Aqua Spirit – #LON-068
Cannot be Normal Summoned/Set. Must first be Special Summoned (from your hand) by banishing 1 WATER monster from your GY. Once per turn, during your opponent’s Standby Phase: You can target 1 face-up monster your opponent controls; change that target’s battle position, and if you do, it cannot change its battle position for the rest of this turn.
Date Reviewed: May 12th, 2022
Rating: 2.29
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is awful. 3 is average. 5 is excellent.
Reviews Below:
King of
Lullaby
Hello Pojo Fans,
Aqua Spirit is a long long time ago Throwback Thursday choice.
All the way back in Labrynth of Nightmare, Aqua Spirit ushered in monsters that could be Special Summoned by removing a monster of the same Attribute as monsters like Aqua Spirit. Her effect was pretty good back then when we had no other form of Extra Deck summoning other than Fusion Summoning and when tribute summoning was still a viable thing, nowadays though…pretty much useless. You could freeze a boss monsters, but the opponent would likely just Link Summon that frozen boss monsters away for something that could get over Aqua Spirit, or, they would summon something else and take out Aqua Spirit.
Short review, yes. Aqua Spirit in the game today would be used as an extender for Extra Deck summoning, that’s about it. Her effect to freeze a monster for a turn isn’t viable anymore, but that was her fate because the game wasn’t going to stay as simple as it was when she was released.
Advanced-2/5 Art-3.5/5
Until Next Time
KingofLullaby
Crunch$G
Throwback Thursday this week brings us a pretty simple card from back in the day that could work with Icejades: Aqua Spirit.
Aqua Spirit is a Level 4 WATER Aqua with 1600 ATK and 1200 DEF. Fine stats, WATER/Aqua still good. This cannot be Normal Summoned/Set ad must first be Special Summoned from the hand by banishing a WATER monster in the graveyard. I mean, simple enough and it’s pretty good to get another body on board. It’s especially nice to consider this is a Level 4 WATER, meaning an easier Bahamut Shark play in WATER strategies, which you know what he summons. Second effect triggers during the opponent’s Standby Phase, letting you target a face-up monster the opponent controls and change that monster’s battle position and said monster cannot change its battle position for that turn. It’s fine I guess, preventing a monster from attacking this potentially if you’re somehow stuck with this on the opponent’s turn. Doesn’t affect Link Monsters as all, as we know with most battle position effects, but you still affect more than enough monsters. This is really just important for the fact it’s free to Special Summon in a WATER Deck, and that’s really more than enough in most cases.
Advanced Rating: 3.5/5
Art: 5/5 A classic artwork, she’s pretty in my opinion.
Alex
Searcy
I wasn’t reviewing at the time, but I remember when these Spirit cards came out. Aqua Spirit is certainly a fun choice, albeit it an old one, for Throwback Thursday. Water/Aqua, Level 4, 1600 atk (1200 def) and can’t be Normal Summoned or Set, but insanely easy to Special Summon simply by removing a Water Monster from your Graveyard from play. Once a Turn, during your opponent’s Standby Phase, you can Target an opponent’s Monster and change it’s Battle Position. Said Monster appropriately has to be face-up and can’t change its position back for the rest of the Turn. This might work for you once, but it has to survive at least to the next Turn, and even that, if it does, it’s likely not enough for your opponent to care about. It’s not disruptive enough to warrant play, in my opinion.
Rating: 2/5
Art: 3.5/5 She’s kinda pretty, and she seems happy, which is nice.
Mighty
Vee
The WATER member of the “Spirit” gang (no, not Spirit monsters), Aqua Spirit is this week’s Throwback Thursday subject, an appropriate potential tech card for Icejade decks. Unsurprisingly, it is a level 4 WATER aqua monster, making it quite similar to a few Icejade monsters. Being a level 4 WATER monster is very noteworthy due to the vast amount of support for rank 4 WATER decks, though Sharks in particular would prefer their own in-house extenders. 1600 attack and 1200 defense is a typical, if middling, stat spread, but fortunately it probably won’t be battling much, if at all (incidentally, it has more attack than the Icejade boss).
Aqua Spirit can’t be normal summoned or set, instead requiring you to special summon it by banishing a WATER monster from your graveyard. As Icejades are pretty good at filling the grave, Aqua Spirit should be easy to summon, even if there’s a tiny chance of bricking. This effect isn’t a once per turn either, so if you happen to have multiple Aqua Spirits you can technically summon them all if you have the resources. Aqua Spirit’s other effect is once per turn, allowing you to target and change the battle position of one of your opponent’s monsters during their standby phase. Additionally, this monster can’t change its battle position until the end of the turn. It’s really not worth keeping Aqua Spirit on the field for longer than it needs to be, since you’ll probably want to use it for combos instead, and their effects will still be live too. Still, it hasn’t aged all that poorly; it’s a decent extender for most WATER decks that don’t get enough from their own. Icejades in particular could use it for the powerful pool of WATER XYZ, including Bahamut Shark and Number 4: Stealth Kragen.
