Cardfight!! Vanguard Gaiden: If

Oh IF, what a ride you are.

Right off the bat, Vanguard Gaiden IF is not everyone's cup of tea. I personally think your enjoyment of it really depends on if you are a fan of the Vanguard series in general and how much you liked the first 4 seasons in particular. It's full of callbacks and interesting "What If?" scenarios so if you're not into that this series might not be for you.

Story:

Absolutely batshit insane and a rollercoaster and I loved every second of it. The plot gets kickstarted when Kouji Ibuki, a former villain from the main series, gets send into the future ... to stop himself from committing a terrible mistake. Everyone who watched Vanguard G or the end of the Shinemon Arc will recognize that this is about putting a deck into Chrono Shindo's, the G protagonist's, shoelocker which would inevitably kickstart his love for the card game.

He unexpectedly runs into Emi Sendou, the little sister of Vanguard’s main protagonist Aichi, who not only turns out to be a magical girl, she also seems to be on a journey to fix time distortions which Ibuki’s “terrible mistake” falls into. To his shock the monsters she fights can’t be beaten by playing a children’s card game and he gets the shit beaten out of him. Emi and her friend Shuka beat up his imposter and his real future self to do his duty of delivering the deck.

From there the plot gets pretty wacky. Ibuki and former side character Suiko get sent to parallel worlds along with Emi and Shuka to solve the distortions in them. There is a monster possessing a human who always turns out to be some kind of Vanguard monster. Ibuki gets his ass beaten for trying to solve everyone by playing Vanguard. The girls save the day, they go home, rinse repeat.

The first few episodes are very fun, each distortion sillier than the last and putting hilarious spins on well established characters from the main series. I think your amusement with these jokes will depend on how well you know the characters and dynamics in the main universe but I think they can work well on their own. At a later point in the series things get more serious, the distortions are less silly and the gap between the alternate and main universe are less funny and more tragic.

Whether you like that shift will depend on you but for me, it was very fun to watch it all unravel and top itself with every new week. 8/10

Art:

Probably the weakest part of the series. What can I say, this series as been running nearly continuously for almost ten years now and it kinda shows. Animation is limited, keyframes are sloppy and sometimes the characters look like you accidentality stopped at an inbetween frame even though you can see their mouths move while they talk. Sometimes you get some shots that look really, really good but you can tell that this show didn’t get a big budget or time, even if it still looks decent enough that it doesn’t burn your eyes. 4/10

Sound:

Background music is a nice mix of new tracks to fit with the new magical girl theme and callbacks to songs from both the original and the V series. Opening and endings are also good, with the opening and first ending fitting the silly and fun tone of the beginning of the series and the second ending fitting the more serious and dramatic shift.

A personal highpoint for me is the voice acting. Each voice actor in the alternate universes gives a stunning performance to fit the changes their characters had compared to the main universe and it works out so well. One spoiler character really threw me off by how different they sounded, it was jarring and unsettling and I commend the voice actor for being able to pull it off. Bravo! 7/10

Character:

Very fun. With a lot of characters returning from the main series, if you liked the cast from the other Vanguard shows then you will like them here but a special mention should go for the original AU characters.

Emi, as the magical girl protagonist, is sympathetic and fun to watch which came as a surprise to me since she played such a small role in the main series. Her motivation to save her brother and her growth as a person over the course of the series is very entertaining and a definite high point in the series.

The other three main characters, Shuka, Suiko and Ibuki all get their own character arcs which felt very satisfying to me, especially for Ibuki who lacked a major redemption arc in the V series compared to his original counterpart. Side character and later spoiler characters also get decent motivations and development, some getting more than others but I think it works in the kind of series this is.

Overall very enjoyable. 7/10

Enjoyment:

If you can’t tell already, I really liked this series. The characters are fun, the way they’re twisted is fun, the scenarios are fun. The shift into a more serious tone is a bit unexpected but the hints had been there all along so I don’t find it jarring and enjoyed the ride as it went along. Some of the elements are very much ridiculous and silly but if you watch Vanguard that kind of becomes part of the package and you get used to it.

