Feb 27, 2017
You don’t have to read the Kingdom manga to get the story, but if I hadn’t and really loved the story it would probably get a much lower rating from me. It has all the ingredients for a good shounen story (character growth, high ambitions, friendships, lots of swordfights). It’s a feast for history buffs since many of the people and events in the story are real (some things have a rather different spin, though, even if they play out the same in the end). I also like that the cute characters are few and far between, if you’re looking for moe, this is not
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what you want. It’s more of a parade of ugly men with a wide and strange variety of beards. Since it’s such an extremely enjoyable story, the anime would get a ten from me, hands down, if it weren’t for the crappy quality. The 3d backgrounds are gorgeous, but the character animation, particularly in fight scenes, sometimes looks like a quite dated game. The game feel does not end there, sometimes it’s like playing one of those large- scale strategy games that I haven’t played for years and years (*cough* let’s just say a very long time). But the voice acting makes up for much of the animation faults and many of the best are in it and doing a great job (some say that the studio blew their budget on voice actors and had to skimp on the animation, I don’t know if that’s true or not). It was a little confusing in the beginning since I only knew the Japanese names from the manga, but in the anime (at least the version I have) the names are Chinese in the English subtitles but everyone is called by their Japanese name. Another thing I really like is that there are strong women in the story, even generals. And they don’t go to war in skimpy bikinis or have bosoms bigger than their heads (there are a few strong guys who have bigger biceps than heads in some scenes, though, which is almost as bad, but I guess that’s just crappy animation). The animation gets better (or maybe it’s just a matter of getting used to it) in S2.
A slight warning might be prudent. It’s all about war. Extremely violent wars where people fight with spears, swords and other edged weapons, often under a rain of arrows. In the manga severed limbs and heads fly around like snowflakes in a blizzard, but that is much toned down in the anime. There are only two severed heads and one is completely covered. In the beginning of the anime blood is sometimes white for unknown reasons, but maybe that seemed too silly since they changed it in the latter episodes. The severing people in half is replaced with the feared chop to the shoulder (as we all know that is often extremely deadly in every swordfight, at least when the hero isn’t the recipient).
All in all, I would love a third season or more and if it is made, I really hope it gets some quality animation, since it really deserves better.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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