YMMV / Cardfight!! Vanguard G

• Awesome Music:
  • Vanguard G gets off to a great start with its opening, Break It, sung by none other than Mamoru Miyano. He later goes on to another great opening with Shout a great opening matching the tone of Stride Gate.
  • The Zeroth Dragon theme is an incredibly haunting piece with an Ethereal Choir that perfectly captures the otherworldly nature of such creatures.
• Badass Decay: Tends to subvert this trend by having either the main antagonist lose at the end or have their subordinates lose before hand to help hype up the next fight. However, as if to respond to how abysmal the heroes' win-lose record was in Legion Mate, G: Z makes the villains look like chumps, instead. It was established early in NEXT that the Diffriders are difficult opponents to defeat due to their connection to their units, this was made obvious when Team Diffrider only started losing near the end when the protagonists connections to their own units became stronger. In G: Z, the apostles, a villain group comprised of nothing but Diffriders and posed a strong threat towards the heroes, are defeated rather easily, typically getting only one win and then losing the next fight. Valeos and Chaos Breaker were the only ones to defy this trope, but it made them so worthless as villains in the end. Gastille, the supposed leader, doesn't even get a win before being defeated.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: In Episode 46 of Vanguard G, after losing to Chrono and resigning his post as the Branch Manager of the United Sanctuary branch, Kanzaki rides his horse down the side of the United Sanctuary HQ building on his way out. No, really.
• Crack Ship: Because Chrono and Emi's Japanese Voice Actors were married at that time (they have since separated) and their tendency to check Critical Triggers consistently in their fights, some fans like to ironically pair the two together, often at the expense of Kamui.
• Crosses the Line Twice: It certainly was not intended to be so, but the United Sanctuary Branch Manager's speech after winning his exhibition match at the start of Vanguard G's regionals in episode 27 is so mean-spirited and hateful and just plain rude, but done in a rather over the top fashion that leaves the audience dumbstruck, can come off as being unintentionally hilarious when taking everything into consideration. Doesn't help that he is a tall, wild-haired, slender Bishōnen young man in an immaculate suit wearing eye shadow. Him dropping the mic when he's finished his speech before walking off just completely sells it, too.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Of the G era characters, nobody comes close to the epicness that is Kanzaki. Dispite being the main antagonist of Season 1 of Vanguard G, he steals every scene he shows up in due to his over the top personality and style. Speaking of dark horses, he also has several that he houses and rides with, including Down The Side Of A Building!!!
• Fan Nickname:
  • Team Traffic Light, acknowledged in universe, for Team Try 3, due to their hair colours which resembles that of a traffic light.
  • Zeroth Dragon of Distant Sea, Megiddo new art for the Bermuda Triangle Booster is nicknamed "Moegiddo" or "Megiddo-Chan" to differentiate her from her original art.
• It's Short, So It Sucks!: The biggest complained of GZ was how short it was compared to the other seasons.
• Memetic Mutation: A few of these:
  • Everyone, Stride Like Ibuki
  • Chrono: "There are so many Overlords."
    • Dragonic Overlord: "There are so many Chronos."
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Team New Nippon are introduced in NEXT as a rival group for Team Striders, and later brought into the main plot after one of their own, Noa, was forcibly Diffrided by Chaos Breaker Dragon. After that though, they immediately begin losing relevancy. Chaos Breaker largely leaves the plot aside from attempting to force a Diffride on Kanzaki and failing, only really returning for Z. And while Arata and Makoto do swear to save Noa and train under Kai, they largely remain the same in terms of characterization, and only have one fight against Gredora where they suffer The Worf Effect. After that, their initial goal of saving Noa is taken by Kai and Aichi under the rationale that Chaos Breaker is too dangerous for them to fight, and even after Noa is saved, the team is left as more an afterthought.
  • The Apostles on their own suffer this to varying degrees. Without reading the accompanying lore, Gastille and Valeos have little in terms of characterization, Dumjid ends up looking like a flatout Hate Sink rather than a Tragic Villain, and Chaos Breaker's ulterior motives seem like they weren't explained. Only the Darkface pair fare in any way decently thanks to their relationship they have with one another and their motivations being explored in series, but it comes at the expense of Gredora being Put on a Bus only a few episodes after first appearing.
  • The hosts of the Diffriders outside of Kazumi, Wakamizu, and Kazuma suffer from this. As the units are largely in the drivers seats during their appearences, and the hosts leave the story afterwards, few of them get any actual characterization. Ruga Kaizu and Arte Hibino suffer the worst out of all them. While Saori gets some characterization via his talks with Dumjid and his forming a team with Taiyou and Hiroki, Verno gets some minor characterization when The Bus Came Back, Noa has an established personality from being with New Nippon, and Gaily gets very minor characterization in the finale via her interactions with Misaki, Arte and Kaizu get no characterization whatsoever and instead are more like a Living Prop.
• The Un-Twist: Many fans thought Ace was a disguised Am well before it was confirmed in episode 17 of GIRS Crisis. It became more obvious when the episode preview showed that Ace's clan was a Granblue deck focusing on Nightrose, Am's deck.