Alright, well the last one was a complete dumpster fire, how about we jump right into this one? If I remember correctly this one is an absolute banger.

Seems we’re still in the Red Land, given that the Blue World is where the advertised tournament is, the cast are going to need to figure out a way to get there.

Ah, supposedly there are special locations that can allow you to move from one world to the next.

I imagine the travel between worlds is something akin to the taking off of a plane, given its the equivalent of another country.

We haven’t seen anyone travel through worlds on-screen, but.

Mai was depicted as ending up in the Purple World when she first arrived, so it’s highly likely she’s been under this process before.

And of course, Zungurii who lives on the equivalent of farmland and never made eye contact with anything more technologically advanced than a bucket, wonders what a roller coaster is.

You’re basically crossing from one country to the next no? Most people do that in planes which do require a fair amount of safety checks.

Mai seems to be disdainful of Clackey’s opinion of the preparations required to pass through a gate to another world.

Oh shit he’s ADJUSTING HIS GLOVES!

…So apparently the “Gate” is just a glowing door but for it to open you need to be heading towards it at a fast enough speed?

Interesting physics…

“The Sealed Clash, The StarEmperorDragon Meteorwurm!”

Interestingly, the card mentioned in the episode title won’t actually show itself, and it isn’t depicted in the title card for this episode. You WILL notice in this odd sea of Red however, that part of it is Greyed out. That’s becase the card being slightly greyed out is an oddly familiar Red/White Spirit.

For those who haven’t watched or read my Toppa blog, that card is infact The SacredEmperor Siegfrieden, Bashin Toppa’s final ace from the first series.

This could be interesting.

An interesting thing to note, this particular “World” and all the series contained in this particular BS Universe REALLY loves their use of Badlands… Not sure why.

In any case, the Blue World’s Badlands seem to be less “Red” and looks more like a product of water erosion than a heated desert.

There are even some Blue Crystal Spires.

So we don’t get to see what’s actually BETWEEN the gates so we have no way of verifying if the speed needed to pass through it was even required.

The Violet probably came into unexpected ground, and now is taking a massive spin.

Though it’s also possible this is intentional as well, you’ve just entered a place you aren’t aware of at high speed, taking a sudden stop just to get your bearings might be a good idea.

Sergei is activated apparently.

except you’re not on any rails, there are no safety bars, and god forbid you HIT somehting.

about the reaction I would expect from Clackey, but Magisa hasn’t had excitement of this level in 4000 years of living?

The Violet just barely manages to stop next to this building which is positioned… right near the gate.

Actually I wonder if it would be worth putting down like an admissions office, is there passport control on Grand-Lolo?

Now that I’m finally able to read the sign, it is not a passport control office, it is just a Card Stand.

Siiiiiigh.

I guess they don’t consider the other worlds to be TOO much like countries.

Dan that isn’t how it fuckin’ works, you’d have to go BACK to the Red World just to come to the Blue World again

What a waste of… Do they even use Fuel? They’re CORE ships right?

WHAT DO YOU MEAN!?

Whatever deity exists in this universe, bless Magisa for her reasonableness.

Clackey looks like he’s about to pass away, it’s apparently funny enough for Mai to take a picture.

Oh right should probably talk about the pun, so apparently the characters used to write “Clackey” can also be pronounced “Groggy”

Name puns tend to be used frequently when they appear so I imagine Clackey’s heard this joke a million times already.

Time for my random bouts of life advice: If you see a pun in someone’s name, best plan is not to make a joke of it, at least not right away, they’ve ever heard it a thousand times before and don’t find it funny, or they’ve got a REAL poor relationship it, people like their names not being a punchline.

Clackey’s a good sport though, at the very least.

The element most associated with Blue is “Water” usually, so it’s surprising to see that the makeup of this world doesn’t see a lot of it.

Blue does have a few less used themes, namely “construction” and “sand”

Which seems to be the target for this one, heading hard into construction.

It appears that the Blue world is inhabited by Giants. As a result, everything is modelled for them.

Ah yes, the “matter of perspective” response. From our own perspecive we are the most “normal” versions of our own species, anything too far removed from it is unusual.

So it pays to acknowledge this when interacting with anyone who lives a very different existence from yourself.

“No!”

Fuck you I’m a fan of catchphrases.

Also that is a VERY physical screen that just popped out of nowhere, technology in this world is nuts.

I think I mentioned this last episode but incase I didn’t, Nanao and Galaxy’s identities were combined, and now Galaxy is referred to as “Galaxy Watanabe”

Galaxy Watanabe gives viewers a reminder of the stakes involved in the tournament for anyone who gladly skipped the last episode’s farce.

This effectively renders Episode 14 completely skippable.

Yes, incredibly upsetting, I know.

In any case, to save you frames and checking back what those stakes are. The Winner of the Grand-Lolo Championship is awarded with a powerful X-Rare, and Otherworld King will personally grant them one wish.

Clackey notes that a “Top X-Rare” would definitely attract the Blue Core Lightbearer’s attention.

This wasn’t so much foreshadowing as it was jinxing the idea of his appearance however.

So, despite the doors in the card stand being HUGE, and we can see that the chairs in the distance look a little large, the actual counter here in the stand is well-sized enough for Suzuri to sit on it.

It seems like arrival in the Blue World was also intended to be some kind of foreshadowing for Suzuri’s appearance, just like how we started in the Red World because our main character is a Red user.

It seems Suzuri still has trouble communicating, he was merely asking about their plans but of course, a statement phrased like that would come out like a suggestion rather than a question.

I’ve had no shortage of situations where someone has thought I was asking them for something when I phrase a question probatively when I’m usually just curious.

Seems there’s no hard feelings from their last ’bout concerning Catastrophedragon.

Mai, having never met Suzuri acts as the audience here who may not be familiar with earlier episodes (a common problem given this is airing on TV, some people need reminders of earlier events)

So I’ll do the same for anyone tuning into this blog a bit late in, Suzuri is the bearer of the Blue Core’s Light. As such he’s effectively this world’s chosen Blue battler. He’s a card collector with a specific interest in X-Rares and despite his shyness is quite determined when it comes to obtaining one.

He specializes in Deck destruction.

He’s also rather protective of the cards he DOES have, being a collector, a card’s condition is important to him, such that he uses gloves, and apparently a nail clipper to ensure that his cards remain in good condition pre and post-handling.

There are 2 types of people witnessing this scene. Those who see Suzuri as an inspiration and aspire to take as good care of their cards as he does.

And those who relate to Dan, and feel that card’s are not such fragile pieces of card stock.

I am the Dan-type, I do not treat my cards roughly but I also am not so particular about their condition. A lightly played card is good enough for me.

Mai for some reason wants to leave, and Clackey doesn’t seem surprised.

I’m a little… puzzled because this sort of comes out of nowhere, I’m having a hard time piecing together what it is we’re supposed to understand from this.

It appears Magisa’s now taking a more pro-active stance in not tolerating Mai’s bullshit. Actively blocking her exit before knowing where she’s going.

It seems this show really wants to upset me because it’s referencing events from the previous episode while ensuring that said episode changed absolutely DIDDLY SQUAT.

Like honestly, resolve your conflicts.

and in response to this question, there are 6 core lightbearers, not 1, that would come with some sort of assumption that all of them are needed to defeat Otherworld King. So yes, we do kind of need you for that SPECIFIC reason.

The show seems to be trying to paint this issue as a recurring theme, namely that these 2 are going to continue getting into tiffs as opposed to it being resolved in one episode.

Dan tries to press Mai for how she felt at the horizon ladder but she dodges the question by acknowledging that Dan is sounding very cheesy.

Gosh I hate people like this, what a fuckin’ character she is.

Don’t let that confuse you for me disliking Mai as a character though, evoking in-universe hatred is also something only a good character can weaponize, she’s being very correctly portrayed as unreasonable, and that is evoking harsh feelings from myself as a viewer. This makes her a good character because I’m being frustrated about her Watsonian traits and not her Doylist ones.

Dan on the other hand is failing the intelligence test, because the whole point of this argument is that she doesn’t want to be here, “Why are you here” is not going to be working out for you.

So you’re acknowledging that you don’t care about what you said before and are just doing what you want.

it’s.. a unique trait, normally hypocrisy is displayed by having someone act opposite to what they preach.

This particular brand of hypocrisy on the other hand is similar but not quite the same, Mai hasn’t preached anything, she has just said she would do one thing and changed her mind about it.

She’s incredibly lacking in self-discipline and doesn’t want to follow through on promises she doesn’t feel like keeping.

There’s a word to describe this… fickle I think it is.

Their argument is interrupted by somebody, a voice I don’t recognise.

Whoever he is, he seems familiar with Magisa, and he’s definitely modelled after some kind of veteran in his personality, asking about the Soldiers’ “color” like asking an actual soldier where they served or their rank.

Dan seems on edge, but it’s justified in the sense that anyone who’s ever cared about Dan’s status as a Core Lightbearer has probably been working for Otherworld King.

I understand this man is asking a very probative question of Dan over here that’s key for this scenario but I just really like Dan’s emoting here, he tends to “Grip” the air when he’s serious. I love the claw grip-type emoting.

I am an Edgelord, leave me alone.

For those who might not realise the symbolism here, this guy offered a “Toast” to Dan’s passion, but then rather than drinking the glass, he poured it out.

The only reason you would do this is when you’re pouring a drink onto someone’s grave, literally pouring one out for them.

It’s used as respect for someone who’s passed away.

He’s effectively claiming that Dan’s passion is doomed and while he respects the passion itself, he has no hopes for it’s success.

He of course, vocalizes this for the younger viewers, but it’s definitely a dark message for anyone older that’s watching and is familiar with that custom. It’s one of those things where regardless of where you come from or what custom you have, the gesture is understood because it’s so wildly outlandish and if any confusion is left over, it’s stated.

Zungurii vouches for Dan by claiming he’s the powerful “Clash King”

To be fair this “battle of Kings” message is definitely something, “Clash King” is not far from “Otherworld King” in terms of naming scheme, so the title definitely suggests that Dan is on more equal footing with the guy than he is.

The strange man asks Magisa about Dan’s age, noting he’s quite young, this suggests previous core lightbearers were either older, or at least that the ones this man was familiar with were older.

Magisa counters with a rather back-handed variant of “Age does not always equal experience”, by claiming despite Dan’s age, he’s stronger than the man here.

I didn’t show the frame but when the man asked about Dan’s youth, he said Magisa’s name, Dan seems surprised they know each other.

She’s a 4029 year old witch my dude, she’s definitely got a looooong list of acquaintances.

Clackey seems to believe that this guy and Magisa were romantically involved with the way Magisa is addressing him.

Magisa doesn’t seem to answer this, she’s kept her eyes closed the entire conversation, and doesn’t seem to want to be around the guy too much which could suggest at least a soured friendship if anything.

We FINALLY get a name! His name is Julian Fines.

Some will note Julian’s eyebrows are drawn incredibly thick and his face is not very typically “anime”, that is because he is NOT japanese!

This show takes great pains with itself to draw characters who are not typically japanese differently to how they draw anime characters normally, because anime characters are drawn based on the appearances of japanese people, usually.

This has been true even in Toppa Bashin.

Oh right, and the reason he’s so probative about the Core Lightbearers is because he used to be one! Specifically he’s the previous bearer of Dan’s Red Core.

This is definitely pretty shocking for a few reasons. In ways that are quite good for the plot.

up until now you would be forgiven for thinking this is quite low stakes, given that Dan and the others have the “credentials” for defeating Otherworld King. Effectively being “chosen” ones.

But this key piece of information, namely that there were PREVIOUS holders and Otherworld King is still at large, is a big giant flag saying that these guys can VERY MUCH FAIL.

And it’s not a small chance or anything, there have been previous failed attempts by previous lightbearers.

Which means that their status as a lightbearer does not confer on them any predisposition to fighting Otherworld King.

We appear to have relocated outside.

What’s notable about this conversation is it drops small tidbits about how Core Lightbearers function.

It’s not like Dan is bearing some individual form of a Red Core’s Light, the Light he and Julian bore are considered to be the same one.

Julian seems to be pointing out that Otherworld, under Otherworld King’s rule, still understands some kind of peace.

Dan of course notes that this peace is entirely superficial, he’s witnessed slavery firsthand in the Red world, a place where crimes like that are occurring can hardly be called peaceful even if some individuals are enjoying some form of it.

Julian notes that he once agreed with Dan’s sentiment.

Effectively, Julian’s will to try and overthrow the Otherworld King was shattered, it’s heavily implied he lost a direct battle with the guy.

Though the “It breaks you” statement, as will be noted later, is a lot more literal than this conversation suggests, however.

Dan gets hung up on Julian’s use of the world “Clash” and Magisa notes that Julian’s ace was a card named “Meteorwurm” which has the Clash effect, much like Dan’s Siegwurm.

Magisa ALSO notes that Meteorwurm is stronger than Siegwurm.

So assuming this was shown before the card’s actual release, we can see here that there’s an orange-coloured spirit looking similarly to Siegwurm here. Cost 7 with 3 reductions, requiring 1 more core to play than Siegwurm on average, and has a single symbol.

Suzuri has apparaently been eavesdropping but is here to point out the rarity of the card.

Siegwurm is what’s known as a “Master Rare”, Master Rares can typically take the place of X-Rares in the “Key Spirit” department, but are ultimately not as powerful as their X-Rare superiors.

The Gap is ultimately, small, when it comes to a well-built deck, but when constructing such a deck, small gaps can make worlds of difference to a player trying to maximize their effectiveness.

Right now Magisa is drawing parallels to Dan’s own experience, effectively Meteorwurm seemed to appear whenever Julian needed it.

It appears Julian’s face off with the Otherworld King broke him SO badly he no longer feels comfortable using the Clash keyword that got him so far.

Naturally you don’t want to take after the example of someone who has failed in their attempts to do something you are trying to do.

Clackey notes that Dan isn’t the same as Julian in that regard and thus the 2 situations aren’t comparable.

Dan of course, sees a notable problem, Julian fought Otherworld King and lost, but he’s still here, and he only needs to topple Otherworld King once.

Giving up when you have an obvious opportunity to try again seems, at face value, foolish.

Dan’s basically calling Julian a coward, the guy’s still about, has everything he needs to keep taking on the Otherworld King, and simply doesn’t because he’s afraid of failure.

Dan once again pushing his belief that the Spirits are happiest when they are battling.

Also seems to be echoing a “Mission Failed, we’ll get em next time” sentiment.

Don’t you fuckin’ start…

Dan seems to be trying to relate his situation to Julian to try and resolve his “broken motivation” but the issue is that Dan is already bearing his Core’s light, I’m not sure there’s much left to fix here.

it seems Clackey wants to say somehting.

Seems Clackey felt the need to counter Julian’s comment of Dan’s “Sweltering” personality

Skipping passed some irrelevencies, Dan doesn’t think its something you can “Give up” on, fact of the matter is the humans are treading on something that isn’t theirs and regardless of what benefits they’re bringing, a Human should not be ruling over the Otherworlder’s home. He’s an invader and needs to be shunted out.

Eh… as much as I’d agree that an outsider should not be ruling over that which isn’t theirs, I don’t think the humans being present is so much of a problem than it is the specific humans enslaving Otherworlders for Otherworld King.

Mixing communities is very important because the more we mix together and come to an understanding, the better we can figure things out and the more of us their is to do so. Respecting a culture is fine, but telling someone not to intermingle with a culture can be problematic. Being an outsider should not disqualify you from participation.

Magisa suggests that Julian would better understand Dan after having battled him.

Which in this case his true, the guy has doubts about Dan’s ability and Magisa has noted that Julian straight up has better cards than Dan, but Dan has been noted to be tougher, so Julian should really see for himself what Dan’s ability is like before judging it.

Julian seems to agree to it, only because Magisa had asked him to though, he’s deferring a lot of say to Magisa on many things.

Oh well, we’ve got a battle to look at! Gate Open!

Julian’s Battle Form is an interesting one, it seems to take almost the shape of a Bull, with the lives appearing as “Eyes”

Notably it’s not very spiky and rather curved unlike Dan’s, its certainly a rather reserved Battle form, which matches his personality.

Magisa and Dan both demand that Julian fight with Meteorwurm.

For someone who claimed he couldn’t use it, he didn’t really put up much of a fight about putting it in his deck.

In any case, given Julian has a fully functioning deck that doesn’t use Meteorwurm, we can safely assume he’s playing with a 41 card deck at this point.

This is fine, Battle Spirits doesn’t have a deck limit, and your odds of drawing the card you need are only significantly different beyond 43 cards.

Min-maxers will swear by 40 and I personally like a concise 40 but it’s not a dealbreaker.

Seems like Julian’s taking the first move.

Julian summons only Lizardedge, Dan noting that his individual summon instead of typically quick consecutive ones our more seasoned battlers do suggests that Julian likely hasn’t battled in a while.

Dan of course compliments Lizardedge’s cuteness and Julian seems to have no disagreements about it.

Birds of a feather these red players.

this is certainly an odd choice of move though, he’s played a Level 1 Lizardedge but didn’t raise it’s level despite still having 3 core in his reserve.

Dan plays Goradon and Ankillersaurus.

I somewhat feel like it’s been a while since we saw Ankillersaurus, I can’t even remember the last time Dan used him, even though it could very well have been Kajitsu’s battle.

Course Ankillersaurus is the card given to Dan by Zungurii, so of course he’s ecstatic about it being played.

Goradon is raised to Level 2, so it’s BP is now 3000.

Both should be stronger than Lizardedge now so of course, Dan is going to attack.

And of course, Gotta make mention of the fact that Dan talks to the spirits.

Dan attacks with Ankillersaurus, Julian takes it from the life, dropping him from 5 to 4.

He seems to struggle a fair bit with the pain, indicating that he hasn’t battled in awhile.

Mostly because I have seen this before and know the makeup of Julian’s deck, I’d have loved to see a battle between Julian and Otherworld King.

I’d love to see more of Julian in general honestly.

Dan wants to remind Julian of the version of himself who was overconfident to the point of saying he didn’t know how to lose.

I suppose Dan’s trying to bring out the part of Julian that fought Otherworld King before with Meteorwurm.

The chances of biting your tongue get higher the more you talk.

Which is to say, Dan’s running his mouth and may come to regret it.

Dan appears to have ended his turn after only that 1 attack.

Julian’s Turn, he’s got 6 core available, and he summons a 2nd Lizardedge and a Lv2 Berserker-Gun

For those who maybe can’t see the problem, a former Red Lightbearer is using a White Spirit.

Julian’s cemented his detatchment from his Core’s Light by using a deck featuring multiple colours.

Julian’s got a lot of spirits, he’s in a good position to take some lives now, so Dan’s preparing for the possibility that he needs to block.

Despite this advantage, Julian chooses not to attack.

Mai and Sergei make note of the fact that Julian’s incredibly hard to read. He’s in a good position to attack but chose not to, and his expression doesn’t really give away what his plan is.

Regardless, Julian’s non-aggression isn’t the worst, after all, a valid form of strategy is not to attack to take lives until you’re sure you have the game, this effectively leaves you with the most amount of blockers to take opposing attacks and time to produce a strategy, and reduces the risk of being countered by an opposing flash.

It’s Dan’s turn.

At some point Dan managed to acquire a 2nd Ankillersaurus, Card Stands do double as card shops I imagine so it would have been possible to pick one up, after all Zungurii wasn’t handing the guy a 1-of-a-kind rare card.

Getting ahead of myself, Dan summons a 2nd Ankillersaurus.

You can read a lot from an opponent’s face across the table when playing any kind of game, let alone a card game.

It’s outside information but because it’s there, it’s a resource you can use.

This is why mastering the Pokerface is important, denying your opponent’s ability to read you from your expression means you can only analyze behaviour on the board.

Dan’s a passionate payer who puts a lot of emotion into his game, and so far has been able to shake his opponents to emote, he’s had trouble battling Yuuki who is mostly unfazed by everything, and Julian here appears to be similar.

Dan attacks with both Ankillersaurus’, Julian takes both from the life.

Julian has certainly put up a wall of non-resistance, but there’s a key problem that indicates what he’s trying to do.

both Ankiullersaurus are Lv1, with 2000 BP, the Berserker-Gun that’s level 2 on the board is 3000 BP.

Julian could happily block one and take it out, but chose not to.

He’s preserving spirits and taking lives, that indicates his plan is to build core.

granted, it’s the end of Dan’s Turn, so even if Dan knows that now, he may not have any time or resources to act on it.

Julian raises a lovely question, even if Dan makes his point, what does he actually want Julian to do?

He’s already lost his Core’s Light, there’s not much more the universe can do to say “You’re done, son”

Dan of course, says the obvious. MOAR BATTLERS.

If we throw enough people at Otherworld King he’s liable to draw a bricked hand sooner or later.

Julian of course, mentions that it’s no longer his job to fulfill the purpose of a Lightbearer, Dan bears the light, so Dan goes to fight.

Dan for some bizarre reason doesn’t retort to this. Which is odd since my immediate kneejerk response would be to point out that one doesn’t need to bear the Core’s Light to fight the Otherworld King.

Since, last I checked, Otherworld King might be powerful but he doesn’t bear any Core’s Light.

And I imagine Dan’s Red Core doesn’t afford him any unique abilities, it’s more like a recognition of his current abilities and his personality. As we noted before, being a Lightbearer doesn’t mean you have the power to fight the Otherworld King, because they’ve failed before.

Ah an oldie from good ol’ Toppa.

I have no idea why this exists to be here but this is FlameEmperor Kujaraku, we saw this last time but covering it again, a Cost 6 with a nice set of reductions but for some bizarre reason, requires 2 core to maintain whatsoever.

Which, given Julian’s next few plays will seem like an odd choice. But then again, even Julian’s deck type, you need good targets for this sort of thing.

I’m being very cryptic I know, but anyone who has either watched this before or knows how Kujaraku was used in Toppa, will know why it’s finally shown up here.

Also Julian’s using a hefty amount of core, he had 10 available core and 4 were on his spirits, he’s used all 6 to play Kujaraku, 4 to pay for it and 2 to maintain it.

on Turn 6, Dan plays a new card, Sabecaulus.

A card from BS06, and one that works rather well in tandem with Dan’s ace, Siegwurm. It’s an Awaken Spirit that grants Clash Spirits 1000 BP at Lv2. Eagle-eyed readers will note that Siegwurm grants Clash to all Spirits with Awaken, meaning both Sabecaulus and Siegwurm will get a power boost with a level 3 Siegwurm on the board, and Sabecaulus will be able to Clash.

We call that: Synergy

Apparently no attacks are being made, since Julian now summons Berserker-Magnum (Lv1 BP: 2000)

Dan can’t attack safely since Kujaraku’s 5000 BP, and Berserker-Gun’s 3000 BP puts all Dan’s Spirits in danger.

Though the monotony might break here.

Dan summons a Lv1 DragonEmperor Siegfried.

It’s only got 4000 BP for the moment, so it’s not beating Kujaraku unless Dan goes to fetch some Core.

Problem is, I think Dan’s all used up, he had 8 core for his turn on account of not having lost any lives, and 4 of it was used up from his spirits.

He’d have to drop one to make Siegfried capable of swinging, and even then if Julian takes from the life he’s got plenty of blockers.

Or Dan can try and bait the block and take out Kujaraku entirely…

Looks like I was wrong, that Berserker-Magnum was Level 2.

Not like the Show let me know though. Julian had 11 core available and only 1 was spent on his Magnum, 9 of which is currently levelling his Spirits, leaving him 1 remaining.

Naturally with 2 White symbols and 2 available core by levelling down spirits, Julian has it covered.

Julian loses another life, dropping him to his last 1.

Blizzard wall makes it so the maximum amount of Life that can be decreased by a Spirit’s attack is 1, Julian’s lost a life, so Dan attacking would achieve not very much.

Christ the CGI animators are god damn flexing, another card we haven’t seen used in this series yet, but is a callback to the previous one, The X-Rare, TwinRowdy Diranos.

naturally I got zero clue what it’s doing in this deck, Julian hasn’t used a single Terra Dragon.

Julian makes no attack and ends his turn.

Magisa notes that Julian is trying not to make any moves in order to keep his request to Dan, that is, to play Meteorwurm.

Now we’re cooking with Gas, Dan levels up Siegfried and Sabecaulus to Lv2 and Lv3 respectively, this means he’s got Spirits with 6000 and 7000 BP on his board, since the highest on Julian’s board is 5000 BP, and his life is only 1, Dan can start picking apart Julian’s blockers.

Dan attacks with Siegfried.

And I feel at this point it’s worth pointing out that Julian’s stubborn playstyle is something I love.

Julian uses another defense Magic, with 2 White Spirits, this one is free.

It’s quite a good “get off me” card, basically stops 1 attack.

Julian targets Siegfried and takes the attack, Mist Curtain prevents Siegfried from doing any damage.

Hm, I wonder why Dan doesn’t want to make a move here. Sabecaulus is still primed to take out another Spirit, with 3 blockers Dan’s more than capable of stopping what would be Julian’s 5 remaining attacks and worst case scenario Dan loses 2 lives.

