English Dub Review: Lord of Vermillion: The Crimson King “You Don’t Know Who I Am Yet”

I sure as heck don’t.

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Chihiro, wounded by the giant monster that came out of Kotetsu’s dad, is overcome with some kind of blood magic that lashes out and kills the monster in one blow. Chihiro returns to his senses just in time to realize what he’s done, but is quickly subdued by the magic of the strange girl who has arrived to witness his abilities. The police soon arrive, but our protagonists don’t have much to say to them.

Later, Chihiro awakes and has breakfast with Kotesu and the girl, known as Eiko Morizono. She explains the transformation that Chihiro underwent, which was caused by the high-pitched noise which the mysterious man in the leather jacket unleashed upon Chihiro.

The two go to school with Eiko, where Chihiro runs into the doctor from the day before, who seems to know something about Eiko’s condition, relating to the name “Vassal of heroic blood.” At the cafeteria, Chihiro presses Eiko for answers on who she really is, but is interrupted by another chime coming from the mysterious leather jacket man and his assistant. Their chime can also cause people to turn into monsters, and Eiko pleads with Chihiro to “Give in to the heroic blood inside him,” which would allow him to fight the monsters. He’s reluctant, but Kotetsu takes up the fight with his own heroic blood and takes the monsters down.

Our Take:

The animation quality last episode was acceptable, but not amazing. Here, it seems to be on a downward trend. The blood powers should really be the main visual appeal of the show here, but they look surprisingly flat and stiff. This means that the fighting is flat and stiff since most of it revolves around the use of these blood-based abilities. It’s also frustrating that, after the build-up to the fight we had last week, Chihiro just ends the fight with the monster with a quick stab through the chest. No fight choreography, no turnabout, nothing.

The setting, explained in the first episode of the series, doesn’t seem to be particularly well developed. I don’t understand how an entire city cut off from the rest of the world can just…well, exist. There’s the police force, there’s infrastructure, somehow everything seems to be just fine except for the occasional monster and the gross red mist that’s ruining the view. A better show might take the time to get into the detail of how exactly the people survive and the associated tensions with that survival. It’s becoming clear that Lord of Vermilion is not that better show.

The tone of this show is weird, to say the least. It’s an odd blend of apocalypse and horror, mixed with the daily life of young people. (Can’t say for sure if they’re high schoolers or college students) I think the show might be trying to go for something akin to “Fate Stay Night”, where accessible, relatable characters are gifted with magical abilities. Given the first five minutes of the first episode, I think I might be right on the money with that. This is probably going to end with an enormous war between magical teenagers.

As for the story, I can’t say much yet except that Chihiro and Kotetsu are pretty generic anime protagonists. While Chihiro does show some emotion for killing the dojo master and expresses some actual distress for his actions, the show doesn’t really have the wherewithal to pull that kind of drama off. It comes off as cheesy, but not the fun kind of cheese that anime is known for.

The cast is starting to expand quite a bit, and I can see we’re going to have some trouble keeping the show’s focus. I’m already having a hard time keeping track of who everyone is and we aren’t even in the juicy bits yet.

Well, we’ll see how it works out.

I sure as heck don’t.