Last episode was kind of annoying, we got barely any plot progression with the main cast, but at least we got juuuuust enough questions raised to not consider the episode completely pointless.

Anything that has Nine take centre stage is worth any amount of pain.

Seems we’ve got a J-centric episode here, “Trip to a town of romance” would suggest a love-interest showing up, but Japan uses an almost literal sense of the word “Romance” so it could also be just something that is cathartic in nature.

This paparazzi are going to chase J all the way to his god damn home country in god damn Finland.

I’d say “They’ve even tracked down his house” but I can’t think of many castles that exist in Finland, much less people that would live in them.

Those are some excellent numbers Commentator-san, but like… I’m fairly sure if we scaled the Castle down that much your Parent’s house would be tiny.

Hey, Bitch, he was making a comparison to the average house, that might be a useful statistic to have, quit knocking him down.

Roll Credits.

It appears the Episode is titled after what Batosupi TV are titling this segment.

The type of school may change but the celebrity is constant.

You can see the life leaving his eyes, let the guy just be a regular student for once, he’s already rich. He doesn’t need a camera in his face every other minute.

Kyouka is also taking part in this special, well I guess a documentary about J’s hometown would be pretty poor in terms of actual historical record if they didn’t include J’s freaking sister.

I wonder if Batosupi TV were just so happy at finally being able to go do a full documentary on J that they just dropped every single cent they had making it as special as possible.

Such that they even invited My Sunshine.

They’re lucky My Sunshine and J are friends.

It appears they’ve also invited Bashin and Striker along, Bashin makes sense given that he’s the last Tournament Champion AND he defeated J.

Striker’s… kind of an odd one out here, but J could have easily made any number of conditions for this to happen.

Bashin is so fascinated by a reindeer of all things that the director… cuts?

Wait is this a Documentary or a Movie? What script are we following? The lady has the Mic, if Bashin doesn’t have one then it shouldn’t be too hard to filter him out right?

But this documentary is in Japanese, so you’re obviously marketing it toward a Japanese audience.

It’s Finland that’s going to be judged, not you.

Finland has a small number of Reindeer, it’s not IMPOSSIBLE to have spotted one.

In an Urban area such as this though yeah I can see the problem.

There’s some pointless jibbering going on just to highlight where the animals are. They’ve got a copy of the script. Most of the scene is kind of useless though

Aibou of course forgets he’s a rodent most people want exterminated and wants to get in the castle.

Out of Aibou and Bashin, Aibou’s meant to be the level-headed one, but this time he just runs off without asking anyone else and all the animals are compelled to follow.

Not great.

Also I’m surprised Meganeko hasn’t been brought along, I guess her only appearance as a High Ranker has only been as Kiiroko so they couldn’t confirm her identity.

I never understand the need to have suits of armor adorning the halls, all it’s going to do is creep you out when you get up in the middle of the night to have a piss.

Also does this place have any WINDOWS?! Or brighter lights?!

Why is it so dark here in the middle of the day?!

This place is referred to as the “Kiano” Castle?

That’s intriguing, “Kiano” is what the “K.” in “S.K. Sawaragi” stands for.

Your father had… an interesting upbringing.

That’s never a good sign, that means that there could be any number of things lurking inside the castle that you’re unaware of.

J laments that no one currently is using the Castle whatsoever, and that his Father doesn’t actually make use of it.

I assumed S.K. was operating out of Finland which was why we didn’t see him, I guess he’s operating in Japan, but away from home?

Bashin seems to ANNOUNCE TO THE ROOM that J’s acting a bit off.

Let the guy endure his melancholy in peace.

Bashin clicks that this has something to do with J’s father and questions him on it.

Well, Bashin, he’s worried about it because he can’t NOT be.

As it turns out, situations involving family members tend to be unavoidable because they’re instrinsically linked to you via your surroundings. J can’t exactly separate him completely from his father without starting a new life entirely.

Yes but that doesn’t mean he’s going to feel good about it, what part of this are you missing you red-rioting flunky!?

Gosh I just wanna strangle him.

Bashin tries to chase after J but My Sunshine grabs him in an attempt to stop him.

It doesn’t go well and Bashin frees himself before crashing into one of the armors.

And as with all elaborate set ups, this is apparently the perfect recipe for a fucking Rube Goldberg Machine.

For those who don’t know what that is, its basically an automatic sequence designed to fulfill a simple task in an overly complex manner.

…So does anyone want to comment on the level of bullshit that just occurred?

Bashin knocked over an entire hallway’s worth of armors in such a manner that it flung a Sword into the air at JUST the right arc, and that Sword was apparently sharp enough to slice through a metal lock and open a doorway that was chained shut.

What!?

So when does Bashin just become banned from all of Finland?

the Director Cuts, but its safe to say this is one of those rooms Kyouka mentioned, being a room that they’ve never seen before.

‘Course before we see them explore it we gotta home in on what the animals are doing first.

Apparently we’ve got an intruder, someone’s decided to disguise themselves as one of the ornamental armors and is trudging around.

Though given the great locks of hair we can see, its easy to tell who this is.

The Knight apparently brings it’s attention to a painting of a woman with white hair.

It seems White Hair is a dominant feature in this family, anyone who is directly blood-related appears to have it.

Apparently the animals are… spooked by the same thing normal people are spooked by, a flash of light in the painting’s eye is enough to scare them off.

Nice to see that they’re making Bashin re-set up the stuff he broke.

Twit.

Ah, we’ve finally united the 2 scenes by returning the animals to their owners.

Oh COME ON! You’re spooked by BASHIN OF ALL THINGS HOLDING A HELMET!?

It’s not someone’s Head! You’re on the floor! You can SEE its empty!

Bashin decides the best way to Hide Aibou is by using the Helmet to conceal him from the director.

I am literally sat here waiting for something to happen and I’ll I’m getting are a bunch of fast-paced scenes that consist of nothingburgers.

My Sunshine diffuses all of these by requesting a break on behalf of everyone.

Except the Staff apparently.

Are the staff not allowed breaks on this trip? This director’s a real asshole.

Please tell me this main cast is mature enough to know that ghosts don’t exist, or at least believe so enough to understand the nature of this event being an intruder.

Does… Does Okyou not know the concept of what a painting is?

Cap points them to this Knight on the wall specifically as what they’re on about.

Geez, J’s bloodline and legacy has been maintained since the Middle Ages?

You’d think some event would cause an only child to become estranged or some other event would cause them to lose their fortune.

Not in this case, apparently.

Why are we bothering with this speculation! We saw the Knight’s HAIR! We know who it is!

The group are interrupted from their needless speculation about ghosts by THIS looker over here.

Ah, J addresses her as “Aunt”, which interestingly is “Oba-sama” in Japanese if I’m hearing that correctly.

Given the colour of her hair though, she’s likely to be the sister of J’s father.

Do all of the Sawaragis come in 2s? One girl one boy?

Since J has Kyouka and S.K. has whoever this lady is named.

Would be pretty cool if that’s lampshaded in any way.

The cast introduce themselves to her before she brings in THESE 2.

And Jesus are they uh, interestingly designed.

We appear to have Dracula gone-out-of-date and supersized Quasimodo.

They look just about ready to start a real life game of Cluedo I’m not gonna lie.

OH GOD PUT THAT AWAY, NO ONE NEEDS TO SEE THAT, THERE ARE CHILDREN PRESENT!

Hm, Kyouka and J’s positions seem switched in this instance, when it comes to the Aunt, its Kyouka that’s on edge about her while J is completely friendly towards her.

I wonder what the Aunt did to Kyouka to put her in a bad mood?

It appears that the arrangements for this castle were changed without J’s knowledge, with the Aunt becoming the “Caretaker” for the castle.

Not sure why she needs to refer to herself as “Caretaker”, she could just be saying she lives there.

To save some images, J informs the Aunt that they’re filming for television here, given this is the Aunt’s place of residence, the Aunt seems unconcerned, as this is “J’s castle”

I guess they need to have some private family chat.

Okay show, it was pretty bad when you did this last time with My Sunshine over Amade Us’ rap.

It is CONSIDERABLY worse when you use the Blush effect for J’s obedience to his Aunt.

Could you fucking NOT.

And yes there are other uses for Blush, but usually thats for embarrassment, J is far from embarrassed here.

Taking J out of the scene then this episode title has his name in it is kind of a dick move, lady.

Do we have a name for you? I’m tired of calling her “J’s Aunt”

No Ace, the answer is apparently no.

Sigh

“Auntie” will have to do.

I am REALLY curious as to what Auntie did to make Kyouka so disdainful, she’s not like that to her own Father and he’s a massive douchenozzle.

Though given how J was completely put into a trance by her, I assume that might have something to do with it.

Piss off! And don’t come back without a deck of 40 Battle Spirits cards!

Oh right, they DO infact need J for his own film.

“Damn, this is some good Tea” or something along those lines.

Kyouka does the clever thing and actually checks if J is in that room.

Oh hey, remember what I said about Cluedo?

Looks like we’ve gone from Ghost-Knights to freaking Murdery Mysteries.

And not a single ounce of this has ANYTHING TO DO WITH CARD GAMES.

CAN YOU HEAR THE ECSTASY IN MY TYPING!?

My first thought is “That is nearly not deep enough in colour for it to be blood, Blood would cause a much deeper stain, and wouldn’t be that cold a red”

But then I remember Kyouka’s 12.

Aibou apparently has the power to pick locks which has never been relevant before this moment in time and likely will not be relevant after.

The animation for this looks more like Aibou is just wiping his ass on the lock than actually picking it.

Welp, we’ve found the source of the “Bloodstain”, good ol’ fashioned Grape Jui-

Oh okay, no rules against depicting alcohol in kids shows I guess, fuck it.

Slowly narrowing things down, My Sunshine has confirmed they couldn’t have left through the window as its been locked from the inside.

At least where I live its pretty difficult to lock windows from outside of them, so if windows are locked at all, its from the inside.

Point is she has ways of telling.

What we have here is what we in the business like to call a “Locked Room Mystery”

Locked Room Mysteries are usually quite hard to solve due to the limited number of conclusions you can draw from available information.

Attempting to create any explanation for the strange turn of events that goes on within a “Locked Room” requires an explanation of how those parties entered and exited that room to leave it in the state that it is.

They’re quite interesting when used effectively.

Unless you pull this shit and then stuff stops making sense.

Locked Room mysteries are powerful because reality gets in the way of explanations like these.

Trying to cement strange occurrences in reality is why they’re good.

Kyouka is suggesting her aunt and her 2 servants left the room Bashin undid the lock on.

Which would imply that her Aunt and those servants are dead.

Have you tried this little thing we like to call Phoning her from time to time?!

Jesus, I haven’t been in contact with half my family in years, I don’t just assume they’re dead just because we haven’t spoken!

That’s a bit of a leap in logic!

Except as far as you know she hasn’t actually done anything!

She offered J some Tea, then left, you have ZERO idea that she took him to THIS specific room and even if she did remove him from here, that doesn’t mean she had an ulterior motive!

This is a bit far fetched, but the entire theory comes from Kyouka who has already expressed that she doesn’t like her, it’d be in her interest to come to conclusions that put the group in opposition to her.

And just like that, the original episode title has been rendered entirely pointless-

also LOOK HOW THEY’VE DRAWN J’S FACE!

Batosupi TV is just J’s hype squad at this point.

I know that’s meant to represent a Ghost but it just looks like Bashin’s passed Gas.

You’re not even certain it wasn’t a random ass dust cloud, this place has barely been used besides three people remember?

My Sunshine spots the Butler and gives chase, the muppet patrol also follow after her.

They end up in an empty room with no My Sunshine to be seen however.

It appears Bashin has found a card that belongs to My Sunshine but won’t bother telling OR showing us what that card may be.

And well, to be fair if its not either of her X-Rares then you can’t say it isn’t anybody elses card.

Given that it’s happened twice, I assume everyone else is just going to get picked off.

Oh they DID show us the card Bashin picked up-

…And its a CARD SUIREN HAS NEVER USED!

Bashin picked THIS card up and IMMEDIATELY asserted it was Suiren’s yet the audience is going to be completely baffled because they’re gonna be like “OH YEAH! I remember when Suiren used that card! It was… Uh… Um…”

Come ooooon.

Ugh, given this card hasn’t actually been played in an episode, I can probably review it as a new card.

Its quite simply a much stronger version of Darkwitch really. Its even from the same base set.

It’s extremely high costed, reaches max reductions at only 2 purple symbols which means most of the time you’re playing this for 5 cost and needs 3 Core for level 2 so that’s like 8 Core invested in it if you want this card’s effect live immediately.

It has a pretty nice BP total at Level 3, being 9000, that does defeat most things.

But more interesting to me is it’s family, its from the “Mounted Warrior” Family which is a family that is prominently featured and supported in White much later on, but seems to appear in various other colours before White claims it for a majority of their cards.

Even weirder is that “Mounted Warrior” is a family typically for Knights that are on mounts but eventually this will get phased out for typically “Knight”-esque cards.

We have a brief intermission then cut to a scene change, its also raining currently.

I would go on a 5-hour tangent about how much I love rain but neither me nor you have time for that.

…Probably the same way MOST people leave things behind, they forget them, or dropped them.

…With the PhantomKnight Nightrider?

Well okay, to be fair we did have one Phantom Knight case earlier its not TOO far fetched.

You’re awfully calm for someone who’s suggesting that a 13-year old popular superstar idol has been murdered

I’m with Bashin on this one, making me agree with him alone is a crime punishable by intense mockery.

I see this “Spirit World” which no one has formally interacted with until now is something which Kyouka is familiar with the intricate rules of.

Kyouka, you’re better than this, come on.

Commentator-san is slow today.

Also I got really curious because this reporter lady doesn’t actually have a name, I deigned to call her “Commentator-chan” but then I got confused reading it back.

The Wiki has thrown all fucks out the window and just called her “Female Announcer”

Announcer-chan works, I’ll roll with it.

Back to caring about other people, Striker has apparently gone missing.

No one fucking pays attention to their friends in this show do they?

You’ve entertained the thought of a 12-year old rich boy celebrity AND a 13-year old pop-idol superstar flat out DYING and none of you bothered to keep a close eye on the REST of you?

And of course the sane plan ANYONE would take is going and searching for your supposedly dead friends.

Yes, I’m aware they’re not actually dead and it would be silly to think they were but why entertain the idea so devoutly if you’re not going to follow through with what that entails!?

Conveniently in this terrible lighting, they manage to find a single one of Cap’s feathers.

Also that fucking feather is bigger than Aibou despite the fact that Cap is nowhere near that big.

It’d have to be like his BIGGEST tail feather or something.

This show doesn’t really have a sense of scale

Open door next to a feather tied to a bird from your missing friend seems related enough.

It appears we have found the gardening shed.

I’m going to hazard a guess that Striker and My Sunshine have pulled a silly and opened the gate to Isekai which is how they’re pulling this crazy disappearing act.

Because of COURSE Striker has conveniently done the same careless thing as My Sunshine.

Which is ALSO a card Striker has NEVER USED.

The Anthill IS a card we have seen before! And it was used by Number Eight! Not Striker!

Come ooooon!

What message!?

At this point, Commentator-san decides “Ayo if we’re dropping like flies then I’m out” and dips.

For uh.. those who appreciate the English language more than I do, he’s worried he’ll be the last one left over, and fucks off.

Announcer-chan is WAYYYY too happy about this bleak looking situation.

Granted, it could also be that she’s an adult with half a brain and is just milking this for all the drama that it entails.

Aibou decides NOW would be a good time to investigate the strange painting.

From a Ghost Knight talking to the painting… to the painting talking.

This Mouse has an active imagination.

Granted we know what the whole deal with involving fancy places with strange pictures.

Bashin’s half a braincell is working overtime today, he’s noticed that the eyes look strangely off and “piercing”

I actually had to go look up what a “Piercing Gaze” meant but it generally means it looks like someone is flat out looking THROUGH you with how direct the gaze is.

Finally! Kyouka’s brain has returned to her and she finally has a rational thought!

Which would imply neither the Armor NOR the painting is a ghost!

REALITY HAS ARRIVED! I can move on with my life!

Bashin does his usual “breakthrough from the front but more like break everything infront of him” deal and slides through the trap door.

I wonder who left THIS one behind given no one else has gone missing.

Geez, Bashin’s on point, he’s even noticed someone moving and is going to give chase.

We actually see a silhouette of them earlier so its easy to tell who it is, but for those who are sticking to reading I’m gonna leave you in suspense.

The REAL ghost the apparition of the Gunslinger.

Looks like we’re going to get a Bashin vs Smile fight if that look is anything to go by.

Unless a Knight comes out of bum-fuck nowhere.

Surprise to NO ONE, this Knight was in fact Eight.

Here’s a more interesting question, while its understandable why Eight might be here due to Nine’s request, why is Smile of all people chilling down here?

If he was seeking J wouldn’t he have targeted him directly?

You were wandering around in a full suit of KNIGHT ARMOR, the whole god damn CASTLE could have found you.

Apparently Smile IS there to keep an eye on J.

So in other words both Eight and Smile are here for different targets, I guess Eight is tagging along with Smile in order to keep her eyes on Bashin under the guise of aiming for the Nazo-Otona’s agreed target of J.

If only you actually followed him around, this squad could use a little more edge.

That you look like what would happen if Buddyfight’s Tetsuya Kurodake went to a Goth convention?

I mean, he’s been a little openly depressed and has absolutely every reason to be but “distant” is not the word I’d use for him, hell last episode he straight up turned up just because he was worried.

Beat his ass? Bashin IS the current reigning champion, and he proceeded to have ANOTHER battle with J after the fact before beating him AGAIN.

You were able to watch one of them! Why is J still your target!?

And they straight up piss off, no fight, no nothin’

I’m like three quarters of the way through this episode, I am skeptical I will get a fight today, which will be kinda depressing to say the least.

Where the hell did THEY come from… Wait is THAT how it looks when people return from Isekai?

That’s… An interesting way, you’d think a beam of light or something but no they just kind of fade into view from 3 different angles.

Well, apparently they vanished to play Batosupi, you know what, that’s fair.

That adds credence to my Isekai theory no less.

Text is slightly disjointed, Auntie is suggesting that they play again with Kyouka next time.

J realizes that his Aunt means to Tag battle with J’s father, her brother, but J is still not ready to forgive his dad yet.

Well at least she ain’t pushy.

See the problem with hidden doors like this is that you can never see what’s on the other side of them.

Sometimes you end up in situations like this where you’re trying to remain hidden and someone just so happens to be on the other side.

Well if it’s Smile, he’s here for you J.

So you wouldn’t give Bashin the time of fucking day but you’ll oblige J with a battle.

This guy is determined to get J on the Numbers Elite isn’t he?

The Nazo-Otonas are aware of Isekai so no reason not to make use of it here.

It’s Turn 19, J’s turn, and J has 2 Sacred Mjolnirs.

Mjolnir is a Cost 2 that requires 2 Core to maintain its Level 1 state so this is kind of a pain in the ass board if he’s not willing to give those up.

Smile here has a rather colourful assortment of Spirits.

WhiteTiger Huck and BlackTiger Kuron which are both exhausted, Kuron is new I’m pretty sure.

And Pom and Rom, Pom being new.

Vassal Orders by Cost UNLESS its an X-Rare which goes at the top so I shall use Vassal’s ordering to review, starting with Pom.

Pom has actually quite a sizeable effect so I’ll need to use one of these lovely segments for it. Its a BS02 Cost 2 Yellow Toy Beast Spirit, Yellow Cost 2 is pretty good already as Cost 2 is something Yellow likes a lot as one of its common gimmicks

What’s interesting is Pom’s ability, it supports “Clown” family spirits but they are few and far between. As such the best way to make use of its effect is to make use of another one of Yellow’s gimmicks in its second effect, having 3 or more Yellow Spirits or Nexuses in any combination (Which is not hard to achieve by any means), all your Spirits on both your field AND hand become Clowns. And they all benefit from the BP bonus.

We see here that Smile actually has 4 Spirits, so Pom’s effect is active, making Smile’s board all Clowns and gain +1000 BP.

Pom isn’t bad for the time, especially if you get multiple and the effect stacks.

And let’s not leave Kuron out, you get a special Photoshop job too.

Anyway, Kuron is exactly the same as WhiteTiger Huck in every way, the only difference being that instead of deploying White Nexuses, Kuron deploys Purple ones.

Interesting that Smile is making use of both of them, does that mean Smile has a Purple Nexus and a White Nexus that are lying in wait in his deck?

Wow, we got THIS far and we haven’t lost a life? Come on game you’re setting up some unrealistic expectations after Nine had Eight cornered at Turn 8

That’s a bit reckless, your Mjolnirs are only 3000 BP large.

That Rom could crash into them with its Level 1 BP of 3000.

Or Smile pulls the rug from under me and uses Defensive Aura.

Talk about a blast from the past. Now Rom is DEFINITELY winning.

That Pom isn’t going to be beatable either.

J manages to protect Mjolnir by using Invisible Cloak and snatches a Life from Smile (Life: 5->4)

Smile ain’t fuckin’ around, he’s finally playing his Yellow X-Rare onscreen rather than just kind of having it when he fought Card Sensei.

At Level 2, Mikafar unlocks ALL of Smile’s magic for absolutely free.

Oh we’re seeing a rather nice animation here, Mikafar’s when summoned effect is revealing 1 card for every Yellow Spirit and Nexus Smile owns, as this is his 5th Yellow Spirit he can check the top 5.

All Magic will go to his hand.

The fun part about the reveal effects in Battle Spirits is that it actually gives us insight into what else is in their deck without them playing them. Piyon and Arcanabeast-Ken is pretty run of the mill, and while we haven’t seen it played, we’ve seen The BlossomChild Lip among the cards Meganeko owns which also fits in with the 3 Yellow Spirit/Nexus strategy Smile is now bumping.

That last Spirit next to it though is one we haven’t seen before, and it’s probably one of the most memed cards in Today’s game.

It’s PENTAN!

Pentan is quite a popular card, so much so it got its own deck type, and continues to see occasional support.

But it all started here, the original Pentan, a Drifting Spirit and Song Bird Family Yellow Spirit from BS02.

Much like the others, it also needs 3 Yellow Spirits and Nexuses available to use, and the benefit it gives is providing Yellow reductions equal to its level to all your Magic.

This makes any kind of magic rather viable in Yellow, and this isn’t the only card that does this sort of thing, which is why Yellow is considered the Colour of Magic.

Anyway, where were we, oh right, Smile has only one target for Mikafar’s reveal, and that’s Binding Woods.

He’s right, if Binding Woods exhausts J’s remaining White Spirit, he’ll have enough Spirits for game.

But J is known for running both Pure Elixir AND Silent Wall, Silent Wall being one of his specialties.

I doubt this will get through.

Naturally, Smile instantly plays it and declares White.

Smile skipping the pleasantries of Flash Timing, he swings with everything.

Even gets 4 of J’s lives too.

Mikafar aims for J’s final life.

New card!? OH BOY!

My suffering has been rewarded.

Behold, one of the new White Magics from BS03, comparable to Double Hearts in both Cost, Reduction and ability.

Its like Shadow Elixir but White and with twice the juice.

The lives come from your reserve so there’s no net gain in Core, And you need 2 Core in your reserve left over to maximize the effect, but its still quite good for getting out of pinches, 3 lives is much harder to finish off than 1.

J takes a life, what would have been from 5 to 0 instead left J with 2 lives thanks to High Elixir.

It’s J’s key spirit, The Gigantic Thor. Summoned at Level 3.

And with 2 Mjolnir being able to attack by themselves and each one refreshing Thor, that’s about 5 attacks I reckon.

And since Smile has no blockers and 5 life this smells like victory.

That’s.. .an interesting one. And that isn’t new, its from BS02

It appears this is J’s answer to Bashin’s previous counterplan of destroying Mjolnir before Thor can refresh. By granting his Mjolnir’s Armor, they can’t be sniped while Thor is attacking.

Also, mild hilarious card spoiler, Blue was not released until BS03, yet this BS02 card granted Armor against Blue Cards.

WUT.

The Subber makes a very mild mistake here but when you’re literally tracking everything a character is saying and transcribing it, its understandable.

J very quickly states “Kiiro Shiro” or “Yellow White”, basically stating that without Yellow or White cards, Mjolnir is sticking which is correct. The Subber just misses out the “White” segment of this part.

Interestingly, if it WAS only Yellow that Smile could use to respond (which is likely given he’s a Yellow player but otherwise failed to go through with it) you get some very interesting foreshadowing, infact I think with only Yellow and White (the only 2 colours J runs in his current deck) this is strong foreshadowing anyway.

You’ll see why in later episodes.

As they say in the business. “Get wrecked”

J goes full combo, and Smile loses.

Oh?…

Smile is… Actually having a breakdown over his string of losses!

Holy shit this was really needed, I’m glad the Writers caught this.

Smile so far has been unfazed by his string of losses but now it’s finally gotten to him, this is a pretty heavy breakdown over losing, I think the biggest we’ve seen.

The voice actor is hamming this up as well, its really good.

Wow J, just twist the knife while it’s in there why don’t ya?

Is… Is his name a Mask for how he’s feeling?

He HAS been bottling his stress over losing, this line is a fairly decent indicator of that. He’s been using his name to continue being whatever he’s trying to portray himself as.

J apparently finds the reveal of Smile’s vulnerabilities as the first time Smile has been “Interesting”

I’m sorry wasn’t this the guy who throttled you over having new cards you weren’t familiar with? Did you never think “Huh, wonder where he got those from?”

Nope, this guy who’s been a walking tower of strength and mystery just wasn’t interesting to you.

Damn, I guess rich people DO have better shit to worry about.

J asking the REAL questions.

It was a fucking yes or no question, the fuck are you asking THAT for?

Oh, J has dropped the offer. If Smile is serious about defeating Uchuuchouten then he’s more than happy to team up with him.

Well we haven’t confirmed he was the Ghost, just that he was beyond the walls.

…Okay THIS time the audience knows Smile uses Pom, but the cast have never seen Smile make use of that card before this episode I’m fairly sure.

You… You realize anyone can play Yellow nowadays.

It was just as likely to be Meganeko as it was smile.

Even KYOUKA has Yellow cards-

wait… what? I thought Kyouka played Red.

Why would J give Kyouka a Yellow card?… Well why would Smile give J a Yellow card I guess, but that one supports White, this one…

I actually dunno, let’s have a look.

Well, this card isn’t going in a Red Main that’s for sure.

It is an interesting card that’s quite powerful on it’s own merit though, I’ll discuss its effects more in depth if it actually gets used.

We didn’t need 28 episodes to tell us this piece of information, we’ve known since episode 1.

I did suggest one possibility, being Isekai.

And right on cue, they’ve returned.

My Sunshine and Striker explain that they got caught up in battles against the Butler and Gardener.

Also dayum, the Butler has a TwinRowdy Diranos, don’t come by those very often.

The Gardener is apparently a competent While Player on top of that.

Lemmings, the lot of them.

Yep, a rare blessing really. Beats watching you throw a Diranos or a Siegfried at every problem.

Oh damn, I almost completely forgot about how late we were into the episode for anything relevant happened, damn.

Well honestly that was rather slow, anything of interest tended to happen towards the end and the rest was kind of just waiting for stuff to happen.

I think 2 key points here is J’s Aunt’s introduction, I’m unsure if it will have any relevance outside of this episode, and the fact that J has shown a willingness to team up with Smile if he’s serious about taking on Uchuuchouten.

Honestly, Smile would have probably made a much better Yellow Cornerstone Holder if only for the sake of drama, but I also don’t want to axe Meganeko out of her plot usefulness, I just feel like the Drama of a Cornerstone Holder working for Uchuuchouten would have been much nicer.

Otherwise, nothing else particularly of interest. Onto the Card of the Day.

Its apparently High Elixir.

I think the card doesn’t really hold up in today’s game whatsoever, I’m not sure if it held up back then either since I wasn’t playing back then.

It requires at minimum a 7 core investment to get it’s maximum effect, and the best time to use it is on your opponent’s turn but trading in 7 core that you could be using to get closer to winning in exchange for making your opponent have to work harder to win is probably not the best use of 7 core.

Other than that, I think it fits White very well, having many lives is a form of defense after all.

Anyway, I’ll see you all next time! Buh bye!

Apparently, I’ve been TOO NICE the previous few episodes.

I have mellowed out, and honestly that just ain’t good enough.

So here we go, Angry Ace, back in “Rip and Tear” segment of reviews!

Let’s GO-

So as if to signal that we’re in the latter half of the series, effectively it’s second “Season” so to speak. We have a new intro now featuring both Meganeko AND My Sunshine together.

It appears My Sunshine hasn’t quite finished completing her resignation, as she seems to be finishing up a rehearsal.

Was it?

Cuz apparently your own idol doesn’t seem to think so, that DOOR SLAM.

I’d say “Then what’s the problem” but when the Line can only go up, you don’t want to feel like you’ve hit your peak.

There’s a saying. “Find a Job you love and you’ll never work a day in your life”

Other people advise you to follow your passion when it comes to looking for work.

Unfortunately passions are things you choose to do, in your own time, once you turn it into work, you can no longer choose to do it, you must do it, and that can kill the passion.

As such, more realistic people will tell you to find something you are GOOD at. Because it will be the easiest to get work in, as you’re talented at it. Even if you dislike it, you’ll have an easier time than someone else.

Pink seems almost DELIGHTED that My Sunshine is having what appears to be Artist’s Block.

I understand you’re being supportive but don’t sound so enthusiastic.

Pink makes the excellent suggestion of filling the void with some Battles.

While I would love that suggestion I am quite literally starved for new cards right now, I need something to sink my teeth into.

Blasphemy!

The Manager gets My Sunshine’s attention juuuuust long enough to apparently introduce her to someone new.

He’s got a curious design… which reminds me of something…

Oh right, I HAVE watched this episode before…

…Oh no.

Oh no…

It appears Bashin’s having Builder’s block, trying to optimize his deck, and can’t really think of anything that could improve it.

To be honest he’s got a hefty amount of good cards.

2 X-Rares in The DragonEmperor Siegfried and The TwinRowdy Diranos which can power up and generate a large number of Awaken Spirits.

He’s got the Plateau of Duel for some nice defensive measures, and The Ancient Fault along with Dinohound to generate large amounts of BP with even small Spirits.

It’s, from what I can tell, a good deck.

Well we just got Blue, which means we’re in BS03 territory, its possible to spice it up with some new cards.

