Chaos Dragon

Episode 11

In the penultimate episode of Chaos Dragon, we finally learn the rebellion army's true plan for restoring Nil Kamui to its former glory, as plotted out by the group's longtime imprisoned leader, Agito. He's been in this show from the beginning, but I've never mentioned him before because this show has too many damn characters and you can never tell who's supposed to be important and who isn't. (The truth is that none of the characters matter because this show is hot toasted garbage held together with silly string, but that will become much more obvious in the next paragraph.)

In the beginning, Agito killed the king and queen, burned down the royal manor of Nil Kamui, and blamed it all on the Kouran invasion. Like father like son, the king was going to back down peacefully and let Kouran and D'Natia divvy up his country, and Agito couldn't stand for it, so he destroyed the monarchy to build it anew with Ibuki, sending him away as if he didn't matter and using a raving mad Inori to get rid of D'Natia in the interim. That means the peace party was a red herring for Inori who was a red herring for the peace party. Inori was never a candidate for the throne because, you know, she's full-blown bananas, and Agito apparently knew that all along too! The Red Dragon is actually insane because he made a contract with Inori first, and when she went insane, so did he. The gods of Chaos Dragon apparently have very fragile psyches. Why doesn't the Black Dragon have the same personality as Sweallow then? Heck, why didn't Ibuki's saneness cancel Inori's madness out, since both of their contracts and birthrights are equally valid? The reason for Inori's madness is equally stupid: some nameless Nil Kamui villagers decided to murder/rape her for inadequately explored reasons, pushing her over the brink into cackling super-villain. (I don't care how scary Kouran's forces are, that is absolutely no excuse to start mob-groping your potential future queen who carries the power of a dragon inside her.) Wait a minute, didn't the Red Dragon predict his madness hundreds of years prior to this? So why bother making a contract with Inori in the first place if he knew that was going to be the result? In fact, why tell Ka Grava to meet him at the volcano if that location had nothing to do with his eventual madness, and why draw that plotline out for so many episodes if it's completely superfluous to the grand finale?! Was it just so they could fetch his claw from the volcano and use it to kill him, because that seems like a way-too-complicated solution--okay. Okay. I have to let this go or else I'm going to end up full-blown bananas too.

So Agito found Inori in this state, and while he never intended to put her on the throne permanently, her madness was useful for getting D'Natia out of the picture. Now he figures Ibuki's ultimate killing powers can get rid of her and Kouran in one fell swoop! There's just one problem. Ibuki's killing powers don't work anymore because Inori has always been in control of the Red Dragon and this newly revealed betrayal doesn't make her feel like sharing him. Now that the siblings aren't simpatico anymore, she's decided Ibuki doesn't get to talk to her pet god from now on, leaving him powerless. Whoops. And so, with his incredibly convoluted and nonsensical plan fully explained, Agito gets squashed by falling rocks in the wake of Inori's/Red Dragon's wrath. Also, Fugaku gets death by falling rocks too. (Remember him? No? He was Ibuki's other other other childhood friend/rebellion army member.)

I don't even know where to begin.

Why don't we begin with Eykha's sad fate from the previous episode instead? Last time, Eykha's bounded demon began to weaken and die because the Red Dragon's magic had drained so completely from the land. Since her fate is tied to her demon partner, Eykha's time was drawing short as well, so she begged Ibuki to kill her for his glory. Inori calls her on this martyr complex and twists the knife by saying that Ibuki couldn't even use her as a sacrifice because she means so little to him. Ibuki, in his infinite wisdom, agrees that he could never sacrifice Eykha, but does not add the extremely important caveat that it's because he loves her too much to hurt her, not too little. I cannot think of a single reason for him to do this. Inori has already made it abundantly clear that she'll do anything for her onii-sama, so if Ibuki says "don't harm Eykha," "don't talk to Eykha," or any number of other commands that would put some distance between the two without giving Eykha the impression that he feels so little for her that she could die in the dirt right there and it wouldn't matter--RRGH! I can't believe I'm saying this, but Eykha deserves better than this show, and she's both literally and figuratively a two-dimensional character, so I'm not sure the standard can sink any lower.

Just when you think it can't get any worse, Ibuki tells Eykha to go back to Ka Grava by herself, ignoring the fact that she is rapidly dying from her wounded demon partner's magic deprivation, and sure enough, this episode finds her gasping out her last breaths alone on top of her dog-monster. OUR HERO! Fortunately, Lou stops by to show Eykha some uncharacteristic kindness, dropping the remains of the Kouran McGuffin into her stomach, which will power her partner with Kouran magic just enough for them to survive a few days longer. Rather than using this second chance to re-examine her sense of self-worth, Eykha mounts her canine companion and races off to sacrifice herself at the altar of Ibuki's kingship. I guess these potato-heads deserve each other.

