Chaos Dragon

Episode 9

I don't know about you, but I'm having a lot of trouble following Chaos Dragon's crazy train of character logic at this point. Apparently, Ibuki considers his party to be his friends and can't bear to see them harmed. Friends? Since when?

Let's recap: Ibuki's Red Dragon Peace Party was a farce constructed by the rebellion effort (supported by D'Natia) to put his twin sister Inori on the throne while the conflict's major players were distracted. The party's members were ignorant of this, but are equally duplicitous for their own personal reasons, with most of their number looking to kill the Red Dragon rather than negotiate with him. At every turn, Ibuki has been manipulated by these party members, sometimes traumatically, with little to no comrade bonding or trust exercises in between all the suffering to soften his feelings toward these obviously fairweather friends. Okay, he's had a lot of bonding moments with Eykha, and I guess Ka Grava was good to him most of the time, but that's because those two characters are the only two whose intentions were actually genuine. Ibuki knows all of this by now. He even runs away from Sweallow when he sees him in the town square, simply because he's with D'Natia, and D'Natia is bad news for him right now. So what unbreakable bond of friendship is he waxing on about through most of this episode? Is the show going to cement Ibuki's feelings about anything in a way that makes sense? It's rapidly running out of time for that, and in my heart, I already know it's too late.

Anyway, the point is that Inori wants Ibuki to become her grand vizier or something and kill off his other party members strategically to eradicate her political enemies and make Nil Kamui great again. Just as the Red Dragon chose Ibuki with a magical chest-implant magatama that gives him the power to take life, he also chose Inori with a magatama that gives her the power to raise the dead. They are two sides of the same coin and with their combined powers, they could kill anyone who stands in their way and revive them as mindless slaves, just like Inori did with Mashiro. (This is probably Inori's plan for dealing with the D'Natia puppet government problem too.) So Inori gives Ibuki the whole "join me and we will rule the galaxy together" speech in as cliché a fashion as possible (complete with dramatic super-villainess criss-crossing sexy-legs), and I'm thinking "Yes. Of course Ibuki would be tempted by this. Why isn't the show letting him be tempted by this? Heck, even if it did seem incongruous to his character somehow, which it doesn't considering how much he's been betrayed, at least it would be more interesting to watch."

But no, Ibuki isn't going to sacrifice his party members because they're his friends who sacrificed so much to keep him safe and--blah blah blah, not buying it, sorry kiddo. Ibuki's arguments become especially hilarious when Inori brings up Lou, the obvious candidate to dispose of for the greater good. Lou is such a thoroughly nasty villain that Ibuki actually drops the "friendship" rationale for a second and says Sweallow and Ka Grava would betray him if he killed Lou. That was pretty funny, I wish there had been more banter in that vein, at least addressing that there are other reasons not to kill party members outside of "well, it's not nice."

Meanwhile, the influence of the Black Dragon's magic continues to spread across Nil Kamui. Sweallow has a bad case of the burny-shins and D'Natia's deity even appears to Ibuki, warning him that it's only a matter of time before the balance of magical power unseats his country's gods, so he should probably start making nice with the dark side of the dragons while he has the chance. This conflict feels like a time-filling red herring, or at least an excuse to give Sweallow something to do for the next few episodes. Ibuki has already made his stance on this clear; he's reverted to his pacifistic roots and would rather sacrifice Nil Kamui than perpetuate more slaughter. So this Black Dragon conflict doesn't really affect him on any emotional level, and I can only assume the show is waiting around to avert this whole thing with the Yellow Dragon's power. Activating both artifacts will probably cause some weird writing-contrivance-paradox that sweeps all magical power dynamics back under the rug. Even if that doesn't happen, the Black Dragon subplot still feels like a distraction.

On the Kouran side of things, there's a new Gakusho figure in town named Byakuei. He's some high-ranking general of the backup squadron of the I-Don't-Care. I'm going to go ahead and assume no one else does either. He seems like a big jerk. Okay, how long before Ibuki becomes inexplicably attached to him and then sacrifices him to the Red Dragon?

Speaking of that, the central figure in this episode is actually poor braindead Mashiro. After D'Natia's stooge-priest learns that she's a Returned One, he scolds Inori and decides to have Mashiro interrogated. Apparently, stooge-priest missed the big exposé about Returned Ones being hyperviolent zombie-monsters who tear mortals in half, because Mashiro goes crazy the instant he starts provoking her. Soon he and all his soldiers are reduced to strawberry jam, and Ibuki decides that his sister may have brought Mashiro into this world for him, but now he's gotta take her back out. So he sacrifices Mashiro to the Red Dragon in order to use her death as a sacrifice to kill her. Yeah, good luck wrapping your brain around that one. His sacrifice and his victim are the same person somehow. The show's rationale for this is that zombies won't die even if you "kill" them, so the Red Dragon's death-by-unholy-fire is the only way to really give Mashiro the full refund, so to speak. Anyway, after seeing the true horror of existence as a Returned One, Ibuki decides he will endeavor to become king instead of putting his crazy sister on the throne, and then the episode blessedly comes to a close.

I can say exactly one nice thing about episode 9. It was perhaps the simplest and most sanely paced entry in the entire show. Instead of being loaded down with "as you know" dialogue and lore-heavy worldbuilding like every other episode, this was just characters talking to other characters about their motivations and feelings, moving the plot along through natural discourse. It would have worked as a perfectly competent chunk of anime, if this show had decent character writing and hadn't already shot its story in the foot with too many terrible decisions. Unfortunately, that big "if" makes this theoretically "better" episode the worst one yet. For as much as I whined about the tabletop-style storytelling, Chaos Dragon apparently needed that style of writing to keep itself afloat. When it tried to fall back on more natural character dynamics and plot progression this week, it only collapsed further into its own little hellish quagmire.

Three more episodes to go, and it looks like the focus will be on Ulrika next week. You know, that super-memorable character we know and care so much about. I have lowered the bar, Chaos Dragon. Pray I do not lower it further.

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.