First look at colorized Vanguard manga

Late last March it was announced that the Cardfight!! Vanguard manga is being re-serialized in Monthly Bushiroad magazine in colorized form. The series' concept creator and manga author Itou Akira is doing the color work himself, expanding on several one-shot colorizations he had done back during its original 2011-2017 run. Monthly Bushiroad tweeted several preview images of the first color chapter, which debuts in the latest issue. Chapter 1 will span 48 pages in total.

Fans will be able to purchase a pair of pins based on the manga panels at this year's Vanguard Festival in Japan. Aichi's badge will be for sale on day 1 of the event on April 29th, and Kai's badge on day 2 of the event on April 30th.

The Cardfight!! Vanguard manga's international license is currently held by Vertical Inc., who is in the process of localizing volume 12, due out July 24th. No international plans for the color edition have been announced as of yet.

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. he first Extra Booster set, V-EB01: The Destructive Roar will launch in Japan June 29th, 2018, and in July for the English-speaking world.

News: Manga Volume 6 Goes on Sale

Today shipments of Vertical Inc.'s Cardfight!! Vanguard Volume 6 went out to retailers and those that preordered the volume through Amazon . Like its Japanese counterpart, the sixth volume is packaged with a promotional card, Tokura Misaki's Pentagonal Magus. This volume corresponds to the beginning and middle of the Link Joker arc of the anime, introducing Tatsunagi Kourin and Miyaji Academy. The interior cover contains rare illustrations by franchise creator Itou Akira, of Kai Toshiki and Sendou Aichi with Vortex Dragon and Wingal.

Volume 7 will go on sale August 25th 2015, and will star Suzugamori Ren with his Gust Blaster Dragon deck. Gust Blaster is likewise expected to be the promo for the volume, following with the Japanese release structure. Readers can preorder volume 7 through Amazon .

News: Cardfight!! Vanguard Manga Volume 6 on Sale May 26th

Vertical Inc.'s English translation of the sixth volume of Itou Akira's Cardfight!! Vanguard manga will go on sale on the 26th of this month, marking the beginning of the Link Joker arc of the English manga. This is a unique time for fans of the manga, as the international scanlation efforts of years past stopped at volume 4, and raw scans of the manga dropped off with the previous volume. The end of May is the first time that even many veterans will be experiencing these chapters of the manga in any language. Readers can purchase the volume at Amazon; it's currently priced at just under $10.

Advanced copies of the sixth volume are currently being sold at a discount at the Anime Central convention in Chicago, alongside Attack on Titan, Dream Fossil and Ajin: Demi-human. Like past Vertical releases, this volume includes a promo card packaged on the interior cover. The previous volume included the Chapter 0 of the series, which was only published as part of a special release in Japan.

Volume 6 covers the introduction of the Tatsunagi group, Kourin and Rekka, and their returning elder sister Suiko. It is also the debut of Ishida Naoki in the manga and of the Narukami clan. Key confrontations in this volume include Kourin and Misaki's initial battle, giving rise to a character arc which has just lead to a final resolution between them in the latest chapters of the Japanese manga. This volume also includes the first appearance of the Magus series cards from VG-EB07: Mystical Magus; the Magus subclan was designed from the ground up by Itou for the extra booster.

Itou's production drawings for Raven Haired Ezel and Pentagonal Magus. Original image uploaded by Itou Akira.

News: Vanguard Manga Volume 5 to Include Episode Zero, Exculpate the Blaster Promo

Yesterday evening Vertical Inc. posted a vine of Cardfight!! Vanguard volume 5, showcasing both the manga's latest promotional card and a page from the volume's omake, Episode 0. This zeroth chapter of the manga details Kai Toshiki's past, and is the first canonical appearance of Link Joker cardfighter Ibuki Kouji, a major character in the fifth anime series Cardfight!! Vanguard G as well as the principle antagonist in the film Neon Messiah. Having first debuted in Japan in January of 2013, the English translation of the zeroth chapter marks the close of the manga's first arc. The initial five volumes of the Cardfight!! Vanguard manga approximately correspond to the first season of the anime series, while the sixth through eighth volumes currently released in Japan correspond to the anime's Link Joker and Neon Messiah chapters.

