Anime Promotional Video
That's right, I'm reviewing the promotional video. Specifically this one.
I've never seen the anime so I won't judge it, but I will judge the promotional video.
This promotional video is...not good. To it's credit it provides a pretty cool image of a giant burning sword. But that's the best part about the trailer. The rest is either mediocre, or simply bad.
The designs of the three monsters shown are uninspired for the most part. We get a green dragon dinosaur monster wearing armor, a red dragon dinosaur monster wearing armor (destroyed so quickly you could hardly even see it) and an orange dinosaur like creature wearing armor (but wields a weapon at least)...who's also called a dragon. Yeah, I can feel the variety.
It's presentation is lackluster. The only real original thing in the game rules shown is that the humans seem to fight as well, instead of only using the monsters like in Yu-Gi-Oh or Duel Masters. So many people figured it would be another genetic card anime based off the trailer. I won't judge too early and say that it is, but the fact that many people though that shows how lazy they were with this promotional video.
But the narration is the worst part. Not only do they add nearly nothing unique, but they hardly go into any detail about the plot. The Buddy Police? Never mentions what they do. The buddy fights? Never mentions how they work. They spend the majority of the running time on just saying stuff that we can tell through the images that the stuff we'd actually need explanation on is rushed and lazy. The 'Buddy Police' name itself sounds incredibly dumb. We don't even get an explanation about them? Do they arrest people for being buddies, because we might as well guess that based off what's explained.
You might be thinking 'Why not just watch the anime to find out the answers?' The problem is, the promotional video gave me no reason to want to see it. Few interesting things actually occur in it, and the promotional video itself is rushed and lazy. I'm not judging the anime, but the promotional video of the anime fails as a way to raise interest. My suggestion? Get to the part showing the giant burning sword, and then stop watching it. That's the greatest thing going for the promotional video.
Anime Skip it. It's not worth your time.
I’ve been following Future Card Buddyfight for multiple seasons now. It’s not worth watching. Between formulaic writing, bland characters, and lack of worldbuilding, this show has utterly wasted its potential.
Let’s start with the setting. The show is set in a future where monsters from other worlds live alongside ordinary humans and the ones that feature in the story are characters much the same as their human counterparts. That’s something one generally doesn’t see in card game anime. There’s even a law enforcement agency that handles incidents involving monsters and operates internationally. How were they founded? How did humanity first encounter the monsters and their worlds? How do the monsters live on their respective worlds? None of this is ever elaborated upon.
Even worse, the series barely develops its characters. The series introduces one or more new characters every few episodes, often as an antagonist or monster of the week, occasionally with a snippet of backstory. This backstory is usually very simplistic and often stems from a single incident with any resulting conflict being cleared up after a single game. This issue often extends to recurring characters as well. Major characters, whether humans or monsters, have just enough backstory to give them some vague motivation and drive the plot forward. After all, why bother with trivialities like setting and backstory when there are new cards to shill every week?
The writers’ drive to promote the card of the week leads to the series being very formulaic in that the overwhelming majority of episodes being mostly comprised of a Buddyfight match where two characters iron out whatever poor excuse of a conflict drives the episode. Even worse is the fact that these are often organized into lengthy tournament arcs that don’t so much contribute to the plot as interrupt it and draw it out. The second season moved away from this in favor of slightly more character-driven storytelling. While still not good, this makes it the best season thus far. In fact, the episodes that focus more on the characters than the cards tend to be the best ones. Bushiroad might have had a halfway decent series instead of a bad one if they did those more often.
I’d recommend avoiding this series but if you really want to watch it, you can look it up on Youtube. I, on the other hand, will be dropping it after the current season.