Lord of Vermilion: Guren no Ou

This is a review of the anime only. I have not read the manga. I marathoned this in almost one sitting. It had a lot of potential that it never lived up to, and in the end, was extremely disappointing. As other reviewers have mentioned, this should have been done in more than twelve episodes. I have not read the manga so this review is of the anime only having no other information than what was presented in the anime. What I liked about it: 1. It had an all-star cast of seiyuus. 2. The character art was well done. 3. The story had aton of potential. 4. There was a lot of action. What I disliked about it: 1. It moved too quickly from the mid-point on. It was clear that a lot of important information was being left out for the sake of saving time. 2. There were too many cast members to go into depth with any of them in such a short amount of time. I didn’t get attached to anyone and it’s rare for me to not get attached to at least one character. 3. The ending didn’t resolve anything. All the questions were left unanswered and there’s no promise of a sequel. It made it feel like a giant waste of time. STORY: The story had great potential but was never fully developed. Motives were never explained. People became attached to one another with no explanation as to why. Characters made choices that were never fully explained. Every episode brought new questions but never answered any and the ending didn’t either. (It could be argued that some of the questions were answered but since those “answers” were just insuations and speculation, I don’t feel that they were answered. I want evidence.) CHARACTERS: The characters could have been amazing, but they weren’t. There were too many in too short of a time span with nowhere near enough development for me to grow to care about any of them. The most interesting character to me was the tattooed hoodie guy and I never found out a thing about him! That drove me crazy and not in a good way. ART: I liked the character designs. They were nothing special but they were pretty. Some of the blood armor, or whatever it was supposed to be, looked pretty awesome, Kark’s in particular, but most were just abstract and odd. I felt that could have been done better. Some of the monsters had really great detail but some were just awful. The female detective's gun holster looking like a bra was so stupid it was distracting. MUSIC: I didn’t like either the OP or ED and skipped through them every time. The music during the anime itself didn’t strike me either good or bad. I don’t remember it all. Overall, I don’t recommend this anime. It’s really great for the first several episodes but then it gets confusing and the ending not answering any questions at all just made it feel like a waste of time. I'm honestly surprised at how poor this was given the caliber of the seiyuus and the high-end production companies. I'm not sure what went wrong but it sure went wrong.

To sum Lord of Vermillion up it would be: A rushed mess of a series with so many unnecessary, undeveloped characters and unexplained plot points. The show was trying to be more complex for its own good and the pacing was too sporadic that it missed out important details that could have made this a solid show. Story: 5/10 The red mist has suddenly covered Tokyo. We have several factions, but the main two are the church and the Science Research lab. The church’s goal is to destroy Tokyo in order to save the rest of the world and usher in a “new world”, a utopia paradise ledby the LoV. The Science research lab reject this philosophy so they started the great collapse (the red mist, earthquakes and monsters appearing). They use humans, turning them into monsters in order to kill all the hero candidates so they don’t create their “new world”. I like this concept where both factions are presented as morally grey. There’s no good Vs evil here, just two groups trying to fight for their ideals in order to save the world using different methods. Characters: 3/10 Our main protagonist is Chihiro- a whiny, emo teen who’s a hero candidate and a potential Lord of Vermillion. Most episodes we see him fighting or questioning himself, other times it’s screaming people’s names and just standing there while they’re fighting which becomes annoying, e.g. Yuri and Cedrid start fighting in the garden, instead of going heroic mode to stop them he stands their screaming “Cedrid!”... Koetsu is Chihiro’s best friend who pretty much fades into the background after the first 3 episodes to focus more on Yuri. Yuri is our female lead in the opposing faction that’s being used by her evil scientist father and has some apparent romance with Chihiro. I don’t care for Chihiro or Yuri’s relationship. It’s poorly developed and just amounts to them having a couple of tea conversations in a garden, so their love for each other seems forced. We see a quick montage of them playing together in the orphanage, but not enough for me to be invested in their characters. Then there’s detective Kakihara. His fixation in wanting to prove Chihiro killed his own father is annoying and his reasoning being stemmed from his suicidal parents that he thought ‘abandoned’ him, doesn’t justify the years of harassment towards Chihiro. Suffice is to say, the characters aren’t this this shows strong point. I’m not going to bother going through all the characters because most are either one dimensional, irrelevant and useless to the story or die off before developing enough for me to bother remembering their names. Animation: 4/10 The animation is subpar at best. There’s no bad CGI so I guess that’s good. Sounds: 3/10 The opening visuals look interesting. Too bad the opening and osts are bland and forgettable SPOILERS: Chihiro saved the world by becoming the Lord of Vermillion and changing the world line. How did Chihiro become the LoV? It was stated all the hero candidates had to die, yet Chihiro had a nakama moment saying he’ll save everyone and boom nakama powerup to LoV. The scientist could have been a compelling villain, but instead he turned into a obsessive, delusional mad scientist hellbent on being with Mitsuki. We don’t even see his and Mitsuki’s relationship, so his motive was underwhelming. The artificial daughter of Mitsuki and the scientist came into the plot out of nowhere in the last 2-3 episides so i don’t care about her. There was no hints of Koume (our scientist assistant) being a ‘defected’ version to the artificial Mitsuki. Again, we do not see their relationship growing up in the orphanage, so her inferiority complex towards towards her is underdeveloped and shallow. The guardian of the states are useless, one dimensional characters I don’t give a shit about because they do nothing except antagonise our protagonists who are trying to help. The hooded guy seems to be the final villain, but he did fuck all except give evil laughs in the corner the whole season. I don’t like the open ending because I’d rather they let this show to be forgotten.

