Bushiroad putting up early chapters of the Vanguard manga online

Bushiroad has uploaded high-quality scans of the first four chapters of the Cardfight!! Vanguard manga to the Monthly Bushiroad magazine website as a free preview to promote the upcoming manga-inspired anime, viewable inside their own reader interface. This is only for the Japanese-language edition; users can select from chapters #001~004 using the four orange buttons below the volume 1 cover, and scroll from right to left using their arrow keys or the on-screen icons. Once the reader interface is loaded, the top right button zooms in on the page, while the top left button closes the reader.

The decision was likely motivated by the inclusion of fully colorized chapters in the magazine's most recent issues, which these uploads do not cover. The company probably intends users to preview the manga online, then want to see the color edition in Monthly Bushiroad.

The new anime series based on the manga, codenamed "Origin," will begin airing May 5th, 2018, on TV Tokyo and affiliated stations. It will be simulcast with English subtitles on YouTube and Crunchyroll, and unlike past seasons will be in a late night to early morning timeslot. V-Trial Deck 01: Sendou Aichi and V-TD02: Kai Toshiki will launch in Japanese May 11th, 2018, and in English June 8th, 2018. V-BT01: UNITE! TEAM Q4! will launch in Japan May 25th, 2018, and in English June 22nd, 2018. The first Extra Booster set, V-EB01: The Destructive Roar will launch in Japan June 29th, 2018, and in July for the English-speaking world.

Monthly Bushiroad Teases 0-Critical 1m Power Shooting Star Stride

July 4th, 2017. Monthly Bushiroad magazine's official Twitter account teased a page from the next chapter of Cardfight!! Vanguard: Shooting Star, an ongoing manga circulated in the magazine. Shooting Star's climax centers on the stride form of protagonist Matsumoto Asuka's key card, Millionaire. The Millionaire stride gains +1,000,000 power when she attacks, and prevents the opponent from calling perfect defense cards to the guardian circle, but in exchange reverts her own critical to 0. While functionally impossible to guard--300k accounts for the entirety of the shield contained in the average main deck, and only a handful of skills superior call perfect guards--an attack of this type would be entirely reliant on checking critical triggers just to deal normal damage.

"The VG Manga Award winner "Vanguard SS (Shooting Star) reaches its long-awaited completion!! 'Power +1,000,000'!!? But 'The critical is 0'??! An original unit's original skill explodes onto the scene!!! Don't miss the exciting conclusion!!"

While manga-original cards have been gradually introduced to the actual card game many times over the years, their skills are frequently adjusted to have appropriate costs attached. For example, "The Dark Dictator" in the manga gave +5000 power to all front-row Shadow Paladin rearguards continuously, while in the actual game this skill could only be used on-ride and cost soulblast 3.

As a whole Asuka's deck revolves around "star" units; in previous chapters she rode the 9000-power grade 2 "Star Saber, Canopus," and called the 7000-power grade 1 "Star Torch, Adhara," while her grade 3 was "Super-Star, Millionaire." Canopus and Adhara  are respectively named after the real-world stars Alpha Carinae and Epsilon Caenis Major. Each of these cards follow a particular naming convention of Japanese Vanguard, where the literal meaning of their written names is supplanted by a forced pronunciation. Millionaire's name is written "Number-One Star Heroine, Millionaire" (一番星の英雄ミリオネア Ichiban-sei no Eiyuu Mirionea) but is spoken aloud as "Super Star, Millionaire." (スーパースター ミリオネア  Suupaa Sutaa Mirionea) Asuka's clan has been the subject of much speculation up to now, but hasn't been addressed directly.

The Shooting Star manga follows Vanguard's first female protagonist, Matsumoto Asuka, a high schooler managing her missing father's titular card shop, "Shooting Star." After her assistant Togakushi Shuuya turns out to be one of the "Twelve Tyrants" of the card gang Crown, Asuka is drawn into a battle with him over the secret of her disappeared father's strength. Written and illustrated by Mitsukoshi Haruha, the manga was selected to receive the Vanguard Manga Award in commemoration of Monthly Bushiroad's third year of circulation, and is being serialized for three chapters alongside the Cardfight!! Vanguard, G, and MiniVan manga. The August issue of Monthly Bushiroad will mark the end of the series' planned run, though with eleven more Tyrants remaining, there's ample room for Shooting Star to be expanded on in additional installments.

Rumor: Cardfight!! Vanguard Manga to See English Translation

The following is being treated as a partially substantiated rumor and the story may develop significantly as more information comes to light. Please read with caution.