Wait, so everything Aibou is fishing through consist of cards that aren’t Red?

We’re not gonna go back to that again are we…

No no no, I CANNOT do this again!

Uuuuughhh..

As much as the concept was interesting before I think I’m getting War Flashbacks to the last time this freaking happened. At least Aibou has a specific card in mind and we haven’t seen it used, so let’s review it.

A Yellow Magic from BS02, Aibou is suggesting Bashin uses “Royal Potion”

It’s not a bad suggestion, Bashin has both Eyeburn and Dinohound, quite good Cost 2s in his deck.

That’s not even mentioning The Ancient Fault which powers them up for him, this card wouldn’t be that bad. It does have the downside of doing the same for the opponent however.

I do find it interesting that Yellow Cards are now readily available that even Bashin has them now, All Yellow users up til now, namely J, Smile and Meganeko are either Nazo-Otonas or have a connection to them.

I already went over Colour mixing the first time around, I won’t do it again.

Bashin has some apprehension against mixing colours because Red is “Working” for him, which is fair.

But one Cost 4 Magic that is out of colour won’t bloody kill you.

That being said, I do think Aibou could really have suggested a better card, Royal Potion only works if Bashin has his Cost 2s, otherwise it’s a brick.

It appears this Red-Head is a Music Critic.

I am not sure why I’m saying “It appears”, I’ve seen this episode, I don’t like it one bit, you’re about to see why.

He seemed so wise and stuff up until this point.

I had to suffer through watching this animated, at least be thankful you don’t have to HEAR it.

This specific set of animations plays frequently, this is Amade Us.

And he’s a Rapper.

Any time he talks he’ll open with his “Us! Ore! Ore! A-Ma-De-U~S” before making some kind of japanese rhyme.

Bit eccentric.

He does have a bit of a resting bitch-face though.

Only probably?

Maybe its just my hindsight from realizing what’s going to happen but this guy already seems like he’s going to get annoying quick.

Amade Us goes on another rapping tirade that I will happily skip for you, but he identifies that My Sunshine’s “Trouble” is that she can’t come up with a new song.

Please for the love of god do NOT make that face.

Hard to tell from the image but that’s now My Sunshine who seems to believe that Amade Us might be “amazing”

Whatever Amade Us is doing its had an effect on My Sunshine.

Pink is rightfully losing his shit considering Amade Us’ entire initial introduction was just him rapping infront of My Sunshine.

My Sunshine seems to believe Amade Us can get her out of her Artist’s Block.

Yeah when someone produces absolute trash and compares it to your own work, you can definitely see how well you’re doing.

But given her face earlier, she probably genuinely thinks he’s a good music critic.

In a Scene jump away from this, Bashin and Aibou are STILL arguing about Bashin’s use of a different colour.

And you know what I agree with Bashin if only because the FIRST time they had this argument we had probably one of the LEAST useful episodes in this entire series.

I do NOT want a repeat of that, but given Amade Us exists I doubt I will get my wish granted.

Which you feel he can only do if he uses other colours.

No we’re definitely talking about using a different colour.

Yeah if a Pink Chameleon revealed itself and just appeared infront of me I’d be pretty damn spooked as well.

Pink seems to be explaining the situation to everyone else, the short version being that My Sunshine has Artist’s Block and doesn’t want to play Battle Spirits to get away from it.

I haven’t seen any mention of Amade Us anywhere or any reference to the music critic yet so I’m going to hold off on assuming Pink has explained that.

When Card games have given you a fucking TALKING PET, not wanting to play Card Games is a pretty big deal yes.

This is obviously ignoring the fact that this is a Card Game anime and therefore NOT playing Card Games is not an option.

I’m… pretty sure that’s backwards, stupid artists wouldn’t be bothered, genius artists are smart enough to be concerned.

Striker’s trying to relate, given that he had his entire Sports career ruined, and he was real good at that.

…Before being interrupted by Okyou.

I’m going to strangle this Cat, YOU’RE the reason he even relates you little shit.

Welp, our group of idiots have decided to resolve themselves to help out My Sunshine.

Given this mention of her being a “Different person” I think its safe to assume Pink has mentioned Amade Us.

Scene-jumping to the scene of the crime, it appears our cast of muppets have figured out a way of avoiding the guards.

By wearing backstage pass stickers.

One would think they’d have come up with this before, but wouldn’t a Guard want to question why 3 12-year olds have Backstage passes?

I’m not sure why you’re explaining that to him, its written on the-

This fucking guy couldn’t hit water if he fell out of a boat.

J clears his throat and says the cast really shouldn’t be doing this.

I didn’t see him with them, Okyou was alone in the Batosupi centre.

J is apparently flustered about this for some… odd reason.

Also WHAT wrong idea!? What is happening.

This is being told awfully.

I’m going to hazard a guess that J is trying to pass his presence off as trying to keep them in check because he knows they’re up to something, while in actual fact he’s worried and wants to help them.

It appears they’ve found her room, time to see what the damage is-

It appears Amade Us has infected her with the curse of rap.

Though it appears like she’s just using Amade Us’ previous rhyme from earlier so not very creative there.

Do addicts look bothered when they’re getting a fix?

Yes, you totally can.

It’s not a very good one but that’s not the point.

Meganeko, My Sunshine’s biggest fan is in LITERAL TEARS from how bad this is.

Alright squad, grab your stuff, we’re going to break Amade Us’ kneecaps.

Is what I would say if he wasn’t entirely safe from me being a fictional character.

Okay listen, Rap is kinda catchy and all but it’s not anywhere NEAR that powerful to turn someone into a rapper when they’ve been a cutesy idol SINGER the entire time.

And the Sea is fucking Blue J, what else is new?

That’s never a good sign. The guy’s probably had an all-expenses trip to get there, and maybe even a free lunch!

Though it appears that perhaps Amade-san was on the other end of that phone call, either that or he had someone on the inside vouch for him.

What kind of people do we know that can infiltrate other professions while turning out to not be what they seem, adults that are inherently mysterious… hmmmmm…

Nope, can’t put my finger on it, I guess we’ll have to wait for the show to catch up.

At least we won’t have to wait long, the squadron of soon-to-be-middle-schoolers are confronting the muppet.

Do you have to rap every line!? Why can’t you just be evil!?

It only took WAY too long to get this far, Amade Us is aware of My Sunshine’s Alter Ego, Suiren.

It only took half an episode to come to THAT conclusion.

And now everything starts to get worse, as Striker has fallen into Amade Us’ flow and is ALSO rapping.

Not even Meganeko is safe from beginning to feel like a Rap God, Rap God.

Uh oh.

MAKE IT STOP!

J, who’s apparently so absorbed into this turn of events has even whipped out a SPARE MIC to facilitate his Rap.

Has he just been popping up with that incase he ever gets to do a duet with My Sunshine?

also that POSE!

They’ve discovered that this is apparently a joke episode and are going as far as they can to make me suffer during it.

You’ve seen it 4 times now, I don’t think that needed explaining.

You don’t get off that easy kitty, if my eyes have to burn watching this, yours do too.

Because Bashin has this lovely thing we like to call “Plot Armor”

It’s quite easy to come by, its made by “fictionalium”, most characters in anime don’t even realise they have it on their person.

They’ve been so engrossed by this Rap they’re calling upon memes from the FUTURE.

Look at em! They’re T-Posing for Dominance!

Even the CHAMELEON is in on it.

I’m not going to show any frames beyond this one but he does shift into his Camo mode a couple times, and notably his voice changes when he does, kind of interesting.

That “Oh dear! Look here” is a segment from Pink’s Rap however, and it seems to have some effect on our rap engrossed Battlers.

So now we have a lovely sequence of Pink and Amade Us having a fucking Rap battle that I’m going to skip.

Amade Us is crazy confused how he’s getting out-rapped by a fucking LIZARD.

I think encouraging whatever the hell THIS is would be a crime against humanity.

Okyou your feelings are not unrequited, I don’t fucking know what the point of entertaining this is either.

COME ON, IS MY ONLY SOLACE IN BASHIN OF ALL PEOPLE!?

Finally its over… Now can… can we JUST have some card games?

YES.

PLEASE.

HAVE A HEART.

Oh we actually get a short animation of the Battlefield forming again.

It appears Amade Us plays a Green deck, he’s got nothing new on his end however.

Same for Bashin, though I don’t think we’ve ever formally seen him use Orcaria before. We’ve seen it used by other battlers.

3 lives remaining, nice.

Bashin ain’t playin’ around, playing The TwinRowdy Diranos at Level 3.

Alright don’t you fucking start, you’ve ruined this show, let alone episode enough as it is.

Oh that’s interesting, Amade Us has cards that aren’t green in his deck, he’s using Flame Tempest.

Its full cost but you know, this is Turn 19, who even cares.

This is the unrealistic part of all this turn skipping coming into play.

All but 1 of Bashin’s Spirits are safe from this, namely the attacking Diranos

Also unsure if that was the best move given Amade Us also axed his own board.

Given Diranos is now undeterred, Amade Us has to take a life.

This does mean that Bashin has no blockers, and with only 3 lives Amade Us can win by playing 3 Spirits.

Which is exactly what he was aiming for, apparently.

In spite of having many cards, he only plays 2 spirits.

And he plays a new green card from BS03.

It’s not particularly remarkable, it DOES have a hefty 4000 BP at Level 2 with only 2 Core though, not the worst vanilla we’ve seen.

Notably, Amade Us colour mixing, Green, Red and now Purple.

Stagscissor and Bat-Bat attack, Bashin takes from the life but no animation is played for him losing them.

Either way, Bashin has 1 life remaining after these attacks land.

On the Flash timing of whatever the second attack is, Amade Us plays “Deadly Balance”

We’ve seen this card before, Bashin will be forced to give up one of his own spirits, and afterwards, Amade Us will have to give up a Spirit.

With his small fry wiped out by Flame Tempest, Bashin doesn’t have much choice other than to destroy TwinRowdy Diranos.

Which is pretty good maneuvering on Amade Us’ part, consecutive magic to force Bashin to make a poor decision.

I’d complain about the order of attacks but if Stagscissor attacks second this literally doesn’t matter, Bat-bat is destroyed.

…But its okay when Suiren does it?

I’m fairly sure that was the last person to use Deadly Balance.

I just applauded you for NOT doing this, show, don’t make me out to be a liar.

KidWithBullshitPlotArmorSaysWhat.

But Bashin’s face isn’t filled with excitement, it’s confusion.

That’s, an interesting response.

So Bashin plays 3 Dinohounds straight up, yeah that’d be pretty surprising to have on hand.

Not like he can swing with anything else.

Amade Us exhausts a Dinohound with Binding Thorn.

Granted he’s only got 2 lives left, Binding Thorn by itself won’t be enough to save him.

That, on the other hand, will. Amade Us plays a freaking MachG to chumpblock the Dinohound.

Toasty.

Second verse, same as the first, MachG is swift summoned and blocks the last Dinohound, resulting in Bashin taking exactly 0 lives off of Amade Us.

Now he’s got a bunch of exhausted Cost 2s, you know what would fix that?

Imagine snatching a card from someone because you DON’T want to use it and then slotting it into your deck anyway despite protesting the entire time.

Complete innatentiveness to the contents of his own deck.

You know, its kind of nice knowing that the first out-of-colour card Bashin ends up using is a Yellow one, given that’s Meganeko’s colour.

All Dinohounds are refreshed.

And Amade Us flails by summoning a 3rd MachG that won’t save him.

Here’s my question, Bashin was brought to 1 life following the Deadly Balance combo, why didn’t Amade Us just PLAY THE MACHG’S THEN!?

Bashin’s hand consisted of, what I can only think to be 2 Dinohounds before he double drew into the 3rd one and Royal Potion. And not to mention Amade Us had 3, if he responded to 1 he could just summon the other on the resultant flash timing, and Bashin only had 2 opportunities to counter while Amade Us had 3 MachG.

This maketh no sense.

It ain’t enough, Bashin takes Amade Us’ last life.

Its finally over.

Bashin tries to thank Aibou for the Yellow card that was given to him.

Except that wasn’t what saved you Bashin, Amade Us getting cold feet and keeping his 3 MachG in his hand instead of killing you with them is what saved you.

Why did it take a fake music critic jeopardizing My Sunshine’s Idol career and mentally manipulating your friends through the medium of Rap for you to fucking agree to use some other god damn colours.

Amade Us doesn’t stop rappin’ for NOBODY.

He does drop off a card before bolting though, strange, I’m not sure there are any Red X-Rares in BS03.

Yeah, BS03 only gave X-Rares to Green, White, Yellow and Blue.

So what the hell did he give Bashin?

Alright, Rapping the entire show and filling it with padding is one thing, but you DO NOT jip me out of a card review by handing Bashin an ECLAIR Card!

That awful moment aside, we now have an explanation for why Bashin wasn’t affected by Amade Us’ rap.

He suffers from Amusia, specifically beat deafness.

So because he couldn’t keep the beat with Amade Us, he couldn’t be enveloped in his rap.

This is… an interesting flaw to give your main character but it kind of sucks if it never comes into play at any other point in the series.

And you may consider this a plot hole because he’s a fan of My Sunshine, but those with Beat Deafness can actually sing in tune. And Bashin can recognize different pitches and tones so it is still possible for him to enjoy music.

Meganeko, its cute that you’re worried about him, however the worst that will happen is that Bashin will be unable to Rap, and subsequently, unable to Dance.

Why are you thanking him? It’s not like he asked to have it.

His Rap WAS better. And is the only reason they were able to be pulled out of Amade Us’ flow.

But it was still a Rap and I still had to hear it.

Pink attempts to try another Rap and finds he can’t do it. Thank God.

And nothing of value was gained.

Literally, no warning, just BAM.

Nine’s face.

I love you Nine but not THAT much, holy shit.

It appears Nine and Eight are having some antagonism between each other.

It appears Nine is trying to make a subordinate out of Eight, and Eight doesn’t really like the idea of answering to Nine.

What do you plan to do if she just says no?

WHOA, THERE’S NOTHING IN IT FOR YOU IF YOU WIN, WHY ARE YOU ENTERTAINING THIS!?

Apparently we’re doing this, interestingly its only Turn 8. Very tame for this show.

UM.

Right, sorry, Nine has only a DragonicFortress Giga, but the issue here is that they’re in Isekai…

Neither of them holds a Cornerstone, and the animal companions are required to open the gate to Isekai.

So how the hell did they get there?… That’s a bit of a gaping plothole.

Eight here has Bat-Bat and a new Spirit, I believe that’s Hellscorpio.

In the same vain as Stagscissor, its a Vanilla, and not a particularly interesting one.

Nine drops Invisible Cloak. DragonicFortress Giga is now unblockable for this turn.

Nine declares Eight’s Life total, 1 life by turn freaking 8? That’s impressive.

And makes me wonder how we get to Turn 21 with players having 4 or so lives remaining.

Come on show.

Either way, Nine appears to have game here.

Nine responds with Shadow Elixir, I do not believe we have seen this card before.

Which is interesting because I believe its from first set.

A Cost 4 Purple Magic from Base set that lets you gain a life from your Reserve, very easy to use in place of a chump block.

You effectively negate an attack by using this card, it’s pretty good.

But I have an inkling as to why this won’t work here.

When you hear those 6 syllables, you know you’re fucked.

And Nine plays a new BS03 Magic.

For those of you who have only watched as far as these blogs go, and haven’t played the game, you’re likely wondering what this means.

I’ve mentioned in the past that Nexuses have symbols, and that reduction for cards in your hand are fulfilled by the number of symbols you have on your field, represented in the corner of the card.

For example here, The DragonicFortress Giga has only one symbol.

Thus, it provides one Red reduction, but symbols also mean something else in Battle Spirits.

And that is, the amount of lives that Spirit takes when your opponent responds to its attack by taking it from the life.

Double Hearts grants a Spirit one additional symbol of a type it already has, meaning a Spirit that would normally take one life, now takes two.

The situation now is that there is a double-symbol DragonicFortress Giga that is unblockable aiming for Eight’s life.

Quite often in Battle Spirits, they actually represent this on the card itself, it’s quite cool.

With no answer to Nine’s sheer awesomeness, Eight loses.

You can always count on Nine to shake up everything, he defeated Suiren quite soundly using a notably different Magic from the ones Bashin uses, and has now introduced the concept of Multi-Symbol spirits.

Nine is awesome, and anyone who says otherwise is going to feel the blunt end of my boot.

From Nine’s dialogue, its no secret that he’s specifically interested in Bashin. From making use of his catchphrase and X-Rare to defeat Suiren quite soundly, to specifically focusing on him when the other Nazo-Otonas wish to bring J into their ranks.

He’s almost like a distant father.

Considering how easy it was for Card Sensei, I’m sure the Nazo-Otonas have favours they can call in to make Eight a teacher.

That question’s quite a toughie, Nine could lie and say “yes” but it would become apparent very soon that it was a lie.

Eight is aware that Nine’s interest in Bashin is unique to Nine, and that Uchuuchouten isn’t sanctioning this activity.

Nine hasn’t said much other than attempting to get Eight to honour her promise, so its unlikely we’ll get this answer out of him, but the fact that she’s dropped the question is also an insert into the audience’s mind that Nine DOES want something from observing Bashin, and only Nine knows what it is.

Its a good way to make this otherwise mysterious character even more mysterious, we get little tidbits about him that only serve to produce more questions.

He’s written well, I like it.

And even when he DOES speak its cryptic and produces even MORE questions.

What is this friendship he wants to renew? And with who? And how is THAT related to Bashin.

I can’t even be mad, I love this stuff.

We’re jumping back to My Sunshine’s Live again, let’s see how this goes.

My Sunshine turns up in her RAP get-up again, because of course she does.

Take that thing off you muppet, you’re not possessed anymore.

The funny part is she ONLY takes off the shirt, gains a dress where she was wearing baggy pants earlier, AND spawns gloves.

Unrealistic anime expectations honestly.

And that’s the episode!

We’re cut off before My Sunshine starts her new song, but its fine in the sense that it cues into the Ending theme as we get a new one this episode.

Its quite catchy too. But enough about that.

Our card of the day appears to be the card Nine used to completely destroy Eight, Double Hearts.

We’ve gone over the concept of Double Hearts and what it does, so I guess I can talk about it. Its a pretty nasty surprise card if your opponent lacks blockers, and can steal a win out of nowhere, but you’ll notice the sheer expense you have to offer up to play it. You have to pay at LEAST 5 core just to use this thing and all it does is grant an extra symbol for a turn.

That being said the scariest thing you can stick an extra symbol on is a card that can attack multiple times, making that symbol worth way more in the long run.

For example, imagine J using this card on his Gigantic Thor before starting his multi-refresh combo, Thor would potentially take 2 lives every time it swung.

It’s quite nasty. Nowadays though this card is completely useless, and that’s because extra symbols can be gained through… much cheaper ways.

Unfortunately that card type is a spoiler, so I will not address it until we see it.

Until next time!

The best time to start this post was after I posted the last one.

The second best time, was now.

Let’s get into it.

This title is gloriously unhelpful, I believe the only relevance is that the Season is Springtime, which Sakura blooms in.

The School year in Japan ends in March and begins in April, Sakura blooms here, so the only relevance this title has is the graduation which we already know about.

This is good, not knowing what’s going on in the episode, is good.

Behold, they are graduating.

I am quite de-sensitized to stuff like graduation, probably because very few of my friends carried over from one stage of school to the next. So I just got used to it.

Yeah, time for Card Sensei to work for his screentime.

This is certainly a revelation, Meganeko has spent the FIRST HALF of this entire series wearing Glasses.

This would be significantly more meaningful if Meganeko had actually made a fucking misplay at ANY POINT during the Tournament earlier that would have been resolved by actual reading.

That hasn’t happened, and I get what they’re going for, they’re trying to show development by updating her design, but this feels a bit forced.

This isn’t going to be awkward taken out of context, not at all.

This ISN’T MAKING IT BETTER

THANK GOD THE CONTEXT HAS ARRIVED.

What I find interesting about Meganeko’s Eye design here is that her Contacts are represented by a line running through them when I’m pretty sure most contacts shouldn’t be visible whatsoever.

Its hard to see where she’s looking due to them.

I guess you can’t be called “Glasses Girl” if you don’t have Glasses.

Then just call her “Kiiroko”, which is evidently meant to be a shorthand for “Kiiro” meaning “Yellow” and “On’nanoko” meaning “Girl”.

So “Yellow Girl”…

…Wait a sec they’re Japanese…

Oh god dammit. Time to refrain from translating “Kiiroko” like EVER.

Identification doesn’t NEED context however. As long as she recognizes you’re talking to her, “Meganeko” is fine.

Bashin gets startled by Nanarin speaking, but Aibou seems LESS surprised, and even moreso, appears to recognise Nanarin’s got a Cornerstone.

But if Aibou was aware that Nanarin had a Cornerstone then he should have ALSO been aware that Meganeko had Battling potential… Is Aibou in no rush to gather Cornerstones?

Nope, I have absolutely zero-fucking-clue, because not a single one of you has GOD DAMN EXPLAINED IT TO ME.

TO WHAT END YOU LITTLE RAT!?

BUT FOR WHAT?!

I’m losing my grip on my shit.

Ah good, nice to know I’m not the only one in the fucking Dark over here.

But being in the same camp as Bashin is probably the reasons my brain cells feel like they’re shriveling.

And that’s just rude… Why would you say that to ANYBODY?

…The Battlefield?

What is the god damn purpose of this FIGHT!? YOU FOUGHT LAST EPISODE

NOTHING HAS CHANGED

STOP!

I am hoping and praying that Turn 21 means this will be over soon.

That’s a relatively large board of weenies, 2 Piyons, Arcana-Beast Ken, Rom and the Fairy Tanya

And slightly less weenies on Bashin’s end with Goradon, Lizardedge and Rokceratops.

A ton of weenies and 2 lives? This game is begging to end!

Not that it should have even started but I guess we can only move forward.

Bashin’s setting up to defend with Siegfried it appears, with The Plateau of Duel and Siegfried.

POWERIN’ UP

This attack is pretty free considering The Plateau of Duel will make it so Siegfried is ready to block later. Doing this first means Bashin will lose the least if Meganeko, say, tries to pre-emptively end Bashin’s Attack Step.

Meganeko eats that life like a champ.

Bashin has no wayh of pushing for game here so his turn is over.

Siegfried is refreshed thanks to the Plateau of Duel.

One of Meganeko’s key cards, The Sealed Spellbook hits the field.

And a Magic to go with it, I’d show a graphic with the effect but I think Meganeko is going to explain the effect for me.

Well, she explained it, just not the best.

In any case, the card prevents Cost 6 and 8 Spirits from attacking or Blocking, the Flash effect there gives a +2000 BP power boost (which coming off a card which you can pay 1 for is pretty good)

And this card is going to prevent Bashin’s Cost 1 or less spirits from attacking or Blocking.

With that, only those with a Cost of 2,3,4,5,7 and 9+ can attack or block.

Which is… pretty broad now that I think of it, this doesn’t cover a lot of bases, it just specifically ruins Bashin.

Certified Kyouka Moment.

Bashin you were there for the Gunslinger, you should know why this is not a good idea.

Bashin, for whatever reason, hears the call of Siegfried after making that consideration.

I mean you’re dead anyway, the only difference is whether or not you wanna blow up your board on the way there.

Was this meant to be their attempt at showing the power of reading when Meganeko made absolutely 0 reading-based mistakes in her play in the last few episodes?

I hate it.

Screw it, next scene, get me away from here.

PAAAAAARTAAYYYYYY

Here’s a thought, after school, or on weekends, you go to the GOD DAMN CARD STORE AND PLAY SOME GAMES.

What part of this requires care? Are you afraid of homework!?

Screw homework, I hate homework. I am glad to be in a stage of my life where I never have to do another piece of homework again.

The muppets finally arrive.

The cast don’t recognise her immediately because her oversized glasses are not present.

Losing our shit phase 2, triggered in response to her showing off her Cornerstone.

This is just a sequence of “WTF” from everybody, they’ve been hit by three “AYO WHAT!?” moments in quick succession.

Damn, everyone out here being like “Haha that’s so funny” while Suiren’s just bein’ a fucking character.

Timeskip to a short while later as Suiren vanishes to take on her “My Sunshine” persona.

This is kind of funny.

My Sunshine’s Chick costume’s bright yellow coloration is what inspired Meganeko to later choose Yellow for her deck, and then later when trying to become a battler she modeled herself after Suiren, who was ALSO My Sunshine.

So all walks of Meganeko’s character development into a Battler has mostly been induced by Suiren, whom Meganeko completely idolizes, even when she doesn’t know it’s her.

Its a short sequence but I see it’s purpose, they’re trying to quickly erase the same revelations everyone else has already had to avoid repeating sequences and getting Meganeko on board with the plot.

Of course, its not just one sided, Meganeko has CONTRIBUTIONS to make!

Ah yes, this ol’ juicy lemon. The cast have to contend with the fact that Card Sensei is part of the group who are working behind the scenes doing… SOMETHING involving Battle Spirits.

To J this must be creepy as all hell, a Curator he was friends with turned out to be a Nazo-Otona, who work for the Thousand Spirits Group, Elliott and Smile are also members of that group who have delivered him cards before so he knows they have access to some area of the game they enjoy, and now a Teacher at Toaru Elementary, of which 3 Cornerstone Holders come from, have a Nazo-Otona.

I skipped a shot thinking it wasn’t relevant but it turned out to be SUPER relevant. But it appears J has come to the conclusion that Card Sensei remained their Teacher in order to keep watch on them and update Uchuuchouten on their status.

And out of what I can only discern to be absolutely bum-fuck nowhere, Kyouka pops out, with BOTH her parents.

This guy looks to be animated a tad weird, but there’s a reason from that, he’s FINNISH.

Battle Spirits has been relatively multicultured from the very start, it’s pretty cool actually.

This guy seems mightily pleased to be meeting Bashin of all people.

Also I haven’t shotted these in, but he seems to have a speaking mannerism where he starts all of his sentences with “Ya, Ya, Ya” or as shomentoppa has translated: “Well, well, well…”

It appears to be a tick while he looks for the words to say, makes sense for someone who likely doesn’t speak Japanese as a first language.

I’m not sure if its obvious from this shot but J is actually leaving the conversation.

And the fact that Mr. Sawaragi- Ah screw it I’ll use his name, S. Kiano Sawaragi, I’ll stick with S until an actual proper name other than “Tou-san” pops up.

Anyway the fact that S doesn’t even notice while addressing the Card Battlers indicates that earlier compliment wasn’t for J.

Kind of a dick.

From what it appears, because Card Sensei has had to confront both Smile AND Uchuuchouten in spite of the fact that he’s been trying to avoid them for this long. He’s leaving to separate himself from everything.

I guess his declaration of resignation wasn’t very well accepted by King Uchuuchouten if he’s just going to vanish.

We are scene-hopping a LOT today aren’t we? Appears that Nine has been delivered somewhere near the Battle Spirits Stadium.

Along with Eight apparently, and whatever task they have to perform they need to do in Three Hours and go back somewhere.

Bashin somehow gets lost again in J’s house, but S is able to find him quite easily.

To the discerning eye, S looks like an S-Class cunt.

He only comes down to see his kids when they graduate, so that’s once a year, and he’s spending THIS time around scouting Bashin and barely paying attention to his son who he hasn’t seen in ages.

Bashin, the clueless little munchkin that he is, expects that this jerk of an estranged father would actually give enough shits about his own son to sponsor him for his team.

It’d be a good move, J is widely known for being a particularly powerful battler.

Doesn’t he make you just want to wedge a damn wrench right in the crack of his butt-chin?

The order is EXCLUSIVE to Bashin, which means he’s ONLY scouting winners.

J’s the runner-up, and everyone else lost before that round, they’re worthless in the eyes of S over here.

Bashin, ever-loyal to the squad.

Kyouka turns up, spotting this problem. And with only a look she knows what’s up.

It appears this ain’t S’ first rodeo.

Ain’t nobody who sees their kids only once a year got time for jokes that run THAT long after all.

This isn’t relevant but LOOK AT KYOUKA BEING ADORABLE.

Bashin dropping the “I’m good, thanks” to the biggest offer of his life.

He’s either a 12-year old being a 12-year old, or an absolute chad.

You know that’s generally a problem most of us try to fix you know that?

Perpetuating the problem and then spinning something like that off as “advice” is probably the most hypocritical thing I’ve ever seen someone do.

It’s like shooting someone and then going “Hey man, People get shot”

YOU’RE NOT SOLVING THE PROBLEM.

It appears this lunkhead has decided to use the rest of his day to meet Uchuuchouten as opposed to… I dunno, spending time with his son.

The guy doesn’t even LOOK like a battler but BOY is he going to Battle the minute he shows up in person.

Ah, so he’s registered as “S.K.”

fair enough, I can do S.K.

J’s board consists of an EXHAUSTED ImpregnableFortress Odin at Level 3.

Berserker-Gun at Level 2 and The Artifact Laguna at Level 1.

S.K. has absolutely no board.

This game is looking to end soon, S.K. must have used his last few spirits to block J.

Uh-oh.

Welp, It’s finally here, so I guess I can talk about it instead of being cryptic every time the colour appeared.

As foreshadowed by the colour of Card Sensei’s Cornerstone and Guragurii, We have a SIXTH colour in the game, the final one.

Introduced in BS03, I present to you! Blue!

In the land of Colour oppositions, this Colour exists to oppose Yellow, as Red does to White, Green does to Purple, and so on.

As Yellow is themed around having a vast variety of gimmicky and strange effects, Blue is focused, most doing very specific things and being VERY good at that one thing.

Stuff like Deck Destruction, Many attacks, multiple symbols, Lockdown. It wouldn’t be wrong to call it the “One Trick Pony” deck.

And as Yellow is one of few colours that specialise in a specific card type, this being Magic, Blue also specialises in the OTHER card type, Nexuses. While all the others mostly only care about their Spirits.

J being caught off guard by this is not good, J is very good around things he can plan for.

I will say though, The Pikeman Jeffrey does NOT look entirely professional, he almost looks like a custom monster out of The Revelations of the Seal of Orichalcos.

The DragonSlayBlade Guy is also summoned by S.K. at Level Three.

Notably he sticks 6 core on it as opposed to 5.

It’s not all that special but it IS the first Blue Card with an effect so we might as well! From BS03, The DragonSlayBlade Guy.