Before Eykha can meet back up with Ibuki to brute-force him into kingship at the cost of her own infinitely more valuable life, we have to play catch-up with Sweallow, Lou, and Ka Grava. Grandpa Golem's role in all this is pretty simple. He has his hands full trying to quell the international incident sparked by Lou murdering Ulrika and her crew last episode. (Oh yeah, I guess that would be a pretty big deal, good thing we don't really have the screentime to develop it, so let's just cram that conflict in here!) On the one hand, their peace party had already disbanded, so there's no real breach of contract in Lou's betrayal of D'Natia. On the other hand, Kouran and D'Natia don't really need an excuse to start tearing at each other's throats again. D'Natia has realized that they have no power foothold in the new Nil Kamui monarchy after all, and Kouran is a bloodthirsty pack of conquerors. Byakuei, to his credit, tries to absolve Kouran of Lou's actions and disavow her completely, but this only makes the tension worse, and I guess that's what Ka Grava gets to deal with in the epilogue, while Lou and Sweallow roll around in needless angst for the last two episodes.

After all, with D'Natia's attempts at princess-puppetry out of the picture, it's time for Kouran to plow their way back into the spotlight, so the country's immortal empress arrives in Nil Kamui to make Sweallow an offer he can't refuse. I've mentioned in the past that Kouran's McGuffin artifact is yellow, which would imply that they have a yellow dragon, even though this creature is never mentioned. This week, we finally learn the reason why. Nation of imperialist warmongers that they are, Kouran killed their god and took his dragon-powers centuries ago, resulting in the creation of an immortal (and forever child-bodied because of course) empress who bequeaths her power and authority to a series of male emperors through the generations. This contrast between a cold-blooded nation of god-conquerors and two more kindly nations who live in constant fear of their deities might have been really interesting if the show hadn't decided to dump this information on us right at the end, but hey, that's Chaos Dragon in a nutshell: it could be good and interesting, but it never really is. The bottom line is that Kouran's empress thinks she can persuade Sweallow not to kill the Red Dragon by offering immortal vitality to his beloved maid. (If Sweallow kills the Red Dragon, the Black Dragon will take over, which would be bad for Kouran.) This conflict is immediately swept under the rug by Sweallow flat-out rejecting and then threatening the empress, because he accepted long ago that all things he possesses must break. (Tiny violins...)

I mentioned in the last review that parallels between the tabletop players and their avatars have been made all but irrelevant by this anime adaptation, but I may have to go back on my word just a little bit for Sweallow this week. Following his rejection of the Kouran empress, Sweallow's showdown with Lou is one of the most absurdly perfect microcosms for Nasu's character writing that I may ever see. (It's also just a good bit of unintentional comedy on its own.) Sweallow doesn't know that Ulrika's been killed, so in an effort to distract him and land a killing blow, Lou tosses Ulrika's severed head at Sweallow's face. As her blonde cranium spins through the air, Sweallow blazes past it without missing a beat. He thinks only "so Ulrika died..." and continues fighting. His maid then gently smiles and explains that Sweallow has learned to adapt to his curse by instantly accepting when things "break" and not wasting any time by mourning their loss. To spell that out in more abstract terms: a female character's horrific misfortune is used as a literal object to illustrate the hero's badass-yet-tragic emotional dysfunction, which is immediately praised as a noble if not downright sexy non-flaw by his love interest in a pretentious monologue. It's like an entire Type-Moon visual novel packed into a few short seconds! (Opinions on Nasu's work wildly differ, and if you feel differently about his writing, that's totally fine. I can only speak for myself. I'm not a fan.) Putting all that accidental subtext aside, this scene was totally meant to make Sweallow more sympathetic, and I think it had the opposite effect. "Sweallow is so awesome that he no longer feels a compulsion to grieve his loved ones! Isn't that cool?"

So there's less than five minutes left in the episode, and here I am just positive that it can't get any more terrible, when Inori casually drops the incest-bomb in the middle of an already catastrophic warzone. (The implication of brother-lust was always there under the surface, but nope, not good enough, better make it revoltingly explicit for our lucky audience!) Inori assures her brother that they can both be king, because the king can do whatever he wants, and that includes sibling-schtupping. They can be one on the throne and in bed and ughlbhglhblhghl--anyway! Eykha shows up in the eleventh hour to save Ibuki from incest-by-fire, he confesses his love to her at the most inconvenient time ever, everyone gathers to put the smackdown on Inori (or just watch), and the credits mercifully start rolling. So much happened in this episode, and somehow all of it was awful.

Chaos Dragon is a bad show, but it's our bad show at this point, so let's see this through to the end in next week's finale.

Rating: D-

Chaos Dragon is currently streaming on Funimation.

Hope has been an anime fan since childhood, and likes to chat about cartoons, pop culture, and visual novel dev on Twitter.