High Card

When I looked at this initially, I thought it was a bit of Kingsmen meets Bungou Stray Dogs, and while that’s mostly right, the comparisons don’t do it any favors. It doesn’t have the kinetic action or suave sophistication of Kingsmen, it doesn’t really have the character bonds, development or direction of Bungou, it’s just… there.

The show has a grand total of 5 major characters, spending the vast majority of its time developing two of them: Finn and Chris. That might be fine if Finn wasn’t a bog standard shonen MC that didn’t have anything interesting to him (the best comparison I have is to ... Makoto Edamura, the MC from Great Pretender, who wasn’t great but was carried by a solid cast around him) and Chris wasn’t utterly predictable in virtually everything that counts as character development. There were some nice moments between them, but they were few and far between. The other 3 characters got, at max, a single episode worth of development (one of them didn’t even get that), and then largely vanished into the background until they were useful again.

All of this would still be fine if the side characters or world were interesting, but more strikes against the show, they aren’t. Most of the side characters are either enigmatic, lacking any real development, or just function as stereotypes that either facilitate or hinder the heroes.

As for the world, that’s what brought me to this series and I was hoping for so much more. The entire conceit of the show is that there are cards that grant magic powers that jive with individual users. That mostly stays consistent, and there is some backstory on how they work, albeit one that basically just chalks it up to magic. So far so fine. There’s a hierarchy for the cards that goes from 2 to Ace, and no, that does not stay consistent at all. The central mission of our heroes is to recover the cards for the king for obscure reasons, and there is one major group in conflict with them for even more obscure reasons. That’s fine, it’s not like Bungou spelled out everyone’s motivations in S1, but I just don’t know why I’m invested in these guys. They aren’t that interesting and their overall aims just feel too enigmatic and grand for me to care. There was an episode in the middle of this season where it felt like we were getting some more information, only for it just to be a “evil guy does evil things” moment with no spin out consequences.

It really doesn’t help that the narrative seems to be running in place. There are few cards collected by the end, the villains don’t seem to care much, the big Chris moment was terribly undercut at the last moment, and it ends on a cliffhanger where Berserker from Fate Zero shows up (I’m only half joking).

Long story short: don’t bother. The series visuals are fine, if a bit off-putting, and they’ve announced a S2, but I’m not planning on watching. It’s a series that played it safe on the narrative and still felt like it missed most of its swings. Consequences just don’t exist for our central cast, which just makes them sacred cows who will survive everything and come back just fine.

High card - an anime with High potential but a wasted one. I dont know if the pacing is the same as in the manga as i do not read it, however it felt extremely fast paced and dozens of unexplained events happening one after another. The plot left me heavily confused about what is truly happening in this world of High Card, i was so confused that i barely had any desire to finish it, powers are left unexplained, cards are left unexplained, literally nothing is explained in this anime and it feels like everything that happens in the world of high card is ... highly fantastic.
First what left me so confused is the plot, even after completing the anime i am still a little bit confused about the entire plot, sure it must have some mystery but its rather a mess than a mystery, second - these cards are explained to give a certain superpower once they are played but through the entire season i can see how our main character who has the weakest card and is the weakest is jumping left and right, surviving all bullets, firestorms, hazards, jumping off train bridge and etc, is he having a plot armor or is just that all cards give some sort of super flying powers and unpenetretable armor because all of them keep surviving and keep acting like their cards give them superman powers along with the certain power that is explained, seriously this anime lacks logic for me and is highly fanstatic, nothing is properly explained, nothing. I literally felt like wasting my time watching this anime because the plot is extremely confusing and unexplained, this anime should have been an 24 episode cour or its just that the anime is not well made - i dont know as i dont read the manga.
The only good thing about this anime is that its art, music and has decent amount of action, honestly for me going into this anime i was excited as i really liked the idea, definitely High Card is an anime with High Potential but a wasted one for sure. I've always liked such animes with cards, carnivals, circus and musical instrument vibes but this one dissapointed me heavily. Nonetheless i will still watch the 2nd season but this anime as it is now is not worth your time.

High Card's story is about a standard 52 deck set of cards containing magical powers. Once you gather all 7 Dragon Balls, you will have your wish--whoops, wrong show. Seriously, though, the story is just too generic for me to care about it.

There was a lot going for it. The animation and art style is quite nice. Some fights are just done off screen, but the fighting scenes that the show decides to animate aren't bad at all. The colors, cuts, and choreography are all definitely above average. This show was not lacking in budget. The protagonist is charming. He's got a super ... boring backstory about being poor and resorting to crime to make ends meet, but his personality really shines through his actions in the first episode. He's a decent guy, but willing to take risks when opportunity strikes. The pilot episode, other than the beginning--which was just useless flavor text--really caught my attention and introduces the world and main character in a bombastic sequence of events. Then there's the 52 cards. Each card contains different strengths, weaknesses, and a unique ability. The show really could have been cooking up anything. A battle royale consisting of all 52 card holders or really just different card holding organizations vying for cards in an everlasting power struggle of turf wars. I had high hopes.

Instead, you got "good guy organization" vs "bad guy organization." What's even the point of watching something like this? I don't care what the demographic is meant for or the fact that it's graphic sometimes, it's a fucking shounen show. The protagonist just gets thrown into a random "good guy organization" and the rest of the plot is just "good guys" vs blatantly bad guys that kill people. So original. Even the likes of characters like Chris aren't that bad, but they just get completely ruined by the story direction. Like haha, Finn is a good guy. Don't believe me? Watch him save a stranger to prove his good-heartedness. Aren't you glad he's a good guy that has superpowers than the bad gang guy that has superpowers that kills people for fun and ruin peoples' lives? Then there's Leo Constantine. Isn't it super cool that he's got daddy issues and how he doesn't care that his father ruins other people's lives by gouging small business with a complete monopoly in his industry while probably openly "lobbying" government officials? I completely made up the last part of course, but it's true that episode 3 talks about his father gouging small businesses, and how Leo states that "only the strong survive." Using a hyperbole as an example, doesn't that mean he tacitly agrees that strong people should be able to kill weak people, like the bad gang people? Isn't it funny that the small business owners that got bankrupt eventually are colored as super bad, maniacal guys that murder and kidnap and then the good guys are part of the rich organization? Wow, such a coincidence. I looked up Pinochle to see if it was an actual company and it was sponsoring this show, but no, it's fictional. Considering how Finn comes from a poor background, I was expecting him to be a lot more empathetic and question his loyalties or something, but nah, he's just happy to serve.

Anyways, regardless of my rant, this show really is just a generic shounen trope-filled show of a mess. Everything about it is pretty good, but the fact that the show is "good guys" vs "bad guys" is super cringe.