English Dub Review: Cardfight!! Vanguard overDress: “Fire Dragon’s Ceremony”

Overview: Tohya (Daniel Fong) challenges Yu-yu (James Higuchi) to a match and gives him one week to prepare for it. Everything is riding on Yu-yu as should he fail, Tohya will burn Team Blackout’s flag. 

Our Take: Well my fine folks, the edge lord, Tohya Ebata, has officially entered the chat. I’m shocked, but then again I’m really not. The show has subverted expectations in various ways but also played the tropes beat for beat in other respects as well. He is all of Anakin Skywalker’s teen angst bottled into one, without any preparation of ingredients it took to get there, despite how you may feel about George Lucas’s prequel trilogy. 

Yu-yu prepares for his match that Tohya challenged him to and overall it plays out like your standard strength in numbers sentimentality. On the upside though, it wasn’t overly corny like other series have been in the past and Megumi, Zakusa and the rest of the team’s B players are actually proactive in their fighting for Team Blackout with Danji away by helping Yu-yu. So while it may not be adding anything new to the table, Yu-yu’s training with his friends was, at the very least, better executed than others that have come before and tried similarly. 

Yu-yu’s match against Tohya is a classic example of how, although the series may be painfully goofy and generic at times, it’s excellent in other areas such as meaningful storytelling and going against the grain. Despite having the power of friendship at his side, Yu-yu ends up losing to Tohya. It was a beautiful fight with a lot of stunning effects and theatrics, although it was still pretty dang short and the same old dusty canyon that is used as backdrop is getting old. Hopefully there will be more imagination put into the art designs to make them more enveloping and maybe into making the battles longer as well. Beyond the pretty aesthetics, though, it was a pivotal moment for how the series develops Yu-yu moving forward. Him being the ultimate badass who can beat anybody, suffice to say, would be boring. Making Yu-yu understand and come to terms with his mistakes is just what the doctor ordered, especially for how comical some of the storylines and characters have been cultivated like Tohya and his new alpha male persona. And with Team Blackout’s flag burned and Danji having arrived, what better teachable moment.