Chaos Dragon

Episode 12

Even after everything we'd already been through, I was not expecting Chaos Dragon's last episode to be this bad. I honestly wasn't.

I was expecting this show to just sort of wrap itself up gracelessly and shuffle off into the night. I didn't think it had the capacity or even the energy to go more supernova when it had only one episode left to work with. And yet, against all odds, Chaos Dragon blew me away with its power to suck. With so much at stake for its world-shattering last battle, this finale added just enough juice to its tank to disappoint me one last time. It's the most infuriating episode of the whole series, flipping double-birds high as it fires itself out of a cannon and into the sun. So here at the end of the road, who can really take responsibility for this dumpster-fire?

Well, I said at the beginning of these reviews that the original Red Dragon campaign's DM, Makoto Sanda, did not have much of a voice in this story, so I wouldn't be talking about him like I would the other writers playing the game. After some more research and side-by-side comparisons, I discovered that I couldn't have been more wrong about that. The tabletop campaign played by these creators was so wildly different from this anime that they become almost incomparable over time. The light novel adaptation is actually what this anime is based on, and from what I can tell, it is pretty faithful to that version. These light novels not only radically rewrite the campaign into the storyline reflected by the anime, they were also written by Makoto Sanda and apparently reflect his actual vision for the story without the chaos that sprung from dudes playing a game together. (That doesn't mean the campaign itself would make for a better story. It probably wouldn't. But if you're going to change everything that much anyway, it should have resulted in something competent. It didn't.)

This also explains why I was having so much difficulty seeing any of Shō Aikawa's voice in the material either. I haven't had any reason to discuss him since the initial writeup because I'm not sure his perspective is in any tiny part of this. (This isn't a judgment on his writing skill positive or negative; I don't always think highly of what Aikawa writes, but at least I can recognize his point of view, and it's not in Chaos Dragon.) This anime is predominantly Makoto Sanda's story, complete with how he saw his friends' characters specifically. That would be a really interesting angle for analysis if Makoto Sanda hadn't proved himself an interminable hack through not only this show overall, but especially its awful conclusion. I haven't seen his prior work, Rental Magica, but I wouldn't be remotely surprised if it sucks too. So Makoto Sanda is officially on my naughty list. Greenhorn director Masato Matsune can join him for the truly disastrous production values that failed to elevate Sanda's ghastly writing. I'll let SILVER LINK, Aikawa, and of course Nasu, Boochi, and Narita off the hook and give them the benefit of the doubt.

Anyway, to talk about the bad things that happen in episode 12, I must first outline the good things that didn't happen. I think the only way Chaos Dragon could have ended with any emotional resonance would be by letting Eykha live. Given everything that's happened up to this point, Ibuki should sacrifice either Inori or himself to the Red Dragon, in exchange for the permanent death of either Inori or the Red Dragon himself. I don't care if this breaks the rules in some minor way, because this show has broken its own dumb rules plenty of times before, and I'm sure they could write around it somehow. They've already firmly established that these gods can be killed and that Ibuki's contract-sacrifice can kill the otherwise immortal. Any number of combinations in this three-target sacrifice could feasibly result in catharsis for the national conflict.

1. The obvious solution: Ibuki sacrifices Inori to kill the Red Dragon. Nil Kamui loses its patron deity and Ibuki is stripped of everything that made him special, freeing him to abandon the nation to its invaders (who he has become sympathetic to anyway) and returning him to his roots as a simple pacifist who longs for a simple life. Eykha is healed in some fashion, finally learns to value herself, and they become a couple.
2. It's less of a crowd-pleaser (if you liked Ibuki I guess), but Ibuki could also sacrifice his own life as penance for all the lives lost in the war, taking out the Red Dragon as payment and somehow magically curing Inori of their shared madness in the process. This could be painted as a grand gesture of forgiveness, and Inori and Eykha could pine after Ibuki's sexy martyrdom together in that anime-girl way, while accepting that Nil Kamui's sovereignty has ended and that's kinda okay.
3. Heck, Ibuki could also sacrifice Inori to kill himself or vice versa, restoring the Red Dragon to sanity and allowing him to determine how he wants his island to be ruled based on the fallout from the whole catastrophe, probably with the help of Ka Grava. It's more emotionally unsatisfying and cynical than the above options, but I could see it working with the right execution.

None of these possibilities guarantees a decent ending, because execution is everything, but all of them would be preferable to what actually happens: more mean-spirited, faux-tragic sacrifices that mean nothing and force us to endure more of Ibuki's unearned angst.

Eykha has to live for her long journey of self-denial to mean anything at all, so of course Chaos Dragon ends by killing her for Ibuki's glory after all. Sure, he waxes philosophical about his long bloody journey not being fair and that he'll "protect" Eykha even if she never forgives him for it. (Gee, how thoughtful of you to impose that wish on her at the cost of her own life, oh wait, this show thinks it's romantic. Barf.) So Ibuki kills his lady-love to kill his crazy sister, and I guess we're meant to feel good about this and relish Inori's merciless demise. (Of course, the twisted little sister's clothes burn off first so we can see her die naked. Chaos Dragon's tastefulness knows no bounds.) It gets worse. Ibuki asks the Red Dragon to take half of Eykha's life, half of her demon-beast's life, and mathematically whip up a new life by combining the two into a new person.

