Tokyo in 2030. In a suburban area, suddenly a high-frequency resonant sound is heard, and at the same time a red mist shrouds the area. Anyone who hears the sound, be it human or animal, loses consciousness. The government estimates that it might be an unidentified virus, and fearful of an epidemic, blockades Tokyo and moves its base to Osaka. However, six days after the incident, those who lost consciousness from the sound awaken for no apparent reason. Those blockaded in Tokyo slowly start to get the city functioning again, but after that day strange incidents start to occur at the blockade border. Those who have awakened a hidden blood power arise, are drawn to one another, and must face a cruel fate. – ANN
Streaming: Crunchyroll
Episodes: 12
Source: Game
Episode 1 Summary: Chihiro is a typical college student who lives with his adoptive family at their dojo. Though he’s a good swordsman, he has an aversion towards aiming for a killing blow, something his instructor (and adoptive father) warns him about repeatedly. Kotetsu, the instructor’s son as well as Chihiro’s friend and adoptive brother, dreams that the two of them will take over the dojo together someday. While they’re both on their way to university, a terrible noise rings out across the city. People begin to collapse in the street as the noise permeates the atmosphere.
Chihiro awakens in a hospital bed, where the doctor (and his moody nurse), inform him that he’s been comatose for the better part of five months. He’s in fact the last of the people affected by the incident to wake up. While he was asleep Chihiro dreamed of a void space filled with spinning architecture and a mysterious young woman with a parasol, but when the doctor asks him about his dream, he finds the images have begun to fade. Once Kotetsu retrieves him from the hospital, Chihiro begins to learn about the things that happened while he was asleep and how Tokyo is now isolated from the rest of the country by a mysterious red fog. When the two return to the dojo, they once again hear a terrible sound ring out – and discover a terrifying monster that has absorbed their father!
Impressions: The first five or so minutes of this episode (which I didn’t bother to try to summarize above) are drawn from what I suspect will be the climax of the anime series and are comprised of several character duos engaged in very angst-ridden conflicts with one-another as Tokyo’s destroyed landscape looms in the background. I’m not sure if it’s just my perception or if this is truly the case, but I feel as though this gimmick has been used a lot in anime lately and rarely to positive effect. I feel like the purpose of this storytelling technique is to build anticipation by revealing some tantalizing and spoiler-ific bits of future plot knowledge out of context, enticing the viewer to stick around to discover how and why things turned out that way. In reality, I usually find it to be disorienting, because such climactic moments are usually interpreted as such due to lead-up events and character development; when dumped on the viewer in the first moments of the story, they lose their effectiveness. While watching the show I just let myself zone-out until the intro was complete.
This, unfortunately, leaves little to talk about, as the rest of the episode is pretty much what one would expect from an anime based around a collectible card game (by which I mean it’s flashy and inscrutable, though likely more interesting to people who have played the game). The two characters properly introduced in this episode, Chihiro and Kotetsu, have the sort of brotherly relationship that often seems established only to create the opportunity for tension to blossom between them later. Because their relationship is essentially that of siblings, the situation seems ripe to eventually pit them against each-other on opposite sides of whatever apocalyptic conflict is going on in the episode’s opening scene. This is, however, just speculation on my part. There’s just something sort of strange and uncomfortable about how the two characters get along so well that seems somehow false and doomed to collapse.
Many of the things that happen to Chihiro throughout the episode seem established to confuse the viewer as the show searches for some elusive sense of intrigue that never really materializes. While Chihiro is in a coma, he sees a dream image of a young woman who recites some lines of Shakespeare and says other various bewildering things as he’s forced to sit back and take it all in. There are other references to Shakespeare throughout the episode, though they all seem, as I like to say, “pasted-on.” In the same way that other anime might take visual or textual inspiration from Western Christianity, various avant-garde art movements, or lesser-known literature in order to appear “cultured,” this series drops some lines from The Tempest, waves around a lot of strange imagery that attempts to seem “dream-like,” and zips off to something else before we really take note of it. There are some series that I’m willing to give a pass on things like this, because they otherwise feel substantial through their interesting characters or setting. This episode doesn’t do that job effectively and so it’s difficult for me to let it be strange for its own sake.
Confusion and unnecessary aspects aside, I think there are probably enough building blocks here for a competent, if forgettable action series. It’s not quite evident from the episode itself, but I learned through some of the research I did prior to watching the episode that the powers the characters use to fight one-another are based around use of their own blood, as well as whatever other inherent tendencies they might otherwise have. The idea isn’t entirely unique but it definitely raises some questions about the characters’ potential endurance, how injuries affect them, and what limiters there are on their powers. The unfortunate thing is that Chihiro first has a deadly encounter at the tail end of this episode and the point at which he first appears to awaken to his new abilities occurs about two seconds before the credits roll. I would rather have seen his fight with the ogre(?) resolve itself than endured the opening five minutes of power-posing, meaningless dialog, and overblown nonsense that contributed next-to-nothing to the episode. Unfortunately what I’m left with is unresolved tension for which I’ll likely never seek closure.
All-said, this opener definitely isn’t terrible; if I chose to watch it through to the end I highly doubt that I’d be able to rank it as one of the worst things I’d ever powered-through (talk about damning with faint praise!). I think being a long-time anime fan who’s now left with significantly less time to indulge in the hobby leads one to forget that there were plenty of times where “good enough” really was enough. But I’m no longer 19 and and now only have time to spend with things that I love, and Lord of Vermilion unfortunately didn’t really manage to keep my attention.
Pros: The “blood as weaponry” angle seemed like it could be interesting, if given some exploration.
Cons: The episode isn’t constructed well and leads with a lot of confusing events. It uses random Shakespeare to seem highbrow.
Grade: C-