Julian had only 1 card in hand, even if he played everything on the next turn without dropping a card, the best he could hope for is 4 lives, Dan has zero reason to not attack here.

It’s Core gatherin’ time, status report! It’s turn 11 with 4 lives lost, so 4 + 5 + 4 for a total of 13.

We got 6 spirits, with 7 core split among them, so Julian’s free available core is 6.

And now, Behold, the complete and utter misplay.

Julian offers FlameEmperor Kujaraku as Tribute, sending it’s 2 core to the void.

Diranos is providing NOTHING to the board right now, Tribute Diranos! Kujaraku has a higher statline!

But putting the bone-headedness of the move aside, Julian summons an oldie but a very well-remembered goodie! The Ultimate Ace from the previous series, the main character’s final ace card, The SacredEmperor! Siegfrieden!

This is the first instance of a tribute in Gekiha Dan, so Julian explains it.

Tribute specifies a condition a Spirit needs to meet, and a place for that Spirit’s Core to go, when summoning a Tribute Spirit, as an additional cost to play it, you must offer up the Spirit that meets the condition, and move all it’s core to the specified area.

In this case, the condition for Siegfrieden is a Cost 6 or more spirit, and the core must go to the void.

As a side note, if you summon a Tribute Spirit with an effect, you might expect in a Yu-Gi-Oh! sort of way that you can’t fulfill the tribute and therefore can’t play the card, but Battle Spirits works around this, if you summon with an effect, you still have to pay the Tribute if it’s not specified, even if you play it for no cost. Naturally there are cards that can get around the Tribute problem as well.

Needless to say, the card looks EXCELLENT in Gekiha Dan’s CGI.

It might have been a hot minute since we seen this, so how about we cover it?

What an absolute monster of a card, pain in the ass to get out but once it’s out, it’s out.

It’s a terrible purpose for Kujaraku, but I suppose they were either trying to circumvent the problem with actually tributing a relevant target for Siegfrieden, or wanted to use something they already had some kind of basis for in terms of model.

In any case, one might wonder why Kujaraku was designed, it’s a BS04 card, The same set that released The DarkDragonEmperor Siegfried, the first ever Tribute Spirit.

Battle Spirits sets are designed to be played independantly of other product, as such, BS04 needed a decent Tribute target for DarkDragonEmperor Siegfried that wasn’t in and of itself a tribute. As such, Kujaraku was made, a Vanilla, easy to summon Cost 6 who’s reductions are accounted for by forcing you to send more core to the void when inevitably tributing it.

ideally, Siegfried requires the same amount of core investment (Total of 4) with less cards on board and less core offered to the void, so if you’re tributing anything, it should be Siegfried.

Naturally, lore-wise Dark Siegfried and Siegfried are distinct cards, we’ve never actually seen Siegfried tributed for it’s Dark Counterpart at any point I think.

If I happen to be wrong do leave a comment, I try to remember as little of Toppa as I can.

A Battler’s deck can often be said to be a representation of a Battler’s soul at the time that it was constructed.

In this case, while Julian’s specialty is Red, Julian is adopting and skillfully using White, Red’s antithesis, and Siegfrieden being a Multi-coloured X-Rare that combines the 2 can be considered a rejection of the Red “Purity” that being the Red Lightbearer suggests.

I dislike somewhat how Julian’s lack of use of Clash is the representation of his rejection of his status as a Red Lightbearer.

Clash is a Red exclusive keyword, yes, but it’s also not the be all end all of Red, Red users are not required to use Clash and it almost certainly isn’t Red’s only keyword.

But I suppose this is less to paint Clash as the hallmark of a Red Lightbearer but moreso to paint Julian as a potential future for Dan, for clash to fail and for his motivation to use it to be shot.

Magisa analyzes the use of White, believing that Julian’s become defensive since losing to Otherworld King. Hence the use of White.

Julian’s “Red” Soul is being contained in a Prison of “White”

Naturally multicolouring need not be represented so harshly. The show definitely does like to play with Colour themeing a lot. And Multi-colour isn’t necessarily always evil.

In this case it’s the context for the change that indicates whether or not the choice is considered good or bad.

Notably, and this will be a recurring theme in this show which I do like, is that Otherworld King is, somewhat, inextricably linked to the idea of multiple colours.

Julian, being one of the first first-hand victims of the Otherworld King, and an evidently powerful battler, has his deck represent the effect of the King on him by now sporting a deck of mixed colours.

Keep that idea in mind.

Hoo boy, you play one big ass Spirit and suddenly you get to wipe out 3 spirits at once.

Notably Siegfrieden is indicated as an outlier in many ways since it’s Destruction effect is determined by Cost, not BP, which is normally considered a Blue trait, a colour Siegfrieden does not have.

With 3 Spirits gone, Dan is only left with an Exhausted Siegfried and a Sabecaulus, conveniently left as a blocker.

Julian has 6 spirits, one of which is double symbol, he stands to take 7 of Dan’s lives this turn.

Dan do be cornered.

Julian enters his attack step.

Dan takes 4 attacks, 2 Lizardedge, Berserker-Gun and Berserker-Magnum, from the life.

Suddenly Dan’s on 1 life, and Julian still has 2 attackers.

Julian, strangely, ends his turn here, and I’m not particularly sure why.

He has 2 attackers and Dan only has 1 blocker, so this match is already decided.

Julian then says that next turn, he’ll bring Siegfrieden to Level 3, and then his victory is decided.

I imagine this is because Siegfrieden being at Level 3 means he can destroy Sabecaulus and Siegfried, who have BP equal or beneath 7000.

Still, one can infer a couple things from Julian’s turn end here, namely he’s been countering Dan’s onslaught for a while, and if he gets countered here, like, say, a stray Victory Fire on Siegfrieden’s attack, its over for Julian anyway as Diranos would get wiped out.

Then Julian lacks the requisite blockers to stop Dan’s board, basically there’s 50 different ways Julian just gets wrecked if so much as one of his Spirits gets put out of action before it can get through, so he doesn’t offer the opportunity.

But also, he has a victory in sight and isn’t going for it out of fear. Which can be a good indication of Otherworld King’s influence on him.

Ah yes, the million dollar question.

With a nowhere near as expensive answer.

Sometimes you just don’t have the drive for things anymore, and besides, in Julian’s mind, after losing to Otherworld King it was probably like losing a war.

Dan once again tries to punch through to Julian’s desire to fight, claiming that Dan will battle Otherworld King the second he shows himself.

Julian acknowledges that if Dan shows his power at the Tournament, Otherworld King will take notice of him.

Dan of course fires back that Julian should also join in, giving Julian an opportunity to once again meet the Otherworld King and battle him.

Rejected.

Ah it’s a rare scenario but much-loved when it happens, the Main character is getting nowhere with his intended goal. Julian is no closer to wanting to fight again than he was before.

Before Julian’s able to answer, Dan drops Sabecaulus to Level 1, and summons a Level 2 Erimakilizard.

And finally, Dan’s ace card but not quite X-Rare, The ThunderEmperor Siegwurm.

They glossed over it, but Siegwurm was infact summoned at Level 3, making it’s BP 9000.

Time for an epic battle, Siegfrieden vs Siegwurm.

Notably, Siegfrieden is 6000 BP at Lv1 and 7000 BP at Lv2, I dunno what Level it’s currently at given that they’ve been glossing over it but since Siegfrieden is Cost 9, Julian had 6 available Core, and had 5 reductions, Siegrieden could very well be at Lv2 at this point.

Hoo boy, another counter from Julian, this time it’s Buster Lance.

In this case, Buster Lance’s flash effect grants 3000 BP to a spirit.

There we go, it is infact Level 2.

Bersker-Gun’s core is used for the cost.

with 10000 BP, Siegwurm’s not gonna cut it.

Naturally 1 Battle trick begets another.

Dan’s response is to use Lightning Aura, an attacking power boost that offers 1000 BP to all of Dan’s Spirits, and Clash Spirits gain an additional 2000 BP.

This puts Siegwurm to a total of 12000 BP.

Naturally the poeticness of this is simply that Julian refuses to use Clash, and will now lose his Key spirit to a card that only functions in the presence of it.

It’s the most minor of pet peeves but the fact that Siegwurm is the ThunderEmperor but is coated in Flames and not Lightning irks me.

In any case, with the lower BP and Julian’s lack of available cards in hand, Siegfrieden, the great X-Rare of BS05 and the last main character’s final ace is wiped out.

Beaten by a structure deck card that wasn’t even an X-Rare, granted not every card needs to be.

Next up is Siegfried, making a push for the final life.

And now, a rare instance of a character doing the insane.

Julian is scooping.

It really doesn’t matter if Meteorwurm hasn’t arrived, you’ve got him on the ropes, a full attack means it’s over this turn.

Julian is fully aware of the promise he made, but unofrtunately, in a rare moment for the series, and in card game anime in general actually, the card did not arrive.

Ah Dan’s bout of furstration, I can understand his rage.

Dan’s spent this entire battle trying to re-ignite Julian’s fire, asking him to fight with Meteorwurm, chastising him for giving up.

Except he has succeeded at none of these things, Meteorwurm did not appear, and Julian’s fire is firmly put out.

Julian looks at himself like he barely recognizes his own hand, noting that what he is, is in fact the previous Red Soldier.

Dan exits the battlefield, frustrated, noting that Julian has somehow vanished somewhere.

To compound the issue, Magisa is also missing.

Clackey and Mai’s expressions naturally are supposed to heavily imply without outright stating in a kid’s show, that Julian was very likely romantically involved with Magisa at one point in time.

Ah here we go, we’re about to delve into the lovely, re-treaded ground of many a card game anime.

Dan is incredibly frustrated, his message didn’t get through to Julian but Julian entertained the fight anyway, so now Dan wonders why Julian even fought in the first place if his ideals were not on the line.

Mai of course points out, that perhaps Julian accepted the game, because he enjoys it.

In Yu-Gi-Oh! A common trope of their Duelists is that over the course of the series they forget their own ability to have fun, and can have Arcs or Subplots dedicated to re-discovering it.

In Dan’s anger, he resolves himself to obtain the wish from Otherworld King, and says it will be to release the Otherworlders from his control.

Which was obvious from the beginning, not sure the rehash here is necessary from an informational standpoint buuuut given the meta-purpose of this episode it makes sense to re-state it.

Julian seems to be notably accepting Dan as the Clash King.

And now for anyone who didn’t notice the undertones mid-battle (which I will talk about later), here is a more literal passing of the torch from the previous Red Soldier to the current one.

I’m not particularly certain what the message is but I presume it’s an acknowledgement that Dan is the current Red Lightbearer, and more importantly, more worthy and capable of utilizing Meteorwurm than Julian was.

There’s a strong suggestion that they were romantically involved, and still harbor feelings for one another, but this very minor disagreement indicates how done the relationship is.

It’s particularly small but the reason it ends off on this is just to pin-point that fundamentally whatever they had stopped working out at some point, and still wouldn’t even if they still feel attracted to one another.

it’s nice and bittersweet, they acknowledge and respect each other, and recognize the other for what they are and how they feel, as well as the fact that it’s all in the past and isn’t likely to come back anytime soon.

In any case we end off on this, Episode 15, almost a 3rd of the way through Gekiha Dan.

Now I mentioned some themeing concerning this fight, this Episode serves several functions, I’ll go over them in order.

By this point, Dan’s deck is quite static, he’s received Siegwurm, Ankillersaurus and shown off some new cards but otherwise his only “Upgrade” since then has been Siegfried and that’s kind of it.

So far Dan’s been tackling cards released before the series began (or as it began), recent characters using recent cards from BS05 or BS06 but also wrangling older decks.

Ultimately, what Julian represents, is Battle Spirits Shounen Toppa Bashin. He is a living representation of what that series is.

His history is sort of complementary to this role, that’s why the writers naturally settled on never having Julian gain Meteorwurm, his role is effectively done and developing him in this manner would almost cheat Dan out of an upgrade he desperately needs.

His deck is centred on The SacredEmperor Siegfrieden, Bashin’s strongest card. And his deck also contains key features and references to the series, such as Kujaraku’s Tribute, and the appearance of TwinRowdy Diranos.

Their existences there were to serve as Anchors that series, and Dan’s subsequent defeat of them was a Doylist “Passing of the Torch” to a newer series, and what better way to open that gate to the new series than to show the first card from BS07 and hand it to the main character.

This is why I like Julian, he is what came before, having arrived to test what comes after. He has powerful cards, he appears competent, and he, spiritually, is the previous series personified.

And that story is done, Bashin Toppa is over, Julian’s story, is over.

Time to make way for the first set untouched by Bashin Toppa, BS07, and time for Gekiha Dan to succeed that show.

I’ll see you lot next time.

It’s good advice for children but as a TCG Player, that sign can’t stop me cuz I can’t read!

Anyway we had like, almost a mini-season finale, that was a whole series contained in that little sequence of 13 episodes.

It’s a good thing we have the whole 50-episode package.

Card Game anime really does lend itself well to long shows. I wish they kept doing them.

anyway, enough bollocking from me! I’m pretty sure you want a show!

So to save me blasting random snippets of text every few frames, I’ll sometimes cover entire scenes like this if they’re small and concise enough to let be as one.

Sergei comments that Viole Mai seems deep in thought and Mai answers saying she’ll put the whole Horizon Ladder situation on her blog when she gets back.

She’s apparently noticed something about her blog however that’s given her some pause.

“Mai’s Cry to Otherworld’s Core”

Interesting episode title, it doesn’t indicate too much, but we do know she’ll be battling this episode as the Spirit on display is Purple.

I will say though, I don’t actually recognize the card on display here. For the sake of being as surprised as you guys are. I won’t look it up prior to it’s debut.

Took Dan a nice 13 episodes to finally resolve himself to be the protagonist of this story and now wishes to take on Otherworld King.

He is asking a particularly important question though, how can you fight a guy you don’t know where to find?

Magisa doesn’t appear to know either.

Magisa does come up on a fairly good idea, given Yuuki had plenty of opinions surrounding Otherworld King and seemed to be quite high up in his ranks, it’s possible Yuuki does know at least WHERE Otherworld King is.

A lot of wondering going on in this episode.

You’ll never guess what there isn’t enough of.

Magisa calms Dan down by mentioning that they should focus on tracking Yuuki down to get their lead on Otherworld King’s whereabouts.

Clackey notes that they should also destroy the other 5 Horizon Ladders as they come across them, should they do so.

Once again, time to compare this show to Toppa. Otherworld King is handled very much the same way as Uchuuchouten. He’s a mysterious character mentioned very early but not revealed until later.

The thing is the plot is almost directly driven by his existence in Gekiha Dan, You have various humans committing atrocities in his name, places like the Red Land left as nothing but wastelands due to his influence, and his power is displayed by the fact that the plot directly misleads the main characters into believing that they had found Otherworld King, only for it to turn out to be one of his soldiers. Suggesting an even higher power.

Uchuuchouten on the other hand, is off-handedly mentioned early and then never touched on again until J does a large series of nonsensical things which eventually turn out to be for the sake of defeating him. And the character gets no background whatsoever until like the last 2 episodes.

And asking “Who is the Otherworld King” is a very good question, since not even us, the audience, know who this mysterious God-like being is.

..It appears Dan did not finish the question and rendered my entire shpeal early pointless.

It appears the “Problem” Mai is having with her blog is that in her attempt to get many pictures of the Horizon Ladder sequence, she found that she only ever took pictures of Dan.

There’s a wee bit of foreshadowing here to suggest something much much later but we don’t even see the culmination of that in this series.

She apparently blames Dan for being so god damn photogenic as opposed to blaming herself for not realizing sooner that she only had pictures of him.

God I could kill for a curry right now.

I recently moved, and well, the cooking in my current living situation isn’t handled by me. I haven’t had a curry in YONKS!

It seems we’ve been interrupted by something.

NOT THE CURRY!

Seeing perfectly good curry in danger, Dan bolts into action

Down in England we call that a nice save.

Oh come on lady, you even caught yourself doing it. They’re all pictures of Dan because you find him to be an interesting person.

You can think people are cool!

That is allowed!

C’mon!

There’s no fucking way she’s doing this out of jealousy!

C’moooooon!

So it looks like we’ve arrived at the Otherworld equivalent of a Car Park… What’s jarring is we haven’t seen a single bloody road at all until now and suddenly there’s a whole transit system EVERYWHERE.

Given all the direct servants to Otherworld King are Humans, its highly probable that plenty of Human knowledge and culture has blended into Otherworld.

…That’s just a train station.

What, and your assault of a giant tower filled with the bad guy’s evil minions wasn’t?

For a world ruled by Battle Spirits, Zungurii is mightily surprised to find that there are card shops anywhere that there would be people.

Ah yes, the Bane of anyone too focused on card games, moving vehicles on the road between them and the nearest card shop.

To avoid echoing “Man it’s a show about card games, what else would they do”, I always wonder what it would be like living in a world where any and every dispute may or may not need to involve whipping out your 40-card deck for a game.

Having your deck with you would be almost as important as having a phone. Which notably I don’t think anyone here has.

For reference, the show is set in 2009 so that could be impacting the frequency of phones appearing, I recall having a very rudimentary phone on me at the time but not an impressive one.

Mai isn’t vibing with the situation and wanders off, Clackey and Sergei both seem to notice she’s in a bad mood.

Meanwhile, wherever the hell Yuuki is.

It seems whatever Dan did to set off Kajitsu’s… “Explosion” lets call it, has reduced her to being bedridden. I certainly hope Yuuki doesn’t see this as an opportunity for revenge.

If for some reason you haven’t tuned in and are watching Episode 14 before seeing Episode 13, you’ll be treated to a nice flashback of Kajitsu going power-mad mid-battle

Seems Kajitsu has regained consciousness.

Ah one of the greatest symptoms that anyone is ill, feelings of uselessness. Ah the sheer sadness I have when I’m taken ill with something as minor as a cold and I just become dead weight.

Yuuki reassures Kajitsu that it doesn’t matter that the Horizon Ladder was destroyed, they can always build another one.

…You and what workforce? You had to enslave half the Red land for it.

Overprotective Older-Brother Syndrome.

Also this scene is entirely pointless because these 2 don’t appear for the REST OF THE EPISODE.

Apparently that’s all we needed to see of that, Kajitsu being okay was apparently important information we all needed to know.

I wonder if it will matter at any other time this episode.

I kid, after all the plot demands the presence of 6 core bearers so keeping 5 in scene per episode is probably a good call, Suzuri not getting much screentime though.

anyway, we’ve cut to Mai looking at some kind of bilboard.

We’re depicting the scene of what appears to be a Samurai movie with a Female protagonist, I presume that Mai’s goal is to be a movie star?

So I’ll cover this, as I said before, Gekiha Dan is a spiritual rewrite of Toppa Bashin, Mai of course takes the spot of Suiren, rather than cast her as a singing idol however, Mai is cast as a super-famous net blogger, apparently even winning a contest with her Purple Talk blog.

But they have obviously gone in a different direction with it, a lot of My Sunshine’s issues have less to do with her as a person and more to do with the fact that her career clashes with her desire to do Battle Spirits.

But here, Mai isn’t having a problem with Battle Spirits, as that’s mostly hard to relate to, she’s having an issue with the fact that Dan appears to be more interesting to her than she is to herself.

She enjoys being the centre of attention, at the core of the action, but Dan seems to be getting in the way of that, and as a result she’s feeling conflicted because by no fault of his own, he’s now taking up space on the “stage” Mai has made for herself.

It’s like self-imposed jealousy, she’s afraid Dan will take what she has made for herself even though she is the one that is allowing him to take it, etcetera.

What do you do when someone is more interesting to you than you are to yourself and that conflicts with what you want to be the reality?

Dan appears to be… playtesting? I’d say working on his deck but he’s not looking at the whole thing.

Dan has agreed to fight until the Otherworld King has been thoroughly removed from Grand-Lolo.

As a result, he’s resolved himself to play as much Battle Spirits as possible.

Dan is understandably not content with the way that battle went, he was in a situation where he had a card that could have won him the game, but that relied on his deck being in a VERY specific arrangement at the time he went to resolve it, he is literally incapable of guaranteeing that will happen next time, or any other time, so he needs to get good enough to be able to handle that situation again without luck.

It’s a good look for the series, Dan needs luck to win but rather than enforcing the plot armor they interrupt the battle due to Kajitsu’s unstable state. Interrupting fights that were surely won is one thing but it’s good because we have no idea what would have happened and Dan here evidently considers the match a complete loss.

Luck plays a role in ALL card games, that is what makes them inherently fun to play.

But being good at them requires a strategy that is consistent and powerful enough to minimize the amount of impact luck needs to have on your game, Luck will do the rest.

This is of course very cool to discuss but ultimately Dan wants to be stronger, which is as Shounen as Shounen gets.

We interrupt this program to give you Zungurii interrupting this program.

And it appears Mai has come to her desired conclusion.

It appears Clackey has tried to get her to discuss the decision but Mai seems to be incredibly adamant about it.

So here’s the thing, Humans operate very strangely, and as a result, the more a person knows that something they believe is wrong, the more they will stubbornly choose to believe it.

This applies to decisions as well, Mai is choosing not to discuss it because she knows the decision she is making is not only selfish but negatively affects the other passengers of her ship.

So in order to try and remove the possibility of her changing her mind and getting what she wants, she is shutting down any attempt at negotiation.

Haha, that’s absolutely a reference to her original incarnation, Suiren. For those who haven’t read the Bashin Toppa blog posts, Suiren is comically well known for just actively kicking people while they’re down and back-handedly apologizing for things they’re not sorry for.

Dan seems to think that perhaps he’s done something that she genuinely doesn’t like, which isn’t quite the self-awareness most would like but it’s self-aware enough that he at least considers it might be his fault.

Unfortunately Dan and Zungurii get into an argument about who’s more at fault.

Mai finds their argument amusing, but otherwise doesn’t bother to entertain their original question.

I’ve never once heard someone liken the refusal to discuss something as “Cruelty” but I do agree with the sentiment, wronging someone without specifying why and refusing to elaborate when pressed could be very much considered cruelty. Not being willing to give a reason can only produce the conclusion that either you know that no explanation would be sufficient to justify it, or you have no reason.

Dan appears to have successfully touched a nerve, Mai responds rather viciously, telling him to shut up.

I take issue with the term “Sweltering” being used as the translation here but I take it that the poor subber in question had trouble finding an adequate translation that would make sense and didn’t want to say “Hot” as that has a different connotation.

For those who haven’t heard the term, “Sweltering” means to be “Hot to the point of being Uncomfortable”, Mai is effectively saying that she hates the fact that Dan has a high energy, hot-blooded personality.

Dan is of course, offended that the reason Mai is leaving has nothing to do with what he’s done but is more to do with a personality she has never clashed with until now.

She’s effectively saying “I’m leaving because I don’t like you, just because you are you.”

So of course, since she’s insisting on being unreasonable, he’s decided not to bother.

I struggle to deal with unreasonable people, because they often need nothing more than time to simmer down from a high tension situation before coming to an understanding, Mai has already “Burst” the bottle of emotions she’s been storing away and by the time she simmers down she’ll be miles away and there’ll be no point doing anything.

So Mai’s temper tantrum here drives me up the wall.

It feels better when you realize she’s 13 and Dan is 12, they’re teenagers, capable of thinking for themselves but not particularly intelligent.

Dan giving up here doesn’t change the situation, so Mai of course takes a potshot at him for it.

We skip to them having left Mai’s ship it seems like, Magisa wants to chat with Mai about the problem but given Mai refuses to discuss it, that’s going to be hard.

It’s an interesting dilemma too, you have a car you enjoy using and there is a person late for work and you have driven them to work before. Due to your past saves, the person now expects you to drive them to work whenever they are late. At some point you make a commitment that prevents you from being available when that person is late.

Are you a bad person for choosing not to drive that late person to work after you establish an expectation that you would, despite having no other obligation?

Obviously Mai is painted as being unreasonable here because she’s refusing any opportunity to negotiate and the reasoning she gave is quite frankly, unfair, but if she had decided that maybe she wanted to focus more on her blog and couldn’t do it with them around, would she be a bad person for that?

Course some might bring up removing Otherworld King as a higher priority but the world’s problems do not automatically become an individual’s problems just because they live on it.

Dan realizes Magisa’s comment about how she wanted to approach the situation was the exact same as he was at the start, Dan made up his mind about going home from Grand-Lolo, so Magisa didn’t push the issue.

the main dilemma here is respecting an individual’s feelings vs what is good for everyone. Bearing in mind that individual is not responsible for those people.

We interrupt this dilemma to bring you an announcement of a series of “Championships”

That’s right lads, we’re going into a Tournament Arc.

And the announcer in question seems familiar if you’ve watched the first series, his hair is a bit different but that is undoubtedly our new Galaxy.

We won’t see ol’ Nanao’s face again, and rather than being referred to as “Galaxy Seven”, he’s now referred to as “Galaxy Watanabe”, merging the 2 personas into 1.

From this point on the series uses these “Charisma Battlers” to act as cameos, often as a host to a tournament.

