The Vermilion Mask Episode 1: Peru the Mask Maker

uorseucs

22h

Verified

Great premiere! This episode gave me goosebumps throughout the fighting scenes. Though, if I were to nitpick about something, I'd say that the animation is quite simple. But even then, it's so well done that I can't really say anything bad about it. That said, the story's pacing is quite fast, with quite a bit of a lore dump. I think it would be better if some things were veiled in mystery.

akumapulse

21d

Verified

**The Vermilion Mask Episode 1 Review** *(or: “Congratulations, You’ve Inherited Your Dead Boss’s Cursed Inventory and Also Mass Murder”)* Honestly, *The Vermilion Mask* has one of those premises that makes me sit up like a dog that just heard the word “treat.” Magical masks. A city that looks like happiness got hit with a restraining order. Enough red in the color palette to make a ketchup factory file for emotional damages. And a protagonist whose origin story is basically “I put on the wrong Halloween accessory and accidentally committed workplace genocide.” Yeah. I’m listening. Episode 1 drops us into Lisblanc, a city so aggressively miserable that the pigeons look like they have outstanding warrants. They’re supposedly preparing for a festival, which is the funniest joke the show tells without saying a word. Banners are up. Decorations are out. The population looks like they just collectively checked their bank accounts after rent, taxes, and a surprise medical bill hit on the same day. Into this joyless void strolls Peru, a traveling mask merchant with the energy of a man who has never once read the room. He’s out here yelling “BUY MY MASKS!” at people who look like they’d rather attend their own funeral than make eye contact. Sales must be brutal. Imagine being a door-to-door salesman in a city where smiling is apparently a misdemeanor. Respect the hustle. Fear the business model. Of course Peru isn’t just some guy trying to hit his quarterly mask quota. He’s on a deeply personal guilt tour. Years ago, as an apprentice to legendary mask-maker Gaston Roux, young Peru decided to try on the Mask of the Warrior God. The mask took one look at this kid, said “mine now,” and used his body to murder his master and every other apprentice in the room. Most people inherit money or a weird family clock. Peru inherited a supernatural cleanup job and a lifetime supply of secondhand embarrassment. Congrats, buddy. Your inheritance comes with blood, trauma, and a very aggressive product-recall campaign. The masks themselves are the best part of the whole setup. These aren’t cute cosplay pieces. They’re power-ups with opinions, tempers, and a worrying enthusiasm for bloodshed. Put one on and you might get wall-climbing, super agility, or the ability to smile so hard it becomes a war crime. Put on the wrong one and you become the final boss of your own friend group. Every time a mask appears I can practically hear my survival instincts screaming, “Do not touch that. Poke it with a stick. Better yet, poke it with someone else’s stick.” Peru is a delightfully unhinged protagonist. Half the time he’s a manic street vendor trying to hustle cursed merchandise. The other half he’s a cold, competent masked menace swapping faces like a man frantically changing tools mid-home-renovation. One second he’s doing the world’s least successful sales pitch. The next he’s Spider-Manning across rooftops with a stolen gremlin girl strapped to his back like a chaotic backpack. The tonal whiplash is real, but it weirdly works. Most dark-fantasy leads communicate exclusively through brooding and dramatic staring. Peru will end your bloodline *and* try to upsell you on the way out. Then there’s Sona, professional yoinker and immediate complication. She steals from him, gets chased, gets recruited, and somehow ends the episode by making the single worst decision available to her. Their dynamic has actual tension instead of the usual “we met five minutes ago but the power of friendship already binds us.” She’s feral, useful, and almost certainly going to make everything worse. I respect it. The episode itself has the energy of a man who just mainlined three energy drinks and decided subtlety was for cowards. Backstory? Dumped. Trauma? Dumped. Rooftop chase? Present. Stealth mission? Present. Multiple mask-swapping fight scenes? Present. Cliffhanger betrayal? Present and deeply rude. Most shows take three episodes to leave the starter town. This one does a full character arc, a heist, and a moral crisis before the credits even finish loading. I had to pause just to remember how to breathe. Visually it’s sharp when it wants to be. The mask transformations look delightfully wrong in the best way, and the red-and-black aesthetic commits harder than most protagonists commit to therapy. The action is readable even when the tone is doing cartwheels. And the opening theme by MAN WITH A MISSION is out here trying to give the entire audience a shared heart attack while Peru is still failing to sell novelty facewear. The dissonance is chef’s kiss. Is the pacing perfect? No. It’s a little like being shot out of a cannon into a lore dump. Does every character get enough room to breathe? Also no. Is the city so grim it borders on self-parody? Absolutely. But the core idea is strong, the power system is clever, and the protagonist is already the villain of his own flashback. That’s a solid foundation. Overall, Episode 1 is a chaotic, stylish, slightly unhinged dark-fantasy premiere that knows exactly how ridiculous its own premise is and leans into it anyway. Peru has a cursed past, a cursed inventory, and a new partner who just made everything exponentially more cursed. Lisblanc looks like the worst vacation destination on the continent. And the masks are the kind of product that should come with a warning label the size of a small child. I’m in. If this show keeps combining salesman energy, supernatural regret, and extremely poor decision-making, we’re going to have a good time. Just… maybe don’t touch any of the merchandise.

amelia664

25d

Verified

What a crazy, nail-biter of an opening episode. We're introduced to a world where wearing a mask gives you a superpower, of sorts, and we follow Peru, our main character, who was a student of a great mask maker. As a premise, this is already interesting, but it only gets triply interesting when we add an antagonistic character who wants to conquer the world, it feels like, and a vengeful girl who has more to her than we see on the surface. Anger and bitterness leads to some questionable decisions and a crazy ending where we know the next episode is going to start off with nothing normal. The literal only thing stopping this from being five stars is that it can feel like a lot is going on, but it doesn't drag while watching so it's not really an issue. Absolutely wonderful for someone like me.