagonist uses a previous protagonist’s Key Spirit.
And this includes the same protagonist between series mind you, er, spoilers, Dan will return as the protagonist of the next series, but due to reasons, he won’t use any of the cards he does in this one (which is a good thing)
anyway, I’ve yammered on enough, enjoy the deck and I’ll get myself onto that final Battle we’ve been waiting for.
So I don’t have much of an intro for this one, mostly because the last episode ended rather abruptly after Yuuki lost his final life against Otherworld King.
So we’re gonna jump right in, if that’s alright with you.
In spite of starting the battle in Spain, it appears the battlefield has tossed each of them out into the Wisdom Gate instead of where they left.
Yuuki’s core is in tatters, same as Dan’s when his own was smashed.
Dan’s trying to get through to Yuuki, now having to do for Yuuki what Dan’s friends did for him when he was in that state.
Otherworld King here looks positively disappointed, perhaps he was hoping that Mother Core’s power would have allowed him to shatter Yuuki’s core entirely, killing him outright, but it doesn’t seem like even bearing Mother Core’s Light gives him the ability to do that.
I wonder how this goes against non-Lightbearer opponents, presumably without something as strong as a Symbol as their Core, they just die off.
Dan’s Red symbol pops out as he tries to call out to him, and Dan’s Siegwurm seems to join in the fun, calling out to Yuuki like it did for Dan.
In the depths of Yuuki’s soul, his Spirits are also trying to console him.
Also notably Yuuki’s Soul has a Grey (or Dark White) Void, while Dan’s had a Dark and Crimson one.
Given this happens rather consistently when anyone loses to Otherworld King, when the Core is shattered it seems to undergo this process.
Dan needed assistance to not only repair his Core, but then to repair his motivation to keep going, Magisa likely assisted Julian in this regard but Julian wasn’t able to answer Meteorwurm satisfactorily.
In this case though, Yuuki has no way of repairing his Core, Magisa isn’t here.
Yuuki’s not alone in this case however, perhaps we can get around the motivation problem without repairing the symbol if we have help.
God presentation is so fucking COOL.
Dan’s symbol’s given him an “in” on Yuuki’s soul, using it he can speak to Yuuki personally.
so covering the Episode Title this time, usually it has spoilers but in this case, it’s clear Dan’s gonna have to knock some sense into Yuuki manually.
What’s weird is the depiction, why Siegfried and Grand-Woden? I suppose it might have something to do with the used cards this game but at least Siegwurm and Yggdrassil would make sense.
Oh well.
Anyway, “Clash King vs. Silver Knight”, Clash King is Dan’s title, but I’ve never heard Yuuki refer to himself as the “Silver Knight Yuuki”, he usually calls his deck his Silver Knights.
Oh well, I guess I know what I’m titling with on the turn count this episode then, The Silver Knight Yuuki it shall be.
The battle ending and both Dan and Yuuki disappearing is a cause for concern, Zungurii reports to Magisa that the 2 soldiers and Otherworld king have dip-dop dipped.
Apt description of the problem, Zungurii should file Bug reports.
Kazan seems to guess that Otherworld King must be at the Wisdom Gate
Notably it was mentioned that Otherworld King is capable of using Mother Core’s Gates to move freely, perhaps that’s how he moved them from the Battlefield to the Wisdom Gate.
Magisa says right now she can’t do anything and that Zungurii and Kazan will have to do it.
To give her the benefit of the doubt, I presume that whatever Mai and Kenzo are doing has a strong likelihood of putting them and The Violet in physical harm’s way.
This may require Magisa to manually protect them using her powerful magic.
So when does Magisa start calling him “Karenzo-kun”
Zungurii and Kazan, who began the series as Mortal enemies, now set forth to rescue their allies.
Otherworld King blows some hot air, I suppose he’s trying to discourage Dan by saying that this is Yuuki’s fault and Dan shouldn’t be trying to absolve him of his own mistake.
Damn son, Dan just tells him to come back from where he came from and cry.
I suppose when you’re beyond reasoning with the guy, insults are good catharsis.
Otherworld King answers the question in earnest, he would have liked to have Grand-Lolo enter the 15th Century, but it seems he had no control over what time period that large gate would have sent Grand-Lolo.
But that doesn’t mean the guy should just persist anyway, he can’t punish his own Era, so he punishes completely unrelated parties?