But enough about our boy Nanao seeing work beyond the confines of the 4th wall, the winner of this tournament will be given an X-Rare.

In addition to the X-Rare prize, supposedly if you win the Tournament, then Otherworld King will grant the winner one wish.

This is a useful prize, seeing as Dan or Clackey can use the wish to meet with Otherworld King, and even if he doesn’t grant their wish to remove him from Grand-Lolo, they can at least fight him.

The Tournament is also being hosted in a different world to the one our cast are in, the Blue World.

It seems they don’t latch onto the “Wish” portion of the prize and instead decide to use the tournament as a reason to find more soldiers.

I’m surprised they haven’t clicked that they’ve seen all 6… but I suppose Clackey may not know about Kajitsu’s Green Core and Yuuki’s White Core.

Dan laments that Mai seems to be being difficult about most everything.

Clackey’s surprised that Dan is more worried about getting on with her after she basically said a bunch of unreasonable things to him

Dan doesn’t seem to care much for what she said, instead saying that it makes more sense for them to travel together as they all share the status of bearing a Core’s Light.

Clackey raises an excellent point that they just got finished fighting the White Core Bearer who was trying to do something horrific, and claims Dan’s way of thinking would require him to forgive Yuuki. Dan clearly already thought about that, instantly saying he’d forgive Yuuki in a heartbeat.

Clackey points out that Dan said he would never forgive Kajitsu, Dan agrees noting that he’d forgotten about it, before saying that he seems less angry with her and moreso wants to play Battle Spirits with her again.

Dan seems to be placing his faith in the light of the core, enough to be ready to be friends with people he despited not a week ago.

Not certain he’d want to be friends with you after you nabbed the X-Rare he intended to steal and beat him to tears with it.

Clackey shows some admiration for Dan’s unique personality, but remember this line, because it’s actually something that gets upheld later.

Notably this means he hasn’t quite forgiven Yuuki and Kajitsu.

Magisa, being a 4000 year old woman, gets a pass for having expectations of Dan based on his Gender, besides she’s giving him a hug for breaking the expectation.

It appears Clackey has some shit to do.

I guess now we’ve jumped to them hauling their stuff out. Dan’s still a fair bit bitter about their earlier argument that he doesn’t really want to be polite to her.

Even Sergei seems to think Mai is acting a fair bit odd, but she insists on leaving so he doesn’t question it further.

unfortunately when Sergei goes to start the Violet, he finds that the key for the ignition has vanished.

Clackey taps on the window, revealing to have stolen the key and requests to speak with Mai.

Personally this is a good amount of catharsis, Mai is being unreasonable and refusing to actually have a discussion about her actions.

Most might argue that Mai isn’t obligated to discuss what she does with her vehicle (which is effectively operating as her home) but the difference here is Clackey’s being unreasonable in order to force a discussion, Mai was being unreasonable to avoid one.

And while I can understand why a person may not want a discussion about something, I also hate that black and white mode of thought.

It’s one of the few things I’m incredibly intolerant of.

Seems Clackey has decided to take this to the one place where they have to have some kind of discussion, the Battlefield.

And we don’t like people who make massive decisions that negatively affect others while being cagey about the reasons for them.

I chose to do something that we in the music business call “lying through our teeth”

Rex Goodwin – YGO 5Ds One Shot – Card Games for Charity

Battle Spirits is a strange game in the sense that the person who wins the die roll gets to look at their hand before deciding whether or not to go first or second, incredibly strange.

In Battle Spirits Saga, due to the presence of a mulligan in that version of the game, you’re allowed to select whether or not to go first or second after seeing your hand, but BEFORE you mulligan… performing a mulligan before declaring first or second means you must go first.

It’s one part of Mai’s board wiping combo, The Depths of the Nether World.

I’m not sure what Clackey means by this, not starting with your colour sounds like a recipe for overpaid cost.

Naturally there are strategies that can use one colour as an engine to facilitate a card from a different colour.

This links a bit to Mai’s philosophy, she wants to be an actor, which is why the prospect of a movie moved her so during the Horizon Ladder event.

By playing a Nexus, she’s selecting the “Setting” with which she can fight in.

Watch out lads, he’s METAGAMING.

But he summarises the purpose of Mai’s deck quite succinctly, so I’m happy.

Clackey goes on to explain the problem with The Depths of the Nether World for anyone who hasn’t watched Mai play and doesn’t understand why Clackey knows about it.

But I’ll do us all a favor and skip to the part where Mai gets impatient about him thinking.

To a layman, it may seem like a Core removal combo would eat a board like this, but Mai doesn’t have much Core yet, and so she’s likely unable to make many spirits appear while levelling The Depths of the Nether World to Level 2.

If Clackey ended here, she wouldn’t be able to deplete much without the requisite core to play both a Curse Spirit and Level up her Nexus.

The other, equally valid option, is to simply ensure the spirits do what they need to do before they’re depleted.

Clackey makes a full attack with both spirits, dropping Mai to 3 lives from the get-go.

Clackey’s certainly choosing an interesting way of smacktalking Mai… by flirting.

Unable to wage anymore attacks though, Clackey can only end his turn.

Though with those 2 lives lost, Mai now has 7 core to work with, she could very easy play a Curse Spirit AND level up her Nexus.

Looks like Mai doesn’t plan to do that though, she summons The HellFighter Balam at Level 3 which uses up most all of her Core.

So as interesting as that is, she summoned it at Level 3, like its existence here doesn’t mean much if you’ve got nothing to block her with and she won’t level up her nexus.

Case in point, she ends her turn.

As the Nether World Depths only fires 1 core per attack at Level 2, Clackey can raise the Gremly’s to Level 2, and chump block using the ones that get targeted, preventing Mai from gaining any advantage by shooting their core to his reserve.

Interestingly, Clackey attacks with a 2000 BP Froger, Mai has a 5000 BP Balam as a blocker. But given that Mai’s Nexus would just deplete Froger next move, he might as well wage an attack with it and derive whatever benefit he can before it’s depleted.

Balam blocks and quite literally claps Froger.

Now Mai has no defenses, Clackey can continue to weenie rush his way to victory.

Clackey considers leaving a blocker in Gremly, but worries that blocking Balam will activate Curse.

Erm, Gremly would lose to Balam either way, his Curse effect is irrelevant here.

But apparently that little misconception doesn’t seem to stop Clackey from attacking.

And now Mai loses one MORE life, dropping to her last one.

I’m not sure you can, she has 4 cards in hand and will draw a 5th soon enough, if 4 of those 5 cards are spirits she can play, you’re in trouble.

Mai seems to be interested in how Clackey feels about battling her, and Clackey of course, being a womanizer, likens it to a date.

But of course, he opens the discussion by once again bringing up the “Sweltering” Dan.

We can confirm that “Sweltering” was another translation choice used for Clackey’s choice words about Dan before they became more friendly.

I’m not sure why this is being used as the crux of the discussion, the earlier scenes point to Mai just using Dan’s “Sweltering behaviour” as an excuse, if she hated it that much she wouldn’t have blogged so much about him, so why we’ve started running with that as the reason makes no sense.

Mai seems to believe that they’ve found common ground, but Clackey is of course noting that they don’t fully agree because they’re going different ways about it.

Clackey mentions that he was originally like Mai but that Dan has a way of being likeable once you hang around him enough.

Which I’m pretty sure is the problem Mai is having, she’s realizing he’s becoming likeable and she hates it.

Now we get treated to a “Dan’s best hits” from Clackey, this one is when Dan wanted to team up with Clackey to protect the village, noting that they’d be powerful as 2 High Rankers working together.

Then there’s this excellent scene I don’t mind showing again where Dan gives The Dark Lord Jin a powerful lecture.

Clackey claims that Dan isn’t simply being “Sweltering”, he’s being straightforward to the point where others get wrapped up in it.

As I said before, just because you’re right, doesn’t mean you can change someone’s mind.

And someone being wrong about something will more firmly believe what they already do.

Very hard to change someone’s mind once they’re set in their ways at a certain age.

Looks like we’re gonna need some more CORE.

Besides the 1 left on Balam, Mai has about 9 core to work with, and 2 Purple symbols for reduction.

Mai plays 2 Hellscorpio and a Skulldevil, this is already looking bad.

Another member of the “Hell” series, Mai plays The HellFencer Berith

Since it’s a new card, and the one on the cover for this episode, let’s talk about it.

A Rare from SD01, which basically means its not a rare.

It’s only 2 reduction at 5 cost, meaning you’re paying at least 3 for this thing, that’s quite hefty, but it’s effect might make up for it.

When summoned, the effect will blast 3 cores, that’s quite sizeable for a Cost 5, so it’s balanced by the fact that you’re not allowed to fully deplete a spirit with it’s effect.

His effect at Level 2 allows him to remove a core.

This is pretty meh on its own, but it’s almost like it was DESIGNED to be used with Depths of the Nether World, as it’s Infernal Lord family means it will gain Curse from the Lv1-Lv2 effect, and shoot cores with the Lv2. Combined with the Nexus, Berith can deplete 2 spirits on one attack.

Which for a 5 cost spirit… ain’t too bad.

Oh look, the exact scenario I was talking about.

…Huh.

Mai didn’t use the on summon effect, or level up Nether world Depths…

Lets see, of the 9 Core she had free, she spent 5 of it, and 4 is used up by her new spirits.

Berith resolving it’s effect would be somewhat pointless then, since Clackey could just return the core next turn, so I guess the skipped it for animation’s sake.

Naturally, you can’t do that, Berith’s effect is not optional, it’s forced to activate.

So while I can understand the reasoning behind not resolving the effect, it’s still a procedural fuckup.

To make a long story short, Mai attacks with all her spirits and Clackey, having no blockers takes all of them from his life, losing him the game.

Clackey congratulates Mai on her win.

That fight was rather trash, it was Clackey full attacking until Mai had enough attackers to win.

He was so worried about the Curse combo he forgot he needs blockers to live.

Yeah, cuz he’s an idiot.

Clackey claims it’s fine that he lost before he could play any of his key cards, saying they’d be jealous of Mai, basically he’s being a flirt.

Clackey takes back the jealousy comment and notes that he was so worried about the Curse Combo he didn’t plan for switch to a rush strategy, figuring she would attempt to play into his prepared board state.

If it’s obvious your opponent is playing around your gameplan, and you have a plan B, use the god damn Plan B

I see Mai isn’t too broken up about that diversion.

It appears Clackey’s latched onto the crux of Mai’s perceived inferiority against Dan, and is trying to compliment her unique qualities that Dan doesn’t have, after all Dan is not an avid user of Nexuses.

Skipping along since this episode doesn’t have a lot going on, we jump to Mai having a sulk on the deck of The Violet

To make a longer story even shorter, she reminisces about her moments with Dan and seems to agree with Clackey’s description that “Dan disturbs the pace of others until they start to forget what their own pace was”

Mai resolves herself to remain in Grand-Lolo, agreeing to “dye it her colour”, which can be considered to be a statement claiming she’s going to fulfill her role as the Bearer of the Purple Core’s Light.

As much as Magisa lamented about letting her go, even if Mai isn’t with them, there is still a lot a Core bearer can do separate from a whole gang.

Clackey apologizes to Dan over Mai leaving.

To be honest you didn’t push the point too hard regardless, you vouched for Dan a lot but a stubborn girl like her wasn’t going to take that for an answer.

Maybe if he won the fight she’d be a little more agreeable but full attacking every turn go brrrr…

It appears Dan has become incredibly self conscious about the reason Mai gave for leaving, wondering what it is that makes him “Sweltering”

…What.

There’s no fuckin’ way.

COME ON.

I’m getting Toppa Episode 17 flashbacks, if you’re just going to come back anyway, WHAT THE HELL WAS THE POINT!?

Honestly, you had a fight that was barely even that, didn’t showcase any new effects while still showing a new card, it didn’t DO anything!

The fight wasn’t particularly interesting, it was Clackey full attacking until he lost.

You had a whole tiff that could have allowed you to separate the characters from the group and let Mai do some other things in the background!

Why go through all this hubub just to restore the status quo!?

WHAT WAS THE POINT!?

Magisa if you knew she didn’t “Mean” to treat Dan like an idiot, blow off Clackey when he tried to convince her, and didn’t even give YOU the time of way why the hell did she even drive off in the first place and wait til god damn SUNSET to come back?!

I’ll tell you why, because she TOTALLY meant it and both her AND the writers couldn’t follow through with the decision!

God!

Dammit!

Screw your juice.

Holding my sheer rage back for a bit, this little shot DOES highlight a key difference in Dan and Clackey’s aims, Dan wants to defeat Otherworld King as he’s the prime catalyst for everything that’s happening, Clackey on the other hand doesn’t harbor any specific aversion to the currently mysterious figure but wants to put a stop to the Horizon Ladders.

Dan is incredibly geared towards the upcoming battle while Clackey is focused on the outcomes. After all, Dan’s key trait is his perseverence in this case, and Clackey’s key trait is his own kindness.

And that’s all for now!

I’m incredibly angry since I basically just got Episode 17’d again. The only outcome of this episode was Mai, who’s otherwise not shown any particular aversion to her role as a Purple Lightbearer, now accepting that role.

There was a battle that basically wasn’t a battle.

The Battle did not showcase anything new besides a Spirit that did not show its functionality within the deck it appeared in.

And an entire situation that would have been otherwise worth changing the current status of the party was reversed, potentially because the writers wrote themselves into a corner realizing they had either nothing for Mai to do, or no creative methods to get Clackey and Dan to the Blue World.

See you in the next one…

We left off on what we like to call, a CLIFFHANGER

So let’s dispense with the Intro and get back into what we were doing earlier shall we?

Nevermind, apparently we’re going to get a liiiiittle bit of a reminder of what the fuck was going on before this.

I’ll give you a run-down, Magisa was doing the equivalent of being a Support Mage trying to beat a Full-tank in a MOBA game.

Yuuki isn’t even looking at Magisa while he’s no-selling her Lightning attack.

Oh, and Dan poked Kajitsu’s berserk button by claiming that he would deal with Yuuki after he’d finished off Kajitsu. So her eyes have 404’d and now she keeps calling herself poison.

Someone get Alice Cooper up in here.

The Score is 2-4 I believe, in Dan’s favor. Dan has 3 exhausted spirits in Balmung, Siegfried and Siegwurm and has managed to destroy all of Kajitsu’s Spirits.

Kajitsu has 2 Fruit of Wise Tree and something in the camp of like 15 core available on her turn, plus her core step which will make it 16.

Having 16 core by your 5th turn is pretty damn impressive considering you only get 1 core a turn.

Apparently we’re not done with the Nexus strategy!

a BS06 3-cost Nexus that centers around an as of yet unseen keyword.

To explain, Windstorm is an effect that comes with a number, like Windstorm: 1, When a Spirit with Windstorm is blocked, your opponent exhausts a number of spirits equal to the number listed on the Windstorm.

So, what this Nexus does is not only core boost based on how powerful the Windstorm on the Spirit is, but it’s level 2 effect is that if your opponent tries to chump-block into a Windstorm Spirit, all the Spirits that were exhausted will be thrown to the bottom of the deck.

This means a Single Windstorm Spirit can be rendered VERY deadly.

At the very least, it’s damning Lv2 effect requires a whopping 4 core to achieve, but given it’s Core-boosting effect, that might not be all that hard to achieve.

Cost 10, 6 Reductions.

Where have we seen a card like this before?

Oh right.

It was Red.

And was the Strongest Red X-Rare by the name of Catastrophedragon.

Kajitsu, in an awesome display, plays The Providence Hououga.

Also keeping track of the core is important here. Kajitsu began with 16 spendable core, she paid 2 for her Storm Highlands.

Then paid 7 for Hououga, so she has 7 core left, 1 of which is maintaining Hououga.

Also we should probably talk about the card…

BS06’s Green X-Rare, a Cost 10 Vanity Deity. Remember how I said this was similar to Catastrophedragon? Because Catastrophedragon isn’t the only one of it’s kind, there is a Card like that for every colour. A Cost 10 Vanity Deity.

This means that Dan is facing down a card of equivalent strength to what Bashin took on at the end of his series… on Episode 13.

An End-series-level card at Episode 13 feels like overkill no?

Anyway, this Vanity Deity has Windstorm: 3 at all levels, meaning any time it’s blocked, 3 Spirits will follow it to be exhausted.

Additionally, at Lv3, a condition that requires at LEAST 10 core. Anytime Hououga is able to deal damage, by sending a Core to the Void from your reserve, Hououga will refresh.

So your choices are Block and risk losing all your blockers, or don’t block and risk losing all your lives.

The Storm Highland’s Lv1 effect triggers, since Hououga was summoned with Windstorm: 3, 3 cores from the void are placed on Hououga, this brings it to Lv2 as Hououga has 4 cores now.

Notably: Kajitsu has 3 cores in her Reserve at the current moment, and 3 on one of her Fruit of Wise Trees, she has just enough Core to bring it to Level 3.

Once again, a card from BS06 compeltely boggles Dan as it’s a card he’s unfamiliar with.

We’ve seen a Spirit of this level of power in Dan’s hands, now Dan is facing it down, and he no longer has an equivalent.

All of Dan’s strongest cards are on-board.

We finally get our Episode Title! Storm Tyrant, The Providence Hououga.

So we can safely assume Dan will spend most of this episode trying to cope with the presence of a Catastrophe-level Spirit.

We interrupt this epic battle to bring you Kazan ordering the capture of our main characters.

I somewhat don’t recall this going well for you last time.

I don’t foresee this going well for you this time either, Kazan.

Rule of thumb, if some guy drops 5 guys within 2 seconds and then kicks the last one so hard he gets to pull a backflip off of it, it’s safe to say you’re outmatched.

Oh naw, Serge don’t even need yawl, he’s got this.

Oh, right, forgot that was a thing.

Might be a little difficult, I can only show frame by frame but the building is currently shaking.

Mai feels very strongly about leaving Serge but Zungurii makes the choice for her and drags her along.

It’s safe to say she isn’t happy about this.

Back at the battle, Dan’s in a pickle, since all of his Spirits are exhausted.

Thankfully Kajitsu appears to have blown most of her Core playing Hououga, so he’s not in TOO much danger yet.

Answer: Likely yes.

Hououga is a Cost 10 Spirit that needs 10 Core to use all it’s effects. So even with completely beneficial board presence, you need 14 core just to bring it to Level 3, and more Core to get it to start refreshing.

Kajitsu didn’t raise it’s Level, makes sense. She needs it to protect herself.

Hououga attacks, at Lv2 it has 10000 BP but Dan lacks a Blocker anyway.

Unable to block, Dan has to take a life, dropping him to 3.

Kajitsu ends her turn, due to the Lv2 effect of The Fruit of Wise Tree, Hououga is refreshed.

Kajitsu’s still kinda in a pickle, Dan has 3 spirits, she has 1, and Kajitsu has only 2 lives.

The Horizon Ladder’s weather isn’t looking too hot.

Is it? It was Kajitsu that was causing a crapton of winds to occur earlier, if anything it’s resonating from her.

…This could actually mean multiple things given how the world functions.

Either he’s worried about Kajitsu because Dan has fully awakened his status as the Red Soldier…

OR he’s worried about whether or not Kajitsu has fully awakened.

The fact that it’s not quite clear which he means makes this incredibly unhelpful to analyze.

I’m glad this makes as much sense to me as it does to Magisa.

I mean it’s going to be a little difficult for him to answer when you’re trying to kill him.

This fight’s really not going well for Magisa.

Yuuki’s managed to finally do enough damage to keep her down for a bit, she took a rather nasty fall there.

Most people actually under-estimate how damaging even small falls like that can be due to how Shounen Anime tend to underplay them, but being lifted off the ground and knocked onto your back can be enough to knock quite a few people out.

Since she’s out for a bit, Yuuki now has an opportunity to fit the Grand Core into the Horizon Ladder.

Now you see it.

Now you don’t.

Magisa used Yuuki’s moment of confidence to snatch the Grand Core from him, using her Hat.

It’s quite a pretty thing up close, I always wondered how most animators do that textured effect to show something brimming with energy.

Magisa he was beating your ass not 2 seconds ago… Please don’t taunt him, just run.

Looks like Magisa’s trying another Hat trick.

Though now by blindsiding Yuuki she’s got his attention, which might distract him long enough to get blindsided by the hat again.

Hoo boy.

Seems like her plan is to trap Yuuki in there to buy time for Dan.

I don’t think Magical Fabric is going to keep the Skilled White Magician at bay there Magisa…

Two things.

That line right there is spoken by Yuuki.

Secondly, there’s a giant echo when he says it, as if to hit home the level of pissed he’s starting to get.

Yuuki’s whipped out a Sword!

To think he was pelting Magisa with spells upon spells effortlessly and he wasn’t even using all the tools at his disposal

It’s in this shot that you realize just how similar Yuuki is to J, the costume structure is very similar, and the black areas of his outfit are very reminiscent of Jack Knight.

Torn to shreds.

Cut to rubbins.

Sliced to pieces.

Yes, it didn’t work, good job.

Hmmm, this line’s very strange, we know that anyone who’s capable of getting on Otherworld King’s good side and defeating him in battle will have a wish granted by him, it appears that Yuuki’s trying to have a very powerful wish granted.

So it’s entirely plausible that he’s not just ruining everyone’s lives because he enjoys it, he might even abhor it.

Though it’s still secondary to his personal desires, which means his morals do not survive his own selfishness even if he has good morals.

Yuuki’s incredibly vague here, but given that we cut to a shot of Kajitsu right after he says that, we can safely assume he’s talking about her.

Apparently whatever’s been set off in Kajitsu will drive her to wipe out everything if she’s not somehow quelled before then. And Yuuki intends to finish what he’s trying to do before she does.

Yes Dan…

That’s how effects work.

Though I’m fairly sure Kajitsu never actually set of Fruit of Wise Tree’s Lv2 effect before now, so he wasn’t aware of it until Hououga refreshed here.

He’s still in an okayish position.

3rd time I’m mentioning it, but yes, 1 blocker, 2 lives, 3 attackers.

This looks like checkmate… from the outset.

Dan’s going to work with 6 cards in his hand, and he’ll be working with 11 available core this turn, he can spend at least 8 of it without offing his spirits, and he has 3 Red symbols on his field for reductions.

Siegfried’s brought down to Level 1, which means Dan’s going to play something he needs the core for.

Dan’s got the perfect idea, He plays Goradon, Rokceratops and Erimakilizard.

Kajitsu is only capable of taking 1 hit before any hit becomes lethal, and she only has 1 blocker.

What this means is that she’ll need to put a stop to at least 4 of these attacks somehow if she wants to survive the turn.

The issue here is that Kajitsu also has a crapton of Core.

Her effects have gained her 8 core total, she’s had 4 core steps, she’s lost 3 lives and began with 4 core, that’s a total of 19 core she has, and she spent 9 of it on her last turn.

Even with Hououga hanging about, she can safely spend about 9 of that 10-remaining core, and she’s got 4 Green symbols with which to reduce the costs for those cards.

She doesn’t have too many cards in her hand though, and I don’t actually recall how this turn goes.

You hear that?

It’s weenie rush time!

Siegwurm is once again brought to Lv3, this will give Balmung and Siegfried the ability to Clash.

This is quite clever, he’s attacking with the Awaken Spirit, Balmung in order to get Hououga’s Block off early and render it useless as early as possible incase her defense strategy relies on blocking something specific.

Balmung activates Clash, Kajitsu is forced to block.

Balmung doesn’t come close to beating that Endgame-level Spirit.

“Stop at least 4 of my attacks without blockers or die”, basically.

Dan starts with his weakest spirit, Erimakilizard.

This is clever because BP generally doesn’t mean a lot when the enemy has no blockers, attack with your weaker cards, block with your stronger ones.

Oh, Kajitsu has called Flash Timing.

So she has a response!

If I were in Dan’s shoes, this would be the part where I’d say FUCK!

Kajitsu’s fired a White Defense Magic. And a potent one we’ve seen before no less.

Kajitsu takes a life, dropping her to her final one.

Dan’s probably getting real sick and tired of this god damned card.

Blizzard Wall’s been screwing Dan over for ages, and it wasn’t just Yuuki, Clackey also made use of this card to put a stop to Dan.

I made mention that Blizzard wall as powerful applications in specifically White Decks, but Blizzard Wall would also have prevented a Double symbol swing for the last of Kajitsu’s 2 lives.

Dan wasn’t getting that last life this turn, period.

Yuuki does care about his Sister a lot, if a bit too much, sharing a card pool when necessary would not be unusual.

Due to Blizzard Wall’s effect, Dan is only capable of reducing Kajitsu’s Life once with Spirit attacks this turn. Even if he attacked again, he could not bring her Life total to 0.

So, with nothing more to do, Dan ends his turn.

I think Kajitsu’s Berserk Mode is going to be a bit shitty in hindsight if she breaks the Horizon Tower because she tried to win a card game.

It’d be a bit pointless of me to say “It looks like Kajitsu’s had some kind of powerful ability!” since she’s been shaking a whole metal tower for an episode and a half now.

Magisa seems surprised to hear that the building is shaking from Kajitsu’s influence.