A Cost 5 Blue Spirit of the Blue-Exclusive “Fighting Spirit” family.

And it’s effect? During your attack step, while either you OR your opponent controls a Red spirit, every Spirit you control that has “Crush” is treated as their highest level.

What is “Crush”? well it’s a Blue-Exclusive keyword that reads as follows!

Crush (When Attacks) Discard cards from the top of your opponent’s deck to equal to this Spirit’s level.

So naturally, using The DragonSlayBlade Guy alojng with a Red Spirit and a Crush Spirit will allow you to mill the maximum number of cards.

Its a shame that this card needs itself, a Red Spirit AND a Crush spirit available to actually do ANYTHING.

The DragonSlayBlade Guy attacks, snatching a life from J (2 -> 1)

It appears J’s entire board is exhausted considering he’s resorting to White Potion in order to defend.

Naturally, J chooses his biggest Spirit, Odin.

Made entirely irrelevant anyway thanks to Invisible Cloak.

Its shit like this that got that stupid Cost 3 card banned.

To be fair, in today’s day and age it might be possible to unban that card, there are infinitely MORE unblockable cards nowadays as that’s White’s thing. So I wonder if there’s a reason Invisible Cloak specifically is kept banned.

Needless to say that Pikeman’s swing struck true, S.K. is the winner.

He didn’t really show off anything special about the cards he played, they could have been White, Red or whatever, but I think the point was that they were new.

And it would have been less obvious if they were just White Cards from BS03 unless J expressly stated as such, we haven’t seen a single Blue card until now, so this lands a lot more effectively, its big and in your face about it.

To get some new cards boyo, what else?

It appears S.K. is going to Uchuuchouten in order to “cover” for J in some way, though I’m not sure what that might be for.

I am guessing it might be because J has been taking cards from the Thousand Spirits Group before getting ass-blasted by Bashin in the last round. J’s victory was likely a condition of some kind for something else.

Also we get to hear J’s name for the first time, “Juli”

Juli is an androgynous Finnish name, and has meanings that pertain to Youthfulness.

It appears J opposes that name, it’s Finnish, so he likely doesn’t like it purely for the connotation that links him to his father’s background, as well as the fact that given it is Finnish, it is his father who gave it to him.

Also is J turning into an edgelord? Please say yes.

No J, it was beautiful…

He really does like his friend doesn’t he?

Yeah, bit hard to ignore the sheer burning rage of J when he simply ASSUMED Bashin had sent Kyouka a love letter and proceeded to get a PRIVATE HELLICOPTER to BEAT BASHIN’S ASS.

It was glorious.

Your sheer force and anger is inhibited only by your immaturity J.

Come on, give me more of that rage!

I mean… This episode could just end here… Is a battle necessary?

Apparently “Yes” is the answer to that question.

Since the board state takes a bit too long to screenshot, I’ve contained it here.

Bashin has 2 Exhausted Dinohounds, Eyeburn and Metalburn, all at Level 1.

J on the other hand, has Baby-Loki, a Level 2 Dualcannon-Bell and The Sacred Mjolnir, it’s also J’s turn.

The Score is 2-5 in Bashin’s favor, needless to say J is getting his ass wooped.

J’s pulling out the Big Guns, or in this case, Big Hammer with The Gigantic Thor at Level 3.

Have we ever seen Thor at any other Level? I’m sure Suiren could beat this thing by just levelling the darned thing down.

Metalburn gets vaporized by blocking Dualcannon-Bell’s attack.

Eyeburn blocks Thor’s first swing. I never get enough of the sheer fact that Spirits just get yeeted out of existence by a fucking Hammer.

There’s a Banhammer Joke in here somewhere.

Time to start pushing, Dualcannon-Bell is now out of the picture to refresh Thor and all Bashin’s spirits should be exhausted, J can snatch from my count, 4 Core. Thor can take 2, Mjolnir can take 1 before being sacked for Thor’s effect, and Baby-Loki can take one.

A White Potion from here makes game.

Baby-Loki and Thor Swing to take 2 lives.

Thor Swinging here is a bit weird, Mjolnir hasn’t attacked yet so he’d get one less attack out of this.

Wait. What?

No-no-no you can’t do that, Baby-Loki isn’t Armed Machine, he’s just a Machine, and you’ve made NO mention of the Artifact Plant being on your board.

BRUH. YOU’VE MISSED A SLIGHTLY RELEVANT DETAIL HERE.

I guess we just have to proceed assuming J has the Nexus that he’s clearly failed to mention.

Mjolnir takes another of Bashin’s lives.

On Thor’s last attack before it refreshes again, Bashin decides to cut it short by using Flame Dance, now he can pop a Spirit with 4000 or less BP.

Naturally, he selects Mjolnir. Now if you’re thinking Bashin could have conserved a Life here by playing this on Mjolnir’s attack, you would be correct.

But Bashin isn’t doing this out of stupidity, there’s one detail here that’s important, and that’s information.

Had Bashin done that, J would have been in a state where he’d see 3 lives and 1 Thor that could not refresh after its attack, so he’d be able to end his turn and sit on Thor, who’s Level 2 effect lets him block Red spirits without exhausting.

So by letting Mjolnir take a life and letting Thor exhaust to take another one, Bashin has orchestrated a state where he’ll survive the turn with Thor exhausted, and all he has to do is give up one lousy life, which puts Bashin in a BETTER position to win afterwards.

He controlled the information available to J to make him perform a decision that was not to his benefit. J only learned that he could not win this turn AFTER he had put himself into a poor decision.

Who needs Life when you can just win the game?

Bashin blew up Mjolnir so Thor COULDN’T refresh, you don’t have a target to Refresh Thor!

I thought this was a mistranslation at first but I listened to the Japanese and J does indeed say something along the lines of popping a Mjolnir to refresh Thor which makes no sense because J HAS NO TARGET.

TOPPA BASHIN YOU WERE DOING SO WELL.

Nothing just yet but this IS good for his Dinohounds.

There it is, as if to hit the point home its at Level 3.

Ah right, before we had any kind of official or semi-official translations of this stuff we just had to go literal in terms of subbing, so “Terra Dragons” are occasionally referred to as “Earth Dragons”

It makes sense, “Terra” and “Earth” are synonyms.

Wait why bother bringing it to Level 3 on summon if you were just going to level it down for Dinohound.

Bit redundant.

So NOW you decide to correct yourselves, There WAS an Artifact Plant on the board, AND you’ve played Pure Elixir to refresh your Exhausted Thor which was JUST depicted Refreshing.

This show is fucking with me, it has to be, some god damn oracle knew for a fact that some 24-year old British twit with too much time on their hands would want to do a full series review and go through this one first.

And he made it as PAINFUL as possible.

Yeah… When a Cost 2 Spirit attacks, Ancient Fault boosts that Spirit with 2000 BP.

That Dinohound is 9000 BP.

Nothing quite as embarrassing as losing your Cost 7, Anti-Red White X-Rare to a Cost 2.

Having nothing left, Bashin attacks with the remaining Dinohound and Diranos and wins.

But… But you DID that already.

That was LAST EPISODE

what do you MEAN At last!?

DID YOU LOSE A COUPLE BRAINCELLS ON THE WAY HERE!?

J and Bashin have a nice talk about good ol’ S.K. Sawaragi, the one who developed the Battle System in this world.

Rich people don’t consider themselves to be Rich. Only successful.

And Success is something often short lived.

I’m sorry is that an Antagonistic Motivation?

On Episode 26 of this crazy series?

WHY ARE WE HEARING ABOUT THIS NOW!?

So Aibou and Okyou are Spirits? That seems to be what he’s suggesting.

Suddenly we have CONTEXT for all this crazy shit. At least from J’s perspective.

SO.

The Cards have Spirits within them, J is stating that the Thousand Spirits Group wish to extract the Souls of the cards for some purpose by using Battle Spirits.

J wishes to free Battle Spirits from the Thousupi Group’s control.

And he knows his Dad sees this as an expansion opportunity. Hence why he’s having a tiff with him.

Things are starting to make some actual sense. This should not have taken 26 episodes to fucking divulge, show!

So J’s in a bit of a rut because he isn’t strong enough to face his Father, and he doesn’t feel like he has enough time to prepare in order to do so.

Given that a Cornerstone makes you uniquely connected to the Spirits, I’m pretty sure Bashin is ALREADY involved.

Bashin makes some Shounen Protagonisty noises and we’re all set to go.

Friendly rivals are great but antagonistic rivals are even better.

Need a little more of that, this one’s a little too bright for me.

We get a nice little scene showing Eight searching for Card Sensei.

Eight has some kind of issue with Card Sensei that has yet to be indicated, interesting that she’s going around looking for him.

It could be because he revealed himself to Smile, that Card Sensei expected Eight would come looking for him, and that’s why he left.

Just need some more sips of plot

And that’s the episode, apparently.

Got a lovely couple tidbits in this plotline.

The series actually feels like its STARTING now, given that we have a plotline to go off of as well as all 6 colours.

We’re still a bit foggy on details, we’ve got no clue WHY the Thousupi group wish to extract Spirits from the Cards. We also know they need the Cornerstones for that goal.

Card Sensei has buggered off somewhere, J’s Dad is now in the field of play if he decides to stick around in Japan, and Kiiroko is now part of the squad

The Batosupi Lecture is still uninteresting, there’s some commentary on Blue and what effects it might introduce. But we already covered most of that.

And I think if I was to try and compose a Blue deck now it would be spoilerrific, so I will not do that.

Instead, I’ll leave you all with that, and see you next episode.

Time for another Episode I’ve already watched, but screw it, I need a complete archive of this stuff on this Blog, and I’ll be damned if I don’t go through with it.

As the subber declared, “SKIP NOTHING”

Besides if I don’t get through this, how will I get to the shows I actually WANT to review.

So rather than bore us all with the details, let’s get into it, Episode is titled “A Flash of Light, Cornerstone’s Awakening”

And with that they’ve spoiled the ENTIRE premise of the episode, good job keeping that suspense writers.

So it appears that there’s some pre-second round speculation, and both Bashin and J are favourites to win this one apparently.

Kiiroko is obviously going to get some notice for defeating the Gunslinger’s Apparition.

And I’m obviously going to get completely vexed by the fact that Smile is suffering from a lovely case of what TvTropes calls The Worf Effect

I have a Video of this episode up on my channel with me reviewing it, HOWEVER I will explain what “The Worf Effect” is here.

Named after Mr. Worf from good ol’ Star Trek, “The Worf Effect” concerns the action of introducing a character as a strong and powerful character, and showing their strength… Before using them as a punching bag to show how much stronger everyone else is.

Its like literary power creep, and the character being the unfortunate sufferer of the Worf Effect genuinely starts to appear weak by audience standards.

In our case, Smile who was shown as incredibly tough for defeating the powerful J has been defeated by Bashin, J with Odin, and new player Kiiroko.

Suddenly the “Gunslinger’s Apparition” isn’t looking so scary anymore.

Your positivity is misplaced.

Well in class he’s also Card Sensei, but personally I like to call him what everyone else in this show is, “idiot”

Card Sensei is insulting Smile like it’s about to be presented to a Judge in court or some shit.

If you’re going to burn the guy at least put some effort into it.

Smile does ask about Card Sensei’s student but Card Sensei avoids the topic, Smile is apparently calling out Card Sensei’s cowardice but I don’t really see at what moment Card Sensei has been a coward?

He trained Smile until Smile developed a new outlook on life coupled with a personality shift into who he is now, and faced him head on before losing.

He left after that and even went and trained Meganeko, I’m really not sure what part of this is cowardly, God forbid he didn’t charge headfirst into a pit of lava.

See what I mean? The minute Smile calls him a wuss Card Sensei just goes “Aight, Square up, bitch”

What part of this is cowardly?

Awwww yiss, more Card Games, and this time its a serious Card Sensei vs Smile.

Seeing battles between side characters like this is really quite rewarding, since you get to see matchups that aren’t just MC’s deck vs X.

It’s one of the most excellent opportunities a card game anime can make use of.

But of course they have a reason to take this where no one’s looking, for they’re about to-

Okay do you ACTUALLY mind? 15 turns is literally a whole set of interactions gone!

ALRIGHT SLOW DOWN THERE CARD SENSEI.

Out of nowhere, and for the first time, they’ve shown off a Yellow X-Rare, namely The ArcAngelia Mikafar from BS02.

So this card is notorious for 2 things in present-day Battle Spirits, the first thing you’ll probably notice about this card is that its BANNED.

That’s right! The most you’ll see of this card in any of today’s game is probably from the Episodes of Battle Spirits that we’re watching!

The second thing its notorious for is the second effect, it has an extremely low power for what it does, but then again it could have 0 BP and still get banned, that second effect is attainable with only one extra available Core, once that’s on Mikafar, you do not pay for Magic, ever.

It was actually so strong that in the extremely limited english release of this game (which only lasted 6 sets) they nerfed this card so that it’s free magic effect only applied while it was attacking, thats significantly better as the opponent gets a flash response between each card and it severely inhibits what magic is applicable to it’s effect but its STILL ridiculous.

And just incase you were having any theories as to whether this 57-set-old-at-time-of-writing card could come off the list? No. No it will never come off. There is far too much Magic in the game now and the simple existence of this card would likely facilitate MANY infinite loops. Its also the reason she hasn’t got a Revival card, which are older cards updated with new effects to make them more relevant to today’s game, as Revival cards hold the same place on the banlist as their originals due to sharing the same name.

Anyway, moving on…

Notably, Card Sensei activates Mikafar’s effect to check cards from his deck equal to the number of his Yellow Spirits, but doesn’t actually explain that he’s doing that, he just kind of picks up a card and reveals White Potion.

Card Sensei makes instant use of Mikafar’s effect to now start throwing out free Magic, first he uses Poison Shoot to level down Smile’s Mikafar to Level 1.

My immediate thought was “Wait, Smile has a Mikafar and didn’t just instantly win the game? How?!” but then I remember that Yellow don’t have a lot of really good Magic just yet.

In this age of BS02, the best card Yellow has currently is Heavy Gate to stop Weenie Rushing, or Chump-Blocking.

At the moment, the best way to use Mikafar is to combine it with Magic of other colours.

Card Sensei then follows up with Flame Dance, who’s effect is described above.

Now, what Spirit did we just mention has incredibly low BP?

Of course, the selection is the now 4000 BP Mikafar.

Card Sensei apparently isn’t done flexing just yet, now using Binding Woods!

We all know Smile uses straight Yellow, so all of his Spirits are exhausted by this.

The drawback to Binding Woods is it also includes your own Spirits in the effect.

Meaning Mikafar herself is exhausted, but if you’ve been keeping up with these posts (I sure haven’t) and remember what Card Sensei JUST added to his hand, you’ll see why this isn’t a problem.

White Potion allows Card Sensei to refresh one spirit, of course Mikafar will be the target.

Let’s review, with this Combo, Card Sensei removed Smile’s Mikafar from the board, preventing Smile from countering for free.

Axed Smile’s entire Board by exhausting it all, and then made up for the downside by re-refreshing Mikafar.

And all that using a 5 card combo using all 5 colours currently available.

The first rule of Card Sensei, you do not fuck with Card Sensei.

Nothing like a sweet badass mentor trope to go with this show, Card Sensei’s been kinda creepazoid up until now but damn he does not disappoint.

Card Sensei just pulled the card game equivalent of a Raging Demon on Smile.

Card Sensei acknowledging Smile’s Strength but indicating that being strong for the sake of being strong isn’t enough to actually do anything useful with it.

Smile, in a very strange turn of events despite his consistent string of losses isn’t actually distraught by any of this.

Perhaps the “Gunslinger’s Apparition” meant more than just a spooky winner, this guy’s like a narrative Zombie, regardless of how much he’s being punted down loser aisle he just keeps coming back completely undisturbed from before.

I am unsure if that’s good or bad.

There appears to be a disconnect between what Smile is and what Card Sensei believes him to be. Card Sensei thinks he’s just trying to accrue Strength but Smile has been targeting his Cowardice and his Kindness as flaws, and wasn’t particularly surprised at Card Sensei beating him quite soundly.

It wasn’t that Smile was calling him weak, he was saying that how Card Sensei was using his strength was incorrect, and Smile did go through a grueling process alongside Card Sensei to rid himself of his own kindness which is the only reason he’s this tough to begin with.

I guess the disagreement is that Card Sensei turned Smile into an unkind monster, and Smile is unsure why Card Sensei dislikes the state he ended up in when Card Sensei made him that way. Card Sensei believes its his fault too.

Oh hey, the updated brackets for the next games are ready.

I see our favourite to win, B.B. has defeated Saku, nice. Let’s see how J fares against Arc-V’s Fusion Dimension Secret Weapon.

I don’t think there’s much useful going on in this scene, Kiiroko is wondering where Card Sensei is, and hides from our Cornerstone Holders who gossip about Kiiroko’s strength

It would indeed be interesting, but we totally need a Suiren Squad involving members of ALL colours.

It’d be like a Power Ranger sequence.

J wishes to hold a thank-you party at his house after the group graduates.

I’m not sure I’d invite these lunkheads J.

I say “Lunkheads” but I just mean Bashin really.

Meganeko just barely escapes from the main cast, because mingling is for nerds.

But I’m not sure being caught by your Dog, your Grandfather and your love interest’s parent is much better honestly.

Also she wears the Shades OVER her Glasses!?

To reduce the amount of images in this scene I’ll give some context, Meganeko explains to her Grandpa and Hayami-

Wait a second I literally just realized Hayami’s name is similar to “Hayai” which means fast… And she’s the Speed Star.

This is the most awkward time to be having this revelation but god do I feel stupid.

Anyway, Meganeko explains that if she plays Battle Spirits, she’ll understand what makes Bashin tick, as well as be able to relate to his friends on a level that lets her be part of that group.

So in other words, its peer pressure. Which sucks but at the same time sometimes you gotta make tough choices when the friends you WANT to have are greatly into something you’re not.

Hayami gives a short speech about how thankful she is to Meganeko and that Bashin will be REAL happy about this, before encouraging her to “Just go through with it” to stop her being nervous.

The most validating thing here is getting advice from the object of your nervousness’ parent really. If they’re telling you to go for it, its probably super re-assuring.

I think this show is starting to rub off on me, the last few scenes did not use Bashin as a centerpiece, it really gives the vibe that in spite of being the main character, the World does not revolve around him.

And also in this moment, he’s giving a real big vibe of… Competence?

I think someone spiked my Irn Bru this morning, this is NOT the vibe I should be getting.

Okyo makes some comment to J about her feeling J would be more worried about his father, J’s worries are apparently entirely obscured by his anticipation of battling Bashin.

Okay is it just the way they’ve drawn Bashin here? In just a few comments and episodes they’ve actually made him seem IMPOSING.

Alright, so it’s turn 21 (cue disgruntled turn-skipping noises) and the score is 4-5 in Bashin’s favor.

Bashin’s board consists of:

• The RiseDragon Balmung – Lv3
• Lizardedge
• Eyeburn

While Kiiroko has 2 Piyons and a MelodyBird Crewc, all level 1.

Listen if Bashin has enough core to bring freaking RISEDRAGON BALMUNG to Level 3! (8 cores required) then you can easily tell who’s winning.

Bashin attacks with Balmung, and Kiiroko takes from the life (Life: 4 -> 3)

We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming to bring you: The cost of tossing away your glasses coolly.

At the very least its a nice moment, Card Sensei comments that he can’t teach Kiiroko anything anymore, which is just as well considering she’s graduating from his class.

I wonder what card that would be.

Bashin’s apparently ended his turn, so now Kiiroko gets to show us what she put her feelings into.

Kiiroko strenghens her board with The Fairy Tanya and The FairyQueen Ti-Tanya

I doubt Ti-Tanya’s effect is going to come into play here, at Level 2 or 3 during the opponent’s attack step, she gets lets you move 2 core from your Trash to her at the start of the step.

She’s good for setting up defensive magic.

Ah nice, Spirit Illusion.

She’s going to increase her attacking power for this turn by forcing every Spirit to be Level 3 of any given colour. This card is good given her opponent only uses one colour.

Slight miscalculation on your part though Meganeko, you only have 5 Spirits, and Bashin has 5 lives along with 2 available blockers.

This isn’t going to work, even with a full attack.

Bashin blocks Tanya with Lizardedge and Crewc with Eyeburn, both being destroyed in the process.

And an attack from Ti-Tanya snatches one of Bashin’s lives.

My first reaction is “She really isn’t”, but my second reaction is “Bashin didn’t need to block those attacks”

Could have happily eaten 3 lives and be even MORE set. I have no idea why he felt the need to reduce himself to 1 Spirit (and therefore 1 reduction with less core at his disposal)

Only through his blocks is Meganeko now in a position to win with 5 spirits to 1 and 2 available blockers, but now it’s Bashin’s turn.

See what I mean? She ain’t winnin’ shit.

And THAT’S just a waste of core! But its gonna give him the win anyhow.

You’d think with someone anticipating to play against Bashin all this time she’d have factored in a counter plan for Seventh Crimson instead of using a strategy that plays right into it, using an artificial Level booster which works best when your Spirits have low Core counts.

This game is stupid.

With no blockers and 3 attackers, that’s game for Bashin.

I’m going to be as GENEROUS as possible and assume that is because he topdecked Seventh Crimson. But even if he hadn’t, Meganeko’s Spirit Illusion only works for 1 turn, she’d have been stuck for BP for a good while.

Because of course that’s a sensible way of dealing with things, I know its meant to be because “Friends know their friends” but Bashin is a notorious IDIOT. He didn’t give her the time of day and was fully aware she didn’t play, what about her would have tipped you off?

And her disguise was good enough to hide her identity to everyone else so why is Bashin special in this regard?

Intermission, guess we get a mid-episode review of the story so far.

This first half was kind of alright, we’ve gotten 2 fights. Smile vs Card Sensei and Kiiroko vs Bashin.

Smile vs Card Sensei is adequately emotionally loaded, its a Former Student vs Former Master situation with Card Sensei trying his best to get through to Smile, but apparently a losing streak that has lasted god knows how many episodes isn’t enough to sway the chap.

Kiiroko vs Bashin is not quite as impressive, once again, she has every reason to have some kind of plan around Seventh Crimson rather than just playing cards and going brrrr, it makes her victory against Smile look like a fluke and Smile’s meant to be notoriously strong.

It bothers me is all, the person who lost to an idiot did so by being an idiot and said idiot defeated one of the coolest characters this show has.

Now we have Elliott with what appears to be a god damn CIGAR.

I am pretty sure Japan has rules against Cigar depictions in their anime don’t they?

Well if they DID have any, that would certainly skirt around the issue, but also Cigar shaped Chocolate is the most American thing I think this show has shown us.

And this show has a Balding fat dude with what I can only describe as an Elvis Presley getup.

Wait, at what point in this tournament did Elliott face J? He fought BASHIN.

The only other time he fought J was in the booster Draft, which he lost. But that was 6 episodes ago!

His power?

I’m FAIRLY sure this entire tournament has been comparing him to Bashin, J is not uniquely special in this regard, both have 2 X-Rares, the only difference is one is rich but you’re ALREADY affiliated with his father.

So money isn’t the problem, yes he’s a strong battler but only because you’ve supplied him with cards he shouldn’t HAVE yet.

Okay I’m being overly pedantic, this guy IS a multi-time champion after all. It wouldn’t be problematic to say that his loss to Smile was entirely orchestrated by Elliott in order to make J reliant on them for power. And they want him to use their power because he is an effective user of it.

Bashin on the other hand is a wildcard, making J the better choice.

They appear to have skipped over the Striker vs J fight, but given the imaging and the fact that neither J nor Striker’s Decks have changed since last time, I’d say its okay to skip over this fight, it would just eat screen time with nothing new changing the landscape of the plot.

Same here, Bashin has defeated Suiren, the 2 have fought before using the available card pool and we’ve seen Suiren’s X-Rare, there’s little need to re-do what’s already been done.

Now I ain’t no expert in Japanese but THAT to me, looks like a letter of resignation, the question is whether or not its from the Nazo-Otonas or as a Teacher.

That narrows it down.

Hoo BOY, its time for the finals, J vs Bashin. And this time Bashin has TwinRowdy Diranos on his side. This makes this a fair fight once again.

…Its so dramatic and it doesn’t make sense but its SO GOD DAMN COOL.

Rooting for J, purely for that hair effect alone!

Its looking at 5-4 in J’s favour, which makes some sense given J’s a White Player. Defense is White’s JAM.

Bashin’s field is looking kinda spicy, LV3 Taurusknight, Rokceratops and Balmung.

J’s is less spicy, from what it appears to me, Bashin appears to be winning.

And if you’re disagreeing with that because of the Life total, please watch Jaden face Atticus in Yugioh GX

Life points don’t decide who’s winning the duel, its the cards you hold.

Nightshroud – Yu-Gi-Oh! GX Episode 30

BASHIN HAS BETTER CARD ADVANTAGE. THEREFORE HE WINNING.

Bashin has made the executive decision to level up Balmung.

3 Extra core in addition to the 1 it currently holds is needed to get it up to Level 2 but we’re on Turn 19 so there’s plenty of core to go around.

Both Taurusknight and Balmung attack, taking 2 of J’s lives.

Now it’s J’s turn, and he’s adding Baby-Loki and Sacred Mjolnir to his board.

This is a bit of a “Ruh-Roh” moment, given an Armed Machine is what J needs for Thor’s rush.

Guess the real idiot was ME, ALL ALONG.

“Solid” isn’t the word I would use but its turn 21 and J has a number of Cost 2 Spirits. I’m presuming he’s got plenty of Magic available at his disposal to power up his defensive spirits for Bashin’s next attack.

This isn’t exactly the most offensive thing at Red’s disposal either, Bashin deploying Plateau of Duel means he’ll be able to Refresh an Awaken Spirit on J’s Start Step.

That’s pretty good for when you want to be safe AND attack.

And a Level 2 Siegfried makes the perfect candidate to strongarm one’s way into getting free strong attacks through.

I’m sorry. “Organ Pattern”?

What?

Is that like Japan’s version of a Modus Operandi?

Remember kids, Attack Steps are for losers.

Any kind of big push Bashin would have made is now no longer going to happen, at least Siegfried will be able to block next turn.

Granted, Attack Step Enders almost ALWAYS wait for the attack to finish first. So J takes that free core.

Quite hilariously, BS02 had a really nasty Cost 2 Focus, The Artifact Plant is one such card.

Simply put, it’s base effect turns any Cost 2 into an “Armed Machine”

That second effect is no slouch either, getting free core on top of it, it lets you generate enough Core for a counter should Thor fail to punch through everything.

Mjolnir gettin’ levelled up.

Here he is, at Level 3 no less. Which means J’s refresh combo is live.

Notably I don’t think this Refresh combo is going to go as well as J thinks it does… Bashin has 4 lives available, and 4 Blockers because J decided to instantly use Silent Wall to limit Bashin to 1 Attack.

J has only 4 other Spirits, and he’s about to use all of them for Thor as its the strongest… meaning Thor will have at most 5 attacks. That’s only going to snatch 1 life from Bashin if he blocks with everything, meaning Bashin can very much live this turn.

Bashin makes the quick decision to take the excess core from Balmung, levelling it down to Level 1, in order to make Siegfried LV3 for a Block.

This is pretty good, Siegfried will grant Bashin a Life on destruction.

At the moment, its Thor vs Siegfried, and Thor has 11000 BP to Siegfried’s 10000.

So to quickly summarise, again to reduce the number of image spam, J destroys his exhausted Baby-Loki before attacking again with Thor, this time exhausting Sacred Mjolnir to augment its BP to 13000.

Taurusknight blocks this time, being destroyed.

I’m not sure why Bashin is blocking most of these, he’s got 4 lives he should be relatively safe to let some attacks through.

J then decides to attack with Thor and 2 Baby-Lokis, which Bashin all takes from the life.

And thus features a very slight but repairable fuck up, the show portrays Thor as attacking first, and then the 2 Baby-Lokis, and THEN J decides to refresh Thor, however Thor can only refresh at the end of it’s own battle. If J attacks with the 2 Baby-Lokis first however this is fine.

What also confuddles me is Bashin is perfectly capable of destroying a Loki with his available Balmung, this would wipe out one of J’s refreshes.

His Baby-Lokis are Level 1 with 2000 BP, this actually makes no sense not to do here, Balmung has 3000 BP at level 1.

BASHIN PLZ

Okay you are not doing this shit again, Siegfried’s life gain is IMMEDIATE goddammit.

I can’t be having Deja Vu over this because I’ve watched this before right? There’s got to be one other episode where Siegfried’s Level 3 has come into play.

Thank god you didn’t, I’d be losing it if you did.

Okay feeling much better about this now, J was fully aware he wasn’t winning that turn so he prepared Pure Elixir to refresh his Spirits after his onslaught, he’s now got 2 Blockers as Pure Elixir prevents you from attacking with any refreshed Spirits.

Bashin has 2 blockers, J can’t attack, so the move ends.

I feel like I really should have prepared a Counter for the amount of times Bashin draws an X-Rare off of Double Draw.

Its the Battle of the BS02 Baddies from Bat-Town, TwinRowdy Diranos vs The Gigantic Thor.

Bashin raises Rokceratops to Level 3 and Balmung to Level 2

And Plateau of Duel gets raised to Level 2 as well.

For those that don’t remember, rather than Bashin refreshing ONE Awaken Spirit on J’s start step, he’ll now refresh all of them.

So J decides to take on the X-Rare showdown believing Thor to be stronger at Level 3 and Diranos not having it’s Awaken ability just yet (it only grants Awaken to Terra Dragons at Level 2 and 3)

So using Spirit Link, Bashin can artificially grant it Awaken.

He takes all but 1 of the Core from Rokceratops and Balmung to facilitate this, moving Diranos to Level 3, and along with it’s Level 1+ effect, Awaken Spirits get an additional 1000 BP.

So Diranos’ BP total is 10000, J CAN stop this with a Defensive Aura, should he have one available.

No such luck on J’s end, Thor is defeated.

Rokceratops attacks and J attempts to defend with Baby-Loki, only for Rokceratops to make use of Awaken granted to it by Diranos, allowing it to get to Level 3 and gain 1000 BP for a total of 5000.

Get roasted.

Bashin ends his turn there, I’m a little confused because he could have taken a potshot at J with Balmung, as it gets Awaken from level 1 upwards, it would get refreshed by Plateau of Duel and J would be on 1 life.

