The Fall 2026 Anime Preview Guide

The Vermilion Mask

Peru, a young apprentice mask maker who loses control under the influence of a cursed mask, slays both his master and comrades in a tragic outburst. Wracked with guilt, Peru sets off on a journey to destroy the legendary masks his master once crafted, crossing paths with unlikely allies and deadly foes. What unfolds is a gripping battle for redemption, as both Peru's soul and the world itself hang in the balance.

The Vermilion Mask is based on the manga series by writer Dr.Poro and artist Nabana Naba. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Saturdays.

Note: The reviews below are based on an early screener provided by Crunchyroll. The anime series will premiere on October 10.

When I work on the preview guide, I like to get a little context for the shows: familiar studios and staff members, the original medium, and so on. When I looked into The Vermilion Mask, I found a statement from director Tetsuaki Watanabe that one of his goals was to animate the action scenes with simplicity and clarity, rather than adding on modern frills like spinning cameras and particle effects. So I had to ask: did he succeed?

Well, the action certainly is… legible. In this world, masks imbue users with abilities reflected in their appearance and names. If you wear the smiling mask, you'll smile, no matter how upset you are; the spider mask makes it so you can crawl up walls, the cat mask makes you agile, and so on. These simple powers make it the perfect series to try out Watanabe's philosophy; unlike many modern action series, understanding the characters' complex powers doesn't require multi-episode explanations. However, Watanabe may have gone too far in his insistence on clarity; before I came across the interview, I described the action as “stodgy,” with stiff animation and unimaginative storyboarding. 100Studio, a young production studio, doesn't have the panache to give the simple action its necessary oomph. Camera angles are like word choice in a visual production: simplicity is a valid creative choice, but it means you have to think even more carefully about how you phrase things so the art sings instead of feeling prosaic.

The story also does little to grab me. The plot the story hangs around is as old as time: a young man must journey the world to collect powerful magic items after a tragedy kills his mentor. Zoom in a little closer and it's just Kagurabachi… Although The Vermilion Mask is actually older, unfavorable comparisons feel inevitable. The first episode runs through the clichés that feel inevitable: the tragic backstory that drives Peru's quest, the exposition via the one-off villain reciting it to him, and more exposition while Peru flies through the air with Sona, his newly adopted protege, on his back. I groaned out loud when I realized what they were doing with Peru and Sona's name…

But! The episode does end on a high note of the kind that makes me think maybe these two-episode preview guides are justified. Sometimes. For the first time in the episode, the imagery grabbed me, and I felt like there may be more going on beyond a generic battle shonen fetch quest. I'm still not totally sold, but I guess I'll give it another episode.

I had to pause the first episode of The Vermilion Mask at exactly the six-minute mark, because it throws a hell of a lot of information at its audience to absorb in rapid succession. We learn this is an almost-modern fantasy world where mask makers can create visages that magically transform their wearers and bestow anything from a permanent smile to the supernatural powers of various animals. We then see our hero, Peru, get robbed by the rascal Sona and baited into a confrontation with the evil military police, who are all too happy to put down any civilians that get in the way of their “justice”, even children. It's not even a couple of minutes later before Peru and Sona officially team up to sneak into the palace of the cruel new king and continue Peru's quest to destroy the masks of the famed maker, Gaston Roux.

I had a whole transition right here where I waxed nostalgic about what the pacing of this show would be like if I still lived in a world where most new anime got at least a couple dozen episodes to do their thing instead of the now-standard 12-week batches, but then I looked it up and discovered that, no, The Vermillion Mask is actually getting a two-cour run this year. Maybe the original manga is also just written like its scripts were strapped to the back of a jet engine? I suppose I should have figured we'd get more episodes than usual with this series, given how cheap its production values look.

I've spent a lot of this preview complaining, I think, but that's only because I see a lot of potential in this show that is being undermined by its weak visuals and rushed storytelling. Take it from the guy who spent many hours of his childhood reciting the dialogue and plot from Jim Carrey's The Mask from memory: This premise is pretty damned fun! I also like the idea of the atoning mask maker and the orphaned princess teaming up to kick some butt with those magic mask powers. We're not seeing anything particularly original here, but if executed well, it could still be fun.

Whether or not The Vermillion Mask will be worth your time will largely depend on your tolerance for low-budget animation aimed at tweens that crams as much content as it can into those limited twenty-minute windows. I could see this show evening out into something genuinely watchable and entertaining, despite its obvious shortcomings. To get there, it will need to learn how to slow down and let its audience get properly invested in its story and characters.

What happens if we take Majora's Mask and turn it into a generic battle shounen? Is that too mean? The Vermillion Mask manages to cram a lot into its first episode for better or worse. The idea of a tragic main character who is trying to make up for the sins of his past is captivating. While the art style is incredibly basic to the point where I kept mistaking Peru for the blond version of other protagonists, the mask powers are a lot more creative than I originally assumed they were going to be. Basing them on animals or vague concepts opens the door to a variety of different unique battle scenarios that could be fun to explore, even if I don't think the premiere takes full advantage of those abilities. The combat is very muddled, relying on messy still frames that highlight the impact of an action instead of showing the action itself. However, the potential is there, and I hope the show can build on its foundation.

Outside of that, this was one of the more boring premieres that I had watched. Even accepting that much of this story consists of things I've seen before, I don't like the way it's told. The exposition is so clunky that I was legitimately happy that the blonde soldier got knocked out because it felt like half of his dialogue was just repeating things. This episode handles subtle foreshadowing, like the reveal of the disgraced princess, but it over-explains almost everything about the setting and its characters.

It doesn't feel like people are talking normally; it feels like I'm only being told what is going to happen or why things are important. The mark of a good show isn't something that needs to constantly tell me or yell at me why I should care. Instead, a show should organically create a setting or characters I can get attached to because of their struggles. So far, I don't feel that, and the closest thing to an emotional hook I have is the dramatic way the episode ended. I hope The Vermilion Mask can capitalize on its potential. If the rest of the show is like this first episode, it will be really hard for me to feel like I'm not just watching a lot of random stuff on a screen.

Something was bugging me as I watched this first episode of The Vermilion Mask: that I should like it much more than I actually do. You see, I am a person who loves magic systems (which is probably one of the reasons I am so tired of lazy stat windows in my anime), and this show has a wonderfully novel one. Certain people are able to make magical masks that imbue the characteristics of the mask onto the people wearing them. This could be a happy mask, which just makes you smile and tell jokes, or one based on a cat, which makes the person more cat-like—complete with claws and heightened reflexes.

The idea that one of these masks basically turns people into a berserk killing machine—and that Peru killed his mask-making master and friends because he put it on—is a great backstory. Likewise, his goal of destroying his master's powerful masks so they don't bring about similar destruction is a good plot hook that can spawn dozens of adventures.

I also like the twist that Sona betrays her obvious role as the heroine and becomes the first big boss of the story—that her need for revenge outweighs the fact that she's likely to kill many of her former subjects before the night is through.

So if I liked the story, setting, and magic system, what's the problem? It's that Vermilion Mask has an art/story mismatch. The tone of the story is dark and gritty, but the animation doesn't match this. The beggar children's clothes are clean and tidy—their faces show not a speck of dirt. The color palette is bright and distinct—even in low lighting. The blood and violence don't carry the horror the story implies. It all just doesn't fit. The animation pulls me out of the story rather than drawing me in.

Who knows, maybe by next week I'll have gotten used to the visuals and my opinion on the show will improve. But as things stand now, while I am interested in seeing Sona's transformation, I'm not excited to watch the next episode.