Also I’m not sure that number of Core is correct for Kajitsu. She had to pay 5 to play Blizzard Wall and she only had 3 Core in her reserve, plus the 3 on her tree, plus Hououga.

For her to have resulted in 4 core in her reserve at the start there, she’d have needed to pay 2 from her Reserve, 3 from Hououga, then she’d have gained 3 core from her trees…

Though it’s possible that’s what she did, there was no point leaving 2 core on Hououga.

That’s a Butt-ton of Cores.

She’s gained 1 from her Core step, and 3 from her life loss, Kajitsu is running on 23 core this turn.

And so Kajitsu continues to become slightly more insane.

Apparently even if it involves enslaving many Otherworlders, having humans arrive and commit genocide to replace them, and committing murder.

She didn’t pay Core off of Hououga.

In which case this is a fuckup of… well, rather insignificant proportions.

The Fruit of Wise Tree is not optional, and she needed to pay Core for Blizzard wall

She had enough, so her play will still be possible regardless of whether this is true or not, but her board doesn’t properly represent how much core she’s spent.

Hououga is up to Lv3 with 16000 BP and 10 core on it.

Storm Highland is Level 2.

17 of her 23 core is used up, so she should have 6 core in reserve.

This means Hououga can slash up to 6 lives this turn with consecutive attacks, and if Dan blocks, he’ll lose 4 spirits, his blocker, and the 3 spirits that were exhausted by Hououga’s Windstorm.

It’s almost like that’s her fucking strategy Dan, get a clue.

Hououga attacks Dan.

5 Spirits and 1 blocker would suggest that.

And Kajitsu can’t Blizzard Wall her way out of it this time either.

But this ain’t no ordinary board state.

Unless you take it from the life like a muppet. Dan drops to 2 lives.

Dan was so sure that was the end of it that he tried to start his turn.

Since Kajitsu damaged Dan’s life, Hououga refreshes after Kajitsu gives up one of her Core.

She’s got 5 more though, so Dan will have to block sooner or later.

She said put up your fucking dukes Dan and get to blockin’!

Back to Mai and Zungurii’s progress at trying to free the slaves, it appears Mai is no longer being dragged across the floor.

As it turns out, a building filled to the brim with armed guards might not all be in one place when it comes to dealing with a specific intruder.

Unfortunately they ARE caught.

Zungurii, you can lift a bag filled with enough supplies to feed a Castle, and you can’t break out of a Guard’s grip?

Kazan here has a massive brain, the biggest of brains in fact.

He knows he can’t compare with Mai’s combat ability, so he isn’t even going to give her another opportunity to disrespect him.

Hououga begins it’s second attack.

Are you seriously considering Hououga’s attack in a vacuum? C’mon Dan you’ve seen it refresh once!

I’m not quite sure what the purpose of this is for, Hououga will refresh again.

I guess Dan MAY have a reason to want the extra core but for what I dunno.

Dan is on his final life.

Also props to the animator, his expression here in pain is amazing.

Hououga once again refreshes thanks to it’s own effect.

The Big Bird’s just gonna keep swinging til Dan wages a block.

It seems like Dan was trying to use that life to see if Hououga could refresh itself more than once and learned the hard way.

I suppose it’s a bit weirder in this board state where you can’t read the opposing card and there’s a lot at stake so you don’t really have too much time to think about it.

Dan’s done letting Hououga walk all over him and finally blocks with Siegfried.

I think the show’s trying to cut to an eyecatch here with this epic still, but I also quite like how this isn’t Siegfried’s first rodeo with a darned Vanity Deity.

Oh, I was jebaited, the still was so Kajitsu could cut in dramatically.

She seems a bit TOO happy about that block, but to be fair she is about to get rid of a large number of threats all at once.

WE FUCKING GET IT, YOU’RE A POISONOUS BUTTERFLY TO PROTECT THE WHITE ROSE.

SHUT THE FUCK UP ALREADY.

Since Dan blocked, Hououga activates it’s special green keyword, Windstorm: 3, exhausting Dan’s remaining refreshed Spirits.

Seems like Yuuki’s aware of the general circumstances of what happens when Kajitsu uses Windstorm.

Also interesting that Magisa’s Staff is actually reacting to the use of the Green Keyword.

Not sure why Yuuki feels the need to explain this to Magisa of all people but whatever I guess, need to keep them in the scene and the audience informed somehow.

Dan’s gonna do what we call a basic Bashin move.

by using Siegfried’s Awaken, Siegfried will rise to Lv3. Bringing it to 10000 BP and unlocking it’s 2nd effect.

Actually fucking curbstomped.

It really bothers me that Dan gets surprised that Siegfried was defeated after the fact. Considering Dan new exactly what he needed to beat Hououga and didn’t have it.

We interrupt Dan’s emotional reaction for the umpteenth fucking time to bring you… apparently what Yuuki’s neat Sword does.

He managed to turn Magisa into a human snow globe and wrest the Grand Core from her.

That’s certainly an intriguing design, the Grand Core is a solid colour on one half but a translucent colour on the other.

Yuuki tries to install his new hardware: attempt 3.

Seems Magisa is actually down for the count this time, no special hat tricks to keep Yuuki at bay.

For reference, the sound the Grand Core makes sounds like Solid Gemstone, and it didn’t even make a satisfying clicking noise when inserted suggesting to me that it’s actually loose in that compartment.

Okay, it did do a satisfying slotting noise when it was lifted up there.

I’d be a little more invested and far more spooked by the fact that Yuuki’s basically succeeded at his goal if we actually knew what the effects of harnessing Mother Core’s Power would actually do.

Like no one has actually said what the problem with this is, yet.

Ahhh, so the spire at the tippy top of the Horizon Ladder splits open.

Kinda like a Satellite Dish.

..At the expense of a great many Otherworlders who will be perfectly justified in offing you to protect themselves.

This isn’t gonna save Humanity, it’s going to fling it into a War it might not even win.

I’m not sure where was much thinking ahead about this plan.

Seems like even though Dan knew what he was doing when he had Siegfried battle Hououga, the loss of his one and only X-Rare seems to have broken the poor boy’s Spirit.

It’s easy to forget he is only 12…

It appears Dan wasn’t aiming for Siegfried to lose that battle, he was just doing his best to increase it’s BP as best he could as the equivalent of flailing.

At least that’s the only conclusion one can draw given he’s surprised at his sudden extra life.

Zungurii apologies to Mai that he’s gonna have to leave her there, believing he can somehow get to the control system on his own.

Was he… holding back his strength because he wasn’t confident he could save Mai?

Either that or Zungurii’s trying to pep talk himself, inspired by Dan’s example.

If only he could see Dan’s confusion here.

Zungurii flung those goes off quite easily.

Mai was apparently so happy to be in this situation she’s having a moment of awe at herself for being cool… What.

This is a very high moment of hilarity though, Zungurii’s dragging the soldiers up the flight of stairs with him.

Dan takes a moment to digest Siegfried’s Lv3 effect.

I suppose he’s not particularly used to relying on Spirits that operate when they’re destroyed since it’s not a battle plan he relies on.

Kajitsu of course isn’t done, Siegfried was defeated in a Showdown against a Hououga that activated Windstorm.

So now she gets to use Storm Highlands’ effect.

As a result, all the Spirits exhausted by Hououga’s Windstorm, namely Siegwurm, Rokceratops and Goradon, are now returned to the bottom of the deck.

Dan will not be seeing those Spirits again this game.

Dan’s X-Rare’s been defeated and his Key Spirit has been rendered inaccessible to him.

For most people this would break their spirits but the whole point of Siegfried’s Lv3 is a general idea that the game isn’t over when your win-condition vanishes.

Finally, Fruit of Wise Tree’s Lv2 effect refreshes Hououga, enabling it to block.

Dan has only 1 Spirit remaining in Erimakilizard. Dan needs to draw a Spirit in order to win, and that’s if Kajitsu lacks a response.

I mean, I think even if you lose, Zungurii can still bust up the control system… I’m not sure this battle is that important, especially given Kajitsu is just trying to keep you from Yuuki.

Zungurii got that Gainax expression on him.

I’m skipping through frames a fair bit, but Dan’s basically resolved himself that the meaning of being “The Clash King” means that he’ll keep hitting himself against whatever brick wall he’s up against until he’s either achieved what he’s meant to do or he’s burnt out.

We appear to have skipped over Dan’s follow-up turn there, I guess he didn’t see a spirit and passed.

Kajitsu plays a Lv3 Machfly.

Machfly swings in and Dan takes a life, respectable move given he can’t take another hit from Hououga, it’d be better to block it.

Also Dan’s hand was 4 cards, did he seriously not see a single Spirit in them?

Yeah if you’re drawing hands that bad, you better be thanking your big-ass X-rare for the extra life.

Problem, Cost 10 Green X-Rare comin’ at you hot.

Hououga’s attack is blocked by Erimakilizard, leaving Dan with 0 spirits on board, and 0 spirits in his hand.

Once again, Fruit of Wise Tree’s Lv2 effect leaves Kajitsu with both her Spirits available for blocking.

As much as this particular situation is due to you fumbling over bad luck, I suppose being able to pull off Hououga at all is fairly impressive.

There’s nothing quite like when your mortal enemy starts complimenting you when they’re on the cusp of defeat.

It’s like a packet of instant noodles but instead of noodles it’s suspicion.

Of course, it is a game after all, and games are indeed meant to be fun.

Most in Dan’s position would probably not see the fun side at all, and even more wouldn’t even find a losing position to be a fun one to be part of.

But to once again reference a wise friend of mine:

“In a game where there is both a winner and a loser, you are statistically likely to have around 50% wins and 50% losses, there isn’t a point playing a game if you only enjoy it half the time.”

It’s basically a lesson to say that if you truly enjoy a game where you’re gonna lose 40-60% of the time, you may as well learn to enjoy losing because it will make up a large portion of your experience.

As much as I’ve been shitting on Dan for his decisions throughout this entire battle, yes, intense and fierce battles where neither player gives an inch is absolutely how Battle Spirits should be.

Dan then asks a question he hasn’t thought to ask the Momose Siblings at all, why are they playing?

They aren’t exactly using the game to enjoy themselves given Kajitsu’s very adverse reactions. And the result of their play is going to cause worse things to happen.

That does, somewhat, make their use of the game intrinsically disrespectful to it’s core design, which is certainly a more personal reason for Dan to defeat them.

And we call that, my friends, an Armor-Piercing Question

Kajitsu has a couple flashbacks to why she plays Battle Spirits, it seems there’s some discord between her desire to “Protect the White Rose” and to “Have fun playing with her Brother”, she’s using a game she loves as a weapon.

She was already on full Berserk-Button, now she’s fucking glowing rainbows.

Well, consider that nerve: touched.

Dan proceeds with his turn and drew something interesting, I guess.

That’ll certainly offer an opportunity for Dan to get out of his current predicament. Given it can draw up to 3 cards if the 3rd card is a Red Spirit.

Dan at this point actively confirms that he lacks any Spirits in his hand with which to do anything, so he needs to bet on the top 3 cards of his deck all being Spirits.

I won’t bore you all with an explanation you’re already aware of, I’m just posting this because I really like the Symbol CGI.

Kajitsu on the other hand seems to be having a bit of an emotional breakdown.

Kajitsu’s elevated emotional state is causing the battlefield itself to rupture, so Dan needs to end this quickly or there may not even be a battle to finish.

Zungurii’s been backed into a corner by the remaining Soldiers.

Zungurii refuses to be captured.

At least, alive, anyway.

Pfft, the Soldiers were caught off guard for like 2 seconds but this guy here is talking like it isn’t his first rodeo…

I imagine some of the Otherworlders might have offed themselves to stop their Shock torture collars.

This just in, The Violet is capable of flying.

We knew it could sort of hover across the land like a speeder from Star Wars but this is the first time we’ve seen it capable of genuine flight.

Anyway, Zungurii noticed it coming up, which is why he took the drop.

Kinda makes you wonder why they didn’t start with this method if they were fully capable of pulling it off here…

Then again they didn’t know where the control system was until after they got out, might not have been an opportunity there.

Clackey’s alive, and is the reason the Violet is currently in operation.

But one can only wonder how the guy managed to survive a death-defying drop with barely a speck on him.

Oh wow, the Mimi tribe created a large pyramid of people just to cushion his fall.

He literally survived by the sheer power of Catgirls.

Ah, look! Male Members! That one holding him has a moustache, there’s another behind them!

Looks like the male members of the Mimi Tribe look more like humanoid cats than anything else. While the ladies are Humans with Cat-like features.

We’ve finally solved the riddle of the Male Mimi Tribe members.

Time to smash a control system!

Dan fires Extra Draw, now for 5 Core, he’ll draw 2 cards, and then reveal the 3rd, if it’s a Red Spirit, he can add that card to his hand.

Dan currently has 0 spirits in his hand, so all the cards he draws must be spirits in order to win.

The first card is Lizardedge.

Oh, looks like Kajitsu’s breakdown is being given some context, it appears she learned to enjoy the game through her Brother’s sheer kindness toward her. But now he’s acting ruthlessly to fulfill their wish.

I suppose, in that, she’s unsure about why she’s fighting so hard for a kind person who appears to have vanished.

The second card Dan draws is Goradon.

We’re finishing a battle here Battlefield! Keep it together!

Looks like that Giant Purple marker there is the Core System.

Not sure if it’s just the light or if that entire pillar there counts.

Whatever it is, it’s transmitting some sort of signal that keeps the collars in place…

Kind of an intentional design flaw really, Shock Collars should really not have a universal system that deactivates all of them at once if the system is destroyed.

Remote controls that send signals to irremovable collars does not need a middleman, what?

And so they smashed the entire thing using The Violet.

I’m sorry if you needed something that big in the first place why the fuck did you guys not return to The Violet to destroy it!?

What were you gonna do if you couldn’t blow it up-

…Though I mean a giant electrical discharge from the collision might be slightly spooky.

And just like that, the magnetically held collars that have clicked into place just suddenly stop functioning.

This makes no sense.

Oh you in trouble now.

The Humans have been using the rule of Battle Spirits in order to enslave the Otherworlders. As well as the element of surprise and superior weaponry.

Thing is, here they’re a lot less staffed. The shock collars designed to keep them in line wouldn’t necessitate such a large workforce to keep them at it.

So they’re outnumbered, and given most of the Otherworlders have Animal-like enhancements to their physiology, the humans also are far weaker.

I’m sorry Kazan, you cannot convince me that Clackey has managed to fly up to Zungurii’s level without you noticing the giant purple ship!

Speaking of which, we haven’t seen much of Serge since he heroically started taking on all those guards on the lower level-

It appears they had absolutely nothing on him because he’s completely unscathed, and had time to get up here, knock out a guard, grab Mai and piss off!

Onto the Violet they go.

Glad the Violet was completely unscathed in that collision, must be a very durable ship.

But if it was durable enough to destroy that control system I’m surprised a rusty ass gate wasn’t easy pickings for it.

#PlotHoles.

Kazan’s face is priceless.

Honestly, such an underrated character, I do wish he had a more active role in battling.

let this be a lesson: Don’t include design flaws that risk the possibility of every one of your prisoners being released all at once.

Especially if you short-staff your workforce relying on that security system NOT going down!

Where the hell did they get all those rocks?

I will say I do like the design of Zungurii’s father, he’s very distinct.

Also if it wasn’t mentioned, yeah this Mustachio’d Gurii Tribesman is Zungurii’s Father.

Humans don’t stand no chance yo.

I dunno Dan, you’ve been blueballing us all Episode, this Battle has been consistently interrupted and it’s really killing my ability to get invested.

Dan draws his last card but before he can get a look at it, Kajitsu gives out a scream.

Kinda makes you wonder if this “Power” Kajitsu was born with just so happened to be the reason that Yuuki and Kajitsu lost their home.

It’s manifestation is directly correlated to her emotional state, so states of high stress like this one just cause it to go nuts.

No wonder Yuuki’s been excessively protective of her relationships, he’s been coddling her to ensure she doesn’t blow up something.

Hm, that’s not a good sign…

Kajitsu’s little explosion here has apparently managed to destroy the part of the Horizon Ladder that was intended to open the path to Mother Core…

I can’t help but feel like it’s not going to work well in that state.

And it’s not like its because Dan won the battle or anything. It was Kajitsu’s delicate mental state.

I feel like there may have been a grave error in having Kajitsu who’s sensitive to this sort of thing up against passionate Dan who is far from afraid to poke the bear on people’s feelings.

Hoo boy, the platform Kajitsu is standing on is continuing to give way.

Hurry it up, Clash King.

Oh shit, she actually dropped.

Yuuki to the rescue.

I suppose after slotting the Grand Core into the Horizon Ladder he wouldn’t have had much of a reason to stick around dealing with Magisa, he’s probably been in the Battlefield for a while now.

At this particular point in time, that’s a very strange thing to call your Brother.

The Battlefield is spewing up Lava Geysers

And the platform Yuuki and Kajitsu were just on completely gives way.

Hoo boy.

And the Spirits… went… with them…

No no no you’re NOT doing this to me right now!

YES! GET BACK HERE AND LOSE ON YOUR FEET YOU ASSHOLES!

THERE’S NO WAY YOU MADE ME WAIT 2 EPISODES AND CHURN THROUGH SEVERAL INTERURPTIONS JUST TO CANCEL THE FIGHT!

As much as both Dan and I are thirsty for blood, the Battlefield’s in no condition to be used any more.

Kajitsu’s butterflies appear to have been released.

It looks like the Battlefield can’t really properly register a cancelled battle…

Or even if it could, it’s currently falling the fuck apart.

So I imagine if it had a mechanism for that, it probably isn’t functioning.

Magisa to the rescue!

Well of course they are, but apparently the question was so unsettling Kajitsu damn near exploded.

So let’s review, Kajitsu had created a Storm strong enough to shake the Horizon Ladder just by being pissed off by Dan’s desire to defeat Yuuki.

And upon losing it, Kajitsu wiped out the Entire battlefield she was in and destroyed the Horizon Ladder that she wasn’t physically at.

Kajitsu OP yo.

And that was the story about how Dan managed to annoy a Girl into blowing up a very very important part of Yuuki’s plan.

Zungurii is finally re-united with his family.

The ratio of Mimi Tribe males to females must be god-awful if this many of them are that invested in Clackey.

We only saw like 3 or 4 males anyhow.

I certainly hope this doesn’t suggest a culture of harems.

As much as Serge was egging her on, he definitely does care enough about Mai’s happiness to remind her about her epic blog.

Dan is Angy.

Probably at getting his battle interrupted, but moreso because he’s resolved himself to try and stop whatever it is Kajitsu and Yuuki are trying to do.

Looks like Dan isn’t done with Grand-Lolo, he did intend only to stick around until Zungurii’s family was saved, but his mind has changed.

In short: What’s the point in leaving if it’s just going to happen again.

Also Dan’s very jovial way of being drawn has shifted somewhat, his posture is very different to how he usually is.

Clackey also plans to extend the adventure. Because Otherworld King has made a lady cry once in his life.

And again about the way Dan is being displayed, he’s been given a lot of focus to make him appear a little more serious.

Yes yes Zungurii you’re very helpful but you’re not a battler and even more importantly, you absolutely drive me up the wall.

Please go home.

Please.

Mai cuts in, pointing out that Zungurii came all this way purely to save his family, he should at least stay with them and reconnect.

Zungurii feels indebted to Dan in some way because Dan, despite not having any rhyme or reason, actively went to an unfamiliar land to rescue Zungurii’s family.

I don’t give a shit how emotionally mature he is, kid needs a childhood.

Zungurii’s Papa gives his permission for Zungurii, what appears to be his youngest son, to continue travelling with Dan to fight against the strongest power present in Grand-Lolo.

You’re disqualified as a parent.

Magisa is of course in the camp of “Well they’ve been doing it so far, no sense in stopping if everyone’s already made up their minds.”

Magisa of course, also agrees to Dan’s original request to lend her power to him.

Since the Otherworld King threatens this world, she’ll be his counterpart, the Otherworld Witch that protects it.

Mai wonders if they’re including her in this plan.

And reluctantly agrees.

Poor girl, she’s probably exhausted, I’m pretty sure this becomes a sticking point for next episode because of her unwillingness to join them.

Dan takes this moment to finally re-inspect the card he revealed with Extra Draw.

notably, this isn’t meant to indicate that Dan was guaranteed to win, but namely that Dan was not certain to have lost, Kajitsu of course still had cards in hand she could have responded with, and she was certainly being quite reserved spirit-wise.

Essentially, there was still a turn left to play. Which means that they have an unresolved battle they need to finish.

Unfortunately I’ll have to give a brief spoiler that may be disappointing, but I believe it’s an important spoiler to know because the episode is effectively promising something it isn’t going to deliver.

despite the focus given to the idea of a rematch here, Kajitsu does not participate in another battle ever again for the rest of the series.

I’m not a fan of giving spoilers but I’m less of a fan of a series promising that something will occur when it simply doesn’t.

Ah, didn’t mean for that to end on a sour note, but yeah.

The Episode was definitely designed to resolve this “Arc” so to speak. Toppa Bashin had 2 “Arcs” split at about episode 26 or so.

Gekiha Dan on the other hand had this as an introductory Arc, I’ll make a mental note when it feels like an Arc is ending and another is starting, but I feel like it’s much easier to divide this series into smaller Arcs.

If I had to name it, I’d call it the “Horizon Ladder” Arc, given it centres around the creation of the last Horizon Ladder, and ends with it’s destruction.

As for the episode itself, it really needed to sort out it’s pacing, my guess is that there were not many plot relevencies left to be resolved and the writing for Dan’s battle having carried over into the next episode did not have many turns left until completion, so they kept basically interrupting every individual turn with something going on in the background rather than letting the battle flow and let the viewer get invested.

As much as I love the fact that Dan’s basically had his first “Boss” battle, facing something equivalent to Uchuuchouten. It was just so incredibly hard to stay invested when I got interrupted every 2 seconds by someone doing something I didn’t care about.

As for our card of the day, It’s The Providence Hououga.

I suppose I’ve gone over most of what it can do, it is, after all, a powerful card.

It’s a shame in reality it’s hot garbage.

To contextualize, the card is very dangerous once it’s out and it’s Lv3 effect is live, it unfortunately has the same problem as Catastrophedragon in the sense that it just requires too much core to function.

With all the Core spent bringing Hououga to Level 3 you could have played enough spirits to do all of the attacks Hououga would have needed to do in order to win.

And as if to make the problem worse, Hououga is the only card you want to supercharge core for at this moment in time. If you’re playing Mono-green and you’re core-boosting out the wazoo way beyond reasonable levels, it telegraphs that you’re trying to pull off Hououga, which allows the opponent to prep for it.

Sure there was the whole “Hey! But if they block you can get rid of 4 spirits at once!”

Keyword: If
Secondly, it loses to Blizzard Wall, Silent Wall, any White Magic really, things that don’t necessitate a block.

And people were already running White Magic as a defense by this time. Off-colouring into White Magic is the most common thing a person can do.

So even if you achieve Hououga AND the nasty Nexus required for it’s Windstorm to be anything other than mildly inconvenient, the card STILL doesn’t work.

The Vanity Deities were certainly a cool concept that got played around with, but were ultimately not very good on their own.

Of course, the high costs of such cards were not completely unaddressable, each Vanity Deity had what was called a “Deified General”, that was designed to trample it’s Cost to a far more manageable 6, and with 6 reduction, The Vanity Deity could come out quite early for a rather low cost. These cards are never used in the anime.

Even with this though, it wasn’t enough to push it into top use, even if you can play the card early, the problem with playing Hououga early is that it still needs a whole 10 core to get its main gameplan working.

Then again, it probably didn’t help that the only recorded events around the time Hououga was playable was the set after, which had a significantly more useful card than Hououga ever would be.

The earlier you do that, the higher likelihood that you won’t have enough core to really do anything else, not to mention Hououga voids core to refresh itself, making it somewhat possible to run yourself low on Core if you try it too early.

Anyway, ramble about Hououga over, we’ve got a fresh start with episode 14, so I’ll see you all in the next one.

Toodles!

Well that was an interesting diversion, we really got held up a WHOLE EPISODE by…

6 Blue Spirits.

Don’t ya love filler episodes? At least we got to see… what, ONE new card get used?

Ah I’ll quit my bitchin’ I’m just itching to get to the GOOD battles!

It’s Episode 12 but no episode title yet, we’re back on the Violet!

And we’re heading towards a very ominous looking tower.

Do I smell boss battle?

I’m feeling a boss battle.

It’s called that because its viewable from the Horizon and seems to Ladder up to the Heavens.

It’s a surprisingly cool name for something that’s basically got no other description other than being a tall-ass tower.

Something we’re all clueless about, Magisa questions why the Otherworld King wanted to create this thing in the first place.

If he wanted Fortresses he HAS those, why is this necessary to exist?

A bit of dramatic irony there. We’re aware that not everyone thinks that Yuuki is the Otherworld King, Belga seemed to be completely unaware of this fact, and the King who was dethroned by Yuuki later claimed that Otherworld King had “Given” Walhalance to Yuuki, suggesting they’re different people.

