×
  • remind me tomorrow
  • remind me next week
  • never remind me
Subscribe to the ANN Newsletter • Wake up every Sunday to a curated list of ANN's most interesting posts of the week. read more

Chaos Dragon
Episode 10

by Jacob Chapman,

How would you rate episode 10 of
Chaos Dragon ?
Community score: 3.1

In today's episode of Chaos Dragon, Boochi put Nasu's hand on his boobies, and this made Nasu very uncomfortable.

Alright, that's just a sentence I was dying to write, but I should probably stop pretending that this show has anything to do with the original tabletop campaign anymore. It's not just that this specific event couldn't have happened (because Boochi's character did not originally have boobies), but so many other dumb anime-esque clichés have popped up in recent episodes, and I don't want to attribute them to the original game's players even when eerie similarities do pop up. Because yeah, given the kind of imagery that echoes throughout his work, I can easily imagine Boochi seducing another character with one hand and reaching for a weapon of life consumption with the other. If anything sexual is happening in an Urobuchi story, it's a prelude to horror and regret. Nothing good ever comes of sexiness, at least not if it's girl-on-guy. (That said, if it's a guy character being sexual on his own, or if it's a girl-on-girl liaison, tragedy might not be around the corner after all! Oh, the complicated implications...)

Useless tangents aside, I don't think this moment (or most of the story at this point) was part of the original campaign, which means it only tells me what Makoto Sanda or Shō Aikawa thinks of these characters, not what Kinoko Nasu or Gen Urobuchi thought of them. So as the anime's significance as a window into creators' minds dwindles, so does my interest in analyzing it. I really wish I could extract more about the psychology of these three fascinating creators from their avatars, but Chaos Dragon just isn't giving me enough to work with.

Let me get back on track: this episode was pretty okay. In some ways, that makes it harder to discuss than if it had been outright bad or outright good--ha ha ha, just kidding, Chaos Dragon was never outright good. This week, the party splits up once again, with Ibuki, Inori, Eykha, and a few retainers heading to the swamp to investigate Nil Kamui's magic deterioration, and the three stooges and their posse deliberating their future back at base. Some stuff happens to Ibuki and Eykha in the swamp, but I'm actually going to skip discussing it this week because I know they're going to spend many long minutes reiterating the situation next time and I can write hundreds of words about how dumb it is later instead. Back with Sweallow, Lou, and Ka Grava, things get a lot more interesting.

Now that their olive branch party has been exposed as a farce, Sweallow and Lou have very different feelings on where their true mission lies. Sweallow thinks they should pour their time into protecting Ibuki, while Lou thinks they should continue their search for the Red Dragon. On the one hand, finding the Red Dragon is easily a more valuable use of time and also much closer to the party's original raison d'etre than "protecting Ibuki." On the other hand, Lou obviously wants to find the Red Dragon for her own extremely selfish and evil reasons. So prime directive be damned guys, it doesn't really matter what you do. At least Sweallow's desire to protect Ibuki is more noble even if it isn't really a smart move. The party should really just disband, and that's basically what happens. After the two restate their character differences through hilariously obvious dialogue, Sweallow says "Well, I guess I already knew we were irreconcilably different since the time we first met." Yes that is true, so why are you bringing it up? Please rely on your poor audience to put that much together by themselves. It's the least you could do for us at this point.

The good news is that this whole kerfuffle exists to set up what is easily the best fight scene (and one of the best scenes period) of the series so far. First off, Byakuei, the Gakusho-replacement we met last episode, confronts Lou with her past while plotting to kill the Red Dragon. Apparently, she used to be the favored pet of a ruthless Kouran general. He collected weapons, so he brought one new curiosity into the bedroom to add a little spice to Lou's sex slavery one night. However, rather than feeling threatened by the sword at her throat, it was love at first sight for Lou. She pledged herself to the sword, it pledged itself to her, and a few bloody explosions later, she was free and on the fast track to becoming an infamous assassin. It's a really hacky backstory, but it's better than nothing, and it puts Lou's apathy for all life outside of her soul-sucking sword into starker perspective.

