The Battle Spirits Commentary Archive

Gekiha Dan – Episode 27

Hoo boy, well that was a roaring start to the fated battle between Kings of Otherworld and Clash, how about we finish off that mirror match?

Nevermind, apparently we gotta deal with this side plot first.

…Could the Violet even catch Fire? The exterior’s almost entirely steel, though then again it has a viewing deck that’s very much open and could start burning.

But anyway, the group’s on a time limit.

To summarise the sentiments of the previous episode, Zungurii wants to get out of here.

Kajitsu refuses, wanting to save the forest as Leon is only burning it down for her.

Hyoudo posits a fair question, even if they do try to save the forest, what would they do about the fire? It spreads every second they don’t do something.

Apparently Kajitsu can restore the damage done by the flames by using her powers at the spring that healed her.

I feel like that might have been useful to know AT THE GOD DAMN SPRING!

Zungurii’s adamant that we don’t have enough time to actually go back, they have until The Violet starts to become a Health and Safety Hazard.

Magisa overrules him, choosing to go back with Kajitsu.

Mai also does so, believing that were Dan here, none of them would get a choice, and they’d do what they’re about to do now.

What about this makes them scary? I’d find the situation a little more concerning than they are.

Thanks for the input Clackey, I’m sure everyone was doubting that until you said it.

Meanwhile, it appears Leon has laid some sort of trap for this eventuality of them turning around.

It’s a funny thing when the episode title sounds like a Spoiler but you can never be sure, given the current battle is a Mirror Match, both characters should have Meteorwurms.

Otherworld King, deciding he no longer needs the physical aid, boots his chair off the battlefield

Well I guess screw that chair in particular, someone else could have used that.

Dan’s still completely horrified at what he’s witnessing.

As last episode, each Life that Otherworld King took caused him to become Younger, going from a decrepit old fart to a rather mature but very physically able man.

Naturally the pain from the attacks should have been the same, so Dan wonders why attacks that are destroying his battle form are rejuvenating him.

Also, Otherworld King’s draw this turn is Victory Fire, as it was placed atop his deck by the effect of Extra Draw.

Ankillersaurus is dropped to Lv2.

And Otherworld King summons his own ThunderEmperorDragon Siegwurm. At Lv2 no less.

As an interesting visual assistance, Otherworld King’s Siegwurm has Blue eyes rather than the typical Green.

Here’s OG Siegwurm for comparison.

As Otherworld King has a Spirit with the Clash effect, Ankillersaurus clocks in at 4000 BP.

Otherworld King attacks with Ankillersaurus, Dan blocks with his own and as they share equal BP, they’re destroyed.

Otherworld King ends his turn, and Dan comments on the fact that Otherworld King seemed to know that Dan would block with Ankillersaurus when he used his Clash effect…

Except Otherworld King didn’t use Clash, he boosted a Spirit thanks to Clash’s presence. It’s a bit of a weirdly worded statement.

I find it a bit odd that Otherworld King doesn’t wage further attacks, Dan has 2 lives left and only Rainydle to block, Otherworld King could protect his Siegwurm by attacking Dan’s Rainydle.

Though it’d be a precarious 1 Spirit win, Otherworld King’s holding a Victory Fire, its just a bit strange.

Dan raises Siegwurm to Level 3, and Rainydle to Level 2.

Dan attacks with Siegwurm, thanks to Clash, Siegwurm must be blocked.

Dan says “Defeat the opposing Siegwurm” like Otherworld King’s Rainydle just isn’t there.

Of course, Otherworld King decides to meet Dan’s request, blocking with Siegwurm, but be careful what you wish for.

Otherworld King uses a Magic known as Warning Attack

**Main**
During this turn, when your “Winged Dragon”/”Flying Fang” family Spirit attacks, the opponent must block with their 3000 BP or less Spirits if possible.
**Flash**
During this turn, give a Spirit +3000 BP.

A Cost 4 Magic from BS05, with a really odd effect for this deck as I don’t believe Dan wields that many Winged Dragons OR Flying Fangs.

During the Main Step, Winged Dragon or Flying Fang Spirits get a Pseudo-Clash effect for 3000 BP or below Spirits, but since it’s the Flash Step, thats a 3000 BP Battle boost.

It’s likely the card is being used not for it’s main effect but for the large-ish Battle Boost it gives.

Otherworld King’s Siegwurm now has 9000 BP, making it match the Clashing Siegwurm (depicted as being ON FIRE)

Since the BPs match, it’s a Double knockout.

Otherworld King lords the draw over Dan, commenting about the fact that Dan didn’t consider any other responses other than Victory Fire, because he explicitly saw it.

Draws are interesting concepts because you’d think that it wouldn’t benefit one side more than another, but in Battle Spirits at least, draws favour the defender, as it is the defender that will sooner get to benefit from the absence of your spirit before you get to benefit from the absence of theirs.

Upset at the loss of his dear Spirit, Dan ends his turn.

Otherworld King taunts Dan, wondering if Dan’s lament is because he’s realizing his own weakness.

Pantera’s right, there was no particular indication that Otherworld King could have had Warning Attack of all things, but if it’s truly a clone of Dan’s deck then he should know that it was in there.

Yuuki says it couldn’t be helped, his BP was higher.

I’m not sure what part of that could have been considered careless, I get that you need to make reads but at what other point was a Battle boost in the cards for Otherworld King?

Clashing into a weaker spirit is standard procedure, but I suppose if I wanted to make a reach, Otherworld King not attacking with his own Siegwurm to take out Rainydle might have been an indicator that he was ready to block with it.

With Siegwurm not exhausted, Dan would have been encouraged to attack with his stronger Siegwurm, creating the prime opportunity to use something like Warning Attack.

But I’m just not sure how reasonable that level of thought is for a game like this.

Again, no real mistake of judgment, he got screwed over by a Magic that he could have very much assumed Otherworld King didn’t have.

Yuuki makes a declaration that Dan isn’t strong enough to defeat Otherworld King with the way he’s fighting now.

Otherworld King summons Lizardedge at Lv2 and raises Rainydle to Lv2.

Otherworld King now beats Dan to his new Key Spirit, summoning the StarEmperorDragon Meteorwurm

Otherworld King’s Meteorwurm works significantly better with the Blue eyes.

My guy he’s cloned it card for card, he can do that with a Magic trick, I’m not even sure he particularly needs to know.

Otherworld King attacks with Meteorwurm, activating Clash.

Dan blocks with Erimakilizard, causing it to be destroyed as it very clearly doesn’t stand a chance with it’s measly BP.

Dan apologizes to Erimakilizard, but Otherworld King rebukes him, saying there was no point apologizing to the Spirit, as there was no way to protect it long enough for it to begin attacking.

Otherworld King once again reiterates the stakes of the battle, namely his promise to leave if Dan wins the battle (unlikely as it seems)

However he claims that him leaving Otherworld will cause Otherworld to collapse entirely.

I presume this is some self import crap regarding how he’s centralized the system he’s created so dependantly on him that recovering from it’s dissolution is impossible.

“I am the best option because I eliminated every other better one”

Pantera wonders what Otherworld King means by this collapse, before Yuuki points out that Pantera nor Leon would know about it.

The natural follow-up, why does one of the Three Heads know something that the other two don’t?

The reason why Yuuki knows has nothing to do with Otherworld King, he’s been aware Kajitsu bears Mother Core’s Light in order to know that Mother Core is suffering.

Though Otherworld King blames the Humans for harming it. Erm, a Grand majority of those humans work for you, Otherworld King.

Also that.

Welcome to good old fashioned hypocrisy. Humans are hearting Mother Core.

Except for Otherworld King, he’s “different”

I see a lot of claims but not a lot of explanations

Otherworld King’s way of thinking is broadened even more, he thinks, despite being human, that he in particular is above humans. And therefore is uniquely exempt from things that apply to humans, such as harming Mother Core.

…So once again, he’s got a God Complex.

Sounds like an excuse a Colonizer would make.

So it seems like it was Otherworld King who presented Otherworld to Humanity, which is why they’re able to access it now.

Seems like a rehash of the things he stated in the previous episodes, he’s basically saying that the only reason the Otherworlders have any compatibility with Humans is because he taught them Human Wisdom.

It seems like Mother Core is this swirling mass of limitless energy I guess? We still haven’t quite figured out what it does, but given Kajitsu claims her Powers can cleanse a Forest, its probable that Mother Core ensures that Life can always endure in Otherworld.

Operates similar to a Sun but more directly I suppose.

Ah yes, the ol’ “Sure they had a pretty good thing going but they need me to make it work”

I guess they’re once again maintaining this old nonsense, the Core System was intended to restore Light to Mother Core, though it was evidently putting an immense amount of strain on Kajitsu, Yuuki seemed to believe that Kajitsu and Mother Core’s fates were one and the same, something tells me that Kajitsu isn’t capable of bearing Mother Core’s full power, a complete Mother Core would kill Kajitsu under all that force…

…The question is if Mother Core being revived means Kajitsu’s death, then Mother Core has no bearer, I wonder if Otherworld King is trying to bear Mother Core’s light?

Sure it was, but they retaliated because of the already shit situation you put the Otherworlders in!

You can’t say “Welp, you thwarted my plans, it’s all your fault”, things were already bad before, yes they made it worse but they wouldn’t have if you didn’t screw things up.

Though I presume Dan is pushing for a more specific grievance, something a little less recent than just his recent ruining of their plans.

These were the ingredients chosen to create the perfect repetitive backstory.

Right, so in essence, all of Human Sin which leads Life on Earth to flounder, suffer or perish causes damage to Mother Core. Is that a result of the worlds being connected or something else?

But it seems like, though Grand-Lolo is what is blessed by Mother Core’s Light, Earth being in the vicinity causes the 2 worlds to essentially influence each other.

Mother Core and the Earth’s fates are essentially tied, if the apocalypse occurs, Mother Core follows with it, and Grand-Lolo will naturally suffer as a result. If Mother Core craps out for whatever reason then the Earth is in similarly bad trouble.

…By you?

It’s an interesting point to make, which makes sense as to why anyone who ultimately challenges Otherworld King can be forced into thinking like him, but Otherworld King is only uniquely indisposed to dealing with the Mother Core problem because he’s the only one so far to know how to work it.

If he shared that knowledge a bit wider and a bit sooner then perhaps this battle wouldn’t be happening, it doesn’t need to be Otherworld King, it just needs to be someone who knows what needs doing. The only reason Otherworld King hasn’t shared that knowledge is because he doesn’t feel anyone else is up to the task.

He’s burdened himself with a task he refuses to let anyone else take.

After all, he “stands at a higher place than Humans”

So, to summarise:

Otherworld King went to Grand-Lolo, found they were somewhat uneducated and took it upon himself to educate them so he could unite the Otherworlders with Humans.

Discovering Mother Core blesses Grand-Lolo with I presume conditions necessary for Life and many other cool things that only happen in Grand-Lolo, he finds out that the state of Earth and Mother Core are inextricably linked. This unique understanding, known apparently only to Otherworld King, Yuuki and presumably Kajitsu, means that if Otherworld King is evicted from his position as King, there will be no one suitable to study and protect Mother Core, inevitably causing it to “become Dark”, and all the benefits it provides to both Grand-Lolo and Earth will be lost entirely, perhaps leading to the end of both worlds.

Dan’s motivations were in earnest based on the available information he had at the time.

It’s not lying if you tell it believing it to be true.

There’s also that, we’ve seen absolutely zero proof of why any of what Otherworld King says is correct.

That argument is incredibly circular!

“Mother Core is suffering, and if it dies, there will be ruin”
“Why should I believe you?”
“Because if you don’t and you’re wrong, there will be ruin”

So Otherworld King should continue to oppress Otherworlders because he’s come up with this fascinating story about how both worlds will end if he’s ever ousted from his position? And based on that story no one who serves him wants to oust him because the consequences of being wrong are too high?

The source of that information is the ONE PERSON WHO BENEFITS from you believing it!

Proof! Proof is needed!

Yeah kindly shut the hell up Yuuki.

Yuuki tells Dan that once he defeats Otherworld King, Dan will become Otherworld King, he’ll inherit all of Otherworld King’s knowledge, and be put into a role to protect Mother Core, to save both worlds.

Hold on, it’s just occurred to me, Kazan’s the Future of Earth, Earth is already screwed at that point and that means Kazan wants to move Humanity to Grand-Lolo.

Would that even work? If Earth is left to die then Mother Core fades out anyhow, and Grand-Lolo crumbles, Kazan’s entire motivation is a suicide mission.

I guess Dan’s not interested in becoming Otherworld King, but I guess my earlier point was refuted by Yuuki.

Anyone who defeats Otherworld King inherits the title, the role, and all knowledge needed to perform the task, if Dan wins and ousts Otherworld King without succeeding him or inheriting his knowledge, Mother Core will have nothing protecting it. Causing the worlds to crumble.

So Otherworld King isn’t just being a massive prick, he’s the strongest card battler and must be beyond Humans and Otherworlders lest a weak-minded individual defeats him and ousts him from his position, potentially resulting in a double-apocalypse.

He isn’t saying he’s uniquely suited for the role he’s in, its that because he is in that role, he must hold himself to meeting that higher standard.

Otherworld King ends his turn.

Dan takes issue with the idea that the hierarchy must be like this, a single individual with full access to Mother Core, it’s capabilities, all in order to protect it, Mother Core existed and was fine long before Otherworld King came, it’s unreasonable to believe that the Otherworlders aren’t capable of doing something to rectify this supposedly impending doom.

In short, Mother Core should be a task left to the Otherworlders to manage, if Otherworld must have a King, why not let it be an Otherworlder?

And I imagine you don’t intend to elaborate on where your lack of faith in the Otherworlders comes from.

Oh right, you don’t believe they’re up to the task because you believe their nature is to be “Savage Barbarians” without the wisdom you provided them.

Otherworld King doesn’t think the Otherworlders are smart enough to protect themselves.

Because the world needs your position, and you’re the one suited to fill it because you were here first, you taught the Otherworlders, and you were the smartest and therefore the best suited to fill the role.

In other words, you don’t believe that anyone less knowledgeable than yourself should have the role OR the sheer amount of benefits that comes with it.

It’s all circular. Mother Core needs him because he’s above it all, and he’s above it all because it needs him to be.

He’s “predestined” for it.

This line goes insanely hard.

It’s Dan’s turn, and Dan immediately summons The StarEmperorDragon Meteorwurm.

I really don’t like this move from Dan, Meteorwurm has a measly 6000 BP at Lv1, on Otherworld King’s next turn he’ll probably have enough core to raise his Meteorwurm to Lv3, with 11000 BP.

With it’s Lv3 effect, it can target attack Dan’s Meteorwurm, Dan would then need to somehow clear a 5000 BP gap to take it out.

He’s being stupid, but I suppose.

Meteorwurm’s attack would likely lead Otherworld King to block with the 3000 BP Lv2 Rainydle.

This would create the same circumstance as last time, where Otherworld King could use a Warning Attack to have Rainydle match Meteorwurm’s BP and initiate double destruction.

Back to the Fire Brigade, it seems they can’t make it too the Spring

Serge however, is completely adamant that they’ll reach it in time.

In a brief moment however, Serge is forced to hit the breaks to come to a halt.

And the reason for that is because the Spring they intended to use is completely bone dry.

In essence, Leon had a far more meticulous plan than just burning the forest.

By Burning the forest he could cause damage to Kajitsu and inhibit her ability to use Insects to halt their progress, Kajitsu’s sense of duty toward the forest would cause her to seek the spring, so in advance, he also set up a plan to drain the spring as they were busy figuring out what to do about the fire.

With the Fire forcing them to make a decision that Leon had already planned for, they would fall right into his hands with no real hope of moving forward. Now since Kajitsu isn’t able to restore the Forest by herself, Leon can bargain with her. It’s an excellent idea.

But buckle up, Serge’s gonna try something.

back to the battle though, Otherworld King almost certainly has enough Core to raise Meteorwurm to Lv3 and take out the copy on the opposing board.

He raises Rainydle and Lizardedge to Lv3, giving them both 4000 BP.

He then raises The StarEmperorDragon Meteorwurm to Lv2.

Interesting choice, he can’t target attack from that position… He could force a Clash but the likelihood that Dan would sacrifice Meteorwurm is low unless Dan could counter with Magic. It’s still a nice position for an attack either way though-

…What?

I wonder if this choice of action has anything to do with the Victory Fire in his hand. If Dan summons another Spirit and attacks his Meteorwurm, Otherworld King can sacrifice it by using it’s Core for Victory Fire, wiping out Dan’s 2 remaining Spirits and leaving him open.

Otherworld King raising the Level of the other 2 spirits is to encourage Dan to either summon a stronger spirit which may need more core and therefore might diminish Dan’s options, or summon many smaller spirits which will leave them susceptible to Victory Fire.

It’s a very safe position.

of course, I could be wrong, I’d love to see if they explain the actual reason.

Whatever it is, it’s ultimately a part of Otherworld King’s plan.

He’s not in danger, so I suppose he won’t.

Dan seems to be following the pattern I expected him to, he summons a Lv2 Lizardedge.

He then brings Meteorwurm to 11000 BP.

Dan notes that even if he attacks into Meteorwurm, he’s pretty darn sure that Otherworld King shouldn’t have an answer for it in his hand.

Dan enters his attack step, he target attacks the Lv2 Meteorwurm with his Lv3 Meteorwurm.

Dan has defeated his own key spirit, and since Otherworld King’s copying his deck, it should theoretically be his key Spirit as well.

Dan probably extrapolated the amount of cards that could potentially deal with this situation, and determined that it was highly unlikely Otherworld King had that card.

Dan’s deck could potentially hold a card that can award 4000 BP to a spirit, Buster Phalanx, an old BS01 Nexus popper that has a battle boost effect of +4000.

But if Dan’s not running that card then he could drop that chance from very low to basically 0.

Unfortunately this is the case, without an answer to Victory Fire this attack basically means nothing, Dan will lose both Spirits and run out of lives.

Pantera claims that this is a Miracle, borne from the Clash King’s burning heart.

…Right, that is a fairly unique predisposition isn’t it? From the position of Otherworld King, and the nature of Grand-Lolo receiving Humans from all walks of time, the guy can quite literally have full temporal omniscience of Human history.

But does that mean that the Earth is a somewhat doomed case in the future? Maybe Grand-Lolo can’t connect that far yet but the signs are appearing, such as in Kazan’s future.

Regardless, Otherworld King’s vast knowledge of all human eras means that Dan might need more than just guts to win in a battle of wits.

And who has more wit than a guy who can see the past, present and future of earth?

Otherworld King starts his turn, and immediately ends his main step.

Dan’s surprise at this action means the worst possible scenario, he’s completely forgotten about the Victory Fire in Otherworld King’s hand.

Otherworld King chastises Dan for his inability to think ahead in a battle, Dan was only ever thinking in what he wanted to do in the moment, rather than thinking about how he was going to win.

In essence, Otherworld King’s going to beat Dan here, because Otherworld King took Dan’s deck and found a Win condition, while Dan continued to focus on his style of play.

Met with a powerful Spirit, Dan’s immediate instinct is to destroy it, Meteorwurm is basically his weapon for performing that exact thing. But sometimes destroying a Spirit isn’t the best way to win the game.

Otherworld King claims that Dan is inexperienced in Battling.

…One begs the question then, if he’s inexperienced, imagine how strong he’d be if he was experienced?

Case in point, Otherworld King attacks with Rainydle, and uses Victory Fire immediately.

Dan’s Lizardedge and Rainydle are destroyed.

Dan tries to also counter with Victory Fire… unfortunately.

This was the reason Otherworld King levelled up earlier before Dan levelled up Meteorwurm, if he raised Meteorwurm to Lv3, he wouldn’t be able to raise his other Spirits to 4000 BP, leaving them vulnerable to Dan’s own Victory Fire.

He could have tied with Dan’s Meteorwurm, but doing so would have lost him the match.

And so, the only game plan that let him out Clash King the Clash King was to sacrifice his strongest cards to ensure his bottom line wasn’t vulnerable to Dan’s magic.

Dan is, naturally, in horror, his tunnel vision to defeating the enemy’s strongest spirit, which usually breaks their will and diminishes their battle effectiveness, caused him to overlook a detail he should know deeply, that being the BP of the Red spirit card pool.

Dan takes a life and his Battle Form takes more damage…

Quite poetically, his last life, is over his heart.

The rest of the lightbearers feel that Dan is close to losing.

Buuuut at the moment they have bigger problems.

Whatever Serge wants to try, he’s not yet ready to initiate it yet.

Many people have a tendency to absolutely despise Mirror Matches, I’ve known Yu-Gi-Oh! Players to straight up scoop their cards and leave the table for no other reason other than their opponent was playing the same deck they were.

Many may claim it’s boring, but ultimately, Mirror Matches have the lowest amount of ambiguity.

In a game where it’s reasonably believed that the result is, mostly, centralized around the skill of the player and not their luck, a Mirror match where all the tools available to both players are the same results in a match where the winner will almost always be the more skilled of the 2 players.

Some people could cite that “Mirror Matches means the match is mostly a coin flip” but no amount of coin flips would account for the mistakes that Dan made, and the sheer amount of planning ahead that allowed Otherworld King to produce 2 4000 BP spirits in the face of a potential Victory Fire that happened to be there.

Otherworld King, using the same 40 cards as Dan, outplayed him to the last card, and Dan, playing against his own cards, made multiple mistakes even though he was able to take advantage of knowing the opponent’s deck.

People hate Mirror Matches, because there is no question who the more skilled player is, once a winner is satisfactorily determined. It is the one time when you can’t use the poor matchup as an excuse, because you have access to every tool the opponent does.

There are no unfair advantages in chess, other than who goes first.

Dan’s use of Meteorwurm didn’t dent Otherworld King’s game plan, Dan’s last gambit was completely foreseen.

It’s over.

Dan’s last life is reacting…

In essence, as a Lightbearer draws closer to a defeat they are highly conscious of avoiding, like for example, fighting for the fate of Grand-Lolo.

The Light of the Core pities him for being unable to turn the situation around, that feeling causes Dan’s Core to shine stronger.

To put even more simply, when Dan challenged Otherworld King to what Dan believed to be the most important match, the final match he must win…

Well, that puts his Core’s Light on the line.

This is probably how Julian lost his own core’s light. He lost a battle he absolutely needed to win.

Dan realizes that this is probably the end of his time as the Bearer of the Red Core’s Light, and asks Otherworld King to finish him off.

Julian’s Meteorwurm, who’s probably suffering greatly after seeing another one of it’s partners lose their Red Symbol to the Otherworld King, cries out in anguish.

And finally, Dan admits his failure, he couldn’t defeat Otherworld King, and he couldn’t free Zungurii’s family from said King’s oppression.

Otherworld King attacks with Lizardedge.

Dan resigns himself to the inevitable.

Witness, the Red Symbol, destroyed.

I can’t imagine that that feels like for Dan, I can’t even imagine what that feels like second-hand.

Again, why is Yuuki not a part of this, we know he’s the White Soldier.

Also interestingly, Kajitsu being the bearer of Mother Core means she gets a more colourful background than the others.

Dan’s Battle Form has now been completely erased.

And now the former Red Soldier, has fallen unsconcious.

Er, well, to be fair he looks rather dead but don’t worry, this is still a show intended to sell cards to people.

It seems like being a Lightbearer makes your Soul and the Light you bear one and the same, so destroying that Light caused Dan’s own soul to fracture.

Pantera notes that the entire time, Otherworld King was in complete control of that match.

Now we need to resolve this sideplot, Leon’s still closing in.

Magisa’s filled in on the situation, learning of Dan’s defeat.

But it seems the shattering of Dan’s Red Symbol was even more worrying than the defeat itself, Dan being rendered catatonic probably doesn’t feel too good to the rest of them.

Lovely timing Serge, right when the worst feels hit the group, you get schmoving.

I refuse to believe they moved from resting to full speed and not a single casualty occurred.

Unfortunately their last line of defense for the Forest is, well, dried up, so they’ve no other choice but to jump to a new world.

Well at least Dan’s not the only one who had to give up something important today.

Leon moves fast, demanding his group ascertain where Kajitsu has jumped to.

It seems Otherworld King is somewhat surprised, Dan was risking everything, which resulted in his Red Core also being risked, but even after losing, and the Core being completely shattered, Dan still bears the Red Light.

Which means he’s still the Red Soldier.

Otherworld King demands that Dan be taken to the Red Horizon Ladder, and to force him to work on a new one.

It seems Otherworld King has some kind of vendetta against humans, presumably he doesn’t consider the Humans that work for him to be the same kind of whatever humans he hates.

Yuuki tries to raise the issue of Leon going completely balls off the walls, but Otherworld King just says to let him run amok, he’s not particularly worried about Kajitsu and Yuuki shouldn’t be either.

…I dunno, after the core system nonsense I’m sensing a great amount of callousness for Kajitsu’s condition, he never spoke of Kajitsu when mentioning Mother Core either as if Kajitsu was irrelevant.

The last shot we get is of Dan’s unconscious face before the Episode clears out.

And this marks, I believe the end of the first half of Battle Spirits Shounen Gekiha Dan, I’m aware the halfway point was 2 episodes ago, but this is truly when things start to change for Dan and the rest of the story.

In cool ways, boring ways, and downright odd ways.

Anyway, there’s no card of the day as no new cards were unveiled, but I think it’d be inappropriate to the mood of the episode to start talking about one now.

In any case, when you’re at the bottom of a pit, the only way is up. As you can tell by the following 23 episodes remaining, this is neither the end for the show, nor is it the end for Dan. And during the next few episodes, I’m hoping to spot some foreshadowing for what’s to come.

I won’t give my thoughts on cards, but I suppose I can talk about something else, namely Otherworld King.

I initially had him pegged as a “White Man’s Burden” type character in the previous episode, but as is outlined in this episode, it doesn’t seem to be a quirk of any particular form of supremacy, the oppression of the Otherworlders, in reality, seems to be an aggressive manifestation of what he believes needs to be done, He’s not punishing the Otherworlders for being stupid, or dumb, or anything like that, he has human followers who likely he bent to his will with his power, and using that newfound authority, he found that he needed more manpower than people that were willing to produce Horizon Ladders, Towers that, when completed, according to Yuuki, would allow the Otherworld King to directly control Mother Core. Something he believes is necessary in order to protect it from the effects humans on earth have on it, and inhibiting the effects Humans indirectly have on Grand-Lolo as a result.

The fundamental disagreement Dan had there, was that the Otherworlders should be the authority on protecting Mother Core, not Otherworld King, which is a reasonable argument to make, but Otherworld King refuses to budge on it for an as of yet unelaborated reason. I know what the true reason is, but at the moment one can only surmise that Otherworld King either believes that no one else besides him understands Grand-Lolo to the necessary degree required to perform the task of protecting Mother Core, or he isn’t capable of trusting the Otherworlders to succeed at that task.

Regardless, Otherworld King is performing what he believes to be a righteous mission, where the end justifies the means, because Mother Core going dark spells the end of everything. And he’s uniquely empowered to do so, having been able to observe Humanity through all walks of time, and being undefeated in any such era.

He’s powerful, appears to mean well, is incredibly wise and deep, but otherwise incredibly callous with others, with seemingly no sense of guilt for how he treats Otherworlders, or how he treated Dan in spite of damn near smashing his soul.

It’s very clear he has a God complex, the tenets of which are:

Believing they are entitled to special treatment – The Otherworld King believes Grand-Lolo’s Sun and Mother Core are rightfully his, keeping the Sun in a special area reserved for himself.
Being excessively controlling – Ordering Humans to suppress and subdue Otherworlders to secure the workforce necessary to build a Horizon Ladder.
Refusing to accept criticism – Didn’t really acknowledge Dan’s last claim about Mother Core being an Otherworlder problem, simply said he didn’t understand and moved on.
Thinking they have all the answers – Need I even say?
Feeling Superior or Invincible – He certainly feel’s that he is of a significantly higher standing than his fellow Humans. I’d hazard to suggest he doesn’t even consider himself Human. He also seems to believe he is uniquely suited for the role he holds.
Ignoring the needs of Others – He hasn’t acknowledged the pain he’s caused anyone else so far, and didn’t even bother with Leon threatening the direct family of the Three Heads.
Being indifferent to how actions affect others – similar to the above, he even demanded Dan be put into slavery in order to build a new Horizon Ladder, completely indifferent to the fact that he’d just halfway destroyed the kid’s mind and that said kid is 12.

The thing about God complexes is that when slapped onto a competent character in a fictional setting like an anime… That stuff is resonating.

Otherworld King is a much loved villain of mine because of how much he just takes up every scene he’s in. And it’s the same with characters who share those same traits that would be suffocating to be around in real life.

But don’t get me wrong, even if he sounds relatively reasonable, his methods are clearly improper and unnecessary, his guilt is completely absent, and is ultimately motivated by something truly selfish that we will learn later.

Try not to get confused, Otherworld King, above all, is:

Evil.

Gekiha Dan – Episode 26

Right, I am completely giddy with anticipation so if it’s all the same to you lot? I’m gonna jump RIGHT into the plot, nom nom.

Dan’s been walking up these god damn stairs for the runtime of essentially 2 episodes, even in realtime that’s like a whole 40 minutes of climbing stairs.

I’m sure if he were an entitled rich kid with the funds necessary to open a boarding school designed to teach card games, he’d probably want to find the guy who invented the stairs, and push him down these stairs.

If that’s an obscure reference to you, look up LittleKuriboh, you can thank me later when you’re done wheezing.

Once again, the topic of Yuuki’s humanity is strangely brought up.

It’s being questioned constantly now, we might soon get to the bottom of it.

Pantera has no question in his mind that Yuuki is a Human, which is more confidence than Yuuki has.

Remember, when Yuuki was asked if he was human, he said “supposedly”

Pantera tries to invigorate Dan by saying that they will very soon be at Otherworld King’s Castle.

…Castle? Wasn’t this place already in a Castle? Are you telling me they are GENUINELY on a Sky staircase right now? There’s another Castle at the end of this?

…It’s also by absolutely no means “close”

My presumption is that it’s “Soon” relative to the actual amount of time they’ll be walking, and not in a vacuum.

“If you can see the castle you know you’re close” sounds like a place you’d want to drive to, not walk.

…Especially not up an ever ascending set of stairs.

I’m getting the sneaking suspicion that the Otherworld King doesn’t like to be bothered, the stairs act as a way to ensure that anyone who needs to talk to him must really need to.

Skipping over that, they finally get to the top.

Also, Pantera called this a “Castle”

…I’d hazard to say that this is more akin to a Palace.

And the Episode title spoils the matchup but not the cards being used, which is a good way to keep the mystery of good ol’ Otherworld King.

One can only wonder what all these incredibly vast places are for, there’s even a Kingdom behind that giant wasteland.

Sorry I can’t see anyone walk into a clusterfuck of a room like this without hearing my Mother in the distance telling me “This place is a Tip“

Otherworld King is a hoarder, it seems.

…Wait, this is the Wisdom Gate? Not the second set of stairs?

No, this very closed room, with not a single gate in it, is the Wisdom Gate?

So in other words it’s his Gamer Pad?

Before Dan proceeds, Yuuki reminds him that Otherworld King is the strongest card battler.

Not strongest in Otherworld, not strongest on Earth, not the strongest Human battler.

Strongest. Battler. Period.

And by barely moving an inch, Dan knocks over and completely destroys Otherworld King’s Gamer pad.

In the midst of the dropping sculptures however, we do notice a figure on a suspended platform…

He appears to be writing something, I suppose this “Collection” of Earthly Wisdom begets adding to in some way from Otherworld King himself.

Behold, the source of all of our woes, this exceptionally old guy.

He barely looks threatening truth be told, and it feels like they could wait out the end of his life anyway.

Yuuki confirms that this old man we see here, is in fact, the Otherworld King.

And Dan notes that Otherworld King isn’t an Otherworlder, he’s Human.

It’d be a hilarious plot twist if it turned out all this Human supremacy nonsense was instigated by an Otherworlder, not sure how they’d wrangle that one.

Mate, I know you’re making a comment about privacy but your fucking door is unlocked.

You’re telling me you’re the all powerful Otherworld King who can subdue Otherworld and bend it to his will but you can’t recruit one god damn locksmith?

Dan is gracious as ever though, knowing he just offended the ruler, even if said ruler is only by conquest.

Turns out the Otherworld King can auto-reset his room easily with a snap of his fingers, he doesn’t even need maids or servants to clear it for him.

I suppose that’s why the general workforce that enter his employ only serve one function, Battling, and the ones that can’t are soldiers to enforce the rule of the battle.

When Dan comments that his magic was similar to Magisa’s, Otherworld quite happily explains that it is Magisa’s abilities, and that he stole them.

…Wait so she staked her magic on a battle, you won said battle, took the powers as the bet stated but you’re still happy to say that you stole them?

Either you’re trying your darndest to see it from her point of view or you take some pride in knowing you, a Human, stole powers from a 4000 year old Witch.

This is also the first instance of us hearing that Magisa is a Card Battler in any sense of the word, granted she’s quite knowledgeable about the game so it makes sense that she may have been one at some point.

So here we’re getting a little bit of insight, not only into Otherworld King’s history as he sees it, but also how his mindset functions, it’s a little… stretchy to say the least.

Otherworld King is the bringer of Human Wisdom into Otherworld, Otherworld’s population, though sentient, had no order until Otherworld King arrived, and brought with him, Wisdom, Intellect, etc.

They aren’t total synonyms but here at least it’s the same principal, he educated and domesticated Otherworld’s inhabitants, all of the sophisticated principals we recognise as things Humans have done originate from Otherworld King.

The fact that he calls them Savage Barbarians is striking a somewhat nasty chord for anyone who can tell this is a giant allegory for racism.

He has done the equivalent of travelling to a Third-World Country, Provided the Populace with Education and in return exploited said Country by confiscating what he wanted for himself…

And he believes he has a right to these things because of the Education he has provided, he Controls Otherworld and it’s contents belong to him because he dutifully educated the people of that World.

Anyone who’s a deep reader of history, or perhaps poetry, might feel like this is akin to “The White Man’s Burden”

I won’t go too deeply as I found it while I was writing this post with the help of a very well-studied friend of mine, but briefly, “The White Man’s Burden” is a nasty poem that basically supports the idea that: if you are trying to civilise what you believe to be a less-educated culture, you are justified in any methods you use to exert control over that culture.

Or more simply, to quote said studious friend: “It basically says Colonisers are justified in their actions because they are providing something”

This led into the creation of a complex, and well, an active trope on TVTropes

But in essence, Otherworld King justifies his claim over basically anything in Otherworld under the pretext that he’s the reason Otherworld could even develop enough to wield these things to begin with.

And just incase it was unclear, this is of course, utter tripe. You can’t just start living in someone’s house and acting like you own it just because you taught them maths. Regardless of who it is or how well-off they are afterwards. I like Otherworld King as a character for the same reason people like, say, Joffrey Baratheon from Game of Thrones, he’s so detestable that you realise that evoked reaction was incredible portrayal, his farce of a justification is about as agreeable as the idea of “The White Man’s Burden”, it’s all garbage.

Dan makes the obvious plea he was always going to make as this fact has yet to be contested by just about anybody. Humans have no business seizing and exerting control over a World that isn’t theirs.

It seems Otherworld King isn’t particularly interested in this conversation, he’s more intrigued by Dan’s passion than anything else.

Well Pantera didn’t run that by you so it’s very impressive that you know that.

So Pantera did act on his own, Otherworld King never had any interest in meeting with Dan for any reason. It was by some stroke of luck that they’re even here now.

For this to occur, Pantera had to have everyone believe Otherworld King wanted to see Dan.

He only did this because he wanted to fight Dan and needed a reason to draw Dan in, so he used the one thing Dan wanted, to see Otherworld King.

And the only reason he was interested in Dan was because Julian left an impression on him.

Pantera is the sole reason Dan has made it anywhere.

Otherworld King scolds Pantera softly, almost like he’s educating his own child.

I suppose maybe he sees him that way, given Pantera is Otherworld King’s creation.

This seems a bit out of place, but Otherworld King is asking Yuuki if he agrees with the assertion that Human’s lie

I mean it’s a bit of a hard claim to refute on it’s face, no one can deny that Humans do not have the ability to lie, and to say “humans don’t lie” is equivalent to saying that no Human, at any point in time, ever made a statement of verifiable fact that was demonstrably false with the intention to mislead… Because said statement would be.

