Over the first day of the 86th annual Comiket, Bushiroad of Japan aired the third trailer for the upcoming pair of
Cardfight!! Vanguard films
The 3 Games and
Neon Messiah, soon after making it available via YouTube. Both films were announced at this year's
Great Vanguard Festival, with
The 3 Games serving as the live action sequel to the 2012 live action drama starring Japanese musician and actor Daigo, and
Neon Messiah as the followup to the currently-airing fourth season of the animated series,
Legion Mate. The
previous trailer showed Sendou Aichi and Kai Toshiki's return to playing the Royal Paladin and Kagerou clans, as well as several of the upcoming fights in the film. This most recent trailer focuses on Aichi's new Legion card and the debut of antagonist Ibuki Kouji, a friend from Kai's childhood bearing the powers of Link Joker and its Deleter subclan. Due for a September 13th release date that will coincide with the upcoming
2014 World Championship qualifiers, the film is to be accompanied by the special booster set Movie Booster 01:
Neon Messiah and the trial deck VG-MTD01:
Malefic Deleter. The latter will feature Ibuki's
core grade 3, Docking Deleter Graywon.
Although once stated to be set between the
Link Joker and
Legion Mate chapters of the anime, the most recent announcements place the film after the fourth season.
Neon Messiah is to follow Aichi and Kai as they enter the Messiah Scramble, a major tournament involving many of the series' previous characters. Amid this an "annihilation crisis" is emerges, causing the units on players' cards to vanish. Of note, the fighters shown in the trailer appear to have locked vanguards at the moment that their units disappear.
As part of the Messiah Scramble, Kai and Aichi engage Ibuki in a tagfight. In succession the trailer shows Team Q4 and several background characters attending the Messiah Scramble, Ren suffering an apparent defeat, Ibuki and Docking Deleter Graywon, Aichi riding Seeker Alfred and Legioning, Kai and Aichi touching down in an arena against Ibuki, and Alfred battling Graywon.
Ibuki's key card is also shown off in several brief shots, with a partial view of its card art revealing that it has no Legion symbol. The background of the artwork matches up with previous promotional images for
Malefic Deleter, identifying the card as Graywon.
Subsequent updates to
Neon Messiah's merchandise page have shown that the new grade 3 does not have a limit break or mate, but that its first skill is a main phase counterblast 2 with no other activation conditions. This suggests that Graywon will return to the mechanics of the first season, being able to use its ability as soon as it has the damage to do so.
As no official transcriptions have been given as of yet, the name of the new Alfred unit is ambiguous. Aichi calls it as こうげんの
探索者アルフレッドエクシブ Kougen no Shiikaa Arufureddo Ekushibu.
Kougen has several associated kanji, but a likely written forms of it is 光源 "Light source."
Ekushibu has been variously proposed as a corruption of Excalibur ("Exclib") or a phonetic rendition of the Roman numerals XIV "Fourteen." Some have disputed the
Ekushibu transcription in favor of
Ekusuemu "XM." At this time CFPro will use the placeholder translation "Light Origin Seeker, Alfred XIV."
Neon Messiah's opening theme will be an arrangement of OP07 "V-ROAD" performed by a live orchestra. This trailer uses Ultra Rare's latest single "Bravery Flame" as its theme.
Neon Messiah will use a combination of hand-drawn and computer generated animation techniques for its fight sequences, blending the appearances of units across two mediums. The trailer is hosted below, with translations.
Neon Messiah's PV begins at the 36 second mark.
Boy: My unit is...
Caption: Vanguard annihilation crisis!?
Aichi: Every day we share the same dream. The dream of a wish that I entrusted to Blaster Blade.
Caption: The exhibition of the "Messiah Scramble."
Ren: He has a hand in this Messiah Scramble. Please be careful. That man...
Caption: Masterminding the "Deleters."
Ren: Ibuki Kouji.
Caption: Aichi and Kai's tag match!!
Aichi: Kai-kun, let's go!
Kai: Yeah!
Aichi: Ride! Light Origin Seeker, Alfred XIV! Seek mate; Blaster Blade!
Kai: Ibuki...I will definitely never forgive you! Our bond with our vanguards are not that weak!
Caption: Ibuki Kouji's goal is...?
Aichi: We will...protect our world, protect Vanguard!
