Last week while taking the train home, I saw a kid with his head buried in some kind of Bakugan guide, and it got me thinking. The first thing was that it reminded me of when I used to sit on the same train with a printed Pokemon pokedex, poring over move lists and trying to imagine new movesets and strategies. It filled me with a sense of nostalgia. The second thing was that it got me thinking about the future of anime.

Bakugan, one of those collecting and battling game franchises designed to separate kids from their money, has an anime to act as a half-hour commercial for the product. It’s one of the latest in a long line of merchandising engines, from Pokemon to Digimon to Yugioh to Beyblade and so on. The shows can still be pretty decent; there’s no illusion about their true purpose, but it doesn’t mean they can’t be entertaining.

That said, what if someone made a collecting and battling anime that wasn’t there primarily to push a product? “Impossible!” you might say. And to some extent you’d be right. Shows are made because they have some kind of chance at making money. But my response is, give it a decade.

In those ten years, the kids who grew up with those trading card games and battle tops will be getting older and older. They’ll be adults working full-time jobs and looking back fondly on their childhoods. It would mirror the progression mecha anime has had, with shows now being made for adults and having more advanced and mature concepts. In this situation, a collecting and battling anime which really takes an artistic and philosophical look at the nature of collecting and battling anime would be perfect.

It could look at the nature of probability and psychology. Perhaps it would ask what it means to play a game where you must collect to improve your chances of winning. There could be legitimately well-written characters and a skeptical eye, but still a love letter to the genres of TCGs and monster battles. It would really master and perfect the sense of timing and tension that would make the heroes’ actions seem all the more worthwhile. Actual rules to the game are optional.

It would be the Gurren-Lagann of collecting and battling anime.