Why is Season 3 so bad

So I herd that in January Aichi will go to high school. Misaki and Kourin apparently are fellow classmates. Apparently based on the manga.

Four more episodes of Season 2 left (up to episode 104)! Start the hate (or maybe love if this turns out to be better)!

EDIT: Shit. If it follows the manga is Kai going to get Psyqualia?

I love how you just preliminarily assume it'll be bad :D

It would bother me if in season 3 all their cards get handed to them. Aichi got Alfred, Ezel and PlEzel, and Misaki and Kami both got their crosses from magical psyqualia PSY shop stuff.

I'd rather see them pull boosters like how Aichi got SSD in season 1. Odd gripe, I know, but I still think it'd make the show better. Kids playing cards > psyqualia bullshit.

i expect nothing but a boob size increase, cuz anime.

I want a reset. I want Season 2 to be all just a dream. I miss the good old days of the lower key, it's just a card game, Aichi's win/loss ratio is logical for a beginner with a decent amount of luck and skill. Also, I WANT MISAKI TO WIN MORE. I mean, come on, quit giving her the shaft, spread it around equally, ok, except Kai if you must. Also, if you MUST keep Gold Paladins in the spot, give Royal's equal billing. Make Aichi have TWO decks or something, because that would actually be pretty unique in card game animes. Seriously, name ONE where THE main character actually uses multiple decks. And just have him alternate, but NOT in the middle of a tournament. Although, we STILL need to come up with a plot. Perhaps a corrupt behind the scenes bureacracy that rig the games in order to profit somehow, until Q4 comes along and bucks the system. I dunno, at least it's better than what they do have.

I agree about losing the supernatural element. Card games don't fit it well.

I'm not particularly against or for Supernatural Elements. However the problem with Vanguard is that writers are attempting to convey both and are succeeding at neither.

Not to say table top games can't be conveyed well in a natural atmosphere though. See: Chihahayafuru

The thing about taking out the supernatural element is that a show that's just about card games and nothing else is pretty boring for people who aren't super into card games. That may not mean Magic-and-Bullshittery is the best solution, but it is a very easy way to add a reason for why the matches matter and it works well with children, the target audience

Nysonin609 wrote:

The thing about taking out the supernatural element is that a show that's just about card games and nothing else is pretty boring for people who aren't super into card games. That may not mean Magic-and-Bullshittery is the best solution, but it is a very easy way to add a reason for why the matches matter and it works well with children, the target audience

Funny thing about the whole "target audience" deal. Studios pick a demographic like Shounen for a series, say One Piece. Yet if you look at the actual demographic from data sources that show who really watches OP, the smallest group is people ages 1-18 (they had to even include teens because children were such a tiny result). There were more people over the age of 50 that watch One Piece than its own target demographic. The most were people in their 20s. Second most were people in their 30s and 40s.

The same is true for people who play card games. You have all these games like Kaijudo, Yugioh, Pokemon, and CFV that pretend like their demographic is little kids but yet it's 20-somethings that actually play the game. Magic may be a lot of flawed things but at least Wizards realizes their demographic for the game they sell. This is the biggest problem with card game animes. They attempt to flaccidly appeal to a non-existent demographic and thus alienate the actual player demographic. If they'd target 20-30 year olds, Cardfight Vanguard could have a richer and more mature story that doesn't rely on Saturday Morning morality and cliche plot gimmicks. And the anime would be a hit.

Alice wrote:

Nysonin609 wrote:

The thing about taking out the supernatural element is that a show that's just about card games and nothing else is pretty boring for people who aren't super into card games. That may not mean Magic-and-Bullshittery is the best solution, but it is a very easy way to add a reason for why the matches matter and it works well with children, the target audience

Funny thing about the whole "target audience" deal. Studios pick a demographic like Shounen for a series, say One Piece. Yet if you look at the actual demographic from data sources that show who really watches OP, the smallest group is people ages 1-18 (they had to even include teens because children were such a tiny result). There were more people over the age of 50 that watch One Piece than its own target demographic. The most were people in their 20s. Second most were people in their 30s and 40s.

The same is true for people who play card games. You have all these games like Kaijudo, Yugioh, Pokemon, and CFV that pretend like their demographic is little kids but yet it's 20-somethings that actually play the game. Magic may be a lot of flawed things but at least Wizards realizes their demographic for the game they sell. This is the biggest problem with card game animes. They attempt to flaccidly appeal to a non-existent demographic and thus alienate the actual player demographic. If they'd target 20-30 year olds, Cardfight Vanguard could have a richer and more mature story that doesn't rely on Saturday Morning morality and cliche plot gimmicks. And the anime would be a hit.

You're kind of assuming that the anime and card game are marketed to the same demographic.

