Cardfight!! Vanguard: Shinemon-hen

I didn’t bother with V reboot as a whole and it looks like I didn’t miss out on much. Especially considering Shinemon is considered the best season, what kind of trainwreck does a series have to be if this is it’s apex. The titular main character has compelling motivations and personality but man, did he need to have a harem and perfect winstreak? Speaking of the latter, the fight design leaves a lot to be desired on the MC’s end with most of his fights ending on quintuple crit sacks. Shin makes Chrono look like a fraud that’s for sure. Jokes, the quality of thisanime hinges on it’s cardfights so I don’t think having half of them involve a nobrain critsacker was a great play. It also bogs down what would’ve been a decent MC otherwise. The story starts off as a mediocre comedy revolving arounds Shin is trying to prevent his brother’s shop from being acquired by this conglomerate. There’s something good in there, Shinemon learning to grow up and become responsible instead of irrationally acting out + a certain reveal about the antagonist making them a lot more likeable but it’s so repetitive and boring overall. Then the story abruptly shifts into this G prologue involving summoning cardfight units and death with no worldbuilding or setup outside of Rive going ‘I need to head to my (mysterious) job, see you later guys!’ here and there. Vanguard always had issues with bad worldbuilding and poor setup of supernatural/sci-fi elements but the tonal dissonance on top of this takes the cake. The final antagonist’s motivations are understandable enough to the point I question why he acts so villainous with generic wicked smiles and laughs when he isn’t trying to do anything particularly insidious (it’s just self-sacrifice). Overall this part of the story was just rushed and out of place. Going from comedy slice of life to sci fi thriller is so weird, Link Joker’s tone shift was bold but it at least preestablished PSYqualia/Cray and compensated for it by being a chaotic wild ride full of epic fights, character development and wild units. I don’t have a problem with the cast but the poorly paced dissonant story and obnoxious cardfight design on top of general issues with V series (production values fell off a cliff going into V despite the standards already being low beforehand + abhorrent soundtrack worse than even G’s, cringey script plagued with catchphrases such as ‘That’s my Vanguard!’ or ‘Yes, my Vanguard’) made Shinemon a chore to watch.

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