But saying that Human’s Lie and then leaving it at that is a gross generalization as if we’re just going around saying shit that isn’t true because why not? Humans typically lie when doing so would benefit them significantly more than the truth, the estimation of pathological liars (People who feel a strong compulsion to lie even when the truth would benefit them or the lie would be detrimental to them) as a population of the world is 8-13% (And that was from a single study which relied on self-identification to generate it’s results). It’s premature to suggest that Humans are prediposed to certain actions or features just because they have the capacity for it to be possible. It’d be like saying Wolves are friendly because 8% of them are and the other 92% of them will rip your face off.

Back in The Violet, Kajitsu is using her abilities for something.

Zungurii’s back from a Honey-run, and notes that he heard goons in the Forest, wondering if they’re able to track Kajitsu due to her abilities.

Mai is somewhat bothered that Leon hasn’t given up pursuing them.

The guy fought 3 battles and won 2 of them, the last one he might have lost on purpose, you didn’t really have a leg to stand on here.

…So… Kajitsu’s going to stop a Military army… with a series of butterflies?

So anyway, Kajitsu’s stopping the military army with a series of Butterflies-

Belga rather hilariously condemns the Lightbearers as Cowards… Not for using the insects in the first place.

But for the sheer volume of insects being used.

Absolutely wild choice of complaint.

“No sir, I’m not angry because they used insects as a defense, I’m angry because they used enough for it to work“

Belga demands they just push through them, the insects have no strength but the Soldier apparently states that they’re causing enough of an obstruction to prevent them from advancing…

I’d love to know how they propose this is the case but we’re interrupted.

I feel like if that was an option it would have been pursued already.

Belga contacts Leon, informing him of the dire situation of being swarmed by bugs.

Leon’s ship also is being swarmed but is clearly not having nearly as much of a problem.

Belga’s astonished reaction at Leon’s suggested course of action is more funny than the directness of the suggestion itself.

“Have you tried setting it on fire?” is often a joked about response but in this case is the one genuinely being considered.

Belga counters that the Horizon Ladder is entirely made of natural resources, being built by Butterflies and all, if they attempt to burn down the forest, the spread of flame would damage the Horizon Ladder, which they kind of need.

…To which Leon reacts with what I can only assume is the equivalent of “Did I fucking stutter?”

Bewitching Leon at it again, he’s aware of Belga’s admiration for his father and attempts to use Belga’s Father as an example Belga should follow, I bet you he doesn’t even know Belga’s Dad, but the deception is easier than trying to counteract Belga’s argument of profitability.

Seems Leon won’t need to do any convincing, Brustom’s offered to commit arson in Belga’s stead.

Also… Fire spreads, like, quickly.

If the Green World entirely consists of greenery and a Fire breaks out…

Hm, that sounds disastrous.

Back to the interesting bit (I like card games, bite me)

Otherworld King words this really weirdly but from what I can tell the translation’s accurate, it seems like he’s saying that if Dan’s Wish wasn’t capable of getting what he wants, then the only other choice would be to get it from Otherworld King directly. So it seems like he understands Dan’s reasons for wanting to face him.

Dan reiterates his rejected wish from the tournament, if he wins, Otherworld King leaves Grand-Lolo.

People who can be held to their words come in 3 different breeds, there are those who only make safe promises they can keep without much effort.

There are those who make incredibly steep promises knowing what the price will be and prepared to suffer it.

…And those who make those steep promises knowing they will never be forced to face that reality.

Otherworld King’s swift acceptance of Dan’s request seems like he might be the 3rd kind.

It seems Otherworld King is also considerate of the spirit of the request, Dan covers his bases by also requesting Magisa’s magic but it seems like Otherworld King had already thought of that.

The counter, if Dan somehow loses, Otherworld King asks Dan merely to heed his words, and accept his fate.

Ah, the best question I like to ask others, “What colour do you wish to face?”

Dan’s initially confused by this question, Yuuki then points out that it’s a Morton’s Fork, it doesn’t matter what Dan chooses, because Otherworld King is so insanely skilled in every colour that the result will end up the same.

Naturally, Dan’s a little offended by the blatant confidence, as Otherworld King’s claiming he’ll beat Dan even if Dan selects a matchup that is favourable to him specifically.

Though from Otherworld King’s point of view, even though this may be true, it’s also possible that even he gets bored of winning with the same strategy everytime, doing it this way not only ensures that he can display his overwhelming strength even with a supposed disadvantage, but also that he can actively enjoy the game for what it is while doing it.

Otherworld King recognizes Dan’s offense, and this likely isn’t the first time the King’s been asked to make a selection on his own.

So Otherworld King decides he feels like he should use the same colour Dan is.

It’s an interesting choice too, Dan forsook the potential for an advantage but rather than select say, White, which has oft been noted to have a poor compatibility with Red in White’s favor, he instead selects Red, to keep him and Dan on an even playing field before the match starts.

Alright, guys, I get that you work for him, but it’ll be hard for Dan to battle over the sound of you sucking his knob!

No, they’re telling you that “could” is doing a lot of work in that sentence.

Dan knows the risks, he also doesn’t care. Guy’s willing to throw everything away for the possibility of ending everything right here and now.

It seems like Otherworld King is too old to actually stand, his seat may have many useful functions like LEVITATING OFF THE GROUND, but even with Magisa’s magic he can’t make himself younger? Magisa herself looks 29 in spite of being 4000 years old, you’d think there’d be something there he could do.

Before the battle, Pantera questions Yuuki’s assertion that the King is skilled with any colour. Which is a bit odd because Pantera’s fought him several times!

I did mention a few posts ago that there is an indication from one character that every player has a colour that is more suited to them than the others, however at least here, Otherworld King is presented as an exception to that rule, as all colours suit him just fine.

Yuuki then smirks as he’s intriged at how Dan will handle the Otherworld King, I presume Leon and Yuuki have also fought Otherworld King and lost in the past.

Dan takes the first move.

Dan starts by summoning Ankillersaurus at Lv2.

Dan does his usual quirk of summoning spirits and then talking to them at the introduction of a match.

Otherworld King’s curiosity is piqued, but even so he doesn’t seem overtly surprised by this.

I guess given his age he’s used to new phenomena not mattering in the grand scheme of things, when you’re all powerful I suppose unless something has the capacity to directly threaten you, the minute details just become quirks of life.

Dan ends his turn.

I did say what colour he selected earlier but Dan apparently asked what Colour Otherworld King chose before his turn started even though the King stated he “Felt like they should match”

Anyway, Otherworld King copies Dan’s play, summoning a Lv2 Ankillersaurus.

As Otherworld King has a core spare, he summons Rainydle for the low cost of free and uses it to preserve it’s Lv1.

Rainydle is a Cost 1 Spirit from BS07, not much different to a Rokceratops and just as useful. It even has the same BP values and cost as Rokceratops.

No the key thing to differentiate this from Rokceratops is family. Rokceratops is a Terra Dragon, but Rainydle here is an Astral Dragon.

Uniting Spirits with similar families in the same deck can enable cards that target those families to be more versatile as a result.

Dan comments on Rainydle’s summon, examining his hand to find that, had Dan gone second, he could have made the exact same play.

Also, Dan’s hand also holds Extra Draw, Buster Spear (a card which pops a Nexus and draws 1 card), and a Nexus from BS07

Which means we get to talk about it!

**Lv1-Lv2**
When your Nexus is destroyed by opposing Spirit/Nexus/Magic effects, destroy every opposing 3000 BP or less Spirit.
**Lv2 [Your Attack Step]**
When only the opposing Spirit is destroyed by comparing BP with your Spirit with **Clash**, destroy an opposing 3000 BP or less Spirit.

The Fall of Meteorite is a Cost 4 Nexus from BS07, and it’s part of a series of Nexuses released in this set, one for each colour, that all have an effect that punishes the opponent for destroying your nexuses via the effects of Spirits, Nexuses or Magic. This one destroys every opposing 3000 BP or less Spirit.

At Lv2, requiring a hefty 3 core, if a Spirit is defeated in battle by a Spirit with the Clash ability, a 3000 BP or less opposing Spirit is also destroyed.

The first effect is rather situational because it requires an opponent to take an action they know they will be punished for, naturally the idea would be to use this alongside a rather powerful nexus an opponent may want to destroy, but the second effect is somewhat okay, allowing Dan to take out small Spirits for performing his usual game plan.

Most people will run out Nexuses because they’re lingering symbols, but Dan didn’t play this because neither effect of the Nexus is useful right now.

Assuming Dan’s hand matches Otherworld King’s as well, even if he had played it, Otherworld King has a Buster Spear in his hand, so now Dan is probably not going to ever use it this game.

Otherworld King attacks with Ankillersaurus and Dan decides he still needs his Ankiller.

Correct, that hand is looking fairly useless with only a Rainydle and an Extra Draw to help you there, to use those in a way that’ll help he’ll need core.

So Dan takes a life and-…

…Huh, that Barrier looks vaguely different… a Hexagon instead of a Barrier?

Otherworld King seems to have altered the Battlefield in some way, a different system for translating the damage felt from a destruction of life has been amplified to the extent of destroying Dan’s Battle Form.

The pain was so severe the whole squad felt it.

Seems it’s not just pain, the force knocked Dan clean off his feet too.

So it seems that feeling also extended to seeing a brief glimpse of Dan’s immediate surroundings, they can tell he’s battling someone.

Kajitsu’s able to formally introduce the old man Dan’s fighting to the group, which is an interesting way for everyone to be able to place a name to a face without having actually met the guy.

Kajitsu suddenly succumbs to a dizzy spell all of a sudden. Classic Kajitsu, but I thought she was getting better?

Seems Brustom’s taken the reigns on this one and has begun exacting Leon’s commands.

Belga’s resentment here is hard to place, he complained about the forest being unpleasant earlier but immediately resisted the first suggestion given to completely Torch it, I can’t tell if his resentment is to being stripped of authority by Brustom, or if he genuinely didn’t want to burn down the forest regardless of his feelings about it.

Yuuki then details to Dan what’s happening, apparently Otherworld King’s power has an effect on the battlefield he’s in, causing the damage to the life to actively damage a person’s “Core”, essentially risking their life.

Otherworld King asks Dan to imagine what will happen when his lives reach 0, suggesting he might end up as broken as his battle form.

Dan, he’s the reason the damage is even occurring, it’s a bit naive to think the damage also applies to Otherworld King.

Otherworld King seems to be trying to meet Dan on his level, as Dan is being driven by feelings rather than reason, given he didn’t need a reason to actively start helping Otherworld, he has no understanding of what brought Otherworld to it’s current position.

It doesn’t take a genius to know that subduing an entire race of people, robbing them of their sun, magic and energy, all because you “civilised” them isn’t particularly something we’d consider morally good, or fair for the Otherworlders.

The fact that 12 year old Dan probably hasn’t thought that far and knows it’s wrong should be an indication of that.

Oh shit, Flashback.

Oh joy, it’s even simpler than that, the prick has a God complex.

Dan’s raised an excellent point, let’s see how Otherworld King counters…

…Really?

He meets it with Ignorance!?

Dan’s naturally bothered by Otherworld King’s indifferent question.

Otherworld King continues with an attack from Rainydle.

Huh? Rainydle only has 1000 BP, an attack here’s a bit weird, a block from Ankillersaurus seems obvious.

…WHAT?!

IT’S TURN 2

WHAT MAGIC IS HE USING WITH 2 REDUCTIONS AND 1 CORE TO HIS NAME?

He could theoretically play a Cost 3 magic with 2 Red reductions but what such Magic threatens Dan here?

The only 2 Magics I can think of that meets the conditions for something that could threaten Dan’s gameplan of using Ankillersaurus for reduction is a card named Meteor Fall and a card from BS08 called Dragon Scramble.

**Flash**
During this turn, treat the color of a Spirit you control as Blue, and it gains +2000 BP.

**Main**
During this turn, when your “Dragon Emperor”/”Dragon Knight” family Spirit attacks, destroy every 3000 BP or less Spirit. Draw one card for each Spirit destroyed via this effect.
**Flash**
During this turn, give a Spirit +2000 BP.

These 2 Red Magics in question boost a Spirit’s BP by 2000, and with 2 Red symbols on board, could be played for 1 core, this would make Rainydle 3000 BP which would tie with Ankillersaurus, destroying both Rainydle and Ankillersaurus and leaving Dan with no Spirits.

The alternative is the wide array of Cost 4 Red Magics that can achieve a BP Gain of 3000, but using it would require that Otherworld King deplete Ankillersaurus, producing the exact same scenario of a 1-to-1 trade, except Dan trades Ankiller for an Ankiller rather than for a Rainydle.

And I thought Toppa was stupid, this is completely nonsensical! This is so unlike you Dan!

Yeah of course you bloody will.

I’m not even going to comment, Dan wholeheartedly deserved that one.

He has 3 lives remaining.

Suzuri must be in a panic, given that unlike the other Lightbearers he’s completely alone and has no real way of understanding what’s causing him so much pain.

This time around with the Lightbearer group, the pain is accompanied by an incredible feeling of anxiety, something feels generally wrong about Dan’s battle.

This is the most polite possible way of saying “I understand this is all very alarming but the FOREST IS BURNING”

Also at least Serge was listening and smart enough to realise their connection to Dan was the topic of discussion, Dan apparently can’t even memorize his own colour’s card pool.

Magisa explains that Kajitsu’s suffering is a result of Kajitsu using the forest to recover her strength, by doing so she became inextricably tied to the fate of the forest, meaning she’s feeling the flames that’s burning the forest down.

Hoo boy, that’s a mental image, Kajitsu’s genuinely feeling the effects of being burned alive.

To rectify this, they plan to diminish Kajitsu’s connection to the forest by leaving the Green World, which should get her far enough away such that it doesn’t impact her condition anymore.

Kajitsu has a different opinion however, declaring that she can’t run away from whatever’s happening.

The Insect-Loving Princess likely holds a large amount of empathy for the forest and wishes to protect it.

I’m getting the somewhat distinct feeling that Otherworld King is intentionally being obtuse to get him angry, but for what purpose I’m not sure, because I don’t remember and can’t extrapolate from the current situation.

Otherworld King breaks down Dan’s battle tactics, saying they’re just like the rumors about him, which I disagree with because Dan does use Magic when his life is low, though I suppose it’s only when his life is low, which is a shallow battle pattern.

Otherworld King has no more attackers, so he ends his turn.

Otherworld King’s insults are incredibly low hanging fruit too… I wonder if this is a case of Appealing to Emotion, a Logical fallacy in which one attempts to disprove their opponent’s arguments by making them angry, thereby making them appear less reasonable.

Dan’s turn, he summons Erimakilizard at Lv2 and Rainydle, I didn’t see Erimakilizard in his hand earlier, which means that he drew it for his turn.

This is a good draw though.

With 3 Spirits, Dan has 3 symbols with which to wield the maximum reductions for Extra Draw. He should have 7 core available, and he’s used 5 for his spirits, which meaaaans.

Bam, gotcha.

Dan draws 2 cards from his deck, and reveals the 3rd, a Red Spirit revealed this way is also added to Dan’s hand for an effective draw 3.

It displayed as if Dan were simply explaining the effect, but it did infact display the card he revealed.

As The ThunderEmperorDragon Siegwurm is a Red Spirit, Dan gets to add it to his hand.

Yuuki and I both think Dan is a dumbass for different reasons it seems.

Though Yuuki is noting that Dan’s acquisition of Siegwurm would have bolstered his will to fight, as Otherworld King lacks blockers, he’ll therefore be inspired to attack.

Pantera strangely notes that apparently soon, Dan won’t know what he’s fighting for.

Which is an incredibly… sinister thing to say.

Welp, time to see what happens when Dan takes one of the Otherworld King’s lives.

Dan attacks with Ankillersaurus and Otherworld King quite happily takes it from the life, this will leave him with 4 lives.

Well it looks like the damage is at least the same, the barrier is equal and the damage was strong enough to send Otherworld King’s chair reeling backwards.

Dan notices something’s odd, the Mood changed.

…And Otherworld King’s hair appears to have gone down a shade.

Otherworld King says “it’s an honor” and then declares that Battle Strengthens his Life. It seems like Otherworld King finds it about as enriching an activity as I do.

Rainydle attacks and Otherworld King welcomes it again, dropping him to 3 lives.

He’s… all too happy to receive that damage.

His hair is getting darker! And his voice is becoming less raspy too.

So it appears that this is a bit of a shitty situation, the damage isn’t balancing out, Otherworld King’s attacks are practically crucifying Dan and yet Otherworld King appears to be rejuvenated by it.

Otherworld King tries to goad Dan into attacking again but Dan chooses to end his turn, leaving Erimakilizard as a blocker.

This is good, Otherworld King will need 2 spirits to check Dan.

Dan’s having a bit of a crisis now, as despite supposedly being quite effective at winning the Mirror Match in Colour, he’s having trouble.

Well Dan, when you use the same Spirits, the result’s basically a coin flip.

Nah, I’m kidding, skill expression’s a very important thing in Mirror Matches.

Otherworld King’s turn, he uses Extra Draw

Dan’s quite surprised how similar their cards are, and their hands apparently.

Otherworld King draws 2 cards.

Ultimately confirming that their deck order is not the same, Otherworld King’s reveal is Victory Fire, another card Dan frequently uses.

When a card that isn’t Red or a Spirit is revealed by Extra Draw, it returns to the top of the deck. Meaning Victory Fire will be Otherworld King’s next draw.

Dan notes that the card choice similarities are far too convenient, he asserts that they are probably playing a True Mirror Match, that is, they’re playing the same deck, card-for-card.

On it’s face this means Dan has just as much chance of defeating Otherworld King as he does of defeating Dan, but skill expression’s incredibly important in Battle Spirits.

Dan becomes irate, because from Otherworld King’s next turn he’ll have to basically play around Victory Fire. He’s already on the backfoot from the full attack earlier.

Otherworld King summons a 2nd Rainydle, and brings Ankillersaurus to Lv3.

Otherworld King attacks with Ankillersaurus, and Dan notes that even if he blocks with Erimakilizard, he’ll still have the 2 Rainydles to contend with, making it unsafe to block.

Plus he’d lose the Erimakilizard, while he’d take out a Rainydle if he blocked one of those, taking a life here is fine.

With no other options, Dan resigns himself to dropping to 2 life.

And another part of his battle form is utterly smashed.

Suzuri went to bed, as one does when they get massive headpains for no reason, but is still distressed that he can feel Dan.

Everyone else follows suite.

I’m surprised Yuuki isn’t feeling the twinge of pain everyone else is getting, is it because he’s actually there?

Otherworld King seems to acknowledge the danger of losing spirits pointlessly now, and ends his turn. This makes Dan’s life taking a well-calculated choice.

Dan’s getting severe pain just from moving now, with only 3 lives down?

Dan’s motions to summon Siegwurm are also re-animated, he’s clearly feeling immense pain as he does this.

Dan summons The ThunderEmperorDragon Siegwurm

He doesn’t waste time, moving to attack with Siegwurm immediately.

Thanks to Clash, Otherworld King is forced to block, and can’t willingly take from the life.

Otherworld King just seems happy to see it honestly.

Otherworld King sacrifices a Rainydle to Siegwurm’s attack.

You… you defeated one Spirit Dan, it’s not that deep.

Dan attacks with Erimakilizard but naturally, Otherworld King takes it from the life.

Otherworld King is dropped to 2 lives, like Dan, and Dan ends his turn.

Unfortunately

It seems that the darkening of the hair should have been a sign.

The destruction of Otherworld King’s lives, has been rejuvenating the man with Youth.

He’s more than young enough to regain an immense amount of strength back in his legs, let alone just enough to stand.

If you thought that old Crone was the Otherworld King that you expected to be our Main antagonist, you were wrong.

Say hello to the True form of Otherworld King, this man, rejuvenated into a still-mature but much younger form.

And though Otherworld King has regained enough youth to stand firmly and strongly, Dan’s giving everything he has just to stay standing.

And worse yet, Dan is completely terrified.

The entire show thus far we’ve been told the Otherworld King has vast power such that most believe they stand no chance, and everytime Dan has recklessly disregarded these comments.

He’s now realizing the size of the gap in the immense fissure that separates him from Otherworld King, and why the man is so terrifying.

Unfortunately for me however.

It’s the end of the episode.

The card of the day has nothing for us either, no card of the day, just some commentary about how the battle will be violent if both characters use Clash.

But to be honest it’s a 2-part fight, there needn’t be any such break-ups between this battle and the next.

So I’ll take it for what it is, a sign to give my arms a rest, and enjoy the battle we’re witnessing next time.

I’ll see you all in the next one!

Gekiha Dan – Episode 25

Alright, Episode 24 we started heading for Otherworld King after kicking Pantera’s Robotic tush!

Now, onto Otherworld Ki-

Whatever it is, Hyoudo’s only on one life remaining.

And his opponent is Leon?!

Ah, I wasn’t expecting to get flung into a battle like that! Er, It looks like Leon’s playing Blue?

Well I guess whatever it was, it didn’t matter, Kenzo went from being the strongest 9 year old to…

Well I suppose he still is the strongest 9 year old, but Leon being able to take him out so easily and effortlessly is pretty bad news. And he’s still taking a precaution against Yuuki?

Given the scene we have, it seems like Leon ran right over to where Kajitsu was if he’s here.

First time? This is the first fight we’ve see-

Oh… Given Mai is being held carefully by Serge there, it appears that Mai had a go at him first, and Leon used a Purple/Yellow Hybrid deck, then when he went up against Kenzo he fought Blue.

Haha, well, Leon embodies one of my favourite character archetypes in this series, because it’s the archetype I personally love the most.

That is that Leon doesn’t have a main colour!

He freely swaps decks as he sees fit, using different colours in different combinations!

A true connoiseur for the game!

So, in particular it appears that Leon’s main colour is in fact Purple, and that this Purple colouring is the basis for many of his Hybrid decks.

Though this is directly stated it doesn’t tend to actually be what happens, as Leon’s been observed using decks without Purple. But that’s a little later, for now it seems all his Hybrids are Purple based.

And Kenzo, likely expecting to see the Yellow side of Leon’s Purple/Yellow deck, was blindsided by the fact that Leon was infact playing a Purple/Blue deck.

Purple Blue, by the way, goes about as well as White Blue does.

And a simple episode title, this time we’ll get to see the X-Rare that Clackey’s been hiding from us for a good few episodes!

Looks like that preview was a bit of a Flash forward. As we’re now peacefully talking about the Horizon Ladder

Seems like the residents of the Green world are mainly wildlife, as this one was built by insects, likely under the direction of Kajitsu.

They don’t seem to be having too great a time, as the Butterflies returning from the Horizon Ladder fade away completely.

Gosh that’s even worse than the Otherworlders in the Red World, there they stayed alive, these Butterflies did their job and then poofed out of existence.

Either that or they’re pieces of Kajitsu’s power, and they’re returning to her, but there’s never been an explicit statement that Kajitsu creates the butterflies she controls.

dunno what to think really.

Anyway, Kajitsu does seem to be feeling better here.

Zungurii asks the obvious question of why they aren’t committing horrible acts of terrorism.

To which the following statement is made, Kajitsu damn near blew up when the first Horizon Ladder was wiped out, destroying the Horizon Ladders in general may put her in grave danger.

Hell of a problem to have honestly, The Horizon Ladders are clearly there for something malicious and yet we can’t destroy them without harming a friend.

Seems the group are a bit stranded, the Horizon Ladder needs to stay put to keep Kajitsu in good condition, but they can’t go find Dan because Kajitsu only really starts to feel better while she’s in the Green World.

That’s the Spirit, Curry makes everything better.

That is a fair point, Clackey and Zungurii are currently differing in that, while both agree they dislike Kajitsu, Zungurii isn’t letting that get in the way of helping her because he knows he should, and Clackey’s being Clackey.

I’m still sad that I don’t live in a household that loves Curry as much as I do, really depressing to be honest.

Also it seems like Clackey is starting to be taken in by Kajitsu’s appearance, he may have his qualms but he can’t ignore a pretty girl when he sees one.

Or he’s just being a moody muppet and is just automatically getting into a poor mood whenever Kajitsu’s around.

Magisa, you’ve been eating his Curry for literal days now, you’ve tasted it every single day since you met the kid, “Can’t believe you made this” my ass.

I suppose it must be extra nice today, Zungurii put his focus into making it since he couldn’t do anything else about Dan or the Horizon Ladder.

Kajitsu however hasn’t touched any of her food, and Clackey’s being absolutely riveting about it.

Even Hyoudo’s digging it, eat plenty kid, you’re a growing boy.

HEATHENS

THE LOT OF YOU

THIS WOMAN IS OFFICIALLY ON MY SHIT-LIST.

DEATH TO THE NON-BELIEVER!

Spicy food is the pinnacle of all food and I refuse to believe a single soul who says otherwise!

If you cannot handle the spice you are ~~too weak for this-~~ entirely valid and I respect your choice in food and would highly recommend checking out some less spicier curry options such as Butter Chicken (or Vegetarian/Vegan alternatives for those who follow those diets) as the curry experience is something everyone should enjoy.

This was my Curry-is-more-important-to-me-than-spicy-food PSA. Thank you.

Lady can’t handle a Curry you think she’s ready for the sheer awesome that’s Ramen?

Those come in big bowls good sir!

I would liken this person to people I know however I know things about this little lady that would make anyone who doesn’t know shudder.

So I am not going to do that.

You’ll understand, in due time.

So it appears that Kajitsu’s diet consists entirely of sweet food and she isn’t capable of eating anything else.

This is… certainly a level of pickyness I wasn’t expecting. The person with the worst eating disorder I’ve ever personally witnessed has a wider palette than this girl.

Mai tells Serge and Magisa to look after Kajitsu, and drags everyone else off to find something in the Forest.

Not a bad plan actually, I suppose that Kajitsu generally eats a diet consisting of mainly fruit if she’s limited herself to sweet things.

Zungurii’s soul as a cook seems to override his hatred of Kajitsu, as he moves very quickly to assist Mai in searching for something to eat. It’s quite adorable seeing him try so hard.

…Oh god I’m starting to warm up to Zungurii

Oh god what is happening?

Clackey’s also told to get moving but he’s incredibly unhappy about it.

Seems Leon knew very quickly where to begin looking for Kajitsu and got there right away.

I’m a little surprised at the distance he covered but I suppose his ship is capable of outdoing even The Violet.

It seems like Leon’s ship has both a Castle and a Lion motif but hot damn that thing is a BEHEMOTH

You could fit a small town in there!

It seems that Zungurii is going to slowly turn into a Honey-addicted Golden Bear. Based on the bees it looks like he’s found at least a schmeckle of honey.

Okay why does Kenzo need to climb that tree the kid is 9.

and I know you’re younger Zungurii but you’re made of literal bricks.

It’s hard to indicate in any meaningful way with singular shots as its a sliding one, but the Tree is really bloody tall.

Standard human reaction to Bees, can relate, especially since there’s the danger of allergies and such.

I think the issue 99% of us have is that we have no idea what the hell the line is before they are bothered!

God I could go for some honey right about now.

And I bloody hate the stuff. Honey tends to be too sickeningly sweet for my taste buds, I can just about bear it in my coffee.

Hyoudo seems to start having the same problem that Mai was having earlier, he has absolutely no idea why everyone is so interested in Dan.

This is true, Hyoudo may have lost to Dan, but the fact that it required Three responsive magics to achieve and would have failed had Dan not drawn any of them means that their relative strength should be about the same.

Hyoudo starts wondering if it’s because Dan has a ton of cards, or if he designs attractive decks.

Naw, apparently Dan receives so much attention because he’s a dumbass.

Well, when someone who’s incapable of worrying about themselves and consistently worries about others has a contagious personality, it does lend one like Zungurii to worry about Dan to cover up for it.

Zungurii’s fat-ass gets stuck in the hole, so he needs pulling out.

Sadly it seems all that commotion from that action “Bothered” the bees.

Mai and Clackey seem to have set off in search of Otherworld Fruit.

Also forget wondering if they’re sweet, are they even edible?

Many Fruits can be poisonous!

OH I SEE YOU THOUGHT OF THAT DID YOU?

FUCK YOU SHOW.

CALLING MY BLUFF.

Thanks Clackey, really adding to the conversation.

The point is you can grab several samples, see which ones are sweet, then go back and get the ones that are indeed Sweet.

Yeah as it turns out “Condoned Slavery” is pretty up there in the list of disqualifying features.

Clackey reiterates his disqualifying feature, namely a girl who is mysterious, never talks much, and ensures her thoughts are an enigma, then he wants absolutely nothing to do with it.

Is it? Communication’s kind of important in a relationship, a person who makes no attempt to make their thoughts known, even to voice distaste or request something, can be incredibly difficult to work with, many people won’t bother with a person like that cuz you’ll never know if they’re happy or not with you.

That’s not to say it’s impossible, but without communication, relationships can and will crumble, the main step will be rectifying that exact issue of their personality.

Translation: “Fuck you, it’s my opinion”

Clackey raises the ultimate question: What’s the point?

Mai poses that Kajitsu bearing Mother Core’s Light makes her an extension of their mission to Protect Mother Core, as they’re one and the same, it’s their duty to protect Kajitsu.

“And I have no reason to forget or to forgive!”

Clackey fires back, noting that not only is she the enemy’s little sister, but Yuuki sanctioned the slavery of thousands of Otherworlders, forcibly separating many from their families, all to acquire the labor needed to build a Horizon Ladder to mess with Mother Core.

He’s a prick, and he’s well supported by his little sister.

Mai’s clear the other extreme, Kajitsu has apparently pushed herself severely far for the sake of that idiotic sibling, to leave her alone in that state, justified or not would be an incredibly cruel thing to do.

There’s a very clear parallel of discussion here, think of it like politics, there are many who would not extend a hand to those they are ideologically opposed to, If you met someone who was pro-slavery and they were drowning, and you had the power to save their lives, would you let that ideological opinion, however severe, stop you from doing an otherwise moral obligation?

Many would say yes. Which is also an admittance that someone who wishes to deny others their basic human rights should not have their human right to exist. And would not protect it if it was threatened.

Morally however, rights are not rights if they can be taken away, so someone’s ideological opinion should not cost them their right to live, regardless if they’re attempting to infringe upon the rights of others.

It’s that kind of debate, if there is a right answer, we’re not agreed on what it is. I for one would save someone I was ideologically opposed to, but I’d be less forgiving toward someone who directly threatened someone I cared about.

This is funny because Clackey completely misses the obvious implication of that statement, if Dan would look after Kajitsu, and you are here for him. Then it’s obvious what you should be doing, right?

Hah, that’s fucking RICH coming from Viole Mai, Queen of pissing off.

You exited stage left because you thought Dan was too interesting, and now you have the gall to tell Clackey to not be part of the group you yourself left?

Granted, if Clackey’s going to be incredibly difficult about protecting Kajitsu perhaps he would be a liability rather than a help.

Mai then goes off at him and tells him to get back to picking fruit.

It seems like Mai returned without Clackey? But on an upside, Kajitsu’s eating Hotcakes with honey.

Ah, they’ve finally noticed he’s missing.

You know, this is a pretty bad place to lose a Human who isn’t from here, I’m not certain that it’s particularly easy finding a gate back home.

I suppose it’s typical for a girl of 13 to just completely unperson someone they’re upset with. Happened in my high school too, set of girls who would completely ignore someone if they were upset with them without telling them. You just got socially ghosted.

It’s awful, but you don’t have a right to a specific person’s attention after all.

I see Clackey’s found a hill to brood on.

So, the show is framing this as if Kajitsu is completely innocent, and that she’s just been powerless to handle her big brother.

Here’s the thing though, Yuuki very clearly cares for Kajitsu and her opinion, if she had asked him to stop he would have, and she clearly had no fear of him.

Instead she supported him in every way, and even battled Dan to buy time for him to complete a Horizon Ladder.

She knew precisely what she was doing, framing Clackey’s issues as “Well she’s the Sister of a guy I don’t like” makes zero sense.

A War Criminal might commit several war crimes but you don’t start claiming that his 2nd cousin is equally as guilty just because they happen to share a Grandad.

Interestingly, though extremely difficult and I have the utmost respect for anyone who can pull it off, it is possible to do right by people you aren’t able to forgive.

Forgiveness is the absolution of a punishment, if you know what the action you can’t forgive is, and you’re clear on what the punishment for that discretion should be, you can act perfectly within that person’s otherwise best interests as long as the punishment is upheld.

I know it’s a heavily downplayed example, but if I didn’t forgive a family member who stole something from me, I would heavily restrict their ability to come into contact with my things, as long as I continue to do so, they have it on good authority that I haven’t forgiven them for the act.

Ignoring that topic of discussion, Leon’s finally appeared.

Interesting that Hyoudo still refers to him as “Brustrom-sama”, using the lord-like honorific, I suppose they were allies not too long ago and switching up your dialect based on the situation can be a bit hard.

I suppose it’s part of Brustrom’s current job description that he needs to so excessively suck Leon’s dick.

Granted, Brustrom did have his title of Blue King stripped from him, without the proper show of respect Leon could probably do far worse.

For those who maybe aren’t familiar with the crime of Treason, Treason is quite specifically, the crime of actively “attacking a state authority to which one owes allegiance”

This is things like helping your enemies in war, overthrowing your government, spying on your own government entities for the enemy, etcetera. Depending on the authority, simply sleeping with the King’s Wife could be considered an act of Treason.

So while it’s usually meant to punish people acting against their own country, in practice it ends up being anything that generally offends whoever’s leading if done directly

Leon seems quite fond of speaking for his King, and he uses the word “suspected” very carefully, he believes that Yuuki gave Kajitsu to the enemy for the direct intent of keeping her away from Otherworld King’s forces, and they kind of need her.

Kajitsu’s a pretty important witness if it comes to the crime of Treason given the Treasonous act in question was “giving Kajitsu to the Lightbearers”

Hyoudo sees through the crap for what it is.

Surprised we can hear Brustrom with his mouth full of Leon’s balls!

Yeah it seems the official type language isn’t fooling anybody.

Oh that’s cool, Mai’s deck is held in the little heart adornment on her thigh highs.

So I was right, Mai was the first to challenge Leon to battle.

Seems like whenever the gate is opened for a new battle, a rainbow coloured light envelops the surrounding areas.

Well you’re not gonna find out from there.

Anyway, I didn’t wanna go out of my way to get a single screenshot of it, but Clackey starts making his way back to the group.

Regardless, we know how this ended.

It seems like when Leon attempted to take the spoils he earned for beating Mai, he was blocked by Hyoudo

Hyoudo feels the need to point out to Brustrom that he very clearly made no promises of allegience beyond the tournament.

It seems Brustrom is an inherently very trusting person, he’s been quite easily bamboozled due to his faith in the words and actions of other people.

Leon’s face is probably the same one we all made, getting back to this moment again.

Because he did, infact, lose like this.

Seems even Kajitsu’s raring to go now. Granted she is the last available battler.

Kajitsu asks to use Hyoudo’s deck as it’s the most compatible deck available, and she apparently doesn’t seem to have access to her own deck at the moment, god knows why.

Naturally, battles that don’t involve Kajitsu already take a massive toll on her, and the last one she took part in she wiped out a Horizon Ladder.

Kajitsu isn’t naive though, she’s aware they intend to use her to exert control over Yuuki out of fear for her safety, and she refuses to be burdensome.

Before anything can happen however, they’re interrupted.

Erm, guys, that’s the enemy, why are you LISTENING to him.

You’re all armed with batons, you can literally kick the snot out of him!

I’m not sure Clackey has the point he thinks his making, many of Hyoudo’s cards are cards that Kajitsu would use, such as MachG and Amenborg.

Sure Byak-Garo’s not an Insect, but… Neither was Hououga, and Byak-Garo’s easier to use.

The Episode title dictates that he must.

It seems Mai really wasn’t expecting Clackey to come back after being so harsh on him, nor expected him to run to the defense of Kajitsu.

And now we can get to the battle!

But before that, we jump to Dan finally making it to the top of the stairs.

Unfortunately, to reach Otherworld King, they must go through the Wisdom Gate… Which is another flight of absurdly long stairs.

No you see, the Wisdom Gate is just the 2nd of them, you then have the Fool’s Gate, the Masochist Gate, and finally, the Insanity Gate.

In actuality, Dan was told he’d be meeting with Otherworld King before and ran into Pantera. So he’s likely asking if it’s not another Pantera situation.

Yuuki agrees to keep his promise (and by extension Pantera’s) as he defeated Pantera.

And thus one of the more important details of the show occurs, Otherworld King’s ascendency is a trial by combat, whoever can defeat Otherworld King automatically becomes Otherworld King.