As we have all realized at one point or another, season 1 was a 22 minute long commercial for the card game that explained the rules. Younger children and early teens will watch, want the cool shiny card and ask their parents to buy them booster packs. They open them, and rarely receive the card they want, so they beg their parents for more. People in their later teens and beyond, as well as anyone serious about the game will know the chance of pulling what they want from a booster is slim, so they will buy singles.

Starter decks are prime examples of this. Most seasoned card game vets will know starter decks are usually bases to improve upon at best. Younger players and new players will want to use the deck the hero uses, 'cause he wins with it in the show!

I know most of what I said is baseless claims, but it sounded right to me.

Having an anime that promotes your product is the smarter business move than having one which doesn't promote the product. The buying power of children is very low because they themselves have no income capital and their parents will not give them 100% of their own disposable income budget. Therefore, if parents would play it themselves and their disposable budget is higher, it's smarter to market to adults. And children are a highly-competed demographic. Going after them is not a smart business decision for someone whose main product is actually used by 20-somethings. It would be like if tampon commercials were marketed toward men. Sure, the commercial can be entrainment in its own right but men aren't going to go out and start buying tampons because they found a 10 minute TV spot to be interesting. Women have a lot of buying power like 20-somethings and they're the actual users of the product.

In every sense, the smart business move is making a mature anime.

Alice wrote:

Having an anime that promotes your product is the smarter business move than having one which doesn't promote the product. The buying power of children is very low because they themselves have no income capital and their parents will not give them 100% of their own disposable income budget. Therefore, if parents would play it themselves and their disposable budget is higher, it's smarter to market to adults. And children are a highly-competed demographic. Going after them is not a smart business decision for someone whose main product is actually used by 20-somethings. It would be like if tampon commercials were marketed toward men. Sure, the commercial can be entrainment in its own right but men aren't going to go out and start buying tampons because they found a 10 minute TV spot to be interesting. Women have a lot of buying power like 20-somethings and they're the actual users of the product.

In every sense, the smart business move is making a mature anime.

I 100% agree with you, but companies, for some reason beyond me, sometimes stray from their target demographic to attempt to increase sales by hitting multiple demos.

Just look at all the .hack media. This whole franchise is aimed at MMO players. It focuses on an MMO, and if the amount of time the characters spend logged in tells us anything, it's an awesome game (as far as MMO's go). Logical step: make an MMO. Instead they produce a ton of Single Player RPGs modeling a pseudo-MMO world. All of those games turn out mediocre at best. If they took all their money and resources and threw an MMO at its fanbase (which would EAT IT UP), but they don't. /endrant

So yeah, I'd love a more mature anime, but we're just gonna get a YGO/Beyblade/everything else clone.


And ya know what? We're all gonna watch it. /bushiroadwin

Never really thought about it in terms of buying power. However the adults who would normally play card games won't decide whether of not to play this card game through the show and adults who don't care about card games wouldn't watch the show. Wouldn't it make more sense to target adults through children with the show as a means of getting new customers, and let the people who actually play card games (who, in most cases, only use the show as a way of seeing which new cards are coming out) do their thing?

what if they took the anime back to when Kai fought Jun and his gang? It would make the show much more realistic! It would show the cheating and down right nasty shit that happens in any card game.
It would be amazing if the show actually matured. They should still go to tourneys and stuff though. To me, that and Aichi losing on a normal basis made season 1 for me.

@Cyprus, well my whole original point was that the company isn't being rational and should be rational. (The formal definition of rational is very strict. It means that given two payoffs where one is higher, you always choose the higher payoff. That's rationality. In this case it means getting the larger customer base to lead to sales). Since we don't think that "artistic vision" was their goal when they founded the company, it stands to reason that their most rational course of action is to make money and perpetuate themselves as a business. My suggestion would be the very least they would have to do to achieve this.

@Nysonin, that statement is simply false. If you make a claim that no adult A will play a card game G after being exposed to medium M, then all we have to do to disprove this claim as a whole is find one instance where the claim is false. Guess who my example is (hint: it's me). Lots of people are inspired by the shows they watch to do something they wouldn't otherwise do. If that were not a true statement, then anime cosplay could not exist unless every person who cosplayed had never seen the anime (including the first person to do it). The card game does not always simply merit playing because of its own existence or because some local store advertised it.

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I, personally, picked up Vanguard after watching the premier.

Alice wrote:

In every sense, the smart business move is making a mature anime.

I'm actually going to take this moment to point out that there's such a thing as having it both ways. If you can make the show something children can watch nominally but still maintain a devoted older fanbase, you can do really well. And there are entire fandoms and demographics built around enjoying toyetic/shounen because it's light-hearted and goofy, not because of its maturity. A prime example of this would be Japan's tokusatsu fandom, where little kids love Kamen Rider/Super Sentai but the buying base for things like the ridiculously expensive megazords and henshin belt merchandise is quite often 20-something/adult collectors.

