Review of Vermeil in Gold

Vermeil is a bad anime, and seeing how people like it I fear for other anime following it's example. Let me explain: on the surface vermeil is a decent (although generic) story about a wishy-washy protagonist summoning a lascivious, big booba demon to be his servant for life. It stands out from other shows of its ilk since the protagonist pretty much embraces the sexual advances of the demon, doesn't get a nosebleed every LUCKY SUKEBE scene, and doesn't engage his sexually promiscuous childhood friend who is also infatuated with him (because of course she is, he's the protagonist after all). The show is very generouswith the kiss scenes and implied nudity and sex, which is (bafflingly) quite rare for this kind of show as we all know.
Soundtrack isn't grating (though forgettable), and art is... it's made to look good on screenshots I think, because each scene looks quite nice and detailed, but something's off when it's all animated.

The problem is everything else. They make a big deal about protagonist's life goal, but he changes that every other episode. All characters in general are either a well-tried-and-liked, static cookie-cutter one (cue overly friendly and positive classmate, kuudere maid and tsundere childhood friend), or a dynamic, wishy-washy mess. The semen demon familiar turns from the playful, lived-eons-more-than-you, unfathomable entity into a retarded, blushing teenager in love in a matter of 3 or 4 episodes.
Villains are painfully sloppy, distorted-face, maniacally laughing retards that are relevant for maybe 3 minutes per episode. This is especially painful with one very popular and nice guy who is 10 minutes later unveiled as a maniacial villain that starts slugging it out with the main cast at the first occasion for interaction. Usually this is meant to evoke feeling of betrayal at 'oh no this kind person wants to hurt me..?' of the well estabilished character, but they do it with basically backgroud mob. All this gets out of me is "oh, ok".

The pacing in general is trash too. The fights go from [we're attacked from most unexpected place] to [a strong enemy appears, fight with power of friendship] to [all hope is lost] to [we'll win because I decided to accept myself/somebody for who we are and that's the most powerful power] to [wahaha, Team R might've lost, but we'll meet again in another castle, Link!] in a matter of MINUTES. About FIVE FUCKING MINUTES of this roller coaster, so before I start giving shit about what the situation has become it's already diametrically different.

And while we're talking about battles, they're VERY poorly done. If you decide to challenge making an anime about magic combat, at least put some effort in that. In this anime, I haven't seen any middle-ground, spells are either shattered on the smugly smirking opponent completely, not even fraying their clothing, or they devastate half the immediate vicinity (depending on how agitated and loud the protagonist was, basically), and they sound like laser rifles in 90' sci-fi movies as well. It's basically two starwars stormtroopers with different color laser rifles shooting at each other, but in shounen flavor.

I can understand why people who want to watch booby and kissy kissy but don't want to watch hentai because the Net Nanny their mom installed will tell on them when entering naughty sites would like this anime.
But the adequately executed art and soft smut aspect aside, this show has no redeeming qualities at all.