The Gratuitous English lyrics to the first theme song: "We can't hold back this feeling any longer. Come on, tear off everything you've got! Get crazy way!" It doesn't help that this is shown over images of Aichi and Kai.
The word Mate was this in the Legion Mate Arc. It's used in the British/Australian sense "friend," but it's especially amusing when used for a person of the samegender.
The Original Generation's are done by JAM Project, what do you expect? In Season 3, Psychic Lover took over in performing the first and third openings, while DAIGO performed the second one. Even so, they are still awesome.
The openings aside, the soundtrack of the anime is very much enjoyed by the fanbase. Arc 2 of Link Joker in particular provided some very excellent music for the series.
For the BGM, there's also In Order to Move Forward, which is with a single exception only used for the last fight of the season so far. Other pieces of awesome from the BGM are Kai's Theme, Kai's Determination, The Power of Psyqualia, Ren's Power, and unreleased tracks from Link Joker Hen, Ren's new theme and the Link Joker theme.
Base-Breaking Character: Kai, particularly with his turn to evil in Season 3. Either it was engaging Character Development clearing up hanging character threads from Season 1, or a cheap rehash of Aichi's corruption by Psyqualia in Season 1?
The introduction of Psyqualia. While the things it brought to the show are generally well-regarded ( Aichi's arc involving it is widely considered some of the show's best episodes), others feel that the anime's charm was in how mundane the playing of the game was, and that introducing supernatural elements ruined that factor.
Star-vader, Omega Glendios' Instant-Win Condition. An impractical skill which gets overhyped by the anime, or a sign that Bushiroad just doesn't care about making a balanced game anymore?
The Lock mechanic has been this since it debuted as many see it as an unfair mechanic since you can neither use your locked rearguards for anything, nor replace them with new units for at least two whole turns. This also made any rear-guard centric decks near unusable in this matchup. On the other hand, there are others who are fine with it and that it's possible to work around it, especially since there are cards that specifically counter Lock. There's also those who are fine with the mechanic so long as it's used as part of costs and require locking the player's own rearguards. The Power Creep towards the end of G did not help with Link Joker being featured in two separate boosters within the span of three months, allowing it to rise to the top of the meta. Needless to say, when people found out the mechanic was going to return in the reboot, although only in the form of "self-locking," reactions were mixed, at least until they found out that Chaos Breaker Dragon was returning with the Lock mechanic as it once was.
Designated Villain: The Quatre Knights pretty much seem to be this. Even though they're the antagonists of Season 4, all of them except Neve (in his first appearance anyway) are fairly respectful to the mates despite their attempts to dissuade them from finding Aichi, and it's being heavily suggested that they're keeping Aichi sealed away to protect the world from Link Joker. Never mind that Aichi himself chose them and asked them to do it. The only reason that they're antagonists is that they're standing between the mates and Aichi Though this is later subverted with Raul Serra, who was The Chessmaster and was engineering events to break Aichi's seals and claim the power of Link Joker for himself, then conquer both Earth and Cray.
The Nubatama Clan, largely because it was neglected by Bushiroad thanks to balance issues, not receiving any support until Booster Set 13.
Amongst the new main cast in season 3, Naoki Ishida has been the most popular, being well liked for his hilarious and awesome moments and a subject of Memetic Mutation.
Among the Quatre Knights, Ratie is liked for her quirky manner, and her mechanically fun deck. The fact that in G She's All Grown Up and is studying in Yale with Aichi helps things.
Epileptic Trees: Some started growing early in when Shin read out the marketing fluff for the Vanguard Gloves, which stated they had 'crystals mined from the Planet Cray', Cray being the planet on which the Units battle. These trees got a right watering after one of Kai's lines in Episode 40 to Aichi regarding PSY Qualia, said line being 'you're the one who's doing the fighting'. Fans theorized from this that Cray is real and that PSY Qualia allows your Vanguard to take control of the fight in your place. To everyone's surprise later on, that's not far off, just the other way around. Cray is real, and when two Vanguard players with PSY Qualia fight, they control the outcome of the battles raging across Cray.
Evil Is Cool: PSY Qualia Aichi suffers a lot from this. When Episode 50 first aired, there was a notable backlash from people who complained that Aichi was going to go back to his 'wimpy old self'. Because, you know, that's obviously worse than being Drunk on the Dark Side due to Psychic Powers.
Among his Japanese fans, Ren is often referred to as "Ren-sama".
Platina Ezel is frequently referred to as Pretzels or PEzel for short.
When Kai shows off having Psyqualia in the manga, it was quickly given the nickname Kaiqualia.
A real life example, Izumi Kitta, Misaki's voice actor, has a tendency to pull two triggers to break through her opponent's guards, and a lot of them are double critical triggers. This has earned her the nickname of Izuqualia.
Like the Gaang and the Krew, Kai and his friends who are looking for Aichi are called the "Mates."
