Xian Wang de Richang Shenghuo 4

If you liked the previous seasons you're likely going to enjoy this one. It's basically the same, which is both good and bad. Good because it retains the aspects of it that I like, but bad because it is starting to become stale. The action scenes are better this season in my opinion, being what I would categorize as good, but not great. The indivdual frames still struggle however, but perhaps ever so slightly less than last season. Main issues are use of rigid cg in scenes that last too long for it to go unnoticed, zooming on a single image rather than redrawing the ... frame which can make the resolution drop, and some of the effects are low resolution as well, detracting from otherwise decent action scenes. The characters are still entertaining, but growing stale, and no character development is to be found, still fine though. Story is fine as well, but again growing stale quickly. Pacing was still pretty good, not over staying it's welcome and keeping me engaged. Probably helps that the episodes are only 14-15 minutes long after you get through the intro, op, and ed. Voice acting is the same. Fine, but in no way inspiring. The soundtrack however it worse in my opinion. Mostly because it's the same tracks from season 1, and it's starting to become maddening. The op and ed are also underwhelming compared to previous seasons which were great. Overall, growing stale, but still enjoyable. I'd like to see it move in some direction, switch it up challenging the characters in some new way. 6.20/10 dubbed

TLDR: I tend to be quite harsh with Donghua; they often try to minimize production costs and have much shorter episode lengths, resulting in smaller, less developed stories being told per episode. Japan has a much more robust animation industry and history, so some may consider it unfair, but Tencent and Billibilli tend to be behind many of the most popular works, a company worth billions of dollars. Daily Life of the Immortal Demon King often subverts this trend with decent production, sure not One Punch Man levels, but much higher than 95% of Donghua, especially when many solely use trashy PS2-level CGI. However, this ... season, it feels lost; the characters need further development, and the comedy has gotten stagnant, yet not unfunny. With the current direction, we've explored each episode's concept to some degree, even if it doesn't align with an earlier episode. The characters must undergo personal growth, and a proper challenge to the MC is needed, not a comedy gag. The series has had great action moments in the past, and this is exactly what is missing from this season so far. Nobody cares about the irrelevant three in the cast of the four characters around the MC besides the love interest. However, she hasn't had many further developments with the MC. In this Donghua, you can feel 100% confident knowing none of the main cast will die; this series puts comedy above all else, even story development that would make the viewers more invested/moved. Many anime also have this issue, but they tend to be shitty anyways; it is fair to compare this series to great anime as it had and maybe still has the potential to rival them in quality; at the current rate, this series will not, though...

While this season is not bad, and we are only five episodes in, much needs to be improved for me to recommend this series to the average anime fan. If you enjoy Donghua, you probably will end up liking it anyway. But if China wants to be competitive with anime, Donghua like these will not give enough soft power for Donghua even to be picked up by many anime fans. I'm still going to keep watching, but considering the past three seasons have ended with ratings of 7-8/10 for me, this is the worst season at a preliminary 6.

Fourth season of The Daily Life of The Immortal King and maybe the worst. It would be lying to say I'm not enjoying the episodes, but the same is true if I was saying this is a really great show. I like it, obviously, because it's funny to watch ! And it seems like they chose to take this direction compared to the previous seasons, so it's a great thing to keep it this way. Thus, for the same reasons, I know it's not an anime that many will really appreciate.

Give it a chance and maybe you'll like it, but don't hope for something really ... interesting.