This is likely to ensure that chaos doesn’t befall anyone who is able to defeat him, or Otherworld, Power vacuums and all, and more importantly, rewards the new Otherworld King with access to resources that can allow them to shape Otherworld however they please, including revitalizing it.

It could also potentially be a trap, Otherworld King very clearly has a vision for Otherworld and that power being transferred to his successor might cause them to follow in his footsteps.

He’s the Clash King, not the Otherworld King, you think Dan rules anything other than a battlefield?

Dan, quite positively, says this is a problem for later.

Dan sees through Yuuki and is clearly aware that Yuuki is wondering why it should be Dan that battles Otherworld King, to which Dan states defeating him is the reason Dan even came “here”

It’s loose wording, but it can be extrapolated any way you wish, to come to the Wisdom Gate, or to come to Otherworld, it’s all the same, he’s only here to take out the King.

Well, Balls, we have a rare moment of turn skipping.

In this case, we’re off to Turn 5. Clackey has Gremly who appears to be exhausted, and Leon is back to using Purple, with Hellscorpio and a new Spirit, Ashtal.

Ashtal is a vanilla Spirit from BS07, of the Nightling family, a family that typically features Vampiric creatures. It’s a Cost 1 with no reductions but in return for that forced payment, it’s Lv2 reaches a nice and hefty 4000 BP with only 3 core. For decks that need the extra power, its not bad.

Leon’s notably missing a life, which explains why Gremly’s exhausted, he took one on Clackey’s last turn.

Leon raises both Spirits’ levels.

During Hellscorpio’s attack, we can see that Clackey actually still has all of his lives remaining, and 3 cards in his hand.

Leon’s full attack however drops Clackey down to 3 lives, giving Leon the life advantage, but leaving himself with no blockers.

Clackey’s turn, he summons The Angelia Cherubim.

We see at this point Clackey actually has a Fairy Tanya on his board as well. And his Gremly is Lv2.

Anyway, Clackey reveals 3 cards from his deck as he has 3 Yellow symbols, he only has 1 Magic target, Royal Potion, but I’d like to have a look at the last card on the left, the one that isn’t Froger.

*Families: Divine Spirit*
**Lv1-Lv2-Lv3 [Either Attack Step]**
when your Cost 2 Spirits are destroyed, draw a card.

The Angelia Kleio is a Cost 2 Yellow Spirit from BS05, it’s a noteworthy card for various reasons, the first but not least of those is that it’s Cost 2, a Cost number that Yellow actively supports with many of it’s effects as it’s one of Yellow’s designated gimmicks.

The second is that it’s one of the cheapest “Divine Spirit” family cards currently available, many Divine Spirits can be a bit up in cost, so Kleio being low to the ground means it can benefit from those effects really easily.

Lastly, is it’s powerful effect at All Levels, Kleio draws you a card anytime your Cost 2 spirits are destroyed, this includes herself as a Spirit’s effects don’t stop applying until after they hit the trash, and the destroyed state leaves them on the field until the very end.

Kleio is a must have for any Cost 2-centric decks built around this time, due to the fact that in many cases it refunds it’s own cost in card advantage, along with refunding you any cards you lost with any potential rushes you may have made, Kleio lets you be reckless with your resources.

Just thought it was a cool card to talk about, anyway, onward.

Having added Royal Potion to his hand, Clackey takes a life from Leon with Tanya.

Next, Clackey attacks with Gremly

During Flash timing, Clackey uses Royal Potion, allowing all Cost 2 Spirits to Refresh, the only Cost 2 Spirit on the board at present is Gremly himself.

Leon takes another life, leaving him with a measly 2.

Clackey attacks again, now if Gremly and Cherubim land their attacks, Clackey wins right here and right now.

But it seems Leon has decided he’s done enough scouting to confirm that Clackey is a Magic-using Yellow Battler, I suppose he’s formulated the best plan of action against it.

**Flash**
Move 1 core from your Reserve to your Life.

Holy Elixir’s a Cost 4 White Magic from BS06, it’s precisely as simple as it reads, you move 1 core from the Reserve to your Life, this essentially operates like blanking an attack during flash timing, though on your turn it can be restorative for other mind games.

Leon’s Life is restored by 1 from his previous 2, leaving him with a current total of 3.

Naturally, Leon being Leon, he’s once again wielded a colour that he hasn’t shown the Lightbearers before, first it was Purple into Yellow, then it was either Pure Blue or Purple into Blue, now it’s Purple into White.

Purple/White mind you, is an excellent combination.

To use a Purple main for the beginning of the fight, he forces you to operate to address his Purple strategies, before blindsiding you with his unforeseeable second colour, it’s unforeseeable because he’s skilled in various Purple mixes and thus it cannot be known what colour he’s using at any given time until he does so, meaning you can’t reliably plan for any given second colour to appear.

For an individual match it can be hit or miss depending on how well he’s been doing with Purple, but as an art of war where he must play many matches, it’s an apt way to prevent anyone from being truly prepared for him.

Using his newly restored life, he takes a life from Gremly.

Clackey worries that without a Refresh, he can’t win, and to full attack without one opens him up to a complete loss as Leon only needs 1 more spirit.

So Clackey ends his turn, leaving Cherubim to block.

Leon’s turn, and he summons a completely new White Spirit.

Haha, not quite class, That was the Sacred Gungnir.

This here’s The HellSacred Gungnir!

*Families: Armed Machine*
**Lv1-Lv2-Lv3 [Your Main Step]**
When summoning a Spirit card with **Tribute**, this Spirit’s cost gets +3.

A Cost 3 White Spirit from BS08

That’s right, we’ve seen an all new BS08 card before we’ve seen Clackey’s BS07 X-Rare, cuz that makes sense!

Whatever happened to Gungnir powered it up. HellSacred Gungnir has the exact same stats as Gungnir, but has gained an extra Lv3 at 4 core, allowing it to Power up to 6000 BP, and for it’s most versatile feature, it’s effect. When HellSacred Gungnir is used for a Tribute, it’s cost is increased by 3, what that means is HellSacred Gungnir can be used to cover the cost as if HellSacred were a Cost 6. This card which can be summoned on the very first turn, can be used to cover the cost of the SacredEmperor Siegfrieden on it’s own.

It’s gone from a mediocre defensive card that’s just a convenient Armed Machine, to a straight up upgrade, it’s a convenient Armed Machine and a facilitator for Tribute.

Next, Leon uses another card we haven’t quite seen yet.

**Flash**
Destroy an opposing exhausted Cost 4 or less Spirit.

Bloody Coffin is a Cost 4 Purple Magic that destroys any opposing exhausted Spirit with a Cost of 4 or less, this can also be used during an attack as it’s timing is during Flash, so you can blank an attack using this.

It was released in BS05.

Gremly is destroyed.

As Clackey has no exhausted spirits with Light, Gremly’s effect when destroyed is pretty useless here.

Finally, Leon ends his turn without attacking.

Magisa comments that Leon has done this twice now, though we’ve only seen this instance, where Leon ends his turn without attacking even though the conditions are favourable for him to do so.

Naturally, given that Leon’s strategy relies on blindsiding the opponent, it’s likely he would prefer to play around any of Clackey’s defense cards, and reduce Clackey’s resources with his own counters.

When Clackey presses Leon for why he’s being so passive, Leon drops this one-liner, “There’s no point in defeating someone who’s lost”

This is to say, that Clackey is lost in his own thoughts, rather than having lost the game.

Clackey is sent back to his thoughts, proving Leon correct, Clackey has no idea why he’s fighting, he clearly doesn’t feel he’s supposed to give 2 shits about whether or not Kajitsu is taken or not, and yet he’s here.

Clackey is torn up over it, he doesn’t like the idea of letting Kajitsu suffer but he also doesn’t want to protect her, so he calls out to his thoughts of Dan, wondering what Dan would do in this situation…

…As if it wasn’t bloody obvious for the guy who meets every brick wall with his face.

Lightbearers have the power to feel each other’s thoughts, as Yuuki felt Dan’s vision of being defeated by Walhalance, Clackey’s now trying to feel out Dan’s current feelings.

Conveniently at this time, Yuuki asks a rather simple question, why does Dan fight for others rather than himself?

The obvious answer would be because it’s the morally right thing to do, or because he’s a good person, but both answers sound like he’s trying to paint himself as some moral paragon or some such.

No, Dan chooses to be honest, he doesn’t need a reason. He acts because he wants to, why he wants to is irrelevant beyond that fact.

And Clackey finally resolves his inner conflict, of course he has a vendetta against Kajitsu.

But that does not mean he needs to bring her harm, or need a reason to protect her from harm.

Conflict resolved, Clackey is once again Maximum Womanizer

Clackey finally brings it out, He summons The ArcAngelia Isfiel at Level 1

Let’s talk about it!

*Families: Divine Spirit*
**Lv1-Lv2-Lv3 [When Attacks/Blocks]**
You can use a Magic card without paying the cost, and after the Magic effect resolves, you can activate the same effect once and only once more.
**Lv2-Lv3 Holy Life [When Attacks]**
When this Spirit’s attack reduces the opposing Life, put a core from the Void to your Life.

The Yellow X-Rare from BS07. It’s of the Divine Spirit family, so perfectly in tune with Clackey’s deck.

At all Levels, Isfiel enables the use of 1 Magic, completely free of charge, and as an added bonus, once it’s finished resolving it’s effect, you can fire the effect again free of charge.

So it essentially allows you to cast 1 Magic from your hand, twice, for no cost.

This effect is quite nasty, as the cost of the card, nor the colour, isn’t taken into account, this allows for quite nasty effect repeats, one example would be using BS03’s Double Hearts to give a symbol to a Spirit, and then give another symbol to a spirit, making Isfiel Triple symbol for a Turn, or making 2 Spirits Double Symbol for a turn.

The 2nd effect is a new keyword we’ve yet to see in Gekiha Dan, Holy Life. A Keyword that rewards aggressive Yellow play, when a Spirit with Holy Life damages the opposing Life, a Life from the Void is restored.

Many low to the ground decks featuring strong Holy Life centric strategies can be a problem for any deck that aims to get the Life advantage, as a Holy Life deck can essentially always obtain the life advantage due to recovering Lives (and therefore negating previous hits to their life) for being aggressive whereas other Aggro decks mostly don’t.

Since this life comes from the Void as well, it’s an indirect form of Core accumulation, it’s quite potent.

The only thing going against Isfiel here is it’s BP, It has an incredibly low BP value, but given it’s penchant for allowing you to perform rather powerful combos on it’s own, it probably doesn’t need the BP really.

Fun fact, in Battle Spirits Saga, the “Holy Life” Keyword was localized as “Blessed”

Clackey raises Cherubim to Lv2, presumably this is just for it’s BP, as currently there are no Light Spirits to benefit from Cherubim’s Lv2 effect.

Cherubim attacks, and Leon allows himself to be dropped to 1 Life.

Clackey then attacks with Isfiel, a weird note is that Clackey doesn’t use any of it’s effects this turn.

A more cooler note is the fact that Isfiel’s Helmet actually becomes a Visor when she attacks, which is awesome.

Leon blocks with Ashtal.

So Leon’s performed a rather cool trick, he’s blocked with Ashtal, and as Ashtal is almost certainly going to lose to Isfiel, it doesn’t really matter what happens to it.

As a result, he depletes Ashtal’s core using Holy Elixir, in Battle Spirits, the disappearance of the blocker mid-flash doesn’t allow your attack to reach the life, once an attack is blocked, it’s been blocked.

This sort of tactic basically lets you make the most out of your core, by chump blocking something, and then using the core that would otherwise go to the reserve uselessly for something now, it’s not like the Spirit needs it anymore.

This results in Isfiel “Missing”, and being unable to do anything with it’s attack.

This tactic works similarly to a “Miss” in rulings as well, a Spirit who is depleted this way isn’t counted as being defeated by the Spirit it was battling, so effects that rely on the Showdown step, that is, defeating an opponent via BP comparison, won’t occur when the Spirit is depleted this way.

Ashtal is defeated, but Leon gains another Life.

Clackey has decided he doesn’t care how many times Leon restores his life, he’s still going to win.

With the board the way it is, Leon will need 2 Spirits in order to threaten Clackey for game.

Well that came out of nowhere! And the Core!

Leon’s operating with only 1 reduction on this thing, he’s got 11 core total, 2 are on his spirits, and he’s just spent 7 of it.

An oldie but a goodie from the Toppa days, Leon summons a White X-Rare.

*Families: Giant Beast*
**Lv1-Lv2-Lv3**
Give all your White Spirits the effect:
“**[When Blocks]**
This Spirit gains +2000 BP.”
**Lv2**
Give all your Spirits the effect: “**Armor: Red/Purple/Green** This Spirit is unaffected by opposing Red/Purple/Green Spirit/Nexus/Magic effects.”
**Lv3**
Give all your Spirits: **Armor: Red/Purple/Green/Yellow/Blue**.

First time we’ve seen this in a while from Toppa Bashin, so let’s look at it again!

IceBeast Mam-Morl is a Giant Beast White X-Rare from BS03. It’s better suited for an all-white build but I suppose it’s difficult to find cards that aren’t.

Namely, Mam-Morl grants a 2000 BP boost to White Spirits when they block at Lv1, at Lv2 it gives Red, Purple and Green Armor to all Spirits, and at Lv3, a requirement of 8 core, it grants every Spirit Armor to every colour that is not White.

Leon has enough core to raise this to Lv3 on his next turn, it’s likely that he intends to grant himself Armor to Clackey’s Yellow cards on the following turn to put a stop to any chances for a turnaround with Yellow Magic.

For now though, Leon doesn’t have anywhere near enough Core to raise it to even Lv2. So it sits at a measly 6000 BP.

Er, what? You spent 7 core playing a card that only has enough core to enable a defense and you attack?

Clackey takes a life from both Mam-Morl, and takes another from Hellscorpio’s subsequent attack, leaving him with 1.

Leon moves for the last life, though he’s only summoned 1 Spirit, so this is gonna get blocked.

Clackey blocks with The Fairy Tanya

**Flash**
When the battle resolves, end the battle without comparing BP.

Clackey uses Archaic Smile, a Cost 4 Yellow Magic from BS06, it has a rather simplistic effect, that being that it ends a Battle without comparing BP.

In practice what this means is that neither Spirit gets destroyed during the battle, as the Showdown step never occurs.

Geez, Leon also has a Flash?

…Well that explains why he so confidently attacked with spirits suited for defending.

Hellscorpio is depleted for the cost.

**Flash**
Refresh all exhausted Spirits you control. During this turn, non-“Mounted Warrior” family Spirits refreshed by this effect cannot attack.

Chivalry’s from BS06, I’m somewhat surprised we hadn’t seen it until now as I’m almost certain it was used at some point, but I’m blanking so I’ll mention it again.

It’s a simple card, It’s a superior version of Pure Elixir that refreshes all of your spirits with the caveat that anything not in the family “Mounted Warrior” is able to attack. This added benefit of Mounted Warriors being able to attack again is offset by the card having 2 less reductions than Pure Elixir.

2 Lives, 2 Blockers, and Clackey has 3 attackers.

He’ll need another Spirit, or a way to remove one of Leon’s.

Bit premature considering it’s only the start of Clackey’s turn.

Clackey raises Isfiel to Lv2.

Cherubim and Tanya are raised to Lv3.

Isfiel attacks and is blocked by Mam-Morl

But Clackey fires a Magic, Wing Boots.

Now, during this turn, anytime Isfiel is blocked, if the blocker has a lower Level than Isfiel, the attack is treated as if it wasn’t blocked, and goes straight to the opponent’s life.

Leon is dropped to 1 Life.

I was about to comment “Hey that’s not how the effect works” but then I went and checked the rulings.

The way Isfiel’s effect works is a little weird due to the way it’s worded, but checking the official rulings, it works like this: During ordinary Flash Timing, Isfiel can cost flub one of the Magic cards you choose to use in your hand, once that card has finished resolving, you can then resolve that Magic again, once more and only once more.

Hence why Clackey was able to wait until the Block before using Wing Boots and repeating it’s effect.

Thanks to Wing Boots specifying a target as part of it’s effect, Cherubim is selected as the next candidate for Wing Boots.

Clackey then activates Isfiel’s Lv2 effect, Holy Life, restoring one life to himself as he was able to damage Leon.

With one final attack from Cherubim, Leon’s last life is smashed, and the Bewitching Leon is defeated.

Damn, guy barely looks fazed by the whole ordeal.

He’s got a couple scratches on his armor but he’s practically unshaken.

Clackey is the designated Dan replacement, even IF Hyoudo is the one who’s meant to be his equal in skill.

Unfortunately, all of Hyoudo’s abilities are centred on known quantities, this makes Hyoudo exceptionally susceptible to being blindsided by things he doesn’t expect.

Leon allows Kajitsu to remain, and leaves.

Naturally, time for a little awkwardness due to the earlier argument they had.

Clackey squares away her doubts, by repeating reasoning she herself gave him earlier, he’s basically admitting he was wrong and she doesn’t need to worry about the discussion any further.

Indeed, what a character, he’s definitely one of my personal favourites in this series. I’ve always been a big fan of characters who wield hybrid colour decks, and Leon maximises it by playing various different decks.

He’s just like me, for real!

Belga 2.0 everyone.

Oh-ho, you’re really going to tell the girl with the Brother Complex to call you “Brother”?

Also given that you’re a man of romance that’s kind of fucking weird.

Thanks Kajitsu for putting an end to whatever the hell that was going to turn into.

Granted I sadly know the reason why she said no and we’re still not at that stage yet so I can’t talk about it.

Later in The Violet, Magisa comments that it seemed like Leon “lost on purpose”

She isn’t totally wrong, he chose not to attack on turns where he could have gained an advantage, he did initially use the excuse that Clackey was lost and therefore had no reason to defeat him but given the stakes involved that seems a bit flimsy a reason.

Unfortunately for them, even though Leon did lose, he’s still holding all the cards, such as their exact position at all times.

Sure he didn’t take Kajitsu, but now he knows where she is at any given moment.

One might wonder how he’s able to track them?

It seems when Hyoudo was defeated, a tracker was placed on his bag.

So now, because of that, Leon always knows where Hyoudo is, and so long as he doesn’t leave The Violet Crew, he’ll know where the rest are too.

This marks the end of the episode.

Naturally, the card of the day is Isfiel.

But I’ve already covered all of the quirks of her effect, listing off useful cards probably wouldn’t help much either unless you’re playing a format restricted game.

Though I suppose if you are Playing Format Restricted, using Thorn Prison sounds absolutely hilarious.

Though, we did finally see a BS08 card in the form of The HellSacred Gungnir.

So I’ll talk about the 2 X-Rares in BS08 that we won’t see.

*Families: Shell Insect, Blade Beast*
**Tribute: Cost 3 or more → Void**
After paying for the summoning cost, you must send all cores from a Cost 3 or more Spirit you control to the Void.
**Lv1-Lv2-Lv3 [When Attacks]**
When only the opposing Spirit is destroyed via BP comparison, send an opposing Life to their Reserve.
**Lv2-Lv3 [When Attacks]**
When the opposing Life is reduced, by sending two cores from this Spirit to the Void, refresh this Spirit.

*Families: Divine Spirit, Dark Artes*
**Lv1-Lv2-Lv3 [When Summoned]**
Discard any number of cards from your Hand. For each card you discarded, draw a card.
**Lv2-Lv3 [When Attacks]**
You can use a Yellow Magic card from your Trash as if it was from your Hand.
**Lv3 [Either Attack Step]**
When a Magic effect is used, draw a card.

A Cost 8 Tribute Spirit in the form of The GreatKing Blacktaurus, a Dark Evolution of Kingtaurus, much like DarkDragonEmperor Siegfried.

And a Cost 7 Spirit, The FallenAngelia Mikafar, a Dark Evolution of the typical ArcAngelia Mikafar

Covering Blacktaurus first, the first thing to note is it’s rather lax Tribute Cost, it can be summoned Tributing any Cost 3 or greater Spirit, Spirits of that scale tend to want something a bit bigger, like a Cost 5. Blacktaurus is a relentless attacker, anytime it defeats an opposing Spirit, an opposing life is sent to the reserve, and anytime the opposing life is reduced while it’s attacking, it can send 2 core from itself to the Void in order to Refresh, letting it repeat the process.

It’s almost a straight upgrade from The Providence Hououga, needing less Core to summon (though the same minimum cost to play), a Tribute of a Cost 3 (But you’re probably not doing that while BlackAmenborg exists), but ultimately it can really nastily check your opponent if they can’t properly answer it.

Of course, one of the ways to stop it’s nasty attack train is to beat it with something stronger, after all it’s Lv3 needs a whopping 7 core and before then it’s only got 9000 BP, and the other way is to do what Leon did with Ashtal, deplete your spirit before Blacktaurus can defeat it.

Mikafar on the other hand is less destructive but more supportive, she empties your hand and refreshes it with the amount of cards you tossed out when she’s summoned, additionally, while she’s attacking she enables the use of any of the Yellow cards in your Trash as if they were in your hand, this can be done repeatedly as long as you have cost to pay, for example, I dunno, using Wing Boots multiple times during her attack to flood the board with semi-unblockables. To add to the cycling, anytime you use Magic during an Attack Step at Level 3, she nets you a card.

Fallen Mikafar essentially creates what I’ll call “Virtual” card advantage, there’s no actual card advantage, but the game acts as if you do, cards are not “Used up” as they should be and can be re-used repeatedly, anytime this happens you’re allowed to draw cards, etc.

She’s incredibly frail however, your deck needs a very clear gameplan in order to use her effectively, but if you have considered this properly then she can be a very potent support.

And of course, the other reason the card was a good release was due to the fact that the actual Mikafar was banned a little before this, thus this was the only way for players to make use of the “Mikafar” character in any way.

Course, ArcAngelia Mikafar is now back in the game after so long but that’s a discussion for faaaaar later.

Anyway, fret not about Gekiha Dan missing out on these X-Rares, as BS08 was the first set to feature X-Rares of every colour, and the game has continued down that trend since, which means this does spoil the presence of new Red, White, Purple and Blue X-Rares in the upcoming episodes but aahhhh that’s not all that much of a Spoiler, especially since this game does like to blindside us with who wields them.

Anyway, see you lot in the next one! Buh-bye!

Gekiha Dan – Episode 24

I got completely jipped out of a fight last episode, yes it was plot relevant but you think I watch Card Game anime just so I can not watch card games?

Come on now.

Especially since we’re so close to seeing Otherworld King for the first time, he’s been completely offscreen for so long.

Naturally though, given we’re so close to the Halfway point, I get the sneaking suspicion the show will attempt to exert the coolness of having a main antagonist who doesn’t appear for half the show.

Seems we’re starting with Pantera deliberating in a lone room.

He’s… Got a fair few incredibly human objects in his room, a Globe, a Television, a Washing Machine.

Oh you can’t fly this under the radar with me, Pantera has a flashback where he says the name of “Meteorwurm” but that isn’t what he says

His actual line was “Is that the Red Soldier’s Deck?”

It seems the makeup of Dan’s deck, and his choice of Key card has Pantera interested in the type of person Dan is.

Also, Pantera’s pose here is quite memorable.

It’s the thinking pose of the famed statue, “The Thinker”

So, the guy is very clearly meant to emulate some kind of Robot here, but you can tell by the edges of his eyes that they’re octagonal-cut rubies.

It could also just be oddly cut red glass but you don’t tend to cut glass like that, you’d expect it to be flat.

It seems Pantera’s opened the gate to go... somewhere.

But given that opening the gate is usually reserved for battles, and Pantera has no opponent, our only assumption is that it’s the same situation as Dan’s gate opening at the end of last episode.

…Therefore, he’s headed to the same place.

The Episode title signifies one of the new cards that’ll be appearing, but more importantly, covers a very interesting statement.

We know from the tint of the Title that the new card is very clearly Red, which suggests that Dan will be fighting, for the first time since Julian, a Red deck.

Now even between similar colours, the deck type can be very different depending on what the battler wishes to focus on, a single colour has many attributes, and when colours are mixed, you’re usually only trying to reap one of these attributes. You can however also focus on these attributes single-mindedly when building a single colour too.

In this case, it’s “Clash vs Destruction” which suggests that the Deck Dan will be facing is a “Destruction” deck, namely, a deck that focuses on the common Red trope of BP-Based destruction effects.

It seems the gate opening has created a spiraling stairway that leeds all the way up and good god I do not want to even think about climbing it.

Yeah, in 3-5 business days.

It seems like Yuuki wasn’t expecting Dan to be missing here, dude has vamooshed.

I guess when you have several rules for opening the gate, some can intersect in nasty ways like now.

Yuuki’s also noticed that Dan’s deck is completely missing.

It’s kind of admirable how somewhat unshakeable Yuuki is, he called for Dan expecting him to be there but he wasn’t visibly shaken when it turned out he wasn’t, he deals with surprise very well.

Don’t be silly Dan.

The Sun isn’t out for another… 52 sets.

Which is weird considering the sky still lights up during the day, you’d think the sun would be accompanying it but nope.

Also this is the place where Yuuki battled Belga. I figured it was the White World before.

But apparently this space lies between Earth and Grand-Lolo, connecting the 2 together.

Damn, guy’s so powerful he gets his own Mini world.

I guess Grand-Lolo’s Sky is lit by it’s Sun, but otherwise the Sun isn’t actually visible except in this strange mid-way space between Earth and Grand-Lolo.

Kind of reminds me of Elysium in Saint Seiya, the Realm of Hades separate from the World of the Dead that also required an incredibly complex gateway to reach.

Pantera’s a rather jovial individual, introducing himself to Dan the second he’s pressed.

Valid question, though not the right one, given that it was Dan that was moved, not Yuuki.

What an incredibly useless answer, where in your logic circuits did you pull that out of if you weren’t a sentient living being?

Wait, is that-?

If you’re wondering how that’s being held together in spite of being thrown, it’s not anime logic, Pantera in the time during Dan opening the gate has somehow snatched Dan’s deck from Yuuki’s pocket, and carefully added 2 plastic straps to keep the deck held together as he tossed it.

How crafty.

Also I absolutely love tossing complete decks when they have those nice straps on them.

Feels so nice.

Dan presses Pantera for why he was given his deck back by him, if Pantera works for Otherworld King.

The answer is that his role as “Lance of the Otherworlders” is more literal than it seems, Pantera was created in order to defeat his creator.

I suppose its some kind of situation where Otherworld King needs to be absolutely certain he can overcome any and all battlers in order for his rule to be maintained, after all, instating a rule of Battle Spirits over Military Might would fall over the second he lost.

Pantera’s his measure to ensure that if the Otherworlders can beat him, they will have through him.

Left with no other way but up, it seems Yuuki has to climb the steps to proceed.

Waddya mean “What does he want”, did you not get the order? Otherworld King wanted to see the Red Soldier.

Yuuki dodging any fucking direct question asked of his intentions like his life actually depends on it.

Honestly, the amount of direct questions that’s been fired in his general direction that he has willingly and directly answered could be counted on one fucking hand.

We about to see them throw down?

Nothing much to talk about here, Yuuki’s confirming Leon’s information that Otherworld King was to have a meeting with Dan.

Leon expresses confusion at this turn of events, and questions Otherworld King’s thoughts, and Yuuki maintains that he was just told by Pantera to take Dan to Otherworld King.

Looks like with this exchange, it’s incredibly rare for Otherworld King to split information between the Three Heads, if one of them is told something directly, the other two tend to receive the message as well.

In this case, Pantera was the one who told Yuuki about this audience, and Leon was unaware of it until recently.

…Which means Pantera was likely lying.

Jesus christ, 38 million battles?!

Assuming every battle takes about 20 minutes to resolve, that means he has 1455 YEARS of PURE BATTLE DATA in his brain.

And in spite of having something along the lines of 1400+ years of experience in battling, he still can’t beat Otherworld King.

I’d make a joke about how Dan can’t count but it’s really hard to follow when someone throws a number that large and that exact at you.

And there’s gotta be an upper limit to how strong you can ultimately get.

Pantera has enough knowledge to solve the format and he still can’t defeat Otherworld King?

Noted, Otherworld King is able to consistently defeat an AI with 1455 years worth of matches.

I presume this will have some kind of explanation as to why this is relevant?

I can only presume that Pantera’s data shows an evident correlation between Battlers who held incredibly hot-blooded souls and the amount of victories against poor odds.

Though its normal to not feed back an AI’s work through itself, I wonder if he doesn’t compare his own battles to see if his own battles match that correlation.

Better than analyzed Data?

Wait how does one extrapolate such a conclusion like that? Maybe there was a disconnect between the actual abilities of a hot-blooded battler and the evident results they were getting?

…Oh, he’s taking Julian at his word.

Wait that makes even less sense.

Ahh, this at least explains Pantera’s interest in Dan, in Dan’s deck, Pantera has noticed the presence of Meteorwurm, the style is also similar, and so Pantera likens Dan to the likes of Julian.

Ahh, I see, so all of Pantera’s data up until Battling Julian made sense, but Julian’s Data didn’t mesh with any of Pantera’s data due to his hot-blooded heart.

Hence, Pantera’s been dead-focused on analyzing a “Burning Heart” to try and make up for what he lacks, because his battle with Julian was such an outlier.

Okay, I see the logic here then.

Pantera has noted anomalies when it comes to Battlers with Burning Hearts, they produce battles that don’t line up with expected data to the battler’s benefit.

As such, Pantera has been hard-focused on the power a Burning Heart provides, he wants to battle Dan as he believes Dan also holds such a heart in order to further understand it, and perhaps, be able to emulate, create, or make up for the differences that heart creates.

He believes once he makes up that difference, he’ll be capable of fighting Otherworld King.

Time for Dan and Pantera to throw down, hopefully they don’t pull another Magical Crown and interrupt it before it gets going.

But before they proceed to opening some gates, Pantera thanks Dan and uses the ol’ “Yoroshiku Onegaishimasu”

“It will be my pleasure” is certainly one suitable translation but it’s a little hard of a phrase to translate, you often use it when entering someone’s household or when you stay with someone, it’s like a “Please look after me” kind of phrase.

I feel like Julian was halfway fucking with this guy.

But it’s also clear Pantera really respects Julian in a weird sort of way.

…Ah, I was wondering what was the deal with the last bearers of the core’s light.

It seems that Pantera was the hurdle they got stopped at, they couldn’t deal with the ever-evolving Battle Spirits AI.

It seems after fighting Julian and defeating the last generation of Lightbearers, Pantera adopted the moniker of “Red Hot Pantera”, in an effort to simulate the Burning Heart he believes he lacks.

Seems Dan’s acknowledging the test here, Pantera was the hurdle the last Lightbearers faced, and Pantera has never defeated Otherworld King, so Pantera is the hurdle Dan must overcome in order to be fit to face him.

Dan declares that it’s Pantera who isn’t fit to be Otherworld King’s opponent.

Well, they both kind of have a bone to pick, so they’re fighting over who gets to take him on.

Dan opens the gate, time for a battle.

Normally when someone enters the Battlefield their Battle Form is automatically fitted to them, Pantera doesn’t seem to have received one.

I’m sure one day we will have clothing that’s this easy to pull off… But until then.

That’s some bullshit.

It seems like Pantera’s automatically fitted with Life holders, and as such, has no need for a Battle Form, similar to Yuuki’s outfit, as it already holds life, he isn’t fitted with a new one.

Pantera’s got the first move!

That… isn’t what I’d expect necessarily from “Red Hot Pantera”, or the Episode Title, or Pantera’s uniform at all.

Pantera’s played The HellFighter Balam of all things.

Been a while since we’ve seen Balam, the last purple battler was bloody Yamigarasu and he was a disaster.

You’d think so wouldn’t you? Though back in these days Mixed colour could come out of nowhere.

Nowadays decks are so finely tuned and knitted that seeing one card could inform you about the entire build.

Huh, it seems Dan appears to believe that a Purple deck has more inevitability than Red does…

…But I feel like Red is the deck with the least inevitability in most cases anyway so this seems like an odd thing to say. Maybe Green might have less?

Interesting spread, a Cost 0 and a Cost 4, that’s used up all of Dan’s Core.

Dan attacks with Sabecaulus, and Pantera takes from the life.

Sabecaulus and Balam share BP, Pantera could block but then he’d be left without Spirits.

Bit of a weird question to ask Turn 1, you only took 1 life.

Hrm… I suppose this makes sense, if the card or mechanic a battler chooses to build around is the core of the deck, then it reflects their soul at the time of building it, all other choices are made with that core in mind, so it wouldn’t be wrong to say that a Battler’s Spirits are their Soul.

Seems Pantera’s getting invested.

Looks like we’re taking a break from the battle to cover what’s going on with Team Lightbearer.

Seems Kajitsu is still not having fun with whatever’s smacking Mother Core.

How does one determine where the hell you are in this pseudo-Hyperspace that The Violet is in?

I suppose it doesn’t really matter, I presume it’s like a road, if you’ve been before or you’ve seen a map you have some idea of where you are relative to the destination.

Into the Green World we are, and as expected, it’s covered in Greenery.

Though, taking a sickly girl to a place covered in Nature is not too nonsensical, some people find it hard to breathe in places filled with buildings, people and cars, and regularly enjoy escaping to incredibly foresty areas so they can breathe easier.

Huh, a dark cloud heading toward them, I wonder what that could be-

Ahh jesus, nothing like a giant torrent of Otherworldly Insects.

So unless Otherworld just doesn’t have diseases, it’s a complete miracle that these lot didn’t get something from these extraterrestrial bugs.

Though it appears these are just Otherworldly bees as they’re stinging people rather than being say, mosquitos.

Kajitsu displays her control over Insects, the “Insect-Loving Princess” indeed.

The remaining Insects promptly leave The Violet.

I love it when the characters in the show have the exact same thought I do 2 seconds later.

Am I that predictable?

As an interesting stroke of luck, it appears that wherever they exited was also pretty darn close to the Green Horizon Ladder.

This one in particular’s covered in moss.

Though, it occurs to me that they only disabled the Core System in the Blue world, and didn’t actually destroy a Horizon Ladder per se.

Unless the Core System and Horizon Ladder were the same thing but I highly doubt it, looked very different.

Nothing like Yuuki feeling the premonition of his Sister.

What precisely triggered that? Who knows!

You’d think Yuuki would learn to keep his incredibly deep thoughts to himself and not share them with literally everyone in the room for no reason.

I can only wonder why in the hell they even bothered climbing so many stairs before doing this in the first place

I guess there’s a set amount of distance you have to be from a Battlefield fight before being able to teleport to it?

But hey they’re here now.

It’s possible that Pantera does intend to reward Dan with meeting with Otherworld King, but needed to use that situation as a pretense for getting Dan where he wanted to be for a Battle.

Leon notes that “Telling Lies” is a very Human trait.

Dan ends his turn with just Erimakilizard.

Dan’s trying to be the beatdown here, hence the attack with Sabecaulus.

Anyway, off to Pantera’s turn!

Well that’s not Purple.

Pantera summons DarkDinohound and ends his turn.

Well it appears Pantera’s actually playing a Red/Purple mixed build.

Red and Purple share a trait of being able to amass many draws and can destroy Spirits via many effects, synergistically, Purple Core removal can be used to put a Spirit in range of a BP destruction effect on account of it’s lower level

Dan enters his turn and summons a Lv2 Erimakilizard and an Ankillersaurus.

Does it? Ankillersaurus and the Lv2 Erimakilizard aren’t capable of pushing through Pantera’s Dinohound OR his Balam.

Infact I’m surprised he didn’t level his Ankillersaurus to Lv2 with that core he gave to Erimakilizard.

This is gonna get blocked, there’s no way it doesn’t.

Ankillersaurus has only 2000 BP, both of Pantera’s Spirits have 3000

…I tell a lie, only Dinohound has 3000 BP, I appear to have forgotten Balam starts with a BP of 2000.

I suppose with many choices of what to block with his Dinohound, you kind of need to decide what Life total you’re happy dropping to.

Anyway, Pantera takes Ankillersaurus’ attack, going to 3 life.

This one’s actually scary as it can’t be blocked without losing a spirit, 3000 BP.

Pantera humbly drops to 2 lives.

For someone who has 1455 years of battle experience, across 38 million card battles, you’d think he wouldn’t be getting mollywhopped this hard.

He’s summoned 2 lackluster defenders with no synergy and eaten every attack so far.

Well, the weaker one would get blocked by Balam and the stronger would be destroyed by DarkDinohound.

Dan would lose 2 spirits for Pantera to lose nothing.