That being said, Kazan and Magical Crown appear to take orders from Yuuki, and act in the name of Otherworld King, suggesting he MIGHT be.

And of course, our main cast seems to believe that Yuuki is the Otherworld King based on his previous claim of omnipotence in this world.

Magisa notices the Red block of energy that Yuuki is holding and begins to move.

Dang, washed up magic is still hella convenient isn’t it?

Instant-clothing change!

Though this begs the question: Why does she need the clothes? They’re more likely to make Magisa’s bike significantly harder to ride than the clothes she was wearing before.

Magisa orders Dan and the others to focus on the rescue of Zungurii’s family.

Holy shit, Magisa’s riding up the Horizon Ladder!

Looks like Mai now has the job of being the outlook for the group.

I love the expressions of everyone here, Dan, Zungurii and Clackey are like “AYO WHAT THE FUCK” while Mai’s all “Yass Queen! Slay!”

Notably, the Horizon Ladder is still in construction, the Gurii tribe members appear to have been rounded up to work as slaves to construct it, Egyptian Pyramid style.

And knowing SOME construction rules, they’ve gone with Hexagons for their construction pieces.

Because Hexagons are the Bestagons.

No I’m serious, they are, here’s a CGP Grey video about it:

Also the theme currently playing appears to be the theme’s running “Action Girl” theme, but it isn’t a listed song in the OST, much like Yuuki’s theme that appears to come up so often.

Ah, no featured card? Instead we have “Awaken! Crimson Dragon Deck!” as our Episode title.

This really is going to be a boss battle.

HEXAGONS, ARE THE BESTAGONS

That aside I really do like the design of the Horizon ladders, just kind of wish they were utilized more as the fortresses they were rather than just being giant immovable MacGuffins.

I don’t need to explain to a 21st-century audience that slavery is bad right?

Especially because sad shit like this happens, poor guy is tuckered the hiffle out from working all day without a break.

Nonburii? That’s one of Zungurii’s relatives!

His words suggest spirit, but his eyes say “bed time”

Yeah, this type of work requires both freedom of movement and hand-eye co-ordination, which means the only way to subdue the populace is with shock collars.

But if the Otherworld King is so gosh darn powerful, why the hell isn’t he just paying these people for their work? I mean come on it can’t be THAT hard to find a group of people in a wasteland looking for pay and are willing to build a huge ass tower

Oh so the Violet can’t crash through a fucking Stone Gate but it’s perfectly capable of ripping through the Hexagon-Patterned wall of a fucking Horizon Ladder?

This show…

You know you’re a fucking minion when it doesn’t even take the protagonists to take you out of the running, the debris produced by their entrance just knocks you the fuck out.

Clackey’s interested in the layout of this place, but look at MAI

she’s like “YO MY READERS ARE GONNA FUCKIN’ LOVE WHEN I POST ABOUT TOPPLING THE OTHERWORLD KING’S GOVERNMENT!”

Critical research failure has occurred here. Our protagonists do not no they are collared.

Yeeep, if Kazan was with Yuuki during the Castle Invasions, now that Yuuki’s back, Kazan’s not likely to be far.

Your ace card is a Cost 3, you are many things, but ready for round 2 of Dan’s foot up yo ass is not one of them.

Looks like near the top of this Horizon Ladder is this weird thing.

The last Horizon Ladder?

For you watching at home, that means there’s more than just one of them, and they’ve already finished them.

Winning here definitely isn’t gonna be the end.

Now if only we knew what that Dream was or how this Horizon Ladder will somehow achieve it.

Nope, you’ve been interrupted by the Magisa patrol, starring Magisa.

You ain’t ready for… uh…

Washed up magic.

Also seems like the item Yuuki is carrying IS a Core.

If we didn’t have some inkling that Yuuki wasn’t Otherworld King, we’d probably call this a match of “Otherworld King vs Otherworld Witch”

Man, Kazan, Dan clapped your cheeks just because he happened to be in the same area when you were trying to pick up slaves

You think he wouldn’t come back for the rest of them after figuring out this wasn’t your first rodeo?

Villain_asks_obvious_question.jpg

Oh, there’s Mimi Tribe members here as well… I don’t see any Males among them, the Male populace should have been taken by the Otherworld King over to here though.

“We can commit any taboos we want as long as the end result is that the human race survives”

Mate the Human race will be here tomorrow if I take a shit on your desk, does that mean I’m obligated to do so?

If the choice is become a group of creatures that justify and commit abhorrences for the sake of our own collective survival or embrace good morality and die then perhaps we as a species should not exist.

Because if we DO survive and we’re willing to commit atrocities to ensure we survive, that means that literally anything that isn’t humanity is in literal danger.

From us.

Also before someone asks the question, no I’m not Vegan, and no, I don’t see non-Veganism as a hypocrisy. All life, besides SOME PLANTS (not all) persist in Life by consuming other Life, be it plant, animal, or otherwise. And even Photosynthesizing Plants persist off our Sun literally burning itself to death.

You can’t compare this to consumption because to be anti-consumption is to suggest that all life should not exist at all.

The lads here have zero clue what Kazan’s on about.

And now the important detail here, which makes Grand-Lolo incredibly strange.

Kazan is from the future.

Basically in Kazan’s era, the current state of the earth is uninhabitable due to excessive pollution, and despite the progression of science, they’ve concluded it’s impossible to restore, as a result, they’re trying to use the Horizon Ladders to move the entirety of Humanity to Grand-Lolo.

Yes, I don’t get it either, Grand-Lolo appears to be on it’s own time axis relative to everything else if Kazan from the future, and Dan from the present can both arrive at the same place.

It’s not particularly well explained HOW you came from the future either, or what time-axis Grand-Lolo is locked to.

So my guess is that the Horizon Ladder combined with the Otherworld King’s power will generate enough juice to transport Humanity to Grand-Lolo.

Assuming that the 6 continents are divided by colour, it seems like these “Grand Cores” are like Cores but bigger.

And for some reason the Continents need them.

The “Core” system appears to be how most of these ships are powered, Core is used to generate power in the ships.

How the Tower and the Grand Core affect that is beyond me, but we know that they can, apparently. I’d complain about “Tell don’t show” but they’re not “telling” us anything meaningful

What the fuck is Mother Core-

I’m kidding, I think we learned about this right at the start, it’s basically Grand-Lolo’s Sun.

Ah I think the subs were a bit literal but I think I have a gist of what’s going on.

So! We need a crapton of power, what has that power? Mother Core, big-ass sun in the sky.

How do we use it? Well we need the 6 Core Lightbearers.

Otherworld King is a giant douchenozzle and is unlikely to receive help from them as they’re all somewhat altruistic in some way.

So he needed a substitute, a giant fuck-off tower in the middle of god-damn nowhere with a relevant Grand Core slotted into the power grid in order to get basically a pseudo lightbearer.

Also it looks like Yuuki wasn’t in the White World at all, he was in the Red World the entire time and was just messing with Castles I guess.

Hah.

I’ve watched this before so I somewhat know certain things.

But the way the Blue World is depicted here is nothing like it’s actually presented when it’s visited.

Seems I got the gist right before I got here, pretty good even if I was only reciting between memory and currently received information.

It’s basically like a Dyson Sphere with extra steps, once the Horizon Ladders are all ready they can just draw energy straight from the bloody thing.

also did I say extra steps? I think a Dyson Sphere would actually require SIGNIFICANTLY more steps than just “build 6 towers and stick a giant shiny brick in them”

Clackey asking the real simple and important questions.

And this is where you take your hand, ball it up into a fist, and ensure it is placed on Kazan’s face with as much force as you can muster.

Basically neither Humans nor Otherworlders can occupy the same space, if the Humans don’t cross over they’ll eventually die, but if the Humans populate Otherworld, they’ll cull the Otherworlders to make room.

Both suck, difference is one race gets fucked by their own mistakes and the other gets fucked by someone else’s mistakes.

Easy choice.

Yes, it’s inconveniencing others for one’s own cowardice.

Dan’s veeeeery not happy with the Momose Siblings at this particular moment in time.

A person’s opinion doesn’t cease to be valid just because you’re knee-deep in a sunk-cost fallacy mate.

Zungurii begins an impassioned speech about how Dan’s gonna kick there asses and save the world.

Maybe I’ve got this the wrong way, maybe these are the males of the Mimi Tribe and every member of that tribe is equally as effeminate?

That would make sense in a way, there’s no reason to think that biologically, Otherworlders would be the same as humans.

I mean there’s a Yellow Womanizer and a Purple Blogger here who are equally as strong as Dan is.

Dan receives some encouragement from Clackey, since there are Women here, Clackey feels more obligated to help the many Women down here than to take down the big boss.

Mai on the other hand bails the hell out, she ain’t about having a war.

So key thing to note here, Viole Mai won’t do the morally correct thing if it inconveniences herself.

She will however, die for clout.

Kazan’s a Military-trained, grown-ass guy built fairly well, and he just got dropped by a 13-year old girl in thigh-highs and a skirt.

I guess when you’re prone to dealing with the creepiest fans on and off the earth, you learn a few self-defense tricks…

Clackey wants to protect the women and Mai wants to leave a big enough impression that they make a movie starring her about it, so she orders Dan to basically go deal with the big-fry

Off he goes.

Oh shit she’s taking on a fighting pose.

At least Clackey seems quite aware of the sheer strength and skill required to do what Mai just did.

Apparently Card Games have just taken a backfoot for good ol’ fashioned violence.

Did he just… blow wind at her?

Did she just fail to block wind?

Lady you just got repelled by a gust of wind.

I know Umbrellas who could take that better than you just did.

…Firing a whole LASER out of your FOOT is certainly an interesting trick.

Apparently the Battlefield Barrier is a common and simple spell anyone can use.

Seems Yuuki finds the information that Magisa’s magic is washed out interesting.

He just did the same thing YOU did. Fire up a Barrier.

Waddya mean that’s “Powerful” Magic!?

It was a GUST OF WIND, and the SAME THING YOU JUST DID.

He just didn’t fail!

And the cat’s out of the bag.

Yuuki finally clarifies the misunderstanding, he is not Otherworld King.

An Errand soldier that seems to be handling the Otherworld Witch without much problems while all the others downstairs are getting clowned on by a Girl that’s barely hit puberty.

Well this is a precarious situation.

See if this was a card game you wouldn’t be facing an almost assuredly fatal drop right about now.

Oh he got up there fast, Ladder musn’t be THAT tall.

At least Magisa isn’t gonna drop.

Yeah? Who else was gonna play Red in his stead?

I don’t think I’ve seen a single other Red player so far besides Dan.

This question has been explained several times and all these schmucks keep FUCKING ASKING IT!

THEY’RE MOVING THE HUMANS OVER!

COME ON!

I see Yuuki and I have a matching wavelength.

Erm, if Dan’s power is comparable to Otherworld King’s.

Does that mean you’re ALSO on Otherworld King’s level, Yuuki?

I guess you’d have to be, given that you’ve been confused for Otherworld King one too many times now.

…For what incentive?

Come on Yuuki you aren’t dumb, Dan’s literally here to rescue your prisoners, at least TRY to make the offer seem enticing.

Dan is understandably quite pissed at the lack of tact at such a question. It was an incredibly pointless statement.

Your deck has gained exactly ONE Siegfried since you last played, I don’t think you’ve got all the answers for Yuuki at this point in time.

Kajitsu considers Dan pitiful, as his rage against Yuuki is very easily exploited, and would be a simple matter to turn against Dan.

I’m sorry he was just commended for having exceptionally remarkable ability and now him being the Red Soldier is a “miscalculation?”

I don’t remember getting a pamphlet of criteria to bear the Core’s Light.

Yuuki’s going to focus on trying to activate the Horizon Ladder, the matter of Dan is now left for Kajitsu to deal with.

Dan has lost to both of the Momoses before this point, so either is a pretty bad match up for him right now either way.

Oh, that’s weird, the Battlefield entry theme is playing as this happens but it seems like Kajitsu can force her opponents into the Battlefield.

Ay, we get to see Kajitsu’s Battle Form for the first time, well, besides the previous eyecatches where she was depicted with it.

Dan notes that he won’t just leave it at that, even if he loses.

I see Dan’s realized this goes beyond just card games.

His mood perks up once his head is in the game though, he finally gets his rematch after getting his butt thoroughly wrecked by Kajitsu.

Kajitsu compliments Dan for his committing her name to memory.

For those not familiar with Japanese culture and are wondering why Dan is using Kajitsu’s full name, you often never refer to a person by their given name, you always use their family name.

The only reason you ever reference their given name is if you’re either on a first-name basis, which only occurs if you’re related, or otherwise incredibly close. Of course, Dan can’t just use “Momose” because both Kajitsu and Yuuki share that surname, the only recourse for him to refer to them is to use their full name, hence his usage of “Momose Kajitsu”

The show has obviously written Dan of course to be happy with “Dan” because otherwise they would have to call him “Bashin” which would make him too similar to the previous series’ main characters.

But for more examples, Clackey Ray goes by “Clackey”, his family name, Viole Mai is referred to by “Viole-san” by Serge, Zungurii uses “Mai” because Zungurii isn’t Japanese.

Anyway the reason im explaining all that is because there’s this, Kajitsu outright requests that her first name be used in place of even her full name.

I tried to come up with some reasons as to why, such as maybe having an issue with her surname but there’s no indication that such a thing is true.

Yes, Lets! Card Games are fun!

Of course we cut away for some MORE PLOT just before we move on.

I hope they don’t use this as an opportunity to skip turns, or I’ll be very upset.

You’ve got weapons, fucking use them!

Fully grown adults getting memed on by a 13-year old.

And a 15 year old, apparently!

I will say you can feel the fire in Clackey’s eyes there. I like that look on his face.

Serge is also cleaning up quite nicely, but at least in his case there’s actually a lore-reason for why the humans are so outmatched compared to him.

Serge just casually threatening to kill each guard that doesn’t free their prisoners.

Despite trying to be clever and avoid yielding knowledge that could help Serge, his eyes betray him.

This self-betrayal brings Serge to the conclusion that the guards are not able to release the prisoners, the method to do so being located a fair bit higher up.

Serge just fucking disrespected that guy, holy shit.

Mai begins to aim for the central control system for the Prisoner’s shock collars but it appears reinforcements have arrived from elsewhere in the Horizon Ladder.

This place ain’t small so I can see why it’d take some time for more of them to show up.

Up the stairs they go.

Also props to this show, Mai is certainly wearing a rather unforgiving outfit when it comes to certain positions but the show makes no attempt to capitalize or even reference this fact, and is quite modest when animating her even in highly flexible moments where it would make anatomical sense.

…I suppose not lewding the 13-year old is not really worthy of praise but at time of writing you can’t turn left without finding an anime doing something really sketchy.

And besides, we should really get into the habit of praising patterns we want done consistently, that’s just basic positive reinforcement.

To be fair we haven’t actually seen Zungurii do anything in this sea of battle, but I suppose the show might have wanted to avoid any depictions of violence against children.

In this case though, Zungurii would fucking snap half the soldiers in half.

Okay, we’re back to the battle, and we don’t seem to have skipped any turns so that’s good.

Also that sky is… looking a little dark.

Kajitsu deploys an incredibly powerful Nexus, The Fruit of Wise Tree for her opening move, let’s talk about it.

A Cost 4 Green Nexus from BS06. It needs 3 core to become level 2.

It doesn’t have a lot of text, but this card is actually incredibly strong.

As a Cost 4 it can be played on the first move.

Additionally, It LITERALLY has BS01’s The Fruit of Life’s 3 core Lv2 effect as a 0 investment Lv1 effect!

The first effect basically doubles the amount of core you gain when life is lost, improving “No guard” strategies that rely on losing lives to accumulate core. Which is exceptionally good because you’re not likely playing spirits the turn you use this.

With this, you gain core absurdly quickly, and if you don’t, it’s usually because your opponent hasn’t attacked you, which isn’t particularly useful if they want to win. The Nexus was SO good it was not rare to just see decks off-colouring into it just to gain the Extra core, the symbol being wrong basically didn’t matter because it would make up for it’s inability to reduce cost with the amount of core it generated.

This is why the Lv2 requires 3 core, because you will often have the spare core required to use it anyway… And that Lv2 effect is the Lv2 effect of The Hermit Wise Tree from BS01, Refreshing all your exhausted Spirits during your End Step.

That’s right, this Nexus is walking power creep, a combination of the 2 best effects from 2 otherwise individually useful Nexuses. Having one of the higher level effects of one of them as a first level effect!

This card is just crazy, I dunno what to tell you.

I believe this might be the show’s first use of a Nexus as well, showing excellent improvement in the animation, now when a Nexus is used, the Battlefield will change to display the Nexus’ appearance.

A much-loved improvement from the days of Toppa.

It’s Dan’s turn, but he’s already in a pickle.

Dan’s an aggressive player, if he can attack without worry, he will, this Nexus poses a bit of a problem though because it actively rewards Kajitsu for losing lives.

It’s possible Dan doesn’t recognize the Nexus however, he’s routinely been unfamiliar with cards originating from BS06 that aren’t actively in his deck. For example: Block-Golem.

Dan goes tall, and plays a Cost 4 Balmung for his opening move, instantly moving to his attack step.

Also if you’re unfamiliar with Card Game terminology, “Going Tall” and “Going Wide” are terms that, while originating from Magic: The Gathering, are applicable to any TCG game with a resource and cost system for their bodies. To “Go Wide” is to try and expand your numbers, using individually cheap cards to produce more forces than the opponent can deal with, To “Go Tall” is to rely on few but powerful creatures.

In simpler terms, “Go Wide” is quantity, and “Go Tall” is quality.

Dan here has spent a crapton to play Balmung rather than flooding his board, he’s confirmed his opponent is using Green cards so the likelihood he will suffer due to Purple interruption is low.

Balmung attacks, snatching a life from Kajitsu.

The Fruit of Wise Tree activates, visually dropping a glowing fruit from one of it’s branches.

Since Kajitsu lost a life, she gains an additional core from the void.

Dan’s exhausted all his Core and actions, so his turn ends.

Meanwhile, back at the fight Magisa is having with Yuuki.

She’s uh… firing a hell of a lot of powerful blasts.

Given a Laser didn’t work on his barrier I don’t think that’s going to do much.

It does explode though, I guess that is more effective.

Except the problem with explosions is that due to the sheer amount of waste product released, it’s impossible to tell whether you’ve done any damage until the smoke clears.

Cool guys don’t look at explosions.

Cooler guys don’t get hurt by them.

Yuuki’s been clowning on your ass with Wind, I don’t even think he’s been trying.

People do like to tell their enemies that they can’t be beaten a lot don’t they?

It’s a bit of a pointless gesture, if it was true that they could stop you, you wouldn’t exactly share that information with them, especially if they were trying to get in the way of what you want.

Oh that’s cool, the Staff is glowing with the colour of magic she’s using.

Red didn’t really work, so now she’s giving Blue magic a go.

This is going well isn’t it? She hasn’t cracked that barrier once.

It’s Kajitsu’s turn, and she’s lost a life, while that would normally give her 6 core to work with, her Nexus has generated a core, so she actually has 7.

This is normally not too big a deficit, green have many first turn plays that can produce a Core from somewhere.

It’s when it starts accumulating that it becomes a bit scary.

Kajitsu opens with Machfly, and we start to hear the tune of Yuuki’s Battle theme.

Kajitsu then deploys a second Fruit of Wise Tree.

Now she’ll triple the amount of core she gains when she loses a life!

The annoying part about this is that there’s no necessity to stack the Lv2 effect because it refreshes all your exhausted spirits, so she only ever needs to level up one of them even though she’s generating even more core than she was with only one.

Machfly attacks, Dan has no blockers so he has to take a life.

Score is now 4-4, problem is them being even in lives doesn’t necessarily mean Dan is equal in resources now.

This strategy has a foreseeable downside from a design perspective.

So what if you can play all the cards in your hand?

That just means if your opponent CAN cope, you have an empty hand.

…Though this is why Red and Green are a very good mixed choice.

He’s insane!

Kajitsu’s set up a board ready to ruin you with numbers and you’re out here paying 5 cost for a Siegfried!?

Well that’s dangerous.

Kajitsu has 3 cards in her hand, she’ll have 4 next turn.
Dan has 4 lives.
Kajitsu cannot block and has 1 Spirit on her board.
With a Core-generating Nexus, if she has 4 Spirits in hand, Dan straight up loses the game.

That being said Kajitsu had 7 core available, spent 2 on Machfly and 2 on a Wise Tree Nexus, leaving 3 core available to spend with 3 Green symbols.

From this, it’s unlikely that Kajitsu has many cheap spirits available in hand, or straight up has Magic responses which would reduce the likelihood of Dan losing from this attack.

Could be a bluff though.

Naturally, Kajitsu takes from the Life.

Thanks to Kajitsu’s nexuses, she gains 2 more core from the Void in addition to the life she just lost.

My man she has 2 nexuses that give her a core when she loses a life.

You do know how to count right?

Dan’s only now clicked that the effect stacks.

Despite having the effect explained to him by Kajitsu earlier.

It’s Kajitsu’s turn again, her trees have generated 3 core so far, it’s turn 5 so 2 core steps, and she’s lost 2 lives.

Lady is working with 11 core this turn.

Also Yuuki’s Battle theme is still playing, normally it’s quite short lived, but I’m here for it, it’s so good.

I just wish I had like a youtube vid of it so I could listen to it outside of this show.

Kajitsu adds to her numbers, this time Amenborg at Lv2.

Amenborg doesn’t do a lot, being a Cost 2 Swift Spirit, but since it can come in for low cost at up to 4000 BP I imagine that’s quite potent when compared to MachG who can only hit 2000 BP.

Dan’s comment seems odd here, especially since Swift is only effective when the card exists in your hand during flash timing, Kajitsu has played it during a Main Step.

But Dan’s probably noting it’s existence because it means Kajitsu is using Swift Spirits in her deck, it’s more for him to consider.

Machfly’s brought up to Level 3.

Dan prepares himself for an onslaught, but Kajitsu instead ends her turn.

Because Kajitsu needs to be safer now.

She’s working with a low number of spirits at the moment, that much is obvious.

Her early aggression was to invite attacks to generate Core from her Nexuses, now she only has 3 lives, she could get aggressive again, but she’d run the risk of losing next turn if you played 2 Spirits and she was unable to counter.

She’s playing it safe, besides, with a deck that intends to generate core, that also comes with it the understanding to not give you core.

Serge’s a house.

I was about to complain about the further interruption to my battle but it’s being interrupted by people beating the shit out of each other so I’ll let it slide.

Clackey’s energy levels are very low from climbing all these stairs.

Who’d have thought a place called the “Horizon Ladder” would be tall, ay?

Nothing quite invigorates Clackey like a raging boner, apparently.

It’s Dan’s turn!

Y’know I always wondered why the board lights up when the Start Step begins, it’s not like any part of the board vanishes when its the opposing turn.

Dan’s gonna need a bit more power to punch through a 6000 BP Machfly and a 4000 BP Amenborg.

And we’re following up with MORE big Dragons! Dan with his 5 unused core available pays 4 of it to play Siegwurm!

It’s been a while since we’ve seen this guy isn’t it actually?

The last time Dan played was against… I think it was Suzuri…

And he didn’t even use Siegwurm that game.

It certainly has been a hot minute, welcome back Siegwurm.

Dan’s three strongest spirits are all on the board.

I get that Balmung isn’t as impressive, being a Cost 4, but at least in Battle Spirits, if it has a “The” before it’s name begins, it implies some degree of uniqueness.

Naturally, Dan can’t crack Machfly just yet, his strongest Spirit is only Siegfried at Lv2.

Problem is maintaining all these huge boys is leaving Dan without much in the way of Core with which to use Magic.

Kajitsu’s turn, since she hasn’t gained any core last turn, she’s on 12 available, though only 4 of it is unaccounted for.

She uses 3 of the available core in her Reserve to level up The Fruit of Wise Tree to Lv2.

You’d think Dan never bloody saw a Nexus in his life, but we saw The Plateau of Duel in his deck in Episode 1 or 2 or something!

I’m… not quite sure what the point of that move was if she was just going to end her turn, Fruit of Wise Tree’s Lv2 effect refreshes her exhausted spirits on her end step, but if she doesn’t swing on the attack step it doesn’t do anything…

It’s not like she loses the core so…

What?

So she can either give you Core that won’t help her win? Or lose her Machfly to a crash with Siegfried?

How about no?

Your plays have been spending lots of core for big spirits which suggests a lack of small cards in hand, why would she want to help with that?

If Yuuki completes the Horizon Ladder before your game finishes, you lose.

If Kajitsu acquires enough core through her core steps to make her plays irregardless of her Wise Tree’s effect, you lose.

She’s in no particular rush. The outcome of this match doesn’t necessarily decide the fate of the Horizon Ladder.

In English, basically Kajitsu’s strategy requires an immense amount of Core.

It’d be a shame if Kajitsu’s deck benefitted from your haste, wouldn’t it?

