Baki is about a super powerful high school fighter named Baki Hanma (Hammer) who wants Baki to get back into underground fighting. Baki possesses a fantastic about a fighting ability and intuition, and many hardened criminals from around the world want to meet with him. His father too was a legend, thus others want to see if his son lives up to the Baki name. When Baki does eventually arrive at the ring, he meets the hardened criminals who have escaped from all over the world to come to Tokyo to fight him. Thus his battle begins...

The first reason why we gave this the chop is the story. There is little to no explanation as to how the criminals know that Baki is in Tokyo. They just are all magically drawn to it and head there. The art is terrible and gives that Isekai Blesser of Enjerhar anime a run for its money for worst animation this season. There is really no story either as you just watch hyper-violent fights with pointless dialogue as the criminals escape from their prisons one by one. Nothing really seems interesting about it, and overall, this feels like a poor man’s Megalo Box which was an excellent series from Spring 2018.

Iori Kitahara has just moved to live in his uncle’s surfing shop while he attends a nearby university. He opens the door to the shop and finds a bunch of drunk, muscular men in various states of undress. They are part of a diving club. They tend to drink a lot though and enjoy getting naked with each other. They coerce Iori and Kouhei, an otaku who also cannot swim just like Iori, into joining. This is their journey about learning how to swim and appreciating diving.

Grand Blue appeared to be a lot like Amanchu! on the surface, but unfortunately, the series is not. It’s a lot of dick jokes, which in and of themselves are funny, but grow stale after three episodes. There are lots of drinking jokes as well, but again, this is nothing to write home about after three episodes. There is one brief scene about diving in the third episode, but the show seems to be focusing more on getting plastered and getting naked, because that’s what people do when they drink? The story was not entertaining enough to keep going and that is why we dropped it.

In 2030, there is a great sonar reverberation that occurs and paralyzes Tokyo. Then, a red mist sets in and all humans lose consciousness. Six days later though, humans start to wake up. That’s when some humans awake to their new powers known as “Hero’s Blood”. This allows them to wield weapons and attack monsters that are starting to appear at an alarming rate. Then, Chihiro, our main character, is the last of the humans to wake up. Adjusting to this new life, secluded from the rest of the world, he starts to meet with a mysterious woman known as Yuuri. Things continue to get more complicated as he learns that the monsters were previously humans. Now, swayed by the blood and led by it, Chihiro must learn to use his power and stop those who would do society harm.

It is not that Lord of Vermilion is bad. It’s not at all. Rather, it’s just too much information at once. Rather than sipping from a spring, you are trying to drink from a fire hydrant of information. Playing the game we assume would be helpful, but there is just so much information crammed, especially in episode 3, that it’s impossible to retain it all. Combine that with a week wait for the next episode, and anyone would be lost. It feels a lot like To Aru Majutsu no Index, and truth be told, if it moved at the pace that To Aru did and had a two cours episode count, Lord of Vermilion could have easily been a success. Unlike Persona 5 which does a great job mitigating everything into the anime itself, Lord of Vermilion struggles with not only the 12 episode syndrome, but also what is relevant information and what is not. Sure, it tries to explain it all, but there is just too much to take in and that’s why we dropped it.