English Dub Review: Vermeil in Gold: “Rampage”

 

Overview: When Rex (Brandon Hearnsberger) goes berserk against Chris (Olivia Swasey), Vermeil (Monica Rial) takes it upon herself to have a discussion with the perpetrator of the recent student attacks, leading to an unfortunate mistake.

Our Take: Chris gets a taste of her own medicine in being assaulted by a hypnotized Chris. Her cruel, dominating persona as a gold square, especially towards Rex, makes it difficult to feel any attachment for her and her beatdown almost deserved. The story attempts to remedy that with their past friendship which is sweet in how she is the only one who appreciates his dragon familiar, but with how much of a contradiction it is, it only goes so far. If this was explained through her role as leader of the dragon riders, it could be a compelling development to their changing friendship, so hopefully that, or an equally complex reasoning can transpire once the threat is behind us.

Even with her deserved comeuppance, Rex was still going too far in his brutality, giving the president of the student council the time to shine. She definitely has power but sadly isn’t given the visual presentation to back it up with lackluster 

Most of the gold squares, so far, seem to be a bland group with their superiority being the only notable trait. One that is single-minded and generic at this point as far as characters/potential adversaries go. With any luck, there is still more to them beyond that one monotonous aspect. 

Vermeil recognizes the magic used on Rex and confronts the culprit we knew it was all along: Obsidian. This all just leads to one ridiculously asinine choice after another from her in not only letting her guard down when threatening him, were he to go after Alto, but also separating from her young mage. This gives him the easy opportunity to inject her with his drug, giving her a power boost and putting her under his suggestion, seemingly. All of this sets up Alto coming to save his possessed demonic girlfriend that will hopefully be more fully fleshed out and emotional then what we got here.