High Card

After discovering that his orphanage was on the brink of closing due to financial stress, Finn, who was living freely on the streets, set out for a casino with the aim of making a fortune. However, nothing could have prepared Finn for the nightmare that was awaiting him. Once there, Finn encountered a car chase and bloody shootout caused by a man's "lucky" card.

Finn will eventually learn what the shootout was about. The world order can be controlled by a set of 52 X-Playing cards with the power to bestow different superhuman powers and abilities to the ones that possess them. With these cards, people can access the hidden power of the "buddy" that can be found within themselves.

There is a secret group of players called High Card, who have been directly ordered by the king of Fourland to collect the cards that have been scattered throughout the kingdom while moonlighting as employees of the luxury carmaker Pinochle. Scouted to become the group's fifth member, Finn soon joins the players on a dangerous mission to find these cards.

"All you need in life are manners, dignity, and the will to bet on your own life."

However, Who's Who, the rival car maker obsessed with defeating Pinochle, and the Klondikes, the infamous Mafia family, stand in the way of the gang. A frenzied battle amongst these card-obsessed players, fueled by justice, desire, and revenge, is about to begin!

Are you ready? It's Showdown!!

(Source: TMS Entertainment)

Redgrave, Chris Main

Masuda, Toshiki Japanese

Oldman, Finn Main

Satou, Gen Japanese

Satou, Wendy Main

Shiraishi, Haruka Japanese

Pinochle, Leo Constantine Main

Horie, Shun Japanese

Singh, Vijay Kumar Main

Umehara, Yuuichirou Japanese

Peace, Sugar Supporting

Takahashi, Rie Japanese

TILT Supporting

Toyonaga, Toshiyuki Japanese

Ball, Bobby Supporting

Sawashiro, Chiharu Japanese

Symons, Bernard Supporting

Yamaji, Kazuhiro Japanese

Hammond, Chelsea Supporting

Kubo, Yurika Japanese

Motonaga, Satoshi Producer

Cao, Cong Producer

Miyazaki, Yuuji Producer

Eguchi, Shougo Producer

Reviews

Mar 17, 2024

LemonadeSamurai

Recommended

52 cards exist, each and every one of them grants a unique power by it's chosen player two sides fight over it's power. This is the beginning of a new war thats lasted centuries.

The premise of Highcard is that two groups are fighting over 52 *actually* magical cards that grant unique abilities to those that wield them. These abilities range from conjuring up a gun or sword to literal immortality or turning people into marbles by touch, these cards fetch an extremely high price on the market and those who wield them gain unbelievable powers. However the cards choose the wielder and they cannot ... be used by just anybody.

The setting is clearly meant to be England but it isn't called that despite having extremely identical architecture, and even depicting the viking invasion of England in a re-telling of the country's origin and westminster abbey even being shown at one point. The show takes place in what appears to be London but it isn't called such. The land is called Fourland and its divided into 4 parts.

The hero of our story is a boy named Finn who is dragged into this war after he is found to possess one of these cards, the two groups fighting over these cards are the Klondike Mafia whom seek to use its power for their own personal use, and the Penochie motor company who seek to collect the cards and return them to the royal family who has protected them for generations.

Highcard is the name of the group that works within Penochie to collect the cards comprised of 5 individuals:

Finn: the 17 year old orphan pickpocket who wields the power of gun and can shoot in a perfect straight line

Chris: a man whom is immortal thanks to his card

Vijay: an Indian looking man who can utilize the power of growing vines or plants from anywhere

Wendy: a Japanese looking woman who possesses a cursed sword

Leo: the leader of the group who can turn money into anything of its value. (Like $2 into a can of coke)

The boss of the Pinoche group is named Theodore whose power is undisclosed along with several other members.

The Klondike mafia is led by a man named Ban Klondike who has too many characters to list and to avoid spoilers.

There's also the police force and several other characters but I won't discuss them once again for spoilers sake.

The anime itself is REALLY interesting and I found myself binge watching all 12 episodes in 1 night. However by episode 10 I felt letdown as they re-used the same cards and characters.

The humor is present thoughout although I never found myself laughing out loud, there's still a chuckle especially one scene on the last episode.

The animation is VERY high quality and breathtaking at times. It's done by Studio Hibari who isn't well known but also did Cutscenes for Persona 4, but the animation really is incredible and colorful with tons of fluidity and realistic visuals.

The sound is SUB only as there is no dub available which is a shame because the obviously English speaking Japanese is odd but the voice acting is good. The most notable VA is Daisuke Ono who voiced Jotaro in JJBA voicing Theodore. Jazz music plays thoughout the episodes and is often used in tense moments.

As far as content warning: there is cursing, violence + excessive gore but no nudity but suggestive sexual language is used.

Overall Highcard is a really solid anime that more people need to be aware of. It has very intense and fun to watch battle sequences and the mystery of the cards keeps the watcher in suspense. The only complaint is that the show feels like it drags on later and some episodes are weaker then others.

But I definitely recommend Highcard if you liked JoJo's bizarre adventures (Golden Wind specifically) or something like Fate/Zero. It's very similar to those.

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Apr 24, 2024

Scrabers

Mixed Feelings

Storyline 6/10 Music 6/10
Animation 6/10

# Storyline
In passing, we will feel like seeing kingsman in anime form. But the whole story feels average.
The use of 52 cards that have the ability to provide different powers, the background of the modern world with a system of government in the form of kingdoms. A clash behind the shadows between 2, The Pro Royal and the opposition camp, with the aim of collecting all the scattered cards. if we read the synopsis and watch for a while it will feel interesting.
But after a while the story starts to feel slow and boring. the comedy that is included also does not ... feel funny, drama and serious scenes are bland, as an audience I do not feel the feeling of passion in the case they are handling, all feel bland.

# Animation
The animation is presented quite well. by using character animation that is commonly used in anime set in the western continent, namely longer legs than anime with a Japanese background. The action scenes presented are not dense so that the intensity of the fight is not felt at all, maybe because there are too many chase scenes.
The animation in the opening and ending feels familiar, but I forget where I've seen this style of opening animation.

# Music
For the opening music, the beginning is not interesting to continue, prefixes that use instant transitions from high to low musical notes are too often used in many anime openings, so they are not very interesting. the middle to end is pretty good but nothing special.
For the musical Ending, the composition of the tone is quite good but not alluring to be heard until the end.
For the backsound, I don't pay much attention because the boring storyline makes me pay less attention to the backsound.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Mar 31, 2024

whiteflame55

Not Recommended

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.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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	Poll: High Card Episode 12 Discussion KANLen09 - Mar 27, 2023	44 replies	by Minervay »» Jul 24, 6:29 AM
	Poll: High Card Episode 11 Discussion KANLen09 - Mar 20, 2023	27 replies	by Sun_Chan »» May 1, 11:53 PM
	Poll: High Card Episode 10 Discussion KANLen09 - Mar 13, 2023	36 replies	by Sun_Chan »» May 1, 11:29 PM
	Poll: High Card Episode 9 Discussion KANLen09 - Mar 6, 2023	24 replies	by Sun_Chan »» May 1, 11:05 PM
	Poll: High Card Episode 8 Discussion KANLen09 - Feb 27, 2023	41 replies	by Sun_Chan »» May 1, 10:41 PM