I would have probably blocked that first attack from Ankillersaurus.

Yuuki notes that Dan is “starting to change” again, I mean I suppose?

Ankillersaurus as a first attack was a little strange but it was most likely a read on Dan’s part, or a form of scouting.

Scouting is when you take an action to determine what an opponent’s plan is, if Dan attacked with Ankillersaurus and DarkDinohound blocked it, he’d figure out Pantera was trying to buy time for something, to take lives here means Pantera’s likely trying to gather core.

Dan would then be free to make different attacking decisions afterward.

And with many Spirits on board one can afford to take risks like that.

Pantera summons 2 Lizardedges.

Dan comments on this as to have 2 would mean he had one in his hand when he summoned DarkDinohound, it could have been a free reduction for it.

But Pantera didn’t do so.

Following up, Pantera summons his Key Spirit The DinoCavalry Diridalus.

Naturally, it’s a new card, so let’s talk about it!

*Families: Dragon, Terra Dragon*
**Lv1-Lv2 [When Attacks]**
You can destroy an opposing 2000 BP or less Spirit.
**Lv2 [Your Attack Step]**
All your Spirits with only one core on them gain +2000 BP.

a Red Master Rare Spirit from BS03, and visibly, actually rather weak.

It’s a Cost 7 with only 3 reductions, meaning you’re paying 4 for this on any good day, additionally it starts with a stat total of 5000, and only goes to 6000 at Lv2. Which isn’t much at all.

It’s best effect is the first one, able to wipe out a chump blocker whenever it swings, and it’s Lv2 effect can increase the overall power of your board as long as they only have 1 core.

Main issue with it is that because it only gets that effect at Lv2, it’s unable to benefit itself with it.

I dunno, this just seems really lackluster to me for some reason, and it’s a Master Rare. For reference, Master Rares tend to be the kind of cards you can have as Key Spirits aside from X-Rares.

I suppose in a deck with many low to the ground spirits that can rack up it’s reductions quickly, it can essentially be the difference maker between 2 Weenie decks, but any deck wielding a high enough BP stat that Diridalus can’t punch through?

I guess in the situation where there’s a 7000 BP spirit the plan is to flood the board with small weenies that get a Power boost from it’s Lv2 but I feel like besides infinite blockers (which do occur) that kind of addresses every problem in the game with or without Diridalus? What does he actually do for that situation?

It’s just a little odd, I’m not a fan.

Pantera moves immediately, attacking with Diridalus, activating it’s Lv1 effect to destroy a 2000 BP or below spirit.

Only one of 2 targets, and both are Erimakilizard, one Erimakilizard is destroyed.

Dan takes it from the life, dropping to 4 lives.

Pantera follows up with Balam, taking another life from Dan. Leaving him with 3.

Pantera then ends his turn.

Yuuki takes a moment to check the board, noting that while Pantera has 5 Spirits, 3 of which can block, he’s only got 2 lives remaining, whereas Dan is sitting comfortably on 3 Spirits and 3 Lives.

Dan Levels up Ankillersaurus

And follows up by summoning his Key Spirit, The StarEmperorDragon Meteorwurm.

Ankillersaurus attacks, Pantera’s got 3 blockers, and going to 1 life would be dangerous, so clearly he’s going to-

…Huh?

This seems like an incredibly odd decision, but I suppose the only Life that matters is your last one.

Oh good, I’m glad I’m not the only one who found this move a little quirky, I was starting to think I might have been a complete moron.

Leon comments on Pantera’s choice, dropping this statement, which I’m not particularly sure what it means to be honest. I can’t recall any specifics between Leon and Pantera.

Dan attacks with Meteorwurm, as Meteorwurm is only at Lv1, it’s unable to perform it’s target attack effect, instead settling for Clash.

Lizardedge is the unfortunate victim of that one.

Dan evaluates the board, noting that Pantera taking a life there meant that he still preserved a high number of Spirits, 4 to be precise, Dan only has 2 blockers and Diridalus is going to wipe out one of them, if he attacks all at once, Dan’s 3 lives are in trouble.

2 Blockers and 2 attackers isn’t a recipe for winning unfortunately, Dan ends his turn.

This is… actually pretty spooky, Dan’s in a really awkward position right now.

Pantera’s taken aback, having calculated an attack that ultimately didn’t arrive.

I suppose he was assessing based on the Pattern of his aggression and Sabecaulus having a decent BP value, Dan could theoretically have Sabecaulus tie with DarkDinohound and have his last Erimakilizard crash into Lizardedge.

This would leave Pantera with 2 spirits remaining, and nothing to destroy, Pantera would then need a Spirit on his next turn in order to win.

But even if the next turn goes as planned Dan would be incredibly low on resources to hit that last life next time depending on what the 3 cards in Pantera’s hand would be.

High board presence is more options ultimately, even if the board state is more complicated.

Pantera notes that Dan still has hope for victory here, though personally I think this is a worse position than the alternative.

Seems Pantera’s getting completely wrapped up in this, what an impressionable AI.

Seems Pantera is trying to emulate a Burning Heart.

And he summons The HellFencer Berith at Lv2.

hoo boy, I haven’t seen this card in a hot minute and I don’t remember if we’ve covered it, I think we have?

Ah yes, Mai used it in Episode 14 against Clackey, alright. No need to cover.

Pantera uses Berith’s effect when summoned to send up to 3 core from an opposing Spirit to the reserve, provided it doesn’t drop them below a single core.

This puts Ankillersaurus to Lv1, 2000 BP, and well in range of Diridalus, however Ankillersaurus won’t be Pantera’s target.

Diridalus attacks, destroying Erimakilizard, now Dan has only a single blocker to contest Pantera’s 5 Spirits on 4 lives.

Erm, it’s an effect that triggers on attack? It’ll trigger as many times as that happens Dan.

Dan takes Diridalus’ attack from the Life. Dan is left with 2 remaining.

Pantera attacks with Berith, and activates it’s effect at Lv2, which lets it shoot 1 core off an opposing Spirit and send it to the Reserve.

Meteorwurm was summoned at Lv1, so unfortunately it only had 1 core to spare, Meteorwurm’s been depleted.

You have to be incredibly careful playing against purple, as those single core shoot effects come really easy, and really fast.

It seems like Pantera’s Red/Purple Hybrid is designed precisely as one of my suggestions said, it’s designed to reduce Core and wipe out small Spirits, Diridalus has synergy with Purple cards as they can drop smaller spirits to be in range of Diridalus’ effect.

Additionally, with Diridalus destroying the smaller Spirits, larger Spirits will be more difficult to summon, resulting in them having no core, Pantera can then capitalize on this scenario by sending their often singular core back to the reserve.

It’s an incredibly convoluted form of resource control.

Dan notes that since he only has Spirits with Low BP, his board is ripe for the picking with the style of deck Pantera has.

To that end, Dan decides to start getting rid of potential attackers, using Victory Fire.

Dan’s able to destroy 2 Spirits with 3000 BP or less, he selects DarkDinohound with 3000 BP and Balam with 2000 BP.

Dan blocks Berith using Sabecaulus, 5000 to 3000, not a contest, Berith destroys Sabecaulus.

Indeed, though I’m not sure blocking Berith was necessary, had he taken that life, Pantera would have had 1 Lizardedge to address Dan’s 1 life and his Sabecaulus, and if he had a Flash to take care of that he would have done so on Berith’s attack.

This would leave Dan an extra spirit, an extra core, and an extra reduction for his counterattack.

Leon notes that usually a card battler is very reliant on their Key Spirit, seeing your Key card get vaporized in such a fashion can be really demoralising, and I’ve known some people to scoop once they lose their win con.

But a game isn’t over til the last card is played or the last life is taken, etc etc.

As Pantera questions why he wasn’t able to win that turn, his last life (which is, poetically placed above where his heart would be) starts to react.

It seems Dan’s managed to reach the state Julian was able to, forcing Pantera to somehow feel the desire to battle more against him.

The Robot is enjoying himself.

Ah it’s always good to have that feeling, that one friend of yours that just really makes battling so incredibly fun.

I have a few friends like that myself, though the one I get the opportunity to battle the least is certainly the one who makes me feel this way the most.

“This heart”? It seems like Pantera’s finally managed to conceptualize his own Heart, or at least, understand what he’s feeling in the Heart he’s been given.

Pantera ends his turn.

“Red Hot Pantera” has finally come into his namesake, he seems quite happy to have discovered his own Burning Heart.

Pantera’s telling Dan to try and go all out for Pantera’s last life this turn, probably so he can heat up more, but it’s also probably the best bet.

Seems all that Heat coming off of Pantera is difficult to manage.

Only a single Lizardedge remains to block, Dan just needs 2 attackers.

I don’t believe Ankillersaurus was defeated last turn either, so he just needs to summon 1 Spirit.

Of course, the thing giving Dan pause is the 2 cards in Pantera’s hand, even if Pantera is cornered, if those 2 cards are able to defend him in any way, an all out attack might leave Dan in a compromising position.

Of course, Dan’s got a style and a title to uphold, to not attempt to gun for that last life here would be a disgrace to his name.

Dan uses Reborn Flame, now he can return a Spirit from the Trash to the hand.

Dan adds Meteorwurm back to his hand from the Trash.

And as if it could be any other play, Dan subsequently summons Meteorwurm, functionally resurrecting it for a grand total of 9 god damn core.

Dan attacks with Ankillersaurus, which is blocked by Lizardedge.

Lizardedge’s Lv1 BP of 1000 doesn’t beat Ankillersaurus’ 2000 BP, Lizardedge is destroyed.

Pantera no longer has any blockers.

Suddenly Dan becomes animated like it’s Episode 4 of Gurren Lagann… If you know, you know.

He attacks with Meteorwurm.

Pantera unfortunately had no options in his hand, and takes his last life.

Aww, that’s a little tragic, Pantera’s fully capable of Burning up and matching Dan’s energy, but he’s still operating under the assumption that he doesn’t have that strength because he lacks a Human heart.

Er, probably? He wasted 9 core re-summoning a Cost 7 Spirit…

I suppose without any other options it was probably the only attack he could make, but I wouldn’t call it a good attack.

Coulda
Woulda
Shoulda

Didn’t.

Pantera questions why Dan attacked from that position, as Pantera still could have had defensive magic and Dan would certainly have lost then.

Well, 2 reasons really. The first and simplest was that Dan was in a precarious situation of his own, with 1 card in hand, and 2 Spirits, even if Dan left full blockers, Berith would have shot a core off of Meteorwurm and Diridalus would have destroyed Ankillersaurus, Dan’s last 2 lives were up for grabs.

The second reason is a style of play often associated with Magic: The Gathering when it comes to being in a bad situation and you’re dealing with information you don’t know. Namely, Dan had no way of guessing what those 2 cards were, not a hope in hell of surviving the following turn, so he went with the only tactic he had left.

He had to “Make Them Have It”

By “it” in this instance, we mean the “Out” to that situation, a card that could have stopped Dan’s attack. “Make Them Have It” is a creed where if you have a situation where you can win provided your opponent has no unseen responses, you go for it, this is to essentially force them to have the response that would otherwise mess you up, or they straight up lose.

The discussion’s a little more in depth than this, more clearly, “Make Them Have It” is one of the 2 answers to the question of what to do when you don’t know if they have a specific response to your current play, the other is “Play Around It”

The reason why one might want to do one or the other entirely depends on each individual game. If I know Dan’s holding Victory Fire and it’s the only thing I know that will stop my current attack step, whether or not I want to “Make Them Have It” or “Play Around It” depends entirely on which situations are lethal and which are not.

Usually, you want to select the option that leaves you in a better position after the fact. If playing around an out leaves you in a lethal position, and playing into it doesn’t, play into it.

If playing around it leaves you fine but playing into it can kill you, obviously don’t.

The true decision making comes when both are liable to produce the same result, if playing into an answer OR playing around an answer doesn’t kill you, then you need to assess numbers and see which one leaves you in a better position, as you’ll eventually need to ultimately “ask the question” of whether or not they have the answer eventually.

And finally, the easiest decision is when both playing around it and playing into it likely results in a lethal position for you. You pick the one that gets you the win faster.

Dan’s case, the play was going for game, he had 1 card, he could have tried to play around defensive magic but with 2 cards constantly diminishing his resources that he was incapable of getting rid of he would have been in an ever degrading position every turn he did not go for game, and Pantera would still draw cards leading to a higher possibility he could answer.

If Pantera did have an answer, Dan was screwed anyway.

So the only option left was available: “Make Them Have It”

a 1% chance of victory was better than 0%, it’s the fact that it wouldn’t have worked out if he made any other choice. It was the only one that could.

Oh, that’s an interesting angle of discussion, let’s see…

Dan’s argument is that a majority of Pantera’s Spirits had particularly high costs, besides the 2 Lizardedge he didn’t summon a single Spirit below a Cost of 3.

Dan reckoned that the reason he sent out so many high cost spirits was to account for a poor hand, he also left 3 blockers on a turn where Dan had 3 attackers, and would have needed 2 more spirits to win from that position.

Based on Pantera’s pattern of behaviour it would be reasonable to surmise that Pantera had no defensive magic, hence why he played so cautiously until he was able to significantly reduce Dan’s board presence. He was flying by the seat of his pants.

Victory Fire was an unknown quantity before the penultimate turn, Pantera never depleted any of his Spirits either. There was reasonable consideration for board presence to justify the possibility that no defense magic existed in his hand.

Battling in general is very profound.

Seems Pantera has no intention of going back on his word, even though a strong possibility exists he was lying.

D’awww, I like the book ends here. Julian taught Pantera manners to show before a battle, Dan’s now teaching Pantera manners to use after a battle.

Well, I mean, if he lied in order to create a premise in which Dan would battle, then it naturally follows that the premise itself could be a lie too.

Though I’m sure Pantera wasn’t programmed to lie, so his capacity for it may be limited.

The one that gets us into the second half of Battle Spirits Shounen Gekiha Dan, hopefully?

Oh, he’s still going.

Leon seems to believe that he has far more control over Otherworld than he actually does, it’s a little egotistical to believe that he has any kind of hand in the meeting between Dan and the Otherworld King.

Ah yes, the ol’ “I control everything and everything is according to plan except for this one prick“

Well now, it appears Leon intends to start making moves against Yuuki, for… some reason. Probably because he’s a Lightbearer and they all ultimately need to be eliminated for the sake of Otherworld King’s safety.

To that end, he plans to start making moves towards capturing Kajitsu, likely to use her as a bargaining chip.

Dan, Yuuki and Pantera make their way up the Stairway to the Otherworld King.

Marking the end of the episode.

Naturally, the card of the Day was The DinoCavalry Diridalus, the Key Spirit of Pantera during that battle.

I was glossing around some of the earlier cards to maybe try and understand what precisely was going the hell on when it came to Diridalus’ destruction effects.

Then it occurred to me, at the time Diridalus’ was released, his ability to freely destroy a Spirit anytime it attacked was rather… Unique, 2000 or less BP is a wide range at a time where 3000 was considered relatively high. Anything Cost 2 or below is covered under that net at lower levels.

And even at this particular time, BS07, the only cards that cover that part of the effect better than Diridalus are 3-fold.

The first 2 are X-Rares from BS04 and BS05, DarkDragonEmperor Siegfried and SacredEmperor Siegfrieden.

The DarkDragonEmperor can wipe out all Non-Red Spirits with 4000 BP or less, naturally this has the obvious caveat of simply not working against Red AND needing a Lv3 Cost 9 Tribute Spirit to work, Siegfrieden can pop 2 Spirits of BP 7000 or less but needs a whopping 6 core for that Lv3 effect too.

Notably, these are somewhat less accessible than Diridalus, because they require a Tribute of a Cost 6 or greater Spirit to even play them, so by the time you’re getting them out, you’ve probably already summoned a Diridalus anyway.

The last one is HalberdBraver Arc, who has Diridalus’ effect on attack at Lv2 and 3 on a Cost 4 spirit, it can even reach Diridalus’ BP value at 6000 with 5 core maintaining it. The difference here is Arc is designed to put the ki-bosh on Weenie rushes while Diridalus supports them, this is because Arc’s effect at all levels prevents Cost 2 or lower Spirits from damaging either player’s life.

That being said, you could run Arc in a deck that includes Diridalus, as a form of board control and survivability until he comes out.

But you’re still running into the issue that Diridalus beats over basically nothing.

Anyway, I’ve yammered on plenty, I can’t wait to meet the Otherworld King soon. I can feel it.

See you in the next one!

Gekiha Dan – Episode 23

Just try and stop me!

This will be an intriguing episode, as Dan somehow lost a match he wasn’t really supposed to lose, and they followed through, making him submit to Yuuki as his servant.

Well this is certainly a weird start, I hope I didn’t click the wrong episode…

We seem to be witnessing a Battle between Siegwurm and Yggdrassil, is there something I’m missing here or?

Ah, Dan is… image training?

I’ll skip over the rather cinematic sequence, but ultimately, Dan is trying to figure out how best to defeat Yuuki it seems.

Image training is a common trope in many anime, mainly ones involving combat, Dragonball Z, Baki, etc.

You’re essentially using your mind to simulate a battle with your intended opponent, unfortunately given you’re wielding your imagination and running through events limited to your knowledge, it’s somewhat ineffective and by no means a good marker for the real thing.

But I suppose it’s a good run through to double check that the possibility even exists in a worst case scenario.

Dan seems pretty sure that Siegwurm stands no chance against Yuuki regardless of what he does, but while Meteorwurm could content with Yggdrassil, he has no answer for Walhalance if Gungnir is out.

Which is a fair-ish assessment? Meteorwurm might be Dan’s brand spanking new card, but it has 2 problems when pitted against Walhalance

It’s new target attacking effect can’t be used on Walhalance at all.
If Gungnir is about, Meteorwurm doesn’t safely beat it.

Upon imaginining Meteorwurm’s destruction, Dan’s snapped out of his image training, even based on known information on Yuuki, Dan doesn’t see a way of dealing with Walhalance should the worst happen and it appears alongside Gungnir.

I find it kind of funny that Brustom’s just there with a whole ass beer.

…Watching Dan sleep, I suppose.

Oh, Yuuki is sat across the table from Dan, I guess Dan didn’t need to try hard to imagine him then.

Well aren’t you a perceptive one?

Seems like Dan’s got “Fear” written across his forehead.

Interesting quirk, seems like given enough intense focus, feelings can be broadcast to nearby lightbearers.

The Episode title today is “Captive Meteorwurm” which is fairly apt, Dan no longer has access to his deck.

Hey, we’re back in the Red World, and Yuuki’s base of operations.

Yuuki’s reading all of Dan’s thoughts like a book, able to figure out from Dan’s curiosity that he was looking for Otherworld King.

That being said if Otherworld King isn’t here, then where does he actually reside?

I mean it’s not a bad idea, and a fairly easy idea for your enemy to realise as well.

Except 2 seconds of thought should have indicated to the poor Clash King that he’s not a willing ally, and you definitely aren’t going to let someone working for you under duress near your King.

Yes it does tend to be easier to talk to the superiors when you work for them.

Dan denies that he thought that far ahead, though once again, Yuuki complimenting Dan’s ideas by laying them out and acting as if he saw through them…

It sounds more like he’s giving Dan clues rather than trying to extinguish his hope.

Kazan’s also seems quite curious about Dan, I suppose he’ll have plenty of time to get to know him now.

I know he was an enemy just a second ago but he did agree to be your Servant and is a potent battler, I’m certain that there is an incredibly useful task battle-wise that Dan would be willing to perform.

…But I guess this is going to operate more like a Punishment than the wielding of a powerful asset.

While Kazan’s walking Dan to his post, he asks a bit of an odd question, he asks Dan if the reason that he got involved in all this because Zungurii asked him to, or if it was out of disdain for Kazan, being Dan’s first opinion of Otherworld King’s forces.

Dan suggests that ultimately it was neither.

Dan recites a tale from a while back where he helps a girl who’s lost in an amusement park, overpowered by the feeling that he needed to do something, he stopped thinking about anything else and decided to help the girl find her parents.

The parents found them very shortly after, but due to a misunderstanding, they believed that Dan was the one who had coaxed their child away and became irritated with him.

Since then, the feeling of doing something about bad situations never left him.

This extended to the current situation, he saw the Otherworlders suffering and felt compelled to act even when he wanted to leave, he wants to go home but feels if he helps out that the rest will work itself out on it’s own.

My kneejerk reaction was going to be that Dan has a “Hero Complex” but it’s not quite the same.

a “Hero Complex” is a pattern of behaviour wherein someone needs to feel like a savior whether or not they are actually saving anything. As a result they may orchestrate situations so that they can intervene, blame themselves for things that are not their responsibility to obligate themselves to act, or otherwise try to be a conventional savior.

Dan isn’t exhibiting this pattern of behaviour, he says right out the gate at the very beginning that he isn’t a Hero, and he’s aware that he has absolutely nothing to do with any of what’s going on. And no obligation to involve himself. Even if he isn’t treated like a savior like that family ended up not doing, he simply wanted to change the situation for the Otherworlders because he simply could not ignore it.

In essence, Dan finds it very difficult to ignore suffering when he knows it’s happening, and feels compelled to resolve that suffering once it’s made itself known to him, regardless of risk or reward.

In essence, Dan’s the perfect example of an Activist.

Dan comments that the absurdity of Kazan’s Future situation made it somewhat difficult to believe.

I suppose we can use this as a reminder, Kazan’s current plan is to ensure that all humans from his version of Earth are migrated over to Otherworld, as Kazan’s Earth has a completely destroyed environment due to extensive climate change as a result of humanity’s actions.

Dan’s asking the real questions now. How is it possible that Otherworld in this time, is capable of receiving Humans from different eras of time.

Er.. what?

So, my understanding is that the Gate did appear in their present, but for some bizarre reason when it did appear, records of the Gate appearing in various other histories, and proof of human history that hadn’t yet happened likely appeared all of a sudden.

So it seems like my initial suspicion was correct, Grand-Lolo operates on it’s own time-axis, causing it to simultaeniously appear in multiple moments of Human History. When it linked up, it linked up to those various eras all at once.

It seems relatively “synchronized” with the times it does appear in though, so that’s why Dan hasn’t met himself from the past, and given that it muddled up history on-arrival, that means that Dan can’t inadvertedly invalidate his own birth by accidentally saying the wrong thing to his ancient ancestor. History’s already changed.

Dan hilariously comments that means ancient japanese people might be about, and that they’d be wearing top-knots

Kazan even says some of those who came from the past would end up being battlers.

Get this lovely visual of a Samurai playing card games.

It does make a Human-filled Grand-Lolo ripe for all kinds of fanfiction that’s for sure.

Notably, I wonder if Dan’s time is the only one where Battle Spirits actively takes place in the Human World, which is why we’re not seeing crazy shit like cards from the future.

So it seems like because Otherworld contains living remnants of Humanity’s past, and proof of it’s future, it’s the best choice for humans to live as much of their history would still exist there. There wouldn’t be a whole lot of recovering history as it would be directly infront of them, living and breathing, hell they might learn more about their past.

Dan comments that Kazan is fighting for the same thing Dan is.

It might not make sense to someone like me, who doesn’t pick up on subtle undertones, but it seems like Dan is saying that while Kazan’s trying to save the humans of his Era, Dan is trying to save the Otherworlders from them.

They’re both trying to preserve a race of people, their threatened survival motivates them to act, Kazan can’t ignore the suffering of his future humanity, and Dan can’t ignore Otherworld’s suffering.

Interesting answer, when probed as to why Kazan doesn’t defy Otherworld King, Kazan states that his loyalties don’t lie with Otherworld King, they lie with Yuuki.

oh hey its been a while since we saw this room, this is where Magical Crown was first introduced, taunting Kazan before running off to get his ass whooped by Dan.

This is a hall, filled with battlers who appear to be practicing

Speaking of! There he is now! Hey Magical Crown!

Ready to get your ass whooped again you Where’s Waldo-looking fuck?

Kazan announces Dan’s status to the room.

I’m sorry I just find it super hilarious that their main reaction is “Dafuuuuuuuuq?”

Magical Crown asking… a fairly reasonable question, Dan was pushed into service after failing to muster the strength required to defy Otherworld King.

So it’s a bit weird to suddenly welcome him into their arms, Dan’s very clearly an enemy.

Yep, Dan being straightforward as ever, if they don’t trust him, test his trust so he can prove it.

Magical Crown seems awfully dickish here, he seems to ask Dan if he “brought his deck” like he knows it’s been confiscated.

Magical Crown mocks him openly, sarcastically asking the crowd of former enemies whether or not one of them could lend Dan a deck. Gets a few chuckles too.

Magical Crown? More like Magical Clown.

Kazan’s incredibly no nonsense, and very much seems to have a respect for Dan as well, so without missing a beat, offers Dan his Curse Deck.

Dan playing Purple would certainly be a fun prospect.

Magical Crown seems taken aback by Kazan’s willingness to lend Dan a deck.

Dan’s only ever used Red up til now most likely, he’s probably never even considered using a colour other than his own.

It’ll be mentioned by a character in a much later series but actually canon to this particular story by a character who mentions that “A battler who is constantly switching colours has no room to grow”

That character also strictly believes that each battler has a colour best suited for them, and that while malleable, it can’t be changed under any circumstance.

I dislike that sentiment, but the fact that the writers added it suggests that Dan is of the understanding that he is suited to Red, and so til now, never even thought about using other colours.

Now the prospect presents itself, and he’s willing to use a Purple Deck.

Magical Crown is certainly interesting when it comes to navigating these sorts of situations, he offers Dan a battle and places an odd stake, if Dan wins, he’ll be allowed to rebuild the Red Horizon Ladder he destroyed.

Dan’s confused because this obviously doesn’t seem like a benefit, but it’s a fairly worthy test, they’re trying to see if they can trust him to act in their best interests, so will be willing to win a fight where the only reward is against his best interests and in concert with Otherworld King’s?

Time to see what the significantly less cool gang has going on. They lost a Dan and gained a Kajitsu, and besides maybe Suzuri I didn’t like half of them anyway.

Clackey double checks Hyoudo’s intentions about whether or not he’s coming, Hyoudo says it doesn’t make a difference.

…That’s not really a helpful answer.

Hey, Hyoudo is at least upfront and honest that he’s worried about what will happen to Kajitsu, her state is kind of stress-inducing to say the least.

Damn Clackey, never known you to be indifferent to a woman. What happened man?

Seems even Clackey can’t ignore when a woman actively causes harm to people he cares about, even if she’s attractive.

That’s fairly good actually, Clackey’s obsessed with Women but not to the point that he won’t draw boundaries when needed. Surprisingly well adjusted he is.

It could also be simple “Babe math”, that “Babe” tried to get rid of all the Otherworld Babes, So her value is negative babes.

Hyoudo your only crime was joining a Tournament that literally anybody was around to Join, it’s not like you were trying to screw them over in particular.

…I guess you got really rude to Dan, mean, but not a sin.

Noted, Clackey dislikes her because she bears Mother Core’s Light and no one knows what the hell that means for her or them.

Noted, Clackey dislikes when a girl has an air of uncertainty surrounding their situation.

Magisa somehow managed to confuse Hyoudo Kenzo, a 4-syllable full name.

With a 5-syllable name that sounds absolutely NOTHING LIKE IT.

Seems Kajitsu’s whole Mother Core symbol has now been shrunk to a small middling Green one.

Why did Clackey even ask who put Kajitsu in that dress? Magisa is a Vagabond and Mai is the ONLY OTHER CHICK HERE.

Clackey, completely uninvited, gives his opinion, saying that the dress Kajitsu was lent doesn’t suit Mai, and Mai should wear more clothing that stands out.

…What she’s not even the one wearing it, she lends it to Kajitsu and you suddenly criticise her for simply having it?

Seems Mai’s clicked that Clackey’s being a massive douchebag because he doesn’t like the idea of having to protect Kajitsu.

Seems Clackey has similar aversions that Zungurii had, he has no idea what to think, they can’t just leave Kajitsu to fend for herself because of their morals, but Kajitsu is also an enemy, and is also bearing an incredible Light no one knows anything about.

Additionally, Kajitsu also bore the core’s light, and opposed them, what exactly is the goal here?

The true question, what does that designation mean, and why did it apply to them?

Hyoudo asking the real questions.

Why is bearing the Core’s Light so integral to changing Grand-Lolo? And even though they’re trying their damndest, Otherworld King is so far kicking their ass.

It doesn’t seem to confer onto them any unique abilities really, at least not ones that express themselves in any meaningful way as of yet, aside from Kajitsu’s

Zungurii protests that such a thing is easier said than done. Claiming Humans are incredibly strong.

Zungurii, you can lift several thousand times the weight of what a Human can achieve, unless you mean in Battle Spirits which is an intellectual difference.

Hyoudo explains to Zungurii that they didn’t start out with that strength, they gained it through iteration, they figured out what wasn’t working and tried to improve it until they got something that was, and when that inevitably fails they’ll be able to create something better later.

Like Deck building.

Mai, this is a Battle Spirits anime, and you are currently trying to stop the cast from talking about Battle Spirits.

Zip it, Card Game talk now.

Hyoudo wonders if Kajitsu is also a Green Soldier, though from what I can tell, Bearers of the Core’s Light can’t co-exist under a colour.

Dan became the Red Core’s bearer after Julian gave up on his.

Bearing Mother Core has some benefits it seems, like being able to sub in as a Soldier of any colour.

Which is weird given we all know her Main Colour is Green, so it’s a little odd as to why she gets one for all colours or what significance it’s supposed to have?

Ay, Kajitsu’s woken up!

And I’m almost certain this shot is just meant to make her look as adorable as humanly possible.

Magisa’s probably only doing this believing that its better to keep the Lightbearers together.

Personally, Hyoudo is basically as strong as Dan, as he practically had him dead to rights until he ran headfirst into 3 destruction magics Dan just so happened to have in his 4 card hand.

If they were going to make up for that kind of power, Hyoudo’s the best bet they have

We’ll break your kneecaps, obviously.

As if the side of the morally just would ever do such a thing, who would ask a 9 year old to participate in a war against their will?

Seems Clackey decided to cool himself off by talking to his new X-Rare, who has been shown off for several episodes but surprisingly is the only BS07 X-Rare that has yet to be played.

Seems Yuuki’s berating Brustom for not reporting to Otherworld King right away.

Define “success”? Your Core System was shut down and you lost Kajitsu, which, according to Kazan was a very important person to that plan.

Your only damage control is that you defeated the Red Soldier and brought him into custody.

At least 2 Other soldiers are actively moving against you, and 2 Soldiers don’t want anything to do with you.

Random Church area, I guess some of the Humans still practice christianity, makes an excellent room.

It seems this incredibly well-dressed chap here is “Pantera”

And this guy is one of my favourite characters… probably because he’s actually a Nine expy from Toppa Bashin. His dress gives away his colour.

And this incredibly fierce looking chap, “Bewitching Leon”, his name couldn’t be more convenient if his name was “Lionheart”

“Bewitching” is certainly an interesting Battler title, one can only wonder how he obtained that.

So it looks like we have an idea of the hierarchy now, Brustom is directly below these three, who are referred to as the “Three Heads”

Leon is “Lance of the Humans” and Pantera is “Lance of the Otherworlders”, I’m as of yet blanking on what the significance of these designations are meant to be. My main guess is probably that Leon is a Human head, and Pantera is an Otherworlder

Which then begs the question as to why Yuuki’s the 3rd head, he’s also Human, but what’s he the Lance of? Lightbearers?

Leon’s showing his immense loyalty from the very get-go… The first words out of his mouth are an invalidation of Brustom’s praise, and informing him that such praise should really have been given to Otherworld King.

Leon then informs Brustom that he should “Step Down” but is unclear as to what he means by this. We learn that Otherworld King wasn’t very happy at how the championship went.

So it seems Brustom’s being punished, given their plan didn’t pan out, the Core System being disabled prevented Brustom from “Bringing Light” to Mother Core. And ay, Kajitsu being taken was a relevant detail.

Of course, Brustom doesn’t fail to point out that Kajitsu being taken was entirely Yuuki’s fault.

Pantera sadly chimes in that it really doesn’t matter what excuses Brustom makes concerning that, as the sod’s already been replaced.

….By fucking Suzuri.

Oh hey, seems Magisa has come to visit him.

Seems I was right about Magisa, she makes the case to Suzuri that its best to keep the Lightbearers all together, once Dan is retrieved they’ll be able to take on Otherworld King.

Unfortunately getting Suzuri to leave his comfort zone is like trying to collect water with a sieve.

Oh god, it’s Belga, he’s back.

Hoo boy, a reintroduction incase we forgot him from forever ago after he got given a prostate exam by the business end of The Sacred Gungnir.

This is Karma Fon Belga, son of the previous White King, and apparently is a Captain of Otherworld King’s personal elite guard.

…I see his infatuation with Kajitsu was all smoke and no substance, he greets Magisa with a kiss on her hand.

So it seems like Otherworld King deliberately selected Suzuri to be the new Blue King, I imagine the reason for this was precisely because of Suzuri’s personality, knowing that once Suzuri was put into a position of comfort and no real power (thanks to the Three Heads outranking him), he’d be removed as a Light-bearing threat.

Removing him in more fatal ways would probably just spawn another Blue Lightbearer, so Otherworld King has to get a bit creative.

Suzuri seems to hold no care for the Core’s Light or the responsibility Magisa believes it thrusts upon him. As a victim of immense bullying, his self-confidence is completely shot, and now he’s a King in this world.

He’s not going to be so readily willing to give that kind of power up when it just falls into his lap.

What, Allied with Otherworld King, Trapped and completely useless? You’re already a 1-to-1 match.

…This… Isn’t your world, Suzuri.

But I presume this determination has more to do with him not wanting to ever return to the Human world, after all the end result is that the Humans exit Grand-Lolo.

Zungurii points out the flaw, The Blue World doesn’t belong to Humans.

What a very “End justifies the Means”-type argument, it’s fine if you rule a World that doesn’t belong to you so long as you rule it peacefully?

“I haven’t decided how to sort them yet”

And of course, the true reason Suzuri took the offer, Brustom’s collection of X-Rares he used like currency are now Suzuri Hideto’s personal property.

Which is a shame, means Brustom stepping down means he loses significantly more than just his Crown.

I wonder if this means Suzuri currently has a hold of Walhalance and Gungnir?

The group get promptly kicked out of the Castle, as Suzuri wants nothing to do with them.

Twat.

Clackey’s making a fair point, most of the Lightbearers came here unwillingly, and either stayed because they found something fun to do, or were Dan.

They can also return to their own world at essentially any point. So there’s nothing actively preventing them from going home.

It’s a bit unfair to ask someone like Suzuri, who hasn’t asked to be a Lightbearer or a King, to give it all up because some 4000 year old Witch says he should.

MISSION FAILED, WE’LL GET EM NEXT TIME.

Nothing else particularly interesting this scene other than Magisa rehashing that she still believes all the Lightbearers should be together, Zungurii asks a fairly interesting question, were the previous set of soldiers as disjointed as this current set?

So it appears that Julian’s era of Lightbearers mostly consisted of selfless people, and so once gathered, all made an effort to oppose Otherworld King unanimously.

This particular set of 6 however, don’t fight for anyone besides themselves, or otherwise selfish interests.

Dan is the only one who somewhat fights for a selfless reason and that’s only because it’s automatic for him, it’s not something he thinks about or actively invests effort in, he was just “born good”

Mai is benefitted from her escapades with material for her blog.

Hyoudo battles to be the Strongest

Yuuki only fights for his Sister

Clackey fights for Women

and Suzuri won’t even battle, only motivated by whatever increases his collection of X-Rares.

Serge vouches for Mai as she does seem to be genuinely acting in favor of Otherworld.

Yeah only took her 2 attempts to leave and then going back on her statements.

…Huh, so I misread that statement from Hyoudo earlier then, since I figured he was trying to teach Zungurii that consistent, adapted attempts would eventually allow the Otherworlders to break free from Otherworld King’s control.

But Zungurii seems to have taken it as a “You failed cuz you haven’t tried hard enough” which is WAY much of a different sentiment. It’s incredibly easy to belittle someone’s situation by being willfully obtuse and acting as if they’ve had the power to change their situation the whole time and if they truly wanted to they’d have done so.

But that… that’s literally textbook victim blaming.

I completely misread that. No wonder Mai was getting uppity with them.

I’d buy that if you weren’t all characters that seem to have a human-level of sentience and can communicate with us at a very high level.