What if it ended up in the past? Would you punish those humans for events that hadn’t even happened yet?
Otherworld King’s attempting to convey the same thing he conveyed to the President of the USA, GEORGE THORMA- ahem
Same thing he conveyed to President Thorman.
I wonder what Otherworld King is trying to do here, is he attempting to break Dan’s will down again like he did before? By making it seem like he’s launching into a poor decision, claiming he’s fighting for something no one will appreciate, once more?
Apt question, if the Core is so beneficial for everyone, the army has no need to move.
Otherworld King answers that a military is still necessary in order to protect the source of that Core, Mother Core.
Looking at this from an earlier frame and based on the earlier shots, it seems like Mother Core’s Light allows Core to naturally grow on the Planets it shines on.
This Core can be then harvested and used to restore the local environment, and provides a near infinite amount of energy from the stones that are (but more means more widespread application)
So the Army are protecting Mother Core to ensure that Core continues to naturally grow at its highest rate.
Yeah this kind of massive mobilization is spooking people.
Well that explains how he’s justifying their suffering, essentially they’ve “reacted the same way” his era did, they didn’t understand it, so they chose not to believe it.
When forced to understand that which they didn’t believe, they attacked it.
This is quite amusing actually, the beliefs you hold strongly are called “Core Beliefs” (no relation I swear)
Core Beliefs are things we consider intrinsic, an example of such a thing is, say, the Sky is Blue during the day. We know it is, and we’ve been able to operate assuming that it is.
When a Core belief is challenged, the part of the brain that processes the new information is the same part of the brain that triggers when we feel physical pain, challenging a Core belief isn’t just an intellectual thing, the way we perceive it is the same as pain.
So, much like as if we were struck by somebody, if someone had a way to turn the Sky green believing it should be, and then did so. The sheer uncertainty of such a thing due to it never being that way before would cause a significant amount of people to lash out violently.
Because no one knows what the Sky being Green could mean, it’s always been Blue, and why would you ever stop it being Blue? And since I can’t think of a reason why you would stop it being Blue, you should put it back.
See how easy the progression of logic goes?
It’s a Nightmarish thing, the first thing before learning any new information on anything particularly integral to a person’s life style, is you need to be okay with being uncomfortable and making others uncomfortable. The sky being green probably might mean nothing… But it will still offend people.
And sadly, in order to think freely and have ideas discussed, you need to risk being offensive. Don’t aim to offend, but don’t be surprised when someone is, and make sure you have de-escalation contingencies in place so you can calm each other down over a warm hot cup of hot chocolate.
It’s okay to be uncomfortable, just remember to return back to comfort with your people. It’s unhealthy to be uncomfortable all the time.
“…But enhanced myself”
Once again, Otherworld King seems to believe that he’s some kind of unique existence, separate from Humans, when the fact of the matter is nothing about this requires him explicitly.
All his powers are stolen, all his abilities are borrowed, all his ideas are observations, there is nothing unique about this man that makes him suited for this role other than he’s done it first.
Dan pinpoints the issue with the argument, Otherworld King is a bitter human being who’s buttmad at Humans because they didn’t accept ideas he knew to be true. He is now punishing these humans for that slight as if he’s some kind of person with authority to do so. As if his wisdom is somehow unique.
He says, acting on his Hatred.
This fundamental disconnect sadly won’t rectify until someone shows Otherworld King that he is no superior to any particular individual human being. Otherworld King continues to move through this logic that he is some kind of evolved being, neither Human nor Otherworlder, uniquely suited to ruling both.
This is why Otherworld King’s rule of Battle Spirits is in place, he proves his intellectual superiority via a game with rules, of supposed fairness, something no one can cheat at.
And it’s through that game of rules that one needs to defeat him, his defeat will disprove his theory that he is some kind of evolved person… Or worse, he may just surmise that the person who destroys him has to be someone who has evolved like him, and therefore is someone who’s disagreements are actually worth acknowledging.
Either way, he’s put himself on a Pedestal, someone needs to kick him off it.
And the twit opens the biggest justification for opposing him that he’s offered this entire time.
He doesn’t care about peace, he’s under the presumption that War will be waged and people will die, as a fit punishment for their own inability to understand. He’ll continue to enable these “Sacrifices” until the Humans evolve as he does.
And because of that, he had no qualms murdering a 12 year old girl.
I’m with Dan, genuinely go fuck yourself, Otherworld King.
