Alto Goldfield is a student at a magical academy who aims to become a master of all magic. However, when he's on the verge of failing a class on summoning magic and in danger of being held back a year, he finds an old summoning grimoire. Following its instructions, he ends up summoning a powerful demon named Vermeil, who was sealed long ago, and makes her his familiar. But the voluptuous Vermeil occasionally requires magical energy from Alto, which she claims by kissing him deeply.

I feel like there's been a lot of series lately about sexually aggressive adult women throwing themselves at blushing, virginal teens. If that's what floats your boat, hey, good for you. For me, however, the continuous lack of consent at play throughout Vermeil in Gold pretty much just elicited a constant, ever-deepening frown.

There are hints of a better story in this episode. Mostly those concern Vermeil, the demoness summoned by our hapless hero Alto--we know that she was sealed in a book for untold years, and her statement about how it would be better for her to masquerade as a human in public because of human distrust of demons, paired with the imagery in the opening and ending themes, seems to indicate that she's suffered greatly at human hands. I'd almost be willing to say that her aggressive physical pursuit of Alto is born as much from a need to be "useful" to him as her need for his mana, but that may be taking things too far, or at least willfully ignoring the intense fanservice angle. In any event, all of this is to say that Vermeil in Gold may be hiding something more than what we get in this episode.

To get to it may take more fortitude than most viewers have though. To put it simply, a lot of the "humor" comes from bad ol' sexual predation shenanigans, with Vermeil stroking Alto's crotch several times despite him being very clear that that's not what he wants from her. She's also constantly sitting in his lap, shoving her breasts against various parts of his anatomy (some more plausible than others), and using sexual pleasure to win a fight against Lilia, Alto's friend who desperately wants to be his girlfriend. It's clearly meant to be funny or at least entertaining, but I can't say I found it to be either of those things. More than that, it feels like a weirdly old-fashioned approach to fanservice, all the more so because the source manga is so recent, having started in 2018.

Vermeil could actually be kind of a fun character if the rest of the cast could hold their own against her. She's killing it in the Virgin Killer sweater, carrying herself with Bayonetta-level confidence that'll surely win her many fans. Hell, I'm not about to deny that she's a top contender for the season's best new waifu. Had she been summoned by someone receptive to her advances, who wasn't intimidated and confused by her constant physical affection and offers of blowjobs, I could see this being a fun, sexy time. Consent, reciprocity and situational plausibility all go a long way towards making fanservice more appealing to me, even if it would run the risk of turning into outright porn if the protagonist accepted her offers.

But that's not the series we got. Instead, she gets to play off Alto, who's as milquetoast as they come. He stammers and struggles his way through understanding what to do with her advances. And hey, that's understandable, because he's all of 15 years old. Occasionally he appears to be open to her flirting, and in those moments they actually have okay chemistry, but then she starts to push his boundaries and it goes right back to being uncomfortable. The best part of the episode is all the ways Vermeil finds to rest her tits on him. And good lord, was Lilia annoying. She has an extremely unsubtle crush on Alto, which manifests mostly as shrill demands that Vermeil stop lavishing attention onto him. She has no personality outside of jealousy, nothing to do but shriek and complain, and considering how little Alto has going on, it's obvious that she's there just to add conflict and/or fulfill the required role of "childhood friend".

This premiere does at least look nice. Along with the two big obvious focuses for the animation, there's a genuinely lively direction to the whole episode. Clever camera angles, playful storyboarding and some nice flourishes make the whole thing a lot more watchable. The character designs leave something to be desired, aside from Vermeil, feeling altogether too plain to leave much of an impression, but they're presented well even if they're not all that interesting on their own.

Sadly, all Vermeil in Gold really has to offer at this point is competently executed horniness, and if that isn't enough on its own, then there isn't much here. The character banter isn't compelling. There's basically no plot yet besides your standard Anime Magic School stuff. The setting itself is as bare as bones can be. Sorry, Vermeil in Gol, but you need to have some kind of heart beneath all the tits you're smothering us with, and it seems to be missing. I'll give you another episode or two to change my mind, but if you don't, you'll be an easy yet well-produced skip.