That's kind of creepy, but creepier still is how Ibuki seems to equate this with "allowing Eykha to live." The Red Dragon makes it crystal clear that this new creature will not be Eykha. That would break the perma-death rules of the contract. So Ibuki is killing the girl he loves to bring a completely different being to life, and then falsely equating the two so he can hump the sexy new dog-waifu that results from his decision. Yes, that's really where this is going. This new being is not only more attractive (and furry) than Eykha, but she's magically born with a simplistic, baby-brained desire to see Ibuki. When you think about it, Ibuki has basically done something very similar to what his sister was doing with Returned Ones. The only difference is that not-Eykha's enforced infatuation with Ibuki is a little more consensual, so I guess that makes him a good guy instead of a selfish little puke, according to Chaos Dragon.

Of course, this also means that Ibuki is crowned king. Kouran and D'Natia are both totally okay with this, so I guess Ka Grava just worked some diplomatic magic behind the scenes, and Nil Kamui can be a sovereign nation with an incompetent king on the throne once again! That's really the only thing that matters about this finale, despite the giant chunks of periphery nonsense floating around its edges. (I mean that literally. There's a giant CG Chinese viking-boat that Byakuei controls with his mind stuffed into this episode, god only knows why.)

It should be a given that Ka Grava continues to be completely wasted on this show until the bitter end, but what happens to Sweallow and Lou? More stupid things, I'm afraid.

After coming to a pretentious epiphany for no good reason (about how humanity breaks things and then rebuilds them I guess), Sweallow tells the Black Dragon not to fulfill his end of the bargain and lift his curse. Keep in mind that Sweallow does not kill the Red Dragon, so the Black Dragon is being unusually kind by giving him a freebie for his good work regardless. But no, after enduring lifelong agony because of his curse, and completely ignoring the romantic freedom it would give to both him and his beloved maid, Sweallow decides that because his curse just so happened to be useful once or twice in the final battle, he should just hold onto it! What if he didn't have that curse and instead had the freedom to pursue other powers and equip other weapons in the leadup to the final battle? Wouldn't that have been even more useful, Sweallow? I would also bring up the emotional stability gained by breaking the curse, but apparently Sweallow has a big boner for his own misery, and we never should have pitied him in the first place. Like always, Sweallow's blasé attitude toward his own myopic choices leaves the audience with negative amounts of sympathy for him and his angsty baloney. Screw you, Sweallow. You're a horrible character and I hate you.

Shock of shocks, Lou continues to be nonsensically evil, but for once it's the high point of an episode instead of the low (HA!) point. She's just so darn happy to finally be doing what she joined the party to do, and I couldn't help but cheer her on a little bit. More importantly, in a show filled with apathetic double-crossers, Lou and her sword seem to genuinely love each other in their own weird way, so they profess their love while hacking away pieces of the Red Dragon and sucking up his soul-bits, and it's kinda great. It's still not enough to elevate the episode though, because there's still plenty of stupid to go around for Kouran's baddest bitch. For one thing, Lou stops attacking the Red Dragon to try and kill Sweallow for no adequately explained reason. I guess she's angry that her first attempt to kill him didn't work? Look, I get that this is personal, but your life's ambition is right there roaring, stomping, and breathing fire before you. Sweallow can wait. Of course, fighting Sweallow leads to her downfall, as they seriously wound each other and shove themselves out of the story's climax. After the battle is over, Lou pulls herself from the rubble...

...and gets a Red Dragon magatama square to the chest, making her the successor to Inori's mad threat.

What.

Look, I get that her sword sucked up like 1/100th of the Red Dragon's soul or whatever, but this makes absolutely no sense. The magatamas are supposed to react to the royal blood of Nil Kamui. That artifact didn't attach itself to any of the other power-hungry Kouran stooges that touched it, and there's no reason for it to latch onto Lou either. There was no pre-established reason for this, so it's obviously just lazy sequel bait and/or an excuse to give Lou's character some modicum of significance. You know what, if there was a rationale for the Red Dragon's power passing to a foreigner and I missed it, I don't care.

Chaos Dragon was a bad show. It was a really bad show, and the most shocking thing is that it took a while to get there. Most people wrote off the first episode as the biggest trainwreck they'd seen in a while, but it got so much worse for those of us who stuck around. It even had the audacity to get slightly better (eps 2-5) before turning to complete garbage again (eps 6-12). That's just cruel. Here at the end, I don't regret watching it, but that's only because it was pretty fun to write about. The series isn't pleasant to look at, it's not intellectually or emotionally stimulating, and most tragically, it offers little to no insight into the minds of the creators behind its characters, except for maybe Makoto Sanda, whose brain appears to be filled with mean-spirited anime-clichés, tabletop lore, and incompetently paced slush. I could never recommend this show to anyone at all. There aren't many anime you can say that about, so I guess if Chaos Dragon was aiming to be remembered, it can always be remembered for being just that bad.

Rating: F

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.