Dan tries to charge, but Yuuki stops him, it seems Yuuki’s mind has recovered from his funk. That was fast, though he had Dan to help facilitate his recovery as he’d gone through the same thing.
In other news, President Thorman is liaising with Belga to get the Core Ships around Otherworld King’s Castle to be dismissed, the collection of military power is causing unrest around the world
Belga seems uninterested in answering that plea in earnest though.
Also look he’s with the Silver Knights again! He got re-promoted after Leon got demoted to Gold Miner
Clackey interjects, claiming Belga’s loyalty to Otherworld King is far too solid for him to be reasoned with in any capacity, and so Clackey challenges him to a battle.
Clackey states that it’s to buy time for Mai, Kenzo and Suzuri, not because he’s afraid of losing but Belga’s worked for people who’ve wormed their way around the rules before. He might get the idea of doing so.
Belga agrees to settle the matter with a battle.
I’m not expecting much, the guy used a rather rudimentary Thor deck before, Clackey should be more than capable of walloping his ass.
Don’t worry though, we’re not gonna see this fight at all, we’re after a different contest.
Otherworld King moves onto a different topic, he informs Yuuki that he has one more way of rescueing Kajitsu, likely the method Otherworld King himself would have used to restore Kajitsu.
Otherworld King states that the Symbol a Lightbearer has can be used in the same way as using a Tribute for a card, by offering it up, Kajitsu can be brought back to life, by linking her life force with theirs.
If we consider Dan and Yuuki to be like Spirit cards in the manner of having symbols, you’ll know that a Spirit goes to the Trash once it loses all of it’s energy, it’s Core.
The symbol would disappear, and the new “Spirit” would take it’s place, in short, the Light Bearer would most likely die for the same reasons Kajitsu did.
…And this would also disconnect the 6 gathered Light Bearers, which is possibly Otherworld King’s aim.
Otherworld King further states, that being revived this way would mean Kajitsu would not become Mother Core’s Bearer again, as currently that role is filled by Otherworld King.
She won’t have to endure power her body can’t handle.
Yuuki says he has no reason to trust Otherworld King’s words anymore.
I’m kind of curious, I don’t believe Otherworld King has ever once directly stated something that turned out to not be true.
That being said, he has more than allowed someone’s belief in false information to put them into a position that benefits Otherworld King. It’s possible that he is intentionally leaving out information that could influence the decision by focusing on Kajitsu rather than what that would mean for defeating Otherworld King.
He’s offering them advice to reverse a small loss that would cause them to lose something they need to win the big victory.
It’s the tactical equivalent of taking over someone’s territory, and then selling it back to the person you stole it from in exchange for the weapon they need to kill you.
They can defeat you, or they can get back their precious land, but they can’t do both.
Yuuki leaves Otherworld King to Dan, but Dan makes the weird suggestion of offering to try.
Yuuki asks the obvious question of whether or not Dan trusts Otherworld King enough for the attempt.
Dan suggests that even if Otherworld King’s lying, if it works, they can potentially save both Yuuki and Kajitsu from a lifetime of suffering.
Dan then offers to use his symbol just to make sure, so Yuuki isn’t put at risk.
Yuuki makes this kind of odd statement, with a smile on his face, this is the first and only hint that something other than what’s being said is going on.
I’ll try to remember to return to this later.
Yuuki states he’ll use his own symbol, and Dan interjects that would result in Kajitsu being revived without Yuuki, which just offloads the problem, he then says “Kajitsu will understand”, noting that it needs to be at least one of the two here.
They seem to be at an impasse.
Otherworld King suggests they settle the matter in Battle.
He doesn’t seem to realise the sheer oddity of the situation. Yuuki’s switch flipped rather quickly, he clearly doesn’t believe Otherworld King and it doesn’t seem like Dan does, but because Dan offered to use his own symbol for it, he suddenly wants to fight?
And it makes no sense for Yuuki to want to inflict his same suffering onto Kajitsu. Otherworld King’s acting on the assumption that Yuuki’s acting out of love but he doesn’t see the strangeness in the situation?
This is the issue with God complexes like Otherworld King’s, he’s convinced himself Yuuki and Dan are inferior, so he doesn’t think that there may be more to this
Dan finds it amusing that it required this kind of bleak situation that would have triggered a rematch with Yuuki.
They haven’t fought since Episode 4.