The Momose Siblings clearly saw this coming.

Oh, that’s intriguing, up til now the Start Step Flashes have been an undiscernably Cyan colour, the color of Core.

But this time, Dan’s Start Step flash has turned red.

Infact even his Core have become Red.

Notably, it doesn’t matter what colour your Core is as long as it’s a distinguishable game piece that can be recognized as core.

Hell in Battle Spirits Saga there are “Core Cards” you can use in place of the tiny game pieces.

But at least narratively, the fact that the Core is shining the colour of the Light Dan bears is interesting.

Siegwurm is brought to Level 3, this means all Dan’s Awaken Spirits now gain Siegwurm’s ability to Clash.

The Dragons are ready.

In hindsight, Dan would really benefit from a DarkDragonEmperor Siegfried, it’d work quite nicely with his deck.

Hell he’s even shown using it in the opening, despite the fact that he’ll never use one.

Dan’s heating up.

Talk about eating your words there Kajitsu, you claimed Dan bearing the Red Core’s Light was a “miscalculation” and now Dan is shining with his light like a sun.

Magisa and Yuuki are still at a stalemate.

Only reason Yuuki’s not really able to proceed despite no-selling Magisa’s attacks is that he can’t protect himself AND perform the likely delicate procedure of inserting the Grand Core.

Needs to swat this fly before he can finish his task.

Dan’s Light is shining so brightly the Grand Core and Magisa’s staff are reacting.

Hm, Yuuki’s wording here suggests that simply bearing a Core’s Light and awakening as a Soldier of that Core’s Light are different things?

Time for Dan to crack Kajitsu’s defense, he attacks with Siegwurm.

Thanks to Clash, Kajitsu must block if she’s able to.

Amenborg blocks and gets wrecked.

At first this seems a little dangerous, Siegfried is only Level 2, meaning it will tie with Machfly.

Of course, this is ignoring the reason Siegfried even has Clash in the first place.

Siegfried gains Siegwurm’s Clash ability, Machfly will be forced to block.

Dan activates Siegfried’s Awaken, taking 3 core from Siegwurm to bring itself to Level 3.

Siegfried now has 10000 BP.

Siegfried crushes the 6000 BP Machfly between it’s teeth!

And then flings it but that’s one frame too many for me.

Dan… Kajitsu has 3 lives, a 1 symbol attack from Balmung isn’t going to do a thing.

Either way, Kajitsu takes a life from Balmung’s attack.

More Core for the Core Goddess.

Dan she’ll have 5 cards in her hand next turn, you have 4 lives.

You’re playing a dangerous game here if you don’t have any Magic.

Dan announces he’ll end the game on his next turn.

You’ve only just taken an advantage friendo.

Chill out.

The light from Dan’s Core Trooper, along with the red hue of Dan’s Core fades away.

Looks like whatever that was, it didn’t last long.

Kajitsu’s theme has started to play, it’s quite a nice soft piano.

Kajitsu’s depressed expression seems to mean that she doesn’t quite have enough Core for her Combo just yet.

Hoo boy, Dan’s vision just expanded a while.

This went from just saving Zungurii’s family to feeling a duty to repair the disorder this world has.

It seems like Dan’s hit home on something with his discussion of “Family”

Dan intends to square up with Yuuki after he finishes off Kajitsu.

Again, getting a bit ahead of yourself there Dan, but I suppose the spirit is commendable.

Well that’s not concerning at all.

Kajitsu’s eyes have blackened and now the Battlefield is rumbling.

This is the first sign of genuine concern we’ve seen on Yuuki’s face all series.

And it’s the look of “ohhhh… I fucked up.”

The whole Horizon Ladder is shaking.

and Kajitsu is in the BATTLEFIELD at this moment.

Hoo boy, whatever Kajitsu is doing it’s causing the Horizon Ladder to fall apart.

Falling Debris freaking smashes the bridge Clackey was trying to cross.

Well that isn’t good, Clackey’s lost his footing and there’s no way to stop himself sliding off this bridge.

And given they’re quite high up the Horizon Ladder, that’s a big drop.

The fuck are they supposed to do? That is an Ex-Bridge and they’re definitely not outrunning a sliding Clackey.

And even then it’s not like these muppets are going to let you, it’s in their best interests to ensure you die.

Kazan’s ready to get his ass beat again by Mai.

Back in the battlefield, there’s an ominous Green sky forming.

So the Magical Girl who can control butterflies is now crumbling an entire tower, forming strange maelstroms in the sky and calling herself poison.

I’ve seen beehives beaten with a stick more amicable than this lady.

It seems Dan’s “challenge” toward Yuuki has set off Kajitsu’s Berserk Button.

I’m not sure a “Big Brother Complex” quite captures the magnitude of what the fuck is going on here.

In Kajitsu’s rage, a gigantic spirit has manifested itself on her field.

And we won’t see what it is until next episode!

God it feels so good to be back in the plot. And we’re in the middle of a nice-ass boss battle.

I have zero complaints, this episode was really good.

Oh right! I guess I can use this time to correct a problem from last episode concerning Wing Boots.

So remember when I got fussed over the Japanese wording of this card? Well as it turns out my Japanese needs some work, “Ijo” in the way it’s being used here actually is a singular word the Japanese have for “Equal or more than”

The Word Battle Spirits uses when it demands that something must be higher is “Takai”, and for lower it’s “Hikui”

So it looks like the text wasn’t quite wrong, I was just limited in my ability to translate it, because “Ijo” doesn’t have a singular word translation in English.

Here’s to learning more Japanese!

Anyway! I’ll see you guys next time. We don’t really have a card of the day, and I already made my attempt at representing Dan’s deck earlier, so I guess we’ll leave it at that.

See ya next time!

It’s always nice seeing players that aren’t the protagonist do battle, this show is actually quite good at trying to vary the battles that take place, something that shows like Yu-Gi-Oh! struggle with, often using their small collection of protagonists take part in every battle.

Though I will say Vanguard is also quite excellent at setting up battles between characters that aren’t the protagonist.

It’s just a breath of fresh air really.

Onto the start of Episode 11, it looks like a Castle in the White World is being attacked for some bizarre reason.

That’s a VERY regal looking fellow with a magnificent beard, and given the statements Yuuki is making, it appears he’s asserting his right as the White World’s King. I presume this man must be the current White World’s King.

Looks like Yuuki’s resolving the Level 3 effect of Walhalance to bounce all 4000 BP and below Spirits to the hand. From right to left, it appears that this Bearded-fellow had Berserker-Magnum, Berserker-Gun, Fenrircannon Mk-II, aaaand… Skulldevil?

Bit of a random choice but while I was originally a protester of gratuitous colour mixing, I recognize it does have a place if you are unafraid to do it.

Looks like this bearded fellow got his ass whooped.

Also Kazan and Magical Crown are here too, so strange seeing Magical Crown appear serious. Kazan’s VERY in-character though.

This man seems to have the wrong idea, we just watched Yuuki, completely uninterested in Walhalance and Gungnir, receive them in the middle of a fight with someone who DID covet them.

Otherworld King had nothing to do with this.

It looks like this castle IS being conquered in the name of Otherworld King, so I can see where the old man got the idea that Yuuki had been presented with those cards by Otherworld King. Given that Otherworld King is basically revered as an Omnipotent Battler.

We know that Kajitsu showed that she bore the Green Core’s Light, so its interesting that Kazan does not refer to her as the Green Soldier.

This guy finally realizes who he’s dealing with.

Also is this Belga’s Father? He’s dressed awfully similarly.

Your Castle is on fire, you just got your ass beat at card games, and some anime-pretty boy is giving you an ultimatum.

Fucked, doesn’t begin to describe what you are in this situation.

We never hear Beard-man’s answer, he just kind of accepts what’s happening. The person shouting this declaration is Kazan.

The Locked Gate
Iron Wall Block-Golem

Interesting Episode title. It looks like the Card of the day for this episode is Block-Golem, we’ll review it when it inevitably appears.

Looks like we’re getting a nice look at Mai’s Inferior Blog.

She doesn’t seem happy with the fact that the Red World seems mostly comprised of Desert.

Also we’ve seen that QR code before. Scanning it will take you to the Gekiha Dan main page.

How dare she disrespect the sweet, beautiful nectar that is Curry.

Also from the looks of the most recent Blog post on the BackNumber there, it’s apparently October of 2009 in this setting, how intriguing.

More than anything, Dan seems to be staying sane, and this is… bothering Mai specifically for some bizarre reason.

They have been driving for at LEAST 2 episodes. This is getting a little ridiculous.

Serge mentions they should be close, and Magisa, having scouted the area, is aware that there is a barrier protecting the Horizon Ladder.

Didn’t Magisa already mention that she couldn’t crack the barrier on her first run at the thing? Which is why she returned.

This woman is down bad.

Why don’t you SPEAK HONESTLY!?

We interrupt this discussion of Magisa’s sheer ineptitude to bring you: Clackey is acting weird.

There’s nothing more adorable than Zungurii trying to cheer up Clackey by offering him a Banana.

I diagnose him with straight.

He’s being incredibly vague about it, since that could be anything, but it’s obvious he’s talking about the fact that he wants to fall in love.

Of course this vague wording clearly sets off Dan concerning the adrenaline involved with battle, not love.

Dan and Zungurii set about trying to convince an uninterested Clackey to battle.

Mai snaps a couple photos and adds them to her blog.

Dayum, the Clash King was already pretty known in Japan on Earth. Mai’s Blog is only going to increase it.

Magisa finally tears apart the confusion by declaring what it actually is.

…What the hell are you on about.

And why are the others so startled by it, you ALREADY know she’s 4000 years old!

YOU WERE THE ONE RAMBLING!

After that pisstake, we finally arrive at what appears to be a Gate.

The Gate’s walls have eroded, such that there appears to be no reason you can’t go around it, but Magisa tests with her Staff and confirms the presence of a barrier, replacing the need for walls.

In short, ain’t nobody gettin’ nowhere until they get the hell passed this Gate.

Zungurii tries to muscle through it but uhh… I don’t even think Disney’s Herculus could smash through this.

Dan what the hell are you going to do? You’re not physically strong in any sense of the word!

Mai notes that the Door has quite an elaborate design on it. Depicting a grand failure to press through said gate as the humans advanced upon some lady.

Aaaaaaand Clackey’s falling in love with a door.

God forbid we run into an extra curvy piece of driftwood.

Clackey’s having an anime waifu moment. With a stone-carved door.

Imagine a medieval knight carrying around a slab of rock with a picture of a lady embossed onto it and he calls it his wife.

Zungurii uh… gives the door another go.

Man really said:

It’s a giant STONE WALL.

It’s bigger than your HOUSE!

That is… not a worse idea than what Zungurii is attempting. Especially since the Gate needs to not have a Barrier in the doorframe to let people through.

Yes, even if it worked, the Violet would probably not come out of that collision unscathed, and you’d have to travel the rest of the way on foot.

I too feel the need to turn every situation into A PASSIONATE BATTLE STAKING ONE’S VERY BEING ON THE LINE!

But bonking a metal ship into a stone door doesn’t quite do it for me.

Clackey’s contributing to this about as well as Clackey does, which is not at all.

Let’s ask this random cloaked NPC who’s very evidently been here the whole time.

Honestly, she’s quite the established character, its any wonder she hasn’t had much screen time up until now.

No don’t ask me what her name is. You should know it by now.

I swear.

Jokes aside, first words out of this lady’s mouth and it’s direct and to the point.

How… Blue.

Mira’s a VERY good name. I would have named my hypothetical daughter, but then my Aunt gave birth to my cousin and used the name.

In any case, Mira appears to be the designated Gatekeeper, only she can let them through.

Dan tries to appeal to Mira, trying to convince her to open the gate by asserting that Zungurii’s family is trapped.

Ah yes, Duty before Reason.

The greatest abstract representation of a stone wall.

Much like this Gate actually-

Magisa demands a reason for Mira’s deafness concerning very real and distressful situation that requires their entry.

Fucking no it isn’t.

Have a brain Mira!

But that is an important distinction, if she’s taking orders from Kajitsu, She’s an ally of Otherworld King.

In a world where law is enforced by Card Games, being a Battler becomes as important as food.

I will say Mira’s design is very nice, simple black dress and a cool hat.

It looks like Dan’s been sniped concerning this battle. The enemy is a woman and therefore, Clackey’s motivated.

So, firstly, Clackey could not have anticipated this lady would show up, and Roses do not grow easily in this wasteland, so he’s had that trick on hand for the LONGEST TIME.

Secondly, I don’t think the colours of the roses symbolize much.

Blue roses do not occur naturally due to genetic limitations, because of this they symbolize that which is unattainable.

Yellow roses, symbolize friendship.

And as we know, White roses symbolize purity and innocence.

There’s no reason for this choice of colours, so perhaps its a more literal thing, Yellow roses symbolize Clackey, Blue roses evidently symbolize Mira given this episode’s title features a Blue card. The only question is the White Rose, I suppose it’s meant to represent the enemy they’re supposed to defeat? Yuuki?

Clackey greets her by giving her a Blue rose and attaches it to her Hat.

This would be a time where I’d scream something about non-consented touching, but Clackey moves exceptionally slowly in these scene, and Mira makes no attempt to move or stop him. And she’s quite stubborn, evidently.

We now get a formal challenge. Clackey challenges Mira.

Dan protests this, believing himself to be the designated Battler.

Mate, there are fucking 3 equally powerful battlers in this one shot alone.

And before anyone argues that Dan defeated Clackey, please remember the circumstances surrounding that battle, Clackey chose to take a life instead of watching Sophia become destroyed.

Magisa being the voice of reason, there’s no need for Dan to fight every battle.

Mira agrees to the battle, given that they’ve spared a ton of effort trying to get there, they may as well at least have a chance.

Mira’s basically, quite over-confidently, stating what her battle style is going to be.

Simply put she’s claimed she’s going to put a clock on Clackey, she’ll take one life per turn until he’s been defeated.

Simply put, if Clackey goes first he’ll have to win by turn 9.

Which is, approximately, 5 of his turns.

Mira’s Battle Form looks much like the cloak she was just wearing, if only a different colour, and the bells replaced with lives.

Mira can’t attack on the first turn, so to be able to keep her promise, she has to go second.

…Yes.

That’s how emotions work.

To skip the sappiness, Clackey believes that Mira is not being honest with how she feels and has locked her heart away, so Clackey intends to try and open her heart through this battle.

Typical womanizer things.

Clackey starts off by playing a new card, Gremly.

A Yellow Cost 2 from BS06, when destroyed at any level other than 1 you can refresh a Light Spirit.

Cost 2s, thanks to Royal Potion tend to be suited toward rush tactics, Gremly in this case is only really at his best when the opponent is on 1 life, or when you’re defending.

Fun fact, on the original Battle Spirits translation, Light was localized as “Brilliance”, but in Saga the Keyword was localized as “Luster”

Clackey only has 1 Core left, he could raise Gremly to Lv2 but eh, 2000 BP isn’t much better. So he ends his turn.

It’s Mira’s turn, and if it wasn’t obvious, she’s playing a Blue Deck.

Mira opens with Rock-Golem at Lv2.

Clackey notes that Mira’s language treats Clackey like a trespasser, as if he’s treading on ground that doesn’t belong to him. In a place he should not be.

Which, is technically true from Otherworld King’s point of view but why would Mira care if she’s just a Gatekeeper?

There’s a word for what Clackey is right now. It’s 6 letters long, begins with a C.

That’s right, Cringe.

Mira attacks with Rock-Golem and activates Demolish, as Rock-Golem is Level 2, Clackey loses 2 cards from his deck.

He lost some, curious cards. The Princess-Snowwhite and The Angelia Throne.

A card that exemplifies how little Clackey thinks of his card choices when constructing his deck. A BS05 card designed to support White cards, and a card named “Dwarf-Seven”

To summarise, she can make herself the sole target of any Spirit or Magic that would include a White “Ice Princess” as a Target. This can also include board wipes, as in JP Battle Spirits, when using a card that destroys all of a certain kind of card, you’re considered to be targeting all instances of it. An effect bouncing all Spirits with 4000 BP or less is considered to target all such spirits.

But as far as we know, Clackey isn’t using any White Ice Princess.

The card it mentions in the 2nd effect, Dwarf-Seven is this Vanilla that’s relatively easy to play with an established board. A White Ice Princess and Dwarf-Seven allows Snowwhite to absorb destruction for her allies, and then return herself to the hand.

It’s not a very good combo, quite gimmicky.

The Angelia Throne is a bit more usable, at Level 2 and above you can switch the core arrangements of 2 Spirits on the opposing field. This follows nicely into her Level 3, which makes her a Purple Spirit, allowing her to provide reduction for Purple Core removal which is likely why you would use her first effect in the first place.

Doesn’t matter though, both are now in the bin.

And Clackey has 33 cards left in his deck.

I’d be pretty surprised as well, Mira shouldn’t be concerning herself with Deck destruction if her aim is to reduce Clackey’s Life to 0 on the 10th turn.

Clackey losing the precious Waifus in his deck makes him immensely upset.

Clackey takes from the life, score is 5-4.

It would be possible for Clackey to block with Gremly, which will shut down Mira’s countdown declaration.

But consider the benefit of this, yes, you disprove her declaration, but you’d also be in a significantly worse position than if you just went along with it.

The Gate Bell rings, signalling the End of Mira’s Turn.

Clackey Ray has 4 turns left.

We interrupt this program to bring you what appears to be the Green world, but I could be wrong?

Seems Yuuki’s going on an Invading Spree of White Castles.

To be fair given the landscape this could still be the White World, all things considered.

That was… a very brief interruption, and now we’ve got some turn skips.

Mira has Rock-Golem and 2 Soldier Gustavs on her field.

Clackey appears to still have Gremly, but has added The Fairy Tanya and Froger to his field.

Mira appears to have lost a life at some point as well. The far left Life point is greyed out.

Mira finally summons our episode title card, Block-Golem.

It’s like if Minecraft Steve got fucking Power Armor.

Block-Golem is a Cost 3 Artificial Soldier from BS06, and has an effect that synergizes well along side Castle-Golem. In that it mills cards based on how many nexuses you control.

Blue can amass many nexuses at once though, so with 2 Nexuses, this Cost 3 card is milling a maximum of 4 cards, which at least is more than most Demolish Spirits can reach.

Dan notes the card is foreign to him, though I’m fairly sure we see it later at some point.

That would certainly vibe with a strategy that attempts to snatch a life from an opponent once a turn.
This of course assumes Clackey doesn’t get block-happy anyhow.

Mira attacks with Rock-Golem, activating Demolish

This time, Clackey loses The GreatAngelia Seraphy and The Fairy Tinguly.

Oof, a BS04 Master Rare, GreatAngelia Seraphy can basically make every Divine Spirit in your hand a 1 core cost as long as you give up their effects on Summon.

That restriction is almost certainly in place due to Mikafar and Valiero, no questions asked.

At Lv2 and Lv3 it gets Light. But you need at least 4 cores to get it to Lv2, and 5 for Lv3. This is quite unusual as its common for most Yellow Spirits to have very low Core requirements for higher levels due to their reliance on one-off Magic.

The other card is The Fairy Tinguly, who’s sat in a cup of Tea, how adorable.

She’s another card that gets the most benefit in a deck of mixed colours, making all your Spirits become Yellow the turn she’s summoned. It’s possible to try and pull this off at Max reduction but I’m not sure what the benefit of pulling this off would be other than providing more reduction than you already have.

They can’t ALL be your favourite, Clackey.

Clackey eats the damage and loses a life to Rock-Golem’s attack.

That’s another thing about Mira’s declaration, he can basically end her attack step by simply taking lifes as early as possible, as she won’t resort to swinging again to uphold her declaration.

From the looks of things, that’s his 2nd life gone, so it’s currently Turn 4.

Meaning on Turn 3, he played The Fairy Tanya and Froger and attacked with one of his spirits which Mira wouldn’t have been able to block.

Mira on the follow-up turn, played 2 Soldier Gustavs which were free, and then played Block-Golem.

Doing a quick calculation, yes, she has enough core to do that.

There are three rings left before Clackey loses the game.

Serge and Mai notice that Mira’s playing excessively defensively. Asserting that she must feel helpless to justify the need for defense.

Mai appears to believe that “strong and cold” are things you develop when you are alone for an extended period of time.

Clackey moves, he levels up The Fairy Tanya and then passes.

The Fairy Tanya is strong enough to swing without losing but Clackey appears to be reserving himself.

Dan’s hamster on a wheel becomes incredibly derailed when Clackey didn’t attack the second it was safe to.

Yes, leaving your resources all at the ready does leave you in a better position to counter attack, ‘specially when your turn comes right after and all your resources come back.

Mira plays a 2nd Block-Golem.

…Um, having 5 Spirits doesn’t make a Perfect Defense.

By that logic having 6 makes MORE perfect defense.

and so on and so on.

Finally some Battles in this field full of Spirits.

an attack from Block-Golem is blocked by Frogger.

I’m not gonna lie, Frogger got completely disrespected there.

From this we can surmise Froger was level 1, at Level 2 it would have tied with Block-Golem.

Clackey’s defining Battler trait, his kindness to the Spirits, is exemplified here.

Lv2 Rock-Golem attacks, it’s Demolish effect sends The Angelia Archre and The Angelia Curio to the Trash.

What kind of mixed hell is this deck!?

At least this one seems to vaguely function in Clackey’s Deck, The Angelia Archre is a BS03 Divine Spirit MASTER RARE.

High Cost and incredibly low BP, but can provide extra reduction symbols to the cards in your hand at all times.

Shame it dies to a small gust of wind.

Now this on the other hand makes no bloody sense, a BS03 Divine Spirit with no Green symbols or reduction that ONLY SUPPORTS GREEN!

We haven’t even SEEN a Green Nexus in this anime yet!

Oh geez, that Barrier shattered on Impact.

That puts Clackey to 2 lives left.

Yeah that IS a bit odd, Clackey hasn’t fired one Magic this entire game, just been playing a rather pathetic game of “build-a-board”

And Mira’s winning.

Much like in the case with when Dan bricked, a Hand with no Magic is almost as bad as a hand with no spirits.

Because it means you can’t rescue yourself if you fall on the back foot in terms of board presence.

Hm, that hand is rather sizeable.

His plan might be to gather core for a turnaround Magic Combo rather than just flailing because he has no such Magic.

I’d take that taunt any day. But I am not smart.

Mira on the other hand has 3 very specific reasons to not take that bait.

1. She’s not me.
2. She’s smart
3. She literally has made an ultimatum and if Clackey loses any more lives this turn she’ll look REAL stupid.

Anyone who hasn’t been paying attention to the dialogue… like, maybe, the young and unattentive audience this show is designed for, might miss the fact that she LITERALLY HAS BEEN SAYING SHE’LL ONLY TAKE 1 LIFE PER TURN AND HAS BEEN CONSISTENTLY REFERENCING THAT FACT.

Oh hey, a rare fuckup.

Serge explains to Mai that the way she’s using the Gong only allows her to take 1 life per turn, but that even IF she were to attack again now, she’d only be able to block once.

Except as we can see from the field… this is completely fucking false.

2 Exhausted Spirits and 3 Refreshed. If she attacked again, she’d have 3 Exhausted and 2 Refreshed.

2 Refreshed means 2 Blockers.

2 Blockers means she can block twice.

Which is, drum roll please.

MORE THAN ONE!

My brain cells may be diminishing at a slower rate this time, but oh it hurts so much more when they DO vanish.

She said, under no uncertain terms, “Each time the Gong rings, I will have taken one of your lives until you are defeated”

Are you telling me there was something confusing about that statement Dan?

Are all the lights on upstairs there, Dan?

Which means Clackey gets about 2 turns to find a win condition.

Score is currently 4-2, in Mira’s favor.

Clackey’s turn, it’s turn 7, he’s lost 3 lives. So he’s got 10 core to work with.

Ah yes, the age old “risk” talking point when it comes to Blue and this isn’t the first time it’ll be brought up in this entire series.

I believe I discussed this in the Catastrophe-Dragon episode. But if you haven’t read that post, I recommend you read it, and then I’ll summarise for anyone who wants to keep reading.

This seems to be the voice of the R&D department trying to say “Deck destruction isn’t a broken strategy” by basically claiming that through Deck destruction, due to the lack of cards in the deck, it becomes statistically more likely that you’ll draw a way to defeat an opponent trying to destroy your deck.

e.g. by milling cards, you get faster access to your outs.

Again, my argument against this was something along the lines of: “If they STILL EXIST in your deck”

Because if they mill all your outs, you can’t bloody draw any can you?

Anyway, moving on.

Clackey levels down Tanya and Gremly down to Level 1.

That’s 8 core unused now.

Clackey brings out his Key Spirit, The GreatAngelia Sophia at Lv2.

That’s 4 core spent and 3 of it used to level her, Clackey has 1 Core unaccounted for.

That’ll do it, Sophia’s effect when summoned allows Clackey to play an Imaginary Beast Family card from his hand without paying any cost, as long as the card he summons doesn’t use it’s own effect when summoned.