Ah, J’s hand was flat empty, no wonder Bashin was confident that would work.

Oh, that’s a depressing last card.

Attack Shift is flat garbage without Spirits to use it with, and J’s board is clean of them.

Actually if he had this card a turn earlier he could have saved Thor from Diranos and broken Bashin’s combo.

And with that halfway point, Bashin is officially a Champion.

That fight was actually pretty cool in spite of some base decision making I would personally disagree with, seeing Diranos vs Thor was pretty nice.

The same influence EVERY result has, you get a bunch of meta-nerds making 1-to-1 copies of Bashin’s Diranos deck-

wait shit that doesn’t actually WORK here because its previously established that the X-Rares of Thor and Diranos aren’t actually released to the public, because X-Rares are AWARDED by Nazo-Otonas.

J is happy that he was able to fulfill his promise to Bashin, but is disturbed by the idea that he won’t be able to see Bashin for much longer?

I’m going to either assume that’s due to graduation or because J believes his battle with the Nazo-Otonas are going to pull him away from Bashin.

Yeah with your super-exclusive X-Rares.

Granted J had them too, I’ll let you have this one Bashin.

I too understand well the reason Bashin-kun is absorbed in Batosupi.

But that is the first and last of the things I have in common with that muffin.

Bashin also takes this opportunity to invite Meganeko over to J’s house for a… another tournament.

I DON’T THINK I CAN HANDLE ANOTHER TOURNAMENT RIGHT AFTER THE LAST ONE.

CAN WE PROGRESS THE STORY FIRST!?

Yeah, kinda like that, that’s exactly what I mean but I also kinda mean new cards and characters that we can actually give a shit about.

And that’s it!

No card of the day according to the Batosupi Lecture, they do make mention of the Terra Dragon Combo however.

So I composed a deck focused on Diranos’ effect.

I don’t expect this to be extremely good or anything, nor do I expect anyone to be playing BS02 format but hey, it gives some insight into what I think would be good playing with this kind of card.

More of a “Deck-of-the-day” but hey, who’s gonna stop me?

anyway! I’ll see you for Episode 26 which is the last episode that went up on Youtube, meaning we’re treading new territory from that point on.

See you there!

Back here again, it’s been like a Year now. And I’m in a Battle Spirits mood after the recent stream and I want to talk about cards.

There’s a Video up reviewing this episode but uh…

Well while only 2 people voted, no one apparently enjoyed the Video format all that much, so I guess I’m back to doing this written!

Which is fine, I can talk about far more than I would be able to normally.

Since there’s a divide between redoing them and just continuing, I’m just gonna re-do them so there’s a complete record on this Blog.

Anyway! The Episode title! Spring Batosupi! A Yellow Storm!

I can’t imagine what colour is going to be on feature today, and given Meganeko’s recent new crash course into Battle Spirits, I can’t imagine WHO might be playing it.

Bashin’s being Bashin as per usual, about as Docile as a Cat with a Rocket up it’s ass.

Bashin proceeds to run down a hill and the momentum prevents him from stopping.

I’d say “Lets hope to dear god he crashes” but I’ve watched this episode before!

…And my hopes are not so easily recognized.

The Speed Star pulls up and Hayami is absolutely surprised that Bashin was able to get up by himself.

Especially since there’s a Tournament today and Bashin fell asleep for the last one.

I shall simply hang my head given that we’re not watching a timeline where Bashin never got up for the tournament…

Or ever for that matter, give me THAT series.

Didn’t Bashin get completely destroyed in the last tournament by J’s 2nd X-Rare, The Gigantic Thor?

An X-Rare he received MID-TOURNAMENT by the way after getting mollywopped by Smile.

I guess he’s got the pride of 2nd place?

Meganeko is busy doing what Meganeko should have done from Episode 1. Signing the contract papers that demand she involve herself in the plot better.

And you didn’t bother to ask where your 12-year old grandchild with no other parents to speak of might be going all on her own?

I could harp on about how ridiculous it is to ask a dog that can’t talk if they want to pray but treating your pet no matter what it is like an actual person is probably the best way to interact with your pet.

“God! Give me the courage to play Card Games”

I wonder if there is a “Batosupi-No-Kami”

And can I suplex them?

What is a God if you can’t wage war against it?

Card Sensei makes an EXCELLENT Play on words here since “First” and “Last” are complete antonyms.

Guragurii the Turtle decides to chew him out for saying something so freaking corny.

Captain this is a Cartoon, it’s not like a Live action movie where that shit is super cringe, this is the BEST place for that sort of thing.

Also shomentoppa, I resist my inner grammar nazi only for your brilliance.

On the other end of the spectrum, the Antonym for Antonym is Synonym.

And Meganeko is apparently a synonym for “Irrelevant to the plot”

I complain about this in the video but Meganeko’s favourite colour is Yellow, her entire attire, design and DECK revolves around that colour.

The problem with adopting an alias centred around that name is that it makes it HELLA obvious what’s in your deck BEFORE you even start, making it so that your opponents have an edge over you.

Thankfully I believe that the Yellow cards were relatively new according to the anime thanks to J having trouble due to not recognizing them whatsoever. Meaning if J struggled so badly against a colour he wasn’t familiar with, then the average joe is probably going to get melted even if they know a Yellow deck is coming.

Guragurii believes Card Sensei should dabble in his Student’s decisons, by having him go completely against his colour scheme and go by the alias of “Master Yellow”

I guess that’s a good way to stand out… If standing out is your aim, and from what I can guess that’s NOT the aim because Meganeko doesn’t want to be noticed by Bashin.

As my friend Iffy would say
“YOU DIDN’T READ YA PAMPHLETS!”

This is an interesting statement that raises questions about the ethical nature of the Nazo-Otonas.

Well, doesn’t raise too many since we know they’re supposed to be evil as they’re under the control of King Uchuuchouten.

But it does make you wonder about the extent of their control. The “New X-Rares” are promptly given out by the Nazo-Otonas when beaten by powerful Card Battlers, but for what intent do they actually impose this rule?

Nine’s fixation on Bashin and Smile/Elliott’s fixation on J means that they probably each have an interest in the Cornerstone holders for particular reasons and want to see them succeed.

Smile is fairly clear in that he wants to Team up with J to defeat Uchuuchouten, but who knows what Nine wants with Bashin.

Smile gives Eight crap for losing The TwinRowdy Diranos to Bashin. Though he doesn’t seem too particularly concerned about the loss of a powerful new X-Rare being in the hands of a group that opposes them.

This story is starting to make less and less sense.

WOMAN YOU RAN A COST 7 RED TERRA DRAGON THAT EXCLUSIVELY SUPPORTS TERRA DRAGONS ALONG WITH A RED EXCLUSIVE KEYWORD,

IN A STRAIGHT GREEN DECK.

A THREE-YEAR OLD COULD PLAY CIRCLES AROUND YOU.

“The plan was calculated”

“But boy am I bad at Math”

I complain about this in the Video, but shouldn’t it be the other way around?

Having a High Ranker Pass means that you don’t have to participate in the upcoming Gunslinger, which means that you’re not actually required to be there until the finals. Plus there is a leaderboard of Gunslinger participants with placements at the top, meaning if any High Ranker turns up too late and gets Disqualified you can just take the next person down from the Gunslinger positions to join in the bracket section.

Why give a fast pass to the people who absolutely DO NOT NEED TO BE THERE right now?

Also FAVOURITISM MUCH!?

When you dedicate your entire life to interviewing one awfully specific rich boy celebrity, you’ll find you don’t have much else to do.

Christ if you’ve got nothing else to do just play Battle Spirits, its literally in the title.

Yeah, maybe its because anytime he wants to go literally anywhere Battle Spirits related he gets chased up by a bunch of fuckwits who appear on TV every morning.

OI!

Battle Spirits Heroes isn’t for another 3 seasons!

Which means he’s had plenty of time to plan his entry route in such a way that lets him dodge you completely.

Yeah, people tend to get nervous when you wander around the stadium wearing CLOAKS!

I’m surprised a Security guard hasn’t stopped you for lookign suspicious.

I haven’t done a proper blog post in several months and I’m still never prepared for the sheer dumbassery of this show.

But you might as well tell us what we need to be prepared for.

Now is a good time to review the main cards of each main character because it’s always a good time to do that.

Let’s start with good ol’ Bashin, this muppet has 2 Red X-Rares, the Ancient Dragon Family Siegfried who has Awaken and grants life upon its destruction. And the Terra Dragon Family Diranos who supports Awaken and grants other Terra Dragons the Awaken Keyword (including itself)

These actually mesh well together because being able to Awaken constantly lets you attack at maximum power with each Spirit, with 2 Powerful Awakening X-Rares Bashin can make the most out of few core.

Meanwhile J’s X-Rares are much less meshable with each other. Having abilities for vastly different purposes. Odin initially allowed J to choke out his opponents with defense, a tactic he employed using various Nexuses. Now however Thor makes his strategy shift completely, taking on a more offensive stance by sacrificing more and more Armed Machines.

Notably, Odin is a Machine and thats even more lack of synergy between the 2. Since J received Thor we’ve seen far less of Odin.

Her 2 X-Rares both share a name, The SevenShogun, and her entire strategy revolves around manipulating the core.

So of course, having 2 X-Rares that fiddle with different core arrangements is always good. Especially when used together, Desperado can wipe single-core Spirits off the board, Destlord can get Level 2 Spirits out of the way, and Desperado can put Level 3 spirits in range of Destlord’s effect. Making this a good combination.

Meanwhile… Striker haaaas…

A Single Duke Kingtaurus. Which granted is quite a Powerful X-Rare given it’s got the highest BP value at Level 3 among all the cornerstone holders.

Sadly for a good portion of the start of the Battle Spirits series, since the 1st set only contained 4 colours, only 4 colours got new X-Rares, so since Yellow was introduced in BS02 (the current set this anime is on) and was subsequently given an X-Rare, one of the colours had to be dropped, and that colour ended up being Green.

When your Lizard starts panicking when it comes to the topic of your Idol work, that’s not a great signifier that you’re making the best decisions.

To make irrelevant story short. My Sunshine escaped the Live by turning the chair away and sticking her wig onto a Teddy bear.

Hilariously, this implies that her natural hair colour is Purple.

Righto! Time for the Gunslinger! Quick reminder of the rules!

There are various desks in the Gunslinger Hall and all Battlers have to form a line. They can pick whatever line they like and you’re free to vacate your place in a line to join a new one.

You earn points for every battle you win on the Gunslinger but if you lose a match you’re forced out of your current position, having to rejoin the line or join a new line.

Also there’s a hard time limit of apparently 3 hours for the Gunslinger, meaning you need to have decks that win consistently and fast. This actively discourages slower lockdown centric decks or decks that take forever to go off as you’ll earn less points.

Which once again makes me wonder why the hell you let the High Rankers skip the line at the front of the stadium given they are NOT REQUIRED TO PARTICIPATE.

Ah yes because they need a reason to include the High Rankers in the Gunslinger feature even though it makes absolutely no sense to do so.

Anyway, Smile being Smile, holding the title of the “Gunslinger’s Apparition” is doing Smile things by playing in the format he dominates best at.

Interesting to point out smile’s unique “factor” I guess we’ll call it.

In a card game its a bit hard to differentiate beyond the cards themselves how a player plays differently from each other, and while Smile’s deck hasn’t particularly shown anything interesting to us, the idea they’ve been hitting us with (including Smile’s backstory) is that Smile can play consistently well regardless of how long he’s done it for.

And of course, the players not expecting Smile to lose anytime soon try a different line.

Problem with this strategy is that by sacrificing your position, while you may get the opportunity to get points, if there is no line behind the person in the lead, the person losing can just try again at that same line. (I don’t believe there is a rule dictating that you can’t go back to the same line but it’s never mentioned in show)

Nine is always so god damn philosophical.

Basically Nine anticipates that Smile will endure some kind of event specifically due to his position as the Gunslinger’s Apparition.

Eight indicates these 2 specifically as worrying Nine.

Well the unknown is always scary and anyone with enough willpower to stand out will likely have something to show for it.

And Kyouka’s participating in this gunslinger! Meaning we’ll get to see her play soon!

Such an adorable character design.

Um… Commentator-San…

Cinderella was poor and had 2 asshole STEP-SISTERS.

There is nothing that compares Kyouka to Cinderella.

The cool thing about reserved characters is often times… When they get animated.

Its rare moments like that which can make you love a ticking time bomb, but its a hard balance to strike. Get animated too often and you’ll either be writing the wrong type of character or you get some dissonance between the character’s description and how they’re actually portrayed.

Too little however and you get this:

For the first 90% of the Universe Survival Arc, Jiren’s Arc is a beautiful story of how a fencepost became a Character.

Totally Not Mark

J’s apparently managed to get a moment alone to think about how his Dad was meeting up with Micheal Elliott and Smile.

That’s extremely non-specific.

“You were here, is that why you’re enthusiastic?”

I mean it’s not really all that obvious that he was enthusiastic to begin with, secondly what would him being there have anything to do with him being enthusiastic?

Unless they’re trying to foreshadow something in that stadium area that would be worth being enthusiastic about but its done extremely poorly given J is offhandedly mentioning it.

I guess they managed to salvage the scene by having Elliott react extremely poorly to the notion that he was at that specific location.

I imagine here that Elliott is referencing J’s father given that J has no clue why his father would be conversing with “Two” and “Four” of the Thousand Spirits Group.

Elliott’s confidence in such a statement (meaning he’s aware of how J’s father will act) tells J that something definitely is going on involving his father, which is enough information J needs to confirm his suspicions. Giving him an incentive to find out what it is.

Alrighty, Kyouka’s finally been paired against Meganeko.

Though one of the 2 would have had to have battled already, meaning Meganeko’s deck should be no secret.

Way to sully Smile’s incentive for Gunslinger domination.

He has an edgey design and amazing skills and conduct and they just keep ruining more and more of the character as the series continues.

Bashin is blissfully unaware of how completely and unrelentingly repulsive he is.

J always gets really flustered when it comes to anything concerning his sister.

Is letting people know that you unconditionally love your family that embarrassing?

Kyouka’s addressing of Bashin is ridiculously adorable at various times and the only gripe I have with that is that it’s not directed at any other character besides Bashin.

Also pointed out by Iffy, because Kyouka and J come from Kyoto, Kyouka has a Kansai-Dialect, specifically “Kyoto-ben”, which is apparently considered to be elegant and feminine dialect. My only question is why J doesn’t also exhibit similar speaking mannerisms to Kyouka (though it might just be me missing the Japanese cues because their voices are so different)

Irregardless, I absolutely love Kyouka’s method of speaking, it suits her really well.

“Can you handle an opponent who’s never played in an official match before?”

I dunno Turtle, Meganeko also hasn’t played in an official match before.

Infact, Kyouka is the BEST opponent Meganeko could ask for.

Why is Kyouka the signal to divest the Robe?

I assume it’s because Bashin is watching but Card Sensei only says to remove the cloak in response to Meganeko being willing to battle Kyouka.

And unless an opponent decided to leave after beating another opponent there is absolutely no reason why Meganeko wouldn’t have had another battle prior to this.

Plot plz.

We can see a “Merat” at the bottom of Kyouka’s Deck. Meaning Kyouka’s using a Red deck. Might as well take a look at her card.

A Cost 2 that can be played for no cost, has 3000 BP at level 1 and 6000 BP at level 2.

…And only has 2 debilitating effects.

Battle Spirits having effects that hurt you is rare but usually there is some great benefit to an effect that applies restrictions or harms your Spirit.

Not only is there no visibly great benefit to Merat’s effects but it has TWO of them. It loses a Core on your Start step meaning you have to keep it levelled, but if you level it then it can’t attack making it super predictable.

“And is also ripping off Suiren”

“And has changed far too little about his base design for it to be an effective alter ego”

Granted I imagine Suiren’s identity was a huge hot topic in an earlier episode and given that she’s a popular female card battler, its the inspiration Meganeko drew from to form her disguise.

It’s just a shame that it lacked some imagination.

If Suiren and Striker are THIS surprised about a recoloured Suiren then they definitely haven’t seen the Sonic fandom.

And we’re at the halfway point, lets use this to review the plot synopsis so far.

It’s the Battle Spirits Championship, and for whatever reason the Nazo-Otonas have some interest in the turnout for this specific Championship.

Irrelevant to what the Nazo-Otonas want, Kyouka and Meganeko are playing their debut matches in the Gunslinger, we don’t know what’s motivating Kyouka but Meganeko is motivated to impress Bashin with her Battle Spirits ability without revealing her identity to Bashin, getting support from Card Sensei.

And J suspects his father due to his father’s involvment with Elliott and Smile.

So far nothing too interesting happening, especially since we’re 24 episodes in and we still don’t know TOO much about what’s happening. J wishes to deal with the Thousupi Group but we have no idea what they’re trying to do that J is trying to prevent.

So far Kyouka has a huge field advantage, having many sufficiently levelled spirits while Meganeko only has 1 spirit.

This would be more concerning if it wasn’t Meganeko’s turn. But since it is, Kyouka is one mistake away from losing.

Luckily for Meganeko, she has the Sealed Spellbook available, not only is that a permanent symbol for reduction but its Level 1 effect allows her to alter field-wide card effects to only affect one side of the board.

What?

WHY!?

The only reason this play would make sense is that Kyouka’s spirits are all exhausted and she needs a Magic to stop Piyon’s attack.

Why else would she risk obliterating her entire board advantage just to stop one little Piyon?

Unfortunately Kyouka wasn’t aware of The Sealed Spellbook’s ability, so she ends up just wiping her own board.

This is a pretty poor victory, for that plan to work, Meganeko had to bet on 2 things:

1. That Kyouka either had no response OR that her only response was Flame Tempest
2. That Kyouka was not aware of the effect of The Sealed Spellbook

It was ONE little Piyon, if Kyouka had used a card like Flame Dance or any other single target removal magic, Meganeko would have lost.

“Surpass” isn’t the word I would use for someone who’s victory entirely hinged on an opponent screwing up in a way that could not have reasonably been predicted.

Your special training which amounted to you throwing out a Flame Tempest because you didn’t think to leave Blockers?

Well given that Kyouka’s “Special training” amounted to effectively nothing we haven’t seen before, the answer would be yes.

Notably with Kiiroko in 2nd place.

Interestingly these are all names but who the hell is “B.B.”?

Apparently Smile’s so fed up with Kiiroko’s placing that he actively throws a fight just to move lines. It’s always interesting when something like this happens because on one-hand, Smile just technically lost a battle to an NPC and a loss is absolutely a loss.

On the other hand there’s the idea of “Meaningful losses” and this is a situation where Smile as a character isn’t placed under any kind of position to learn from a loss in a game he wasn’t particularly interested in anyway. The result is he lost but the reason he lost is because he needed to in order to get him to where he wanted to go, there’s no lesson here and his opponent is basically being rewarded NOT for their ability but because they just so happened to be the person Smile was playing against when he lost interest.

This is a good example where a prominent character can lose while still maintaining whatever power hierarchy is in place.

Granted Smile’s emotional investment into battling a student of Card Sensei would absolutely trump whatever else he might have been doing at the time.

Does the hair not give it away?…

Shades are not the perfect tool of disguise cartoons make them out to be.

There’s nothing much to comment here, other than the Nazo-Otonas recognise Card Sensei.

Card Sensei is worried about the prospect of Meganeko battling Smile, mostly because it would be an emotionally intense battle for the pair since they are connected through their teacher.

Not to mention Smile’s reputation for not only being the Gunslinger Champion but also upsetting the opponents he beats would be a bad experience for Meganeko who has just started out.

Card Sensei tries to convince Meganeko to back out but Meganeko points out why she wishes to continue, noting not only that she trained for this but also because she wishes to compare her strength against another Yellow player. Dismissing Card Sensei’s belief that she only wanted to Battle Bashin.

Card Sensei’s backstory was told to Meganeko after she discovered his status as Number Five.

So being his current student it’s entirely fair to have the motivation to battle his previous student.

What’s COOL about this is this isn’t a decision involving another person either, Card Sensei doesn’t want her to battle Smile and this has nothing to do with Bashin, its a personal resolve she developed after learning about Card Sensei and studying under him.

Which makes Meganeko her own character rather than simply revolving around Bashin.

Need I remind you that I fucking love Smile’s voice and design!?

2 Students, both taught in the same style, connected through the same Master, one driven by rage against his teacher and the other driven to test her own ability against another Yellow user.

In hindsight, this battle is actually something we can sink our emotional teeth into. The only shame is that Meganeko has done very little to earn such an emotional conflict.

Turn 6? Bit low for this series.

Smile’s voice in combat is so raspy and aggressive and I love it.

Smile summons his HellDog Cerru-Berus and levels it up to Level 3 immediately.

This is an important detail because not only can Cerru-Berus not attack at Levels 1 and 2, but Smile can take control of an opposing Cost 6 Spirit on his Start Step if Cerru-Berus survives.

Smile promptly ends his turn.

Meganeko adds The Fairy Tanya to her board and ends her turn.

If I were her I would have swung with Barball, it only needs 3 cores to match Cerru-Berus’ BP making it enough to threaten Smile because no matter what Barball isn’t going to protect her on her turn.

Might as well get some mileage out of it, or exhaust it to prevent it being useful.

Smile uses Cerru-Berus to take Barball on his Start Step, allowing him to make use of the Spirit and it’s abilities… With the caveat that Smile isn’t allowed to touch it’s core arrangement.

Smile swings with his newly acquired Barball and takes a life from Meganeko.

This is the first time we see the life here so I don’t know how many lives Smile has.

Meganeko now realizing that Barball is useless for blocking starts swinging with it, Smile blocks using a Tanya. Meganeko ends her turn.

Barball is once again stolen from Meganeko and Smile adds Piyon to his field.

Meganeko takes another life from Barball’s attack.

Good on Card Sensei to drop his previous contentions and actually support his student.

Smile makes this show worth watching. There’s nothing quite like the sweet animated appearance he takes on whenever he’s in the heat of battle which seriously contrasts with the way he practically looked like a Zombie in his initial appearance.

Kiiroko decides now is a good time to completely break the boundaries of the genre she’s in and become a Magical Girl, who knows what levels of power this transformation will afford her-

Nevermind, apparently she just has something she can play.

Barball is brought up to level three, giving it a wopping… 7000 BP.

One would think that for a Vanilla, Barball would actually have comparable or more BP than The DragonEmperor Siegfried, toned down only slightly by the additional cost reduction it has. But early vanillas in this game had really poor scores, probably because you had to run just a few in most decks at the time. Nowadays Vanillas are whopping beaters with enormously high BP values.

Want an example?

This is “Mushatokage” from BS31, the start of an Era of Battle Spirits that is about midway through the game’s current lifespan at time of writing. One will notice that it can easily compete with Barball for BP at its highest level.

We’re currently on BS02 at present however, so I can’t really scream “Power creep!” when the game is still being figured out at this moment in time.

Kiiroko then uses The Sealed Spellbook in Combo with Heavy Gate, to recap, Heavy Gate makes it so both players cannot attack or block with Cost 1 or below Spirits, The Sealed Spellbook takes magic effects that apply to both players and can ensure it only applies to you or the opponent.

Therefore, Heavy Gate becomes one-sided and Smile is the only one unable to use Cost 1 or below Spirits to attack or block with this turn.

For the character that introduced yellow to the series, and displayed its characteristics by beating the ever-loving snot out of J, you’d think he’d be a little more well-versed in its capabilities to not actively make this mistake.

At the same time, BECAUSE Yellow is a relatively rare colour before Smile’s appearance, its also possible he’s just inexperienced at dealing with opposing Yellow users.

And from that, Kiiroko wins the game with a full attack.

This is also covered in the video, but this is going to be the start of a recurring narrative issue that will crop up later, as you can see currently, Smile has been used kind of like a doorstep in order to display Kiiroko’s abilities. This isn’t a crime in and of itself, only in conjunction with a few other things that will be covered later.

To say Smile isn’t pleased is an understatement, currently Smile is giving “Master Yellow” a death glare over his new student.

While I’d love to explore how this could culminate later, we’re in a Tournament sequence right now.

Uchuuchouten gives the same intro he did for the last tournament. I’m pretty sure its word-for-word the same introduction he gave last time.

Starting off this mini-Tourney is going to be Mr. Elliott along with Bashin Toppa, we can all guess how this is going to end.

Which is weird because Mr. Elliott is KNOWN for handing out cards pre-release for the sake of making players stronger, why doesn’t he do the same for himself?

And of course in good ol’ Toppa Bashin fashion, we skip ahead to an unrealistically late turn.

Elliott’s unfortunately having a hard time, having lost 3 lives already.

Only 1 spirit a side, Bashin has DragonicFortress Giga and Elliott only has Shockeater.

Well its clear to see who has the advantage then.

It ain’t a Battle if a character hasn’t drawn their ace, actually very few times in the series does a Character not play their ace, but interestingly there are a few battles that do occur where an Ace is not played.

There’s a temptation to go “BRO WHY ARE YOU SURPRISED YOU OWN THE PRINTING PRESS THAT FUCKING MAKES THEM” but he’s probably commenting on the timing of the X-Rare’s appearance, which is bad. You never want to be ill-prepared for an X-Rare.

And Siegfried takes out Elliott’s penultimate life. Now will Elliott play something fancy and shiny?

Nope, its attack of the Budget crew, Beatbeetle, Hercules-Geo and Gowsilvia are thrown out with Gowsilvia being at Level 2.

And Gowsilvia’s nifty ability kicks in which gives it an extra 4000 BP

At level 2, Gowsilvia has 4000 BP, with the extra 4000 that’s 8000.

Unfortunately, The DragonEmperor Siegfried beats that at Level 3, so fat chance.

Meanwhile the most powerful exchange I think I’ve ever had the honour of hearing come out of Bashin, him flat out calling Elliott WEAK.

I can feel this scene deep in my soul and its one of the few times I actually resonate with Bashin, feeling the need for some excitement only to be denied it, even if you’re in an advantageous position can make the remainder of the game a bit boring.

Bashin quickly levels up his DragonicFortress Giga in order to play Seventh Crimson. Now while this card has been in frequent usage in Bashin’s battles, lemme show you all something I’ve been working on.

A new visual for effects on cards, if a card isn’t in perfectly clear view or is particularly important, I’ll draft up one of these in order to review it, I think its pretty cool and accurately lists all the necessary effects in a way that is easy to read than trying to parse everything in basic text.

Anyway, moving on, Bashin is targeting DragonicFortress Giga to remove cores

Since Elliott’s spirits didn’t have 7 core between them (pretty unlikely when you play 3 spirits in a row), they all get wiped out.

No Elliott, that would be cheating.

Siegfried attacks, taking Elliott’s last life, giving Bashin the win.

Considering the board state, which consisted of Elliott’s 3 Spirits and Bashin’s 2 relatively high cost spirits, it wasn’t a bad plan for Elliott to hold off for a turn until he could figure out a way to deal with them, but Bashin having a way to sweep the board is pretty overkill.

Well, at least the character themselves don’t seem very strong but you would think a character with access to new cards before they release would be able to try get the edge over Bashin with unfamiliar cards, there wasn’t even an X-Rare played.

Granted, just because Elliott has unfamiliar cards doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll win, but the element of surprise goes a long way in any competitive game.

Now we get a lovely look at J vs Smile’s battle. This battle is a bit of a strange choice for many reasons.

At this point Smile’s bucket of achievements boil down to beating J by introducing Yellow. He’s been beaten by Bashin already and now even Kiiroko, and given J’s near unstoppable nature with Thor, its very clear what the result of this battle will be given its a replay.

Smile here isn’t really shining as a great example of a powerful enemy, which makes me wonder what the purpose of showing this scene is even for, J’s power is already properly cemented, and Smile is already showing to be losing his touch. So what’s the point of this when the result is going to be obvious?

Well, the series has an answer.

J removes all of his Core from The ImpregnableFortress Odin.

In exchange for Thor, whom he promptly proceeded to beat Smile over the head with it and win

In card game anime, how a player treats their own aces is an often important indicator to who they are as a person… sometimes.

In Yu-Gi-Oh!, Arkana, or Pandora for Japanese viewers willingly destroyed his Dark Magicians (his ace) to gain even small advantages and is considered a monster for doing it this way.

Battle Spirits only OCCASIONALLY demonises players for the way they use their own cards, especially if it means winning. But usually Battle Spirits looks to the deck style as a whole before determining a person’s personality through it, as opposed to 1 simple action like J trading in one X-Rare for another.

Smile is undeterred by his defeat at the very least, J’s strength going simply exacerbating his desire to team up with J in order to defeat Uchuuchouten.

But anyway, this battle, while on the outset seemingly pointless, not only serves to highlight J’s reliance on Thor to the EXCLUSION of Odin, but also to show Smile’s position in all this, he’s not slowed down by his string of defeats, merely seeing it as a benefit.

Looking at that bracket, we can see who’s fought and which battles have completed. What I find interesting is that Kiiroko hasn’t fought whoever this “Gaku” is but is still worried about her second match.

Kind of a bit dismissive, this secene would make a wee bit more sense if it showed Kiiroko had actually PROGRESSED to the round against Bashin.

Also nice to see Battle Beast (B.B.) hasn’t completed his round yet, can’t wait for the much awaited Arc-V crossover-

And that’s the end of the episode!

There is some exchange between Kiiroko and Bashin but its just commenting on how she defeated Smile and otherwise adds nothing, the Batosupi Lecture at the end also lacks a card of the day. So I guess I’ll pick out something I found interesting.

At this point in the game where J depletes Odin was a moment I found curious. The reason being is that Berserker-Gun on the board.

Berserker-Gun is not an armed Machine and therefore does not benefit Thor to be on the board, Odin is stronger but J was definitely aiming to end it all that turn. So my confusion lies in why J didn’t keep Odin and simply level it down and beat down Smile with 2 X-Rares.

It could have been to avoid a situation where even if he failed to defeat Smile, he wouldn’t lose Odin, but Smile was forced to block Thor’s attack using Cerru-Berus, and it only applies on the Start Step of the user’s turn, so even with a second Cerru-Berus, Smile wouldn’t be stealing Odin.

One might argue this is an oversight, another might also argue the idea that perhaps J WANTED to discard his X-Rare and that his choice to do so is highlighted by the fact that there was an evidently better choice to be made if he wanted to make it. In a case of information not directly fed to the audience that hints at the mindset of a given player.

