Kamui’s hopes to go against Gouki are dashed in a most hilarious of way.
What They Say:
Kamui wants to show Gouki, the guiding star of the Vanguard world, how strong he’s gotten. But first up for “Team Handsom” is…!?
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
The regional tournament finals are now underway and it’s a bit of an extra important piece for Kamui as he intends to go up against Gouki and Team Handsone to show him just how much he’s grown since they last played. He’s all revved up right at the start and itching for it, but he’s completely thrown mentally when it’s revealed that it’s not Gouki that he’ll be playing against but rather Nagisa. Who is playing for love as she continues to talk about how she’ll marry him one day. Nagisa is in sort of the same boat as Aichi is in a way as she’s watched Kamui play every day when he used to come to the shop so she’s not exactly a neophyte. She’s trained hard in order to show Kamui that she’s worth of him.
Nagisa’s style of play is actually pretty amusing as she comes across like Kamui in a lot of ways with tone and energy and that only serves to frustrate Kamui more and amuse others a whole lot. Kamui is in a sucky position in couple of ways as you can tell that he’s not exactly holding back, but he’s not attacking with full gusto at first either. At least until she starts to play pretty well and it throws him off even more. Making matters worse is that he’s being watched by Aichi’s sister whom he’s very much in love with. With Nagisa going on and on about playing for love and even recounting the story of how she fell in love with him in the middle of the match, which earns extra points for being so perfectly out of place that you have to imagine most of the audience wanting to smack them. It’s so girly and over the top that when the truths are revealed, you can’t help but to smile.
In Summary:
The match itself has some good moments to it, though of course if you’re actually interested in the cards and how they interact with each other you’ll get more out of it. That part is certainly important to the series but it continues to be a bit too important for my tastes most of the time as it interferes with the shows ability to actually have a story at times. The majority of this episode is focused on the fight but it’s the silly drama that’s associated with it that I liked the most. The stakes are a bit high for Kamui with what Nagisa wants out of it and I like the lovey dovey stuff because it’s so inappropriate for the match but it works pretty well. The two have very similar styles of play but completely different visions of how everything is unfolding, him with dark energy and her with princesses, castles and love, that it made me smile even when it felt that it shouldn’t. If you’re going to do silly, this is the way to do it in this series.
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.