English Dub Review: Lord of Vermillion: The Crimson King “Bright Lights Suit a Dark Heart”

Oh, it’s not just bad, it’s bad and stupid.

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Jun has dispatched gang members across the city to hunt for Inuki, and the forces of the Church are after him as well. Inuki eludes capture as best as he can, but he can’t run forever. Meanwhile, Isshin presents a photo that reveals Inuki as the traitor to the Church they’ve been looking for. Apparently, Inuki’s past is intertwined with Jun’s, and so he’s been secretly working with him this whole time.

Things come to a head when Inuki loses control of himself and has to fight Chihiro with Jun watching nearby. Eventually, Inuki’s completely lost to the monster inside him, and Chihiro has to end him, bringing Inuki’s life to a swift and sudden close.

Our Take:

Things are just getting stranger and stranger of Lord of Vermillion: The Crimson King. The plot continues at a rapid speed without pausing for sense or reasonable story detail and delivers an episode that isn’t just poorly made, but also incredibly boring to watch as well.

I take issue with the main antagonist of this series, “Jun,” who seems like little more than a mean dude with sunglasses. I mean, I’m used to seeing villains motivated by personal gain, but Jun’s place in this conflict just seems too haphazard and inconsequential. He seems like a bad guy who just does terrible things for the sake of being a jerk, and in a full-fledged seasonal anime, that’s just mediocre characterization. The episode tries to make him more complex by giving him a connection to Inuki, but it’s so minor it might as well not be included in the episode.

Things get a little better character wise between Inuki and Koume, who actually get some time to talk to each other and act like human beings. Inuki has a lot more heart than Chihiro and Kotetsu, who are a continuous cringy embarrassment to watch stumble through the story. Every time Chihiro drops one of his edgy, overdone lines, I’ve reminded of bad Sonic the Hedgehog fanfiction. It seems like almost everything he says is dripping with narm, and completely lacking in any kind of subtlety.

The plot gets a major push forward with the development of Inuki’s betrayal of the Church. This would be the main draw of the episode, except that, like most bad anime twists, its less of a twist and more of a big exposition drop. It doesn’t feel like it was built up to or has any kind of natural evolution from the plot so far. Not to mention, we’re in episode six of this show, so it’s a bit too early to expect me to be so invested in a character that I feel something from their alignment change. Especially when the cast is this scattered and spread thing.

This episode is so melodramatic, it’s laughable. It’s completely humorless, melancholy and dry, without having the dramatic chops to actually elicit an emotional response from the audience. There’s this unfortunate discord between knowing how the show wants me to feel, with its heavy-handed somber music and hushed vocal tones, and the reality of its terrible storytelling. All I am by the end of this episode is bored. From start to finish, this week’s episode is a complete slog, punctuated by moments of embarrassing writing and poor voice acting.