Cardfight!! Vanguard: Legion Mate-hen

I watched 4 seasons without even playing the game in real life, but I do understand the rules and enjoy the fights though. We get new rule for every season, and this one is no exception. Now we get something so dazzling, which is called "Legion MATE". Okay, just the word choice is so weird, and the word "mate" is being repeated again and again whenever characters talk about Aichi - our forgotten protagonist. Well, I'm sure you will get used to it, just like I did.

Please note that this anime, or the whole series, is there for the purpose of promoting cardgame and selling ... desks in real life. People watch this mostly to know the power of cards instead of reading plain Wikipedia. Thus, the plot of the anime is not something splendid or awesome, it happens to show the cards. Although I'm saying that, I actually enjoy its simple plot. I love how they shift Kai to be protagonist now to make him gain more development, especially after season 3, where he has many problems. His problems is being showed here as well as an element to build up his character. Maybe this season is actually the first time we see him acts like a leader, a friend, and a "mate" of Aichi. We see him struggle to overcome his sin in the previous season, and his interaction with others. However, other characters like Misaki and Kamui are being overshadowed.

The Quatre Knights is not really an interesting gang, but the director at least cares to create the background for every member, though most of them don't make sense at all (Anyway, turning off your brain is the best way to enjoy this anime). As Cardfight on Moon is not magical enough, we have them fighting by Ice and Fire Power like they just come out from Sailor Moon. I don't think it's necessary at all but it doesn't hurt anyone, I guess. We also have a little plot twist with Serra - one of the Knights and Leon and Ren, which I think is a step-up from previous season that I find it rather interesting.

The art is decent enough for a long series like this, though sometime they make such silly mistake like the cards in Damage Zone change magically in the next scene. Some of the animation appears to be great when the characters summon their Ace Cards. The voice acting is great, and their screams are marvelous, I should say.

The Openings don't appeal much to me, but I like the second ending, it gives me warmth. I kind of sympathize with Aichi right now. The OST is plain boring, well, I didn't expect anything from its music anyway. Hopefully I can hear "Believe in my existence" as insert song once again, maybe in the last fight that probably would happen between Kai and Aichi.

I’m so mortified that this is from the same writer as the A Channel anime, I want to put my head through a wall. The entire premise of this season seems to be based on the series compositor having taken a trip to London and sat in a pub listening to people talk. This season has no style, no substance, plot holes you could throw whole buildings through and utterly unlikeable characters with motivations that are more implausible than any conspiracy theory to ever exist. I’m so glad that G moves on to a whole new set of characters because I couldn’t stand to be ... with these characters any longer. Just as long as I don’t have to listen to anyone try to force British slang spoken in English into any more anime because repeatedly hearing them say mate was utterly grating.

Story: To quote Drawn Together "I am on a neverending quest to save my boyfriend" is the story this time around, it's practically filler this time around which is probably why it was never dubbed, taking all the effort and development the characters had throughout the first 3 seasons and tossing it out the window. It's incredibly predictable with its fights and doesn't have any excitement or thrill of the match.

Art: pretty standard with the series, no drops in animation or anything.

Sound: In terms of voice acting this was terrible, some of the new characters sounded painfully annoying I will get to a certain ... person int he character section and in one episode this one guy who they kept cutting to during a fight with Koutei who is my personal favourite since his fights are always fun and he would speak in such an obnoxious, annoying way that i was tempted to just edit out the scenes of him because of how bad he is. Music is pretty standard.

Characters: Congratulations Vanguard, you introduced a character who I hate more than Nagisa and Asaka if that was your intention this whole time, good job. Rati Curtie has got to be one of the most annoying, obnoxious, smug little brat and what's worse is that she plays my favourite clan and just treats one of the best characters terribly, I don't know why we should feel sorry for her when all she does is annoy and treat people like crap. I cheered whenever something bad happened to her and she is one of the reasons I was so close to quitting the show. Every other new character is unlikeable I hated every new character introduced.

Enjoyment: there was no enjoyment in this series, aside from one cardfight everything else was incredibly hollow and bland.

Overall: This series was terrible but does it deserve a 1? No because the original cast saved it and it was cool seeing their new decks in action that was it.

Legion Mate is a complicated one.

Yes the worldbuilding is completely incoherent but this has always been a major flaw of the original series; supernatural events, underage corporate magnates and sci fi elements phasing in and out without any logic or coherence with the otherwise realistic setting (Ren vs Aichi at the end of season 1 must have looked schizo as hell to the spectators). Legion Mate is no different, introducing magical torture based games and a palace in the Moon asspulled out of nowhere which in isolation is completely retarded but after the witnessing events of Link Joker it’s not really a big deal ... tbh.