This is very clearly an allegory for dealing with other countries as the customs and experiences growing up are different, values are handled differently.

for example in Japan many places rely on the honour system, namely there isn’t any visible safeguards to prevent you stealing say, a carton of milk from a stand that has a coin dispenser for payment but people, holding themselves to honour the expected behaviour, will pay.

In the UK, pfft, say bye to your Cartons.

Ah, so your very human mannerisms and logic are a result of Human occupation, and Zungurii, who very rarely encountered humans and thus were unaffected, were naturally going to come at odds with them?

I wonder if this is foreshadowing something that will come later, namely the general incompatibility of Humans and Otherworlders co-existing, granted it comes from Serge of all people who is among the very few exceptions to this rule.

But enough of that relatively deep conversation, Kajitsu has started having an episode again.

Serge seems to raise a sense of urgency, believing that Kajitsu needs to be treated quickly or things could end somewhat fatally.

Hyoudo manages to prove that his immaculate forehead actually has an equally immaculate brain behind it, and suggests that if Kajitsu’s Symbol is showing Green, they should go to the Green World.

Voiced but not subtitled, the crowd gasps at Hyoudo’s suggestion.

Because up until now no one in their right mind had fucking thought of that.

Another section, another World! Let’s get schmoving!

Zungurii seems to have resolved his issues, deciding that his main focus is getting Dan back, so he’s gonna do the only thing he can do.

Make some damn good Curry.

Clackey still hasn’t resolved his issues concerning Kajitsu it seems, not so easy for him to forgive.

Aww geez, everyone’s anxious now!

Mai’s anxious about Kajitsu, Clackey’s Anxious about Trusting Kajitsu, Hyoudo’s Anxious about his future as a Lightbearer, and Zungurii’s anxious about making his Curry too spicy.

Anyone else got something to be Anxious about?

Back to the cool kid’s club!

Brustom’s still apparently negotiating a demotion that’s already occurred, though he seems to be blaming Leon for it even though he mentioned it was due to Otherworld King’s dissatisfaction.

How very Loyal of you, I suppose such is a trait required to be one of Otherworld King’s Three Heads.

Erm, If it wasn’t, I’m fairly sure Leon wouldn’t be in the position he is now.

Loyalty’s kind of nice to have, important to maintain, and difficult to earn back once it’s been lost.

Brustom’s really acting like this is Leon’s fault or Leon’s request, he’s already said the order didn’t come from him.

At this point, Leon asks a… bit of an odd question, he asks if Brustom wants to deal with Yuuki.

Yeah it’s pretty clear, Yuuki was the one who willingly released Kajitsu, and only Brustom has been punished for it.

Leon’s smiling like he’s just heard something good?

I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that Leon isn’t particularly fond of his fellow heads.

Leon tells Brustom that all of Brustom’s punishments were as a result of Yuuki‘s suggestions.

Well, we don’t have Yuuki here to defend himself one way or another, and it’s a bit hard to tell if this was a lie or not.

But it seems that explained Leon’s smile, he dropped it as soon as he continued speaking, he confirmed a small amount of resentment for Yuuki…

…and now he’s telling Brustom that he wasn’t just punished for Yuuki’s mistake, it was Yuuki who proposed the punishment.

That’s changing Yuuki from a lucky sod to an active participant in Brustom’s suffering.

Once again, hard to tell if Leon’s lying, because there is reasonable suspicion that Yuuki does infact want to be Otherworld King.

It seems even though Leon was the one to deliver the poor news to Brustom, he seems to have simply bolstered his loyalty in spite of it, and has even turned Brustom against Yuuki.

…He took what was a meddling resentment of Yuuki, and turned it into a full blown hatred with his words and retained Brustom’s loyalty, appearing to be an ally even in the face of Brustom’s punishment.

…Bewitching Leon indeed.

“Just as desired”?

Oh, well that’s not good, Belga being a direct reporter to Leon, as well as being the one to oversee and spy on Suzuri while he’s King suggests to me that Leon was lying when he said Yuuki suggested the punishment to Brustom.

Leon suggested it, and has only told Brustom, in private, that it was suggested by Yuuki, where no one can prove Leon said it.

By having Brustom stripped of Kingship, and handing it to Suzuri, and then choosing not to pursue Yuuki, Leon was capable of orchestrating a situation wherein he could retain the loyalty of a soldier most efficient with X-Rares and pointing it at Yuuki, while also disabling a Lightbearer from working with the others by providing them an incredibly comfortable safespace that their paranoid self would be unwilling to leave. He even banked on Suzuri being sought out by Magisa and having the subsequent failure to recruit demoralise them.

He’s consolidating his allies and dividing his enemies, Bewitching Leon indeed!

“Yeah, guy’s only running 1 Meteorwurm and 1 Siegwurm when he very clearly needs 3”

Yeah that about sums it up, Dan’s gameplan isn’t anything extravagent, it’s not even a complete synergy, his plan is to take lives in order to summon many spirits, his Spirits that do have effects tend to have ones that allow them to power up or power up other spirits, and the rest is just maximizing the benefits of Dan attacking.

Victory Fire and Flame Dance are low to the ground BP destruction effects to put a stop to counter-rushes if Weenie rush ends up being a viable strategy.

The only non-straightforward card we’ve seen so far is Reborn Flame, as that Card operates as a contingency rather than an addition to the win condition.

Yuuki seems to be noting Pantera’s interest, commenting that Pantera wants to Battle Dan

So this sequence of dialogue pokes at a couple things, firstly, Yuuki’s talking as if Pantera isn’t a “person”, and that he was “made”

In other words, Pantera’s neither Human nor Otherworlder, he’s a completely artificial being.

Additionally, Yuuki’s commenting that Pantera was created in order to benefit Otherworld, so it appears that’s what the “Lance” designations were from earlier, Leon’s role is to benefit the Humans, and Pantera’s role is to benefit Otherworld.

But Yuuki’s noting that Pantera’s growth seems to be pointing him in the path of being more Human than Otherworlder.

There’s more to this conversation than is initially laid out though, but it requires knowledge of something that has yet to be revealed.

Pantera doesn’t seem to mind that idea.

Seems like Dan’s actions over the course of this plot has actually caught the attention of the enigmatic Otherworld King.

He only helped destroy a Horizon Ladder and win a Tournament, kinda surprised that it’s took this long to convey his interest to meet him to be honest.

Well, I suppose Dan being in custody helps.

Ho-ho, what a twist, the Wish that Dan was denied is now being granted!

Back to the plot, it seems Dan’s decided to punch both ways, and wants to instate a rule for the loser.

Er… doesn’t this somewhat void the test? The test is about trusting you as an ally, if you Win you get to rebuild the Red Horizon Ladder, but the loser must work towards breaking Otherworld King’s rule?

Apparently the crowd found that idea hilarious.

Either Otherworld King’s so strong that such a thing is impossible or they’re just so surprised that Dan would openly suggest that.

Whoa, hold on, Magical Crown didn’t openly accept the terms of the battle.

Before any battle is able to start however, Yuuki bursts in.

There’s no further words spoken this scene but it’d be pointless to have a long drawn out conversation informing Dan about the permission to speak to Otherworld King

Yuuki comments that Dan can battle on “his own time”, presumably the appointment with Otherworld King took precedence over whatever Dan’s “work” was, especially given that Kazan didn’t really stop the fight from happening

When Dan asks why this needed to happen so suddenly, Yuuki states that speaking to Otherworld King directly is something that happens very rarely.

“Will Dan Challenge Otherworld King to a battle”

Is Ketchup Red?

You don’t get a say in this!

Dan only answers by asking Yuuki if Yuuki has a hold of his deck, but I don’t really understand if that’s meant to mean that Yuuki will allow Dan to use his deck for the purposes of the battle? Or if it’s Dan exclaiming that he can’t use his Deck if Yuuki’s holding onto it.

Well you see, it’s the Hyperbolic Time Chamber, one year inside the chamber is one day outside-

More seriously, whatever it is, it requires Dan to open the gate as if he were heading to the Battlefield.

Which he does! Promptly ending the episode-

…Wait

OH COME ON, I DIDN’T GET TO WITNESS A BATTLE

D’awww I’m so bothered by this too…

I mean, unlike the dread Episode 17 of Toppa Bashin, this Episode is kind of required reading, it dumps so much plot onto you.

And Dan’s position changes so much from the start of the episode to the end that if it were to be skipped we’d be really confused as to where in the sweet hell Dan was.

So I suppose it’s nowhere near as bad as Toppa’s no-battle episodes.

Since there’s no battle, no new cards were unveiled, and therefore no Card of the Day is possible, instead the section talks about how Meteorwurm and Siegwurm share the Astral Dragon family, and that because of this, combos are made possible among Spirits with the same family.

This is true but it’s not the whole story. A Family is a guideline, once you find yourself running multiple cards sharing a family it can become prudent to run cards that support that family.

However doing it backwards can lead to bottlenecking, as a card that supports a given family that you want to use might cause you to only seek out cards of that family, which may lead you to build a sub-optimal deck.

Family matching is important, but, more important is the strategy you are attempting to perform, as that is the main, direct impact of your deck. A card that gives all my Astral Dragons 1 Red reduction like Reborn Flame doesn’t necessitate that I run a deck with nothing besides Astral Dragons, I’d need an additional reason for that to be the case.

Anyway, next one is Episode 24, right before the halfway point, I’ll see you next time!

Gekiha Dan – Episode 22

Alright lads, Dan has just won the first tournament of his life, wielding a card that represents a separation from the previous series.

I’ve been harping on about the similarities between this series and the old one, designating this series as a “Spiritual Successor” to Bashin Toppa.

Reborn Flame is the first true indicator that the series will now begin to diverge, ever so slowly, to become something completely different than Toppa Bashin.

With this in mind, let’s jump in.

Since I’m in a meta-narrative mood, from the outset, Brustrom appears to be acting as a pseudo-Nazo-Otona type role here, a mysterious adult acting in service to a King we are as of yet unable to meet.

To rehash the stakes for anyone who didn’t watch the last episode, Dan’s initial wish of telling everyone to piss off was ignored, Dan’s second option, to see Otherworld King, is grantable but just annoying enough to be contingent on Dan being able to overpower Brustrom.

If Dan loses however, he will serve Yuuki, the White Soldier.

It’s been a hot minute but it’s a curious thing to mention, the Core Soldiers, the Bearers of the Core’s Light have the power to revitalize Otherworld and are chosen for that task, and by virtue of Otherworld King causing Otherworld to need revitalizing in the first place, are fated to be opposed to him, however, 4 of them, Yuuki, Kajitsu, Hyoudo and Suzuri, have been acting in Otherworld King’s interests. Notably the only one seeming particularly loyal to him is Yuuki, the rest seem to be acting on their own vices which is being exploited for Otherworld King’s benefit, Kajitsu wishes to assist her brother in any way he needs, Suzuri wants X-Rares, and Hyoudo wants to be the strongest.

The rule of war in Otherworld dictated by Otherworld King is Battle Spirits, Physical force is secondary, Otherworld King’s allies favour the result of a Battle more than their own Physical might, Dan is not an ally though, so he has to actively give his word that he’ll abide by the rules.

Oh hey, Hyoudo’s watching.

And Hyoudo, you’re a Core bearer too? Also you defeated Clackey who bears the yellow light.

‘Fuck does that mean?

Yuuki comments that while Dan does try exceptionally hard, he has made a decision, a promise to act based on the results of this battle.

I find this exchange to be quite interesting actually, Hyoudo comments being a Card Battler is Troublesome, when Yuuki starts to wonder why Hyoudo’s speaking as if he’s not one, Hyoudo points out that being a Card Battler in Otherworld and being a Card Battler on Earth is not the same thing.

Playing Card Games in the Real World confers no real power, If I’m the best player in a world, my voice only holds sway in the Court of Public opinion within the community that I’ve gained power in.

I can’t enact law or enforce rules by playing a game of cards, and there’s no expectation that I would be able to do so, or be expected to submit to rules. Infact to some extents, to offer antes in a card battle is stigmatized.

Attempting to wield power in that manner would be laughed at and actively suppressed.

In Otherworld though… It’s a lot different, Card Battlers have power that is respected more than physical might, weaponry.

To be an efficient Card Battler is to wield power over someone without threatening their life.

Hyoudo notices the oddity of the question, Yuuki is Human, he must be fully aware of the differences between how card battles in this world and earth differ.

Yuuki answers with this incredibly unsure answer, “Supposedly”

This is obviously foreshadowing that Yuuki being Human, while correct, doesn’t appear to be the whole story.

Which is weird, Yuuki’s been actively witnessing the effects of the Core System on Kajitsu for ages, and his statements earlier clearly show knowledge that Kajitsu bears Mother Core’s light.

It’d be one thing to say he didn’t care but to say he doesn’t know suggests that he might not have been aware that this is a direct consequence and not just a side effect.

Clackey questions Mai’s actions, wondering why she’d go out of her way to rescue an enemy just because she was unwell.

Suzuri is very unhappy that he’s having an X-Rare held over his head for his services that seem to have no end in sight.

Mai does try to praise him, but surprises him by calling him the rather affectionate “Suzurin”

Zungurii however is significantly less jovial about it, as far as he’s concerned Kajitsu was directly involved in the enslavement and imprisonment of many members of his personal family, he is understandably not convinced to act differently just because she’s sick.

Zungurii asks the ultimate question, why did Mai help Kajitsu? What was the end goal?

Right, unfortunately this episode suffers from a fairly nasty spoiler in it’s title, so while I am prepared to talk about it, people who are reading this but not watching alongside, I will not spoil the surprise for them.

The Battle’s finally underway, Dan starts with a simple bit of board set up, summoning a Lv2 Lizardedge and a Lv1 Ankillersaurus.

All the core does something here, so this is an okay first move.

Kajitsu suddenly reacts to the Core’s effects again, which is a little strange, supposedly the Core system they destroyed should have stopped pouring power into Mother Core.

Serge states their deduction based on their available information, and ultimately the audience’s.

That the Core System was what was connecting the Core to Mother Core, by destroying it, Core energy should have stopped reaching Mother Core, and Kajitsu should no longer be suffering whenever Core is used.

Serge says there is something about the pair of them that we’re not being told.

But also says that, as they’re following the will of the Otherworld King, they’re of no consequence to him. Which makes sense as Serge is an Otherworlder.

I’m not sure what the point of this statement is as Serge is incredibly composed while saying but, but I think the meat of his statement is that they simply don’t know enough about the 2 of them to make determinations as to what’s causing Kajitsu’s condition, and as they’re enemies, they shouldn’t have to care.

Brustrom plays The Soldier Gustav. As expected of the Blue World’s King, Brustrom plays Blue.

‘Scuse me?

Now we’re getting into the fun bits, Brustrom appears to be using a Mixed Colour Deck of White and Blue.

Brustrom’s clearly a man with a collection of many X-Rares like Suzuri, but favours Blue cards, as a result its probable that he normally wields a Blue base, mixing in the colours of the X-Rares he wants to use.

Now that we’re out of the Tournament Arc, the Battles, beyond just being a competition, are once again back to settling differences between the Battler’s.

What that means is just there’ll be more discussions now mid-fight rather than just taunting.

Brustrom asks Dan if he’d consider the state of the Blue World to be peaceful.

Notably, Brustrom is asking who Dan is supposedly trying to rescue, though he limits his range to “the Blue World”

Suzuri comments that the question is disingenuous, but you do need to be specific as to which groups are being unduly affected when trying to sort out any particularly widespread problem.

In this case, Brustrom is ultimately casting doubt on the idea that Otherworld King is bad for Otherworld, as the Blue World is peaceful under Otherworld King’s rule, regardless of Dan’s experiences in the Red World.

Brustrom wonders how Dan will explain people are suffering to Otherworld King if he can’t show him anyone that is.

Sure, Dan’s fighting based on his experience of oppression in the Red World, but the Blue World doesn’t appear to have such a problem.

It casts doubt on the idea that Otherworld King is actively bringing suffering.

But it’s an undeniable fact that Otherworlders were enslaved and forced to build a Horizon Ladder in the Red World, and that task was carried out by Otherworld forces, it might be peaceful in other worlds but accepting that peace requires accepting those atrocities as a necessary consequence, and no moral person is going to do that.

If Peace can only co-exist with the suffering of people who don’t deserve it then that isn’t Peace.

Brustrom performs a full attack, attacking with Berserker-Gun and Soldier Gustav

This explains the levelling choices between having 4000-1000 BP split between the 2 spirits, or 2000-3000, the first option would have allowed Dan to destroy Berserker-Gun without issue.

Dan takes both from the life, leaving him on 3 lives on the 2nd turn.

Defending the life would have required sacrificing board presence, I don’t think there is a single battler playing today who wouldn’t have done the same thing.

Dan levels down Lizardedge and summons The ThunderDragonEmperor Siegwurm.

This is a rather odd play, Brustrom has no refreshed Spirits for Siegwurm to destroy, any other Spirit would achieve about the same effect as Siegwurm is doing here.

But I suppose this is just an example of Dan’s straightforwardness.

Oof, that’s an incredibly Red light, unlike the others we’d seen until now.

Magisa observes the effect Mother Core has on Kajitsu, noting that stronger spirits need more Core, and that causes Kajitsu more damage

Dan’s offering his rebuttal now, namely that he saw plenty of suffering in the Red World, Brustrom’s question being limited to his own World is one asked in bad faith.

Dan contends that the Humans who came here aren’t even following Human rules, which is true.

Slavery’s pretty awful, most developed countries have it completely illegalized, so to have people from the future completely unopposed to forcing it upon the Otherworlders and willing to commit genocide to make space for themselves seems fairly regressive.

Yuuki questions why Dan fights for those other than himself.

Dan declares he’ll force them to return Grand-Lolo to the Otherworlders once he wins.

Brustrom mentions that Otherworld was rather uncivilised before the Humans arrived, that much of what good happens in Grand-Lolo is a result of Human presence.

Brustrom is essentially advocating that Otherworld King and the Humans allied with him are doing far more good for Otherworld than bad, even if that level of “Bad” includes literal slavery.

Indeed. Fact of the matter is there still has been no clear reason as to why the suffering of Otherworlders is necessary for these “Advancements” Brustrom praises so highly. Asking us to ignore it just because those benefits exist makes absolutely zero sense.

And that’s because Brustrom, despite being an Otherworlder, is a beneficiary of the system, and therefore doesn’t give a damn what happens to anyone else.

Dan evens out the Life difference, taking a life from Brustrom with both Siegwurm and Ankillersaurus. Brustrom’s got 3 lives remaining.

And unlike Dan in his battle against you Hyoudo, he has 0 core available to respond with a Flash.

Dan ends his turn.

Brustrom adds more White Spirits to his board, summoning Berserker-Magnum

…And then, very surprisingly, Summons The Sacred Gungnir!

That is a one-of-a-kind card that only Yuuki owns at this present moment in time.

So that begs the question… How does Brustrom have one?

I do find it amusing that the Sacred Gungnir of all things is regarded so highly as a one-of-a-kind card in this show, Gungnir has the trashy effect of bouncing every opposing Cost 1 or below card to the hand when it’s destroyed. And it was released in a Starter Deck as a common.

Kajitsu’s pain has caused the symbol of Mother Core to appear.

Oh right! Dan has never seen Gungnir before! Yuuki’s only use of the card was against Belga.

Magisa’s 4000 year old ass apparently knows full well what Gungnir is, allowing the cast to catch up on the fact that it’s one of the 2 spirits that represent the White World’s King.

…Brustrom being the Blue World’s King means this shit don’t add up.

I can’t actually tell if Kajitsu is exclaiming that this is her Brother’s out of a need to remind the audience, or in actual disbelief that he’d lend the card to Brustrom for any reason?

Fuck you mean “Do you still think we’re even?”

Gungnir is actual trash, don’t even start.

It’s only benefit is that it doesn’t demand as much core as Mjolnir to perform essentially the same function.

That is a fair observation, Dan only has Lizardedge, Brustrom could win with a full attack and Dan would be hard-pressed to stop him.

Though if Dan did stop him, Brustrom would be in a spot of trouble.

Dan raises Siegwurm to Lv3 (9000 BP) and Lizardedge to Lv2 (2000 BP)

This is a pretty fair move to make, Dan doesn’t know what Brustrom is planning, and worse, Brustrom has a board advantage.

And even if he knew what Gungnir did, this would still be an okay play, because Gungnir would bounce Lizardedge if Dan attacked with Siegwurm now, giving Brustrom an additional opportunity to play more spirits and win even harder.

Brustrom seems to like his draw…

Well that’s certainly a draw and a half.

Well that’s a little reckless but okay, Brustrom summons The Armored Sacred Walhalance, but to help it reach Lv2, he depletes all of his spirits that aren’t Gungnir.

The Spirit advantage is gone, all to get Walhalance to 7000 BP.

Under any other circumstance this would be kind of risky, but I suppose Brustrom does still have enough White reductions for a cheeky White defense magic later.

Aside from Soldier Gustav being a Red Herring, or in this case, a Blue one, this could functionally be seen as a Proxy match between Dan and Yuuki.

But anyway that was the Spoiler in question, Brustrom wields both Gungnir and Walhalance!

After all, the Episode in question is simply called “Meteorwurm vs. Walhalance”

Wait really? It’s Turn 6 and you lost 2 lives, your maximum available Core is 9, you just spent 4 of it summoning Walhalance.

Walhalance needs 3 core to be Lv2, Gungnir needs 2…

Yeah, adds up, if only just about.

Sadly if there’s one thing I agree with Brustrom on, its that we both adore seeing classic formations like this one.

And out comes the truth, Yuuki made gifts of these cards to Brustrom, likely expecting Dan to challenge him I suppose.

Yuuki explains the history of the 2 cards, as those 2 cards protect the King of the White World, Brustrom is justified in wielding them against Dan, as defeating Brustrom will indirectly bring Dan closer to defeating Yuuki, that makes Dan a threat to the White King.

It appears Suzuri is familiar with those cards, likely learning of them upon arriving in Otherworld.

Still, Gungnir being a common starter deck card still makes this funny.

Serge makes the same comment I did earlier, this battle is somewhat of a Proxy battle between Yuuki and Dan.

And Mai focuses on the fact that the Battle causing Kajitsu pain means that the summoning of Walhalance as gifted from Yuuki makes him responsible for hurting his Sister.

Hrm, I suppose if even Zungurii feels that Yuuki is being too obvious to suggest malice, he must truly not know that his sister is suffering.

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
~ Hanlon’s Razor

Fun fact, the act of attributing conditions to villainy that which arises from stupidity is occasionally called the “Devil Theory” fallacy

Though there is of course an adequate extension to this rule:

Never attribute to malice or stupidity that which can be explained by moderately rational
individuals following incentives in a complex system.
~ Douglas W. Hubbard

This extension exists because selfishness is kind of a default state of being, if I intend to eat from a selection of plates and I take the last of the most desirable option such that no one else can eat that option for the rest of that day, I am being neither malicious nor stupid, I’m acting on the incentive of eating the best meal I can access and as a result of that have denied others from being able to do so. I knew it was the last one, so I couldn’t have been stupid enough to not realise that taking it wouldn’t inconvenience someone else who wanted it. But the motivation for taking the dish wasn’t specifically to inconvenience those people either, it was just because it was the dish I personally wanted.

I got a bit off track after that analogy, moving on.

Yuuki’s very clearly acting as an antagonistic force but one of the weird things about the way he operates is he always speaks in words that almost sound like he’s trying to motivate Dan to continue down his current path rather than force him to stray.

Brustrom ends his turn, yeah attacking here would be a bit suicidal.

I wonder what precisely she believes will mess with Dan’s pace, the fact that Brustrom is using Yuuki’s cards or the fact that Dan literally has never seen these cards before now?

Nice, deductive reasoning from Dan here, Yuuki’s specialty is Armor. Ain’t no reason it doesn’t have Armor to Red.

Ah, good ol’ anime bullshit.

In a real game a player is allowed to freely verify the effects of any card placed on the board, theirs or their opponent’s

Here though, the logistics of doing that are difficult on account of the fact that Dan can’t fucking see the opposing board.

So really it’s up to you if you think this is bullshit or not, on one hand it’s not how this would play out in reality, on the other, it makes sense given the mechanics of the show.

Dan attacks with Siegwurm, activating Clash.

The issue here is this won’t confirm a single thing about Walhalance, because the board state is ripe for Walhalance defeating Siegwurm.

So, I know that Yuuki is saying this because of Walhalance’s Armor: Infinite means that Walhalance doesn’t have to block, but here’s the problem, Gungnir does.

In order to protect both Spirits, blocking with Walhalance is the only move.

Brustrom activates Walhalance’s Lv2 effect, by exhausting Gungnir, it’s BP is added to Walhalance, giving it a grand total of 11000 BP

Brutal, Siegwurm is completely skewered by Walhalance, destroying it.

Brustrom really do be watching all of Dan’s matches, seeing him win every one with Meteorwurm and then proceed to spit out of his mouth what he expels from his ass.

Hoo boy, Mother Core’s turnin’ red!

Seems like something’s emitting from Kajitsu as well, as her hair is floating.

But such is the case with any card with Armor to Red cards really? Walhalance is technically even slightly easier to circumvent than Yggdrassil, as Walhalance is vulnerable to cards that don’t have a matching colour symbol on the opposing field.

If you’re wondering “How does that work”? It means Dan could essentially fire a Dark Coffin from his hand, and since he has no Purple symbols on board, Walhalance would be susceptible to it.

Dan probably doesn’t realise, but Yuuki was trying oh so desperately to give Dan a hint as to Walhalance’s other abilities, since Brustrom blocked Siegwurm, Dan believed it was susceptible to Clash and therefore doesn’t have an Armor ability.

So now, based on this knowledge, Dan is going to bank on it being susceptible only for it to blow up in his face.

What is your DAMAGE Yuuki!?

You keep throwing encouragement after encouragement and yet you oppose him like he’s public enemy number one?

Naturally, knowing Yuuki’s motivations will give clarity to why he’s like this but there’s not a lot of hints about it given the thoughts we hear Yuuki think.

…Walhalance Gungnir isn’t that strong a combo, what?

So I understand the rage, I feel like it’s not helping, but at the same time it’s a bit hard to tell Zungurii this is an unwarranted course of action because someone he hates is telling them that Dan’s fucked essentially, and well, given the stakes he’s not about to leave anytime soon as he wants to watch over his friend.

Could tell him to say nothing but that does precisely nothing. “Sit there and be uncomfortable” doesn’t quite have the resolutionary vibe.

Dan ends his turn and Brustrom goads him.

My guy he doesn’t have enough Spirits to kill you, what’s he gonna do? Summon a MachG?

Of course he’s going to sit there and wait, chill your beanstalk

I suppose the point is to rile him up, disrupting your opponent’s pace is a method of winning after all.

…Oh this could be nasty.

Walhalance being Lv3 opens up an entirely new effect.

I mean, Brustrom still has 3 core in his reserve, he could still summon.

Also in actual gameplay you’re free to re-arrange your core as much as you like, what most people do is gather all their core on one Spirit they want levelled before doing things like summoning to ensure their Spirits remain as levelled as possible.

“YoU’rE gOnNa BeAt Me WiTh JuSt ThAt CaRd!?” is a bit of an overreaction to someone raising their Key Spirit to the max level.

Walhalance attacks.

Thanks to being at Lv3, all opposing 4000 BP or less spirits return to the hand, which just so happens to be all of Dan’s Spirits.

Lizardedge and Ankillersaurus return to Dan’s hand.

At least they were relatively cheap to play, shouldn’t cause too much of an issue.

Dan’s life on the other hand…

Dan takes a life, he’s got 2 left.

Brustrom follows up with Gungnir, and Dan loses another life, leaving himself with 1.

Clackey notes that because Dan is up against Yuuki’s spirits, he’s at a disadvantage.

I’m really not sure where this sentiment that Red is uniquely poor when trying to deal with White comes from given they’re meant to be opposites, it’s kind of irksome actually because the show just continually assumes this to be true.

Brustrom is out of attackers, so it’s Dan’s turn, and he drops a Lizardedge and 2 Erimakilizards.

Dan then follows up with a Lv3 Summon of Meteorwurm.

Meteorwurm needs 6 core to be at Level 3, Dan started his turn with 12 core in his reserve (4 core steps, 4 lives lost, 4 at the start), each Cost 0 Spirit needed 1 core to maintain, so 9 core remaining.

Meteorwurm at Max reductions needed 4 core, with only 5 core left, he needed an extra core from somewhere, Lizardedge was depleted to ensure the cost for Meteorwurm’s level was paid.

I’m trying to wrangle my head around how Dan wins here, he has an Ankillersaurus in his hand and Brustrom has no blockers.

We interrupt this battle to inform you that Kajitsu’s Core appears to have started a fucking rave

Oh now you’re paying attention!

Yuuki calls out to Mai in a rather low tone, asking her if it was “Fun getting to know Kajitsu”

Well that’s about as Grim as the sky is Pink.

Magisa states that Kajitsu is “Breaking”, her episode back when she fought Dan was apparently the exact same scenario as this one.

In spite of this big expulsion of energy, Kajitsu’s body is cold

Physics is weird here, normally things that emit bright light and have high energy are warm.

Clearly no one was informed about this, even Brustrom’s stopped to wonder what on earth-er, Otherworld is happening.

Apparently Brustrom doesn’t get to know things.

Dan tries to target attack Walhalance using Meteorwurm.

Sadly besides a raw attack, Dan has no other options… if attacking Walhalance was even considered an option.

Attacking Gungnir would cause his Erimakilizards to bounce back to his hand due to it’s effect on destruction, then Brustrom could attack with Walhalance to win.

You don’t have enough *badges* to attack Walhalance

Target attacking functions as if you’re forcing the Spirit you selected to block, since it affects the Spirit’s actions, you can’t bypass Armor with it.

As Dan has Red Symbols, Walhalance is immune to all his Red effects

Brustrom uses Diamond Strike during Flash timing.

**Flash**
Refresh an “Armed Machine” family Spirit you control.

A Cost 3 White Magic from BS07 designed to support Armed Machines, it refreshes an Armed Machine, no questions asked.

Naturally this is a much cheaper version of White Potion, the trade-off being you can only Refresh Spirits of a given Family.

Brustrom has no core in his reserve, so he drops Walhalance to Lv2 in order to refresh it with 7000 BP.

Brustrom then uses Walhalance to block Meteorwurm’s attack.

Now that’s an interesting play, fighting Siegwurm before made sense, but in this scenario it looks like Brustrom went above and beyond, weakening Walhalance to get it to do what Dan wanted it to do anyway.

…It’s one way out of 2, what?

…’scuse me?

So, Brustrom follows up with another Flash, Arms Impact.

**Flash**
When your Spirit is blocking an opposing Spirit, destroy a Cost 4 or less Spirit you control, and you can destroy any number of opposing Spirits up to the cost of your destroyed Spirit.

An incredibly weird BS07 Blue Magic, it’s only usable during the Flash Timing of when you’re blocking an opposing Spirit, by then blowing up a Cost 4 or less Spirit on your board, you can then destroy opposing Spirits up to the destroyed Spirit’s Cost.

There is a slight issue I have with this, Brustrom just paid core from Walhalance in order to use Diamond Strike because he lacked core.

Arms Impact is Cost 4 and Brustrom has no blue symbols.

In order to destroy the Sacred Gungnir he’d need to pay 4 core from somewhere, 1 from Gungnir and at least 3 from his 4 core Walhalance.

The interesting thing about “up to” cost effects is that Cost 0s are just automatically included without actually wasting space, Gungnir is cost 3, had Dan had another Cost 3 spirit, the Erimakilizards would have still been destroyed.

Walhalance catches Meteorwurm’s attack, and is destroyed

Well I suppose Arms Impact dropping it to Lv1 wasn’t relevant then, assuming this is true the move is still legal, not a fuck up, just a glossed detail.

Kajitsu seems to be not having fun with the high intensity battle here.

Still, I’m curious as to why Brustrom sacrificed both his spirits there, Arms Impact would have still defeated Dan completely, there was no need for a Diamond Strike to have Walhalance challenge Meteorwurm.

And apparently that produces more Core Energy than anything else that actually uses Core.

It is, but pointlessly.

This would have been true had Walhalance blocked or not, the difference would have been that Brustrom would be on 2 lives.

I don’t think sacrificing an X-Rare to stop yourself going to 2 is particularly worth it.

I can’t read.

I completely forgot the fact that Arms Impact requires a Blocking Spirit in order to use.

…2 seconds after reading it.

It IS a bit weird that Arms Impact requires a blocking Spirit in order to use, but there is the added benefit that you can use Arms Impact to blow up the Spirit you’re blocking with.

If Brustrom wanted to protect Walhalance, he could have refreshed Gungnir, forcing it to block, once Gungnir was destroyed it’s effect when destroyed would have bounced all the Erimakilizard’s to Dan’s hand, producing the same situation without wasting Arms Impact.

He could also have just used Arms Impact anyway and achieved the same result without sacrificing Walhalance.

There was no necessity for Walhalance specifically to block.

Run that by me again?

That X-Rare summon is causing Mother Core’s energy to start rupturing the arena.

Notably, Alexander’s summon here is accompanied by Yuuki’s theme.

Suzuri exclaims that Brustrom is scary as he had another Alexander.

Well for a King like himself, it’s likely he’s amassed a rather large collection of extra X-Rares, I wouldn’t be surprised if he was running triple Alexanders here.

Kinda, I don’t think we’ve ever seen Dan use a magic to destroy a Spirit with 6000 BP, I don’t have a reason to believe he’d use one now.

And yeah, lord knows what’d happen to Kajitsu at the end anyway.

Zungurii has a change of heart, unable to ignore his own desires to help Kajitsu in the state she’s in, he changes his mind and calls out to Dan, saying “he’s battled enough”

Essentially, Zungurii’s trying to take the pressure off of Dan to win, as to continue battling would harm Kajitsu further.

Brustrom attacks with The GiantEmperor Alexander

Even losing the man’s gracefully confident.

Dan loses his last life, but Alexander breaks through the life barrier…

Dan seems alright, but he’s lost his last life, making the Blue King Brustrom the Winner.

I wouldn’t be alright if I lost to White/Blue

The thing about colour combinations is there’s usually a complimentary benefit to wielding both.

The problem with Blue specifically is that it’s a one-trick pony colour designed to hard-focus on win conditions, it does what it does very well. Attempting to mix in utilities detracts from Blue’s ability to actually perform it’s intended task.

Only 2 colours get away with mixing with Blue under normal circumstances, Red, as Red’s aggressiveness and Blue’s ability to take many lives at once lines up. And Green, not because there is an inherent synergy, but because that’s only Green is unique in the sense that there isn’t a colour it doesn’t benefit, Core boost is something every deck appreciates.

White is usually better for defensive strategies and extending game time, something rather counter intuitive to Blue’s hard-focus on win-cons.

Dan apparently surmised that it was Kajitsu based on his previous experience with her exploding.

Ah, isn’t that a nice callback? Kazan at the very beginning confiscated a deck from Zungurii’s brother after he’d lost, now Kazan’s here again after Dan’s first serious loss to the Otherworld King’s forces… asking Dan for his Deck.

Dan has no right to refuse, the rule for the loser is to be Yuuki’s servant, and Kazan is one of Yuuki’s men.

The last time Kazan confiscated a Deck, Dan protested, saying “A Deck is a Battler’s life“

To take away a Card Battler’s Deck is to take away their ability to battle, essentially ending their life as a Card Battler.

Zungurii clearly doesn’t intend to respect the rules, but unfortunately…

Dan clearly has a code of ethics as a battler, if he can’t respect the rules he himself agrees to then there’s no point engaging in battles in the first place. Why should he be allowed to impose his will on others if they can’t use the same method to do the same to him?

It’s a principle, and it also ensures that if Dan is able to battle again that he’s able to once again use Otherworld King’s rule of Battle Spirits against him, to ignore it now would be not only dishonest but I’m fairly sure Otherworld King’s men would no longer heed his wishes to Battle.

Why fight a guy who won’t keep his word when he loses?

Kazan takes Dan’s deck and has Dan taken prisoner.

Dan isn’t the only Lightbearer however, he passes the Torch to Clackey, Bearer of the Yellow Light, to look after everyone else in his stead.

Kazan takes the opportunity to try and take Kajitsu back, however Yuuki interrupts him, exclaiming that he is the reason Kajitsu is suffering.

Hrm, he’s blaming himself a bit harshly there, but based on his thoughts in earlier episodes it appears he genuinely believed Kajitsu would be revitalized by the Core System, he’s now acting as if he blames himself for not knowing how much damage Kajitsu was actually taking and that her condition was getting worse as a result.