So he chooses to drop his other signature card, The Cost 7 CleverBeast Iberix which lacks an effect when summoned.

Granted, that’s the last of his core. He’ll be unable to use much Magic in this state.

Once again, more Deck destruction antics avoided by just not having your best cards milled.

About as good a plan as just “drawing the out”

Well at least in the case of Dan he at least lost Siegwurm, so.

And Mira only milled, what, 6 cards at this point?

So not the highest likelihood that they’d get lost, but then why make so much fuss over the deck destruction?

Hah!
With what!?

Yeah! Exactly! The fuck was he gonna do?

He has no core to play any magic and he wouldn’t win with a full attack.

So what would be the point?

Apparently, this makes Zungurii REAL mad because Clackey isn’t getting aggressive.

I suppose the concern is warranted, Clackey basically has to take all 4 lives on his next turn or Mira’s “promise” will be delivered.

Well of course he is, what, you think he played his spirits just because they’re pretty to look at?…

…Actually don’t answer that.

She has twatted you once a turn, and you’ve let her.

And she’s erected a wall of golems.

I wouldn’t call that “Bloodthirsty”

You had to apologize, quite sadly, to Frogger after he got his ass whooped by Block-Golem.

Does that sound fun?

Well, yeah I suppose getting smacked by a Rock-Golem every turn isn’t particularly interesting.

…I’ve lost the plot, bitter about losing your Spirits?

Gonna go out on a limb and guess that Clackey was JUST trying to get one of his favoured Spirits out onto the board before Deck Destruction could wipe them out, and is bitter he didn’t get to use the earlier cards he lost.

We interrupt this program to give you progress on Yuuki’s latest Arson attempt.

It appears Yuuki is still seizing castles.

Is there any other things of note for this scene that this actively explains? Or are we just getting an update that yes: He did infact invade more castles and it’s working?

Oh, this actually IS worthy of note.

Yes, Yuuki staring at his latest work of Arson and commenting on the Crimson Flames IS worthy of note for narrative reasons.

Yuuki’s clearly making massive grabs for power at this point because he not only bears the White Core’s Light but now holds Walhalance and Gungnir, proof of the White World’s King.

And clearly in assaulting the White World’s castles he’s setting them alight.

The Crimson Flames he’s created seem to remind him of Dan, from this we could interpret this in one of a few ways:

1. He feels that his creation of these Crimson Flames have likened him more to Dan.
2. Perhaps the Flames reminding him of Dan is giving him some guilt as Dan would likely never stand for this sort of thing.
3. Perhaps Dan has left a lasting impression on him, such that even vague representations of him, like these flames, call him to mind.
4. Or perhaps he’s feeling a premonition about another battle with Dan.

But it could also be a kind of foreshadowing in a way. He does this in the name of Otherworld King, the fact that they’re approaching this in this manner might be suggestive of Otherworld King’s preferred colour of choice: Red.

Of course, we haven’t seen Otherworld King battle, so we have no way of confirming this at this point in time.

It’s Mira’s Turn and she adds yet ANOTHER spirit to her board, this time a 3rd Soldier Gustav.

Clackey now goes for “Card games as therapy” angle, claiming that Mira’s playstyle exemplifies some vulnerability.

Mira deflects, claiming that anyone would raise defenses against an advancing enemy.

Except this is a card game, defense alone won’t win, and your 1-life per turn looks more like a crutch from a gameplay analysis.

Clackey seems to notice something in the Gate’s design this time.

For anyone who’s as slow as I am, Mira appears out of nowhere with no warning to block some magical gates. The gates themselves depict a long-haired lady.

One might put 2 and 2 together and surmise that Mira is representative of the Lady on the Gate in some way.

Mira attacks with Block-Golem, and the Spirit literally RECONSTRUCTS ITSELF in prime position to beat Clackey’s ass.

What’s bothering me is that Block-Golem here is the feature card, yet it hasn’t unveiled any effects because Mira hasn’t used a Nexus.

Not much of a “feature” if its being used like a glorified vanilla.

Anyway, Clackey has one life remaining.

Mira announces that her next turn will be the last one.

One could say that her next turn will be the uh…

(Maybe I’ll do Vanguard after I finish off Battle Spirits… That show is ALSO quite nice)

He ain’t wrong.

Clackey’s got 12 core to work with, 6 of which are accounted for on his currently 4 Spirits.

He needs to punch through 5 Blockers, and 4 lives.

This would, on average, require 9 attacks, but with only 3 cards in his hand, which will become 4, he can only produce 8 spirits max.

It’s not happening. He needs some other way to get around the Blockers.

Clackey once again, is more interested in Mira than the fight, but it’s quite hard to ignore an opponent that’s evidently carrying some baggage.

Clackey’s probing has led him to realize the connection between Mira and the woman on the wall, which appears to have gotten a rise out of Mira.

Oh geez.

Clackey’s levelled up Gremly, Tanya and Iberix to Level 2, and Sophia to Level 3.

In total, that action required all 6 core remaining in his reserve.

Which means if Clackey’s going to use Magic, he’ll have to pay off his Spirits.

Though Mira herself appears Human, then again if she’s an Otherworld Resident, then Human or not, if it was Humans that ruined her life she might hold some specific resentment toward them.

Good ol’ fashioned fantastic racism.

This statement from Clackey seems to cause Mira to relive, if briefly, the memories associated with the design on the Gate.

Naturally, thinking about it causes her an immense amount of distress, it’s no different to a victim of any traumatic event, such that some will argue that pressing on the point is in effect causing them to relive the event for real, and that such topics should be dropped out of consideration for the victim.

That being said, my hot take on this is that if you’re having to avoid talking about something that has occurred, you haven’t moved passed it, and you give it control over you. So no matter how painful, talking about traumatic events is important, because your silence will only make yourself suffer longer, and you’ll even begin to affect the emotions of the people around you.

It is better to feel an immense amount of pain in a short span of time than it is to feel a lesser amount of pain over the course of many years.

Just be sure to talk with someone whom you trust and who welcomes the talk, like a therapist, etc.

Because even if it doesn’t go away immediately, people who are informed about your pain are in a better position to give you the support you need.

Clackey continues this topic of conversation by morphing into Uncle from Jackie Chan Adventures.

Oh I don’t like where this is going.

Suddenly Yuuki burning down Castles in the background becomes a lot more significant.

So, here’s the gist, Humans invaded Mira’s Castle and wiped the whole thing out, setting it ablaze.

In Mira’s despair, Kajitsu introduced herself to her, and became friends through Kajitsu’s kindness.

Now, who do the Humans work for? Otherworld King.

We know Yuuki is currently setting Castles on Fire for Otherworld King.

Which means that there’s a strong possibility that Kajitsu was taking advantage of the destruction she was complicit in.

To summarise again, Mira has become insanely distrustful of Humans ever since her Castle was destroyed, blanket distrust is not a safe coping mechanism for having one’s trust broken. So naturally Clackey’s going to have to pry her heart open.

Clackey attacks with Sophia at Level 3.

Since he’s not played a Spirit, Clackey’s going to have to somehow nail all 4 lives with only his 4 spirits.

Mira meets Sophia using Block-Golem.

Clackey fires off a Yellow Magic, Wing Boots.

A Magic from SD02, so not quite as new as BS06’s pool of cards.

Firstly of note, Iberix is providing a Yellow reduction to this card, so it has 4 Yellow reduction, being 4 cost, and Clackey having 4 Yellow symbols, he’s able to play this card for free.

Basically, while resolving the Showdown step, if your Spirit’s Level is higher than the opposing Spirit’s level. The attack isn’t considered to be blocked, which is to say that the Attack will automatically go to the life AFTER the block has been declared, and your Spirit won’t be destroyed.

Allowing you to take a life even though you’ve already been blocked.

Unfortunately, this only allows you to “target” a spirit, meaning Clackey can only grant this benefit to one spirit for the turn per use of this Magic.

Keyphrase: Per Use.

It’s nice when the visual effect is representative of the card’s design.

Dan once again showing off his immense familiarity with the game, Zungurii is unfamiliar with the effect of Wing Boots because this is the first time he’s seen it, so Dan explains the effect to him.

Yes, unfortunately because Mira has no Level 3 spirits, Sophia is basically unblockable.

There’s a rub in the sense that Rock-Golem is at least Level 2.

I’ll explain a bit later

Mira loses a life, dropping her to 3.

From Lv2 upwards, Sophia is a Light Spirit, so Wing Boots returns to Clackey’s hand at the end of Sophia’s battle if it remains on the field.

Iberix has the same ability, meaning Clackey can get three uses out of Wing Boots.

The issue is that Rock-Golem being Level 2 means Mira can block one of the upcoming attacks, so Clackey still needs a way to get that last life.

Ah yes, where Dan’s specialty is Clash, Clackey’s is Light, and Mai’s of course, is Curse.

That would make Yuuki’s specialty Armor, and and Suzuri’s specialty Demolish.

We’ve yet to see the Green Soldier, so we’re still holding out on that one.

Clackey attacks with Iberix, during Flash timing he plays Wing Boots again.

Mira could block this with Rock-Golem, but decides to take a life.

Thanks to Iberix’s Light, Wing Boots returns to Clackey’s hand.

This time Clackey attacks with Tanya, once again using Wing Boots.

Tanya isn’t a Spirit with Light, so Wing Boots won’t return after this use.

Reminder: Rock-Golem can still block this attack as Tanya is only Level 2.

Mira takes a life from Tanya, leaving her with 1 life remaining.

Gremly will get blocked for sure when it attacks, however we read it’s effect further up.

Clackey once again asks Mira for details on what happened in her past to make her so defensive.

Welp, Clackey, she’s way too old for you already.

So, in summary:

Mira was left in charge of the gate and erroneously allowed Knights with evil intentions to enter the town, believing their lie that they needed to rest.

Due to this misplaced trust, her entire town was destroyed and she lost everything.

And therefore she’s had persistent trust issues ever since.

What, you want my opinion? I’ve got only one word for this: Understandable.

To be guarding this gate under the orders of Kajitsu for hundreds of years and not be aware that she’s committing the same atrocities would be very difficult.

Though Mira’s silence concerning this matter seals the deal, she’s fully aware, it’s just that Kajitsu offered kindness at a time when Mira was most vulnerable and had no one, much like how many animals with nowhere to go and no one to follow will take a chance trusting the first seemingly sentient thing it comes across.

Though this offers a very strange plothole, Kajitsu is only 12 years old during the time of this anime, and this event supposedly took place hundreds of years ago, there’s no decent timespan for Kajitsu to appear.

Kajitsu isn’t 100s of years old.

Though I think I have an explanation for this plot-hole if it isn’t addressed shortly.

Clackey attacks with Gremly, since he lacks Wing Boots, he can’t make Gremly unblockable.

It’s at this point Mira has made a game-losing mistake.

She’s chosen Gremly as the Spirit to be blocked by Rock-Golem, Rock-Golem being Level 2 could have blocked any of the last 2 attacks.

It’s at this point I questioned the show’s logic here… So I did a bit of digging.

So initially, google translate APPEARS to tell me “Greater than or equal”

Which would suggest that the existing Wiki entry is wrong.

However, reading the japanese, it reads “バトル解決時、そのスピリットのLvがブロックした相手のスピリット以上のとき”

In English lettering, that pronounces as “Batoru kaiketsu-ji, sono supiritto no Lv ga burokku shita aite no supiritto ijo no toki.”

I’ve had a hard time translating this specific line, at first it feels like a rough translation is “At the end of battle, when a spirit blocks when your spirit has a higher level”, the key part here is “Ijo no Toki” which is “When higher”

So I thought “oi, what the hell?”, I don’t put stock in Google Translate’s attempts to translate it, and the japanese seems to suggest what the Wiki is saying.

But in checking the rulings for Wing Boots listed on Batspi.com.

Q1.自分のLv2のスピリットがアタックして、相手のLv2のスピリットにブロックされた後、このマジックの効果を使った。これでブロックされなかったものとして扱って、相手のライフを減らせる？

A1.はい、減らせます。

I find the above.

Translated, this question is quite simply asking, if a Lv2 Spirit blocks a Lv2 Spirit under the effects of Wing Boots, will Wing Boots kick in and reduce the life.

That answer says “Hai, Herasemasu”, or “Yes, it can be reduced”

So the wording on the card DOES NOT make it clear what the card fucking does!

Wing Boots, despite specifying a scenario for the effect to occur, ALSO triggers in a scenario not fucking specified by the card!

Ugh, In any case, I found an interesting ruling concerning this card since I need SOMETHING to brighten my day after that.

Namely, that the Level is checked upon resolution of the battle, which means that both spirits need to exist when flash timing ends. If you somehow get rid of your blocking Spirit before flash timing is over, Wing Boots won’t go off because you lack a spirit to compare levels with.

Back to the battle, this means even if Mira blocked with Rock-Golem, equal levels aren’t enough to snuff out Wing Boots’ effect.

There are no good frames concerning this battle, Rock-Golem at 3000 BP knocks the 2000 BP Gremly out of the way.

Gremly’s effect kicks in when it’s destroyed. Allowing Clackey to refresh a Light Spirit.

His selection is, of course, Sophia.

Clackey once again attacks with Sophia, the effects of Wing Boots remain on the Spirit until the turn ends, so a refreshed Sophia can still benefit from it’s effects.

Sophia’s attack is unable to be blocked safely, so Mira’s last life is taken, making Clackey the winner.

Praise from the peanut gallery!

More importantly, Clackey’s noticed that his opponent has gone missing all of a sudden.

Clackey despairs for a bit, thinking she’d run off and closed her heart more, believing his attempts to free her were in vain, but Mai points out that the image on the Gate has changed, the Tear on the lady’s face is gone, she’s smiling, and most importantly, the rose Clackey gave Mira is now present on the Gate.

This suggests that Mira was in fact the Woman depicted on the Gate, brought to reality.

Which brings me to the earlier plot-hole, if her spirit was bound to the gate because of her mistake, it’s possible Kajitsu only turned up recently to offer her kindness, because the gate depicts the memory of her town burning, that might just be how she remembers the memory because that’s what the world looks like from inside that mural.

Having appeased the Gate Spirit, the Gate now opens.

I wonder why they aren’t taking the Violet through it?

Is where they’re going close enough that they can make it on foot?

Looks like they were just getting a lay o’ the land.

The Horizon Ladder is visible in the distance.

Well that’s concerning, Kajitsu welcomes Yuuki back onto the Horizon Ladder, but Yuuki’s holding something glowing a BRIGHT red.

It appears to be some kind of Red… well, “Core”

Not like a Battle Spirits Core, like a Power source kind of Core.

Well that’s not fucking ominous at all.

The question likely in everyone’s mind here is, “What is that fucking thing, and where the hell did Yuuki get it?”

And that’s all folks!

This episode was kind of a meh one, it’s glorified filler.

The reason why I say this is because the events of the episode don’t trigger a change in the status quo, that Gate never appears again and neither does Mira, the fact that nothing changed about the current situation from the beginning of the episode til the end means that plot-wise this episode was mostly irrelevant.

So when that happens in your Card Game anime, your battle needs to be somewhat showy, perhaps unveiling new cards or showing some other narrative significance.

The only thing this Episode does is show that Yuuki has Dan on his mind, and Clackey’s use of Wing Boots, a card that isn’t even that new–

Actually I tell a lie, SD02 comes out after BS06 in terms of release schedule, so Wing Boots is actually a very new card.

I think I got my wires crossed with SD01.

Ah well, clearly I need a hot minute to take a break, so I’ll see you muppets in the next one! Cheerio!

Yawl mother-effers wanna KEY CHANGE!?

So since the LAST time I posted, the greatest thing of all time happened.

I don’t know if it was force of will, or community outcry, or even if it was this blog, but all I know is, Battle Spirits has COME TO THE WORLD.

Now even I can play my favourite game physically, and you can be damned sure my wallet is going to wonder if it wronged me in a past life after I’m done with this game I swear to you.

Of course, If you are a Battle Spirits fan, I would highly recommend checking this game out. But if you’re just here for my dumb takes on an anime that’s several years old, don’t worry, ye shant be waiting long.

So there’s no pre-cursor to whatever happened last episode, no reference made, not even a title card, we’re actually flung into what appears to be exactly NOT Grand-Lolo.

This house has honestly seen better days, I won’t lie, half of it is missing.

And it’s raining too, I’m a lover of rain but I know for a fact like 99% of people disagree with me.

If you haven’t quite figured it out from the awfully recognizeable young faces here. This is Yuuki and Kajitsu’s past. Their house appears to have been destroyed by a Storm when they were children.

No one this tiny speaks this concisely or verbosely.

This would also be more believable if there was any wind animated over the storm, but not only is there no wind, the rain is falling horizontally, if it were windy it’d be at least diagonal.

More like an English Mastiff’s drool…

Yuuki and Kajitsu were initially humans from Earth but appear to have made a home in Grand-Lolo, it appears that this event instilled the idea that the Human world isn’t for them.

We interrupt this flashback to give you Yuuki being a bloody creep and watching his Sister sleep.

Though looks like Kajitsu’s having a nightmare flashback and it’s enough to bring her to tears while unconscious.

This is meant to be all very precious but LET THE GIRL SLEEP DAMMIT!

And with that we FINALLY get our episode title, no points for guessing what the card of the day is.

“The ArmoredSacred Walhalance’s Trial, Strongest Lance, The Sacred Gungnir”

That’s a bloody mouthful and a half if I do say so myself.

So naturally we’re going to see this lovely White X-Rare.

Behold, an entirely inconspicuous field of flowers.

This appears to be a Garden located in the White World. It’s a location we come back to a few times over the course of the show, but it’s not particularly significant now.

…I mean come on, she’s the Butterfly Princess, of course she’s going to like Flowers.

Looking at the Flowers appears to give Kajitsu memories of… picking flowers with Yuuki in the rain.

I think we’ve ALREADY established you have a past, this is kind of rubbing it in now for the sake of padding.

Kajitsu attempts to pick a White Rose but pricks herself on one of the thorns.

Yadda-yadda, Roses have Thorns, etc etc.

WATCH OUT GUYS

UNCENSORED BLOOD, AVERT YOUR EYES.

OH THE HUMANITY-

As much as I’m being incredibly sarcastic about the blood, please be wary if you have Haemophobia. While this show doesn’t make excessive use of blood whenever it can, it won’t be afraid to display it if it’s relevant.

Like say, pricking your finger on a rose.

Tips for trying to impress a prospective partner.

No, Gratuitous French does NOT make you sexy.

Ask CONSENT before touching someone.

And especially don’t fucking GRAB THEM BY THE WRIST, OUT OF NOWHERE, SURPRISING THE SHIT OUT OF THE PERSON YOU JUST GRABBED HOLD OF BECAUSE YOU WERE NOWHERE TO BE SEEN UNTIL THIS PARTICULAR MOMENT.

Fuckin’ tell ’em Kajitsu.

Tell me you’re hopeless with women without telling me you’re hopeless with women.

We’ve been granted a name, this is Belga, he appears to be of some kind of Royalty. And is asking Kajitsu out to a ball that’s THREE MONTHS AWAY.

I’ll stop shitting on him for a moment, just because I know he’s trying to embody very chivalrous values, but come oooooon man…

To be fair it’ll make more sense later once we actually get a gist of how Grand-Lolo actually functions.

I’d be more considerate of the fact that he’s given her a nice little bandage for her finger if the animators hadn’t missed where his mouth should be.

Look at that shit, it’s barely hanging on.

I may have left out some context of the conversation, Belga basically just said “You are beautiful, so you should avoid being injured”

Kajitsu here is saying that she isn’t so narrow-minded as to believe that Thorns are needless on a rose.

Kajitsu casually saying its her will to protect the thorns on a Rose after having just pulled one out of it’s stalk, that rose is fuckin’ dying yo.

Aaaand because Belga is Super Into Mash Potaters. He instantly renegs on what he just said and completely agrees with her.

Have some substance man.

Belga’s… making a REALLY big deal out of the fact that Kajitsu likes the Thorns on a Rose.

So, Belga is a fucking creepazoid and is trying a little TOO hard to curry Kajitsu’s favor…

But uh, Yuuki is asserting a little too much authority over Kajitsu’s company.

Belga, as any person would, takes personal offense at being asked to remove himself when it hasn’t been actually made evident that he’s bothered anyone.

He appears to be a member of the Otherworld King’s “Personal Guard”, known as the Silver Knights.

Though the veracity of this claim has yet to be seen, Belga seems more like a Silver Spoon than a Silver Knight.

I’m surprised he doesn’t go by the “Karma” portion of his name honestly. That’s SIGNIFICANTLY more threatening and far more fitting for a Silver Knight than… Belga…

Also he’s hardly a common man, you just invited his Sister to the ball.

It’s not a crime if he wins at card games.

Grand-Lolo is a Meritocracy, your Laws don’t mean shit if you can’t enforce them with power.

…So you KNEW who you were dealing with, called him a commoner despite inviting his Sister to your stinkin’ ball, and STILL don’t realize how fucked you are?

This is the guy who literally told the flame-haired protagonist that he was Omnipotent in this world.

Apparently that remark was enough to prompt a physical response.

Though to be fair if someone was suggesting I was about to be arrested for something I know that isn’t against the law and has no way of being enforced I’d be pretty damn inclined to prove how powerless they were as well if I could.

Belga finally drops the pretense and finally moves to defend his presence, namely that hew as trying to help Kajitsu because she injured herself.

Yuuki just fucking tosses Belga aside after learning Kajitsu has an injury.

Now under most circumstances the audience are likely going to be “Yeah fuck that guy” because he was just blowing smoke not 2 seconds prior.

But anyone with half a brain would realize that Yuuki’s given an overtly aggressive response to a guy only mildly up his own ass and was actually there for a decent reason.

Firstly, that’s incredibly disrespectful, the bandage was a non-stick bandage which is a perfectly fine way to treat a cut from a rose-thorn. So it’s not like Belga has even used incorrect treatment here.

Secondly, WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING!?

YUUKI, STOP.

I’d be more concerned about the fact that he’s just done something signficantly MORE harmful to Kajitsu than you did… but eh, he’s meant to be the bad guy I guess.

Belga, chivalrous as he is, challenges Yuuki by throwing a white glove at him. Very traditional.

Yuuki of course isn’t having any of whatever this is and refuses.

For reference, it’s evident Yuuki is being excessively over-protective of Kajitsu here to an almost weird level.

This trait is… explainable.

And there is a reason I specifically use the word explainable.

I will say there is something quite hilarious about these 2 siblings sharing a smile while Belga malds off-screen.

Okay I’ll relent here, Yuuki isn’t completely unjustified in his rage, Belga is acquainted with him so Yuuki is probably up to here with his bullshit, Belga came in unannounced, touched Kajitsu without her consent, lectured her on something he had no clue about, relented instantly just to try and gain her favour and invited her to a ball. It’s possible Yuuki is aware that Belga has a history of trying to hit-on Kajitsu and Kajitsu has welcomed… exactly none of it. But of course, being unable or unwilling to reject Belga herself, Yuuki puts it upon himself to be more direct.

It appears Belga is harboring what appears to be jealousy towards Yuuki’s position as The White Core-Bearer.

I’m aware there is a distinction between envy and jealousy, namely that envy is wanting what another has, and jealousy is feeling as if someone is trying to take, is taking or has taken what is yours. And one might be so inclined to claim that Belga is envious, not jealous.

To that I say!

They aren’t mutually exclusive feelings, one can be both envious and jealous.

Yuuki’s mostly dismissed Belga as a nuisance up until this particular moment, seeming almost amused by the suggestion that the title of White Core-Bearer is so fickle as to have chosen Yuuki over Belga lightly.

Yawl Mother-Effers want a SCENE CHANGE!?

Dan is working on his deck, it seems like he’s trying to review after his battle with Suzuri where he was nearly decked out and is considering trying to increase the number of cards in his deck.

Oh, now I get to talk about differences between Battle Spirits and Saga.

So in Battle Spirits, 40 cards is the minimum, with 3 copies per card. If you want to have a deck with the highest possible consistency, you will not run a single card over that 40 card count.

There are many who have attempted to try and force Blue deck destruction to work a bit harder to obtain their victory by increasing the number of cards in their Deck. Unfortunately in practice, what most find is that by doing so, it becomes more difficult to draw the exact card they need in a situation where it matters, and that affords Blue decks more time and more freedom to discard more cards, not less.

As a result, it is simply better to try and keep to 40 cards, and try to achieve your win condition before Blue can destroy your deck.

In Saga, though we don’t have Blue just yet, your deck must contain no less than 50 cards, with up to 4 copies per card, but you are also entitled to a max 10 card sideboard which you can side in between games 2 and 3. The reason it’s maximum 10 is because the number of cards between your Deck and your Sideboard cannot exceed 60. Meaning you can’t bring a Sideboard if you bring a 60-card deck.

This is useful, because it means in Games 2 and 3, if you feel the need to, against Blue decks, you can increase your Deck count in Games 2 and 3 to try and achieve this same result, though in practice it would probably be better to simply side in cards that counter Blue strategies like that.

Another difference between Battle Spirits and Saga. The way Armor functions.

