Lord of Vermilion: The Crimson King Episode 2: I'll Tell you Later, Unless You're Dead

Yep, it is another one of those shows that mistakes poor writing and characterisation for intrigue and we’re going to have character after character just leave sentences hanging or outright deny another an explanation in order to string the audience along. Does this ever work?

Picking up from last week we have Chihiro killing off the monster and then waking up to realise he has blood on his hands and his friend’s father (and I’m guessing his foster father) is dead. This kind of freaks him out but the spooky girl who has shown up is waiting for him to remember before she tells him anything. Doesn’t that seem kind of contradictory to you? And given that Chihiro is clearly being targeted it also seems really stupid. This is the kind of decision making that plagues these kinds of shows though and comparatively there are plenty of worse things out there, even while this remains fairly unimpressive.

By the end of the episode about all the audience has been told is that Chihiro belongs to some bloodline of heroes and apparently so does his friend and the guy in the blue jacket wearing sunglasses clearly wants them dead and has the ability to open gates and make other people turn into monsters. Why and how have yet to be explained or anything about why everyone fell asleep or what the red mist is. These are questions that the show presented in episode one but didn’t really feel the need to address yet.

However, by not addressing the basic questions of what is going on, this anime has left me with little reason to care about what is happening. So the bystanders can scream and clutch their heads in pain and terror right before transforming into monsters but I’ve not been given a reason to be overly concerned about whether that’s the end or not. Nor have they explained why Chihiro is so special that he was unconscious for so much longer or why some characters seem to know more about what is going on than others.

Still, it could be worse and it might get better. Maybe I’m just clutching at straws given Chihiro is shaping up to be the worst kind of protagonist. The one who insists he can’t fight because he doesn’t want to hurt people, even as everyone is already getting hurt. At least he isn’t also a shouter. That would be the final nail in the coffin of this one.

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