English Dub Review: Vermeil in Gold: “Selection”

Overview: Vermeil (Monica Rial) helps Alto (Mike Haimoto) prepare for his strenuous practical exam through a little bodily contact. 

Our Take: Alto joins the student council, reluctantly, in questioning their reasoning for doing so in merely doing so to keep his demonic familiar under close surveillance. Or more specifically, Elena’s reasoning in how, seemingly, tantalized she is by the challenge that Vermeil and Alto present. Elena’s unhinged thirst for blood sets her up as an unhinged and unsettling looming presence as well as an intriguing figure in pondering how lethal her intentions are. 

Most of the fan service portions have been confined to Vermeil, a few scenes with Lilia aside, and have been more or less the same in execution. The same goes for this episode in the standard procedure of Vermeil using her body to help prepare her young mage for the bronze square exam. After all, a little tongue wrestling is always the best medicine for a mana depleted familiar and heart. It can lose its luster in the wash, rinse and repeat-y nature of his continued  timidness and her assertion. However, Elena, Jessica and Chris’ inclusion is hot in their uniquely colored and frilly undies, making for a spicy change-up. It also helps add some more natural lightheartedness amongst the council in Jessica’s old fashioned ideals about nudity pre-marriage, not to their persistence for Alto to study to assure his success on his upcoming test. 

Before that, getting down to brass tax in the threat they faced, the paper remnant left by a platinum square is engaging in it being the first breadcrumb of newly created magic and uncharted territory as far as threats and rules go in the world. For the brief scenes in their scheming, they make for a threatening group in Iolite’s playful cruelty and their odd monster experiments with the Kohakumiya, the paper sorcerer who attacked Elena. With their next targets being Alto and Vermeil, hopefully their ambitions are more unique and engrossing than Obsidian’s cliché power lust. 

With Alto’s paths of fate laid before him by a mysterious woman, it fails to engross, initially, due to how black and white both choices are in pure destruction for Vermeil’s sake or salvation for the rest of the world. Hopefully, there can be more complexity and/or originality to how Alto chooses his own pathways later on. 

Ortigia’s prestigious and notable reputation establishes higher stakes in graver consequences in not being allowed to move up a grade, despite the school’s higher acceptance rate. The circumstances regarding Alto and the gang’s practical test makes for an decently interesting cliffhanger in gauging the true difficulty behind powering a small flame with mana with it also being proctored by a mage colonel.