End of an era: Vanguard leaves Sunday mornings for late-night

On April 8th, 2012, the first episode of Cardfight!! Vanguard Asia Circuit aired on TV Tokyo. It was 10:00 AM on a Sunday morning in Japan, twenty-six hours later than the first season's timeslot. Since that episode aired, Cardfight!! Vanguard has retained its timeslot across seven seasons of animation and nearly six years of continuous broadcast.

Until today.

The final episode of Cardfight!! Vanguard GZ has aired, and with it comes an end to Vanguard's stranglehold on the slot. After the 24th episode closed, the first thing to follow was a TV spot for Kiratto Pri☆chan, which will be taking its place in seven days' time. The next season, which begins May 5th, will be broadcast at ten different times. All but two of them are after 9:00 PM. Its primary slot is 10:00 PM JST Saturdays on Tokyo MX, and its latest slot is 3:00 AM Monday morning on Sun TV. In Japan streaming services have struggled to gain ground, with only around 16% of residents using a subscription streaming service compared to more than 50% overseas. Traditional television broadcasts and video rentals are still thriving, and so the change represents a potentially harmful shake-up for the franchise domestically.

Who is this new slot targeted at? Vanguard has cross-demographic appeal, but while Future Card Buddyfight is Bushiroad's elementary school show, Vanguard is primarily targeted at late middle through high school students. (The biggest clue to this--both Aichi and Chrono began as middle school students that eventually went through the all-important transition to high school.) Perhaps there's a fourteen-year-old working a graveyard shift desk job somewhere there that thinks this new slot is a dream come true. But for the majority of Vanguard's target audience, these are inaccessible air times their parents would never let them tune in to, and it's hard to say if any but hardcore fans will be following this series. The new season's most accessible broadcast time for its traditional audience is Wednesdays at 7:00 PM, taking over from...THE Karaoke★Battle 2018?

North American viewers will probably prefer the change. For those of us in the midwestern United States Asia Circuit was airing in the dead of night at 10:00 PM through the grainy low-quality video playback and lossy audio of Keyhole TV. (This was a dark time, when Bushiroad had chosen to not renew their contract with Crunchyroll as a direct result of how heavily pirated Vanguard was--they sincerely thought no one was watching, and thus it took a good thirteen weeks for fan outcry to change their minds. Remember kids, KissAnime and HorribleSubs almost killed Vanguard.) With the show now moved thirty-six hours forward, we'll be getting "Origin" at a cozy 9:00 AM, as if it were a real Saturday-morning cartoon. Those on the west coast will instead be up at 6:00 AM sharp to catch the new series, or otherwise spend their mornings hiding from their Twitter feed.

All joking aside, the move to 10 at night is concerning. Some have interpreted it as an opportunity to inject the show with "darker" themes, but those hoping for Bushiroad to hand Aichi a gun anytime soon are in for a rude awakening. The more likely explanation is that the series' history of falling ratings and poorly-performing merchandise has hurt its future with TV networks. Of note is that while seasons five, six, and seven of Vanguard were all greenlit long before they went into production, no similar deal has been announced since early 2014. It seems the anime has been renewed season-by-season up to now, and the confidence once placed in the brand is long gone.

Bushiroad has taken the appropriate measures to fight for the franchise's survival, aggressively marketing the upcoming anime through a total takeover of the Yamanote Line, and pushing the rebooted game at major events like Anime Japan 2018, all while promising to focus on their international presence in this year's strategy conference. The new series is set to debut May 5th, with a subbed simulcast appearing on Crunchyroll. For the English-speaking world, the game itself will follow on June 8th.

Come this time next year, where will this new Vanguard be? Will it recapture everyone we lost in Asia Circuit, Link Joker, and G? Will it be found worthy of being called back to its old home--or perhaps become something else entirely?

Time won't tell. We will.

News: TV Tokyo Commercial Reveals Plot for Legion Mate, Nouvelle Vague to Hit International Shores in June

This morning Japanese TV channel TV Tokyo aired a commercial for the upcoming fourth season of Cardfight!! Vanguard, Legion Mate, sparking a flood of images and comments over Twitter from Japanese fans. TV Tokyo's official website also updated with a synopsis of the season's upcoming storyline:

Just days after a deadly fight against Link Joker that involved the whole world,everything is peaceful and the usual calm days have came back. 

But, Kai Toshiki faces a surprising situation. 

Sendou Aichi, the hero who saved the world from the invasion of Link Joker, suddenly disappeared. Along with peoples' memory of his existence…While there are few clues to go by, Kai will seek Aichi with only the proof of their bond, “Blaster Blade” and a Royal Paladin deck. 

Fighters named the “Quatre Knights” appear before Kai. The four fighters—Gaillard, Neve, Ratie and Serra—are world class fighters in Vanguard.

They use a mysterious power and tell Kai to give up seeking Aichi.What is their purpose…?! And what is their relationship with Aichi…?!Receiving the new power "Legion," Kai's fight to get Aichi back, starts now!!

The commercial for Legion Mate showed Kai's role as the protagonist prominently, featuring him alongside the surviving Team Q4 members, as well as Naoki, Ren and Miwa. Naoki and Kai's new friendship has been emphasized in the commercial, while a poster for the series seen above features the antagonistic Quartre Knights, each of which appears to be a counterpart of a member from Q4.

