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Chaos Dragon
Episode 5

by Jacob Chapman,

How would you rate episode 5 of
Chaos Dragon ?
Community score: 2.5

Last week's episode of Chaos Dragon was stressful, climactic, and sweaty. So that means it's time for a bath episode! Alright, the bath scene doesn't take up the entire episode, but it's definitely here for one reason and one reason only: poorly-drawn fanservice. Eykha, Lou, Gakusho, and the D'Natia representative Ulrika are all stark naked and pretending to discuss the plot kinda sorta while the camera ogles their barely-defined curves. You only have 12 episodes, guys. This is not a valuable use of your time.

In fairness, we get a much better picture of Gakusho's character in this scene, and it's enough to make her pretty likable. Sure, she's a merciless warlord, but she's a merciless warlord with principles. Now that the treaty has been finalized, she makes overtures of alliance toward Ulrika (her competitor) and even Eykha (her enemy), and more importantly, she doesn't trust Lou at all. The traitorous assassin invites her to have a little roll in the hay, but Gakusho turns her down flat, probably because she knows Lou is really Gen Urobuchi. Everyone knows about your lesbian fetish by now, Boochi. We're onto you. On a more serious note, this girl-on-girl teasing is actually meant to illustrate Gakusho's character. Gakusho seems to find Lou attractive, and Lou's invitation to bed is probably sincere, but Gakusho doesn't respect her, so she says no. Her attitude toward sex is the same as her attitude toward warfare. She's ambitious and ruthless, but she's not dishonest and she does not make contracts with people she doesn't value, which is why her prior relationship with Ka Grava was so important. (Yes, I know I said Kaguraba in the last writeup. Expect these names to change a lot, because I have no idea which ridiculous spelling to use.) She's still a villain, but she's an honorable sort of evil that's more sympathetic and fun to watch.

On that note, I continue to lose more sympathy for Sweallow's character with each passing episode. His heroic demeanor goes from untrustworthy to downright infuriating this week when he accepts a weapon of mass destruction from a D'Natian priest with a shrug and a smile. This onyx artifact has the power to negate the red dragon's power over Nil Kamui completely, extending the black dragon's authority to the whole of the island. It's a Really Big Deal. Sweallow acts like he was given a fun trinket, and goes back to yuk'ing it up with the party in the very next scene. Yeah, this character sucks. It's not that he's duplicitous, planning to betray the party for the sake of D'Natia while wearing a very convincing mask. That would be a great conflict to base a character around. The problem is that he doesn't express any emotions toward the party, his home country, or even his own personal ambitions. He's like a weird robot with a perpetual happy face, when he's not being reminded of his horrible tool-breaking curse, which he seems to be only slightly more affected by. There's no indication that he has any idea what the ramifications of his relationships with others are, and there's no indication that he cares either. At least with Lou, we know she's a horrible snake-in-the-grass with no remorse, but Sweallow is a complete cipher that I think we're meant to admire. It's not working. I don't care about him, but I care just enough about Ibuki and Eykha that I don't want him to hurt them with that oblivious smile on his face. The end result is that I hate him and time spent with the character seems to be time wasted so far.

Lou actually receives the Kouran equivalent of D'Natia's weapon of mass domination in this episode as well. Her artifact is golden instead of onyx, but it has the same shape and carries the same effect for Kouran that the black relic carries for D'Natia. Except in Lou's case, she steals the item from Gakusho and then tries to kill her. At least I understand why Lou does what she does. She's only out for herself, and she wants to feed every powerful being on earth to her soul-eating sword. Nice and simple! That begs the question of what use she could have for an item that gives Kouran power, since she doesn't seem to care about her home country at all. I'm sure she'll think of something, though. (It'd be great if Sweallow and Lou use both items at the same time and they cancel each other out.) The point is that Sweallow and Lou are douchebags, and Ibuki and Eykha are screwed. At least Ka Grava is on their side.

This brings us to the main focus of the episode. Ka Grava and Eykha explain that not only has the rebellion effort tried to contact the red dragon in the past (and failed miserably), the red dragon himself knew all of this would happen. Ka Grava warns the party that he had a heart-to-heart with his scaly friend centuries ago about how he would someday go mad, and the only way to stop it would be to find him at Nil Kamui's great volcano, which is where the party must go now. There's just one problem: Eykha's rebellion army already tried that. When they first set out to hunt the red dragon, they were hoping to win his trust instead of fight him because they were following Ka Grava's advice: find the red dragon at the volcano, and everything will be okay. Unfortunately, the dragon was just as insane as ever once they got there, and Eykha was the only survivor of the fallout. Ka Grava asks if, knowing this, they are still willing to try again. Of course Ibuki says yes, not only because he wants peace, but because he wants the violent curse on him to be lifted at any cost.

Unfortunately, when Ibuki asks Ka Grava more about the nature of his curse, we arrive at the silliest new development in Chaos Dragon's story: zombies! Yes, zombies. Ka Grava has never heard of Ibuki's "sacrifice a friend to kill an enemy" curse before in all his years of palling around with the red dragon, but he does know of a different curse that Nil Kamui's deity used to bestow on its rulers. Apparently, there are rumors of the dead rising from their graves to serve the kings of old. They were called "Returned Ones," and when Ibuki hears the phrase "returned," he can't help but think of his dead friends. "I wish I had been given that curse instead," he muses.

Be careful what you wish for.

After Lou's failed attempt to kill Gakusho, the party is beset by a surprise flood of Returned Ones. Despite the more positive-sounding name, these are zombies in the truest sense of the word: murderous, mindless, decaying hellions that immediately start eating the party's elephants from the feet up. While everyone else in the party scrambles to quash the undead horde, Ibuki notices a familiar face in the crowd. It's Gakusho, but now she's a Returned One! Darn, I liked her, but I'm sure that was intentional. If Chaos Dragon is spending time making any NPC sympathetic, they're probably not long for this world.

It looks like Ibuki will have to pull out another sacrifice to stop Gakusho from avenging her superior a la Ibuki-skewer. So who's going to die to keep him alive this time? I don't know, but I'm sure it will be ridiculously melodramatic as always. This episode was not peak form for Chaos Dragon, but the story is still more captivating than those early episodes suggested and probably always will be. The biggest problem continues to be its origin as a tabletop campaign and how much that cripples the characterization, but even in an unfocused episode like this one, the pacing is solid enough and the plot complex enough to keep this fantasy adventure from being boring.

Rating: B-

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.


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