Ulrika, a D'Natian lady-knight we've seen darting in and out of past episodes without much consequence, doesn't really care what kind of world Lou came from. This whole war has taught Ulrika that all people deserve to be equal, and intolerance and imperialism are wrong. This makes Lou's narcissistic vendetta unforgivable, since Lou discriminates against all people equally and wants to swallow up the entire world for herself. Of course, Ulrika also seems resentful of herself for being part of the D'Natian army, and she realizes that if she wants to stick to her newfound principles, there will be no place for her in the military she worked so hard to establish herself in anymore. That would be an interesting conflict to explore if Ulrika wasn't obviously going to die before episode's end. Shocking, I know. Zatoichi could have seen that one coming.

Needless to say, I sure wish we could have seen any part of Ulrika's character development happen during the show instead of just being told about it in a big monologue-wad, but oh well! It's time for a catfight between D'Natia and Kouran, as Ulrika tries to smuggle the Red Dragon's one weakness (his own claw) away from Nil Kamui with Lou in hot pursuit. I call it a catfight because, unfortunately, there's another reason Ulrika has decided to make Lou's wicked ambitions her own problem. Remember the boob-touching I mentioned at the top of the review? Yup, Ulrika is inexplicably smitten with Sweallow, and she did not appreciate Lou's attempts at stepping in on her man (or trying to swallow his soul). Once again, this is the kind of thing I can see Nasu writing about his own character. ("Oh no, my self-insert is just so fake-nice and blandly tragic that every woman falls in love with him!") But I can't cast aspersions because I don't how much of this stuff comes from the campaign or doesn't.

All this rushed setup is still worth it because the battle between Ulrika and Lou, fought entirely on a little caravel on the ocean, is the most engrossing and emotionally successful moment in the show to date. Classical music usage in anime can be really cheap and thoughtless sometimes, but the choice of Chopin's "Waltz No. 14 in E Minor" took a potentially dry conflict and infused it with surprisingly tender emotion. The piano piece stands out immediately at first when Lou powers her way onto the scene, but then blends into the dusky lighting and fading strength of both combatants, while still maintaining the right tension for a race against time. Lou and her all-powerful weapon have the upper hand, but they have to fight fast, because Ulrika's Black Dragon powers will become far stronger once the sun sets. At the same time, the music makes it very clear that Ulrika already knows she was never going to win this fight. The piece has an unmistakable eulogistic tone, and its juxtaposition with her sad smile says enough to really make you feel bad for Ulrika, even though we barely got the chance to know her.

I spent an entire paragraph talking about that music piece because I think it may be the most clever thing Chaos Dragon has ever done, so I just want to lavish praise on whatever small part of the show I can still be nice about. Ulrika and Lou's battle rages on for five minutes straight without letting up, fraught with twists and turns and passion and noticeably better animation on both sides, until Lou activates her Yellow Dragon McGuffin and renders Ulrika magic-less. (I thought she sold it in exchange for her new arm...? Whatever, maybe she stole it back.) Lou's not exactly a magic user, but hey, a big chunk of Nil Kamui's ocean is Kouran-flavored now, I guess. Of course, since Ulrika knew she was going to lose, it's revealed that she didn't have the Red Dragon's claw after all. So Lou gets to break out the oars and start that long row of shame back to Nil Kamui, Ulrika got to die for her beloved Sweallow and martyr herself out of the D'Natian army, and we got a cool fight out of it. At this point, I'll take the pleasant surprises where I can get them. Chaos Dragon had about five minutes of a good episode this week, and that's reward enough for me.

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.


discuss this in the forum (117 posts) |
bookmark/share with: short url

back to Chaos Dragon
Episode Review homepage / archives