But if I were to concede that point I’d be giving this show a little TOO much credit, so instead I’ll just assume the animators looked back at this and went “oh shit, missed that.”

Anyway, thats all from me for today! I’ll see you NEXT episode!

OH GOD IT’S BEEN FOREVER.

Apologies to anyone eagerly awaiting what happens next on the mis-adventures of BlackAce watching a show about actual children playing actual children’s card games.

Buuuut with University starting up again I was having a really hard time organizing myself in a way that allowed for me to make another blog post.

Uuuuuuuntil right about now where I realized I actually have a buttload of free time on my hands and the means to squander it immediately.

So you’re lucky I’m squandering it on you guys.

So since it’s been a while, recapping the previous episode. Meganeko learned how to Battle!

Aaaaand is intending on surprising Bashin at the next tournament however to uphold the surprise she’s being EXPRESSLY mean to him to make Bashin think she’s still mad.

Which is a bitch move in my opinion and at the moment Kyouka is slowly turning into Best girl as a result, buuuuut Meganeko is absolutely adorable still and she still firmly holds that spot.

So nothing less than Kyouka actually battling is really going to shake that monolith now that we have a Yellow representative in the show.

So, without further ado lets move on with this absolute monstrosity.

The Episode title is “Last Days as an Elementary Schooler”

So what are we finally around Summer time again? Because the language used in the show seems to have confused the subbers to the point where it’s unclear when school is actually ending or if it’s just a break.

But this wording seems clearer now, so hopefully they’re actually finishing their dumb elementary school.

And we’re starting off strong in the plot foreshadowing department with Nine communicating with someone on the phone about the delivery of High Ranker passes.

If you remember, that job is typically given to Eight, which means she must be the person on the other end of the phone.

There’s a distinctly female voice on the other end that is very recognizable, it’s Eight.

Apparently she’s done well this time around and hasn’t had a massive delay delivering everyone’s passes.

That’s odd…

Previously they were testing people and only those who could defeat the Nazo-Otonas were handed X-Rares. But then again given that was only the first set of the game it was likely the first time this ever happened.

I suppose now that they have a large quantity of potentially strong battlers, they’re less concerned about actually battling as long as they continue to prove themselves in the tournaments, so now they’re just handing out the X-rares.

This also provides some consistency between the Cornerstone holders, given that J received his new X-Rare from Elliott and didn’t have to battle him first for it.

Given the person Nine’s had his eye on and has been emulating the Battle style of, it’s not unlikely that he’s talking about Bashin here.

So it stands to reason that Bashin is going to receive a new X-Rare. Which is great!

Eight agrees with Nine and then decides to go on a tangent here saying that the Tournament is the only reason they have so many strong players participating.

I’m not quite sure what the relevance of this is, but it might be Gunslinger related.

Now we cut to Meganeko knitting something in Card Sensei’s room, and Card Sensei reminds Meganeko of her debut match.

More interesting parallels here between Meganeko and the unfortunate Smile, is that they’re going to have to make a name for themselves in the Gunslinger.

Meganeko doesn’t have a High Ranker, so her fate and how well she does in the Gunslinger are entwined, not sure how hilarious it would be if Meganeko took Smile’s title of being “The Gunslinger’s Apparition”

Card Sensei reminds Meganeko of High Ranker passes, since they let her skip the primaries.

And given that Card Sensei is a Nazo-Otona, he’s absolutely got the power to provide her with one.

And in a surprisingly wholesome turn of events, Meganeko turns down the need for a High Ranker pass.

Meganeko sees the point of the Gunslinger, it’s a good way to test her deck’s ability against a large amount of people at once. She can improve her ability as she plays so that she arrives in Bracket with a well educated idea of her strategy, deck, as well as what type of decks players are using.

That was a VERY abrupt cut if all they were going to give us is Richboy- I mean J, drinking some tea.

Apparently J’s so miffed with Smile randomly showing up inconveniently that his mind has developed his own “Smile sense”

Smile shows up cosplaying as Postman Pat and tosses something to J

And of course because everyone in Card Game anime has apparently been 30 years in the Olympics for discus throwing that they can frisbee non-throwable objects in straight directions.

And even more weird is the other character’s seemingly developed reflexes that allow them to catch it between 3 fingers.

In this case it’s a letter, which is significantly heavier and bigger than a single piece of card stock, so you can fling that through the air a little more easier.

But throwing basic card stock in a straight line across a whole freaking PIER to hit someone directly in the hand without air resistance causing the card to spin out and land in the water somewhere…

Apparently all of these “Deliveries” have been off-screen because as far as everyone else is concerned, you received The Gigantic Thor and The Sacred Mjolnir from Elliott, and the only things you’ve received from Smile was The WhiteTiger Huck and White Potion.

So… Wanna divulge what else he’s delivered to you?

J just casually calling Smile an “Errand boy”

Oh, it’s just a High Ranker.

Well, that was completely unexpected-

I can’t say that with a straight face, alright next scene.

Son of a-

Alright so we have Bashin now, who was apparently “Cutting it close” with the receiving of his High Ranker.

I like to think that the Nazo-Otonas think Nine is bloody insane and REALLY didn’t want Bashin to participate in the next tournament.

I thought she was meant to be “Sexy Queen Number Eight”?

But I guess Bashin isn’t really old enough to know what the significance of that is so Big Sister it is.

Also you guys should totally message me on Discord Verus#6257 about whether or not you prefer me to call her “Eight” or “Big Sister”

For now I’ll just call her Eight until further notice.

Because the answer is obvious when it comes to hyperactive 12 year-olds who can’t think of anything but playing really good card games.

Yeah one would be happier that they have better chances in a tournament that really likes groin-knitting.

I see these fits of blatant spoilage from Bashin and I can’t tell if he’s naturally meant to be this annoying or if the show is being accurate on it’s representation of a 12 year old card game player?

Or both?

Anyway, Bashin decides that he prefers permanence over his temporary boon and wants an X-Rare.

God bless these writers, they’re actually bringing up the point that Bashin thoroughly beat the ass of Eight not once but twice and she hasn’t yielded an X-Rare to him.

The 2nd time was due to tournament bracket, so it’s understandable that she isn’t obligated to present Bashin with any reward mid-tournament, I would say usually because when you’re in a tournament you can’t change what your deck composition is throughout the entirety of it, though in this case it seems like what deck you use for the Gunslinger doesn’t need to be the same deck you use for bracket if J’s sudden usage of The Gigantic Thor is anything to go by.

But there’s absolutely no reason why Eight didn’t yield an X-Rare the first time, I could probably explain it with something Nine said, claiming that “Nazo-Otonas give X-Rares to people they recognize the strength of”

Eight’s main deck is a Green one, but she used Purple against Bashin, so since she was doing the equivalent of sandbagging (the act of not playing your main deck or character in a card or fighting game because you’re confident enough that you can win while actively inhibiting yourself), she was able to ignore the need to recognize Bashin’s ability.

She’s such a Diva at times really. “I don’t even know if I’ll show up so I GUESS!”

But you know, we’re fighting now, so GATE OPEN!

Skipping straight to Turn 17…

At least it’s not Turn fucking 999…

Moving on the side of speed they didn’t actually give us a field review, but Bashin has a Level 2 Metalburn on his board, Bashin then adds a Level 3 Rokceratops and Level 2 Eyeburn to it.

That’s a pretty bulky board.

Bashin then attacks with Metalburn and Eyeburn (they apparently skipped Eyeburn’s attack animation) and snatches 2 lives from Eight, leaving her with 2 left.

Bashin then leaves Rokceratops as a blocker and ends.

Well this isn’t looking good for Eight but I don’t know what position Bashin is in concerning lives.

Eight then deploys The Hermit Wise Tree at Level 2.

If you don’t remember what this does (it’s been a while I don’t blame you), for every exhausted spirit Eight has her battling spirits gain +1000 BP, and at Level 2 all her Spirits refresh during her End Step, letting her full attack without fear of needing to leave blockers.

…Dropping a Cost 7 Red X-Rare.

Alright, you had my curiosity.

But now you have my attention!

The TwinRowdy Diranos, a Cost 7 Red X-Rare from BS02.

And it’s a Member of not one but TWO prominent families, Terra Dragon and Emperor Beast!

We finally get a view of Eight’s Board, and it consists of a Flyingmirage which she just lost thanks to adding it’s core to Diranos.

and a Level 2 Shockeater.

Using Shockeater’s Core to level it up to Level 2.

Now would be a good time to review all of Diranos’ abilities.

The first effect grants all spirits with Evolution an extra +1000 BP.

The 2nd effect grants all “Terra Dragon” family spirits the Awaken keyword at all levels but only if Diranos is Level 2 or higher.

So at Level 2, you can count on all your Terra Dragons having an extra +1000 BP and Evolution, which is good for trading around Core for your attacks.

As for the “Terra Dragon” Family itself, it’s a family of cards with Dinosaur motifs, and they’re very popular.

Maybe you should have thought about that before using Diranos in what seems to be an all-green deck.

Honestly this happens so often in this particular show and it bothers me.

Bashin blocks the now 6000 BP Diranos with Rokceratops, and Rokceratops, having only 4000 BP, is destroyed.

Bashin loses a life to the remaining Shockeater.

Eight ends her turn, and thanks to her Level 2 Hermit Wise Tree, she can now safely sit behind her big nasty X-Rare as a powerful blocker.

…

Lizardman, Skeleton-Jaw AND your own bloody X-Rare are normally strong enough to take on TwinRowdy Diranos you absolute shitstain.

Bashin out here giving Gingers a really bad name, Orange is one of the coolest hair colours and Bashin don’t deserve it.

Unsurprisingly, Bashin draws The DragonEmperor Siegfried, and summons it at Level 3.

…Except that Eight does have an available Shockeater to Block Siegfried instead of Diranos. So it’s not like she couldn’t just block with that and keep Diranos.

Plus you’ve got only 2 other attackers and 1 life. But I assume you have a plan for that. Eight still has 2 lives so even if you full attacked this turn you couldn’t win.

Bashin’s stupidity must be contagious because apparently Eight takes Bashin’s challenge and Siegfried defeats The TwinRowdy Diranos.

Forgive me if I’m a little bit confused at this course of action.

WHAT!?

HOW!?

YOU HAVE 2 LIVES AND A BLOCKER, BASHIN ONLY HAS 2 ATTACKERS!

YOU WOULD LIVE!

For the sake of argument, lets play this out.

Bashin has 2 remaining Red Spirits, both stronger than Eight’s Green Spirit.

Eight has 2 lives, Bashin has 1.

If Bashin swings with both, Eight takes one, blocks the other, then Bashin has no blockers remaining and Eight can play The TwinRowdy Diranos again and win (Because that’s what’s in her hand)

If Bashin swings with one and Eight takes a life, if Bashin chooses not to continue attacking, Bashin STILL loses because he only has 1 blocker and Eight would have 2 remaining attackers because she would just summon the extra Diranos in her hand.

The only situation that ends unfavorably for Eight is if she blocks the first attack and Bashin ends his turn leaving a blocker, because then Eight would only have 1 Attacker.

But that requires that Eight willingly be stupid enough to not take a life for it. Strategies that rely on opposing stupidity are not reliable strategies.

But lets say Bashin decides to err on the side of caution and not attack leaving 2 Blockers, Twin Rowdy Diranos gets played again at Level 2, Eight can attack with Diranos, get blocked (because Bashin only has 1 Life) and even if Bashin blocks with Eyeburn which has 6000 BP, Diranos’ BP wasn’t actually 6000 during it’s attack.

Because of the Hermit Wise Tree’s Level 1 ability.

Spirits must exhaust to attack and to defend, so Diranos’ attacking BP when on it’s own is actually 7000 BP. Meaning Bashin loses Eyeburn.

And while Eight wouldn’t win on that turn you’ve still got a few turns to go which firstly, isn’t a lost match, and secondly, THE BEST CASE SCENARIO THAT FOR BASHIN THAT HE CAN CONTROL.

Because if he tries to incur stupidity with an attack on Eight, all Eight has to do is take the first attack with her Life.

These Nazo-Otonas are stupid I tell you.

And of course, Bashin now has a copy of The TwinRowdy Diranos.

I suppose we had to improve his deck somehow.

It’s an alright powered X-Rare, on its own it squares evenly with Siegfried, and while it beats Thor in base BP, it can’t beat it while Mjolnir is around.

Back at Fort Bishounen, Suiren and Striker both have their High Ranker passes.

Though I’d have thought Suiren would have been confirmed to have hers like way earlier, considering she played her 2nd X-Rare.

Bashin makes his way in, announcing his new X-Rare.

Striker’s face is absolutely priceless, but unsurprising considering how he lost his mind when he initially saw The DragonEmperor Siegfried back on Episode 7.

It’s been 16 episodes since then?… Geez.

Speaking of which, Striker is the only Cornerstone holder lacking a 2nd X-Rare.

You’ll need a combo of your own if you’re going to use Diranos to defeat J, Mjolnir puts Thor’s BP over Diranos’

Sucks to be you.

It’s something normal people would call “Growing up”

It’s also something that anime characters are allergic to, so yes, there’s definitely something wrong with J.

…But he won’t even be watching it if he’s confined to his room.

If he doesn’t know it’s being played this won’t work.

And you’re just projecting.

I’ve been graced with not having my time wasted watching Striker and Suiren battle for what will feel like the umpteenth time. J seems to be keeping watch on Smile-

Hold on a fucking moment, how old is Smile?

Approximately 13.

The dude is DRIVING A GOTDAMN TRUCK.

If he could Drive a Nazo-Otona sanctioned Truck he wouldn’t need a bloody Taxi Driver to get him to Tournaments.

DOES JAPAN NOT HAVE DRIVING LAWS!?

No time to worry about that now! The PLOT is happening!

Emergency report sounds eerie, I wonder what J was expecting a report from

Nevermind, we cut to Striker battling Suiren and Bashin losing his proverbial shit over not being able to fight J.

“There is no such thing as a dumb question”

Carl Edward Sagan

Carl Sagan did not die for his legacy to be disproved by a talking mouse.

What fucking planetary arrangement told you he was even aware you were playing?

Or even cared?

Bashin is both dumb as a brick and yet still the smartest person in the room.

And that doesn’t bode well for the world he exists in.

It’s almost like something urgently called him away.

You know you couldn’t use the more efficient car that I know full well you can afford, one with less seats considering you’re not planning on picking anyone up or taking anyone with you.

Or do you just hate the driver that much that you have to sit as far away from him as possible?

In which case why haven’t you hired a new one? You’ve got more than enough money to burn for a new driver, there’s probably a fucking waiting list.

I understand that Kyouka is very distressed considering she has no clue what is going through her brother’s head.

But I would just like to point out once again that she has the most unique voice of any anime character.

And I absolutely love it.

Ah yes, the classic method of simply having someone inconspicuously take a suitcase to a location, wait a bit and then just leave it there.

You pull this on a Train in London and the whole line will go down for a few hours.

I assume this suitcase was what “Emergency report” was about.

And it seems the Driver is aware of J’s situation with his friends.

Just gonna come right out and admit it aren’t ya?

Isn’t there an incentive for you to defeat Uchuuchouten? Not become his puppet?

I suppose it’s hard to beat someone when you don’t know who they are.

Ah yes, most sneaky. Except both your Sister AND Bashin caught you.

Not exactly the stealthiest kid on the block.

Captain they’re your friends, you think they give a damn about Thousupi Group specifically?

None of them have any hard feelings about the Nazo-Otonas, hell Eight and Card Sensei are friendly to them!

The show seems to think that the Nazo-Otonas are very carefully established as evil but if anyone came and told me that I’d slap them.

The only established evil character in the show is literally Smile, and NO ONE ELSE, NOT EVEN UCHUUCHOUTEN.

Uchuuchouten is the “Antagonist”, obviously, but he is not established as “Evil”, his conversation with Card Sensei ordering him to fight was indicative of his personality, but there’s no established action Uchuuchouten has taken.

Smile on the other hand, his entire backstory shows how he fell from being a polite young boy to the “Gunslinger’s Apparition”, his personality shifted for the worse, earning him a reputation for breaking the wills of his opponents as well as a knack for seeing kindness as a weakness.

Just a bit of explanation for ya if you’ve gotten this far on the premise that all Nazo-Otonas are automatically evil, none of them besides Smile have shown “Evil”, merely antagonism.

In an odd turn of events we’re actually getting to see what’s on the disk immediately.

I was not expecting to see J’s father’s face but now that I have a good look at it, the dude looks like he could cut Diamonds with his nose.

So J’s father, isn’t from Japan?

This requires some background.

After a quick check on the Wiki, J’s father, namely S. Kiano Sawaragi as he’s named is from Finland which is the oddest nationality for a character in a Japanese anime.

And it’s cool.

Which means J is actually half-japanese, half-finnish.

Interesting trivia, I don’t think this comes into play at all though.

And now we see Smile and Elliott welcoming Kiano.

Considering we know that Kiano was having Elliott help him with the New Battle Spirits System, namely the Tag System, this isn’t much of a revelation.

How does a video involving Kiano and Elliott IMMEDIATELY indicate that Elliott is a member of Thousupi Group?

You must have been aware of their collaboration, nothing has indicated that he’s a member so this conclusion comes seemingly out of nowhere.

Considering how you jumped to the conclusion that they’re members of Thousupi without a clear indicator, who knows.

You could probably deduce that they’re trying to find the most complex method of milking a cow if your deductive reasoning is this bad.

Nothing like spilling the beans on Isekai, but we’re aware the Nazo-Otonas know of Isekai so this isn’t surprising.

As for why they’re informing Kiano about this, likely they intend to use the funds of the Sawaragi family to do something to it.

Kiano’s smile here is… actually kind of hard to decipher.

Considering the Video camera here, it could be that Kiano was trying to get them to spill the beans about it on video.

But at the same time it could be an expression of interest, the smile is indicative of something but we don’t know what.

We call this good directing, it makes the audience speculate.

The Smile does mean one thing, the information of Isekai is useful to Kiano in some way.

It’s at this moment that Elliott and Smile realize there is a Camera filming them and Smile cuts the feed there.

Seems they weren’t happy about it, so either Kiano didn’t know about the Camera or he brought it knowing that the Nazo-Otonas wouldn’t approve.

No Shit Okyou. Though one could argue he looks like he’s having a headache.

Dude’s been receiving rare cards from a pair of Nazo-Otonas, who work for Uchuuchouten, who the Cornerstone holders are destined to defeat.

I’d be having an identity crisis as well, but I assume the worry here is more about what his father is doing with them.

J was expecting his father to have been duped by Thousupi into working with them?

The dude’s RICH, he didn’t get that far by being a moron.

Seems J and Okyou are at opposite ends.

Okyou doesn’t want J to immerse himself in Thousupi any further I’d imagine, so that’s why she’s encouraging J to focus on the tournament and not on investigating Thousupi.

It’s hard being a rich kid involving yourself in what seems to be the Battle Spirits Illuminati while ALSO being a champion at card games.

J just casually informing Okyou that he intends to beat the answers out of Smile.

Well that’s one way to kill 2 birds with one stone.

I did NOT sign up for this today.

WHAT IS HAPPENING!?

WHY IS KYOUKA BLUSHING!?

Oh okay, they put her in a uniform.

From the looks of things, it looks like school clothes, in which case I can sympathize with her being bashful.

Trying new school clothes was always an embarrassing endeavor.

All round flattery from Kyouka’s mother and Suiren.

Meanwhile Striker is being Striker and falling for it.

First he wanted to be choked out by My Sunshine, now he’s entranced by Kyouka in a skirt.

I think I preferred the Blue dress to be honest.

Wouldn’t the blue dress do more for that kind of appearance than a school uniform and skirt?

I suppose the tie helps.

…Practice for what?

Apparently nothing considering they won’t elaborate as to what it was.

Instead Striker interrupts with the Plot, which is totally acceptable.

Ah, I see Bashin is missing because he’s hunting for J.

Well this should be interesting, I wonder what Bashin intends to do about J once he finds him considering J has a tendency to be rather stubborn about nothing.

J’s been not only ignoring casual battle spirits but also just not conversing with his friends altogether.

This is a good enough cause for concern.

J’s mother isn’t aware of Kiano’s activities.

That’s significantly alarming, normally your Wife is the person you’d want to confide in the most.

He wasn’t exactly making it hard for you.

“The Battle Spirits Center” isn’t the most inconspicuous location to invite a Nazo-Otona

I’ve been tricked by Bashin so many times that I don’t know if he’s skillfully covering up the fact that he’s worried about J, or if he’s being genuine.

If I were doing this for Kyouka’s sake rather than… being Bashin.

I’d have immediately retorted with “That statement won’t fly” and warn him what’s going on with the people around him.

I suppose J is dense in his own way, he’s not aware how his actions are affecting the others.

After some protest from Bashin, J decides to battle.

Didn’t exactly take much.

Well, I get another fight to watch, so this is the opposite of a problem for me.

Gate Open!

Bashin has a Level 2 Taurusknight, and a Level 2 RiseDragon Balmung, which is a new card, so we gotta check it.

It’s just a Cost 4 Spirit with Awaken, not really much to see here. It’s Winged Dragon Family isn’t a particularly prevalent one in the game either.

Meanwhile J has 4 Spirits.

Baby-Loki
Queen-Valkyrie (Level 2)
Sphereroid
and The Sacred Mjolnir.

That’s a pretty hefty board, and with that much reduction there’s a lot he could play too.

Bashin adds a 2nd RiseDragon Balmung to his board.

Bashin swings with his Level 2 Balmung, J blocks with Sphereroid which is destroyed.

Surprised J isn’t taking from the life, you’d think if he wanted to block he’d use a Defensive Aura maybe…

Bashin prepares to attack with his 2nd RiseDragon Balmung, using it’s Awaken ability to have it match the level of the previous attack.

Queen Valkyrie takes this attack, Bashin hasn’t managed to snatch a life.

I’d argue taking at least one would be worth it here but J is playing White, blocking is kind of the aim of the game.

J refills his board, summoning Baby-Loki and The Artifact Laguna, which is at Level 2.

Bashin… Mutters to himself suggesting a problem with J’s play…

I haven’t noticed anything myself, perhaps its the lack of attacks? I’m unsure.

Bashin hasn’t lost a life and he’s been swinging, so it’s likely that J hasn’t made a single attack whatsoever.

Bashin deploys a Level 2 Plateau of Duel.

This will let him refresh all his Awaken Spirits on J’s Start Step, letting him attack as much as he likes.

Ah, it appears we’re finally getting into the meat of what Bashin’s Deck is.

It’s a deck focusing on his unique Keyword at the time, Awaken, which is good when you want to make a lot of powerful attacks.

Awaken lets you maximize the levels of your Spirits with limited core by moving them around, giving you strong attacks without much card investment.

Still got no clue what utter nonsense Bashin is spouting.

Bashin attacks with Taurusknight, using Awaken to bring it up to Level 3.

The Artifact Laguna is destroyed.

J is REALLY not wanting to get hit by ANY of these attacks and it’s starting to bother me.

AND FINALLY THE GAMESTATE CHANGES!

Bashin swung with his remaining 2 Balmungs, using Awaken to bring them up to Level 2 each.

J then took both of them from the Life.

Bashin doesn’t realize, it, but he’s just been caught in a really nasty mental trap.

J was blocking every attack up until now, and even Taurusknight’s attack, but made sure to leave 3 spirits available.

Why?

Firstly, the first Block was to goad Bashin to continue attacking, making him think he wants to protect his life.

By taking the next 2 attacks and leaving 3 spirits, not only has he gained 2 extra core to use for the Gigantic Thor, but The Gigantic Thor has 3 White reduction symbols, which J can fulfill in it’s entirety.

Laguna wasn’t necessary.

And was sacrificed as a way to goad Bashin.

Bashin’s Plateau of Duel refreshes every one of his Spirits, that means it’s J’s Start Step now.

J seems to be prepping his board, he summons Baby-Loki.

Alright, now would be a good time for The Gigantic Thor-

-Wha?

J? Ima need you to run that by me again because this was the PERFECT time to play your Key Spirit.

Bashin can’t pin-point what J’s strategy and you know what? Neither can I.

Bashin is having a hard time identifying whether J’s trying to defend or not, given that J took 2 lives and nothing came of it.

I’m confused as to why there is no THOR when it looked like a huge build up to it…

Haha, this is actually pretty self-aware.

Since Bashin has a massive Track record of drawing Siegfried with Double Draw, the show is trying to pass it off as an indicator that Double Draw always tends to give Bashin the exact card he needs.

And this makes it a really freaky way to not only subvert the audience’s expectations, but also hit home that Double Draw will give Bashin Siegfried as opposed to the card he needs.

This get’s reflected in a Revival to Double Draw’s effects. (Revival cards are cards that got updated effects to make them more usable in current formats)

Bashin depletes a Balmung to summon The DragonEmperor Siegfried.

Leaving all the core on Balmung, which is fine because Siegfried ALSO has the Awaken ability.

Have fun with that, J has 4 Blockers.

Well, so much for that plan, Bashin didn’t get to make much of his turn.

Attack Step ending is very nasty against a Red deck that rewards itself mainly for attacking.

Is it happening?

Finally, we now get The Gigantic Thor!

Not sure what the wait was for, probably to enact a Battle between Siegfried and Thor.

Which is kind of an interesting way to abuse the “I’ve only got 1 copy in deck so I didn’t draw it yet” excuse.

Gigantic Thor is levelled up to Level 3!

So Gigantic Thor is now at 8000 BP, and it can refresh itself by destroying an Armed Machine.

Bit of a shit plan, you’d think he’d want to get Bashin within kill range before defeating him with his Key Spirit.

Bashin quite rightfully points out that Mjolnir is the only Armed Machine family spirit there, meaning even with the 5-6 attacks Thor gets off, he won’t be able to deal anywhere close to 5 lives through 3 blockers.

J deploys a Nexus I haven’t seen before! So time to examine!

How I failed to notice this card existed in BS02 is beyond me.

The Artifact Plant, during any attack step, grants all your Cost 2 White Spirits the “Armed Machine” Family.

Which is just a fancy way to say “Thor’s gonna go HAM”

That second effect is pretty nice too, combined with Thor you can get a lot of Core for defense later if you level it up.

J levels up all of his Spirits besides Thor to Level 2. The reason this is important is because Thor otherwise wouldn’t have enough power to defeat Siegfried at Level 3.

Exhausting a Baby-Loki, Thor bludgeons a RiseDragon Balmung.

Which is confusing, because Balmung has the most core, therefore it would make more sense to grant the core to Siegfried if it was going to lose anyway.

Hell, Bashin’s perfectly allowed to block with Balmung then deplete it with Awaken just so the core doesn’t go to waste, he doesn’t lose a life that way.

Siegfried will give Bashin an Extra life at Level 3, so.

Baby-Loki is destroyed to refresh Thor.

Now that Balmung’s core is in the reserve, Bashin has 0 way to actually survive any of J’s attacks now, because he was a dumb-dumb and didn’t Awaken Balmung’s Core away.

Friggin’ idiot.

Mjolnir attacks and takes out Taurusknight.

Thor attacks, defeating The DragonEmperor Siegfried.

Bashin currently has 5 lives, so lets do a check, by destroying Mjolnir, Thor will refresh again.

So J’s field will be 2 Baby-Lokis and a Thor who can destroy each for 2 more refreshes.

That would give Thor a total of 3 attacks, along with the 2 Baby-Lokis, Bashin would lose all 5 of his lives.

Just barely, and only because Bashin can’t use Awaken to it’s fullest extent.

He’s an idiot, and so are you for making a Rival of him.

…What?

No it wouldn’t!

Diranos would have made the situation MUCH MUCH worse! He only gives himself Awaken at Levels 2 and 3, and YOU had to deplete a Balmung just to summon Siegfried.

Your loss hinged on decent use of Awaken and you fucked it up.

J asks if… The Cost 7 TwinRowdy Diranos…

Can handle Cerru-Berus?

Are you some sort of moron– You know what I already know the answer to this question.

Anyone who thinks Cerru-Berus is genuinely threatening can go suck a fat one, It’s Cost 6 Limitation means it’s COMPLETELY useless against 99% of the cards in the game, if your highest cost in deck is Cost 6 you’re doing something horribly wrong.

Bashin gets straight to the point.

Good, we need more plot to deal with this aching headache caused by the sad fact that was that battle.

Ah yes, the classic retort for when you want to avoid answering a question, change the subject.

And we call this an OOF.

J’s doing a dang good job to make it seem like Bashin’s a hypocrite for trying to pester him.

Of course, this is true, no one is worried about the tiff between Bashin and Meganeko because people know what’s going on.

No one knows what J is doing, that’s the difference.

In my experience, bottling stuff up never ends well, especially when you don’t tell your friends what’s ailing you.

Or you end up like this guy:

And NO ONE defines edge quite like this guy.

Bashin finally decides to leave it and tells J to promise they’ll battle tomorrow.

Tomorrow of course, being the Tournament.

After this scene, we cut to Best Girl, hoping for the best tomorrow when she finally gets to play Card Games with everyone else.

It’s adorable and I hate you all for not squeeing over it.

FINALLY, WE CAN RESOLVE THIS LITTLE DISPUTE. ITS BEEN CHOKING ME EVER SINCE.

Meganeko asks Bashin about the Tournament and Bashin perks up after realizing that Meganeko knows about it.

Meganeko realizes that she might blow her cover if she continues to talk about the Tournament so she thanks Bashin for her Diary and tries to cut the conversation off there.

She’s… Gonna come to the Tournament obviously.

It’s not rocket science.

Luckily the object of your affections is about as intelligent as that inanimate bag you’re holding.

Also god dammit this dispute didn’t get resolved here.

I swear to god the pacing of this is putting me to sleep.

Finally, now we get to something RELEVANT.

Smile says all of this with nothing separating it other than a “Keke” and both the first and second things he says have absolutely no relation with each other.

This is a tad weird to see. You’ve got no control over how your father chooses to operate J.

It would be a little different were it the other way around, Kiano has ABSOLUTELY a reason to not want his son influenced.

But otherwise, I’m slightly wondering why J isn’t more suspicious of his father, and is sat here, telling a boy the same age as him not to involve his Dad in whatever shenanigans the Thousupi Group are invested in.

Well, this isn’t anything new, I’d be very surprised if Smile wasn’t an acquaintance of Kiano, given how they kind of had a meeting.

Even Smile can hear the Wishful thinking from here.