Yuuki draws his opening hand. And it’s a weird one.
He’s got Fjalar, Laevateinn, Hououga, and a Cost 6 that isn’t immediately recognizeable, but enough sleuthing can bring us to the answer.
It’s The Valkyrie-Hildr, an Android Spirit from BS06, and an adequate target for Tributes due to it’s inability to be affected by Spirits or Magic. This can keep it relatively safe on the board until the time to Tribute it comes.
In the meantime, it can be an annoying blocker.
Yuuki takes special note of the Hououga in his hand, and asks to begin
Clash King Turn 1, Dan makes the first move, summoning Rainydle at Lv3.
Dan reminisces about how he wasn’t able to crack Yuuki last time, due to Armor and White Magic.
Dan states that with Siegwurm-Nova he can get around this problem… but it’s not quite gonna be that simple, Siegwurm-Nova has no methods to get around Armor to Red, something Yuuki has in abundance. But I suppose the Double Symbol means that Dan can just muscle through.
Otherworld King observes the fight, wanting them to wear each other down.
Likelihood is he’ll want to tire out the loser, while the winner gets sacrificed to Kajitsu, giving him an easier time in the final bout.
Silver Knight Turn 2, Yuuki summons The Sacred Laevateinn at Lv2.
Dan expects an attack but LOL, Yuuki’s not punching through a 4000 BP Rainydle.
Yuuki ends his turn.
Yuuki recalls the most recent clash with his white cards Dan has had, namely that Dan, while conscious of his Spirits’ Armor, couldn’t cope with the White Magic that supplemented it, and when Dan lost his Key Spirit, he wasn’t capable of doing much else
Yuuki needs to be aware that Dan has had these experiences, and therefore needs to be cautious of Dan finding a way around them.
Dan notes a change in Yuuki’s demeanor between his battle with Otherworld King, and this one, Yuuki isn’t impatient to win, he’s calm, which is where he’s strongest.
Which means in spite of a shattered core, Yuuki’s unfettered, Dan’s taking on a Yuuki at full power.
Change of plans when it comes to Kazan and Zungurii, Magisa informs them of Clackey’s battle with Belga, and Kazan agrees to switch trajectory and return to Magisa in order to assist.
Knowing Belga, this might be true only because he’s never fought one.
Unfortunately for you Belga, no one in this series has ever lost to you.
When you accepted the battle against Clackey, you already became a jobber.
Burn.
The good thing about Belga’s penchant for Trash talk is that it lets Clackey waste his time.
Time needed for more important things.
Clash King Turn 3, Dan draws Extra Draw.
Rainydle is brought down to Lv1, and Dan summons Erimakilizard.
Dan then uses Extra Draw.
The fact that Dan didn’t summon another Spirit before using this suggests to me that he doesn’t hold a Cost 0 or a Cost 1 Spirit in his hand with a Red Reduction.
As summoning one of those would have enabled him to have 3 Spirits and make this move still.
Yuuki comments that Dan spending core increasing his hand means he hasn’t quite got something in his hand that he can work with, a Key Spirit.
Sometimes a Key Spirit is only the card the deck is built around, however a deck can have multiple strategies enabled for a swathe of cards, like Dan’s is.
As long as Dan gets a Clash Spirit, his deck can formulate a strategy.
Unfortunately he got Siegfried, but Siegfried’s big stats should be more than good enough to hold down the fort for a while.
Whoa nelly, attacking with Erimakilizard opens it up to destruction via Laevateinn.
Of course, if Yuuki blocks Erimakilizard, Dan can full attack and take the life anyway, or he can deny Yuuki Core.
This gives Dan options, so it’s up to Yuuki to decide what’s more important.
Yuuki chooses to take from the life.
And Otherworld King notes that Yuuki chose to gather core rather than destroying a Spirit.
Yuuki takes it from the life, There are 4 lives remaining.
In so doing that damage however, a part of Yuuki’s White Core begins to repair itself.
The damage from a Lightbearer’s Symbol has restorative capabilities, utilized by Otherworld King to restore his Youth, Dan is using the same concept here to try and restore Yuuki’s symbol.
Dan ends his turn.
Suzuri arrives in… not the Blue World, from the ruins it looks like the aftermath of the Green World’s forest fire.
It seems when Suzuri went to the Blue Castle and asked about Brustom, he found out that he was in the Green World from the people there.