Yuuki asks Magisa a favour, that being to take care of Kajitsu.

Yuuki curses himself for being so close to Kajitsu, witnessing her struggles and still not realising that the Core System was what was causing her issue.

So he’s punishing himself by separating himself from her.

Seems that for some reason, Yuuki trusts Magisa more than his own men to look after Kajitsu…

Something isn’t quite adding up here.

If he wanted anyone to look after and keep him separated from Kajitsu, his loyal followers should have been the first people to go to.

But Kazan was under the impression that the Core System and the Horizon Ladder along with Kajitsu was the only way for him to have Hope that his era of humanity could survive and to that end tried desperately to keep Kajitsu away from Mai and the others.

We know based on Yuuki’s beliefs and how easily he rectified them that the Core System was indeed harming Kajitsu, the question then becomes who let them think that the Core System was supposed to help?

They’re acting under orders from Otherworld King, so a keen-eyed viewer would deduce that perhaps Yuuki is starting to have his suspicions about Otherworld King and given Magisa’s opposition to him, makes her the safest place to keep Kajitsu away from him.

Dan comments on the idea that Yuuki is fighting for Kajitsu’s sake and not his own, Yuuki seems to resent Dan’s line of questioning.

Seems Dan has a lot to think about all of a sudden.

Yuuki thanks Mai and Mai gets flustered about it.

Notably when Mai gets flustered she straightens one of her bangs.

Welp, seems wherever Yuuki’s going, he’s taking Brustom with him.

Also I’ve been spelling it “Brustrom”, like “Maelstrom” the entire time, I just checked the Japanese spelling and it’s certainly “Brustom”, without the additional R.

Welp, Bye Dan, I hope Yuuki’s employ has a good dental plan.

Hyoudo pokes Suzuri for his opinion, but he says he “Isn’t interested”

“Kyoumi” is the word used for Interest, curiosity or Zest, Suzuri here says “Kyoumi Nai”, so “Not Interested”

It’s a literal translation sure, but it seems like the context would have been better served by a translation of “I don’t care” which is how Suzuri is using the phrase, when Serge earlier said he wasn’t interested in the Momose Siblings, he used the same phrasing, “Not interested” suggests an indifference whereas “Don’t care” suggests an active unwillingness to get involved, which is what Suzuri and Serge meant.

I’m not gonna ride Soaker over the translation decision, they made the correct translation because that is what the phrase means, it just surprises me that Japanese doesn’t have alternate phrasings to highlight the subtle difference between indifference and actively uninvolving oneself.

By extension, he’s Yuuki’s subordinate more than anything.

He didn’t lose to ordinary power, he lost to White/Blue, that shit should have folded like a chair.

I don’t know that phrasing, the closest I can think of is “There are no lessons learned in victory, but a thousand in defeat”

Also “When you have nothing left to lose, you win”

Errr… “Only way is up?”

None of these really capture the same sentiment.

Mai seems concerned, given that even if Dan “Profits” from his Loss, he’s currently working for Otherworld King.

I guess Mai’s suggesting that Dan could become an enemy but uh, that’d be too cool for this show.

And finally, Zungurii doesn’t know what’s going on, as he no longer understands who is a friend and who is an enemy, Dan has accepted his fate and become Yuuki’s servant, technically making him an enemy, and Kajitsu has been left in their care by an enemy, so Zungurii has no idea what’s going on.

With that, the Episode closes.

Oh, that’s a surprise, the card of the day is Walhalance.

I don’t really… have much to say, I guess I can talk about some interesting notes.

They were definitely future proofing with some of these card wordings, as “Armor”, quite interestingly, states that the Spirit is unaffected by Spirits, Nexuses and Magic of the aforementioned colour.

Almost as if they knew that these wouldn’t be the only available card types, and they certainly aren’t at time of writing.

Even ignoring that fact though, on it’s own Walhalance is incredibly difficult to remove, a blanket “Your colour doesn’t work on me” makes the spirit immovable via effect, that makes it an incredibly difficult body to address once it’s on board, Low max BP but pfft, it can solve that.

Hrm… Ah! There’s an interesting quirk, You might find it a bit odd that Walhalance ended up being the White Feature for the current Set display’s fights, currently we’re on BS07 and we’ve had a nice feature from Red, Blue and Green, the reason we’ve only seen BS06 showings from Purple and White is because BS07 is the last set that only included 4 X-Rares, Purple and White missed out this time around, hence the X-Rares for those sets were thrown into the fights with the colours that got X-Rares this set.

From BS08 onwards, every colour will receive at LEAST 1 X-Rare, however the show’s run will not reposition itself to accommodate this meaning 2 colours per set until the end of this series will not have their X-Rares shown.

Naturally, I will review them at times that seem relevant, because I’m fun like that.

Anyhow, I’ll see you guys in the next one! Buh-bye!

Gekiha Dan – Episode 21

Alright, if you were around for the last post, you’d know that this Episode is actually a follow-on from a previous one, so if you’re not caught up on the fight til now, go read the article for Episode 20, the entire battle gets played from Turn 1 it’s absolutely beautiful.

If you’re already caught up, let’s review!

Dan’s only got 1 life remaining, and all that’s left on his field is a Lv1 Meteorwurm and a Lv1 Sabecaulus.

Hyoudo Kenzo on the other hand is sitting quite comfortably at 3 lives, his board consists of a Lv2 Byak-Garo and a Lv2 Gabunohashi, all his Spirits are currently exhausted and it’s Dan’s turn.

Before we resume that match, gotta do some plot housekeeping!

Seems even though Suzuri’s main goal is to give Brustrom a crotch massage in the hopes that the semi-finals will be redone, his attention is caught by…

…The situation going on with Mai, Serge, Kajitsu and Kazan.

Also Continuity Error! The guards were knocked into the room by Serge and it was very clearly a Green room back then with Sofas and everything, it seems they needed to cut a corner here and made the background here just like every other one but it’s still jarring, especially when the unconscious dudes have crawled into new sleeping spots.

“Kajitsu-sama” was never here to begin with! Different room dickweed!

Right, in Episode 12 Kazan explained that he’s actually from the Future, as Grand-Lolo seems to operate on it’s own kind of timescale, it connects to multiple areas of Human History at once. From Kazan’s perspective, the Horizon Ladders are like giant power Pylons, using that he wishes to move all of Humanity from his time to Grand-Lolo.

I explained earlier that the reason it’s unjust is because he’s expecting to sacrifice many Otherworlders to accommodate this, including enslaving them to build said Horizon Ladders. Essentially forcing the natives of Otherworld to suffer for the mistakes of a different race.

Kazan doesn’t really have any other options though, rolling over and dying isn’t a particularly attractive prospect either, so until an alternative presents itself, he’s going to do whatever he can to survive.

And right now that involves protecting the Blue World’s Horizon Ladder, and apparently Kajitsu.

Serge seems to have summarized my argument for me, don’t act as if the people standing in their way are directly causing their suffering, when it’s the consequences of their own actions.

Jesus christ what upper arm strength!

Kazan’s face is precisely the right reaction, he has enough strength to grab Mai while holding Kajitsu bridal-style and still have enough energy, grip and strength to jump over Kazan.

Hot damn, Serge isn’t done with Kazan yet apparently, he’s gotta go back and beat his ass personally.

That does seem pretty reasonable a plan.

Well shit.

…There’s no explanation offered as to why she can’t, she can roundhouse kick Kazan halfway across a room but doesn’t have enough upper body strength to carry Kajitsu?

WAT.

SUZURI’S JUST-AS IF NOT EVEN SCRAWNIER THAN MAI IS.

I will say, though Kajitsu and Suzuri have never really met, this shot is kind of adorable.

It helps that Kajitsu is presented incredibly cutely as something vulnerable and to be protected, so she gets a lot of instances like this.

This is REALLY not the time to be asking that question.

I feel like that appointment’s been cancelled Suzuri, at least they played off the obvious bullshittery in order to get Suzuri into a position where he could assist the plot but it’s still nonsense.

Kazan looks like he’s ready to throw hands.

It always weirds me out that Kazan’s got an incredibly “Do what you have to do” mindset when it comes to dealing with our Main characters, he’s also just as aware that Kajitsu has a very clear issue and needs assistance but y’know.

ah, I forgot about the Dragon and Tiger imagery here.

It’s a trope that’s quite common, Dragon vs Tiger, the reason it’s so common is representative, the Dragon and Tiger both represent Strength, Honor and Bravery, but it’s the manifestation of this that differs between the 2.

Dragons are usually the more thoughtful of the two, observing before action, where as the Tiger is seen as the more brash, focusing on overcoming the opposing obstacle as soon as possible.

In essence, the Dragon is the big picture thinker while the Tiger tends to focus on the moment, much like how Dan is trying to get the big picture through to Hyoudo who is single-mindedly following his desires.

It’s this kind of dynamic that generally depicts the Tiger as the more villainous of the two.

If he was already the strongest then he’d have no business wishing to be what he already is.

Fact of the matter is, if someone invested that much effort into being that strong, and aimed to ensure that they should never lose.

One begins to wonder if they’re afraid of losing.

He’s got 3 lives, no refreshed spirits, and Dan has 2 spirits raring to attack, 1 spirit puts Hyoudo on the backfoot.

Yuuki knows Dan better than Brustrom clearly does, knowing that Dan only gives up when his last life is gone.

Hyoudo has decided he’s bored of Dan’s play and plans to finish him off.

Suzuri appears to be worried that Kazan will report Suzuri’s actions to him.

I suppose Suzuri doesn’t know Kazan that well, but at the very least he answers to Yuuki.

Besides, that requires him to survive Serge.

Kajitsu’s not having a fun time, but she mentions something about Light in her feverish state.

We appear to have made it to the Horizon Ladder section of the Stadium, this was what appeared when Brustrom was mentioning about “Preparations” being complete.

Kajitsu explains what Brustrom said to Yuuki earlier, that the Core system here is intended to “repair” Mother Core. Mai’s not quite sure what the hell Kajitsu’s talking about, much like most of us to be honest.

Dan moves to fill up his board, starting with an Ankillersaurus.

Dan also levels up Meteorwurm and Sabecaulus to Lv3, quite nice actually.

Sabecaulus will boost Meteorwurm to 12000 BP as Meteorwurm holds Clash.

and Meteorwurm will be able to target attack Byak-Garo, thereby removing Hyoudo’s Key Spirit.

“…Will run through the Core System and pour into Mother Core”

“Resurrected” is some weird terminology, given that Kajitsu isn’t dead.

But that is the wording he uses, “Yomigaeru”

And thus explains Kajitsu’s strange abilities.

Kajitsu isn’t an ordinary Bearer of the Core’s Light, Kajitsu bears Mother Core’s Light.

As a result, her Light is comprised of the 6 different Lights our other 6 lightbearers have, allowing her to wield their Core’s Light as well.

This explains why she was able to bear the Green Core’s Light battling Dan earlier as well, Green is her colour of choice, as Bearer of Mother Core, she’s free to select which colour she bears for any battle.

Though it seems that being that cool comes with it’s own downsides, a regular Human Body can’t typically withstand the strain of bearing Mother Core’s immense light.

It also seems that all those Core Systems running Core energy into Mother Core causes Kajitsu to be directly affected by those changes, in this case, negatively.

There’s no fucking way

How did you survive SERGE!?

That’s what I wanna know, for evidently visible, and actual lore-accurate reasons, Kazan straight up does not 1v1 Serge in any universe.

Pfft, guy yeeted his Robots at him and ran away with his tail between his legs.

I’m sorry this looks cool animated but stopping this on any singular frame just makes Serge look completely ridiculous.

Naturally, the bots stand exactly zero chance against the complete megachad that is Serge.

So, given that Mother Core, a massive energy source, and Kajitsu are one and the same, Kazan kind of needs that MacGuffin lady back.

Kazan’s absolutely just regurgitating what he’s been told by Yuuki, and Yuuki only got that info from Brustrom.

He said earlier something’s very clearly wrong, but because he doesn’t know what it is, he doesn’t have the heart to question it incase his suspicions turned up short.

Poor Suzuri’s been panicking his little blue ass off since he got here.

Thankfully, Mai’s apparently found that the most effective way to cope with that fear is just to completely ignore him.

Mai requests that Suzuri assist her in stopping the Machine.

Kazan waxes lyrical about how Mother Core, in it’s damaged state, won’t be able to use it’s power to grant any wishes.

Given Kajitsu’s state only occurred after her Battle with Dan, is it possible that her mental state when battling Dan is what caused Mother Core to be damaged in the first place?

They are indeed.

So the fundamental disagreement here is all about whether or not Kajitsu’s state is a side-effect of the Machine pouring power into Mother Core, or is the intended outcome.

Naturally, Mai has the evidence of her eyes to see that the Machine is indeed pouring in power, and Kajitsu doesn’t seem to be getting much better, infact she seems to be deteriorating.

Kazan seems to believe that Kajitsu’s condition is a side effect and that she’ll recover 100% once Mother Core is fully repaired.

Though, Kajitsu did mention that Mother Core is too much for any Human to bear, I wonder if both couldn’t necessarily be true, Mother Core returning to 100% capacity might be putting strain on Kajitsu’s body.

Mai tells Suzuri that his job is just to protect Kajitsu, and to let Mai do her own thing.

Been doing fine so far, why not?

Oooo, that’s the sign of someone who understands her target audience.

MY GUY SWITCHED UP REAL QUICK

‘FUCK YOU MEAN “WHAT COLOUR”?

As if there was any other colour of X-Rare she could offer him.

The Venn Diagram of “things Suzuri won’t do” and “things Suzuri will do for an X-Rare” is a fucking circle.

Not even any further negotiation, just wanted to know what colour of X-Rare and he was gone.

PFFT, FOR A MACHINE POWERED BY CORE IT HAS MODERN USB SLOTS?

Oh come on there’s no way it’s that easy, there must be a password or some kind of other authorization-

…Okay so they covered the Authorization part but what Anti-Hacking system comes with a UI like this?

Now you might think she’s calling Brustrom disgusting, but the real issue is that she’s just seen that it’s written in Java.

Ayyy, Back to the Battle!

Dan attacks with Meteorwurm but then misstates it’s BP value, Sabecaulus should be boosting it by 1000 as Meteorwurm has the Clash ability.

Regardless, Dan uses Meteorwurm’s Lv3 ability to target attack Byak-Garo.

Well of course you did, what else was he gonna do? Not take out your Key Spirit?

Well this hilariously invalidates the decklist I posted last episode but ah well, it was meant to be inspired, not a 1:1 recreation.

**Main**
During this turn, when the attack of your Spirit reduces the opposing Life, put two cores from the Void to your Reserve.
**Flash**
During this turn, give a Spirit +3000 BP.

Speed Star is a Cost 5 Magic from BS06 with 2 different effects, the Main effect makes it so reducing the opposing life with a Spirit attack adds 2 core from the void to your reserve, it’s good synergy with Windstorm as the opponent will be forced to exhaust excessively, allowing some attacks through.

To accommodate it’s rather situational applications though, it’s Flash effect is a 3000 BP battle boost.

Situational cards like this very seldom see play unless there’s a specific aim to be gained with them. Battle boosts are useful but nothing beats just stopping an attack outright or blowing up the attacker.

I’m sat here, twiddling my thumbs, hoping to sheer god this doesn’t bite Dan in the ass because Sabecaulus was being ignored for no reason.

It… it really doesn’t.

Oh thank god, Dan knows how to read, holy fuck I was about to blow a gasket.

Shoulda bloody LED WITH THAT! IT’S A CONTINUOUS EFFECT!

With both Spirits colliding at 12000 BP, the only possible outcome is Mutually Assured Destruction.

Pfft, what Anti-hacking system not only programs UI this interactive but also acknowledges it’s own degrading performance?

And apparently Brustrom must be proud of his weight because the guy is getting THINNER as things get worse!

…I’m sorry if you’re chasing a girl who shouldn’t be any more than 2 feet away from a hospital bed, and a guy who barely looks like he could handle a happy meal for the sake of your honor.

I’d pack it in my guy, it’s fucking gone.

That’s a rather serious face for someone who was so confident after being promised an X-rare.

…Flashback? There’s a Trauma associated with this?

Depicted is Suzuri apparently having Water splashed over him from a bucket in the bathroom. Seems like Suzuri’s incredibly submissive demeanor outside of a battle is due to a history of being bullied.

This also somewhat explains his rather intense demeanor once it comes to cards, In Otherworld, Physical strength is replaced by Skill in Battle Spirits, and Suzuri has a non-negligible amount of it.

In essence, he has more power in Otherworld than he does at home, he is not helpless here

Except, in this moment, he isn’t in a Battle, and he is under threat by a physically stronger person once again, his helplessness is probably setting in.

Back to the battle, Byak-Garo and Meteorwurm are both destroyed due to their Double knockout.

Why is everyone so surprised? Dan had to do precisely nothing, it was Hyoudo who had to force the draw.

Why is everyone acting like Dan’s the one who loses out here? They both lost an X-rare!

I know Dan’s on 1 life and Hyoudo’s on 3 but still!

Indeed, Byak-Garo being off the field means that nasty Windstorm: 2 won’t render Dan’s options for blocking completely untenable.

Dan attacks with Sabecaulus and Hyoudo takes a life, leaving Hyoudo with 2, Dan leaves Ankillersaurus as a blocker and ends his turn.

Hyoudo needs 1 spirit to threaten game.

“Standing Stubbornly”?

I’m sorry, is Hyoudo under the impression that he’s already earned a victory?

The only objective metric for determining who’s won the game is who’s run out of lives, and Dan still has one.

Yeah he doesn’t want to lose, neither do you, that’s why you’re still playing as well. What is this argument?

By who? You? If you could win so easily just by wanting it then Dan should have already beaten you.

Suzuri’s despair sets in again, and he tries to leave Kajitsu behind in order to sneak away

He’s distracted however by Kajitsu trying to bear her current situation for the sake of the “White Rose”

Well that distraction was apparently long enough for Kazan to walk around the ship he knew they were hiding behind.

Still, that’s some pretty dexterous work with that whip, using it to coil round Suzuri’s neck.

Hyoudo starts his turn and immediately attacks with Gabunohashi.

Huh, didn’t summon any spirits, but that doesn’t mean Swift isn’t a thing.

Ah, that focused stance, how so very familiar.

Sorry, reminiscing about some later quirks about Dan that we won’t get to til later.

Anyway, Ankillersaurus blocks Gabunohashi.

Hyoudo uses the Flash timing opportunity to Swift summon 2 MachGs, both at Lv2.

Ankillersaurus is defeated as it’d need to be Lv3 to have a hope of tying with Gabunohashi’s 5000 BP

…Sabecaulus is still on his board Galaxy, what?

STOP INTERRUPTING MY MATCH WITH THESE CONSTANT UPDATES ON WHAT THE PEANUT GALLERY IS DOING.

Kazan already has a whip poised to snap Suzuri’s throat like a twig, random robots we don’t care about aren’t going to add any more suspense to the situation.

2 Attackers, no Blockers, 1 life…

Yeah I guess it would be, slight problem with that estimation though, your MachGs have a little detail that makes this not a clear victory.

“Come” is cool but in this situation it’s the equivalent of Dan saying Hyoudo has no balls.

not to quote Naruto but you really need to give up trying to make Dan give up, reduce his life to zero or stop complaining.

Put up or shut up.

The thing about MachGs… is their Maximum Level only consists of 3000 BP.

Stop interrupting my match then, show!

Kazan’s really still on that idiot-juice that lets him think that he’s somehow entitled to commit mass genocide of otherworlders so he can re-colonise Otherworld, come on.

Ahh, this adds context to Suzuri’s stringest hoarding of X-Rares, he had his precious cards taken away from him by his bullies too.

Look at that intensity, my boy’s fighting back!

Anyway, 2 MachGs being 3000 BP or under means that Dan can swat them away using Victory Fire.

The 2 MachGs are destroyed by the 2nd Victory Fire.

Hyoudo finally cracks, bursting into Tears, begging to understand why Dan won’t lose.

In Hyoudo’s head he had this won several turns ago, but even though Victory’s clearly infront of him, Dan’s still fending him off every time.

Notably, Hyoudo’s acting like he’s never had this problem before.

Damn, Brustrom tries to re-centre Hyoudo and Hyoudo just tells him to suck a fat one.

I suppose this is the true 9 year old child that was hidden inside Hyoudo the entire time, he hates the prospect of losing.

Victory Fire may have destroyed the MachGs, but remember, Flash Timing only ends when both players run out of Flashes to play, the Attacker that started the Flashes being no longer on the field has no bearing on what can still be played.

Using his remaining Flash, Hyoudo Swift Summons Amenborg.

Hyoudo subsequently launches an attack, Amenborg has 4000 BP, another Victory Fire won’t save Dan here.

Kazan, if Suzuri’s so weak, how are you having so much trouble?

It seems this situation gave Suzuri an immense fear of Kazan, a bully in this situation, taking Suzuri’s cards.

So Suzuri whips out a god damn nail clipper.

Cutting right through Kazan’s whip, the force of Kazan’s own pull knocks him backwards.

Mai has successfully managed to hack into the Core System and force it to shut down completely.

Theoretically, that should stop causing Kajitsu’s condition to get any worse.

It also seems like that Core System might have been integral to other things, as it was apparently powering these Drones.

Hoo boy, how many systems were in fact relying on that Core System running?

Yeah depending on how widespread of a problem disabling that power plant was, you’re gonna need to make some distance between you and whoever the hell needed that on.

Dan is undeterred by the incoming Amenborg attack, casting Flame Cyclone during Flash Timing.

**Flash**
Destroy a 5000 BP or less Spirit.

A BS03 Red Magic that is as useful as it is simple, it blows up anything with 5000 BP or less.

Amenborg’s Lv2 is only 4000… so.

At one time Dan bricked because he had something along the lines of 2 Flame Cyclones and 3 Victory Fires in his hand, he’s ready for rush tactics like this with low power spirits.

Amenborg is wiped out by Flame Cyclone, Hyoudo is once again out of attackers.

Hyoudo throws another temper tantrum being unable to finish off Dan when he wanted to.

However, when Hyoudo examines the last card in his hand, he finds that it’s not a card he’s able to attack with, meaning it’s probably a Magic with a Battle Boost effect during Flash Timing that he’s at present unable to use.

As Hyoudo’s out of moves, Dan moves onto his turn.

Dan uses a new Magic, Reborn Flame.

**Main**
Return a Spirit card from your Trash to the Hand. During this turn, give every “Astral Dragon” family Spirit card in your Hand an extra red reduction symbol.
**Flash**
During this turn, give a Spirit +1000 BP.

A Cost 4 Magic from BS07, making it very new. It’s flash effect is a poultry 1000 BP battle boost, barely worth a mention, it’s Main effect however…

It allows Dan to return any Spirit from his trash to his hand, another trope of Red colour, that being the return of Spirits to the hand, much like a Phoenix.

That’s not all though, during the turn Reborn Flame is used, all Astral Dragons in the Hand are given an extra Red Reduction Symbol.

This works similar to Iberix’s ability, this would for example make Siegwurm from a 6 cost spirit paying a minimum of 3 core, to a minimum with of 2 core as long as an extra symbol is on your board.

Dan re-summons the StarEmperorDragon Meteorwurm

Meteorwurm is resurrected.

Funnily enough, cards like Reborn Flame in other card game anime are usually meant to act as pseudo-second copies for cards that a character only canonically has a single copy of in order to re-summon a card for a second time.

Naturally one might wonder why a character doesn’t just run 3 copies of their given card, but naturally in cases like Meteorwurm that thought process doesn’t apply, he only recieved it because he was given it by someone else, if he could he would, after all, Suzuri had 2 Titus in his match with Dan.

And another might wonder what the signifance would be, if a Reborn Flame is a Meteorwurm, wouldn’t you want to run it to increase your number of Meteorwurms?

The answer is sadly more complicated, ignoring the 2 Cost it takes to play Reborn Flame at a minimum, even if the card was free, Reborn Flame is only a copy of Meteorwurm if a Meteorwurm is in the trash. Which means in cases like Dan’s, to play Meteorwurm twice, he still needs to draw the 1 copy first.

It’s this situationalism that causes character decks to usually falter when built as cards need drawing in the correct order to function.

Dan attacks with Sabecaulus, Hyoudo hasn’t got a Spirit in his hand or he would have used it, so he’s forced to take from the life.

Hyoudo has 1 life remaining.

This seems to fully highlight the crux of Hyoudo’s damage.

When one first enters any kind of competitive setting, the first thing you’ll often be shown is how it feels to win at it, it’s an unspoken rule when it comes to teaching players any kind of competitive game, as winning and being praised for doing so is positive reinforcement which will help a player retain interest.

Hyoudo had a very good teacher clearly, as he learned the game from someone who would have, at the time, allowed him to win, and positively reinforced his ability, from then on Hyoudo likely found that he was infact very good, and didn’t lose even in more serious settings.

And he doesn’t appear to have had much difficulty in achieving those victories either. This strong positive feedback that he always got, along with the praise that he ultimately didn’t work for (because he’s never lost, it also means he’s never been shown to have made a mistake), he takes his victories for granted, he knows he will get them because he always has, and he denies them to other people because they must be denied for him to receive them.

And the positive feedback from winning tells him it is normal, and expected, for this to be the case.

Hyoudo was the strongest, because Hyoudo was incapable of losing. Those 2 definitions likely married in his mind and became inseparable.

Dan cracked his shell, because the one time Hyoudo expected to win, he didn’t, and then he tried again, and again, and he was answered each time due to information he could’t have known.

Something he’d gotten every time without a problem was now being denied to him, when you’re so used to the positivity of something being there before it’s wrenched from you, it is stress inducing.

And now, Hyoudo who wants to be the strongest, feels as if he has completely failed in his goal, because he is about to lose, and the strongest should be incapable of losing.

Dan doesn’t acknowledge Hyoudo’s incredibly childish whining though and moves to finish it.

With no defenses left, Hyoudo is forced to take a life, reducing him to 0.

Bashin Dan is the winner!

Better yet, this also makes Dan entitled to the Top X-Rare and a Wish from Otherworld King.

Whoa whoa whoa, let’s not get ahead of ourselves

Dan pulled off an impressive win yes, but the impressive part was the fact that he had 2 Victory Fires and a Flame Dance in his hand.

The best teacher for any child is experience, Hyoudo was incredibly rude on account of things he assumed to be true because the alternatives never occurred.

Hyoudo is 9 and has never lost, he was going to need to do it sometime, so that he can grow as a person, consequences build character.

And before anyone starts going around retaliating towards children so they can “build character”, there is a difference between a child enduring necessary pain to contribute to their growth, and someone unnecessarily causing them harm.

Direct consequences are necessary pain, like accidentally falling over and scraping a knee teaches one to be careful when running.

Retaliations or Punishments are not direct consequences, If someone does A and you said you would do B in that scenario, you still ultimately make the decision to do B when A occurs, that’s not a direct or even a likely consequence, that’s a punishment, and that seldom teaches people anything other than to hide from or avoid you.

While some might chock this up to Dan being the admirable main character, he is also showing Hyoudo how he acts when he wins.

Hyoudo is something of a sore winner, but has never lost, Dan is acting in the way he would like to be treated when he is defeated.

He’s also reassuring Hyoudo, by asking to play Battle Spirits again and praising him for his strength, that losing doesn’t invalidate any of the things Hyoudo wants, and that he truly loses nothing from losing.

Reminds me of some advice a friend of mine who somehow was always capable of being unbreakably calm during a game of League of Legends, when I asked him about it, he gave me the following answer, paraphrased of course:

If I’m going to lose 50% of all the games I play, I might as well find a way to enjoy them too.

This statement has stuck with me for as long as I can remember, and I repeat it to myself when I find myself getting frustrated with a game I find difficult or painful.

Most people would rather stick to knowing they like winning, and therefore believe happiness is in the minimization of losing, and that causes them to become meta-slaves who will do anything to win.

But very rarely do people actively try to find the fun in losing.

This is going to be an interesting exchange, given that Brustrom now has to essentially give Otherworld King’s wish to his enemy.

In the meantime, Suzuri and Mai manage to reconnect with Serge after he outran laser robots for goodness knows how long.

Mai’s disabling of the Core system must have shut Serge’s down as well.

Serge being back means that Suzuri can be free to move as he pleases once again.

This man is like my dog after he completes any task that I consider praise worthy, instantly starts demanding treats like he’s owed it.

…In this case however, Suzuri is indeed owed an X-Rare.

Suzuri’s desire for an X-Rare lets Mai kick this problem down the road.

All this is going to achieve is just going to start having Suzuri start taking his payment in advance, or requesting collateral maybe.

Bashin Dan never actually won any events so this also technically means that this is the first event won by the famous “Clash King”

This seems like a long drawn out outro for the tournament, however, this is also a way of Galaxy saying goodbye, as I don’t believe we’ll see him again for the rest of this show.

At least, not in story.

We now skip over to the rewards ceremony, as Dan is the champion, he’s now entitled to the Top X-Rare and a Wish from Otherworld King.

Morally motivated people will empathise with Dan here however, It doesn’t behoove oneself to accept gifts from enemies.

It’s kind of like how settlements work in court systems, in order to prevent decisions being made by the judge that set nasty precedents that are bad for evil business, you may be offered money to repair your personal grievances so that you can overlook the general problem and ultimately make a decision. People take these generally because either their injury is personal or they were wanting monetary compensation in the first place and don’t mind the situation that caused them the issue persisting if they’re paid to overlook it.

If you’re motivated by justice, you’ll be like Dan, and refuse such settlement offers for the sake of seeking out a decision. It will require more effort on his part to achieve his goal but not doing so isn’t an option.

There is also this, by not taking one of the gifts, the ambiguous nature of the wish can be made more reasonable.

Dan ignores Brustrom for a moment, asking Yuuki what the hell is going on.

Yuuki doesn’t really give him an answer, just kind of acknowledges his existence.

Dan makes the obvious wish he was always going to make, they did say in the previous episode that WHATEVER THE WISH MAY BE, IT WILL BE GRANTED.

Magisa calls Dan an idiot, I mean, they offered him the Wish, and everyone in the Blue World knows he earned it.

Dan’s wish is automatically denied, Yuuki mainly focuses on the fact that it is the belief of those who ally themselves with Otherworld King that Otherworld is only as sophisticated and safe as it is because of the Otherworld King’s rule. To have Otherworld King and his forces leave Otherworld would be to leave Otherworld in disarray.

This is a typical oppression tactic Tyrants might use, Abusers also use it to get their victims to submit to their nonsense, by suggesting that the status quo is the best available scenario, and that all other alternatives lead to either complete destruction or wanton chaos.

In essence, “Otherworld King imposes his law onto Otherworld and without him there is no law, you can’t blame us, we’re just protecting it!”

Oppression only ever exists due to people believing it to be necessary when it almost never is, there’s no reason to believe Otherworld King and the Humans leaving would necessarily cause the visibily orderly Otherworlders to become anarchistic.

Dan request a change to his Wish then, as clearly his first wish will ultimately go unheeded as he has no way of holding Brustrom and Yuuki accountable for not granting it, He asks to speak to Otherworld King directly.

This is a pretty good move, so far we’ve only heard about Otherworld King from the perspective of his allies, and they’ve all been acting in his name and doing all these awful things.

Dan wonders if Otherworld King is ignorant of what’s happening and hopes to open a dialogue, to ensure that Otherworld King is in fact:

Aware of the issues at hand
The source and/or complicit in the existence of those issues.

It’s also Otherworld King that is supposed to grant the wish, so Dan can ensure that his desires are delivered to Otherworld King directly rather than being blocked by people who haven’t even spoken to the guy yet.

Brustrom, all of a sudden, cackles at Dan’s will and demands a Battle with him.

It seems Brustrom either answers or heavily respects Yuuki’s opinion when it comes to this though, as he only then asks permission to proceed with this plan.

Yuuki agrees with letting Brustrom fight, and decides to make the granting of Dan’s wish contingent on defeating Brustrom. If Dan defeats the big oaf, he’ll be allowed to see Otherworld King personally.

Yuuki then states that should Dan lose, Dan will become Yuuki’s servant.

…Maybe it’s just because of Yuuki’s calm and cool demeanor, but hearing it, it almost doesn’t seem that bad.

Naturally however, no-end-in-sight ultimatums like this indicate that Brustrom’s about to get his shit wrecked.

Dan agrees to the terms and immediately Opens the Gate to fight Brustrom.

As Battlefield Galleries can be entered by any member of the public, this also offers the opportunity for these very clear fugitives to bring Kajitsu to Magisa.

Mai breaks the very important news to everyone, that Kajitsu isn’t the Green Soldier, but in fact bears the Light of all colours, Mother Core.

The battle against Brustrom approaches, but sadly we’re out of time in this episode as that’s the end of it!

geez that was a pretty heftily packed episode, and we’ve still got the card of the day!

Naturally, that card is Reborn Flame, the card Dan used to resurrect Meteorwurm.

I don’t have much to say about the card itself, but it’s the first in what will inevitably be a pattern of support for Dan’s very clear favoured Family, Astral Dragons.

Localized as “Star Dragons” in Battle Spirits Saga, Astral Dragons are what the writers are using to ultimately differentiate Dan from his narrative ancestor, Bashin Toppa.

Bashin Toppa’s era had 5 Red X-Rares over the course of it’s run from BS01 to BS06, of those 5, 4 of them were of the Ancient Dragon family.

As a result, Bashin Toppa is often represented alongside Ancient Dragon support, and most Ancient Dragons tend to be variants of his ace, Siegfried.

While Dan’s ace, Siegwurm is an Ancient Dragon, uniting Dan and his narrative predecessor, it was also an “Astral Dragon”, this initially held no narrative significance whatsoever to Dan’s deck, instead having Dan focus on the “Clash” keyword wielded by Uchuuchouten. It’s only now that Dan has used a card in direct support of that family, likely due to wielding 2 Astral Dragons, notably Meteorwurm lacks the “Ancient Dragon” designation too, instead having the additional family of “Soldier”, also known as “Valiant Hero” in Battle Spirits Saga.

This makes Dan’s battle with Julian even more significant, as not only did Dan defeat Bashin’s old ace, Siegfrieden, but he then received a new evolution of his own ace, which discarded the signature family of the old protagonist, solely focusing on Dan’s own signature Spirit family.

They did right by Bashin Toppa thus far, but to simply have Dan be another Toppa would be a disgrace to the character, Toppa might have been riddled with mistakes but the show overall isn’t the worst thing I’ve ever watched, I even enjoyed it and it’s my least liked series.

Dan needs to be his own character too, and if Meteorwurm wasn’t the jumping off point for doing so, the use of Reborn Flame, Dan’s first card to support Astral Dragons, definitely was.

I’ll see you lot in Episode 22. We’re getting close to the halfway point.

Gekiha Dan – Episode 20

Last episode was somewhat disappointing, but the only way to get as far away from it as possible is to press onward, now to episode 20!

The Episode starts by offing the no name Gaius Bando, he wasn’t important anyway.

Which means this Episode is really trying to speed us along to Dan vs Hyoudo.

…This is an incredibly weird statement to make, if he hadn’t made it to the final match by now it’s because he was eliminated, what?

I see these 2 are still depressed as ever, if I was possessed by a random ass onmyouji and then only regained control as I was losing with a deck that wasn’t even mine I’d be pretty bummed out too.

ah yes, the greatest match of the year, a 12 year old wielding the strategical equivalent of smashing their heads against a wall until it cracks, and a 9 year old who’s a complete asshole.

Hyoudo… The first thing you did when you met Dan was completely shit-talk the fact that he folds the second he gets out of the Gunslinger, knew precisely when?

At least Dan is trying to look past the kid being an absolute twerp.

In Brustrom’s case, him thinking they’d square off makes sense, as Hyoudo appears to have been favoured by Yuuki given their conversation last episode, and Dan’s been a complete thorn in the Otherworld King’s left ass cheek for goodness knows how long.

Yuuki seems to believe that this battle will somehow “Heal the scars on her Soul”

From the outset it feels like he’s banking on Dan losing, thereby “Healing the scars on her soul” by giving the Clash King a defeat but I don’t recall anything beyond this point allowing Kajitsu’s Soul to “Heal” necessarily.

Nothing significant about this title, it’s 2 BS07 X-Rares going at it for the final round.

…That’s probably another reason for last episode, they wanted to save a BS07 clash between 2 similar powers for the final match and not the penultimate one.

Gods, where’s MY spice-filled curry…

I suppose my Birthday is coming up… I can have whatever I want on that day.

