What’s it about ?
An informercial about a new cardgame.
No, seriously. There’s barely any plot to it, and it takes pains to explain in detail of this cardgame works and why it’s awesome.
Characters
Aichi, our wimpy protagonist. He never played the game before, but he’s still walking around with a full deck, including a super-rare Vanguard DoublePlusSuper card.
Morikawa, a stereotypical bully who steals the aforementioned card. Comes with two lackeys in tow (although one of them disappears halfway through the episode – continuity isn’t this series’ strong point). He immediately proceeds to lose it to…
Kai, the ace player from the local cardshop. He too comes with a lackey in tow, a blond dude whose main role is to talk smack. Anyway, he’s straight enough to allow Aichi a rematch to try and get his precious card back, even nicely explains the rules in minute detail for the newbie. It eventually comes out that they both know each other for some reason, although we don’t learn the details yet.
Production Values
Well, there’s only so many ways to make two dudes playing an effing card game exciting, so this series goes for the route of having Kai tell Aichi every other minute to “IMAGINE !” they’re having an epic fantasy battle and not just sitting around a table. But even those fantasy fights are cliché and boring, matching the triteness of everything else.
Overall Impression
During the whole “climactic” card fight sequence, there are regular side shots of the shop clerk barely looking up from her book to watch over those excited idiots. They stop short of having her actually roll her eyes, but just barely. This is the only character in this show I have any empathy for. (The ED suggests she’s joining the core cast travelling around the country or something, which makes my mind boggle.)
So yeah, this is despicable garbage trying to sell this crap collectible game to kids. It has no redeeming features whatsoever, it’s boring, it’s a transparent commercial, and everything there has been done better before. Oh, and it doesn’t even have a proper ending – it stops when Aichi draws his Blue-eyed White Dragon SuperDuperAwesome card (which Kai had helpfully lended to him as a handicap) ; that’s not a cliffhanger, it’s just running out of screentime…
Avoid at all costs. If you have any interest in this, go watch Yu-Gi-Oh instead, which at least has the novelty of cardgames on motorcycles (or something).
via [In which I review] New anime, Winter 2010-2011 – Page 9.
