English Dub Review: Lord of Vermillion: The Crimson King “Sometimes People Become Cheerful When Faced With Death”

Geeze, Lord of Vermillion, that’s a bit dark, don’t you think?

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Isshin is pissed at Chihiro for allowing Marie’s death by trusting Yuuri, and so decides to figure things out on his own, separating himself from the Church. Chihiro, wracked with guilt, tracks Isshin down and tries to reason with him back to the fold. Eventually, he’s able to reason with Isshin and tags along with his investigation. After sharing their stories with each other, the two find Marie’s murderer, the scythe-wielding Agent of Chaos, Kark.

Their fight against Kark is intense and results in the deaths of both Tsubasa and Isshin, who dies in Chihiro’s arms. With his final words, Isshin asks Chihiro to keep on living and tells Chihiro that he isn’t the one who killed his father.

Our Take:

Once again, Lord of Vermillion fails to hold my attention in yet another installment of the strangest show of the season. A show which increasingly embodies everything wrong with the anime industry today.

Functionally, the Agents of Chaos do get to strut their evil stuff a little bit more this week and earn some villain points by turning a bunch of innocent people into monsters. This gives us a little bit more tension in the episode, but as always it just sort of dissolves into all the doom and gloom “destruction of Tokyo” business that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. It’s still difficult to understand what the Agents of Chaos actually want from their war with the Church. Obviously, since they’re the “Bad Guys”, they’re up to no good, but there’s a distinct lack of depth to what they’re trying to achieve. They feel more like the villains of a Saturday morning cartoon, dedicated to nefarious deeds for the sake of being nefarious. Like Robbie Rotten, but more violent.

Chihiro’s having a hard time holding everything together at the Church, but can’t seem to express an emotion more interesting than “mild concern.” In fact, upon closer inspection, it seems that basically everyone’s facial expressions tend to rest on one distinctive look, without deviating to indicate such silly things like, you know, actual emotion. This is a problem because this episode should be focused on Isshin dealing with the loss of his friend, but its hard to have empathy for a guy who doesn’t seem to be rattled by anything. Even his “tragic backstory” can’t make me feel anything for him. Once again, over-dramatic sentimentality alienates me away from whatever weird story this show is trying to tell instead of bringing me closer to its characters.

As for the entertainment value of this episode, there isn’t much to see here. Most of the episode is exposition topped with some forced dialogue, not really accomplishing much in terms of plot. I’d say this feels like a filler episode, but most all the episodes of Lord of Vermillion feel like filler episodes, so its something of a moot point. There’s a little bit of a fight that goes on around the end of the story, resulting in a couple more deaths, but since there’s been so many in the past few episodes, they’re nothing much to write home about.

Once again, Lord of Vermillion can’t get its shoes on and stumbles around the room like its been pinching sips from the liquor cabinet.