Cardfight!! Vanguard Gaiden: If

Oh IF, what a ride you are. Right off the bat, Vanguard Gaiden IF is not everyone's cup of tea. I personally think your enjoyment of it really depends on if you are a fan of the Vanguard series in general and how much you liked the first 4 seasons in particular. It's full of callbacks and interesting "What If?" scenarios so if you're not into that this series might not be for you. Story: Absolutely batshit insane and a rollercoaster and I loved every second of it. The plot gets kickstarted when Kouji Ibuki, a former villain from the main series, gets send into the futureto stop himself from committing a terrible mistake. Everyone who watched Vanguard G or the end of the Shinemon Arc will recognize that this is about putting a deck into Chrono Shindo's, the G protagonist's, shoelocker which would inevitably kickstart his love for the card game. He unexpectedly runs into Emi Sendou, the little sister of Vanguard’s main protagonist Aichi, who not only turns out to be a magical girl, she also seems to be on a journey to fix time distortions which Ibuki’s “terrible mistake” falls into. To his shock the monsters she fights can’t be beaten by playing a children’s card game and he gets the shit beaten out of him. Emi and her friend Shuka beat up his imposter and his real future self to do his duty of delivering the deck. From there the plot gets pretty wacky. Ibuki and former side character Suiko get sent to parallel worlds along with Emi and Shuka to solve the distortions in them. There is a monster possessing a human who always turns out to be some kind of Vanguard monster. Ibuki gets his ass beaten for trying to solve everyone by playing Vanguard. The girls save the day, they go home, rinse repeat. The first few episodes are very fun, each distortion sillier than the last and putting hilarious spins on well established characters from the main series. I think your amusement with these jokes will depend on how well you know the characters and dynamics in the main universe but I think they can work well on their own. At a later point in the series things get more serious, the distortions are less silly and the gap between the alternate and main universe are less funny and more tragic. Whether you like that shift will depend on you but for me, it was very fun to watch it all unravel and top itself with every new week. 8/10 Art: Probably the weakest part of the series. What can I say, this series as been running nearly continuously for almost ten years now and it kinda shows. Animation is limited, keyframes are sloppy and sometimes the characters look like you accidentality stopped at an inbetween frame even though you can see their mouths move while they talk. Sometimes you get some shots that look really, really good but you can tell that this show didn’t get a big budget or time, even if it still looks decent enough that it doesn’t burn your eyes. 4/10 Sound: Background music is a nice mix of new tracks to fit with the new magical girl theme and callbacks to songs from both the original and the V series. Opening and endings are also good, with the opening and first ending fitting the silly and fun tone of the beginning of the series and the second ending fitting the more serious and dramatic shift. A personal highpoint for me is the voice acting. Each voice actor in the alternate universes gives a stunning performance to fit the changes their characters had compared to the main universe and it works out so well. One spoiler character really threw me off by how different they sounded, it was jarring and unsettling and I commend the voice actor for being able to pull it off. Bravo! 7/10 Character: Very fun. With a lot of characters returning from the main series, if you liked the cast from the other Vanguard shows then you will like them here but a special mention should go for the original AU characters. Emi, as the magical girl protagonist, is sympathetic and fun to watch which came as a surprise to me since she played such a small role in the main series. Her motivation to save her brother and her growth as a person over the course of the series is very entertaining and a definite high point in the series. The other three main characters, Shuka, Suiko and Ibuki all get their own character arcs which felt very satisfying to me, especially for Ibuki who lacked a major redemption arc in the V series compared to his original counterpart. Side character and later spoiler characters also get decent motivations and development, some getting more than others but I think it works in the kind of series this is. Overall very enjoyable. 7/10 Enjoyment: If you can’t tell already, I really liked this series. The characters are fun, the way they’re twisted is fun, the scenarios are fun. The shift into a more serious tone is a bit unexpected but the hints had been there all along so I don’t find it jarring and enjoyed the ride as it went along. Some of the elements are very much ridiculous and silly but if you watch Vanguard that kind of becomes part of the package and you get used to it. I enjoyed the callbacks, I enjoyed the call forwards. I enjoyed Ibuki getting his ass handed to him every week. I enjoyed Suiko being confused with a 20-something year old. I enjoyed Emi’s and Shuka’s banter. I enjoyed the totally sudden magical girl transformations into Vanguard units. I also enjoyed seeing my favourite unit badly animated several times in this series. Watching this with my friend was an absolute joy. 9/10 Overall: I want to reiterate that I know this series is not for everyone. You need a very high tolerance for bullshit, a good memory about things that happened in Vanguard, especially the original series, to enjoy the callbacks and the ability to go with the sudden shifts in the story. This is very much a series that is for Vanguard fans that love the characters in the anime and is basically a love letter to the Vanguard animes until now. It takes the silliest, craziest and most dramatic moments in the series and mixes it all together into a wild stew of weird and you either love that or hate that. I for my part can’t recommend it enough to anyone who loves the Vanguard anime and wants a ride down Nostalgia lane. Anyone else should probably take a second to think about it. 8/10