That means Suzuri’s cycled a god damn while, he’s moved from one continent to another!
When Suzuri wonders about all this work Brustom’s doing, Brustom answers that he’s planting trees, as Brustom was the one who burned them down, and so his Mother, rightfully, punished him by having him make reparations with his own hard work.
Suzuri asks why Brustom just doesn’t use the power of Core, as Core could very easily accelerate the process of what Brustom is doing, but Brustom notes that his Mother thought of that.
It’s glossed over, but if you can snap your fingers and return the forest to normal, does that make it okay to burn down the forest? The answer would obviously be no, but you may draw the conclusion that “Well if I can fix it so easily, then it’s fine if I break it”
Let’s double back then, if all our systems ran on this assumption that we have an instant fix button, what happens when that button goes missing, or breaks. Our own reliance on it would kill us instantly.
It’s important to know how to do things without the tools we take for granted to do them, so that we can truly appreciate what it is those tools actually do, and use them responsibly, treating the things around us with care.
I can understand the desire to invest less effort, but effort breeds humility whereas the easy solution does not.
Fair question, Suzuri wants to inquire about how Otherworlders felt about the merging of the 2 worlds, the Humans obviously don’t approve (depending on their allegience with Otherworld King) but the Otherworlders haven’t been given a voice.
Otherworld King forcing the unison of 2 factions that don’t want anything to do with each other isn’t healthy. The discord that stems from that causing wars is something Otherworld King calls a necessary sacrifice but necessary for who? Some evolution that no one asked for?
It is sometimes important to embrace change, even rapid change, but that change needs to come naturally. Flinging countless people into a situation no one is prepared for and just letting the problem resolve itself with millions dead isn’t a great solution.
Even if it gets to where it is, one would wonder if there was not a better way to go about it, the system will be forever tainted by that “Necessary sacrifice” doctrine and even more ills would come about as a result of that precedent.
Brustom concurs with the rest of his fellow Otherworlders, they just want to go home.
Well that settles it, the only man who wants this union is Otherworld King.
The only humans supporting it either directly serve the guy or just want the Core.
Unfortunately, conversing with someone in the midst of doing chores naturally invites one to be involved in them.
Yuuki brings Laevateinn down to Lv1 so he can summon The Valkyrie-Hildr. This card can function as if it has Armor, but is even immune to Dan’s destruction Magic. So it’ll be sticking around until Yuuki can tribute it for Grand-Woden or Ragna-Rock.
Yuuki attacks with The Sacred Laevateinn, and Dan takes a life, dropping to 4.
Yuuki ends his turn.
Dan says he needs one more card other than Siegfried, likely he wants to draw Siegwurm-Nova.
Clash King Turn 5, Dan summons The DragonEmperor Siegfried.
Yuuki recognizes Siegfried’s use as a defensive play, and Dan concurs by ending his turn.
The reason for this is naturally because Siegfried’s Awaken can enable more effective blocks and not just attacks, and the Lv3 effect boosting your life by 1 is purely defensive, Siegfried has no destructive power of it’s own.
Also, as an aside, my favourite theme not present in any OST is once again is playing during this segment. You know the drill.
Otherworld King comments that Dan’s defensive play seems to be in expectation of one of Yuuki’s key spirits.
Silver Knight Turn 6, Yuuki draws Reload Cores.
He doesn’t have many Armed Machines out at the moment, and Hilldr’s an Android.
Yuuki summons The Artifact Fjalar and fires Reload Core.
As Yuuki has 2 Armed Machines, he adds 2 core to his Reserve from the Void
He’s down 1 from when he played Reload Core, but he’ll have 2 more core from each turn onward.
This core is still enough to raise Hildr to Lv2, hardening Yuuki’s defense even further.
Yuuki, rather carefully, attacks with Hildr, as Dan has no spirits to compete with it, he takes a life, dropping to 3, now Yuuki has the life lead.
Yuuki seemed to have expected a counter there, but Dan simply took a life, this is similar to their first game, so Yuuki notes that Dan hasn’t changed.
Either as a taunt, or enjoying the nostalgia, Dan simply reiterates that this is his style.
Yuuki ends his turn.
Otherworld King demands they fight more violently, and it seems like he transmitted his voice to the Battlefield.
Otherworld King demands they fight more aggressively, rather than this patient, methodical play he’s been seeing so far.
Dan ignores Otherworld King, completely focusing on using the battle as a medium to communicate with Yuuki without Otherworld King noticing.