While the Cardfight!! Vanguard media franchise is known internationally as an anime and Trading Card Game, for the past two years the third piece of the puzzle that has yet to see English-language localization has been the original manga written by franchise creator Itou Akira. First debuted at the 2010 Tokyo Toy Show along with a preview video of the anime, and acting as the source material for the animated series, the Cardfight!! Vanguard manga has so far had only one official adaptation, of its first chapter released in preview materials during the 2012 World Championships and at promotional events. Outside of these fragmentary distributions, potential readers have been forced to rely on web-based fan translations or Japanese language mastery to read the manga. But if Amazon is anything to go by, this is about to change.

Amazon.co.uk has put up a preorder listing for volume 1 of the Cardfight!! Vanguard manga, published not by Kadokawa Shoten as the Japanese volumes were, but by VERTICAL. A New York-based publisher of Japanese popular media, VERTICAL is most noted for its translations of the manga adaptations of 5 Centimeters Per Second, Summer Wars and the works of classic artist Tezuka Osamu. The company was also responsible for translating Mobile Suit Gundam: THE ORIGIN. The English volume 1 is listed at 180 pages long, compared to the original Japanese volume's 193 pages. The reason for this discrepancy in page count is unknown. Volume 1's ISBN-10 is 1939130417 and ISBN-13 is 978-1939130419, and its release date is March 27 2014 according to the Amazon listing. Note that the preorder listing is exclusively on Amazon UK, but the New York publisher suggests that the manga will be released in the United States as well.

The current blurb on Amazon reads "From the makers of the YuGiOh trading card game comes Cardfight!! Vanguard, the manga that inspired the hit Vanguard card game. In similar fashion to YuGiOh and Magic the Gathering, the teenage cast of Cardfight!! Vanguard play a high-fantasy themed card game - initially they play for kicks, but eventually the stakes grow much higher... The basis of the hit trading card game and animation franchise, Cardfight!! Vanguard is a modern fantasy tale of trading card playing and making friends through gaming." There are some small inaccuracies within the description, as Itou was only involved as an assistant on the original Yu-Gi-Oh! manga and the author of the Yu-Gi-Oh! R spinoff, with no involvement in the card game outside of designing promotional cards.

Presuming that the information is correct, one point that is uncertain about this volume is whether or not the Alfred Early promo card that was included in the Japanese release will be brought over for the manga's English language release, as the card was already distributed with boxes of VGE-BT07: Rampage of the Beast King in 2012. As the release of VGE-BT10: Triumphant Return of the King of Knights is nearing, and it was within this set that the manga cards were rereleased in Japan in RRR rarity promo cards as box toppers, the release of the English manga would be the perfect opportunity to distribute these foiled reprints for westerners.

Press Release: Bushiroad Announces Next Generation Licenses – “Future Card Buddyfight” & “Five Qross”

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Bushiroad Announces Next Generation Licenses – “Future Card Buddyfight” & “Five Qross”

Tokyo, Japan (June 13, 2013) – Bushiroad announced 2 next generation licenses, “ Future Card Buddyfight” and “Five Qross” at the International Tokyo Toy Show 2013 in Tokyo, on June 13, 2013.

“Future Card Buddyfight” is a new generation trading card game meant for children between the ages of 9 and 11 years old. Comic serialization begins from Winter 2013 in Shogakukan’s “CoroCoro Comic,” and the airing of the “Future Card Buddyfight” TV Animation in Japan starts in early 2014.

In an unprecedented move, the company has announced that “Future Card Buddyfight” will feature simultaneous worldwide releases of both the Japanese and English editions of the card game in January 2014.

Bushiroad will release further information about “Future Card Buddyfight” in Autumn 2013.

More announcements on this exciting new license will be made at http://fc-buddyfight.com/.

The other license in development, “Five Qross,” is scheduled for release in Autumn 2013 in Japan. “Five Qross” will utilize a hybrid system where players purchase physical packs and play online.

*Logo not final and is subject to change.

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Bushiroad Group Publishing Inc. consists of 5 sub-entities: Bushiroad Inc., Bushiroad South East Asia Pte Ltd, Bushiroad USA Inc., Bushiroad Media, and New Japan Pro-Wrestling Co., Ltd.

Bushiroad South East Asia Pte Ltd was established in Singapore on November 12, 2011 in order to expand the overseas market for Bushiroad card games such as Cardfight!! Vanguard, Weiβ Schwarz, Chaos TCG and Victory Spark.

Bushiroad USA Inc. was established in Los Angeles, California on May 18, 2012, to better cater to the growing demand and interest in Cardfight!! Vanguard from both players and retailers in the USA.