Seems Dan has a Stalker that would make any his age envious.

Given the way their last exchange ended, it appears Mai isn’t quite sure how to approach Dan in this situation, given she broke her promise and said she’d take off… And then didn’t.

Bit hard to rectify the Supreme Queen of Backpeddling.

God forbid you’re happy to see someone you’re actually happy to see.

Tsundere surprises me with how popular it is, given it seems like a really inefficient method of acquiring any kind of adoration or affection.

I agree with Serge, “Don’t be a bitch” tends to be a good approach to many situations.

Bathroom trips must be incredibly difficult.

Serge opts to focus on the fact that saying anything at all is probably better than nothing, which I suppose is a fair assessment.

No time for that now, Kajitsu is calling.

This is probably the only unrealistic portion of most card game anime, the fact that competitors can modify their deck basically at any time before any given match, while in reality, once you enter, you’re stuck with that deck until the event ends. This is most likely to ensure that the deck is valid as you tend to need to write down what you’re using but I suppose with an automated system like the battlefield to auto-validate any deck or card played this is kind of unnecessary.

Some would argue surprise factor is unwarranted but it’s not like each of these players have the other’s decklist.

Brustrom and Yuuki be plottin’

Ah shit, it’s another Horizon Ladder, also it seems like they’re relying on Dan and Hyoudo’s match to repair Mother Core.

Also a subtle hint as to what “Kajitsu’s Soul” is based on Yuuki’s commentary earlier

We don’t actually know what the Horizon Ladders are for to be fair, the last one was only destroyed as they enslaved people to help build it.

I was about to ask if Mai ever heard of knocking but that’s a massive door, probably made of stone no less, no sound was getting through that.

Well that’s a first, Yuuki’s very seldom separated from Kajitsu for any reason…

What could be so important that Yuuki needs to see to it personally without bringing his ever-so-precious Sister along?

What the hell kind of face is that?

“There’s a guy at the front door saying there’s a Pizza for you. Says he works for “Uber Eats””

Mai’s face is incredibly hilarious here, given that I believe she kicked Kazan in the face at one point.

It must be really weird standing in the same room casually with someone you literally meant harm to.

I’m not sure he was giving you a choice.

Though Yuuki seems to make it clear that Mai isn’t staying there for Kajitsu’s protection, she’s there for her entertainment.

I wish I had the confidence to completely ignore someone who was half-decided on an action knowing they would take the one I asked them to do.

Gal-et me get to the match already!

As an odd note, Galaxy seems to consistently refer to Hyoudo as “Tensai Shounen”, or “Genius Boy”, Even though it’s not quite his Battler title as he doesn’t seem to have one.

Well they’re not champions yet, not until they win anyway.

I feel like Brustrom is conveniently leaving out the massive fucking Asterisk that is “Except Otherworld King”

Keyword being singular, but at least they offer one in any colour the user wishes.

I do wish they showed us what they were, analyzing them would be fun.

Clackey appears to have just completely imagined some kind of asian princess as being the Top X-rare.

You… You can’t bang a card Clackey

Geez man, I know you’re 15 and at an age where you’re interested in women but find a god damn room.

If I worked my ass off to win at card games such that I could get one of the most strongest and most exclusive cards in the game, I wouldn’t waste that decision on the guy who lost to the guy I’m fighting.

Brustrom also rehashes that a Wish is indeed up for grabs, stating that no matter what the wish is, it will be granted.

Brustrom’s a slimy fuck, so I don’t trust that line of dialogue for one second.

Dan tries to declare his wish prematurely.

Only to get completely invalidated by Hyoudo. This fucking kid is all manners outside the battlefield but the second he gets into any kind of competitive setting he’s insufferable.

I suppose as a 9 year old he’s not particularly realistic with his wants and desires, but being unbeatable in a competitive setting… invalidates the point of competition.

And if that competition was required to settle matters like it does in this show, it would cease to be a reliable metric to determine a course of action, people who know you’re an invincible fighter just won’t fight you.

People do not like engaging in battles they will know they will lose, the only reason they might is to see how far they’ll get, which is the same as saying that they’re not 100% sure they will lose.

He probably could… But would he is the question?

Why would Otherworld King create a battler that could threaten his control? Especially given that his control over Otherworld is certainly based in Battle Spirits.

Dan seems understandably agitated by this, he was just cut off by someone who effectively told him to keep quiet because he wouldn’t get what he was about to ask for, then told he was going to lose, THEN the opponent did just the same thing he was going to do.

Given that we seem to already have our 6 contestants, one can only wonder what he means by this.

Recap, the Plot’s been setting up, so far, that the colours are represented by the following:

Red – Clash King Dan
Purple – Viole Mai
Green – Momose Kajitsu
White – Momose Yuuki
Yellow – The Noble Youth of Light, Clackey
Blue – Suzuri Hideto

There’s no gaps, so how could this guy be-

Which then begs the natural follow-up question: If Kajitsu isn’t the Green Soldier, then why was she capable of bearing the Green Core’s Light?

His opponent’s talking shit, Yuuki’s talking shit, Brustrom’s… there.

There are many reasons for Dan to be relatively upset at the moment.

Hyoudo takes the first move, and with it, summons Gabunohashi.

This card is… Actually new I think, I don’t think we’ve seen it before now!

*Families: Plant Spirit*
**Lv1-Lv2 **Windstorm: 1** [When Attacks]**
When this Spirit is blocked, the opponent exhausts one Spirit they control.

A Cost 3 Windstorm Spirit from BS06, weak Lv1 but respectable Lv2. It’s also of the Plant Spirit Family, a series of cards that resemble Plants in some way.

In any case, it’s wide power range gives you various options for goading the opponent into blocking.

After Byak-Garo’s debut, it seems like Hyoudo’s decided to include more Windstorm spirits into his deck.

Seems like Windstorm is intended to be the Keyword that the Green Light-bearer is most associated with.

3 core spent, 1 core maintains the spirit, nothing more to do here.

Yeah, Dan’s probably only just found out that he’s associated with Yuuki due to Yuuki only singing Hyoudo’s praises now.

Hyoudo seems mighty puzzled as to why Dan’s angry at him.

That is a fairly interesting question, how does Hyoudo view the current situation through his eyes, he seems a little too smart to turn a blind eye to what’s going on with how Brustrom, Yuuki and Kazan operate via force.

This answer’s probably striking all kinds of nerves within Dan, Hyoudo could have very easily feigned ignorance concerning it and they could have moved on, but no.

Hyoudo acknowledges what Dan is saying, doesn’t refute it, and then says he doesn’t see a problem.

Hyoudo details that he really could not give less of a shit about what’s going on in Otherworld, Otherworld King has what he wants and Hyoudo very much intends to get it.

The details of what happens to others, or to Otherworld in general is irrelevant, he doesn’t live there, and he doesn’t know these people, they don’t mean anything to him provided he can get what he wants.

This is a general callousness that many people will wield as an excuse for being exceptionally selfish at the direct expense of others, especially people they don’t know. “I don’t know these people, so I don’t care if something bad happens to them, if that gets me what I want”

You know what other kinds of people think like this?
Thieves.

Thieves operate under this same principle, gain at the expense of people they don’t particularly care about.

To enrich oneself at the detriment of others when the environment is not zero-sum is tantamount to thievery.

Dan’s talking mainly morals here, it wouldn’t be right for such a person to become the strongest.

But even functionally, if I became the strongest only by robbing the strength of others, then while I may be the strongest relatively I wouldn’t be the strongest objectively. To be the strongest person surrounded by strong people is more impressive than To be the strongest person surrounded by weaklings.

In a flurry, Dan summons Lizardedge, Erimakilizard and Ankillersaurus all at once.

Definitely a good idea to level up Erimakilizard to Lv2, Gabunohashi only has 1000 BP, so take all you can get.

We interrupt this very interesting program to give you Mai trying to make small talk with Kajitsu

Kajitsu just says Mai has to stay there, when pressed for a reason she doesn’t give a particularly satisfying one, simply saying that Yuuki wanted her to.

Yes… Yes she does.

Mai tries to see if she can’t wrench any individualism out of Kajitsu by asking her a question to get her to consider herself beyond her brother.

She gets precisely nowhere though, Kajitsu just repeats Yuuki’s request.

Unfortunately Mai you’re not winning this battle… Those of us who have watched this before will know why Kajitsu is… not incapable but utterly unwilling to consider herself beyond her brother’s needs.

Dan attacks with Erimakilizard and Ankillersaurus, Hyoudo takes a life from both, dropping him to 3.

It seems that Mother Core is receiving energy everytime a life is lost.

Dan leaves Lizardedge as a blocker, granted I believe that might have more to do with the fact that Lizardedge will tie with Gabunohashi, rather than because Dan wants to leave a blocker available.

How bloody flashy do you want him to be? He wasn’t going to use any nasty effects and 3 whole spirits is a whole lot more than most people play on Turn 2.

Hyoudo summons a Lv2 Gabunohashi and ends his turn…

He’s a Core off from levelling up the other one, only 1 in his reserve, but it means that he won’t respond with Swift as Swift requires that Hyoudo handle the entire summon, Cost and Core movement, using only core from his Reserve.

I too agree with kicking the everloving shit out of conceited people.

Could have, and the last one should have.

Unlike yourself Clackey, I don’t think Suzuri is quite so easily cheered up just by thinking about incredibly attractive women.

This is an incredibly fair complaint Doylist-wise… but in-universe, it’s your own fault for picking up that stupid X-Rare.

No Magisa, it really wasn’t, there are various reasons as to why Suzuri’s true deck would probably have fared differently.

Dan raises Ankillersaurus’ level to Level 2, giving it 3000 BP.

He then ends his turn, a 5000 BP Gabunohashi is a bit tough to topple and Dan can’t press the attack without losing spirits.

Question is, if the Core energy is meant to be repairing Mother Core, why is Kajitsu having such a nasty reaction to it anytime anything happens?

This… incredibly sinister sting suggests to me that Yuuki has plans different to what Brustrom intends to do with that Core Energy.

Thanks Kajitsu, can always count on you to remind me that the Sky is blue, could have forgotten! Whew!

As a reminder, given Mai’s been offscreen for a little bit, the reason she separated herself from Dan is because she felt like he was occupying her thoughts too much, and she found herself writing about him more than anything.

As it turns out, absence has made the heart grow fonder, so at the first instance of potential news she jumps at it.

Even when she tries to change the conversation she still ends up talking about him, she wants to know Kajitsu’s thoughts on Dan, having fought him, explaining how she finds him incredibly, well she used three words to describe it, but essentially annoying.

Kajitsu merely describes him as “Light”, if it was anyone other than Kajitsu I’d probably find that quite romantic.

She also extends the same statement to Mai, it seems like the bearers of the core’s light seem very bright for little Kajitsu.

“Poetic” describes Kajitsu quite well, she kept calling herself Poison when she got angry so.

Hyoudo’s turn, he drops his levelled Gabunohashi down to Level 1.

He’s got 6 core in his reserve, and 2 Green symbols on his field.

That stance… Wait.

ALREADY!? IT’S TURN 5.

If it was any other card I’d say this was a little too early to be summoning an X-Rare, but Byak-Garo has a Lv1 BP of 7000, that let’s it sit above most Red magic BP limits.

Even worse, since it’s got more BP than Dan’s entire board, it can attack without falling victim to Clash, and it’s much too early for Dan’s Meteorwurm.

Or not…

Granted maybe I’m looking at this too shallow, Dan’s next turn will be his 3rd Core step, with no lives lost he has only 7 core, and he has 3 Spirits, even if he can summon Siegwurm it won’t have anywhere near enough BP.

Obtaining momentum in Battle Spirits can be done in one of 2 ways, Life advantage, and Core Denial.

Life Advantage is the more aggressive way, you assert Momentum by forcing the opponent to rush to defend themselves, done by attacking early so that you yourself are up in lives before the opponent, the opponent retaliating without thinking just grants you more core to keep up the pressure.

…Then there’s Core Denial, a strategy that leaves your opponent’s life untouched so that they can only amass core slowly during their Core steps, you set up your board so that you can achieve your win condition safely, when all the opposing lives are available for taking.

And as a result they’re playing incredibly safely, Dan dropped his aggression the second a bigger Spirit came along, and now Hyoudo’s denying Dan resources to stop him breaking out of this situation easily.

Hyoudo might be low on lives but he’s up on core, which means he can set up his board state a lot easier than Dan can right now.

Magisa notes that Dan knows he can’t beat Hyoudo with just Clash.

Sorry to say but isn’t that basically all he’s got going for him? That and Victory Fire…

Suzuri has decided he’s going to go ask Brustrom to re-do the Semi-Finals.

Unfortunately it’s a bit late for that, the Finals have already begun, if the issue was raised directly after his match with Hyoudo, then this would be fine, but to cancel the current battle now would poison the results.

Of course, Suzuri is acting now because he doesn’t care if the results are poisoned, it would give him a higher chance of winning that Top X-Rare he wants so badly.

Dan’s noting that none of his Spirits really compete with Byak-Garo, even though the Gabunohashi’s are both Lv1 at 1000 BP.

Next turn both can be raised to Lv2, giving them 5000 and it just kind of gets worse from there as only Ankillersaurus can get that high IF Dan can play an Awaken or Clash Spirit.

Speaking of, here’s one now, Sabecaulus, an Awaken Spirit.

This isn’t a good situation to be in, Byak-Garo’s Level 2 effect makes this board incredibly flimsy. And Ankillersaurus would need another turn before getting to Lv2.

Hell, Sabecaulus can only compete with Byak-Garo’s Lv1 and Dan doesn’t have the Core for that.

Definitely not, Hyoudo spent 4 core playing Byak-Garo last turn, that means he’ll have at least that much available for Byak-Garo to reach Level 2.

Once that happens, Dan’s board state is going to be painfully easy to crack.

And adding to the inevitable danger that is this turn, Hyoudo adds a BlackMachG to his board.

Hyoudo attacks with Byak-Garo, and Dan seems entirely caught off guard by this.

My presumption is that Dan thought Hyoudo was trying to deny him core by not attacking, so Dan acted as if this would continue to be the case, I don’t think he was quite prepared for the idea that Hyoudo would infact attack eventually.

Ah fuck here we go.

Righto, so this is going to become a running theme and it’s not a joke I find particularly find funny. But essentially, for the rest of the series, Magisa is going to be completely incapable of remembering Hyoudo’s name and will call him all manner of things instead.

Dan, likely thinking on his feet and being wary of Windstorm, takes Byak-Garo’s attack to the face, leaving him with 4 lives.

Sadly this isn’t going to go as smoothly as he thinks.

Hyoudo activates Byak-Garo’s Lv2 effect, by sending 1 Core from his Reserve to the Trash, Ankillersaurus and Sabecaulus are bounced to Dan’s hand.

Well this isn’t going to go well, if Dan blocks he’ll lose a Spirit and the other one will be exhausted.

That leaves the only other choice:

Dan now only has 3 lives remaining.

With an attack from BlackMachG, Dan takes another life, leaving him with 2.

Well that’s not good, it seems like the Championship battle between 2 Light bearers is causing more energy to hit Mother Core than Kajitsu is able to take and she collapses

Well at least Yuuki made sure she was looked after incase this happened.

Maybe not permanently but he’s certainly set back a little, the issue with Cards being bounced to the hand in games where cards aren’t free and must be paid for is that it causes the resources spent to bring those cards out to be wasted and then must be re-spent returning those cards to the field.

Worse still, Dan can only take one more of those hits, and if he tries to block, Byak-Garo’s Windstorm will activate, making it incredibly difficult to block.

I suppose Hyoudo’s been winning fairly easily using this particularly patient and then suddenly aggressive strategy.

Byak-Garo to rip apart the opposing defenses, Swift for his own defenses.

Mai desperately tries to get the attention of someone outside, demanding a Doctor.

Naturally, fainting is a pretty severe symptom so her fear is warranted

Then get a Doctor and bring them here you prick.

Thank you!

You know, you’d think the guards would have at least been briefed on whether or not Kajitsu was to be alive by the end of this ordeal.

Granted, I don’t think a Doctor would be able to fix what Kajitsu has so my ramblings will inevitably fall on deaf ears.

…Oh, they probably were briefed then if there’s no particular fear of something fatal happening.

At the very least I can commend Mai for knowing when she wants something done and just doing it.

Oh…

Yeah that’s uh… a pretty powerful card to play… Pun not intended.

One does not simply fuck with Serge.

Dan’s turn! He re-summons Sabecaulus.

Bleh, that re-summon eats 2 whole core though, minus the 3 on his Spirits he should have roughly 6 core left in his reserve.

Ah really, you’re summoning Meteorwurm now!?

At 4 core spent you can’t even bring it to Lv2 without offing another Spirit, and even then you can’t bring it to Lv3 and take out Byak-Garo!

This seems like a pretty big miss….

You’re all nice and scary but a 6000 BP spirit with Clash isn’t going to be as helpful as you think it is…

Dan immediately moves to attack with Meteorwurm, but hoo boy, as if the 6000 BP wasn’t poor enough, Hyoudo’s got a response.

Aww geez and it’s a nasty one too.

**Flash**
The opponent exhausts two Spirits they control.

Thorn Prison is a Cost 4 Green Magic from BS06, and it’s incredibly powerful. Windstorm: 2 is a double exhaust contingent on the opponent blocking, it’s situational, most Exhaust magic only covers 1 card, but Thorn Prison covers 2, and even more annoyingly, the way the game works means that the opponent gets to select what they exhaust, but they must exhaust 2, and can’t exhaust any already-exhausted cards.

Dan’s got a board of 4, he’s got 2 lives left, he’s just swung with 1, this will make it so he has 1 blocker to address at least 3 spirits after this Clash, with 2 lives that’s almost a loss right there.

Erimakilizard and Sabecaulus are selected by Dan to be exhausted.

Thorn Prison was so incredibly potent that it was competing for space with Silent Wall of all things, you either ran Thorn Prison, Silent Wall, or some combination of the 2 when thinking of defense cards to include. Usually the determining factor ended up being what colour you were leaning on, or what your preference was.

And that’s only if you weren’t running both.

It wasn’t until an even more broken card in BS14 of all things came out that it started to not see as much use, and for reference, that BS14 card was so busted it got limited for the longest time.

As Meteorwurm’s clash is active, Hyoudo has to block with his available Gabunohashi, causing it to be destroyed.

A Thorn Prison used in this situation is both an attack and a defense, Dan doesn’t have enough attacks to reach Hyoudo’s last life, and Hyoudo has more than enough attacks to reach Dan’s.

We cut to Serge checking on Kajitsu, as Mai is clearly out of her depth on this one, being a 13-year old blogger and all.

Also, Serge says he’s never seen a girl like this? Does that imply he’s seen a boy like that?…

…Also why would the gender be medically relevant here?

Serge quite intuitively suggests that Magisa, having lived for 4000 years, might have seen this before.

Which is actually a fairly astute idea, good job Serge.

Kazan, you clearly see Kajitsu passed the hell out, in dire need of medical attention, to the extent that we had to summon Serge to kick the crap out of your guards in order to seek that Medical attention.

And you’re still stuck on “Well Yuuki told me to do it so uuhhhhh…”

And worse still, if 3 armed guards couldn’t stop Serge why the hell would a bunch of lifeless DRONES stop him?

Ohai Suzuri, I see you’re being as useful as a pile of bricks, as per usual.

Hyoudo’s turn, now the numbers are back to scary, Byak-Garo’s at 9000 BP and Gabunohashi’s at 5000.

Hyoudo makes the correct play and attacks with Byak-Garo first.

Gabunohashi could attack but if Dan takes from the life for that attack, Byak-Garo will never trigger it’s Lv2 effect again for the rest of the match. At least here Dan has to make a somewhat predictable move as if he doesn’t block, that blocker is going back to his hand anyway.

Naturally, Dan blocks with Lizardedge, thanks to Thorn Prison though, Dan has no other Spirits to exhaust, so Windstorm is a non-issue here.

Hyoudo keeps up the pressure, Dan has no blockers, 2 lives, and 2 attackers to address.

One might argue “Hey, he’s got 2 lives, he can afford to lose one”

Actually, being on 1 life is an incredibly dangerous thing to be, the reason for that is because of the vast amount of effects in the game that can force the opponent to lose a life via an effect.

Being on 1 life means you can lose from anywhere and nowhere.

In Flash timing, Dan plays Victory Fire… Issue is he’s only got 2 Core in his reserve, the 1 he left behind and the 1 lost from Lizardedge’s block, and he needs 3 Core to pay for Victory Fire.

Erimakilizard is the unfortunate sacrifice that needs making for this to work.

BlackMachG is destroyed but it’s a little unfortunate, Victory Fire can destroy 2 Spirits with 3000 BP or less, but Hyoudo only had 1 to destroy, in spite of that, Dan had to use the card in order to not die.

Dan relaxes, as Hyoudo only has 1 attacker, Dan is naturally expecting Hyoudo to hold off for now and leave Dan’s lives alone.

No such luck for Dan, Hyoudo’s performing a full attack anyway regardless of whether or not he can defeat Dan.

That leaves poor ol’ Dan with 2 issues, no spirits to block with, and after taking from the life, 1 life remaining.

Hyoudo taunts Dan’s evidently disadvantageous position, still declaring the battle to be unfun.

You know, in a real tournament setting, sportsmanlike conduct is an expected behaviour pattern, acting like a complete ass generally gets people disqualified.

Now if you’re wondering about the fact that the episode was going on for a while, while being nowhere close to finishing, that’s kind of because it was.

This is a rare 2 part battle. So we’ll only be able to see the end next time!

The end of episode card of the day is, of course, Thorn Prison!

I seem to be getting ahead of myself a lot when talking about these cards, I should probably start saving some topics for the end just for cases like these as once again, got nothing to say that I haven’t already said, Thorn Prison around this time was an incredibly potent card that was competing for space with Silent Wall, a Cost 4 White Defense card.

Instead, I’ll give you something else…

Here’s a deck from this time featuring mainly the kinds of cards and strategies Hyoudo Kenzo is using. It’s mainly a weenie rush type build, but it features lots of Core gain and plenty of exhaust options, very much a Green Goodstuff build.

If you’re playing older formats, I’d definitely like to hear how well this deck fared, til then! See ya in the next one!

Gekiha Dan – Episode 19

And we’re back, and well, I know and recall the contents of this Episode, needless to say I’m not going to be happy with it.

As a Card Game advertising anime, Gekiha Dan naturally puts the cards on show first, and the character’s development second, as a result, not every episode gets the opportunity for us to see a character we know well enough develop differently.

This isn’t to say their development is bad, it’s usually just slow. Hence why it’s a 50 episode anime and were it not, we’d be done 7 episodes ago, or in the next 5.

I can cope with this, because Episodes that don’t intrinsically develop a character can instead be used to examine what they’re trying to show us with the game. Battle Spirits at the very least, knows what a card game community is like and what they are interested in seeing.

As a result, when character arcs, the big picture story, and the card games don’t have enough room for each other, one might take a backseat.

This however… is an episode where character development is going to be outright sacrificed for the sake of what I can only describe to be “moving things along”

So there are apparently 2 rounds, the Semi-Final, and the Finals. For reference, every “round” of brackets necessitates another multiple of 4.

1 Round consists of 2 people. This would be the “Final”

2 Rounds consists of 4 people, this would start at the “Semi-Final” round.

3 Rounds is 8 people, and 4 rounds is 16.

This would mean this Tournament started with 16 people and all the fights we saw up until now was just the Top 16.

Now we’re in Top 8, we’ve skipped over a large portion of the tournament. This is fine, as the characters introduced as throwaways were actually incredibly interesting and had cohesive and memorable decks… ‘cept Randel.

Randel gives me the creeps.

They also didn’t show us a bracket at the beginning so there was no expectation of “who was fighting who”

Given we hadn’t seen Hyoudo battle, this probably would have been an excellent fight to see… However.

Except we skip into midway through said, and ultimately the climax of said battle, we don’t get to see a very clearly important character battle a well-set up opponent.

Instead, Clackey loses outright, which isn’t particularly great. This is definitely one of the battles that we would have liked to see play out.

I’ll talk more about my understanding of why this ended up the way it did, but it’s still a pain in the ass for the “Tournament Arc” to half ass half the Tournament.

This is an excellent time to remind viewers that Hyoudo Kenzo is 9 years old and operates at roughly college-level.

Brustrom isn’t even trying to get that Popcorn into his mouth.

Also look at that ELBOW, he’s about to knock the entire pile all over that table.

And there’s CLEARLY enough space on that table for that aide of his to put down the fruit, why the hell is she carrying it.

Brustrom would burn too many calories reaching for it, it doesn’t need to be that high.

It appears Clackey didn’t get the opportunity to use the X-Rare he recieved from Seiru, The ArcAngelia Isfiel.

Granted, his usual strategy doesn’t involve the use of X-Rares anyway, and Hyoudo apparently didn’t need one to defeat him.

Suzuri being grumpy about any battle not including an X-Rare is very Suzuri.

Brustrom seems relatively unsurprised, it appears X-Rares aren’t all that easy to come by in Otherworld, meaning Suzuri is very privileged indeed.

And indicates why Brustrom is also unsurprised that Suzuri made it to the semi-finals, with many many X-Rares to construct a deck from.

Unlike Brustrom it does seem like Suzuri has rather good deck building skills, choosing to build around few or singular X-Rares like Titus rather than Brustroms ALL ABOARD THE X-RARE TRAIN.

The Episode Title confirms the card we’ll be seeing today, The BladeKingBeast Byak-Garo.

Which is a Green X-Rare.

As for that “Possessed Battle” nonsense, well it’s another one of my gripes for this episode.

We cut to the middle of the night, nothing like a Naruto Run through the hallway to get that night-time exercise in ay Suzuri?

Suzuri seems to be looking around for more X-Rares, even though he was framed when it came to Isfiel being pilfered, it seems he is indeed just buttering up Brustrom for more X-Rares, whether Brustrom wants to offer them or not.

I’m sure my first reaction to seeing an ominous glowing purple light in the middle of a book case would not be to crawl towards it…

…It’d be to burn down the Library.

I’m sorry if there are Spell Tags blocking a door, I’d figure that there’s something in there that people didn’t want getting out, what in the world are you ripping off the tag for!

It seems in whatever room Suzuri found himself in, he found The Four Symbols.

For those uninformed, these are mythological creatures that appear alongside Chinese constellations and are associated with a Cardinal direction.

The Azure Dragon of the East, Qinglong, called “Seiryu” in Japanese, representing Wood and the Season of Spring
The Vermillion Phoenix of the South, Zhuque. Called “Suzaku” in Japanese, representing Fire, and of course, Summer.
The White Tiger of the West, Baihu. Referred to as “Byakko” in Japanese, represents Metal, and the Season of Autumn
And the Black Tortoise of the North, Xuanwu, called “Genbu” in Japanese, represents Water, and the Season of Winter

There is also a 5th one representing the center, Huanglong, The Yellow Dragon, which is called “Koryu” or “Oryu” in Japanese. It also represents the element of Earth, and the changing of Seasons.

Sometimes the “Kirin” replaces the White Tiger or the Yellow Dragon, but it’s inconsistent which.

Ya’ll ordered some foreshadowing?

Suzuri, not interested in anything without a Golden “X” plastered across it, puts the White Tiger down the wrong way

Suzuri apparently does what we call in the business “Failing upwards” and gets an X-Rare purely for being disinterested enough to put down a White Tiger model the wrong way.

And now we’re treated to Suzuri’s screams as he’s attacked by a random phantom bird.

And that’s it, that’s the scene, we just get a fade to black after.

No! Galaxy!

Galaxy first starts by comemorating those who were defeated… Except there’s a slight problem, based on the way the screen is presented it appears like it was a Top 8 and we’re only now getting to Top 4 even though we know there was a 2nd round and there should be 8 more battlers.

And if they were commemorating only those who lost in the 2nd round then Shula, Gaana and Randel shouldn’t be there because they lost in the 1st.

Consistency is not upheld very well here.

It looks like Clackey’s apparent failure to draw his Sophia is what lost him the game, he also wasn’t able to draw Isfiel because Suzuri commented on a lack of X-Rares.

You’d think just Iberix and Cherubim would have been sufficient but I guess he just drew dead the whole time.

I’ll speed things along, we know 3 of the 4 finalists.

Clash King Bashin Dan.
Suzuri Hideto
Hyoudo Kenzo

The 4th remaining battler is a guy called “Gaius Bando” who is the only Blue World native who’s made it to the semi-finals.

SEE HOW YOU LIKE IT, TWERP!

In the last episode, Hyoudo was surprised at Clackey Ray’s luck for pulling Royal Potion from the top 4 cards of his deck after topdecking a Cherubim with an empty hand.

Yet, when he’s referred to as lucky by Galaxy he protests that he’s strong, not lucky.

I want to belt this kid across the room.

Galaxy tries to introduce Suzuri but he’s “mysteriously” missing.

And though he may be a master of Blue cards and deck destruction, we will be seeing precisely neither of those today.

The Matchups are randomized, the first round is between Suzuri and Hyoudo.

I presume that little text under them is who’s making the first move but I don’t know what either of them says because:

Not that Suzuri’s being given the time to show up, we’re opening the gate NOW apparently.

Gate Open! Release!

Suzuri is being given a whole 60 seconds to get his ass on the battlefield before Galaxy kicks it onto the street.

The writers ran out of time to come up with an actual fight between Hyoudo and Suzuri so they’re pulling this nonsense.

…And I don’t mean Suzuri isn’t gonna show up, he will.

Apparently Brustrom caught a glimpse of him before he went to go battle, and Suzuri’s wearing a “showy outfit”

And what the fuck is he wearing!?

For anyone wondering what that garb is, he’s dressed as an Onmyouji… Because he’s possessed by one.

…Magisa is a few centuries off from current Human history but is aware of modern concepts like Cosplay?

Is cosplay a thing in Otherworld?

…I suppose Galaxy is literally right there.

Ah looks like it was Hyoudo that was going first.

“Yamigarasu Kadou”

…Like adding Dark (Yami) to replace the “Yata” in “Yatagarasu” and then just sticking “Card” on the end?

How creative. But yes essentially this is my major gripe with this episode, it’s not Hyoudo vs Suzuri, it’s Hyoudo vs Kadou

That’s the neat part.

It does.

There’s some initial banter I don’t really care about where Kadou mentions that he’s been sealed away for 1000 years and Suzuri accidentally released him but honestly we’ll never see this stupid spirit again.

So I’ll just move onto the game, Hyoudo starts off with BlackMachG, an effectless Cost 3 with a 3000 BP base.

Just that alone is apparently enough to cause Kajitsu to faint.

Hyoudo has no core left to do anything so now it’s Yamigarasu Kadou’s turn.

The Onmyouji demonstrates incredible psychic abilities unlike any Suzuri has shown up until now. But that’s not enough to convince anyone.

No, the thing that tips off Dan that this might not be Suzuri is that he’s not wearing gloves.

Just about everything else was plausible to you Dan but the GLOVES are what tipped you off?!

Kadou starts by summoning Darkwitch, a Cost 4 BS01 card that blows up an exhausted Spirit at Levels 2 onward.

I’m fairly sure we saw another Darkwitch at another time this series so I won’t re-review.

Apparently its because you TALK TOO MUCH.

Literally no one cares!

Oh god Magisa, somehow even less people care about that.

What a basic backstory.

Essentially he had mystical powers, people were scared of them, so he was sealed away.

That’s it, that’s the backstory.

At least this ties into the current plot, Yamigarasu Kadou wants to return to the capital and get his vengeance by using Otherworld King’s Wish to restore himself…

That’s a good Watsonian reason for your existence.

BUT I STILL SEE NO NARRATIVE POINT OF YOU, WHY ARE YOU HERE!?

Galaxy does God’s work and tells Kadou to Shut the fuck up in the nicest way possible.

He says, being the noisiest one here.

…Kadou’s so offended by being told, quite rightfully, to keep his massive yap shut that he summons a Crow Shikigami and assaults the referee.

Could there BE any more time wasted?

Seems like the deck Kadou is using is infact comprised of cards from Suzuri’s collection.

Suppose now’s a good time as any to go over what this issue is.

So, in this episode we had the prospect of Hyoudo vs Suzuri and Hyoudo vs Clackey completely ripped away from us, instead those 2 ideas have been condensed by turning Suzuri temporarily into a complete jobber, and skipping over Clackey’s fight.

This is… Bad, they were going to give Hyoudo a fight and if they wanted him to appear strong, defeating the guy who won last episode is one way of doing it, or hell, defeating Suzuri who, so far, hasn’t lost a battle due to any particular permanent factors.

Remember, Suzuri’s only loss required the use of Catastrophe-Dragon, a Red X-Rare Dan only had access to for that fight. Meaning Dan can’t rely on Catastrophe-Dragon again to fight Suzuri, Suzuri has strength that isn’t just informed, it’s shown because of the asspull required to beat him in the first place, it’s good set up. This means Hyoudo defeating Suzuri wouldn’t be a poor use of the Worf effect in this case.

Hyoudo would appear skilled, as he evidently boasts to be, and Suzuri would lose, as he’s very clearly set up to do so now.

But instead, Suzuri is for some reason replaced by an entirely different character, and Suzuri himself will be punished and removed from the Tournament Arc as a result of this character’s actions, AND this “Yamigarasu Kadou” will never be fuckin’ seen again.

That is infuriating!

Now, naturally, completing the entirety of the Tournament arc with every important character battle would take a lot of episodes, this is true, much longer would have been spent glossing over details that wouldn’t matter later and viewers would get a bit bored. This is fine.

But that doesn’t cover the issue as to why this one match needed a different participant to act in Suzuri’s stead.

I have 3 ideas as to why this decision was made:

Suzuri has just unveiled a BS07 X-Rare, and very clearly, Hyoudo’s about to unveil another one, they don’t want to advertise right out of the gate that Byak-Garo, a BS07 X-Rare, is inherently stronger than The GiantEmperor Alexander, this is an advertising issue if Suzuri is allowed to fight as he is. But if this was going to be an issue, have Hyoudo fight GAIUS for fuck sake! (Even if this would result in Suzuri being beaten offscreen as an extra episode would be required to cover it, because Hyoudo’s deck is inevitably going to be pitted against Dan’s soon anyway)
If Hyoudo fought Suzuri in an honest battle and won, and Dan inevitably fights Hyoudo and wins, Dan is demonstrably stronger than Suzuri by virtue of that fact, and a later episode would be slightly less impactful as a result of this. This is probably also why they didn’t have Hyoudo fight Gaius as Dan would need to defeat Suzuri in that case.
You could have paired Suzuri against Gaius and then Hyoudo against Dan, which would preserve the number of episodes, but Hyoudo’s been talking nothing but hot air and his first debut match ending in a loss would cause that to resolve incredibly unsatisfyingly. Plus there’s the Suzuri-in-a-later-episode issue once more.

It’s just… I just hate it, Suzuri essentially gets shafted and the only reason I can think of is either sales of BS07 for Blue players, or trying to keep a later battle interesting… But rematches happen all the time and besides there is such a thing as new god damn cards!

Anyway it’s Turn 3 and Hyoudo summons Beatbeetle at Lv2.

BlackMachG is also brought up to Lv2.

Darkwitch is incredibly weak at it’s current level, so Hyoudo does a full attack with his 2 spirits, reducing Yamigarasu to 3 lives, and passes.

on Yamigarasu’s turn, he plays the Crossroads of Destiny.

Don’t think we’ve seen this card, let’s talk about it!

**Lv1-Lv2 [Either Attack Step]**
when Spirits with no printed effects you control is destroyed by opposing Spirit through BP comparison, draw a card.
**Lv2 [Either Attack Step]**
when only the opposing Spirit is destroyed when comparing BP with your Spirits with no printed effects, exhaust a Spirit you or the opponent controls.

A Cost 3 Purple Nexus from BS03 that supports Spirits holding “No Printed effects”, this is cards like BlackMachG on Hyoudo’s board.

I’m not a particular fan of that Level 2 effect, but the first effect is pretty darn good, usually your bottom line consists of vanillas so this granting you cards for losing them can be quite nice.

Wait really? Under normal circumstances you’d have 6 available Core this Turn, 1 is on Darkwitch.

You spent 2 to play Crossroads of Destiny, that’s 3 remaining. The card you’re showing is Danse Macabre, a Cost 4 with 2 reductions applying, making it Cost 2.

Waddya mean “Gathered enough Core”, You have enough, get real.

anyway, Danse Macabre, should probably talk about it.