While the first three volumes were packaged with Studio TMS' alternate artworks for Blaster Blade, Dragonic Overlord and Blaster Dark, beginning with volume 4 the English-language promotional cards  have matched their Japanese counterparts. Hence while volume 4's was The Dark Dictator, volume 5's is Exculpate the Blaster. The motivation behind reprinting the promo cards, which in English were originally distributed as box toppers, was likely that these cards have not been reprinted since their initial run two years prior. Exculpate in particular was only available as a topper for VGE-EB01: Comic Style Vol. 1, one of the least successful sets in the history of the English-language card game.

The fifth volume of the Cardfight!! Vanguard manga will be released on February 17th, and can be preordered through Amazon. Volume 6 is to follow on May 26th, and volume 7 on August 25th.

News: VG-BT17: Blazing Perdition Set Teaser Revealed, Vortex Dragon to be Revived as "Perdition Dragon Vortex Dragonewt," Volume 2 of Cardfight!! Manga to See English Publication

Four Japanese TCG news resource and advertiser Duel Portal leaked the first visuals for the seventeenth main booster set, VG-BT17: Blazing Perdition. Set to feature cards for the Gold Paladin, Link Joker, Kagerou, Royal Paladin, Aqua Force, Granblue, Tachikaze and Narukami clans, BT17 will feature double the number of Legion Rares of the previous sets, with LR prints for the new Legion pairs "Perdition Dragon, Vortex Dragonewt" (煉獄竜 ボーテックス・ドラゴニュート Rengokuryuu Bootekkusu Doragonyuuto) paired to "Perdition Dragon, Whirlwind Dragon" (煉獄竜 ワールウインド・ドラゴン Rengokuryuu Waaruuindo Doragon) and "Bluish Flames Liberator Prominence Core" (青き炎の解放者 プロミネンスコア Aokihonoo no Riberetaa Purominensu Koa) paired to "Liberator of Oath Aglovale" (誓いの解放者 アグロヴァル Chikai no Riberetaa Agurovaru.) The set announcement comes in the aftermath of series protagonist Kai Toshiki's Blaster Blade Seeker being stolen during the Sunday morning episode of Cardfight!! Vanguard Legion Mate, prompting speculation that Kai will be going back to his Kagerou deck to wield the new Perdition Dragon units in BT17.

The set's cover cards are illustrated by Daisuke Izuka, well known for his work on the Garmore series of units, as well as Chaos Breaker Dragon and the Revenger, Raging Form Dragon. The choice of Vortex Dragon as the namesake of a new Kagerou Legion is unsurprising, given the card's history; according to the draft papers included in volume 1 of the Cardfight!! Vanguard manga, Vortex Dragon was originally going to be Kai's main grade 3.

BT17's accompanying Gold Paladin support is to feature a second grade 3 able to Legion with Aglovale, who was previously revealed as being part of a Legion pair with VG-TD16: Liberator of the Bluish Flames' boss card, Percival. Aglovale draws his origins from a minor Knight of the Round Table, Sir Agloval de Galis, who in Arthurian legend is brother to Percival and Lamorak, and the eldest son of Pellinore. BT17 will be released in Japan on August 8th, 2014.

In other news, the release of volume 2 of the Cardfight!! Vanguard manga is drawing nearer, set to go out on June 24th, and is up for preorder on Amazon. This volume will include the promo card PR-0059EN Dragonic Overlord, believed to be the alternate artwork variant by Studio TMS which was distributed in Japan with the video game Ride to Victory! The manga launched in English just over a month ago under the auspices of publisher Vertical Inc. Vertical's translation has been well-received by fans, and volume 3 is expected follow in August.

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.