I think it's fine that Vanguard is kid-friendly, but my problem is that the show really isn't taking the steps it could to have it both ways. It did a really good job of that throughout season one, but in season two the thing that made the first season really engaging (the fact that it actually cared about developing its characters) was really just dropped because it's blatantly obvious by this point that the writers don't know what they're doing, where they're going, or why. They're just marketing what they're told to market, and that doesn't please anyone.

That shouldn't be the primary use of the budget. If they had a mature anime already and their budget went up because revenue went up (it would), then they could make something like the current anime for kids concurrently. It's more optimal to actually target the correct demographic.

Alice wrote:

That shouldn't be the primary use of the budget. If they had a mature anime already and their budget went up because revenue went up (it would), then they could make something like the current anime for kids concurrently. It's more optimal to actually target the correct demographic.

Arguable. If you make a consistently good product which can target both demographics and increase revenue from both, then you have done well. The first anime wasn't meant for older viewers specifically, but a lot of older viewers came on board.

I'd actually prefer for a return to season one rather than "maturing" the show, though admittedly I'm not sure what you mean by that specifically. Darker, edgier, "next week on a very special episode of Clone High" stuff is what I associate with the word, so that's very much not what I want for the series since I think it dealt with just the right amount of actually mature subjects for marketing a CCG (personal loss, lack of confidence, etc., as well as a slight under-current of the "right" way to depend on others/yourself which I think might have ended up there by accident). I don't know about other people who watch Vanguard but I like the fact- or liked, rather- the fact that the show was able to jump between being silly and serious when it needed to.

Well, unless you're referring to "mature" as in sex and violence for the sake of sex and violence, then isn't it possible to make it mature in a way that doesn't necessarily mean we have to alienate the kids. I'm thinking like a good combination of humor(Tasteful, as in, IS ACTUALLY FUNNY and not just an endless stream of bathroom humor.) and drama, with a plot that kids can understand but isn't overly simplistic so that they don't bore the older audience. It can be done, I mean, take a look at some classic Disney films, like the Lion King, Aladdin or Beauty and the Beast. Now, it doesn't have to be up to THAT level of quality, but, hey, a guy can dream can't he?

Mature like One-Outs. A character who's intelligent and everyone are real human beings with working brains and actual character.

Alice wrote:

Mature like One-Outs. A character who's intelligent and everyone are real human beings with working brains and actual character.

Oh okay, yeah. I get that.

I just generally associate it less with maturity and more with like, quality. Since that's stuff I expect from good kid's entertainment too.

I consider maturity in fiction (whether books, movies, or shows) to simply mean deeper characters.

A story is pretty lame when the people you have to follow in it are bumbling retards with their thumbs up their asses. Made worse when they shoehorn in development.

Season one was decent even if it was a commercial. But Season two is just blatant marketing of specific cards and forcing characters to change because last episode they hit a DBZ roadblock.

Klaus wrote:

I consider maturity in fiction (whether books, movies, or shows) to simply mean deeper characters.

A story is pretty lame when the people you have to follow in it are bumbling retards with their thumbs up their asses. Made worse when they shoehorn in development.

Season one was decent even if it was a commercial. But Season two is just blatant marketing of specific cards and forcing characters to change because last episode they hit a DBZ roadblock.

It's like one of the big things that bugs me about Shounen is how people will keep important information to themselves. Aichi told Kai like one faggot time that the decks had been swapped, never told anyone else, and conveniently forgot about it. He wasn't even just keeping it to himself because he thought everyone else would believe he's insane either according to his own internal dialogue. In a Seinen, the character might keep it to himself but there are logical motivations for it. Such as him wanting to observe just how much has changed before rushing into something.

Little shit like this adds up over the course of an episode and mature anime handle it right.

So here's what I know after some Vanguard convention:

1. Aichi and Misaki still present, both in same school. Emi also there. May be new main character (Extra Booster 6 is Bermuda Triangle, so possibility is there).

2. All other prominent major characters (like Kai and Kamui) will be at different schools, as will minor people like Morikawa.

3. Kourin also at Aichi's school (for some reason).

4. Two new characters introduced. One uses Narukami, not sure about the other.

5. Aichi using new GP and RP from Set 10 as shown in opening.

6. Ren and Asaka appear at some stage, and so does S.I.T Genius. Not sure when, though.

On an unrelated note:

Extra Booster 6 (Bermuda Triangle) and Shadow Paladin Trial Deck (which will apparently include an alternate art Blaster Dark) confirmed.