Review of Vermeil in Gold

A tale of a young prodigious magician who has difficulty summoning a familiar until he has a chance encounter with a book in the library. This is a mixture of drama, action, romance, and intrigue, and it is a completely unremarkable concoction in its totality. The cast is comprised of shallow supporting characters that fulfill the most miniscule of roles in that they only ever appear on-screen to induce shenanigans or to invite adversity into the story. The villain(s) are evil for the purpose of being evil. The main character is special and has a unique power because that is how it is. The major supportingcharacter is mighty and can only be summoned by the main character because that is also how it is. There is little expounding on the subject of magic in this series. It is a mystery as to how any of it works, with the bare minimum of exposition given (and delivered in a stilted manner as though explaining arithmetic to a grade schooler), and this exposition is given sparingly, usually at the intervals to explain why the main character is so much better than everyone else.

The writing is rudimentary with no intention of showcasing any elaborate schemes or interesting ideas. Many of the lines delivered by the cast are cliche and trope-like. There is perhaps some magnitude of intimacy between the main character and Vermeil, but this is so often crushed by the classic trope of the main character being illiterate in matters of intimacy. The plot overall is nonexistent--generously, there is precisely 1 long-term main character goal, and several short-term goals. The narrative strings together what it can from each episode, but there are no long-term ramifications or correlations from or to the beginning to the end of the show. A lot of what is shown is shown simply for the sake of having something on television for a 24~ minute runtime.

The animation is underwhelming. It is abundantly clear between the obnoxious flame effects, the ugly static overlays used throughout the entire season, and the recycled cuts of running and walking in-place on backgrounds that the budget was tight for this production. How tight exactly one could only possibly guess at, as it is not as though any large sum of money was spent on the writing, but it should be safe to assume frugality was involved.

At the end of the day this is an ecchi anime. It is also a PG-13 one and so it is ever the double-edged sword, handicapping all of its expectations before it even shows you anything--not that you are actually shown anything of sexual substance in the first place. One almost wonders what the point of it all is. The lackluster execution of virtually all categories of production involved with Vermeil invite the viewer to question why there is not a single outstanding quality present in the anime, as surely where quality was compromised in one area it may have been recouped in another, but this is no such case.

Mediocrity. There are better shows with sexual themes and there are better magical fantasies. On this basis, I do not recommend this show--nothing about it is done well.