In Battle Spirits, Armor’s a Catch-all, if you have Armor, the Spirit is unaffected by any opposing effects coming from the colour specified.

In Saga however this has been nerfed. Armor in Saga only prevents their selection for the purposes of an effect, if an effect does not involve a selection, it will punch through Armor.

This can cause interactions to work differently. For example:

Covering Desperado’s effect, if it were to face off against Armor Purple in JP Battle Spirits, it wouldn’t have an effect on the Armor Spirits, but in Saga (where we have a card with an exact duplicate of Desperado’s effect), because this effect does not involve making a selection, it can chomp through Armor.

And while Dan and I are clearly on the Battle Spirits Grind, thinking about the game itself.

Clackey’s cleaning his Waifu.

Ugh…

Dan’s hit the limit on his ability to consider everything for his deck-building, this can happen, there is only so much a deck can actually do.

People often take this feeling as a sign that a deck is as good as it is going to get, and simply try to bet on luck when facing a poor matchup.

But every person has a different style of building, and there is likely always a card that can help you in a given situation if you’re expecting it.

Then stop trying to snog cardboard ya weirdo.

I think, concerning this Era, there isn’t much Red can do about White. White happens to be Red’s worst matchup, as it can resist all of Red’s attempts to try and brute force through it. Hilariously the best way for Red to try and push through White is pure power. High BP values will overcome pesky blockers.

At least for Armor though, Armor sucks when facing off against opponents that the Armor is prepared for. But Armor crumples when you manage to use a wide array of colours as not every spirit can Armor through every colour.

…Yet.

Clackey’s more interested in people than cards, which makes sense. So we once again return to the theory that Yuuki is the Otherworld King.

Though given that Belga appears to dismiss Yuuki as a Common man, as well as supposedly being the Otherworld King’s “personal guard”, it seems highly unlikely that Yuuki is indeed Otherworld King.

Especially since the Core Light-Bearers are supposedly meant to be opposing Otherworld King, it would be incredibly strange for Otherworld King themselves to become a Light-Bearer.

I mean his ace also just straight up counters yours, your hand doesn’t matter if it doesn’t do anything.

Clackey dismisses the ability to read Dan as an indicator of Otherworld Kingliness, mostly because Dan is incredibly easy to read. His win-con is Siegwurm’s Clash ability to wipe out the enemy’s spirits in order to reduce their options.

Clackey is quite laid-back, effort is good but investing effort for no gain definitely isn’t going to be much use, and suggests Dan should relax.

It appears Clackey has an idea for what Dan should do besides thinking-

This was such low-hanging fruit it actually overflowed into being genius.

It’s not creative but god-damn its still funny.

Dan notes there’s a problem with the amount of curry left, Zungurii made loads so there should be a fair bit more than one container of it.

The culprit is: Zungurii

The reason? Say it with me now: He’s Super Into Mash Potaters.

Zungurii inquires as to what Mai is doing.

And the results are in:

I’m so used to like, hamming these out in like 2 or 3 hours and then uploading them right after I’m done that I often forget I can save them as Drafts and upload them later.

Mai has this guy trained like a puppy.

Excessive amounts of positive reinforcement has made him inclined to do nice things for her with the expectation of being rewarded.

What is he? A Butler?

Also really? Chilled Pasta and Prosciutto?

Seems.. a tad light don’t you think?

My mans just learned what curry was last week, he ain’t ready for this Italian shit.

Nowadays “Noodles” refer to very specific things while “Pasta” refers to something different, but the word “Noodle” does come from the German word for “Pasta”, which is “Nudel”

They are interchangeable words, if a bit strangely used here.

I wish I had Zungurii’s confidence in making food.

Zungurii spots Dan and Clackey in the Kitchen and fuckin’ tosses them out.

His love for Mash Potaters gives him super strength.

…Well on top of the super strength he has already.

My man just learned what Pasta was not 30 fucking seconds ago. I don’t think he knows what Chocolate is, much less a Parfait!

Well I’m glad you’re having fun.

Can we get back to card games?

It appears Yuuki and Belga have pissed off elsewhere in search of a place to battle.

I mean you get taken to the Battlefield either way, I’m not sure what the preference of location is for.

Not gonna lie this shot REALLY looks like it wouldn’t be out of place with GUNDAM slapped on it.

It looks like another re-attempt at what Bashin Toppa did before, creating a 2-Spirit combo using an X-Rare and a designated Weapon.

Where Gigantic Thor had Mjolnir, Walhalance has Gungnir.

It appears that there are a set of qualifications for becoming the White King. The first is that one must bear the White Core’s Light, and the second is that they must have Walhalance and Gungnir included in their decks.

Yuuki naturally dropping the “Who the hell cares”

The adage of “If you can’t beat em, join em” works for political power too, if you’re unable to be in charge, then simply be the next best thing: The favourite of the one in charge.

It seems like Belga is relatively obsessed with status, and needs validation of his status.

Which seems to have manifested in an erroneous belief that if he acquires Walhalance and Gungnir, he’ll be considered more worthy to bear the White Core’s Light than Yuuki.

…Except it’s also just as possible that Walhalance and Gungnir will choose Yuuki because he bears the White Core’s Light.

It appears Belga was spoiled to an unfair degree, being promised the status of bearing the White Core’s Light only to have it stripped from him by Yuuki.

…Eliminating the current White Core-Bearer would certainly throw a wrench in Yuuki’s ability to obtain it.

The saddest part about this is why he wants to do it. It’s not even for his own gain. Earning the Armor and Lance of the King and proving yourself to be the rightful heir to a whole world is bragging rights for like… eternity.

And he just wants it to please his father, it’s incredibly vain.

Belga doesn’t even want power, he just wants approval.

“Look Dad! I’m the White King” is certainly very childish, yes.

We’ve survived the plot, now we can actually get into some BATTLES!

Belga’s Battle Form is… much like his personality. It’s eye-catching for a split-second but ultimately not very interesting.

Looks like Yuuki’s requested the first move.

From a game design standpoint, it certainly shouldn’t matter whether or not a deck goes first or second, as it should be capable of producing it’s intended function regardless. In practice however, certain decks do prefer to go first or second.

This is mostly determined by your deck’s intended opening play though, rather than it’s colour. Given what we know of Yuuki’s deck however, I presume he would prefer to go first to establish a board faster.

Time for Yuuki’s first move.

Yuuki starts off by… playing a Level 1 Berserker-Gun?

Strange, even on Turn 1, it’s possible to play Berserker-Gun at Level 2.

But there may be reasons as to why one would do this, for example, trying to prompt an attack.

…You twisted his wrist and flung him onto a cold brick floor, and that’s ignoring how badly you treat Belga in general.

“Bothered by your existence” is putting it VERY lightly.

Talk about misreading the situation. It seems like Belga’s issue tends to directly be with Yuuki, and that Kajitsu was not infact Belga’s target whatsoever.

Belga is suggesting that the easiest way to draw Yuuki out tends to be to use Kajitsu as bait.

…Except all malice is lost when one factors that he IS genuinely infatuated with Kajitsu.

Kajitsu finally makes a summation of Belga.

The Silver Knights protest, because apparently brown-nosing Belga until they’re indistinguishable from Koala-bears is part of the job description.

Kajitsu protests being compared to a Rose, as she believes herself to be more of a Butterfly, and White Roses are a type of rose more favoured by Butterflies.

Now, if you’re keen on symbolism, you’ll notice that Butterflies and Roses are symbolic of romantic love, not sibling love. With White Roses representing loyalty, purity, and innocence… but most importantly, eternal love.

White Roses are also the most common type of rose to be seen at weddings.

Yes, the suggestion is very… very odd. And I hate it as much as you do.

Belga says a bunch of things here that are mostly just him screaming about wanting Walhalance, yadda yadda.

Infact he took SO long we had to expedite it with an Eye catch.

Also notably the uniform Kajitsu is wearing there is a Battle Form, and we haven’t seen her Battle in Grand-Lolo yet.

Another eyecatch… For the sake of… catching your eyes… I guess.

We appear to have jumped to an indeterminate turn, but to summarise, Yuuki’s amassed a field of 2 Droidens, and 1 Level 2 Berserker-Gun.

Yuuki, at this point, has not lost any lives.

Belga however, has 2 Bersker-Magnums, and a Fenrircannon MK-II.

And he has 4 lives remaining.

Your “Belga-Sama” is currently on the back-foot.

Though he does have the strongest spirit currently, so.

I think Kajitsu.exe has stopped working.

It appears the awkwardness of Kajitsu’s… very concerning statements are not lost on the Silver Knights.

Ah fuck me we’re on Turn 6?!

Let’s see, Yuuki’s lost no lives and has had 2 Core steps, so he’s working with only 6 Core at present.

Belga’s lost a life though and this will be his 3rd Core Step, so he’ll be working with 8.

WE GET IT, YOU DREW A GOOD CARD.

Overconfident people failing at keeping a Pokerface is a very routine trope of this genre.

Belga uses all his available Core that isn’t being used to maintain a Spirit to play The Gigantic Thor.

Much like Siegfried, our boy Thor has gotten a good-ass glow-up since we last saw him in Bashin.

Is it? It has a Lv1 BP of 4000, and Belga needs to deplete his other spirits in order to raise it’s level.

It’s not doing much at the moment. It can’t exactly do it’s multi-attack combo without being at Level 3.

Yuuki takes a life, dropping him to 4.

Belga seems to be rather irate about the fact that Yuuki does not show outward signs of discomfort when losing a life.

It looks like we skipped Yuuki’s turn as it simply consisted of a pass as Yuuki’s board hasn’t changed.

Let’s see, Belga’s working with 9 core on this turn, 4 on Thor, 3 on the other spirits.

Mjolnir is 2 reductions and needs 2 core for maintenance, I can see the writing on the wall.

I always found it interesting that Thor’s BP at Lv3 is so incredibly low compared to most other X-Rares, but it makes sense given the fact that he makes up for it based on how much you invest into Mjolnir.

Even at Lv1 Thor will have 11000 BP for his attacks, just maybe not while he’s defending, though given what he’s intended to do with his abilities, refreshed on an opposing turn is not a likely scenario.

We… don’t actually see a Mjolnir play, Belga just has Thor repeat it’s attack from last turn, Yuuki taking a Life, dropping him to 3, Belga has taken the lead.

…What about this “one-swing-per-turn” is “constant” to you?

As if to prove my point, Belga’s turn ends.

Yuuki’s turn, 4th core step, 2 lives lost, so about 10 core total to work with.

Oh, he’s drawn Yggdrasill. With 1 Droiden levelled up, and Berserker-Gun at Lv2, he can play this without much problems.

Now Yuuki is comparing Yggdrasill to a White Rose…

That padding aside, Yuuki finally summons The Iron Knight Yggdrasill!

So having Yggdrasill is proof of bearing the White Core’s Light… and being a White Core-Bearer with Walhalance and Gungnir is proof of the White King…

At that point just cut the middle man and make the White Core-Bearer King?

Yggdrasill is one of those cards that are most nightmarish when you’re not expecting it. It’s effect just bounced THREE cards to Belga’s Hand.

Yuuki levels down Berserker-Gun and Droiden to bring Yggdrasill to Level 3.

Yuuki’s managing his core VERY well, He just spent 3 of his 10 available core to play Yggdrassil, 4 are levelling up Yggdrassil, and the other 3 are maintaining the Level 1 on his Spirits.

As an interesting aside, Yggdrasill’s effect at Level 2 and 3 gives Armor to Red and White to all of Yuuki’s Spirits, which makes Yuuki very well-suited to a White Mirror match.

Berserker-Gun snatches a life from Belga, dropping him to 3.

It occurs to me that Belga has no blockers, and Yuuki has enough Spirits to take the game.

Droiden swings, the score’s now 2-3 in Yuuki’s favor.

You are getting your ass quite thoroughly whooped, yes.

I’m certain that even if that were true, that wouldn’t necessarily mean you’d be winning.

Note to parents: Don’t make promises you can’t keep and Don’t tell big lies, your child will remember and once that trust is gone, it’s damn hard to get it back.

And if their trust doesn’t vanish, you’ll teach your child that it is okay to lie and well, honesty is kind of a virtue.

Yuuki didn’t press his attack for the last 2 lives, despite having enough attackers.

I guess one might try to read his hand to suggest a potential counter? White does have plenty of defense magic. And Belga did have 6 core available to use some.

Plus a potential counter-attack from Thor could be nasty.

Magnum’s back.

And he’s brought his friend.

The Artifact Plant would be great here.

Also worth mentioning that Belga’s working with 12 Core at the moment, he’s just spent 2 of it, and 7 is being used on his spirits, he’s got 3 left.

Oh that’s niiiice, we’ve got a peak at the entirety of Belga’s Hand! I’d love to see what’s in there! Notably he’s taken a card out but we’ll get to that.

The first is Eternal Shield, an Anti-Blue Magic for White that limits how much your Deck can be discarded to 5 for the turn.

Not a particularly good stopgap for Blue really, especially given the timing, the most devastating deck destruction effects come from Titus and Castle-Golem on summon.

The next card is Reflection Armor, this can grant Armor to Cost 2 Spirits to everything except Yellow or White. It’s okay-ish for Belga’s deck as he’s running Berserker-Magnum and Mjolnir. But it’s understandable why he isn’t using it here, because Yuuki’s a White user.

Which makes you wonder if he planned to Battle Yuuki why is this card in his deck?

Mobius Loop is an Anti-Nexus card, not bad if you want to deal with a particularly oppressive Nexus, like the ones Purple like to use, otherwise it’s a nice Battle Trick.

And finally, The Protection of Sacred Artifacts, a Cost 3 Nexus that protects your White Nexuses from Red destruction (the colour most likely to destroy your Nexus) and at Level 2, designates a Spirit on the Start Step to attack on this turn.

So, this is a Cost 3 Nexus, which means it’s easy to play, and it is nice protection against Red, if nothing else, it’s an easy extra symbol.

…But.

That Level 2 isn’t that useful, because it’s designated during the Start Step, if the opponent gets rid of the Spirit, they’re no longer subject to the effect.

Additionally it doesn’t say when they must attack, just that they must at some point do so.

Never give your opponent decisions if you want the benefits of an effect.

Anyway, moving on, Belga plays The Sacred Mjolnir at Level 2.

Looks like Mjolnir’s ALSO had a significant glow-up, its far less shiny now.

…It can attack twice my dude.

Belga declares an attack with The Gigantic Thor, exhausting The Sacred Mjolnir in order to add Mjolnir’s BP to Thor.

8000 + 5000 is 13000. So The Gigantic Thor is swinging for 13000 BP.

You have a refreshed Droiden! Why sacrifice Yggdrasill? at this point in time?

You have 3 lives! Take 1!

What purpose does sending Yggdrasill to die serve!?

He just… he could have blocked with Droiden

and then you’d be boned, because Thor would be swinging for 8000.

And then Yggdrasill would wreck your shit.

In the hallway they were just in, Walhalance appears to be glowing.

Same with Gungnir.

Okay so Yuuki appears to be attempting to flash here, he needs 2 core for… something.

Since they only had 1 core anyway, they’re depleted.

Yuuki plays Avalanche Aura, which will give Yggdrasill 4000 BP.

This will put it on par with Thor, who’s at 13000. This makes sense as to why it was Yggdrasill that blocked, Yuuki’s trying to use mutual destruction to stop Thor’s consecutive attacks.

…Though I’m pretty sure we just saw a Battle trick in Belga’s Hand.

…Wot?

Belga depletes his Lv2 Berserker-Magnum to play Mobius Loop.

One might wonder why he didn’t use Mjolnir’s core, well there’s a ruling about The Gigantic Thor that the BP gain is constantly checked, if Mjolnir’s BP changes, the BP Thor gains also changes, so the core needed to come from elsewhere.

With 15000 BP, Thor defeats Yggdrasill.

If Yuuki had just pressed his attack last turn, Belga didn’t have a counter, he would have lost.

Yuuki sorely misread Belga’s hand.

In summary, Belga’s been led to believe he is someone he’s not, and therefore is entitled to something he isn’t.

And that entitlement is the only reason he wants it.

Get wrecked.

Meanwhile the glowing has hit a breakpoint and Gungnir has been released from it’s seal.

The card appears to have added itself to the top of Yuuki’s deck.

Japanese readers will already be able to see it’s effect so might as well talk about it.

The Sacred Gungnir is from the first Starter Deck containing unique cards. SD01. It’s almost entirely unremarkable as a card. Only having a When-destroyed effect that bounces all opposing Cost 1 and 0 spirits.

And it seems like Yuuki just passes turn.

And Belga has leapt straight for the attack step.

Let’s see, currently 9 core is used up, Belga should have about 13 Core available.

He’s more than capable of playing that Fenrircannon-MKII in this hand without compromising his position, though its perhaps unecessary given Thor can make up the extra attack on his own.

Still, having an extra blocker on hand wouldn’t hurt-

Wait, Fenrircannon has appeared on his board!

Hwat.

Its on the field too, they completely skipped over him playing it.

Also yeah, Thor snatches a life, This looks kinda bad given that Yuuki only has maybe 1 Spirit remaining and Belga has a potential 5 attacks.

Though swinging with Thor here kind of wastes Mjolnir’s attack.

It’s possible Belga chose not to attack with Mjolnir because I believe a Levelled up Droiden would have destroyed it, which is fair.

Belga uses Thor’s Level 3 effect to destroy Mjolnir.

You’d think they’d have come up with a way to determine whether or not one does indeed bear the core’s light-

Oh right. Magisa can, and she only has “Washed up” Magic.

Thor attacks again, apparently it has ROCKET POWERED FISTS!

Yuuki’s reduced to 1 Life, against Belga’s 2.

YOU HAVE 2 MORE ATTACKERS.

HE HAS 1 LIFE.

1 BLOCKER.

JUST
FUCKING
SWING!

Though he did pass his turn without playing a card so that might be a tell-tale sign that he has defense of some kind.

and relenting to it is a tell-tale sign that you, Belga, don’t.

If only you knew.

This is the first time Yuuki has actually gone out of his way to berate Belga for his actions rather than just making fun of him.

I can see how he compares wanting a King’s Power for selfish reasons to be comparable to wanting the power of an Evil God.

Yuuki’s resolve appears to be motivated by his rejection of the Human World… For reasons other than losing their house mind you.

And at this moment, Walhalance is ALSO freed from it’s seal.

Yuuki plays a Sacred Gungnir at Lv2, there’s really not much else to cover here.

Though there’s notably 2 cards on Yuuki’s board when he plays it in this shot:

But he depleted 2 cards for Avalanche Aura and Yggdrasill was destroyed so I have zero clue what that extra card is. It had to have been there since his last turn since it being there would stop Belga from going for game.

And of course for a nice debut, we get a Level 3 Walhalance.

A Black Knight of Silver to contrast Yggdrasill being a White Knight of Silver.

BS06’s White X-Rare card. The ArmoredSacred Walhalance.

Cost 7 with 3 White Reductions, meaning you need to pay a minimum of 4 to get this into play.

It’s first effect, at all levels, is Armor Infinity. A Special kind of Armor that gives Walhalance immunity to any effect that shares a colour with a symbol on the opposing field. The only way to skirt around this is to use a card that does not share a colour with a symbol on your field, such as using a White Magic with only Red symbols on board. But this usually means you’ll be paying full cost to try get rid of Walhalance.

The effect at Level 2 and 3 is similar to Odin’s, he can exhaust Armed Machines in order to add their BP to his.

And finally, when he attacks, all opposing Spirits with 4000 BP or less return to the hand, it’s a VAST upgrade to Yggdrasill’s effect when summoned.

Supposedly, according to the Batspi.com page on Walhalance, when he came out in BS06, there was a vote, and Walhalance was ranked as the 3rd strongest card in that set.

Overall, he’s a little expensive for what he does, but he’s a good card at the time of his release.

Nowadays, haha, Powercreep is a bitch ain’t it?

Belga’s struck with a horrifying sight, failing to process the fact that the cards he expected would fall right into his hands and make him King are now being used by his opponent.

While very rare, situations where the evidence speaks for itself are certainly the most satisfying… provided it’s not contradicting something you believe to be true anyway. That’s just cause for rage.

Pretty typical response to a self-entitled individual, he’s just now realized something doesn’t belong to him, and has now defaulted to trying to take it.

And of course, since if he can take a card, then property no longer matters and he can take what he wants.

When the chips are down, he’s given in to his greed.

Thor attacks again, using his effect when attacking to exhaust Mjolnir and gain it’s current BP, putting him at 11000.

Yuuki blocks with Walhalance.

Naturally, Walhalance only has 10000 BP at Level 3, dealing with a 13000 BP Thor won’t do much.

Unlike his predecessor, Thor, Walhalance is able to use Thor’s BP gaining effect on Block as well.

This gives Walhalance Gungnir’s 4000 BP, sticking him at 14000 BP. But Belga’s made a misplay.

You see, it’s turn 14, Belga’s had 7 Core steps, and lost 3 lives. That’s 14 Total core he has available.

Of that 14 core, only 11 of it has been used. 4 for Thor’s Level 3, 2 to maintain his 2 other spirits that aren’t Fenrircannon MK-II, 2 more to maintain Mjolnir’s Level 1 (it needs 2 core to be at Level 1), and 3 to Level up Fenrircannon MK-II to Level 2

Now, even if he played Mjolnir THIS turn, Mjolnir is free with maximum reductions, if he used the 3 Core he hasn’t used yet.

The reason he hasn’t used that 3 core to level up Mjolnir is because there are now 2 Fenrircannon MK-II’s on his board. Which means he spent the 3 core that isn’t being used playing the 2nd one and levelling it up.

Had he not played the 2nd one, and just raised Mjolnir’s level to 3, Thor would be gaining 7000 BP now. Putting him at 15000 BP, far higher than Walhalance’s maximum 14000.

Why didn’t Belga do this?

Because Belga’s an idiot, and likely isn’t aware of the effects of Walhalance, this is likely meant to be a “Show, don’t tell” way of informing us, the viewers, that Belga does not give less of a shit about Walhalance enough to even know what it does, just the status that the card can give him.

When Core beliefs are challenged, it makes one’s faith in them stronger, not weaker. That’s a human defense mechanism.

Belga cannot fathom the idea that he is not fit to be this World’s King, so Walhalance’s choice must therefore be wrong.

Thor is destroyed. Shattered to pieces, much like Belga’s self-perception.

Yuuki decides this match is over, and starts to ask Kajitsu to leave.

The Silver Knights are not convinced, believing that this isn’t over.

And to a degree they’re right, Yuuki only has 1 life, and 2 blockers, Belga has 3 attackers remaining.

But even if Yuuki is in a losing position, their positions are already clear regardless of whether he wins or loses. Not to mention Yuuki supposedly wasn’t trying.

Yeah that block from Yggdrasill was kind of suspect honestly, there was no reason to want to push for such a dangerous gambit when you weren’t even in danger.

Belga’s motivation to continue vanished along with his Key Spirit, so even if he can win here. It wouldn’t change that he is neither the White Soldier, nor the rightful White King. It would be meaningless.

We got to see Thor vs Thor-but-not-really. Don’t think it was that uninteresting.

I wish less steps were skipped, the amount of flashback padding really cut into that time.

Kajitsu spots a Brilliant Rose, a Mysterious Rose and a Warm Rose, divining that Clackey, Mai and Dan have gathered.

Whoa Dan, get a room.

Checkmate, Meat-eaters.

Remember to always re-evaluate your position when presented with new information.

In other news, Zungurii succeeded at making chilled pasta.

D’aww that’s adorable, Zungurii’s taking responsibility for the fact that Clackey and Dan are arguing over the last pieces of the Curry because Zungurii’s been too busy doting on Mai thanks to her positive reinforcement.

Mai’s attempts to condition Zungurii into being her personal chef have failed thanks to Dan’s passion.

Magisa of course, is saying what we all feel like saying, “The goofiness is fun and all but there’s a whole-ass PLOT going on?”

This would make more sense coming from the lips of someone who wasn’t a fictional character speaking from a world where time has no meaning.

That certainly was an episode of Battle Spirits Shounen Gekiha Dan.

Naturally, the point of this episode was to flesh out how actually deep the relationship the Momose Siblings have with each other is.

It stresses a level of trust and loyalty that seems to go beyond just siblings and is justified in story by their shared adversity in the Human World.

The problem is the execution of this is uh… handled quite poorly, using symbolism more suggestive of romance than kinship (which, for reasons we’ll find out later, isn’t an accident) and Yuuki displaying behaviours that seem more controlling of Kajitsu than supportive (which, is probably an accident, don’t let anyone tell you nothing in stories is by accident because literally anyone can interpret anything however they want)

The only way this feels less creepy than it is, is because Kajitsu actively shows she’s content with and welcomes the way she’s regarded by her brother which would leave a more analytical person with an idea of “Well if that’s the dynamic that makes them happy then who are we to argue?”

In any case! That’s the Episode! Naturally our card of the day is our boy Walhalance! So since we’ve discussed that already, I’ll end this post here!

See you lot next time! Buh-bye!