Showing posts with label naoki ishida. Show all posts
Showing posts with label naoki ishida. Show all posts

Thursday, February 20, 2014

News: Kai Toshiki to Play Royal Paladin for Legion Mate, Team League 2014 Regional & Continental Dates

The cover characters for the fourteenth and fifteenth trial decks broke early this morning, confirming fans' initial speculations about the direction of the Cardfight!! Vanguard franchise's fourth chapter, Legion Mate. VG-TD14: Seeker of Hope features cards that will be used by Kai Toshiki in the anime, while VG-TD15: Brawler of Friendship will instead feature Ishida Naoki's units. The news was first leaked through promotional posters sent to card shops, with official images replacing their placeholder equivalents on the Japanese portal soon after. The promotional posters also advertised Legion as a new mechanic, each showing off two new cards united by the same crossing of swords symbol used in Legion Mate's official logo. Moreover, a set of promo cards have given some indication of what the new mechanic may look like.

Set to be released on April 26th and 27th as part of this year's Great Vanguard Festival, the promos are new first vanguards for for Narukami and Royal Paladin intended to work alongside the trial decks' new cards. In addition to their basic Forerunner skills, Brawler Fighting Dracokid (喧嘩屋 ファイティング・ドラコキッド) and Vanguard Seeker File (先陣の探索者ファイル) have Legion-centric skills. File's skill activates automatically; when the vanguard gets "Legion" he can move into the soul to superior call a Blaster Blade Seeker from the deck. Dracokid instead has to be activated in the main phase. By moving into the soul, Dracokid gives the vanguard a skill that when an opponent's frontrow rearguard is put into the drop zone and the vanguard has "Legion," his fighter can counterblast 1 and retire an opponent's unit on the same column as the retired card. The way that these cards are worded defines Legion as a quality any unit can have or have taken away, like Twin Drive!! or Boost, but also specifies particular benefits for the vanguard receiving it, and these units also give Legion a specific icon in the shape of a shield made up of crossed swords like that shown in other promotional materials.

Note that since neither promo card is subclan or clan dependent, they do not necessarily have to be used with Brawler or Seeker vanguards, or even units of the same clan. All they require is that the vanguard have Legion. Currently it's presumed that Blaster Blade Seeker will have an on-call retire skill like past incarnations of Blaster Blade, and because File exchanges himself for a copy of Blade Seeker while Fighting Dracokid does not give anything but a retire skill, the cards are balanced around the idea that Dracokid causes the user to lose one card in advantage while the opponent's loses two where File does not cost card advantage and in exchange the Seeker he calls can only take away one card. If multiple retire skills can be triggered in one turn however, Dracokid can snowball more effectively by retiring two cards on his own in addition to what was accomplished with other skills. Furthermore, putting him in the soul can contribute towards Rising Phoenix's soulblast-to-draw skill. These extended combos specifically depend on being able to access other retire skills for less than 2 counterblast in the first place however, could not function with break ride skills due to the timing involved and can only last for a single turn.

Accounting for how posters have advertised Legion as connecting two cards, the contiguous Blade Seeker and Sacred Wingal artwork, a similar design pattern for Skybeat and Skyhowl Dragon, and the literal reading of Legion's kanji 双闘 as "fighting as a pair," Legion itself seems to be built on the idea of tagging two cards together to work at once. Thus the mechanic both enables the abilities of certain cards as with File and Fighting Dracokid, and can be made useful on its own. The fact that Legion has to be received to use it at all suggests that there are restrictions on when and how many times a unit may get Legion per game.


In international news, the upcoming Team League 2014 has had some of its terminology modified. What were previously identified as national championships are now being called regional championships, and what were called regionals are now being referred to as continental championships. This answers some of the confusion surrounding the idea that League 2014 was previously touting, that the national tournaments for each country would serve as qualifiers for regionals, which to many veteran fighters sounds like a paradoxical inversion of the established tournament structure; qualifying for a smaller event at a larger one. With the change in terminology has also come the dates for the upcoming tournaments, with regionals picking up in April and lasting through July while the continental tournaments will be in July. Specific dates can be found on the official Cardfight portal.

Team League 2014 is a triples format for the English-language Cardfight!! Vanguard TCG, with each team taking the side of either the Cray Defenders protecting the planet from attack or the Void Invaders seeking to conquer it with the otherworldly power of Lock and Reverse. Invader teams are required to play either with Link Joker or "Яeverse" cards empowered by the Void, while Defender teams are banned from using these cards and must fight back with their natural abilities.

Saturday, October 1, 2011

Character: Ishida Naoki

"Break time!"