Clash King Turn 7, Dan draws Siegwurm.
Without a moment’s hesitation, Dan summons The ThunderEmperorDragon Siegwurm at Lv2 (6000 BP). And ends his turn.
Yuuki notes that Dan, while stating his style’s the same, seems to have defaulted to a strategy more typical of White, summoning large spirits to act as walls.
Dan is of the opinion that he can’t be aggressive from this position has he has only 3 lives remaining, and if Yuuki summons Spirits on the next turn that Dan can’t answer, it could end next turn.
It is true that Dan could attack with Siegwurm, and thanks to Clash, Yuuki would be forced to use Laevateinn in order to block, and Fjalar doesn’t have enough BP to save it with it’s exhaust effect, that would reduce the number of attackers.
But that would also reduce Dan’s number of blocks and so that might not be the best idea, especially if Yuuki reduces that number by doing something like summoning Yggdrassil, which would leave Dan with only Siegfried in that scenario.
Mai has finished rewriting the security system, turning it into the Brustom Virus, the program acts as a sort of intense bloatware, forcing systems to freeze if users don’t interact with the “gameplay” of forcing Brustom to diet.
When Serge asks if Mai knows how to get this into a PC via hacking, Kenzo comments that the hacking part is his side.
Kenzo states that he’s just come off the phone with the chief secretary he was trying to speak to in forever, he seems to have gotten himself some knowledge or opening that would allow him to spread the Brustom Virus around military networks worldwide.
It seems Kenzo has some kind of sway over militaries and governments, meaning he’s probably from a family of wealthy people.
Kenzo begins the process of committing mass cybercrime.
Silver Knight Turn 8, Yuuki draws The WingDeity Grand-Woden
His hand currently contains The ShieldSoldier Balder and Diamond Strike, along with a Hououga he has no reductions for.
This is a fairly nasty hand to have, as with Grand-Woden and Diamond Strike… Well Yuuki can make Grand-Woden attack 4 times.
Yuuki brings down Hildr to Lv1 before Tributing it to summon Grand-Woden at Lv2 (9000 BP)
Now, Yuuki can wage 6 attacks this turn, by attacking with Grand-Woden first, each Armed Machine attack will refresh Grand-Woden, and with Diamond Strike he can get 2 more by refreshing an Armed Machine on Grand-Woden’s final attack for a total of 8 attacks. 4 from a Spirit with 2 Symbols.
The maximum damage potential of this turn is 11 damage. And Yuuki only needs to do 3
Dan notes that the extra core from Reload Cores made Grand-Woden capable of being Lv2 on it’s summon turn, enabling this combo a turn earlier than otherwise possible with Yuuki’s current life total.
Grand-Woden attacks and Dan blocks with Siegfried.
Yuuki calls out Dan’s play, noting that Siegfried’s Lv1 BP of 4000 is far below Grand-Woden’s 9000.
During Flash Timing, Dan uses Siegfried’s Awaken, by depleting both Erimakilizard and Rainydle completely, and dropping Siegwurm to Lv1, Siegfried reaches Lv3, and raises his BP to 10000.
…It doesn’t seem like it’ll be enough though.
Yuuki uses Fjalar’s effect during Flash Timing, exhausting it to give it’s 2000 BP to Grand-Woden.
With it’s BP at 11000, it’s higher than Siegfried, and because an Armed Machine was exhausted, Grand-Woden is refreshed.
Siegfried is destroyed by Grand-Woden, but with it’s effect at Lv3, Dan gains a life from the Void, returning to 4.
Yuuki points out that the combo hasn’t been broken yet, Yuuki still has 2 attacks remaining with Grand-Woden and 1 with Laevateinn. Dan can live on one life if he sacrifices Siegwurm.
Grand-Woden attacks for the 2nd Time, and Dan instantly responds with Victory Fire.
Laevateinn, with 2000 BP, is destroyed, Fjalar is not affected due to it’s Armor to Red and Green.
Dan notes that under the current board state, Grand-Woden won’t be able to refresh anymore, and Dan will still survive on 2 lives and no blockers to stop him.
Unfortunately, dramatic irony kicks in, we know something Dan doesn’t.
Yuuki uses the Diamond Strike we were shown earlier.
Yuuki refreshes the Artifact Fjalar.