Its moments like this that make me absolutely love Smile’s character. He definitely needs another Battle so I can get TRULY invested.

There’s nothing that gets the Blood Knight in me going like “If you wanna know you’ll have to beat it out of me”

J decides to take Smile’s suggestion but Smile interrupts him.

Well if Smile isn’t the person J is battling then who is?

This… Doesn’t exactly answer that question but it does answer why Smile was holding J’s hand with all the card deliveries up until now.

Well that declaration was sudden!

In one fell swoop, Smile confirmed something we were already expecting but then declared something that subverted it immediately.

Smile wants J on the Numbers Elite, but ONLY to Tag up with him so they can defeat King Uchuuchouten (Whoever the fuck that is)

See here’s another few questions that get raised by that declaration, we can infer that Smile is working for Uchuuchouten so he can slowly learn how to beat him through proximity (with the help of Elliott’s supply), the odd part here is why does he need J to Tag with him to do so?

And secondly, what is so wrong with Uchuuchouten that he absolutely needs to be defeated? As far as we know, Uchuuchouten exists simply as an obstacle to be beaten but we have nothing to tell us WHY he needs to be.

And given Smile’s determination and need for J to assist in beating Uchuuchouten, that means that they are telling the Audience that Uchuuchouten is powerful, though with no explanation as to why.

It also doesn’t explain what Kiano’s purpose is in all this either.

Anyway, we’ve got no Card of the Day, merely an explanation of the Multi-Attack Combo used in the episode.

So with that, I’ll hopefully be able to actually get these out routinely now, this one took a damn long while and I apologize for that.

Til the next one!

Your little reviewer is a happy bunny indeed, apparently about a MONTH ago (I am so sorry for not noticing this earlier) the Subber for the Battle Spirits anime footage that I am using for the purposes of this Blog gave their approval of the Blog on the Episode I considered skipping as it served no plot relevant purpose.

As the Subber themselves has requested I do not skip any episodes whatsoever, you can be sure that Battle Spirits will have their reviews in their entirety, at the expense of my declining mental health due to over exposure to Bashin’s idiocy.

Which is slowly coming to light that maybe just anyone holding a Cornerstone seems to have their own unique brand of stupidity.

Don’t do Cornerstones, not even once.

But on that lovely note, I’m happy to begin Battle Spirits Shounen Toppa Bashin! Episode 22!

I didn’t think I’d have to say “NO SHIT SHERLOCK!” before the Episode had even started.

If it wasn’t obvious before captain, it is now!

How come you have to make a thank-you party even though you’re not actually finishing your year yet?

You’ve still got a summer term, dipshits, get emotional then, this seems like a waste of time.

Because unfortunately Bashin, not everyone plays Battle Spirits.

I know it’s Blasphemous of them but you’re an idiot for not realising this.

Not if Meganeko has been working on it, it won’t.

CAPTION THIS.

PLEASE.

And Bashin kinda just deserved that one, smartass trying to budge into the frame with half of his face.

Kind of mean though to include the blurry pics in the Yearbook.

Forgive me if I missed something but you still haven’t had the opportunity to apologise to her yet.

You shouldn’t be talking to her unless it’s to apologise, forget the yearbook, people first.

And Meganeko just FUCKING IGNORES HIM.

YES. THIS IS PRICELESS

BEST. EPISODE. EVER!

Awww that’s just like the worst shit when someone’s ignoring you.

You’re right there, trying to get their attention and they just blank you out.

Then some other fuck calls them over and they respond immediately.

I hate people that do this. I love the fact it’s being done to Bashin.

So the story finally catches up with my thought process and asks Bashin whether or not he’s actually bothered to apologise to the girl.

I can understand being mad at a guy, but considering the gravity of the situation that pissed off Meganeko.

Actively INHIBITING his ability to apologise is the easiest way to make enemies, that’s just dumb.

Why the hell would you do that? Not wanting to make amends is just… God it bothers me!

Of all the things I can ignore about Meganeko on account of her innocence, this is NOT innocent! This is just blatant bitch behaviour!

This is the same shit I’d expect out of a Cornerstone Holder.

No Shit Sherlock!

I… How… What?…

How can you rationalise that as NOT her avoiding you?

That’s right, you can’t…

…Also someone call 911 I think I’m hallucinating, Bashin shouldn’t be realising he said something dumb.

Well isn’t that unfortunate. Though you and I both know it’s because she’s training with Card Sensei, she needs free time for that.

That we can’t attribute to her being a blatant bitch to Bashin.

She can very much still be mad at you.

Because he’s your teacher, and has significantly more experience than you in dealing with women, even IF his luck has run dry.

…Are they keeping the fact that Meganeko is learning Battle Spirits a secret?

Because if THAT is why she’s avoiding Bashin then not good enough.

It doesn’t explain the evidently shitty photos of Bashin in the yearbook, that’s still a super nasty thing to do.

Yes she is.

PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD FINISH THAT SENTENCE BEFORE I GET THE WRONG IDEA.

MY MIND IS NOT AN INNOCENT ONE SO FOR THE SAKE OF THE PURITY OF THE PEOPLE READING THIS BLOG!

GOD.

FUCKING.

DAMMIT.

And now conspiracy theorist Striker has decided that there is something super suspicious going on because Card Sensei is teaching a young girl how to play Card Games…

But of course they’re going to fail to state what they think it is because they want it to be weirder for the older audiences.

Also Striker is TERRIBLE at coming to conclusions, Cap thought his Dad was cheating on his Mother with Number Eight (which admittedly is Cap, but not Striker), then Striker thought Bashin needed Valentines Chocolate… Then there was getting mad at J for doing the exact thing you wanted him to do.

And then there was that time when you legitimately thought Suiren was an old lady.

Like come on.

You might not be as openly stupid as Bashin but you are certainly far too quick to act on that stupidity.

Oh thank god.

THEN WHY DID YOU INCLUDE THE SHITTY PHOTOS OF BASHIN THEN!?

THAT’S JUST MEAN!

Why would anyone regret learning how to play a Card game?

Like that doesn’t even make sense.

Especially in a Card Game anime.

Oh lovely, so the next few minutes are going to be meaningless to me because they’re using Karuta cards.

I can’t read Japanese and I am sad that I cannot.

…WHAT IN THE NAME OF KINGTAURUS DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH BATTLE SPIRITS…

I can take a good analogy and apply it to the game but this makes absolutely ZERO sense!

Make it understandable for a Beginner my ass, I’ve been interested in this game for YEARS and I don’t know what the fuck that’s supposed to mean.

Apparently neither does the god damn Turtle that somehow managed to teach Card Sensei how to play the game.

And Card Sensei is a fucking Nazo-Otona, and Number FIVE of the Numbers Elite according to Smile!

I have absolutely ZERO idea how this is going to help Meganeko.

Is that what that’s meant to mean?

…I assume the Karuta cards have to follow some kind of rule for them to actually be Karuta cards, just putting that on the Karuta itself seems like it wouldn’t make sense.

I think I can wrap my head around this one but I’ll leave it to the Turtle.

I can agree with this, Purple is VERY low powered, meaning you need to rely on lots of effects to maintain your position.

Because using cards requires using lots of care, going too ham can leave you with no card advantage, and no core with which to defend yourself.

Now we cut to Batosupi TV!

Which probably means we WON’T be talking about Battle Spirits!

Nothing like SUBVERTING YOUR EXPECTATIONS!

cough Suspension! cough

Possibly creeping on some lady like the weirdo he is.

I wouldn’t put it passed him after he hounded the girl’s bathroom for 6 fucking hours.

Tip for lonely guys, don’t choke the damn girl you’re after.

Well that didn’t take very long did it?

Good thing Meganeko is planning a surprise for this lazy cretin.

Bashin gets a ring at the doorbell, thinking it’s Meganeko, he DASHES for it. Hoping to finally apologise.

Nope.. It’s even more surprising. It’s freaking KYOUKA.

What reason does Kyouka have to go all the way to Bashin’s house personally?

Bashin questions Kyouka as to why she came to visit him so early.

Something’s up with J? I’m actually curious. Given that Card Sensei’s Nazo-Otona status has been given focus I imagine Kyouka might be worried about J’s relationship with Micheal Elliott.

Him being lost in deep thought isn’t anything particularly new for him, especially when he doesn’t have a lot of friends.

As for losing his appetite, we can attribute that to puberty…

Buuuuut while I could explain every coincidence concerning J, 2 coincidences that point to a similar conclusion are worth worrying about.

Kyouka came to see if Bashin knew anything about it.

For what purpose would a pretty boy like J need to actually go on a diet? The dude looks like he could be snapped in half if he fell on a curb.

Alright bets are on!

I’m betting that J’s talking to his Dealer, Micheal Elliott about some more CARDSSSSS for J’s evident Battle Spirits addiction.

He’s a rich boy, he can afford it.

Do you reckon “Diamond Moon” could be a street name for some type of drug?

Looky here smartass, but the fact that J kept it a secret, and then didn’t tell Kyouka about it, implies that Kyouka simply “asking about the secret” wouldn’t cause J to divulge it.

See now THIS is a Sister that has thought shit through, props to Kyouka for intelligence.

Basically Kyouka is saying that even IF she knows what it is, it doesn’t necessarily mean she will have the ability to do something about it.

Though I question the assumption as to how Bashin would seemingly have more power over whatever is happening to J than she does, given that she holds power through money in the Sawaragi family.

Why place faith in someone other than your own sister? It’s not like Kyouka and J have a competing relationship with which J would seek to keep something from Kyouka.

Even Okyou’s speech is something Kyouka is aware of, meaning whatever J is locking up won’t be unsealed just because his Rival asked him to…

But he is a cornerstone holder, they’re prone to episodes of stupidity.

Honestly, Kyouka and Bashin’s relationship is really cute. And Bashin at least TRIES to smarten up when Kyouka is around.

Not only that but Bashin has opened up to the idea of Kyouka becoming his girlfriend last episode by imagining her giving him chocolates.

So it’s not like its an impossible ship…

When a girl you know is being an absolute bitch for seemingly no reason (those pics CANNOT be explained away by Meganeko wanting to surprise Bashin), it’s not a bad idea to change targets neither…

But that’s enough SawaragiShipping.

But you’re aware she’s avoiding Bashin, besides she’s not even home.

No point trying to make it up to a girl who wants nothing to do with you.

Let the problem solve itself.

Oh god this bollocks.

A lot of shows do this to promote a good attitude to the game, but I feel like this same advice really puts too much of an emphasis on “Luck” and causes rage toward the game for not giving them the right draws.

If you want to have the “Determination” to draw a good card from your deck:

Then you also need the knowledge and experience to not put shit cards into it to begin with.

You can’t draw a shit card if you don’t have any.

This is why I have a loving focus on deck building, because feeling like you’re getting that fated card you need can be lived through if your deck is filled with good cards.

This is a crappy exercise if there is actually a Dango filled with Wasabi.

This is creating a situation where there is a Shit card in the deck and you need to avoid drawing it.

If I were heading up this exercise, I would probably claim that all but 1 was Wasabi Dango, but actually they’re all Bean paste Dango.

Then once that exercise was done, I’d explain that you can’t draw badly if your deck only has cards that help it.

Then we could chow on the rest of the Dango without worry.

I’m a genius.

There’s no reason for the both of you to participate in the challenge… Only Meganeko.

Saving you from the boredom of having to watch them eat, Meganeko and Card Sensei both got Bean paste Dango.

Also Meganeko is adorable in this shot after having eaten Bean Paste Dango.

If Card Sensei can either afford, or make Bean Paste Dango I’m surprised he hasn’t managed to impress a woman yet.

Card Sensei asks Guragurii to participate but he’s evidently too worried about eating the Wasabi Dango to do so.

I’m surprised he didn’t go with the easy out of the fact that he’s a Turtle and he shouldn’t really be having Dango as part of his diet.

I can’t hear the show over the sound of NO ONE CAPTIONING THIS FUCKING SHOT!

And now we’re at the Sawaragi residence. Time to see what’s up with J.

But first we’re presented with a lovely shot of a sleeping Okyou.

Also I can NOT tell what Okyou is sleeping on, but it looks like a Laptop from here.

I see regardless of her ability to speak, Okyou is still a cat.

Secluded himself in the Batosupi room to think.

Because you know he couldn’t think in any other room, like his bedroom, nah he secluded himself in the Battle Spirits room, a room specifically designed to accommodate more than one person.

Yeah I’m thinking Bashin’s dumbassery isn’t his fault anymore, damn Cornerstone holders.

I thought he came here to figure out what the hell was up with his boyfriend?

And speaking of which if he was going either play OR do the above, then why isn’t he there?

Thought as much.

Yes, don’t stay next to the person who knows this place like the back of their hand and can direct you to where the Battle Spirits room is.

They eventually come by a really large door.

Not sure why a door that big would be needed for J’s room, I’d like a single door that I could lock, personally.

Okay THIS is just flexing in all manner of ways.

You have to cross a BRIDGE to the bathroom, with a Glass see-through floor, which also contains a WATERFALL and a RIVER with which FISH can live in.

And the fucking Throne itself is made of fucking GOLD.

WHAT NEED DO YOU HAVE FOR A GOLD SHITTER!?

Meanwhile, in the Batosupi Room, J is STARIN’ AT A CARD!

I’m hoping the card in question is relevant in some way.

Oh, it’s the WhiteTiger Huck.

A Card J has been putting to GREAT use.

Well he hasn’t included any Yellow Spirits to reduce it’s Cost really but it’s supported his Nexus combos just fine.

The only Yellow Spirit in his entire White Deck, I wonder what he’s pondering over it for? Is he intending to get new cards or is he stuck on whether or not he wants to use more colours than just the yellow Huck?

J does what all “Cool Rivals” do in anime and somehow have a 6th sense for someone turning up despite giving no indication of their presence.

And they’re ALWAYS right. Alright let’s see who this is-

-But apparently we won’t get to see that because they’ve placed a stupidly odd scene cut to Meganeko’s Dango drawing exercise.

Why even put that there? At least show us who J was sensing and give us a little more OMINOUS instead of just telling us someone was there, and then scene switching.

Fuck sake.

Well at least Meganeko is enjoying herself.

I suppose that’s one good thing that’s happened this episode.

And Card Sensei finally loses the completely pointless Dango drawing match.

As if it had any actual relevance to actual Battle Spirits strategy, all this time they could have been actually playing the dang card game.

…What? The Mindset?

Smells like a waste of time.

ALL THIS TIME AND MEGANEKO HADN’T BEEN GIVEN A DECK TO PLAY YET.

GOOD GOD!

Card Sensei is a Quack Sensei, even when teaching Battle Spirits.

It’s pretty obvious which one Meganeko is going to choose.

The Foreshadowing from Episode 7 hinted at this.

If you don’t remember what that was, I’ve actually hunted it down for you.

This statement was made when Meganeko was describing My Sunshine’s appearance after hatching from that Egg.

I suppose while we’re here, we might as well deal with the subject matter that is this unrecognisable card.

A Cost 4 Yellow Spirit from BS02, belonging to the Fairy Family.

At Level 2, if you control a combination of 3 Yellow Spirits or Yellow Nexuses when your opponent blocks, the blocker is treated as Level 1.

After revising some of the basics of Battle Spirits through a helpful English Tutorial that Discord Server I’m part of was in, I had finally discovered what Yellow’s actual style of play is, or at least the best way to describe it.

Given that Meganeko is picking Yellow, I might as well go over it. Yellow is the “Gimmick” Colour.

I was always having issues pin-pointing what Yellow’s strategy was, but “Gimmick” describes it perfectly, as Yellow does a lot of things that seemingly don’t correlate.

This “Combination of 3 Yellow Spirits or Nexuses” wording here is one of the early Gimmicks of Yellow. There are quite a few cards that request a specific combination of 3 Yellow Spirits or Nexuses in order to trigger an effect.

Card Sensei seems rather taken aback by Meganeko’s decision.

I wonder if it has to do with Smile?

As someone who has taught players to play the game myself, I can tell you that I have a big track record of teaching players who end up using Purple.

3 out of the 4 players I have attempted to Teach have used Purple decks, I’m going to have to re-teach one of them and I’m dreading it due to their already established affiliation with the damn colour.

Yes that has everything to do with why I have an aversion to Purple decks.

If the scene switch wasn’t a blatant indicator, Smile is that very student I’m guessing, given that Card Sensei hasn’t got a meaningfully established relationship with any other Nazo-Otona.

It seems Smile has been nagging J about something, and J has been lost in thought trying to give an answer.

That’s the problem with nagging, typically if you do it enough the person you’re asking will decide that the annoyance isn’t worth what they’re being offered, and refuse.

This seems to be a common line in Japanese anime, the “I don’t hate that” line.

It’s become a trope, if only exclusive to Japanese media.

Smile has suddenly disappeared, that was quick.

I wonder if J will try to shoo him away before Smile reveals himself…

That’s pretty cold-

God now I’m agreeing with Smile, look what you made me do?

Shouldn’t you be dealing with the more pressing matter of why Bashin is even in your house without your knowledge? You practically took a Helicopter ride when he sent a love letter to Kyouka JUST to fight him.

Not concerned why Kyouka might be bringing a boy home? No?

Infact how the hell did Smile get in there undetected? Kyouka is outright afraid of Smile.

Seems Smile didn’t get far. I’m still curious as to what he was offering J though.

Finally! Time to get some fuckin’ BACKSTORY!

I think this is the first time we’re actually getting decent backstory on one of the characters, especially since this is a series with an already established world, and a previous set of events that we have yet to know about.

I didn’t think it would take us 22 episodes to get this far but oh well, we’re here now.

“Was”

Interesting choice of words there. You were reporting to Uchuuchouten, so we know this particular part is a lie. The rest we know though, because Smile told us when he spoke to you.

Though it seems like even the Numbers Elite think you “Ran away” from them, despite your reporting to Uchuuchouten.

The Thousupi Group is trying to create a Team of “Perfect Card Battlers”?

I wonder if that’s why some Nazo-Otona has an interest in different Battlers?

It would certainly explain why Micheal Elliott was making a University, and trying to involve the Cornerstone holders, especially J.

It would also explain Eight’s interest in Striker, and Nine’s interest in Bashin.

Surprised no Nazo-Otona has made express interest in Suiren though, except for that one guy disguised as a security guard.

Sounds a bit like his newer pupil though, no offense to Meganeko for being soft.

Nice to know that Card Sensei has a nack for teaching small, weak-spirited and frail students.

That’s certainly a cause for alarm if anything.

Considering the EXTREMELY thick black lines covering the hair and the way it’s stylized kinda looking like a set of Bananas, I’m assuming that’s Smile.

I’m sorry but Card Sensei looks so bloody out of place with a thick beard.

Like what the hell is that? I thought he was just failing to grow one, but apparently he just did a shit job of properly shaving it.

Did the hair on his head not want to follow through?

…They’re playing Battle Spirits upside down.

Holy moly I do not to imagine how painful the blood rushing to their heads must feel.

Smile actually looks really cool here, I’m kind of sad that he turned evil, he has a really nice design in this shot.

HOW BLOODY TALL ARE THOSE DECKS!?

For the record, Battle Spirits has no card limit, you can legally play tall towers of decks like this one.

…However most Tournaments will disqualify you if you bring a deck that you cannot adequately randomise, so whether or not you can shuffle this monstrosity is another story entirely.

But you would have lost before you even got 10% through the deck… You only have 5 lives in a game, if it was a Battle of Endurance then you’d need to have artificially increased the life count to stupid levels.

YO WHAT THE FUCK? TURN 999!?

HOW THE HELL YOU GONNA PLAY A GAME OF 1000 TURNS!…

Okay okay, lets say a turn takes 1 minute, reasonably to go through each step, resolve effects and play your hand, attack, etcetera…

1000 Turns is 1000 Minutes.

That is 16 hours.

THERE ARE ONLY 24 HOURS IN A DAY.

THEY WERE, FROM THE MOMENT THEY GOT UP, BATTLING NONSTOP UNTIL THEY WOULD HAVE TO GO BACK TO SLEEP AGAIN (assuming 8 hours for sleep)

JESUS CHRIST.

I love Battle Spirits but not even I could play it so unreasonably much in the SAME GAME.

Card Sensei loses the match against Smile.

…First of all that’s god damn creepy, are you telling me he got that Smile then and NEVER lost it?

Secondly, “Your weakness is your kindness” did not age well since having his ass kicked by Bashin.

After Thousupi Group took great care in training these Card Battlers to become “Perfect” Card Battlers, you’d think he wouldn’t be able to actually leave Thousupi Group, or they’d have some kind of task for him?

Nope, they just let him disappear because why the fuck not? So much for all that effort.

I’d say something horrible like “Not that absurd if you know anything about America” but I’ll let the Americans off for today.

So, to summarise.

Card Sensei was part of a plan to create a “Perfect” Card Battler, so they took already strong Battlers and put them to training, each under their own Numbers Elite.

Number Four, aka Smile was a powerful Battler but a Kind Soul, but after completing Card Sensei’s training, Smile saw kindness as a weakness, went to America, and then was rumoured to have died.

Feeling guilt over the way Smile turned out, Card Sensei quit being a Number.

…So why are all the Numbers giving him shit for running away!? His student could have died and he didn’t even know about it until Smile came back. God they’re assholes.

Doesn’t explain the talking turtle unfortunately. I’m still a little bit boggled over whether or not Card Sensei is a Cornerstone holder.

And now we’re all caught up, Smile is Card Sensei’s Meganeko-gone-wrong.

So, Card Sensei is probably worried that Meganeko’s selection of Yellow might cause Meganeko to turn into a second Smile.

Card Sensei improving his mood with “That was then and this is now”

We can all use a little pick-me-up from time to time, I’m glad Card Sensei recognises that the circumstances are different here.

…I…

Hold on a second.

YOU BROUGHT UP THIS CONVERSATION YOU DUMB TURTLE!

ANY LOST TIME IS YOUR FAULT!

Nice, so Meganeko is going to Battle Card Sensei.

…WHAT?

I thought they were just going to play here! They’re going to take Meganeko to Isekai world!?

Meganeko has no Cornerstone, nor any talking animal, so this seems a bit odd to show her Isekai World when she has no reason to know about it.

They called them “Cornerstones” earlier in the Sub, I’ll switch to Keystones for my vocabulary if they consistently start calling them Keystones from now on.

Card Sensei’s Keystone is rather pretty.

And it’s Blue.

Which makes him special, since Blue is not one of the 5 main colours at present.

And Aesthetically, Blue is my favourite Colour. So this is a really nice animation to look at.

As for those who can’t handle bright blue, I feel sorry for you.

Also Card Sensei’s pose is just… ridiculous.

But also, this confirms that Card Sensei is a Chosen Card Battler… Who is ALSO a Nazo-Otona.

That is odd.

I wonder if Uchuuchouten knew about that, J’s Cornerstone never went off in response to Card Sensei, and Okyou, while normally able to tell when a Battler has been chosen, hasn’t mentioned Card Sensei at all.

There is something precious about Meganeko losing her shit over being in Isekai World.

Also I have a very good question, where the FUCK is the board meant to be? I see no place big enough for a Battle Spirits board.

Anyway, we’re hopping right to Turn 8 of MEGANEKO’S FIRST FIGHT!

This is the best Episode and none of you can convince me otherwise.

Meganeko has Rom, Arcanabeast-Ken and The Fairy Tanya on her field, all at Level 1.

Meganeko again, losing her shit over her spirits.

Absolutely precious.

Card Sensei seems to be keeping up his Mixed Colour Strategies with Beatbeetle and Dinohound.

Also you can tell the budget shifted immensely, the quality of Dinohound’s appearance just destroys Beatbeetle’s Cartoony look.

It’s just occurred to me that Card Sensei nor Meganeko will have any X-Rares this match…

Gawwwwd So booooriiiiing.

But I will review it with gusto because it’s Meganeko’s first!

Typically yes, Technically no.

There are several reasons why you might want to take lives or you might want to block, simply having less life than your opponent isn’t enough to determine who is winning.

The fact that Life cores go to the Reserve when they are lost is not only there to add sort of a “comeback mechanic” to Battle Spirits, but it’s also there to ensure that the reasons the opposing player would take a life are ambiguous.

Meganeko attacks with Rom and Card Sensei blocks with Beetbeatle, Rom ploughs through it.

Meganeko then makes an attack with Arcanabeast-Ken.

And Card Sensei takes from the life.

Isn’t that odd?

Dinohound has more BP than Arcanabeast-Ken, and wasn’t exhausted.

So it’s odd that Sensei would choose to take a life rather than blocking the easy to block Arcanabeast-Ken.

The same applies to Rom, it was at Level 1, and it’s weaker than Dinohound.

So either Sensei is letting Meganeko win, or he’s gathering core for something.

Meganeko seems as confused as I am that Card Sensei didn’t block those attacks.

As a person who hates putting himself into fights he can’t win, I wouldn’t have attacked at all without a way to deal with Dinohound.

Card Sensei plays Berserker-Gun, Flyingmirage and Shockeater to his field.

I see Card Sensei’s colour soup this time seems to consist of Green, Red and White.

Card Sensei attacks with Berserker-Gun, which Meganeko blocks with The Fairy Tanya.

Since they have equal BP, it’s mutually assured destruction.

Another odd move, Sensei didn’t attack with a card that had higher BP than Meganeko’s only refreshed Spirit, that was a waste.

And Sensei just ends his turn.

Yeah I see what’s happening here, he’s not doing his best to encourage Meganeko.

This is a really bad way of doing it. The best way to get someone into the game is to orchestrate it so that they win, yes, people like to think they are good at something from the get go.

But actively making bad plays just to do that is obvious to the person you’re teaching, and really insulting as well.

Meganeko’s picked up the problem though, which is good, it means that she’s recognising optimal attack patterns.

Meganeko plays Piyon.

Meganeko attacks again with Rom, Card Sensei blocks with Flyingmirage, his weakest spirit.

With 2 other Spirits that could easily beat Rom no less.

Waaaaaait.

Are you telling me Smile ended up the way he did? And defeated Card Sensei in that 999 Turn battle?…

Because Card Sensei LET him win!?

And Smile noticed!?

Meganeko is a Strong independent Card Battler who don’t need no free wins.

Card Sensei plays Eyeburn, Bat-Bat and Skulldevil.

Apparently we’ve got Purple as well.

He then brings Shockeater and Skulldevil to Level 2, meaning Shockeater has 4000 BP and Skulldevil has 3000.

Card Sensei then deploys The Ancient Fault. All of Sensei’s Cost 2 Spirits will gain +2000 BP while attacking.

And Card Sensei FINALLY moves his god damn Dinohound.

It only took several turns of NOT USING IT.

Meganeko Blocks, turning Arcanabeast-Ken into Roastedchic-Ken.

Meganeko laments the fact that only Piyon is able to Block at present.

Meganeko loses 2 lives due to the attacks of Shockeater and Eyeburn.

I mean 6000 BP isn’t breaking the barrier of how strong a Spirit can get, calm down.

It IS strong enough to take down a Level 1 DragonEmperor Siegfried and that’s an X-Rare so it’s nothing to scoff at either.

Meganeko plays The MelodyBird Crewc.

I wonder if she’ll use it’s effect to turn it and Piyon (as well as any Song Birds in her hand) into a family of her choice?

Apparently not, welp there goes that plan.

Now that Sensei has suddenly shifted into MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE

Meganeko seems to be having a hard time with the sudden onslaught of Stronger than usual spirits.

Eyeburn’s been brought up to Level 2, it’s got a pretty strong Level 2 BP of 6000, meaning with the Ancient Fault it’s going to have 8000 BP.

That’s pretty tough for a Cost 2 Spirit at least.

Dinohound burns away Piyon.

Shockeater and Eyeburn each attack again, bringing Meganeko down to only a single life.

That card?

Well now you have my ATTENTION!

Apparently Meganeko knows she has a card in this deck that can come back from this sticky situation she’s in. Card Sensei is 2 lives ahead and has Bat-Bat and Skulldevil reserved for blocking.

Meganeko only has Crewc and Rom, so I’m curious.

Ooooo… It’s a Nexus!

Now I’m even more curious, I’ll go over it’s effects when she plays it.

Meganeko adds The Fairy Tanya to her field.

I’m guessing this will be our card of the day, but you know what? Screw it.

Another Mishap with the Japanese Card being of Low Quality, so I’m going with this, Apologies.

At all Levels, this Nexus makes it so any effect that affects Both players or the cards on their field only affects one side, and you get to pick.

And at Level 2, any effect you use to draw yourself cards lets you double that number.

These are both pretty gimmicky effects but they’re pretty powerful if you can find the right effect to use them on, let’s see what other card Meganeko has to combo with this.

This card is awfully specific, hence the 4 reductions on it’s 5 cost.

Under normal circumstances this would cause it so Meganeko’s Fairy Tanya and Piyon and Card Sensei’s Bat-Bat and Skulldevil unable to attack or Block…

But these are hardly normal circumstances.

Meganeko activates the effect of The Sealed Spellbook, causing Heavy Gate to only affect Card Sensei’s side of the board.

And Meganeko takes the game!

Round of applause for our newly born Card Battler! I’ll be rooting for her literally every episode from now on!

Now we just need to get her an X-Rare and we’re all set, given the rest of the gang have one.

And she’s friendly to her Spirits too! Well isn’t that just lovely!

#MeganekoForMainCharacter.

I could totally do with this right about now I won’t lie, I’m sick to death of Bashin’s idiocy…

This completely undoes the bitch move of Meganeko including crappy photos of Bashin, he deserved it anyway.

Well I’m pretty sure that was the plan anyway, you did say you wanted to surprise Bashin at a Tournament, not immediately after learning.

A better candidate for a main character than Bashin…

Oh wait she already was.

I can understand why that would be pretty annoying. While I do also hate secrets (hence why I never keep any unless they’re not mine to tell), there are just some things people would rather not talk about.

You’re doing a shit job of it.

And so are your friends.

There is an ENTIRE group of people who know of it’s existence that aren’t Keystone Holders.

MEGANEKO knows about it despite being neither a chosen battler or a Keystone holder.

If it bothers you that he’s out late on his own at a friend’s house then either prevent him from leaving the house while you’re not home or give him a fucking phone so you can call him you muppet.

Becoming really hard to ascertain where Bashin inherited his stupidity.

None of which pertain to Isekai whatsoever.

Which means you are more than able to explain to your mother the nature of the situation that caused you to be late coming home.

Yes.

Yes they are, avoid keeping them if you can.