**Flash**
Discard any number of cards from your Hand. For each card discarded, send a core from a single opposing Spirit to the Trash.

It’s quite a simple card, you toss however many cards and shoot that many core off your opponent’s Spirits, they even go to the Trash so they’re unusable this turn.

Thing is, you’d want to use this on something actually threatening, Hyoudo has a Beatbeetle and a BlackMachG.

Yamigarasu tosses out 2 Humpdumps, both are Curse Spirits.

How very curious.

Just so you get the full picture of this nonsense, Yamigarasu tossed out 2 Cost 3 Curse Spirits, each which could have taken out Beatbeetle on their own, to deplete it with a Magic.

This play is ultimately a negative 2 in card advantage.

There’s a method to this madness but I still don’t think its worth tossing them out this early.

No, this is what they call “Cutting off your nose to Spite your face”

Yamigarasu raises Darkwitch to Lv2 and attacks.

If you’re not familiar, Darkwitch has a nasty effect from Lv2 onwards that wipes out any Exhausted Spirit, as a result, Hyoudo’s last Spirit, BlackMachG is destroyed.

Without a spirit to defend himself, Hyoudo has to take a life, leaving him with 4.

Yamigarasu is out of attackers so his turn comes to an end.

Hyoudo draws a card and passes. Choosing not to do anything.

While this seems odd, Hyoudo is playing a Green deck, and Swift is an entire keyword, It’s likely Hyoudo’s lying in wait for an attack so that he can put a dent in Yamigarasu’s formation before attacking.

That’s the issue with dealing with Swift, you can be ambushed out of nowhere and lose a Spirit you intended to take a life… Though the same applies with most Magic.

Also I’ve been skipping through most of the banter because it’s incredibly pointless and I hate Yamigarasu, but DAMN does he fucking talk

Yamigarasu drops Darkwitch to Level 1.

This is the “Cursed X-Rare” that Suzuri picked up earlier, a copy of The SevenShogun Beelzebeat.

The issue here is Yamigarasu’s board state. It’s Turn 6, he’s lost 2 lives and had 3 core steps, so he’s on about 9 Core available here, 1 maintains his Darkwitch meaning he’s left with 8.

He’s just spent 5 core to play that Beelzebeat because he’s got a Nexus and a Darkwitch and that’s it.

Naturally, Dan catches onto the strategy, Beelzebeat’s effect when summoned allows it to resurrect Curse Spirits up to a Total cost of 13 from the Trash.

Mildly amusing, but the summoning of an X-Rare in Suzuri’s body causes Suzuri to regain control of himself for a brief moment

Though Beelzebub, the thing Beelzebeat is based on, represents gluttony, not greed.

If you’re not quite sure what the difference is, the Sin of Gluttony is more about a lack of self control, while the Sin of Greed is about the desire to have something for the sake of having it.

If that still doesn’t make sense, People who accumulate large amounts of wealth are greedy, Shopaholics are gluttonous.

Without a single core spare, Beelzebeat resurrects the 2 Humpdumps at Lv1, they’re each Cost 3 so they don’t even make up half of Beelzebeat’s maximum efficiency.

Yamigarasu attacks with The SevenShogun Beelzebeat, and Hyoudo takes a life, leaving him with 3.

Yamigarasu boasts about Hyoudo’s… “predicament”, but Hyoudo maintains that there’s no particular threat to him at the moment.

Easily irritated, Yamigarasu attacks with a Humpdump, Hyoudo takes another life, dropping to 2.

Yamigarasu attempts to attack with Humpdump, but during Flash timing, Hyoudo Swift Summons MachG.

Besides Beelzebeat, all of Yamigarasu’s Spirits only have 1000 BP, MachG’s Lv1 starts at 2000, so Humpdump is easily wiped out.

Humpdump’s Curse is only active from Lv2 onwards so that doesn’t activate either.

Supposedly, Hyoudo’s specialty is Swift, but it’s not an ability his Key card has.

That being said, Swift has routinely been an ability reserved for a supporting role, and is generally not featured on Boss cards as it’s an irrelevant detail once the card is summoned.

Darkwitch attacks, being at Lv1 it can’t destroy MachG with it’s effect, but Hyoudo swift summons Amenborg and takes out Darkwitch.

Yamigarasu is out of attackers, so he ends his turn.

Hyoudo begins his turn, and simply raises the Levels of his Spirits, before passing.

Hyoudo’s fully capable of ending the game now, he has a 4-card hand to Yamigarasu’s 1. The idea that he doesn’t have another attack-capable Spirit is wishful thinking at best.

Dan however says that Hyoudo’s waiting for “The card he believes in.” before ending the game. Which is all well and good if I didn’t want out of this episode before it started.

Yeah maybe you should do that less.

Or just stop completely. Existing I mean.

What the fuck does that even mean?

Yamigarasu summons Hellscorpio at Lv3 (an action requiring 5 core) and raises Humpdump to Level 2.

I feel the need to ask the burning question of WHY THE FUCK!?

Beelzebeat is your biggest blocker right now, unless you plan to attack with him this is an incredibly stupid idea!

I get the temptation to do this, going “wide” (spreading out) rather than going tall (consolidating) feels safer from the outset but the second Hyoudo plays anything big you’re boned.

I guess these just barely compete with Amenborg and MachG but Beelzebeat could take either at Level 1!

Sigh…

Yamigarasu can’t end the game as he lacks the requisite cards, that last card in his hand is clearly one he can’t use.

Hyoudo levels down his Spirits and summons a Cost 0, this could have won him the game last turn, but he’s choosing to play it now as it’s free and provides the last reduction needed for his next card.

Play Red?

It appears Hyoudo was inspired by Dan to try and recite a Summoning chant.

To be fair that’s a rather realistic reaction for that sort of thing.

Anyway, Hyoudo has finally summoned his X-Rare, and coincidentally, the Title card.

*Families: Blade Beast*
**Lv1-Lv2 **Windstorm: 2** [When Attacks]**
When this Spirit is blocked, the opponent exhausts two Spirits they control.
**LV2 [When Attacks]**
When this Spirit’s attack reduces the opposing Life, by sending a core from your Reserve to your Trash, return two opposing Spirits without **Tribute** to the Hand.

A Cost 6 Green X-Rare Spirit from BS07, Byak-Garo has a respectable Lv1 BP of 7000 and a somewhat tall order of 4 Core for Lv2 at 9000. Good thing the card is Green.

Byak-Garo holds the Windstorm effect, it can exhaust 2 Spirits when he’s blocked, essentially making it so 3 exhausts are required just to stop it. And if it just so happens to slash the life at Lv2, it can bounce 2 spirits instead.

So at Lv2, either way, the opponent is losing 2 more blockers whether they want to or not.

I wish I could say more about it’s playability but I genuinely don’t have access to that information sadly. I definitely do not think it’s a bad card by any means.

Does anyone agree with me in thinking that this guy was probably sealed away for being an incredibly annoying talker?

Byak-Garo attacks at once.

And this is why Beelzebeat should have been raised to Lv3.

At Lv3, Beelzebeat has more power than Byak-Garo can reach at 10000, though at least in this case I guess it really doesn’t matter, Yamigarasu doesn’t have a way to win here anyway.

Beelzebeat is cut to ribbons, and destroyed.

…You do know how to read numbers on a card don’t you?

Due to Byak-Garo being blocked, Humpdump and Hellscorpio are forcibly exhausted by it’s Windstorm: 2

Yamigarasu acts like a victim again, lamenting that it’s unfair for him to fail after being sealed for 1000 years.

…Also I’m not sure 4000 years being single and ready to mingle is equivalent to straight up imprisonment.

Yamigarasu is so scared of losing he just exits Suzuri completely and dips.

Of course, the first thing Suzuri notices is, is the X-Rare presently on the opposing board.

However, the battle’s over, Hyoudo has 3 attackers and Suzuri has 3 lives.

case in point, Suzuri loses the battle.

I’ve been asking myself this same question since the episode started, both of these characters were completely robbed this episode.

Magisa and Dan inform Suzuri that the Beelzebeat he was using was cursed.

Of course, Suzuri is having precisely none of it, just wanting to keep his X-Rare card.

However, a Crow comes by and nabs it immediately.

Before Suzuri can chase after the Cursed X-Rare, he gets his ass bitten by Magisa’s shoes, who commands him to never pursue that card again.

I suppose that particular copy of the card, as Mai’s doesn’t seem to be all that cursed.

The fact that the writers here acknowledge that Suzuri was robbed infuriates me more.

It’s like they’re insulting me, they’re really poking the bear here I swear to god.

Now I really want to know what the real reason behind this weird ass decision was… I suppose I’ll never find out.

And the Episode closes on this little note, as Hyoudo seems to believe that battling Dan in particular, will be “fun”.

I’m kind of at a loss for what Hyoudo considers to be fun, it’s hard to get a read on him, or what his wish is for the Tournament he’s engaging in, we know he’s incredibly intelligent and that’s shown in his Battle Spirits play, but otherwise we know nothing else about him other than he thinks very highly of himself and lowly of others.

Oh well.

The card of the day, of course, is The BladeKingBeast Byak-Garo.

I don’t really have anything else to say that I haven’t already said, Byak-Garo doesn’t have anything particularly notable due to it’s effects being so simple and yet effective.

I do question the idea of Byak-Garo being the boss of a High Speed deck for Hyoudo, but the card is kind of good on it’s own that I suppose it doesn’t need any inherent synergies, even if such things are my preference.

Well in any case, hopefully the next episode shall treat me a little better, I’ll see you all in the next one.

Gekiha Dan – Episode 18

Nothing much to lead in here, we’re now on Episode 18, and as mentioned consistently before, it’s now time for Clackey Ray to get involved.

And the nonsense starts immediately, as apparently Clackey Ray is capable of biting hearts into Apples the size of his god damn head.

Just… Just take me to the Episode Title

“One Turn Kill! The Noble Youth of Light vs Light Speed Shula!”

…Oh… Oh I remember this.

Oh this is going to be incredibly fun.

So, as indicated by the title, yes, the featured strategy of our opponent is going to be a One Turn Kill. That is, the opponent is going to employ a strategy that eliminates the opponent in a single turn.

Naturally, Players of Batosupi in this world need to get their cards from somewhere, and as Cards can be used to settle disputes here, it’s possible they would be quite popular to have.

Clackey however, has absolutely zero interest in engaging with the cards the same way Dan and Zungurii do.

Clackey’s Deck is comprised of cards he specifically likes, when your likes are, let’s say, picky, it becomes easy to be disinterested in looking at a mass of cards because you will be unlikely to find anything you like even with that many options.

…Infact more options can make it harder to decide what you like from among them, it’s a concept called overchoice, the potential to make an incorrect choice is larger when you have more of them to choose from, so it becomes more difficult to make a distinct selection from more choices, even when it’s something subjective like “What cards you like”

Clackey strikes me as anti-stress, he’d get it.

Granted, no one’s listening to him talk about himself, so sucks to be him.

We interrupt this casual stroll to give you a situation involving the return of Dark King Jin.

I love the idea of trying to make the subtitled titles sound cool… But it does bother me a little bit that “Gekitotsu-Ou” and “Mei-Ou” have the “Ou” (King/Emperor, etc) translated 2 different ways.

I suppose it’s contextual but come on.

The small kid Jin was holding onto just turned his bollocks into mashed potatoes.

The child’s immediate dart behind Clackey seems to make Jin believe that they’re in cahoots.

…Well, for how hard he purports to be, Jin really doesn’t have any resilience in an actual fight, guy’s filled to the brim with Hot air.

I’ll skip the big long introduction, but essentially, she says she’s “The First Imperial Princess of the Astoria Family, Former Instructors of Battle Spirits”

Essentially her family appears to be one of the main people who taught the game to others I guess?

We now skip to Seiru slapping the table like it insulted her and making a meaningful request to Dan.

That seems like a reasonable request, but… Aren’t you from a family of instructors?

WHY!?

WHY ON OTHERWORLD’S 6 FUCKING WORLDS WOULD TEACHING SOMEONE BATTLE SPIRITS BE “EXCESSIVE?!”

Dan raises the point that someone else could teach her, though his reasoning misses the whole point of INSTRUCTOR FAMILY.

Okay, so distant from her mother and father.

Figures, the only available instructors who would be willing to teach her aren’t about.

Once again, why is Dan protesting teaching her Battle Spirits?

It appears Seiru has a purpose for learning however, she wants to be strong in order to enter the Tournament.

It probably wasn’t clear earlier if you weren’t having a keen eye, but Seiru was actually holding onto a set of Purple cards that Jin wrenched out of her hands, one card was Jin’s main card for his battle with Dan, The HellFighter Balam

-Audible Snorting noises-

I would describe Jin’s deck as many things, but containing strong cards is certainly not one of them.

In spite of his rather loud… everything, Jin is actually quite modest, he knows what his limits are, be it intelligence or ability. He’s an abundance of uncontrolled passion.

Jin flashes back to a battle he was having in the Gunslinger it seems. He’s opened his first move with The Depths of the Netherworld, not a bad start.

It seems like Jin’s opponent, who’s giving me some real Char vibes not gonna lie, has declared he’ll win in a single turn.

Jin is visibly irate from the suggestion that he’s going to lose already.

This is a weird analogy, but essentially, it doesn’t matter how strong or how pretty something is if it perishes anyway.

…And the guy follows up with Goradon, 2 Erimakilizards, Lizardedge and Rokceratops (who’s cost reduction makes it Cost 0), amassing 5 Spirits all for no cost, maintained by a single core each.

That’s right, behold people, an anime portrayal of an incredibly infuriating playstyle, Weenie Rush.

A Low cost deck that abuses the existence and re-occurance of Cost 0 cards or cards that can make themselves Cost 0 by having a single symbol on board, provided the opponent doesn’t play a card they can defend with on turn 1, such as a Nexus, you win the game the second your turn comes because the opponent can’t defend against it.

You might think the answer is simply to play a Spirit, but your spirits are likely to be of equivalent quality as these, and if they are Cost 3, you’ll only defend one attack, if you’re unable to amass a worthwhile defense following, you’ll lose the turn after.

It’s a deck that produces an incredibly uninteractive game state, in the sense that you either have an answer to it or you don’t. It flies in the face of the concept of consistency.

Nowadays this would be impossible however due to the introduction of new card types that each make this kind of strategy worthless, it’s still annoying if you’re not prepared for it.

Naturally, a Battler’s title is very strongly associated with their playstyle. This particular technique is apparently the hallmark of the name in the Title, Lightspeed Shula, and also because of that title, we know that Shula is going to be Clackey’s opponent.

Based, my guy doesn’t browse Otherworld Social Media.

Shula then proceeds to apparently BREAK THE SPEED LIMIT by exhausting all of his cards by gliding his finger across them.

Look at those FRAMES.

And with that, Jin loses 5 lives one after another, losing him the game.

It seems Lightspeed Shula’s strategy is likened to that of a Meteor Shower, 5 small hits colliding all at once.

Decks like that are indeed scary, but worse still, they have the very irritating downside of being incredibly unfun to play against.

Losing a game within the first turn based on whether or not you drew something to answer that specific strategy are not good moments to have, and a game where that kind of win condition is common has a glaring design flaw.

Battle Spirits has various answers to the problem now, so attempting it nowadays would get you precisely nowhere. There are similar strategies that also win in few turns but they can never win on your first.

Battle Spirits Saga, though I loathe to talk about it for personal reasons, got around this issue early on by very seldom printing cards with a Cost of 0, they eventually did but they introduced one of the anti-weenie card types incredibly early that put a stop to that kind of strategy.

I’d say Dan and Zungurii were gossiping about Jin behind his back, but my guy is directly infront of them.

I’m with Jin on this one, it’s incredibly unfair to treat him that harshly given he wanted to participate and win the tournament just like any other player.

And he lost to one of the most out-of-buttfuck-nowhere strategies he could have possibly run into.

Jin’s loss to that deck isn’t a very clear indicator of his skill or deck building because he had only 5 cards, 5 chances to draw an answer from a deck of 40.

If one such answer existed, and those answers happened to be entirely contained in the other 35 cards, he was boned even if he did prepare.

“Escalators can never break, they simply become stairs”

Yeah I can make deep-ass quotes too.

Jokes aside it looks like that particular phrase sparked a memory within Seiru

So we see a Flashback in which a young Seiru is deeply upset because she can’t defeat her Brother, she assumes it’s because the cards she is currently wielding are too weak and that she would win with stronger ones.

It appears that this is hinting that her brother is infact Shula, her Brother in this instance demonstrates his analogy, by stating that though a pretty ring with a shiny rock, and a regular, dusty old stone, were both dropped into water, both sank the same, and settled on the same level.

In the grand scheme of things, when push came to shove, what they were and how much they were valued meant nothing when both drowned in water.

He then says that cards are the same, and that victory is not determined simply by the rarity of a card.

…So who wants me to rip into this ideology?

First I’ll say what’s good about his example, yes, rare cards don’t win you games by themselves, and it is possible to win with a deck comprised completely of common, unwanted cost 0s.

But his analogy fails, yes, a pretty rock and a stone both are meaningless when it comes to drowning at the bottom of the ocean, their value means nothing… But their value has meaning when used for their intended purpose, a pretty rock excels much better at being pretty than a rock does.

Applied to Battle Spirits, cards are intended to be played with and are given differing values which differentiates how they’re played and how they affect play. Sure, once you lose it doesn’t matter how many rare cards you loaded your deck with, but stronger cards make it easier to win, and make you less likely to lose. This value isn’t determined by a card’s rarity but it is determined by a card’s power which will be informed by a card’s Rarity.

The Weenie Rush is strong because it attempts to win the game before anything of value can be created. It has the lowest inevitability of any deck in the game and is the beatdown of any game by default.

It does not take a lot, at all, to prevent it from achieving that goal, it’s simply impossible to do consistently. But once it’s done, the deck folds, it has no more plays, it cannot remain in the game. And because of it’s low value, there are many cards, with value limitations like BP destruction, where those cards fall within the scope of.

Shula’s been lucky to not have been answered so far, but the second he is capable of being answered, he will be out of the tournament, there might be a world where he wins the tournament, but there for sure are not many of them on account of the glaring weakness of his deck.

Seiru doesn’t understand the depth of the analogy, but she says that she will try, she seems to have kept the analogy close to the forefront of her mind at least which is a good start.

Either way, Seiru is given a present by her Brother, if you can just about make out the text, you’ll realize that’s a Cost 7 Yellow Spirit by the name of The ArcAngelia Isfiel.

Yep, it’s to find her missing Brother. Which Clackey concludes

Lady you said your Brother was missing, and you wanted to enter a Tournament and then waxed lyrical about a Story about said Brother where he tried to help you learn Battle Spirits.

THE FUCKING DOTS WERE IN A STRAIGHT LINE.

One thing I like Clackey doing here is that he’s not treating Seiru differently because she’s younger, a lot of people infantalize children who are very clearly dealing with a relatively mature problem, Clackey here isn’t treating her like a Brat, he’s treating her as he would anyone else… Or at least any other woman.

So we cut to a match Brustrom is involved in and what the fuck is this board?

There is not a single card beneath Cost 5 here. Sweet jesus.

No colour matching between the lot either. Obviously this is trying to paint Brustrom as a big X-Rare buff, by having him wield cards from the first series, the only missing colour of X-Rare here is Purple, but Desperado would likely make no sense and Destlord I guess was too low cost?

He’s playing against Suzuri, who appears to have a very loaded Trash, and many many low cost spirits in play. Given that there is no Trash pile on Brustrom’s field it would be very easy to conclude that Suzuri let Brustrom win.

I know I spent a long time raking Shula over the coals for his ideology being wrong but this isn’t correct either.

The most cohesive, impactful and consistent strategy is what determines the odds of a Battle Spirits game, the victor however, beyond that metagame preparation, is determined by how the cards are played.

No amount of skill will save a terrible deck, and no amount of powerful cards will make up for poor skill, that is because good cards and good skill are both required to execute powerful and complex strategies, all must be above a certain baseline, then all that’s left is the game.

…This however I can’t argue with, making a finishing attack with a pretty card is always cool.

Also it looks like Brustrom gave Suzuri a copy of The TwinRowdy Diranos, further indicating that Suzuri let Brustrom win.

It appears that Brustrom has a problem with Shula in particular, I can’t imagine what the difference might be…

If you’re noticing a change in the subtitles now, That’s because I’ve gotten a hold of a more convenient player with which to actually take these.

Anyway, Brustrom comments that Shula’s deck should be confiscated…

For what reason?

Hoo boy, I’m not about to get into the weeds of taking away people’s decks because they’re not expensive enough.

It’d be like kicking someone out of a restaurant because they didn’t spend buy an expensive enough menu item. If you weren’t content with them buying only that item, don’t offer it as an option.

Applied to cards, the deck is allowed to exist, so he should be free to wield it.

The only thing absurd about this guy is the reading on his weighing scales.

Shula has broken into Brustrom’s room, he appears to be spying on The ArcAngelia Isfiel.

We then flashback to Brustrom throwing a shitfit about… something.

It seems Shula vehemently disagrees with the way Battle Spirits cards are being wielded by Otherworld King to suppress others, and so seems to have protested against Brustrom in some way.

How he’s done so is not clear.

It appears that Brustrom retaliated to this protest by ransacking the Astoria Estate and confiscating every last card they could find.

This feels like a more adequate explanation for why no one at home can teach Seiru Battle Spirits than the one she gave, they don’t have any cards to teach her with.

It also explains why Seiru felt the need to try and steal a deck, she has no cards to forge one of her own.

And thus, Shula became a complete Edgelord, can respect.

And thus the brother became Lightspeed Shula, one who vows revenge on Brustrom.

…Wielding a Deck of nothing but Weenies.

Sexy?

No! Galaxy!

“Gala-hotter” is an interesting way of translating Galaxy’s use of “Galaxy” right before certain words, I probably would have gone with “Galactically Hotter”

What bloody tipped you off? The several minutes of exposition showing the audience Shula’s your brother?

Oh don’t insult me Zungurii, you don’t stop Battle Spirits, no one leaves until I see 5 broken holes where Core used to be.

It seems Clackey has made an agreement with Seiru to fight in her stead.

Shula once again declares his victory as he did with Jin. He declares he’ll defeat Clackey in a single turn.

Clackey has an interesting way of being dismissive of his opponents, he’s doing this for a selfless reason but he’s acting selfish to rile them up and break their flow

Clackey informs Shula that he’s made a promise with his sister, and is aware of the history leading Shula to where he is now.

Shula naturally has never met Clackey in his life, so he’s understandably irate that someone who under any other circumstance should know nothing about his past is standing in his way as if he’s personally involved.

“I won’t forgive them, no matter who it is”

Release!

Looks like Clackey’s going first, which is unfortunate as this is the ideal situation for Shula, Shula wouldn’t be able to win on his first move.

Serge inquires about Mai not watching but Mai basically ignores the battle, asking Serge to let her know if something “Good happens”

I can empathise, being a blogger myself but uh… bitch.

And it’s the worst case scenario, Clackey throws out a Nexus for his opening move, a new Nexus mind you, The Miraculous Hill, but a Nexus nonetheless…

**Lv1-Lv2 [Your Attack Step]**
“Divine Spirit” family Spirits you control gain +1000 BP.
**Lv2 [Your Attack Step]**
When your “Divine Spirit” family Spirit is destroyed by opposing Spirit through BP comparison, return it to your Hand.

A Cost 3 Yellow Nexus from BS04 that supports Divine Spirits, it’s designed to make them a little stronger and, later on, make it so that they aren’t sent to the Trash when defeated.

This synergizes well with Divine Spirits who have effects when they’re summoned.

Oh piss off Galaxy, unless he had a Cost 0 in his hand, that was all he was EVER going to do…

Maybe a Cost 1 too but even so!

Have you tried moving your bangs out of your face? Might help.

Shula reminds Clackey that he declared he’d win in a single turn, and if he’s prepared.

Shula’s turn, I can’t be bothered saying all the names so I’ll let Galaxy do it for me.

Anyway, Shula summons 5 weenies, all at Lv1.

Shula does the ~~unthinkable~~ entirely thinkable and somewhat predictable action of attacking with all 5 spirits.

Welp, the win con is here, how will Clackey react?

Clackey takes 4 of the 5 attacks from his life.

On the last attack, Clackey fires Mist Curtain, declaring the last Erimakilizard, meaning it can’t reduce his life this turn.

Magnificently would have probably left him with more than one life remaining.

My guy Clackey needs a Board wipe or a LOT of spirits… like, STAT.

See through you- My guy you’re a BLOODY WINDOW.

You straight up told him you’d win this turn, you were about as Opaque as a Glass of water!

Oh now Mai’s watching. Didn’t take her long to get invested in the GAME HER BLOG IS ABOUT!

Hyoudo out here being dismissive as ever, why do you think this battle’s pointless Hyoudo?

Hyoudo seems to be dismissing the battle outright because Shula’s constructed a deck that functionally has the most simple strategy a Battle Spirits deck can have. There’s nothing to be learnt from the battle in question.

Dan’s also precisely correct, this Battle actually has nothing to do with depth or skill, Shula’s attempting to obtain victory using a deck of commons, but the downside to his method is that the deck produces precisely 0 opportunity for a Battle style. There are no decisions, preferences, what have you, there is only one particular course of action when wielding it, which makes it worthy of criticism and incredibly boring.

Essentially, the deck operates in a manner known as “Set Play”

“Set Play” is a term used to refer to a deck that essentially never has to make a decision between actions, you will always play the same cards, reach the same end state, and once all the boxes off the list of things the deck needs to do to win is done, you win the game. And the deck will never deviate from these decisions.

Decks that follow “Set play” do not hold a battle style, there is no way of battling they’re suited for, there is only the list of actions needed to be taken for victory, which is what Shula is doing, following the singular thing his deck is designed to do.

Dan’s issue is, likely, that the deck holds no soul, no personality, and no opportunity for expression.

It appears that Brustrom’s irritation earlier was due to Shula defeating Brustrom in exactly the manner he’s utilizing now, Brustrom retaliated as he did.

In order to restore Astoria castle, Shula entered the Tournament and planned to use the Wish granted to Battle Brustrom and essentially publically humiliate his deck full of X-Rares the same way.

To further summarise, it seems Seiru’s issue is that Shula’s plan of defeating Brustrom’s X-Rare deck using a Common Deck has zero reason to produce the result he expects, that is, improving the Blue World, Seiru believes that Shula’s hatred of Brustrom is clouding his judgment, and worse, he’s attempting to use the game he loves to exact vengeance, which may ruin his relationship with the game.

I will say, he’s corny as all hell but the guy is fairly good at Magic tricks

Seems to be that this was when Clackey agreed to defeat Shula after Seiru poured her heart out.

He may have only 1 life, however that incredibly reckless attack is going to let him start his turn with a grand total of 9 Core.

Clackey summons Froger at Lv2 and passes

Shula doesn’t seem to have drawn a Spirit he can summon? Which is strange considering his deck, instead he raises Erimakilizard’s level

Shula sends Rokceratops in to finish off Clackey

Clackey blocks with Froger and immediately uses Heavy Gate.

Not sure we’ve seen Heavy Gate in this anime, let’s have a look again!

**Flash**
During this turn, all Cost 1 or less Spirits cannot attack/block.

Heavy Gate is a BS02 card, so this card’s been around for as long as Yellow has been a thing.

Now Shula won’t be able to attack or block with any Cost 1 or less Spirit, which just so happens to be his entire deck.

Not necessarily, exhausting them would have been better, they can still block for Shula next turn.

Froger’s 3000 BP blows Rokceratop’s 1000 out of the Water, see ya Rokceratops.

Unable to do anymore, Shula ends his turn.

Seems we’re getting a better look at Shula’s rather insane deck of low cost. I don’t even think he uses a single Magic.

Also Shula you have attempted twice and failed, you made declarations you couldn’t complete twice.

What happens twice will happen thrice.

Clackey levels down Froger, now we’ve got a Total of 9 Core and 2 yellow symbols to facilitate essentially whatever the hell we want

You mean the core you gave him.

It’s still a little jarring that Sophia of all things is animated in 2D rather than sharing the CGI with the rest of the cards, but I suppose they hadn’t quite figured out how to make a 3D Divine Spirit model yet.

Thanks to Sophia’s effect when summoned, Clackey can summon an Imaginary Beast for no cost as long as he doesn’t utilize any of it’s on-summon effects, he naturally selects his Iberix, which lacks an effect on-summon.

3 spirits to 4, still a bit dicey here, and Clackey only has 1 card in his hand.

Ah boy, there we go, he’s said something he won’t be able to take back very easily.

Shula’s focus on the equivalent of Human-Wave Tactics means he doesn’t actually trust any of his cards individually, simply the overwhelming amount of them will win eventually no matter how many are destroyed.

And hoo boy, welcome a new 5th spirit, Goradon!

Shula’s disagreement with Clackey’s belief in Sophia specifically seems to stem from the fact that any card can win, so therefore faith in a specific card is meaningless.

Shula once again declares a full attack.

Welp, let’s hope that card in Clackey’s hand is a good one.

Clackey declares all of his blockers but there’s still 2 attacks unaccounted for, and he needs to block both.

Sophia and Froger both take out the 2 Goradons.

During Iberix’s battle, Clackey uses Same Tired.

**Flash**
Exhaust opposing Spirits until they control the same number of exhausted Spirits as you do.

Ooo, Crafty, this had to be handled incredibly well for this to work.

We’ve seen this card used by Meganeko in the previous show, but essentially, as Clackey has destroyed 2 of Shula’s spirits, on his 3rd Block, all 3 of his Spirits were exhausted, but technically 2 of Shula’s wouldn’t have been yet, as attacks are officially waged one at a time.

Meaning by doing this on the 3rd battle, Shula would have been forced to exhaust his last 2 spirits.

That puts a stop to Shula’s plan.

Oh dang, Shula uses a Magic of his own, Fourth Draw.

**Main**
Draw until you have four cards in Hand.
**Flash**
During this turn, give a Spirit +3000 BP.

For Shula’s deck type, where he’s liable to empty his hand frequently, a card like Fourth Draw is amazing.

Being able to empty your Hand and then draw until 4 cards are obtained is a godsend.

Naturally however, Shura isn’t using it for it’s draw effect, he’s using it to give his currently Lv2 Erimakilizard 3000 BP.

Iberix at Level 1 only has 4000 BP, so the 5000 BP Erimakilizard defeats it.

Hoo boy, a Cost 7 Spirit, defeated by a Cost 0.

I wonder if Shula should have held onto that Fourth Draw so he could draw into new Spirits on his next turn, but it occurs to me that Fourth Draw would have needed 3 Core, and Shula only had 2 he could pay without giving up one of his spirits.

Plus Clackey would have 3 spirits, which gives him better odds of winning on the follow-up than he does now.

You keep saying that, but you’ve been wrong literally every single time this match.

Clackey raises an impeccable rebuttal, the guy’s been going on about how he’ll defeat Clackey in One turn, then the next, and the next, it’s now Turn 7 and he’s no closer to winning than he was on Turn 2.

This time, Clackey makes a declaration of his own, that he’ll defeat Lightspeed Shula this turn.

Hrm, 2 Spirits, and 1 card in hand, he definitely needs a way to get 3 more attacks, which would be difficult with only that one card… which means it must be a card to obtain more cards.

MY GUY’S NAME IS KEITH.

Sorry, I don’t mean to shame people named Keith but it’s a very well disliked name.

Kevin is after all, right there.

Clackey berates Shula, or should I say Keith, for having a Battle Spirits that is “Isolated” (I presume that’s the closest translation to describing a Battle Style that invalidates all other Battle Styles)

Then declares that his Battle Spirits is a fun match with everyone, claiming it’s the most fun game (which I agree with)

After having used some of her core for Same Tired, Sophia is re-raised to Level 2.

He’d need a Nature Forces + Refresh Combo to do that, he only has 1 card, not that he can’t get more though…

Clackey summons a new card, The Angelia Cherubim.

**Lv1-Lv2-Lv3 [When Summoned]**
For each Yellow Symbol on your Field, reveal a card from your decktop. Add a Magic card among them to the Hand. Return any remaining cards to the deckbottom in any order.
**Lv2-Lv3 [Your Attack Step]**
Every opposing Spirit that is blocking your Spirits with **Light** is treated as LV1.
**Lv3 **Light** [When Attacks]**
At the end of battle, return all Magic cards you used during this battle to the Hand.

A Cost 5 Divine Spirit from SD02, so not a particularly new card release-wise but it’s the first time it’s been used here.

On summon Cherubim is able to reveal a card from the top of the deck for every Yellow Symbol on the field, take 1 Magic card, and then return the rest to the bottom.

At Levels 2 and up, when Light Spirits are attacking, blocking Spirits are treated as being Lv1.

And at Lv3 it has the Light ability, naturally it has the cheapest possible Lv3 requirement at 3 core, making it easy to access.

It’s a Magic-searcher with Light, it’s a bit hard to dislike honestly.

Clackey uses Cherubim’s effect when summoned, as he has 4 symbols, he reveals 4 cards, he can now add a Magic, he has only 2 options here. Heavy Gate, and Royal Potion.

Heavy Gate would be good to defend against Shula again, but Clackey said he would win this turn. The only way to achieve that is via Royal Potion.

Naturally, this is the card Clackey selects.

Luck!?

He only got this far from pure unadulterated skill.

Piss off, Hyoudo.

Froger attacks, and Shula, having no refreshed spirits, takes it from his life.

Shula also has no cards in his hand, so he’s also out of responses.

Next is Sophia’s attack

During Flash Timing, Clackey uses Royal Potion, this refreshes all Cost 2 Spirits, meaning Clackey’s Froger is refreshed.

All of Shula’s spirits are Cost 1 or below, so they’re unaffected by Royal Potion.

Shula eats the attack from Sophia, reducing him to 3 lives.

Thanks to Sophia’s Light, Royal Potion returns to Clackey’s hand as he’d used it during Sophia’s attack.

Froger attacks again, Shula drops to 2 lives.

Not sure why they do this after, but Clackey uses Royal Potion again during Flash timing to refresh Froger.

instant follow-up, Froger takes another life from Shula, leaving him with 1.

Seems like the large surge of lives being lost all at once is having an adverse affect on Kajitsu due to it’s effects on Mother Core.

Clackey, taking this opportunity for a pre-final attack lecture, berates Keith for going through this entire charade

Cherubim wages the final attack, without any blockers, Keith is forced to lose his final life, and loses the game.

Our Noble Youth of Light is the winner!

We then cut to Seiru reading some kind of letter, with what appears to be Isfiel included alongside it.

But the prick is completely vamooshed so Zungurii’s question is probably what’s on my mind as well.

It appears Keith wrote that letter to Seiru and then vanished again, however it seems like he’s promised to 1. Not pursue revenge, and 2. re-develop his own style of Battle Spirits again.

Seiru tries to give Clackey the Yellow X-Rare she obtained, but Clackey refuses, knowing the significance of that card.

But apparently it seems like the card was indeed for Clackey, as it was meant for someone who could make Seiru smile.

Not like he can argue with that, Clackey takes the card, and now actually has an X-Rare with his deck, as I believe Clackey’s been operating entirely without X-Rares up until now.

In his defense it’d be a bit difficult to wield an X-Rare, As of BS06, Yellow only has 3 of them, Mikafar, Valiero, and Rean, they didn’t receive one in BS04 or BS06. The reason for this is because only 4 X-rares were printed per set up until BS08, because the first set only released with 4 colours, BS07 is the final set where only 4 Colours received X-Rares, and from BS08 onwards, there will be atleast 1 X-Rare for every colour, no questions asked.

Naturally, that Isfiel had to come from somewhere, looks like Keith nabbed it while he was there, and naturally Brustrom would look to the one person interested in X-Rares to the extent that he himself is, Suzuri.

After all, Suzuri has a track record of trying to steal X-Rares after all…

And that’s the episode!

Interestingly there isn’t a card of the day, instead this section explains that Shula’s strategy was defeated thanks to Magic.

Weenie rush was a very strong strategy and I do recall an entry, perhaps around BS03, where such a strategy was able to make it to top 2, but it featured a lot of magic to refill the hand as well.

I guess it would be premature of me to guess that the reason this episode was made was partially to indicate to players how to deal with such basic strategies, namely that they need to use magic capable of keeping those spirits from attacking.

It’s easier said than done, after all, Clackey only survived due to “having the out” multiple times over the course of that game.

It’s just not a particularly fun strategy to use.

Anyway, that’s all I have for this one, I’ll see you all in Episode 19!