Cardfight!! Vanguard: Legion Mate-hen

Legion Mate is a complicated one. Yes the worldbuilding is completely incoherent but this has always been a major flaw of the original series; supernatural events, underage corporate magnates and sci fi elements phasing in and out without any logic or coherence with the otherwise realistic setting (Ren vs Aichi at the end of season 1 must have looked schizo as hell to the spectators). Legion Mate is no different, introducing magical torture based games and a palace in the Moon asspulled out of nowhere which in isolation is completely retarded but after the witnessing events of Link Joker it’s not really a big dealtbh. Another major gripe people have with Legion Mate is the constant jobbing with even Kai himself becoming a worthless pushover in the first half of the season. Yes Kai jobs in Legion Mate, even Kamui and Kourin beat his ass. Ren even takes pity on him an yielding. It can be argued that while characters lost important matches in previous seasons it only added to the stakes and helped to balance things out while in Legion Mate multiple characters outright never win especially Misaki. And honestly it's true, Legion Mate makes you question why Misaki, Miwa and Kamui were even a part of the story. This is mainly due to the antagonistic threat: The Quatre Knights. They're all continental level champions on the level of Aichi and Kai who're tasked with guarding Aichi and preventing his friends from locating him. There are two problems with this, one being that trying to prevent them from reaching Aichi makes no sense when he's sealed away in the Moon with no way to get there (the consistently incoherent worldbuilding being a crucial part of the plot this season ruins it) and while Aichi was wise to pick the strongest fighters in the world it sucks for the story because only Kai can really beat them. It's also arguably infruriating how they brutally defeat and torture beloved characters then even wipe their memories of Aichi later on. I think it's due to poor writing, while it makes sense they want to ward off Aichi's friends the way they do so is bizarrely cruel and villainous making them unlikeable from the get go. The worst example of this is Ratie Curtie. Already somewhat annoying from the get go, she goes from slight nuisance to insufferable bitch when she's revealed as a Quatre Knight. The way she treats Misaki and revels in her suffering for no real reason (Misaki even bought her food) makes you desperate to see her get a taste of her own medicine. Then they rematch later on and it's expected that Misaki who's already established as intelligent and skilled at cardfighting will counter Ratie's strategy and deliver a painful and humilating punishment only for her to lose to the same deck in the exact same way. It's beyond infuriating the first time around and one of the worst instances of jobbing in Vanguard period. It's hard to understand what the writers' thought process was. Everyone liked Misaki. Nobody likes Ratie. Was this an attempt to be realistic because of Ratie's skill level or something? By the time Ratie fights the generic traitor villain Raul, you're ROOTING FOR HIM TO WIN and CHEER IN PURE JOY WHEN THAT NYANPARARA BITCH GETS COOKED. If a story makes you root for the villain out of pure spite then you know something went wrong. As for the others, Gaillard was annoying at first but becomes a lot more charming when Kai knocks him off his pedestal, Raul Serra has an unappealing lame design and is a generic double crosser villain and finally Philippe Neva is a typical cool teddy bear type character. One thing with Raul and Philippe is how dumb/over the top their backstories were compared to Gaillard and Ratie's down to earth pasts due to the lack of worldbuilding. So yes there's a big case for Legion Mate being terrible. Nonsense story, annoying characters and brutal jobbing. But at the same time when Kai switches to Kagero and finally cooks Gaillard, the story really picks up IMO. Kai's switch from loser jobber to the aura farming, crit trigger sacking, final turning beast he used to be is so satisfying and it doesn't stop there. You have a side character actually winning for once (Naoki vs Kourin, although the conflict itself was dumb with Naoki completely glossing over the fact that Kourin will likely never see them ever again), Kai going on to beat Gailllard again in possible the most epic yet stupid sackfest of a fight in the entire series and the epic final match between Kai and Aichi. The latter of which wasn't just epic with Aichi spamming Absolute Lock and Kai reriding the Great over and over through pure sack energy but had a great payoff through the supporting cast choosing to share the burden of the Link Joker seed with Aichi instead of him suffering alone (which is a solid way to present the typical power of friendship themes these types of series usually have). However this should be taken for granted and is only so epic because of how miserable the series was up until that point. And moreover the finale itself while it gives good closure neglects one really important thing... Kourin x Aichi. They should've kissed in their final moments together. What a pisstake. Adding to that only Kai (and Naoki partially) gets to pop off in the latter half while the rest of the cast, ESPECIALLY Misaki gets BRUTALLY shafted in a way never seen before. If they had an opportunity to make a comeback similar to how Kai did opinion of this season wouldn't be anywhere near as low. Anyhow all in all while the climax was still epic IMO, Legion Mate is a disaster of a season and shows that while making characters lose is still important for the story if you go too far all you end up with a unsatisfying and frustrating experience.

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