I enjoyed the callbacks, I enjoyed the call forwards. I enjoyed Ibuki getting his ass handed to him every week. I enjoyed Suiko being confused with a 20-something year old. I enjoyed Emi’s and Shuka’s banter. I enjoyed the totally sudden magical girl transformations into Vanguard units. I also enjoyed seeing my favourite unit badly animated several times in this series. Watching this with my friend was an absolute joy. 9/10

Overall:

I want to reiterate that I know this series is not for everyone. You need a very high tolerance for bullshit, a good memory about things that happened in Vanguard, especially the original series, to enjoy the callbacks and the ability to go with the sudden shifts in the story.

This is very much a series that is for Vanguard fans that love the characters in the anime and is basically a love letter to the Vanguard animes until now. It takes the silliest, craziest and most dramatic moments in the series and mixes it all together into a wild stew of weird and you either love that or hate that. I for my part can’t recommend it enough to anyone who loves the Vanguard anime and wants a ride down Nostalgia lane. Anyone else should probably take a second to think about it. 8/10

So what to say about If?

It certainly ins't a typical Card anime. It's a mix of the show itself, and say Prisma Illya, or say Cardcaptor Sakura in terms of it being a magical girl type show so far, which is a weird combo, but it honestly works here. For a number of a reasons, and let me explain why!

The plot might not seem like much, cause the episodes might be kind of the same with every episode that passes by. But it's still great, it's very nastogic when it comes to seeing old faces, along with a few new ones. Which is quite interesting ... and great to see. But the plot is a basic concept to follow, and you'll wonder how much they have to do, which just pushes more interest in my view.

Our mains, it's a good mix of characters, with the main focus being on two characters who weren't main characters in the original series, along with a new face and a main from the G series. So quite the mix of characters, and it's nice that they're given more of the spotlight in terms of the two more side characters in the original series. Even if in some cases they might sound a little different to how they were previously, but it isn't too bad. It's real fun, and we get to see more the character, than what we knew already. Which is fun to see.

The art and sound is pretty top notch honestly. Can't really say anything about it, it's what you would expect in a Vanguard show, and you cannot go wrong there.

I'd honestly recommend IF if you love Vanguard, and magical girl type shows in general. Or in general. It won't blow you away, but it's a fun show! So give it a shot!

I loved this series when it was a gag series about having a bit of fun with anime tropes, but then Kai shows up somewhere in the middle and the series loses all of its charm.

The first half is 10/10 fun, with 10/10 characters and an interesting enough mystery.

The second half is 0/10 fun, all the melodrama, and retreading plot lines Vanguard has done in other shows and a movie already. Vanguard should get an award for the most amount of times they've done the exact same story in the shortest amount of time. At least Marvel waits to recycle their plots.

You can literally pin ... down the exact episode where it stops being fun.

Cardfight !! Vanguard Gaiden: If little can be said about this anime, it no longer tells the great story besides that it is very reptilian and you know what is going to happen with each chapter you are watching "it is more noticeable in the first chapters"

Basically the story is that we now have as the protagonist emi "aichi's sister" who is fighting in different worlds but in certain lines of time "this you can understand if you saw the original series" the thing is that they add things that are not understood at first glance or they modify them to make them in a ... funny way or flat they do not fit with what you did not see in the original series and the question here is what should I believe ?.

The funny "thing that happened to me" is that I feel that this anime was an attempt to do the same as in legion mate-hen only here they decided now whether to put the main characters and not add new ones to add magic and leave in the background the duels "for those who watched that season will know what I'm talking about"

With the shape of the characters they are the same that you saw in the original series except that I did not like that forced change of adding charisma to a character that we all know is made to be someone serious or bad "ibuki" in addition to the bad jokes placed in situations that nothing to see and largely ruins the development of the story.

In general I can only say that if you expected the great duels like in the original series let me tell you that you will not find it here and "as I said before" the vanguard fights are in the background almost saying "your moment has passed" now If I would recommend it, I may do it but not with great enthusiasm only if you have some time or nothing to do with it but don't expect the great work of art.