Review of Vermeil in Gold

tl;dr: Some good but generic concepts, but overall pretty shoddily put together. The anime is about Alto Goldfilled, a student at Ortigia Academy of Magic, and his familiar Vermeil, a high class demon. Though demons are generally feared and shunned by humanity, Alto can't help but have a positive impression of Vermeil, and Vermeil too becomes quite fond of her master. As they spend more time with and learns more about each other, they grow even closer. However, that doesn't change the fact that Vermeil is a demon and all the risks associated with that are still present. The core of this anime is the relationship betweenAlto and Vermeil. Due to Vermeil being a demon, she needs a lot of mana from her master, and the best way for him to give it to her is through kissing. So from the start of the anime their is quite a lot of physical intimacy between the two, though they're technically not in a relationship. Alto just demurely takes it and Vermeil has fun essentially playing with Alto. As the anime progresses they establish that they love each other. And after that point in their physical interactions Alto grows to be less meek while Vermeil starts taking them more seriously, which is pretty decent relationship development. However, the broader relationship development and their relationship afterwards isn't written very well.

Alto and Vermeil simply don't have very good chemistry. The onee/shota kissing and fluff is handled in a pretty amusing fashion, but anything with depth left a lot to be desired. The transition from master/familiar to lovers just sort of happens without any proper build up. And once they enter a relationship, every major serious relationship beat afterwards is just repeats of that: Vermeil feeling guilty about something but happy that Alto loves her despite that, and Alto emphasizing that he loves her despite all her issues and vowing to become stronger in order to protect her. These concepts aren't all that original so it quickly starts feeling repetitive. And as that's what a lot of the anime is centered around including the ending, it's just not all that satisfying to watch.

Alto and Vermeil aren't all that great as characters at an individual level either. Alto feels very inconsistent. He's pretty passive most of the time, but randomly gets hotheaded. Him getting passionate over Vermeil is fine, but he also does over things it feels really bizarre for him to. He also starts the anime off with the goal of becoming a Platinum Square, the highest rank of mages. It makes sense for him to want to be strong once he wants to protect Vermeil. But to have such a goal beforehand feels pretty out of character for him. He doesn't seem like the type to be ambitious for ambitions sake. Maybe there's an explanation in his past somewhere, but the anime provides essentially zero background on him whatsoever. As it's really hard to get a good read on his personality or motivations it's hard to get all that invested in him.

Vermeil is fleshed out better than Alto, though her character is pretty generic. She's lost control of her powers before which has led to the deaths of many so she feels a lot of guilt as well as fear towards losing control again. Unlike Alto, her background is shown in detail, and it makes it much easier to sympathize with her and get invested. Still, overall she's just not all that likable of a character. There are a bunch of tropes that she's meant to embody, but they're pretty subdued, so her personality just isn't strong enough and most of the time she just seems kind of boring. In contrast there's another character, Lilia, who's also a set of tropes, but they have a much stronger presence and she comes out much more interesting and likable despite being a side heroine essentially. Everyone outside of that is pretty shallow and generic and not particularly worth mentioning.

The world building in this anime also felt incredibly lacking. The anime provides very little explanation on anything. For example it brings up different colors of mana, mainly gold and silver, but gives zero indication of what the significance of them is. It mentions a mythic item and we're supposed to be amazed that Alto and Vermeil overcame it. But the word "mythic" literally isn't used until the line where someone is impressed that Alto and Vermeil overcame a mythic item, so there is zero frame of reference on how amazing this is. There's an overarching plot with a bunch of mysterious plot threads and involving a lot of characters, but it isn't clear at all how everything relates or where it's going and progress overall is really slow.

There's a lot of things that if an explanation was provided for may make sense, but in the absence of an explanation feel really bizarre. For example, apparently no one has ever seen a human familiar before but Alto can claim that Vermeil is a human familiar without anyone trying to question it. No one tries to figure out who Vermeil is or where she came from either. Also, it kind of seems like mages can only cast a single combat spell because as far as I can remember not a single mage used more than one. Alto for example can summon and manipulate crystal growths. This really isn't all that fun of a power to watch, so the combat in this anime gets really dull.

The art and animation are okay. The designs are decent enough but not good enough to hold up the anime. There's a lot of ecchi in terms of quantity, but most all of it is really lite and it's somewhat repetitive so it's kind of boring. The OP has pretty solid visuals and the song is mostly fine though how it begins is straight up grating. The ED is okay in both regards. The soundtrack was not particularly remarkable.