The regionals roll on and Team Q4 has to face an array of themed teams that may make you cry a little inside.
What They Say:
The regional tournament is heating up even more after the winners of the first round are decided! Unique and quirky teams all stand up before Team Q4 to fight and win!
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
With the Third Kanto Regional Tournament fully underway and the card shop gang having made their moves, it’s time to let some of the others get in on the goodness. We get to see a couple of amusing teams from the start with the Pirate card players getting involved as well as Team Nadeshiko, which has a trio of players focused on the aesthetic arts, such as flower arrangement and tea ceremony techniques. While the shop involving the gang of characters that not only dressed like pirates but made their place look like a pirate ship (except for that cowboy door), some of the more realistic elements of the show have gone out the window. Not that they didn’t before with Aichi’s teacher showing up in a full costume under an assumed name.
Kamui gets his chance to play after being denied before and he has a good match that takes up a couple minutes worth of time. Since he got shut out before from participating, letting him have some time to play his favorites is definitely appreciated. What kills me is that when Kai gets up to play, it’s kept entirely to an off-screen win as we see him prep and then we see him win. It’s definitely one way to move things along quickly, especially as we see all the various themed teams playing through the matches and advancing through the ranks so they can eventually face our heroes. It is nice to see the group doing so well and to have the younger members enthusiastic as they are, which is balanced against Kai playing it completely cool and smooth.
Kamui does get an extra bit of background here as we see some of his struggles as a young man and the way he wanted to be a part of something bigger. It’s standard fare, made very serious with the music used, and it has a surprising amount of detail for some of the backgrounds in order to give it that kind of feel. In fact, most of the backgrounds used for the exterior shots here really take things up a couple of notches in a surprising way considering how bland the interiors tend to be. With the shift to the outdoors for lunch between matches, it lets the show slow down a little bit and for the characters to interact with each other. This isn’t exactly where the show shines, but it does come across better when they’re not focused completely on the cardfights and just go through standard character silliness and mild drama. And the silliness is here with Kamui and the way he’s got both a girlfriend he wants and a girlfriend he doesn’t want.
In Summary:
While I may have lamented that much of the early episodes was all about the teaching aspect, when it started to move beyond it, it unfortunately went in an even worse direction. The introduction of the themed competition teams is a bit saddening and this episode even brings in a small idol group so we get a musical performance that feels very much wedged into the series. The action scenes are alright here, though they’re generally cut short outside of Kamui’s initial match, and a lot of what we get is just showing the diversity of opponents. There is some cute character interaction material over an outdoor lunch that happens, revolving around Kamui as he definitely is the type to attract that kind of attention, but that’s pretty much the high point of the episode. Which is sad. So very sad.
Grade: C-
Simulcast By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDS-R70XBR2 70″ LCoS 1080P HDTV, Dell 10.1 Netbook via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