Another image from the commercial gave early details on some of the cards from TD14: Seeker of Hope, revealing that Blaster Blade Seeker will be a grade 2 with 9000 power and 5000 shield, and that Sacred Wingal will be a base 11000 power grade 3. Legion Mate is set to air on March 9 in Japan, exactly one week after Link Joker ends on March 2 this weekend.

In international news, two extra boosters were confirmed for an English release today, with VGE-EB08: Champions of the Cosmos and VGE-EB09: Divine Dragon Progression getting a dual release on June 6, 2014. The primary draws of EB08 are its crossride units Immortal Asura Kaiser and Galaxy Blaukluger, along with the legacy support for the old cards that they bring. Since Champions of the Cosmos' Japanese release last November the Galaxy Blaukluger deck has gradually climbed up the ranks of VGCS tournaments to become the dominant competitive option for Nova Grappler, much as the original Blaukluger had back in 2011.

Divine Dragon Progression is based around the cards used by Kai Toshiki in the more recent volumes of the manga and is the better known set by far, chiefly for the infamy of its cover card Dragonic Nouvelle Vague. As the first fully implemented grade 4 unit, Nouvelle Vague's designers are held to have overcompensated for its unwieldy nature with extensive options for deck searching and field control, and skills that both prevent it from being guarded with grade 0 units and passively nullify the opponent's trigger checks. These qualities were not in the card's original intention--Itou had envisioned Nouvelle as nullifying both players' trigger checks and not having the Twin Drive!! ability--and have snowballed along with Kagerou's self-standing break ride support to create a deck that can attack multiple times with its vanguard while preventing the opponent from guarding those attacks while also sitting on an unnaturally high 13000 base power and destroying the opposing rearguards to prevent them from fighting back. Nouvelle has thus superseded Link Joker in Japan as the dominant deck of competitive play, leading to the restriction of Lizard Soldier Conroe who was a major linchpin in the deck's consistency. The build is currently considered wounded but playable, as it has continued to dominate Japanese Vanguard Championships alongside Omniscience Regalia Minerva, accounting for up to 18% of all decks played in some cases.

EB08 will feature a promotional print of Nova Grappler's original critical trigger, Shining Lady, with her 2011 anime artwork as a box topper, while EB09 will get a print of Dragon Dancer Arabella.

2/28/2014 Update: The Nova Grapplers will also be receiving a special Sneak Preview playmat that can be won by participating in the extra boosters' dual launch event. This time the playmat will be of Galaxy Blaukluger. Unlike with EB04 and EB05, there will be a second playmat representing the Kagerou side. Which unit will be featured is unknown but it is speculated to be Dragonic Nouvelle Vague. Those that take part in the Sneak Preview will also receive a PR/101EN Chain Blaster Dragon. Back in Japan, Chain Blast had been a Monthly Bushiroad promo, and was known for his ability to simultaneously retire three of the opponent's rearguards by discarding two grade 3 units with his limit break, while searching for those grade 3s with his non-limit break skill. Sneak Preview events will be taking place around the world on May 30, May 31 and June 1, with the final dates determined by the hosting store.

In other news, VG-BT15: Infinite Rebirth officially released in Japan today. While there was some trouble with international sellers in Singapore stocking the set before the street date, the surprises surrounding the set were limited this time due to all of BT15's RRR and RR-rarity cards being known from promotional materials released ahead of time. What is drawing the most attention at this time is that the newly released Triple Reverse rarity card, Star-vader “Ω” Glendios, is now selling for as high as 6000~8000 yen (approx. $60~$80 in US money) higher than any other single card in the history of the game, including its immediate predecessor Chaos Breaker Dragon who sold for as most as a Japanese booster box at release. Although Link Joker usage has waned considerably since the release of Dragonic Nouvelle Vague in Japan, Glendios has gotten particular attention not just for its unique rarity but also due to the host of supporting units that have helped it along, in particular Cold Death Dragon and “Яeverse” Cradle.

Glendios' core strategy is built around its alternate win condition, having all of the opponent's rearguards Locked at the beginning of its cardfighters' main phase while also having five damage, but requires repeatedly discarding “Я” cards to use its highly defensive Omega Lock ability that prevents cards from opening during the end phase. The disadvantage to this is that prior to “Я” Cradle, all Reverse cards came from other clans and Glendios could only make Reverse cards already on the field into Link Joker units, so the deck had a crippling weakness in that it was forced to run between 12 and 16 grade 3s with many of them being of the wrong clan and having the Lord skill that prevents them from attacking unless Glendios is on the vanguard circle. “Я” Cradle neutralized this by giving both a Reverse card to Link Joker so that only a limited number of cards from other clans would need to be used, and also sharing his ability to turn Reverse units into Link Jokers. Meanwhile Cold Death Dragon is a grade 2 that when called can put the top card of the opponent's deck into play Locked for counterblast 1, on the condition that they already have a Locked card. This makes it easier to achieve the deck's win condition as the opponent does not have the option of leaving some circles empty to prevent cards from being Locked. With the addition of Ruin Magician and Praseodymium, grade 1 units that can add Reverse cards back to the hand from the drop zone and unflip damage respectively, the Glendios build has evolved into an effective alternate strategy that has even secured independence from Infinite Zero Dragon, but some have criticized it as lacking interaction with the game compared to Chaos Breaker or Nebula Lord and shutting the opponent down too heavily to promote interesting gameplay.