English Dub Review: Lord of Vermillion: The Crimson King “My Soul Calls My Name”

Go home, Lord of Vermillion, you’re drunk.

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Chaos is setting up a concert at a new theater Grumman has built for Kark to sing it, so he can use his singing magic for nefarious purposes. Chihiro, meanwhile, has taken the recent deaths of his friends to heart and is more determined than ever to fight Chaos and save the world. This is good because they have a new mission given to them by Dux, to destroy the machines Chaos is using to protect the artificial keystone. Chaos and its forces seek to defend their barrier machines so they can cause another Great Collapse, but they’re having some internal strife with Jun being pissed at Yuri and everyone generally being unpleasant to each other.

For some reason, Haru from Chaos gives the Church forces a flier for the concert, from which they surmise Chaos’s plan to use the concert as a way to turn a bunch of people into monsters which they can use to stop the Church from interfering. That night, Chihiro has another strange dream with Dux, who says this is the first time Chihiro has ever wanted to kill someone.

The night of the concert comes, and the Church’s forces attack the concert venue, but Kark uses monsters to fend them off while he performs. Chihiro manages to sneak into the theater through the roof using an illusion, but Jun tries to stop him and enact his vengeance. The other Church warriors arrive just in time for Kark to turn the entire audience into an enormous monster.

Chihiro taps into his inner power and uses it to defeat Jun, prompting his allies to wonder if he’s the “Lord of Vermillion.” Chihiro is about to finish the battle, but Kark betrays Jun at the last minute and stabs him in the back with his scythe. Haru protests, but then Kark kills him and Akira as well. This only fuels Chihiro’s anger, who taps into his Lord of Vermillion powers once more to fight Kark and his giant monster dragon, Ahura Mazda. Despite Kark’s cunning, Chihiro destroys Ahura Mazda, but Kark escapes before Chihiro can finish the job.

Our Take:

The body count just keeps rising higher and higher here on Lord of Vermillion: The Crimson King. Seems we can’t go a single episode without losing a cast member or two, or three, in this episode’s case. Thankfully, that’s not a really big deal since these characters are so underdeveloped one hardly notices that they’re gone. Just another week for the show that no one watches and continues to get worse and worse with each new episode.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen an anime take itself so seriously, and certainly not one this oblivious to the ridiculousness of its own subject matter. Lord of Vermillion proves itself this week to be the kind of show that makes people embarrassed to say they watch anime. We hit all the major “bad anime sins” with this episode. Cheesy, poorly written dialogue, an edgy, grimdark villain, and ugly, choppy animation. All of that served up with an almost incomprehensible plot that serves as a cherry on top to complete the bad anime sundae this show seems to strive to be. I continue to be amazed at the depths of failure that this show manages to achieve.

There’s supposed to be (As per usual) deep dramatic strength here. The fight between Chihiro and Kark is supposed to mark his evolution from being a boy to a true warrior, but that moment couldn’t be more hackneyed. Chihiro’s leaps in strength seemed to be tied to nothing more than his emotional state, making his power growth feel like it comes from nowhere. Not to mention, it seems his character is only capable of repeating the same line over and over again. If I have to hear Chihiro make one more declaration about how he’s “never giving up”, or some variation of that platitude, my ears might bleed.

Lord of Vermillion is nothing more than a bloody mess this week, and its a testament to its poor storytelling that its characters are so expendable. It’s becoming pretty clear that this series is just trying to score cheap “drama” points by having a cast so big it can afford to throw anyone it wants under the bus that it wants to. All this does is make the viewer jaded, however, and teach the audience not to care about anyone in particular, since they probably won’t be around too long. With any luck, this show won’t be around for too much longer either.