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.
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.