Ishida Naoki/石田ナオキ
Age: 15/16 (presumed)
Voice Actor: Nara Touru (Japanese)
Anime Biography: A first-year high school student at Miyaji Academy, at the start of the third season Naoki was dissatisfied with his everyday school life. Alienated by the serious, academic atmosphere of Miyaji, Naoki followed his new classmate Sendou Aichi to Card Capital after seeing an abrupt shift in the transfer student's personality. Convinced by the visiting Team SIT Genius members and Sendou himself to partake in a cardfight, Ishida picked up the game seriously after becoming fired up in an introductory game with Sendou, and bought a trial deck on the spot.

Manga Biography: At his original debut Naoki was a coarse and distant boy, hazing Aichi for his hobbies and refusing to look into Sendou's school club.

Spoiler warning: Manga details follow.
Although not yet confirmed, it's implied that Naoki was the one who tore down Aichi's club poster at Miyaji.
Spoilers end here.

Universal Notes: Due to becoming too fired up in gameplay, Naoki tends to call every card his "avatar" card, mimicking the phrase that he first learned from Aichi.

Fan Culture: Naoki has been compared to one of Nara Touru's other acting roles, as Nishida "Nikuman-kun" Yūsei of Chihayafuru. At Ishida's debut, Nara was very popular for his role as Nishida, and the similarities in portrayal between the two characters have been favorably compared. A common joke among fans is to see the two characters confused because of the similar voice that Nara gives them, despite their lack of visual similarities.

Naoki's Engrish catchphrase "Break Time!" has often been parodied by both Japanese and overseas fans in conjunction with Kit Kat products, in part because of the international slogan for Kit Kat, "Have a break... have a Kit Kat".

Decks and Play Style
Naoki's deck is based out of a Narukami trial deck that he bought from Card Capital, TD08: Eraser of the Empire. Based around controlling the opponent's front row in the early game and mowing them down with powerful limit breaks in the late, his deck has a stronger endgame than contemporary Narukami decks because of Vowing Sword Dragon's break ride skill. His take on the clan is based heavily around the Eradicator subgroup, which gain power bonuses from having a vanguard with "Eradicator" in its name, promoting field unity for overwhelming power.

One difficulty Naoki experiences while cardfighting is his wholehearted devotion to attack, calling units that most fighters would normally reserve for defense. Because of this and his lack of early guarding, even while holding an advantage over opponents in terms of total cards controlled, Ishida tends to be unable to last through the late game to see his limit break skills come out.

Rides 105-106 (21/50 cards)
Grade 0
x1 Stone Bullet Eradicator, Houki (FVG)
x2 Zephyr Eradicator, Hayate ST
x2 Eradicator, Dragon Mage DT
x1 Eradicator, Yellow Gem Carbuncle CT
Grade 1
x2 Dust Storm Eradicator, Toko
x1 Red River Dragoon
x1 Eradicator of True Flames, Kougaiji
x1 Eradicator, Demolition Dragon
Grade 2
x2 Eradicator, Thunder Boom Dragon
x1 Assassin Sword Eradicator, Susei
x1 Lightning Blade Eradicator, Jeem
x1 Dragon Dancer, Veronica
x1 Eradicator, Spark Rain Dragon
Grade 3
x2 Discharging Dragon
x1 Chain-Attack Eradicator, Shion
x1 Eradicator, Vowing Sword Dragon

Around ride 107, Naoki began to make serious modifications to the deck, having been inspired by Kourin's retreating first vanguard. Unlike Kai, Naoki's Narukami deck is built more around field control, using Gauntlet Buster Dragon along with Vowing Sword and Gauntlet support cards to quickly clear out the opponent's rearguards while also building up power and critical for a strong center line.

Rides 107-Current (18/50 cards)
Grade 0
x1 Ambush Dragon Eradicator, Linchu (FVG)
x1 Zephyr Kid, Hayate ST
x1 Eradicator, Dragon Mage DT
x1 Demonic Dragon Eradicator, Seiobo HT
x1 Eradicator, Yellow Gem Carbuncle CT
Grade 1
x1 Eradicator, Demolition Dragon
x4 Thunder Fist Eradicator, Dui
x1 Dust Storm Eradicator, Tokou
x2 Red River Dragoon

Grade 2
x1 Assassin Sword Eradicator, Susei
x1 Eradicator, Thunder Boom Dragon
x1 Eradicator, Spark Rain Dragon
Grade 3
x2 Eradicator, Vowing Sword Dragon
x1 Eradicator, Gauntlet Buster Dragon