Advanced: 2.75/5
Art: 3/5 The older seinen art style might look out of place in modern Yugioh, but it certainly has its charm.
Today’s Throwback Thursday is going WAAAAAAAY back! Anyone remember Labyrinth of Nightmare? I sure do. Today we’re looking at Aqua Spirit, the WATER themed member of a series of cards that predated the Chaos monsters for Special Summoning themselves by banishing stuff from the Grave.
I imagine the reason that we’re covering this card is because it’s seen some fringe play in WATER decks as a generic extender. By banishing a single WATER monster, you can Special Summon Aqua Spirit from Hand. Sometimes, getting an additional body on board is all you need to get your Extra Deck plays going.
As I’m sure you’re aware, this has been Icejade week. So does Aqua Spirit fit with this deck? Of course! Otherwise we wouldn’t have covered it XD
There are several Level 4 Icejades, so being able to summon 1, then dropping Aqua Spirit, means that we can overlay into Bahamut Shark – which means Toadally Awesome. Of course we also have the newly released Stealth Kragen and the oldie, but goodie, Abyss Dweller.
There’re also a lot of strong WATER Synchro monsters. Aqua Spirit can help get the right levels on board to bring out a Brionac, Trishula, Dragite, or Chengying.
I should mention that Aqua Spirit technically has an effect, I just doubt that it comes up often. During your opponent’s Standby Phase, you can Target one of their monsters. Change its battle position and it’s stuck like that for the rest of the Turn. Back in the day this was a nice control effect to keep high ATK monsters from being able to do much.
Nowadays it’s just not much of anything. Even if that monster can’t Attack, it still has all of its effects online. Plus your opponent can just use that monster as material for something else.
I’d like to see each of these original Spirit cards from LoN to get retrained. Aqua Spirit could maintain the same effect with the addition of negating the targeting monster’s effects and/or making it unable to be used as material. As she is now, she’s still good as an extender if that’s what you need.
Advanced Rating – 2.5/5
Art – 4/5 (Aqua Spirit was always my favorite of the original “Spirit” cards)
Therion
“Captain”
Tav
Alright, for Throwback Thursday we have the fearsome Aqua Spirit, a water-attribute, aqua-type monster originally released all the way back in the 2003 set Labyrinth of Nightmare, which was only the fifth TCG set released at that time!
Boasting 1600 attack and 1200 defense, its stats are honestly nothing special, even during those early times (trust me, I played back then). For comparison: Gemini Elf released in that same set, which had 1900 attack points and could easily beat any other normal summoned monster in attack position that existed at the time.
Water Spirit cannot be normal summoned or set, but you can easily get it out by exiling one water-attribute monster from your graveyard! Getting free special summons back then was something special indeed, and Aqua Spirit belonged in a cycle of cards with marginal effects that could be summoned that way. Its second effect states that during the opponent’s Standby Phase, you can change the battle position of one target monster your opponent controls and it has to stay that way for the rest of the turn, which is nice, but assumes your opponent won’t tribute it or simply summon another monster to run over your Spirit.
This card is very mediocre, but I’m not one to bash anyone trying to make their odd little strategy work. Since most people didn’t use many water type monsters back then apart from the very common 8 colored Fish (another normal summon with 1800 attack), you could build a water-centric deck using the field spell Umiiruka to beat over everyone’s earth and dark types. Graceful charity is another card from that time Aqua Spirit could benefit from excellently. This was a year before the real chaos monsters showed up and rained on everyone’s parade, so just using this as an additional beater to special summon or tribute to get out a Jinzo could be good enough! I’m afraid that’s all the good things I have to say about it, though – for modern standards, this simply doesn’t cut it.
Rating: 1/5
props:
easy extra special summon for water-type decks, can be offered as a tribute summon for monsters you would actually want to have on the board 😉
slops:
weak stats, pretty much irrelevant effect
Art: 4/5
The older Yugioh cards have such simple manga artwork with often really rough low-quality 3D backgrounds. I love how this one just shows a water girl with fins without managing to somehow sexualize the art work. It’s the lady of the lake conjuring up a cheap CGI of a droplet against a backdrop of generic 3D water animations. The tiny bubbles on top really pull it together to sell that it is indeed wet in that cardbox!
Visit the Card of the Day Archive! Click here to read over 4,000 more Yu-Gi-Oh! Cards of the Day!