And definitely don’t pester someone to talk or tell you something they don’t want to talk or tell you about.

Because that only prompts them to keep things to themselves more.

Something Something reporting to King Uchuuchouten despite not being a Nazo-Otona?

That was too easy, you need to test my knowledge more dammit show.

…Wait what?!

But wait, the other Numbers don’t know that, which means the only person who knows about it is King Uchuuchouten, Yourself, and Guragurii.

And from the sounds of it, you were SUPER averse to having to Battle your students.

I don’t think you could really call that a Nazo-Otona but I suppose if you’re still affiliated with Uchuuchouten then regardless of whether it’s against your will or not, you’ll be recognised as one.

And that’s the episode!

We only got 1 Battle this time around, this time featuring the “Gimmick” Aspect of Yellow.

Because of Yellow’s very gimmicky nature, it features a lot of combo oriented plays, mixing those odd features together or running similar features en-masse to confuse your opponent.

As for the plot itself, we’ve finally got the lowdown on the bulk of Card Sensei’s past, However there are some points we don’t know about, for example why Number Eight hates Card Sensei so much.

Meganeko has finally become a Card Battler after 22 episodes. And now we’ve also got more than 1 Yellow Battler, so I sense there’s going to be a deep-seated rivalry between Meganeko and Smile, given that they’re both students of Card Sensei, and they use the same colour.

While they did go over the fact that J is supposedly keeping a secret from everyone, and it has to do with some kind of request by Smile, we haven’t exactly figured out what it is, and most of that segment seemed to be entirely padding concerning Kyouka’s Visit to Bashin and Bashin going ALL the way over to J’s house just to be shoo’d out. Not really all that great.

As for Meganeko’s “Surprise”, the Episode Preview seems to tell us that the Tournament in question where Meganeko intends to surprise Bashin will infact be next episode, so we won’t have to wait all that long to see how that will pan out.

It also seems that while J has been happily accepting the new Card Gifts from Elliott and Smile, he’s not at all willing to work with the Nazo-Otonas in question.

So at least he’s still on the Good guy’s side, though Smile did say he could see that he was wittling J down. I’m curious about the context if J actually makes a face-heel turn.

That pretty much covers the review really, I was dying to see Meganeko play a Card game, so I’m a happy bunny.

As for our card of the day…

Nailed it.

Of course, we’ve already given the card some review, so there’s no point going over it again. It is important to note though that Yellow is extremely varied in it’s capacity to do things, it’s got the ability to do an absolute lot, hence why it is the “Gimmick” Colour.

It is good at a lot of things but not specifically prevalent in any one thing (Though the combination of those “many things” can really catch your opponent off guard if he is prepared for one thing and not another)

Though while some of you may be willing to cite examples to refute me, Battle Spirits is a game where there is ALWAYS a deck that subverts the things you would expect out of that colour.

While most “Gimmick” Decks don’t usually top as a result of that gimmick having simple counters, Yellow Gimmicks are actually really strong, and in fact they were indeed meta enough at a given Era to not only get 1 but 2 of the cards in that deck limited… And 2 Eras later ANOTHER Yellow card got limited afterward.

Normally Gimmicks aren’t something you’d want to fear as long as you have a plan for it, but Yellow Gimmicks are outright scary when you have one that can start crazy combos.

Anyway, that’s our review for Episode 22! I’ll see you guys next Episode!

Well the last episode certainly left us on an annoying cliffhanger didn’t it?

Let’s hope it gets resolved with this episode. This particular set of episodes seems to focus on the relationship between Meganeko and Bashin.

And it seems to be developing as we speak, given that Bashin is becoming more aware of Meganeko’s feelings.

As well as whatever’s in her Memo Book, which seems to contain 2 contradictory pieces of information.

1. That Card Sensei is a Nazo-Otona
2. That Guragurii can communicate.

So hopefully we’ll either get Card Sensei’s past more focused on, or Bashin’s relationship to Meganeko.

…Or we have a Valentines Episode featuring My Sunshine.

But Valentines Day is on February 14th, is it different in Japan? Or am I losing my shit?

They just finished school it should be the next bloody summer.

Here we have a Bashin looking longingly at Meganeko’s House/Library/Whatever the fuck you call this thing.

He’s still trying to return that Memo.

God dang Bashin it’s as simple as knocking and returning it, and saying you’re sorry.

Why the hell are you being so moody?

A bark from Nanarin alerts Meganeko.

And of course Bashin has already flown the coop.

But nice of him to leave the Memo near the front door where ANYONE could have taken it between the time of Bashin leaving and Meganeko going outside to check for visitors.

This show is ripe with idiocy, filled to the brim with people doing stupid things for stupid reasons.

Meganeko, is not one of those people.

Thank you for being the light in this dark realm we call Battle Spirits Shounen Toppa Bashin.

A Wild Scene cut appears!

And now Bashin is in a good mood…

God… Dammit.

…AND IT APPEARS WE’RE DOING THIS NOW.

No purpose for this battle whatsoever but apparently they really wanted to engage the audience.

Let’s hope new cards get unveiled.

We’re at… Turn 9? Pretty early.

And Bashin has Goradon, Lizardedge, Eyeburn and Taurusknight on the field.

Meanwhile, Striker has Flyingmirage and 2 Hercules-Geo.

All Spirits seem to be at Level 1.

Ho-Lee Shiet.

Bashin has apparently had 0 chill this game, tearing Striker to just 1 Life on Turn 9.

Without having lost a single life himself. That’s an ouchie.

Bashin attacks with Goradon, Lizardedge and Eyeburn, and all 3 of them are blocked and destroyed.

Bashin still has Taurusknight, so he does have the capacity to win here.

Bashin is AWARE of the fact that he could end this now, but because Striker apparently had a Fruit of Life on the board, Striker has 7 cards to work with.

If any of those are a High Speed Spirit, Bashin will be left with nothing left next turn, and Striker can perform a big turnaround.

Bashin being typical Bashin, he’s spending his intelligence points early.

Simply put there’s no point overextending when you can survive a turn and guarantee victory the turn after.

I’m.. a little curious as to why he attacked and lost spirits for no reason, but I can hazard a guess as to why.

Bashin ends his turn, and Striker is a little bit confused as to why Bashin isn’t immediately butt-rushing the crap out of him.

These Intelligence points are really annoying when spent correctly.

That’s about right, Flame Tempest wouldn’t save his Spirits anyway, better to try weed out any responses from Striker before deciding to use it.

That’s a problem.

Taurusknight and Flyingmirage were both destroyed, but Hercules-Geo has 4000 BP at Level 1.

They’re unaffected by Flame Tempest.

Another weird misplay.

Striker notices the misplay and re-informs Bashin that Flame Tempest don’t work like that.

Striker’s 2 Hercules-Geo snatches 2 lives.

Still 3 lives left to go through, and he’s out of attackers-

WHOA NELLY.

SLOW DOWN THERE STRIKER YOU’RE BREAKING THE HERCULES-GEO’S BACK WITH THIS ONE.

Striker, the jammy bastard Swift Summons THREE! (3!) MachG’s!

And they wipe out the rest of Bashin’s Life.

That was bloody sudden. I wasn’t expecting that.

Bashin’s mistake aside, how the hell are you supposed to plan around 3 fucking MachG’s at any given moment.

The chances that would occur are MINIMAl.

…Something is wrong with Bashin and I don’t like it.

He’s being a good sportsman, he’s complimenting Striker.

He’s ANALYSING his final move… I…

Something is wrong here, who the fuck are you and what have you done with Bashin Toppa?!

Correct…

Had Bashin waited for Striker to drop his MachGs, Flame Tempest could have been played then, and left Striker with no Blockers to defend his last life.

I mean he was being stupid.

I’d say he’s acting exactly like himself.

What’s that smell?…

I think it… Smells like bullshit…

Yep. Definitely bullshit.

Thick in the air.

Striker’s fucking FACE…

I swear, anime just has the best shots for people’s faces, this show included.

The amount of “Somethin’ smells like bullshit” in Striker’s eyes right now.

Priceless.

It seems Striker relayed the information to Suiren.

I see Aibou decided to join the other Cornerstone pets as well. Striker’s picked up on Bashin’s weird mistakes.

Apparently Pink has nicknamed Aibou “Chibi-chan” and licked him.

Come on I get that you’re friends now and some animals like to lick for affection but you’re still Aibou’s natural predator.

leave the poor mouse alone.

“The impossible”?

It’s Bashin… I’m pretty sure if he ever goes to incredibly large lengths of stupid the problem will solve itself.

…WHAT!?

They think he’s moody because he DOESN’T HAVE A DATE FOR VALENTINES DAY!?

AGAIN WHAT DAY IS IT? HOW IS SCHOOL OUT IN THE MIDDLE OF FEBRUARY!?

HOW DID YOU GET TO THIS CONCLUSION AS WELL!?

…Oh okay you’re as confused as I am.

God dammit Striker you’ve lost the plot.

I think if you’re the one giving him Valentines Chocolate, that’s cause for MORE worry.

And this is obviously being explained as chocolate being a distraction…

The problem with distractions is that they’re temporary…

And ultimately do not help solve the problem at hand.

Okay bugger to this, I need to verify when Japanese Valentines day is.

OH.

SO ITS THE EXACT SAME DAY!

AGAIN, HOW WAS THE LAST DAY OF CLASS BEFORE THIS?!

They legit just had Winter break.

…Because she’s a Girl?

This doesn’t look weird whatsoever.

Also I can’t stop laughing at the fact that Suiren is trying to hold back Striker’s Hair.

Innocent is a SUPER weird word to use here, you’re implying he wants to solve Bashin’s depression by getting Suiren and Bashin to start dating.

Which I definitely disapprove.

Striker re-assures Suiren that she doesn’t need to give Striker any Valentines Chocolates…

I’m unsure how Striker is viewing the relationship between the 2 of them right now…

And Suiren just kinda shrugs it off saying she wasn’t planning on giving any to anyone.

So either Striker thinks he’s dating Suiren and Suiren doesn’t.

Or Striker’s just being a cheeky little bastard.

Or both… Could definitely go with both.

We now cut to Meganeko dusting the library.

And again, Kudos to the animators for handling their colour schemes well.

STOP THE BLOG.

THE LITTLE DOGGO HAS SNEEZED.

WE MUST CHERISH THE POOR LITTLE THING! DELIVER THE CUDDLES NOW!

What do you have to say for yourself you monster!?

…

Call off the S.W.A.T. Team, she says she’s sorry.

Clear out boys, nothing to see here.

Welp, she’s started slipping.

Which means this is a One-Way Train Ticket to the floor.

Nanarin barks happily.

Clearly she thought my joke was funny.

You jinxed it Meganeko.

Now what does this have to do with the plot?

Okay someone REALLY needs to educate me on Japanese Elementary Schools because having your last day of class be BEFORE February 14th does not make sense to us Englishmen who don’t finish a class til Summer.

Aibou tries to start a conversation with Bashin but Bashin gets interrupted by an unidentified flying-

…Box from the Sawaragi Corporation.

I almost forgot J existed, where’s he been?

And is this a gift from Kyouka or J? And does it involve Card games?

If it’s an over glorified box of chocolates from Kyouka I might just have to name her best character.

So it IS Chocolate!

Now we just need to figure out if it’s from Kyouka.

CALL BACK THE SWAT TEAM.

THE TERRORISTS HAVE RESORTED TO DROPPING BOXES OF CHOCOLATE.

Seeing Bashin be bombarded with Chocolate is somewhat relaxing to watch.

So one of the 2 Sawaragi Twins just Ordered a guy to make a Supply drop of chocolate to Bashin…

Bro he’s got enough Chocolate to last him a lifetime…

And that’s implying he’ll get through all of it without dying first.

I DISAPPROVE.

IMMENSELY.

KYOUKA IS AN INNOCENT SOUL AND SHOULD NOT HAVE HER IMAGE RUINED BY BEING ANYWHERE WITH IN A THOUSAND MILE RADIUS OF YOUR DUMB ASS BASHIN!

I think she’d be here if that were the case.

The Ships just write themselves.

I don’t even need to stick on any jokes about J being gay or anything, it’s just RIGHT THERE.

Nothing wrong with 2 dudes going out there Aibou, drop the face.

Okyou just casually lying through her teeth.

J x Bashin is the only ship this show needs.

Suddenly Striker turns up and demands an explanation from J.

J somehow goes full Micheal Jackson in this shot. Look at his LEGS.

I need fanart of J in a Micheal Jackson outfit STAT.

What, did Striker also ask J to give Bashin some chocolate?

That’s A LITTLE of the chocolate from your house!? Are you running a fucking chocolate factory?

Now I need a Photoshopped image of J at the Chocolate Factory, there are too many memes to be made here.

Also I swear to god if anyone is kind enough to make Blog memes I WILL feature them, I promise you!

Bashin adequately describing the plot of this show.

STRIKER’S FUCKING FACE.

SO MUCH POTENTIAL HERE TODAY

Also does J even give chocolate to people? I feel like this would be his first time considering the mountain he just dropped on Bashin.

What does that have to do with anything?

Cap just randomly bringing up Football for like 0 reason.

Is That what it is?!

So why was there such a fuss over throwing an end of class party for Card Sensei?

They still have the summer term don’t they?!

MORE MEMEABLE FACES FOR THE MEME GOD.

Striker is… for some odd reason, getting irritated at the fact that J doesn’t play Football and does nothing but play Battle Spirits.

Uh, Striker… You shouldn’t be playing Football to begin with. Remember how excessive practice screwed up your foot? All YOU should be doing is playing Battle Spirits.

…Why are you telling this to Cap?

Out of context, this line seems really weird.

And basically you were right J, this is what Striker wanted.

But he wanted it to be given to him in a loving, compassionate way… Basically get Kyouka to give up her pride for like a day and make Bashin feel like he’s the only man on earth.

And then drop the bad news on the 15th when the joke is over.

It would be hilarious… and it would crush Bashin emotionally…

…What the hell are you looking at me for?

…Neither was anyone else captain…

Neither was J, infact.

To add, there is infact no reason why you would ever NEED to play Battle Spirits in order to give Bashin chocolate.

And that doesn’t fix the current problem of the chocolate already dropped on Bashin, J can’t exactly just “take it back”

CAPTION THE FUCK OUT OF THIS.

Strange to see J refuse a card battle though.

I need to raise the rent on the estate that J is occupying inside my head.

You’d think the show would look for any excuse to have a battle but for the reason I literally just outlined, they didn’t.

These writers really know me.

Also I love how Okyou is just staring at J like “OH NO YOU DIDN’T”

I can’t tell if Striker is referring to Bashin, or J.

And in either case I completely agree.

But I’m actually starting to like J a bit, despite the things he does being a bit on the emotional trigger sort of thing. I still haven’t forgiven him for battling Bashin over sending a “love letter” to Kyouka.

At least help him with the massive boxes of chocolate you asshole.

You couldn’t deliver to his house like a normal person could you?

Bashin finally breaks out of the chocolate prison he was crushed under.

Shame…

God bless non-skimpy character design.

Because that is an unfortunate angle.

…

Pink just chills in Suiren’s chest area?

I mean I know she doesn’t have like pockets or anything but there are shoulders for such a thing. Come on.

Well when you’re in an Idol-Manager relationship, and the company needs you more than you evidently need them, I’m sure she can do as she likes to check on her friend.

Didn’t you battle like… Last episode?

Bashin being Bashin OBVIOUSLY accepts this match, but Suiren says she won’t lose this time.

I’m curious what the purpose of this battle is for.

And they’re not even going to Isekai.

This will make the field review a little easier at least, nothing like cards on the table.

Nevermind I forgot they had the stupid graphic interface that doesn’t realistically make sense.

Bashin’s got an Exhausted Rokceratops, but I can’t tell if Suiren means that Lizardedge is exhausted or not.

Meanwhile Suiren has Draculious, just alone on the board.

Remember when that card caused Bashin a bunch of trouble against the Nazo-Otona?

Draculious is a tough cookie, if only for a vanilla.

Score is Suiren’s 3 Lives to Bashin’s 5.

And Suiren plays a new card, Bottom Desuper at Level 2.

A Purple Cost 4 Evil Shadow Family Spirit from BS02.

It works a little like Top Supra, the card it’s an inverse of, however rather than being unable to be blocked by Level 3s and Level 2s, Bottom Desuper cannot be blocked by Level 1 and Level 2 Spirits.

One goes top-down, the other bottom-up.

Of course, either effect only applies from Level 2 onwards, hence why Suiren played this one at Level 2.

Nowadays, the Level-based unblockable effect would seem more like a Yellow effect than a purple one.

Suiren declares an attack with Bottom Desuper.

Because of course they needed to wait for Bashin to declare block to explain the effect instead of Suiren just saying Bashin can’t do that outright.

And just like Top Supra, Bottom Desuper has a GIANT FUCKING LASER BEAM for an attack.

Suiren snatches a life and ends her turn, leaving Draculious as a Blocker.

…You really don’t, you just need a Level 3 Spirit.

Lizardedge is brought up to Level 3 by Bashin, it’s a shame though, while this does let it deal with Bottom Desuper, if Suiren chooses to level it up again it will all be pointless.

Not gonna level up Rokceratops? Or is he anticipating Top Supra?

Which is a bit of a silly thing to even try when you’re playing Red.

Bashin needs some White cards.

That is a Shackles of Doom! Rokceratops is prevented from Blocking since Bashin didn’t bother to level it up.

And now Suiren plays Top Supra at Level 2! If you remember this card, at Level 2 and 3 it can’t be blocked by opposing Level 3 Spirits, and at Level 3 it also can’t be blocked by Level 2 spirits.

Since Suiren has it at Level 2, and The Shackles of Doom is preventing Single Core spirits from attacking or blocking, Bashin can only stop Supra with a Level 2 Spirit… Which conveniently, Bashin does not have.

Lizardedge can still check Desuper though.

SO TAKE THAT LIFE BOY!

Not that it would be that frightening, Bashin has like 4 lives remaining.

He’ll be down to 3 after this attack but that’s not too bad, You’re not in the danger zone until you’re at 2 lives, in which case then you need to badly protect your life.

…Could you not have just given him the chocolate?

This is a shit Valentines present, really.

A peck on the cheek could have been less expensive if it was money you were worried about.

Bashin plays Pot of Greed!

I mean! Double Draw!

It lets him draw 2 cards from his deck!

I’d try to keep a Tally of how many times Bashin’s next move was to play Siegfried off of Double Draw.

But not only have I not been keeping track initially, I can’t even manage the Fuckup Tally by itself because of how inconsistent this show is sometimes.

I don’t know if it’s because I haven’t done this in a while but there hasn’t been any major fuckups as of yet, but in any case, WHAT A SURPRISE. BASHIN GETS SIEGFRIED OFF OF DOUBLE DRAW!

Summoning at Level 2 of course, because them SHACKLES!

Bashin wants to attack with Siegfried but pauses because of Desuper and Supra, he wants to attack but he doesn’t want to be left unprepared for the odd blocking rules set by the pair of spirits Suiren has out.

Bashin alters the Core arrangement of his spirits, putting him in the Sweet spot that neither Desuper, Supra, nor Shackles can cover, Level 2.

Would be a real shape if Suiren just levelled them both up… Or played Desperado…

…Oh she’s onto it.

So what will it be? Desperado or Level up?

Bashin’s an idiot, you’re expecting an idiot to change himself for the better?

Tall order there Suiren.

…Given how Bashin has acted up until recently, as well as his sudden inability to actually apologise to Meganeko, this adds up.

But also God DAMN son, Suiren’s just laying into him.

…Why are you punishing him for trying to be smart about his play?

Bashin’s state, as of currently, despite the asshole implications he’s been giving, has made more smart analysis on the games he’s played than you have this entire series.

Let him wallow, if it makes him intelligent then it’s for the better.

And as if holding on to his Intelligence points like his life (And my approval) depends on them, Bashin ends his turn.

Yeah and you know what Suiren? Fuck you.

Let him suffer through it, stop trying to fix what doesn’t need to be fixed.

He’ll either get smarter as a result or it won’t be his problem anymore.

Simple.

Suiren Levels up Bottom Desuper and Top Supra to Level 3, now in addition to Desuper being unblockable to Level 1 Spirits, and Supra being unblockable to Level 3 Spirits, both are now unblockable to Level 2 Spirits.

And given that Bashin has made all his Spirits Level 2, he can’t block them whatsoever.

And Suiren plays… An X-Rare?!

Well I was expecting she would get a new X-Rare from a Nazo-Otona, not just pop out with it, but it shows improvement for this area of the show after losing to a down and out Bashin.

I know the text can’t be read and I haven’t attached an effect, but this is BS02’s Purple X-Rare.

The reason why I won’t discuss it’s effects now is because it will give us something to discuss at the end. This will definitely be our Card of the Day.

Besides, maintains the surprise for the rest of the episode, I’ve been worried about ruining big moments like this for you.

The Suiren activates Destlord’s first effect! Which exhausts all Level 2 Spirits on the board (including hers) when it’s summoned!

Since Bashin literally made all his Spirits Level 2 to avoid Suiren’s unblockable combo, all his spirits get exhausted.

Though I’m a little confused, why didn’t Suiren level down Desuper and Supra, summon Desperado, then put them back to Level 2?

Doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Though bumping them to Level 3 is smarter incase Bashin attempts to refresh them.

Suiren attacks with Supra, Desuper and Destlord, taking out the rest of Bashin’s lives.

Well that was some mad strategical play on Suiren’s part, kudos to her card game ability.

Not so much Kudos for her trying to un-depress Bashin, It’s done him more good than bad.

But I SUPPOSE he needs to apologise to Meganeko, and being scared of negative consequence gets in the way of that.

Because Bashin is a Hyper-active 12 year old with a strong aversion to emotional stress.

What does THIS have to do with anything?

God you’re a shit talker Suiren, stay on point.

Because those are not things that Battle Spirits teaches you Suiren.

I’m not sure how you drew that conclusion but I think you should put it back where you pulled it from, which I can only perceive to be your ass.

Again, WHAT DOES BATTLE SPIRITS HAVE TO DO WITH THIS CONVERSATION!?

My Mother doesn’t understand Gaming and I had several arguments with her over it.

Did I suddenly stop talking to my mother because she “didn’t play video games” and “didn’t understand video games”?

No, I did what a normal person would do and fucking explained it.

You’re well versed in Battle Spirits, how about you use that knowledge and do something with it you fiery haired cretin?

Bashin does what I wish he would do with this show and leaves abruptly.

So much for that Battle.

We timeskip to My Sunshine’s dressing room, and she’s (understandably) exasperated.

Apparently NOT that trying to explain anything to Bashin in a way that isn’t outright telling him is a fool’s errand.

You need to consider the intelligence of your target to understand basic things before attempting to get them to come to that conclusion.

And finally the scene gets interrupted by My Sunshine’s manager.

Well isn’t that just lovely?

Alright what’s the next scene?

We have a depressed Meganeko, that’s the scene we switch to.

And we got that GOOD animation now, nice.

HAVE YOU EVER CONSIDERED FIGURING OUT A SOLUTION TO THAT PROBLEM MEGANEKO?

I DUNNO, PERHAPS, LEARNING HOW TO PLAY? YOU DO HAVE ACCESS TO SEVERAL PEOPLE WHO WOULD BE WILLING TO TEACH YOU.

OR AT THE VERY LEAST CARD SENSEI

My S.O. is a Bookworm, so I more than envy the people who can fully immerse themselves in a good book.

I can barely pay attention to anything that isn’t immediately flashy and moving across the screen so books are generally not great for me (I do go out of my way to read articles a lot though, perhaps I should try again)

This is an obvious metaphor to Meganeko’s relationship with Battle Spirits.

Battle Spirits is “The Book Meganeko has yet to read”, she knows it exists however has never perused it, and doesn’t understand people that HAVE read it.

The only time she will truly understand is when she opens up the book and reads it herself.

Another comparison to Meganeko’s situation, she doesn’t understand why Bashin loves Battle Spirits because she hasn’t immersed herself in it in order to understand.

Now we cut to Bashin watching Batosupi TV, on the topic of Valentine’s day.

Welp, this episode just took a turn for the boring.

…Can mice eat chocolate?

Aibou is just munching on a piece in the corner there…

And now I want chocolate, one moment-

It seems Commentator-San hasn’t received any affections from the girls he’s been creeping on.

Good.

When you’re in love, Valentines Day is great.

For everyone else, they call it “Single Awareness Day”

Ah, well I suppose that ties in to that other scene rather than just using it to relay what My Sunshine was thinking trying to convince Bashin.

Good on the writers for doing this, I commend them.

…What?

How are you just going to forget the reason you were brought into this interview? It’s a Valentines Special, come on now.

Okay I understand you have to keep your friendship with Bashin a secret to keep your Suiren persona, but don’t throw your manager under the bus, poor guy.

Bashin’s inherent aversion to being able to be a normal human being for all of 2 minutes and talk to Meganeko like one isn’t exactly very petty.

Sure I advocate that Bashin’s little depressive episodes are good for him because they’re making him at the very least a bit smarter about things, but I can at least admit that being unable to talk to anyone about a serious topic purely on the merit that they don’t play Battle Spirits sounds like something that could really affect him much later in life.

She’s regurgitating Bashin’s words.

This is one clever muffin, if only because apparently she’s allergic to telling Bashin information directly.

Yes! It’s almost like explaining yourself is PART of how you resolve arguments!

This almost sounds like the Anecdote with my Mother.

I WONDER THE FUCK WHY!?

Bashin decides now is an excellent time to go running to Meganeko.

I feel like that ship has sailed captain.

NEVERMIND. You’re lucky Meganeko actually gives a shit.

This is honestly really sweet, I’ll refrain from hating on the Orange-haired muppet until this is over. I actually want to see this through because it’s cute.

Bashin finally arrives at Meganeko’s house.

But hold on, wasn’t Meganeko like… outside the house? Looking for you?…

She’s not gonna be home.

If only if only, The woodpecker sighs.

Chill at her place til she gets back? Though you’d have to ask permission from Grandpa.

But it’s a viable option, and one she would appreciate.

But is Meganeko going to see Bashin? I suppose we’ll see a Hayami appearance soon.

Meganeko was reading her Memo while standing outside an apartment complex that isn’t the one where Bashin lives.

…Is she going to Card Sensei’s house? Come on now.

Meganeko’s Grandpa also works part time as an answering machine.

But for all serious messages that need to be given…

Good. He’s getting it.

That makes me happy.

Now let’s see what the hell Meganeko wants with Card Sensei.

If I was a teacher and I had a student hounding my ass at random times of the evening I think I’d get a bit fed up.

But at the same time how can you ignore the wishes of a student who really relies on their teacher? It’s also adorable.

My paternal instincts are confusing me.

First of all, a 12 year old student giving a Teacher who looks at least to be 3x her age Valentines Chocolate is suspicious as fuck and the Teacher should have said no.

but then again I’m holding her to English Standards, I think the Japanese simply use Valentines as a day to express kindness to the people you are thinking about, rather than simply as a show of love.

Which is kind of nice, come to think of it.

But also, Meganeko just WALKS into Card Sensei’s house after giving him said Valentines Chocolate.

I’d make an “I’ve seen enough Hentai” joke but it’s not funny given the context.

And this scene absent of even SOME of the context? Holy hell it looks bad for Card Sensei.

Also don’t the Japanese have stricter manners than us? I’m sure Meganeko barging in like this would be seen as extremely rude if she wasn’t specifically invited.

And Meganeko darts STRAIGHT to Guragurii.

Guragurii noping out of the situation.

I’d say he’s afraid of Meganeko but come on, she’s MEGANEKO.

She’s like the kindest soul in this entire show.

OUTSIDE OF EVEN SOME OF THE CONTEXT.

THIS SCENE IS REALLY WEIRD.

Anyway it seems that Meganeko’s about to go from “Kind Soul” to “Badass Mofo”

She’s just layin’ down all of the bombshells right now.

Card Sensei could just deny ALL of these accusations right here and Meganeko would have 0 way to verify them.

Outside of Guragurii popping out of his shell and saying something.

As a result of the accusations laid forth by Meganeko, Meganeko then BEGS for Card Sensei to teach Meganeko how to play Battle Spirits.

Not “Relay this to Bashin”, Not “Tell me why you’re one of them”

She’s gone to the Cornerstone holder’s natural enemies, and requested tutelage.

The Balls on this one. And she’s a GIRL.

She doesn’t actually get to finish this sentence, and just repeats her Beg.

Are the accusations meant to be a veiled method of blackmailing him? Are you saying that Card Sensei is possibly the strongest player to tutor her?

I don’t get what the purposes of the accusations are, it’s known that he knows how to play Battle Spirits.

That… Voice didn’t sound like Meganeko OR Card Sensei.

Meaning!

THE TURTLE SPEAKS

Also could they stop using the “Cute Girl” statement, it’s giving off way worse vibes than they’re meant to be.

Again, why does Meganeko being a “Cute” Girl matter in this context? Especially to an old fart like Card Sensei.

WHAT.

GURAGURII IS CARD SENSEI’S TEACHER?

You are literally referred to as “Card Sensei”, Meganeko’s Master is the VERY THING I’d expect you to be.

How can you say no to that face?

Fuck my pessimistic hate for normal characters being circumvented by none other than Meganeko.

She makes it SO much harder to hate this show more than I already do.

We now cut to Bashin who is walking home alone with Aibou.

Actually, the last time Bashin was on the streets in the dark, there was that bearded Nazo-Otona that wanted to fight him super bad.

We don’t have nearly enough Episode time for another fight, but this kind of character development would warrant another X-Rare for Bashin to use.

Aibou is as pleased as I am with Bashin’s choice.

As one should. If people were persistent about giving apologies we’d have less fights in the world really.

Well, the drama hasn’t been completely done away with, but the characters involved have gotten some good character development.

also, we can’t forget, MEGANEKO IS NOW LEARNING BATTLE SPIRITS!

This instantly puts this episode high on my list, Meganeko is a refreshing character amongst the stupidity that is the 4 Cornerstone holders.

That being said. Talking animals are meant to be a symbol of a Cornerstone holder, so the fact that Guragurii can talk to Card Sensei makes very little sense.

Unless he himself is a Chosen Card Battler, would be really odd if he was considering that he’s also a Nazo-Otona.

And Uchuuchouten wants to acquire the Cornerstones and awaken them, so again it’s very odd what Card Sensei’s motives are, despite the fact that he means well.