The game itself is called "Luckfight Sackguard" due to its propensity for relying on cards on the top of players' decks as part of its game mechanics.
Friendly Fandoms: Vanguard is popular among Yu-Gi-Oh! fans, particularly Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V, for being a card game anime that goes from being just a card game to high stakes. Chrono and Yugo's similar personalities also help.
When Episode 33 first aired, there was some speculation among fans that Kenji had a way to Superior Ride Daiyusha, explaining how he had a Grade 3 Vanguard while Ren was at Grade 1. Come Booster Set 8, a Unit named Dimensional Robo, Goyusha was released, with a skill that matched the fans speculation.
In Kyou's fight against Leon, the former lost due to being unable to pay the cost of his Perfect Guard due to lacking any cards in his hand. In overDress all standard Perfect Guards have a skill that the player doesn't need to pay the cost if they have one or no cards in their hand.
From Episode 2 of Link Joker, Naoki gives us BREAK TIME.
Final Turn was practically destined to become one from the moment it was first used.
Episode 158 and 159 in general is full of moments that have been mutated by the fanbase.
Dragonic Overlord's final formExplanationWhen Kai first plays Dragonic Overlord the End, he introduces it as "Dragonic Overlord's final form". Dragonic Overlord would go on to get nine more unique forms over various formats, leading to sarcastic references to the line often in tandem with the Lampshade Hanging of "There are so many Overlords" line in G
Mind Game Ship: Ren enjoys screwing around with Aichi's already rather shaky self-confidence a bit much, and basically slowly pushing him over the edge. At the very least the guy's good at knowing which buttons to push. While watching Aichi's match with Kenji, Ren's main concern is having Aichi fall to the power of Psyqualia again and show him the victory he desires.
The dub gets hit hard when characters have to read English instructions from a pamphlet and the script still treating them like they're Japanese, resulting in Naoki's infamous "I don't speak English" line.
The Stand Up! Vanguard live-action drama quickly degenerates into hilarity even when it's trying to be serious. One of the most drastic examples is when Hiroki's teacher is hit by a car. The scene degenerates into Narm because it's shot at a bizarre angle, making it look like she's actually flying. That said, the drama still manages to be entertaining, if only because ofDaigo.
Kai, big time. By the end of Season 3, many fans were annoyed with him becoming the Final Boss of the season. THEN Episode 162 aired, revealing that Kai wasn't Brainwashed and Crazy and knew what he was doing the whole time, but couldn't stop himself because he's addicted to power to the point he couldn't refuse Link Joker despite knowing it was evil. Add in the idea that he truly hates himself for doing it and hurting Aichi, and that he wants to commit suicide and with just one episode, Kai was solidly rescued. Even the idea of him as Season 4's protagonist was helped by the implication that he's trying to save Aichi to find redemption for what he did.
From Season 4, Philip Neve. Initially, he was criticised by the fans for being a bland, uninteresting Jerkass. However, once Episode 182 revealed his backstory and toned down his Jerkass side, fans warmed to him, particularly because of how much of a sympathetic badass his backstory made him.
So Okay, It's Average: The general consensus on the dub is this. It's considered better than the average 4Kids dubbed anime, but it isn't regarded as anything particularly amazing. It doesn't help that some of the voicing work is questionable, particularly Kai and Kamui's dub voices.
They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: As the series progressed, the time spent on the actual cardfights became less and less, particularly from Neon Messiah onwards. Many consider it a cheap cop-out to avoid showing how the fight actually went while also making it hard to follow how the victor is decided due to the lack of a script, effectively taking the "trading card" out of a trading card anime. Neon Messiah is particularly guilty of this, as none of the cardfights were shown properly to the extent that an unaware viewer could have easily mistaken them for a shounen anime fight scene instead. This trend would bleed into the sequel.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The Seven Sacred Beast armors were well done initially, especially the concept of each armor bearer being an ace card to focus a deck around. Then they were aborted with three bearers unreleased (and at the time, one armor unrevealed), leaving Ezel to take the spotlight.
The Woobie: Following Episode 24 and her backstory, Misaki was firmly established as one. Having her parents die in a tragic accident while she was young is bad enough, but due to her 'perfect memory', any time she gets too involved in Vanguard, all the painful memories come flooding back. She spent whoever knows how long avoiding playing, but ultimately in Episode 24, it all comes crashing down...
Aside from not using honorifics, the "sub-manager" (i.e., the shop cat/kitten) is referred to as the "Assita-cat" in the dub.
Team Foo Fighter was renamed "Team Asteroid". It's either this or a Macekre depending on who you ask.note They are both astronomy based terms ("foo fighter" is a slang term for a UFO), however, the original version calls them one name, while the dub calls them by a completely different name. This may be due to the presence of the real-life Foo Fighters, a rather famous rock band who are still active today. American viewers would probably associate the name more with the band than the slang.