Another major gripe people have with Legion Mate is the constant jobbing with even Kai himself becoming a worthless pushover in the first half of the season. Yes Kai jobs in Legion Mate, even Kamui and Kourin beat his ass. Ren even takes pity on him an yielding. It can be argued that while characters lost important matches in previous seasons it only added to the stakes and helped to balance things out while in Legion Mate multiple characters outright never win especially Misaki. And honestly it's true, Legion Mate makes you question why Misaki, Miwa and Kamui were even a part of the story.

This is mainly due to the antagonistic threat: The Quatre Knights. They're all continental level champions on the level of Aichi and Kai who're tasked with guarding Aichi and preventing his friends from locating him. There are two problems with this, one being that trying to prevent them from reaching Aichi makes no sense when he's sealed away in the Moon with no way to get there (the consistently incoherent worldbuilding being a crucial part of the plot this season ruins it) and while Aichi was wise to pick the strongest fighters in the world it sucks for the story because only Kai can really beat them. It's also arguably infruriating how they brutally defeat and torture beloved characters then even wipe their memories of Aichi later on. I think it's due to poor writing, while it makes sense they want to ward off Aichi's friends the way they do so is bizarrely cruel and villainous making them unlikeable from the get go.

The worst example of this is Ratie Curtie. Already somewhat annoying from the get go, she goes from slight nuisance to insufferable bitch when she's revealed as a Quatre Knight. The way she treats Misaki and revels in her suffering for no real reason (Misaki even bought her food) makes you desperate to see her get a taste of her own medicine. Then they rematch later on and it's expected that Misaki who's already established as intelligent and skilled at cardfighting will counter Ratie's strategy and deliver a painful and humilating punishment only for her to lose to the same deck in the exact same way. It's beyond infuriating the first time around and one of the worst instances of jobbing in Vanguard period. It's hard to understand what the writers' thought process was. Everyone liked Misaki. Nobody likes Ratie. Was this an attempt to be realistic because of Ratie's skill level or something? By the time Ratie fights the generic traitor villain Raul, you're ROOTING FOR HIM TO WIN and CHEER IN PURE JOY WHEN THAT NYANPARARA BITCH GETS COOKED. If a story makes you root for the villain out of pure spite then you know something went wrong.

As for the others, Gaillard was annoying at first but becomes a lot more charming when Kai knocks him off his pedestal, Raul Serra has an unappealing lame design and is a generic double crosser villain and finally Philippe Neva is a typical cool teddy bear type character. One thing with Raul and Philippe is how dumb/over the top their backstories were compared to Gaillard and Ratie's down to earth pasts due to the lack of worldbuilding.

So yes there's a big case for Legion Mate being terrible. Nonsense story, annoying characters and brutal jobbing. But at the same time when Kai switches to Kagero and finally cooks Gaillard, the story really picks up IMO. Kai's switch from loser jobber to the aura farming, crit trigger sacking, final turning beast he used to be is so satisfying and it doesn't stop there. You have a side character actually winning for once (Naoki vs Kourin, although the conflict itself was dumb with Naoki completely glossing over the fact that Kourin will likely never see them ever again), Kai going on to beat Gailllard again in possible the most epic yet stupid sackfest of a fight in the entire series and the epic final match between Kai and Aichi. The latter of which wasn't just epic with Aichi spamming Absolute Lock and Kai reriding the Great over and over through pure sack energy but had a great payoff through the supporting cast choosing to share the burden of the Link Joker seed with Aichi instead of him suffering alone (which is a solid way to present the typical power of friendship themes these types of series usually have). However this should be taken for granted and is only so epic because of how miserable the series was up until that point. And moreover the finale itself while it gives good closure neglects one really important thing...

Kourin x Aichi. They should've kissed in their final moments together. What a pisstake.

Adding to that only Kai (and Naoki partially) gets to pop off in the latter half while the rest of the cast, ESPECIALLY Misaki gets BRUTALLY shafted in a way never seen before. If they had an opportunity to make a comeback similar to how Kai did opinion of this season wouldn't be anywhere near as low.

Anyhow all in all while the climax was still epic IMO, Legion Mate is a disaster of a season and shows that while making characters lose is still important for the story if you go too far all you end up with a unsatisfying and frustrating experience.