The Colour of Guragurii’s little orb also throws people starting Battle Spirits through this show, for reasons I will not mention because they are spoilers.

But in any case, lots of interesting stuff for next episode, I’m happy Bashin got the high amount of flack that he did for being, well, Bashin.

It was a good episode that really focused on how characters feel toward each other. Though specifically toward Bashin.

J rushes to Bashin’s aid when asked to, however is dismissive of Striker.

Striker feels very strongly about Bashin but doesn’t quite understand what he goes through.

Suiren understands what Bashin goes through and what troubles him, but finds it difficult to convey what he’s meant to do so that he figures it out himself.

It’s all very unique interactions, the oddball seeming to be J as J didn’t really seem to care about what was going on, despite the fact that he dropped a mountain of chocolate on him merely because he was asked to.

I can’t tell if J openly wishes to help Bashin or simply didn’t understand the gravity of the situation but acted anyway. Which is a sign of a… Negligent friend.

It was a good episode, and now for our card of the day!

I was right, Our card of the day was The SevenShogun Destlord!

A Cost 7 Purple X-Rare in both the Nightling AND Ogre Wizard Families, from BS02.

Destlord isn’t particularly strong in the BP department, it’s only 4000 BP at Level 1, requires 6 Cores to get to Level 2 which only bumps it up to 8000 BP.

But the reason why it’s strong is because it works well in Suiren’s Lock combo, with Shackles of Doom covering single core spirits, Bottom Desuper covering mainly Level 1, and Top Supra covering mainly Level 3, the opponent’s immediate recourse will be to change everything to Level 2.

And that is where this card comes in to finalise that combo, once they do that you can play Destlord and make an all out attack after exhausting all the opponent’s Spirits.

Note however that it’s When Summoned effect only occurs at Level 1, when summoning a Spirit in Battle Spirits you’re allowed to Select the starting level for that Spirit, if you were to summon this at Level 2, you wouldn’t be allowed to use the When summoned effect.

This is an interesting issue they correct later of course, with most effects at earlier levels occuring at Later levels as well, including “When Summoned” abilities.

That second ability relates Destlord to Desperado however, at Level 2 when Destlord defeats an opposing Spirit, you gain Core in your reserve equal to the number of Core on the opposing Spirit that Destlord defeated.

Odd how the SevenShoguns at present both have Core boosting abilities, normally an aspect of Green (their natural enemy)

But in any case, Destlord needs to be handled with care, it’s naturally weak and not fit for any deck not specifically designed to accommodate it. And of course is definitely designed to be used with Desuper and Supra, given their Level based abilities.

And that is our Blog post for Episode 21! Next episode should be fun! I’m hoping Meganeko finally gets a Card Battle! I’ll see you guys next time!

Welp, I got nothing. Can’t think of anything special to spice up this blog post as a celebration for making it to episode 20.

Well the sunk cost fallacy has finally sunk in, now there isn’t much worry about me stopping considering I’ve gotten this far in the first place!

I suppose it might be better to review where we are in the plot thus far. As well as what theories I may have.

At the moment, we’re to watch Episode 20, in the past 19 Episodes we’ve established that the Nazo-Otonas are members of the Thousand Spirits Group, or the Thousupi Group for short. The big shot Nazo-Otonas are known as the “Numbers Elite” and Card Sensei was once a part of them. They serve under King Uchuuchouten.

The Nazo-Otonas seem to have some sort of aim, to that end they’ve been going around looking for strong Battlers to award with X-Rares.

And as of currently, Smile has returned from America along with Micheal Elliott, Smile seemed to single out J and beat him by surprising him with the new Yellow cards, at that moment Micheal Elliott declares he’s the person who supplied Elliott with new cards, and proceeded to give J some new ones.

Now Elliott, who is Number Two of the Numbers, is setting up J for something. And J refusing to study in America threw a wrench in that plan, he was eerily focused on J going there more than anything else.

Given Smile’s history as we know, it seems they’re trying to turn J into another Smile, and while it’s gradually working, it doesn’t seem to be working at the speed they’d like.

I’m curious to see how the plot will unfold from here…

Apparently not by much.

“A Broken Friendship is a Constant Disagreement”

…Yeah no shit how else would you break friendships numbnuts?

Sweet jesus.

Apparently we’ve timeskipped so god dang far that Bashin is on his LAST day of class…

They were literally just on Winter Break, for it to be his last day of Class it should be right before bloody Summer now…

Assuming that Winter Break ends in January and Summer Break starts in July, they just skipped 6 MONTHS.

And given that this show started at the END of the last one, in 20 episodes we’re close to going a full year round.

Has Bashin not had a birthday yet? Is that not a thing!?

Bro you JUST got out of the last one.

Like legit its been like what, 3 episodes since Winter Break?

This show has some bad timeskips.

He doesn’t deserve your praise Hayami.

I will allow it only on the grounds that he is your son, I guess you have to be KIND of invested when 50% of your god damn DNA is part of that hellspawn.

And if Hayami’s not the reason Bashin’s a little shitstain then I REALLY don’t want to meet his father.

Yes Bashin.

The Bag is significantly more deserving of praise for having to deal with you every god damn day.

So we cut to the clearly superior Meganeko.

And she’s carrying party things. I wonder if she’s being Card Sensei’s Pet and organising an end of school party or something.

A surprise party?…

For who?

…Ah, him.

Oh right, if they move up in year there’s the possibility that they will get a different Teacher (You’d probably end up knowing well in advance, so it’s appropriate to throw a party for Card Sensei)

Hey look, the Hellspawn actually went over to visit Meganeko, how bloody thoughtful.

Place your bets now!

Will Bashin be a shithead and run off without helping Meganeko?

I’m betting on yes!

God!

Dammit!

I need to remind myself that Bashin likes to spend his Intelligence points right when I’m making bets.

He’s becoming unpredictable.

This is unacceptable.

…IS HE?

He’s using both hands and his head to carry only ONE of the bags that Meganeko was previously carrying 3 of.

So either he’s weak as shit, or Meganeko is HENCH.

I am unsure what this has to do with the end of your teaching career with these students but sure. Go on.

Oh god not this bullshit type teaching bollocks.

I get that it’s in the school’s best interests to ensure that the kids are healthy, and socialising is a part of that health in a mental sense.

But forcing social interaction like this is just more stressful than useful.

And of course Meganeko doesn’t get a partner.

Because Bashin’s just a general asshat. Honestly.

How do you go from being the most helpful person ever, to failing to offer your friend a partner in a social activity?

OH SHIT.

I DIDN’T KNOW THAT CARD SENSEI

I THOUGHT THEY WERE TREES!

DAMN, MY BAD!

Leave him.

Maybe we’ll be lucky and he won’t wake up…

Like ever…

Sweet lovely Corn to go with my already potent amount of Cheese.

Well he can’t die given we’re only on Episode 20, but at least we’ll get the next best thing.

A good bollocking from Card Sensei, on his last day teaching them as well.

YES CARD SENSEI.

SPEAK MY LANGUAGE.

RELISH THE FINAL MOMENTS YOU HAVE TO REPRIMAND THE SHIT OUT OF THIS KID-

Will it?

It’s not like you’re leaving the entire school though are you? It’s their last day of class, not your last day of teach-

Waaaaait.

I remember now, Card Sensei said it was their last Summer as “Elementary Schoolers”

That means these guys will be going to Middle School now? I don’t really know the education system in Japan that well.

But the point is this is an Elementary School, they’ll have to get a new School entirely, for the entire class.

So Card Sensei can’t even see them, let alone teach them.

I gave my Maths Teacher permission to Splash Water on my face if I ever fell asleep in class (as I did so often, I was pretty good at Math but my sleep suuuucked)

Way more fun than simply being yelled at to Wake up.

And nothing else comes of this scene.

Wow.

What ungrateful little shits.

I mean I guess they are 12, all I could think about at that age was getting out of class as well.

But like jesus, come on now.

…I somehow forgot about the surprise party they were throwing him, no wonder they wanted to get out so badly.

Man, Meganeko workin’ overtime for her Sensei, this is wholesome as fuck.

No one deserves Meganeko.

Especially not this show.

I see Card Sensei bothered to remember Guragurii this time.

Loveable little Turtle.

Awww that’s an upsetting sight to see.

The other Teacher’s class gave her the celebration right outside the school.

I can almost feel the potential envy from here.

Well ain’t that unfortunate.

And what’s with that Teacher’s face? Why does she look so sad to see him?

Striker doesn’t make it out of the school before being pelted by confetti. Can’t tell if they were just waiting for Sensei or were planning to do this to Striker.

IT WAS PLANNED.

THESE MISCHIEVOUS PRICKS.

Also Meganeko, I expect better from you, come on now.

Of course Meganeko would somehow find a way to make it okay to prank Striker.

In this case, for “Rehearsal”

…I’ll allow it. It’s Meganeko after all, her only transgression thus far was nagging Bashin over a god damn Egg.

…What does Suiren have to do with this?

So, apparently somehow offscreen, before this episode began.

God knows when.

Bashin made a Promise to Suiren to go to the Battle Spirits Centre immediately after class ended.

Despite knowing that Meganeko was to be throwing a party for Card Sensei at the same time.

This guy’s level of schedule management is minimal.

These kids need phones.

It would make it SO much easier to not waste Suiren’s time.

And you will be waiting…

For a rather long time.

And now we get a peak at Suiren’s deck.

I’m seeing a number of new cards we haven’t seen before, but it would take the entirety of this blog to go over them all, so I won’t this time.

BITCH.

YOU JUST GOT HERE.

CHECK YOURSELF.

Okay, 2 things, firstly I understand the fact that you really shouldn’t stand anyone up for any reason, it’s super mean and super damaging to their self-esteem.

But for FUCK SAKE Pink! “Leave a cute girl” as if her being a cute girl should have been ANY more reason to NOT stand her up?

Is the fact that she is a cute girl the REASON they’re visiting her? No.

Is she puttin’ out to Striker and Bashin after this specific instance? Of course not she’s fuckin’ 13.

What does her being “Cute” and “A girl” have to do with the fact that they’re leaving her waiting?

A better statement would be “They’d leave a good battler waiting” because Suiren is a strong card battler which is I believe, the main bloody reason they’re even going to meet with her there in the first place, AND the main driving force behind their mutual friendship.

Oh Fuck off. I’m not even addressing this with a response because I know it’s a playful jab from Pink. But legitimately fuck off.

I want to lob this Chameleon against the nearest wall and see what colour he paints it.

So the fact that he legitimately JUST got here, complained about them specifically leaving a “Cute Girl” waiting as if her being a Cute girl had anything to do with it, and then used that to conclude that boys are useless?

I hate this Chameleon. I really do.

Striker finally arrives and Suiren wonders where Bashin is.

Considering Bashin is the one who made the promise, this is a fine question.

No, you shouldn’t.

Infact you should completely ignore the fact that he exists and just make it a fun little time between you two.

…That was the purpose of this meetup…

Change that exasperated tone of yours.

Apparently Striker’s done something different with his deck.

Well I hope its a significant change, you know how much I hate repeat fights.

Purple players tend to make me feel like crying, I won’t lie.

Those Beatbeetles look so high.

Striker’s got 2 Level 1 Beatbeetles from the looks of it.

Suiren on the other hand, has Skulldevil, and a new Spirit, Bat-Bat.

A Cost 1 Purple Spirit from BS02, and it’s from the Ogre Wizard Family.

Nothing really special here, it’s on the weak side given it’s a low cost spirit with an ability, but that ability means that the opponent can’t carelessly block it with Spirits that only have 1 core, or it will effectively win that battle.

Striker sends in both Beatbeetles to Attack, Suiren chooses to block with both of hers as well.

Skulldevil survives, having more BP than one of the Beatbeetles.

Bat-Bat isn’t so lucky, and Beatbeetle is destroyed along with it.

This seems like a silly move from Striker through, he sent in 2 Spirits that definitely wouldn’t come out unscathed.

Of course, during the Flash timing of whatever attack was last, Striker plays MachG.

MachG’s Swift ability allows you to summon it during the Flash timing of any attack step. Making for an annoying surprise attack.

And MachG of course, is super generic given it’s a Cost 1 with no reductions, it’s also famous for being one of the cheapest Swift Spirits.

Striker sends in MachG to attack.

Suiren is left with 2 lives after that attack.

What?

It’s been in the game since Set 1. Don’t believe me?

This is one such card from BS01 with High Speed.

Her ignorance has 0 excuse.

It’s been here since the start of the series, get real Suiren.

Oooo, Suiren drew Desperado.

Desperado is one of those cards that, while powerful, needs to be carefully timed to make the maximum use of it’s effect.

There’s only 1 Spirit aside right now, meaning if Suiren played it, the damage to Striker wouldn’t be massive.

So, adding to her forces, Suiren plays Bat-Bat and Top-Supra.

Bat-Bat and Top-Supra attack.

These attack bring Striker down to 3 lives.

Wow, Striker wasn’t touched the entire 17 turns they’d been playing? Hot damn.

But Suiren’s Modus Operandi is to sweep the opponent in one big attack, so not the worst thing in the world.

But with only 1 Blocker, Striker just needs 2 Spirits to Corner Suiren, as she only has 2 lives.

Striker summons Shockeater at Level 2!

MachG attacks and Suiren blocks with Skulldevil, resulting in a draw.

Something tells me another Swift Summon is coming.

Yup, would you look at that.

Striker plays a SECOND MachG.

Striker attacks with the new MachG, snatching another life from Suiren.

No Blockers, and only a Shockeater. Suiren’s in a big pickle.

Swift isn’t really irregular, it just means you can’t tell how many Spirits your opponent will be attacking with on a given turn.

It also eats from your hand, meaning that your opponent definitely has a maximum, not to mention all cores must come from your reserve so you can’t deplete spirits for said summon.

There’s lots of restrictions to Swift, so it’s definitely not a “Broken” ability by any means just because you can summon Spirits at an odd timing.

It seems Striker has ended his turn despite having one Spirit available.

This isn’t actually a stupid idea, despite Suiren having only 1 Life and no blockers to defend from Striker’s singular Shockeater.

Suiren has 2 Spirits available, all it would take is a simple counter from Suiren and then another Spirit to take out Striker’s 3 lives.

So while Striker could end it now, if Suiren counters, he’ll be completely defenseless, it’s also an indicator that he either 1, has no counters in his hand, or 2, he’s absolutely prepared to finish Suiren next turn if she doesn’t make a significant change to the board state.

And thus, with this card alone, Suiren has created a method to defeat Striker this turn.

Suiren seems to have drawn and played the Shackles of Doom, which will prevent Spirits with only a single Core on them from attacking or blocking.

Suiren has added 2 Core each to Top-Supra and Bat-Bat so they each have 3 now.

So if Suiren plays Desperado now, she’ll be able to drop Shockeater to a Single Core, and she’ll have 3 Spirits available to attack.

With no blockers, Striker loses.

And like clockwork, Suiren plays The SevenShogun Desperado.

MachG gets depleted, and Shockeater is dropped to 1 Core.

With 1 Spirit depleted, Desperado gains a core on him.

Using the core lost from Top-Supra and Bat-Bat, Suiren can level up Desperado to Level 2.

And for the sake of depleting Shockeater, we’ve blown half the Episode’s budget.

Kudos to Striker for trying to be careful and not simply rushing ahead into the win, but had he taken the chance, he would have come out on top.

…Hold up what?

I’m going to assume this is 1:40 PM.

But even then, does School in Japan finish this early? Last days for us aren’t usually early enders.

Probably trying to skip out on his obligation to Card Sensei to get here, you know, typical Bashin things.

Not sure what’s stopping him from ditching the party though.

Nothing surprises me in this show anymore.

Not even the fact that Bashin was struggling with a single one of Meganeko’s bags but can outpower 3 boys his age.

Meganeko reprimands Bashin for being impatient and is saying it would be an injustice to everyone else.

Injustice begets Injustice, Bashin wouldn’t be having this issue if he’d just not made a promise to Suiren that he had an Obligation not to keep.

…Oh no…

He did NOT.

NOOOOO…

Bashin you FUCKING INSENSITIVE MORON!

This goes beyond “Think before you speak”, You literally have to TRY to be so bloody stupid that you say “My friends are waiting for me” as a reason to not only spoil a surprise organised for your Teacher whom you will NEVER see again, but also while a friend of yours is RIGHT BLOODY THERE.

For the more dense few: Bashin has just implied that his friends are “waiting for him elsewhere”, therefore none of his friends are “here”.

Given that no friends are here, while Meganeko IS, one can draw the conclusion that Meganeko is not Bashin’s friend.

Uh oh…

Meganeko caught Bashin…

And Meganeko never usually catches up to Bashin.

YOU CAN’T HEAR IT BUT THE WAY SHE SAYS THAT IS SO BLOODY EERIE.

Bashin of course, has no clue what Meganeko’s on about, and wrenches his arm free.

…I’m sorry I think I need that embed from earlier.

MEGANEKO JUST LOBBED A FUCKING BOOK AT HIM!

BEAT HIS ASS MEGANEKO. DO IT!

Use those fucking intelligence points you spent right at the beginning of the show and figure it out, shitgoose.

Someone had to say it eventually.

And I’m happy that it was Meganeko.

Now someone strangle this guy, a crying Meganeko is a cardinal sin that must be punished with death.

Huh.

Meganeko threw her Memo at Bashin…

Though it seems more like a cute diary than an actual Memo.

Oh I swear to god if Bashin reads that shit.

So we cut to a little later and Card Sensei finally leaves work for the surprise.

And amongst the headcount, Bashin and Meganeko are nowhere to be seen.

Which is a little depressing really.

This is supposed to be a happy moment, but there’s sad music playing.

It’s really making the fact that Meganeko and Bashin aren’t here really bittersweet.

So skipping to the Batosupi Centre, Bashin not ONLY had the audacity to read the Memo, but showed it to Striker and Suiren as well!

And they’re laughing at it.

…Striker you son of a bitch.

Suiren is the only person I respect in this entire room right now.

OH YEAH.

YOU KNOW, THE ONES YOU COMPLETELY IGNORED NOT 3 MINUTES AGO!

You have no right to talk right now Bashin.

Shouldn’t that make it less funny?…

I fail to see how a Novel would be significantly funnier than a Diary.

Meganeko has somehow managed to figure out that Card Sensei is a Nazo-Otona?

Just from watching a single conversation with Smile? (Who wasn’t even known to be a Nazo-Otona initially)

Bashin immediately dismissing the notion that Card Sensei could be a Nazo-Otona.

Considering that Card Sensei plays Battle Spirits despite being a well-aged adult, that already adds credence to the idea.

Get that shit-eating grin off your face Striker.

Good point but please, I’d rather not plant my fist through my screen.

…Neither did Eight.

Neither did Smile.

Neither did the Police Officer that Striker lost to.

Neither did the Curator.

This is not a good criteria to determine whether or not Card Sensei is a Nazo-Otona.

Okay, then recite his life story, from birth, up until present day.

All you know about him is the fact that he is your teacher and he plays Battle Spirits.

You. Know. Nothing.

And whoever attempts to DM me with “Jon Snow” will receive a long-winded rant from yours truly.

Suiren… The dumbass who continues to be an idol despite loving Battle Spirits far too much to do that adequately…

Is the voice of reason.

What has this show come to?

I may have felt bad for you before Bashin but not this time.

No amount of remorse you show will earn any from me.

Well it didn’t take long for Card Sensei to find Meganeko.

Also Sensei can understand the feelings of a 12-year old girl who has been shunned by the only friend she has?

So, what, it’s less that Bashin doesn’t consider you a friend, but moreso because he doesn’t really care about the class or how much of a big deal separating from them is?

This is a pretty normal fear…

The friends you make outside of school are honestly the best ones you’ll ever make.

Because it’s very difficult to stay in contact with them when you end up parting ways.

Hence how I’ve been able to stay with my S.O. 5 years (as of August 8th, 2019), I didn’t meet her in any educational institution, it’s the fact that I maintained contact with her outside of it that the relationship has lasted this long.

It would make you look like a real muppet if there was a readily available solution in order for you to become one of those Batosupi friends.

A right proper muppet.

Yes it will.

Hurtful, but truthful.

Well it was complete gibberish, so no wonder no one got the memo.

That was a poor choice Meganeko.

An extremely poor choice.

This will most certainly bite you in the ass later.

Apparently whatever Sensei just rambled on about has cheered up Meganeko, so points for that guy for keeping Meganeko as happy as she is.

But for fuck sake Meganeko re-evaluate your love interest for the love of all that is good in this show.

Striker has completed his purpose as Suiren’s punching bag, and being a dick to Meganeko’s Memo, so now he’s leaving the scene to go do Striker stuff that no one cares about.

Forming this as a question Suiren was the worst move you could have possibly done.

Obviously Bashin’s answer is going to be “GEE UH I DUNNO HURR HURR”

You’ve never seen her cry?

I…

What…

How ignorant of his friends could he POSSIBLY be!?

Hoo boy. I know I’m just spending this episode ripping into Bashin but he literally deserves it, and there’s nothing plot relevant going on other than Meganeko thinking Card Sensei is a Nazo-Otona.

Which, given that Meganeko isn’t a Battle Spirits player should add SIGNIFICANT CREDENCE to that investigation because it means she’s not just speculating for the sake of it.

…That was sudden. Is this because Bashin is being an ass and needs a good ol-fashioned butt-kicking?

…So what if Bashin won’t willingly return the Memo they’re going to fight him for it?

I’m having a hard time following this, also notice how Aibou has consistently been in every shot Bashin’s been in since he got to the centre, and yet hasn’t said a word.

THIS SHOW HATES ME.

I SWEAR!

Bashin seems far too depressed to confront Meganeko again.

That’s going to irritate a certain Purple-Haired Idol.

YES!

THE “SNAP-OUT-OF-IT” TROPE FIGHT, COMPLETE WITH SUIREN’S ANGER!

THIS IS THE KIND OF SHIT I LIVE FOR!

Apparently Bashin doesn’t know what basic human decency is.

Because you’re failing to do something that should be bloody obvious is the correct thing to do.

I hate to say it, but it’s because it’s Bashin.

Also I do enjoy how this entire episode has not one but 2 people losing their shit with this fiery haired muppet.

We taking this nugget to ISEKAI NOW BOYS.

They’ve made it nice and easy for us to decipher which field is which.

It’s currently Bashin’s turn, field is pretty even, no clue what the life count is though.

Bashin plays The Ancient Fault.

This means all of Bashin’s Spirits gain +2000 BP as long as they have a Cost of 2.

Goradon attacks but is blocked by Skulldevil, which causes Goradon to be destroyed.

Of course, the whole “I’m playing bad because I’m too depressed to think clearly”

Bashin messed up, he forgot the Ancient Fault only works on Cost 2 Spirits.

I significantly doubt the truthfulness of this statement.

Suiren summons Bat-Bat and attacks with it.

Lizardedge is destroyed, however having equal BP to Bat-Bat reflects the attack.

I’ve noticed the special effects are super inconsistent, when attacks are reflected they sometimes change colour, but other times they don’t like when Goradon just got red flames shot into his face.

Oh but when LIZARDEDGE blocks an attack and destroys the attacker, the lightning turns bloody orange.

MAKES SENSE (it doesn’t, thankfully passed this season it won’t matter)

Both Skulldevils also attack, dropping Bashin to a comfortable 3 lives.

Bashin seems almost terrified at the prospect of losing.

Why? There’s no reason to be so averse to giving an apology.

Bashin moves to refill his field by summoning Rokceratops and Metalburn.

And then Bashin… Plays Buster Phalanx.

That card destroys all Nexuses in play… But I’m pretty sure Bashin is the only one with a Nexus here.

Well, it was good while it lasted.

…Who am I kidding, it’s contributed nothing to this game whatsoever.

Guilt?

You know, typical things that signal the need for a “Snap-out-of-it” Trope match.

To think that destroying your own Nexus which reaped no benefit to being destroyed nor applied any heavy restrictions on your play to do so could ever be seen as anything but a misplay.

Bashin swings using Rokceratops and snatches a life from Suiren, he then ends his turn, leaving Metalburn as a blocker.

Suiren summons Bone-Gladiator.

Skulldevil attacks but Bashin blocks with Metalburn… Who starts rolling to block the attack.

What a really weird way to block an attack like that, at least it’s well animated.

AND DESPITE THE REFLECT, THE LIGHTNING IS STILL PURPLE.

INCONSISTENCY AT IT’S FINEST.

Byeeeeeee Skulldeviiiiil~

You will not be missed.

Suiren takes a life with the other Skulldevil and ends her turn, leaving Bone-Gladiator as a blocker.

Bashin draws and immediately plays Lizardman.

To add to the immediate nature of the play, he also immediately attacks with Lizardman.

Lizardman snatches a life, putting Suiren at 3.

As much as I’d love to take the opportunity to rail on Bashin again.

Suiren’s actually wrong here.

Bashin’s remaining Spirits are Metalburn and Rokceratops.

He’s already attacked with Lizardman, however, if he made a full attack and dropped Suiren to a single life, Suiren would still have 2 Spirits remaining to take Bashin’s last 2.

Hell even a single attack here would put Bashin in the danger zone provided you had another spirit in hand.

In other words:

He’s doing well with this turn, leave him be.

What? And give you more core?

It doesn’t work like that captain, you’ve got enough lives to survive a full attack.

There is no point to it.

Suiren adds a 2nd Bone-Gladiator to the board and attacks with it.

Bashin takes from the life…

This is… fine but he might have been better off blocking this one.

It would encourage Suiren to work for the life.

What problem is he exactly meant to be thinking about? The Problem with his play or the Problem with Meganeko?

The turn passes to Bashin and he plays Double Draw.

I’m not making a Pot of Greed joke.

The first card Bashin draws is The DragonEmperor Siegfried.

Well ain’t that a cool X-Rare to get now. Not sure if it will save him though.

WHOA, BASHIN’S FACE.

What exactly did he draw?

A new magic card?

I’m confused, we haven’t seen BS03 introduced yet, so what Magic have we yet to see?

Bashin summons The DragonEmperor Siegfried.

And look on the improvement on that animation, the animators are just flexing on us now.

And for good measure, he levels Siegfried up to Level 3.

And then plays a SUPREMELY High costed Magic card! Seventh Crimson!

Since the Japanese art sucks ass, I’ll be using the English one, it’s not like the effect is any different.

Anyway, Seventh Crimson’s effect forces you to send all the Cores on a Spirit with 7000 BP or more to the Void, when you do this, you can send 7 cores on any cards your opponent controls to the Reserve.

This is a Cost 7 Magic from BS02, and it is NOT worth the cost required to play it.

Not only does it have only 2 reduction, meaning you have to pay at the VERY LEAST, 5 cores to play it, but you also have to eliminate a relatively powerful spirit, on your MAIN PHASE no less.

It’s fairly nasty, the flash timing doesn’t nearly award enough BP as a card of that cost generally should.

Bashin, naturally, sends all the core on Siegfried to the Void as the condition for Seventh Crimson’s effect.

All of Suiren’s Spirits only had 1 Core, so absolutely no chance she was going to be left with a Spirit.

And now Bashin has 3 attackers with which to take Suiren’s 3 lives.

This is a shit “Snap-out-of-it” Fight.

So despite 2 GRIEVOUS misplays on the part of Bashin, they still decided to give him the win.

This is stupid. Suiren shouldn’t have lost that.

Suiren is being caught off guard a lot today, first Swift Summoning and now Seventh Crimson.

Bashin casually explaining how Seventh Crimson works.

Interesting how this is a RED card when it very clearly has a Purple-Esque effect, I’m a little confused as to why it’s having a colour identity crisis.

I suppose Aibou is questioning why Bashin would bother using a card that specifically offs his Siegfried for such a powerful effect.

Unlike Yu-Gi-Oh!, Battle Spirits doesn’t really condemn specific styles of playing all that often, merely promotes different ones.

I think the closest we get is during Sword-Eyes but only very briefly.

Otherwise as long as it’s a valid way to win, they don’t really challenge people over the way they went about it.

Hell Aibou himself was the person who scolded Bashin for relying too much on his X-Rare, using a card that eliminates Siegfried for a super nuts effect is entirely in line with Bashin’s development as a battler.

I mean if he wanted to be an asshole, yes.

Apparently he decided not to go that route.

By virtue of being the perfect-in-every-way Shounen Protagonist.

I don’t forgive him, he’s only doing this “Because he must!” rather than because he actually gave a shit.

Bashin notices Meganeko and Card Sensei, and immediately moves to hide from them.

Because that’s a great way to confront people, by hiding from them.

For WHAT Purpose!?

Or are you scared of looking all embarrassed and apologetic infront of Card Sensei.

WHO YOU MISSED THE SURPRISE PARTY FOR INFACT-

Ohhhhh…

I get it, he’s still a dick though.

First of all, WEIRD THING TO SAY WITH NO CONTEXT AND THE ONLY PERSON YOU’RE TALKING TO IS A TEACHER 3 TIMES YOUR AGE MEGANEKO.

I assume she’s come to terms with her feelings about Bashin, but of course, Bashin over here has no idea what she’s on about. Not sure what the depressed look is for (If he was assuming Meganeko and Card Sensei became a thing then this show is messed up for even including that idea)

Given we didn’t see the moment of truth, it can be asserted that it didn’t happen.

Hah, not even Bashin’s mother could be here to console him.

Lovely little jab in the stomach for Bashin.

What’s he so bothered about?…

…That was a really weird “To be continued” screen.

It didn’t have the usual jingle and instead just carried on the depressing theme.

Well.. That’s not great.

Well Episode Review! This seems to be covering the relationship between Meganeko, Bashin and Card Sensei a little more, Meganeko suspecting Card Sensei is a Nazo-Otona means she’s on to a lot more than she should be, the problem is she’s not got the same information that the Cornerstone holders have and isn’t aware of what a talking turtle actually means.

The other thing is, Bashin is now super afraid of confronting Meganeko for some reason to apologise to her, seeing her happy made him afraid and he went home without saying anything.

I’m unsure what’s going through that nutcase’s head but Meganeko being happy should have been more encouraging to him.

Though him hearing “I’ve never felt this way before” also seems to have bothered him some.

I can’t really decipher what’s up with him, it might be because I don’t care enough but I’m racking my brain here.

It’s likely we’ll get it resolved next episode.

Anyway, before we leave, our card of the day is Seventh Crimson! Since no interesting topics come up as a result that I haven’t already discussed, We’ll leave it there!

I’ll see you next time!