Story: 4/10 The story started out very promising. You start off with an action packed fight scene, showing a previous "play," where you then go to the current play. You start to look out for the important characters, but from there it really just goes down hill. The story felt like it was all over the place, where you would end one episode and suddenly you were at a totally different scene. *Spoiler* One of the episodes ended with a fight scene at the school, and then the next episode it started up with the team, with members you "technically" didn't know were part of thechurch, destroying these historical sites. *End Spoiler* Scenes like this really created a disjointed scene making it overly confusing as to what had happened in between scene jumps. The story itself also seemed lacking in substance. It kept talking about how the past was the end all be all. Your fate can't be changed, but we never understood what the previous fate really was. We saw one whole scene, and all other previous fates weren't even mentioned until the last 2 episodes. The only interesting thing about this anime was the morally ambiguous sides. This anime, unlike others, didn't present a good or bad side. They presented teams that had their own reasoning behind their actions. This allowed you to choose a side where as most anime predetermine your "favorite" team. Art: 5/10 There is nothing really spectacular or notable about the artwork. Very average, but not terrible. Sound: 5/10 Similarly to art, there was nothing truly awesome or notable about the sound. I did find that in the dub, the characters voices didn't really suit some of their characters. I felt like there could have been better choices. Character: 4/10 There is very little character development. Chihiro got the most development and even that, for almost 10 episodes straight, they hinted at the same thing over and over. If they hadn't kicked the poor dead horse so many times, it would have been an earned reveal. It even lead Kakihara, to being a babbling nuisance. He kept harping on Chihiro, blaming him for everything and it was to the point that this interesting character, became annoying and you kind of wanted him to die. As for the others, they got little or no growth. We don't get to explore their powers, we only explored Chihiro. Most of the characters just appeared with no explanation as to who they were or what they could do. We just knew that they were 10xs weaker than Chihiro and would probably just be killed out. Enjoyment: 4/10 I did enjoy exploring this anime. I kept looking forward to new episodes to see if there was anything really redeeming about it, but there wasn't. I honestly thought this anime would turn out to just reset time and un-screw everything up. I did truly enjoy figuring out who to side for since both sides had their faults, but other than that, nothing really stood out. Overall: 5/10 It was just a poor anime. The story could have had so much potential, but assuming do to little budget, there anime's run was short. It felt like to fit the entire plot in 12 measly episodes, they had to rush the plot along. Leaving a lot of things disjointed and not enough to time to explain anything or even provide character development. There was just so much to digest in this anime, that this series is not suited for a 12 episode season. Recommendation: I still recommend watching this anime, see what you think. It was still a fun few hours of my life, but I definitely would not go back and re-watch this.

For a quick review of this anime: Don't watch it. The story may seem even a tad bit interesting at first but it hardly takes any time to realize that it is horrible. The characters are very dull with many character cliches, deus ex machina moments, and overall bad writing. The animation/art definitely isn't the worst out there, but it definitely isn't very good. They outline the backstory of each character poorly and don't give us any backstory at all for other characters. The only reason I watched this really is because I was around 4 episodes in and wanted to finish it for completionistsake, otherwise would have dropped it.

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