Now after Grand-Woden’s attack, it will refresh again as long as Fjalar can either block, or exhaust itself to raise Grand-Woden’s BP.
Worst part is, Fjalar’s immune to Red Magic, so Dan can’t so easily just blast it off the field like he normally does.
There’s also the current attack to worry about.
Dan takes it from the life, dropping to 2 lives remaining.
This isn’t the first time Grand-Woden’s Double symbol has been relevant as I believe it was so against Assassin Kurotaru.
The card’s only seen 3 games, and this is the 3rd so we can’t give the writers too much flack for that being the case.
Otherworld King notes Dan’s life total. After all if Dan loses to Yuuki who lost to Otherworld King then Dan has almost zero chance at beating the guy.
Dan chastises himself for not thinking about Diamond Strike… But like wtf was he supposed to do precisely?
Fjalar’s immune to Red Magic and Yuuki either has the card or he doesn’t, you didn’t even attack last turn to make as many blockers as possible.
Yuuki’s still going, he attacks with Fjalar.
Dan realizes what’s happening, and takes Fjalar’s attack, dropping to a single life.
Dan exclaims it isn’t over, but upon Yuuki declaring that Grand-Woden is once again refreshed, his jaw drops far enough for the foot he just put in his mouth.
Grand-Woden attacks.
In a bit of an “ah balls” moment, Dan is forced to block with Siegwurm, a Spirit he would have really really liked for when Nova came.
Grand-Woden destroys Siegwurm.
Yuuki ends his turn.
And the rest of that battle we’ll leave for the next episode!
I did say this would be a 2-parter, don’t shoot the messenger.
The only problem it leaves is there’s not much to talk about in terms of the episode because it technically hasn’t concluded?
But if nothing else we can talk about the changes to Yuuki’s deck based on the new information.
The cards used by Yuuki are now sufficient enough to arrange ratios for without needing to add in new ones, as a result I’ve produced this.
The main downside I notice by building it this way is that you really need to draw one of the 13 cards you can actually play going first, or you just pass your turn
We can use a Hypergeometric calculator to calculate the odds that Yuuki draws a hand he can actually play with, let’s assume that the condition is super easy, he draws at least 1 of the 13 cards he can use on the first turn of the game.
a Hypergeometric calculator’s a rather useful way of testing your deck’s opening hand consistency. It calculates probability of a hand based on 5 key pieces of data
In spite of having just under a 3rd of the deck being playable on the first move, there is still an 87.7% chance that Yuuki draws a Spirit he can summon.
Roughly 1 in every 8 hands Yuuki draws will be a dud. If we acknowledge that Balder can be summoned on Turn 2, it goes up to around 92%, or 1 in 12-13 hands will be dead.
Throwing together what we know of Dan’s current deck makeup, he comparatively has 14 first turn cards.
If you’re not sure how important the extra card is, drawing at least 1 of those 14 cards in the opening hand is a 90% chance.
That means only 1 in 10 hands won’t see a card that can be used Turn 1. And if Dan is going second it shoots up to around 94.8%, or 1 in 20, this is due to Sabecaulus being summonable if Dan gets 1 core step, which he only gets going 2nd. And I haven’t even considered raw Extra Drawing for example in this (The extra 3 cards makes it around 1 in 40 hands are dead)
That’s still higher than expected you might think, but that’s cumulative probability for you. The more you roll the more likely you win.
For reference, the fact that Magisa’s Ambrocius ended up in the top 10 cards of her deck against Leon isn’t as rare or astronomical as it might seem.
While each individual draw had a 1-in-however many cards were in Magisa’s deck yes, rolling that 10 times actually makes the chances of Ambrocius being in the Top 10 cards 1-in-4, 25% One in every 4 of Magisa’s games will have Ambrocius appear that soon.
If you’re wondering how that Math works, think of it this way, 10 cards is a quarter of your deck, so the chances of 1 specific card being in that quarter is well, 10 chances in 40.
This Math gets even gnarlier when you consider the chances of drawing singular copies of cards like in Dan’s deck, for Dan to draw any of Siegwurm, Siegfried, Meteorwurm or Siegwurm-Nova, a total of 6 cards (I’ve not been given a reason to believe that Dan only runs a singular copy of Siegwurm), without using cards like Extra Draw, Dan has only a 20% chance, only 1-in-5 to not see any of them within 5 draw steps.
Anyway, I’m mathed out, I’ll see you all in the next one!
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