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Vinland Saga's second season retains the beautiful visuals from the first and still contrasts those with the cruel nature of the world it portrays. However, the tone and overall nature of the show have changed significantly. For most of the season the setting has been changed from the battlefield to just the field. The season has little action and has become much more drama oriented.

While the lack of action may be a turn off for some viewers, my problem with the second season lies elsewhere: I'm old enough to have gotten most youthful idealism out of my system, so I simply dont ... reasonate with the now turned pacifist protagonist. The show goes from amazinly writen to silly as soon as pacifist Thorfinn enters the fray, making the tone oddly inconsistent.

All that being said, the show has good production value and, when not disturbed by Thorfinn's pacifism, can be quite gripping.

In conclusion, if you go into this season expecting action and a "badass" protagonist, you are going to be disapointed. But if you are looking for a gripping drama, and are not put off by the idea of viking Gandhi, this show is for you.

Doupo Cangqiong, known in english either as "Battle through the heavens" (BTTH), or as " Fights Break Sphere", is the absolute quintessential Cultivation anime (or donghua if you prefer). If you have never seen a cultivation story, Doupo Cangqiong will get you familiar with all the tropes of the genre in their purest form.

Cultivation stories are very popular in China, in this type of story individuals accumulate some form of energy, usually called Qi, by a process similar to meditation. The accumulated Qi is that individual's cultivation and allows then to become powerfull and prolong their life. The cultivation process is often subdivided into several ... stages, which allows one to have an idea how powerful an individual is by which stage of cultivation he is in.

Doupo Cangqiong follows the story of Xiao Yan, who as a kid was touted as a genius with great talent for cultivation. However, suddenly and without apparent reason, Xiao Yan's cultivation stopped progressing and in fact started to regress, which made his reputation take a turn from genius to trash. The show follows Xiao Yan's climb in the cultivation world, from trash back to prodigy.

One of the staples of cultivation stories is that the main character is both overpowered and weak at the same time! You may find that statement odd, but because cultivation takes place over many years, older characters tend to be stronger than younger characters. There are no "old man past his prime" in cultivation stories, the older a character is, the more time he had to cultivate. Doupo Cangqiong makes full use of this dynamic, alternating situations where the main character is heavily outclassed and situations where he gets to be an overpowered badass dealing with people around his age.

It must be said that season 1 is by far the weakest of the show. This show was a pioneer in the recent explosion of chinese 3D shows and as such, it took then a while to get a proper handle on it. Based just on season 1, I wouldnt recommend this show. However, having seen the subsequent seasons I definitely recommend getting through it to get to the latter seasons. The latter seasons have improved character models, the animation steadily improved from season to season and the fight choreography improved as well.

For me, season 1 earns a rating of 5, but the show as a whole (up to season 5) earns a score of 7, with the more recent seasons being clearly better than the early seasons.

Kingdom is an enjoyable adrenaline ride toeing the line between shounen and seinen. The anime is adapted from a popular and highly acclaimed manga.

Despite all these attractions, Kingdom hasnt been as enthusiastically picked up by the anime community as one would expect. There are two clear reasons for that:

1 - The animation in the first season absolutely sucks!
2 - The first arc of the show is by far the weakest.

The good news is that this show is in a constant ascent in quality. The show immediately becomes more interesting when it moves to the battleground, with full scale wars.

The ... animation has consistenly improved every season. While season 2 still didnt look good, it was a major improvement over the first. Season 3 made another major improvement in animation over season 2.

The 4th season continues the trend of improvement, nevertheless, the animation is still the weakest aspect of the show. While the characters and scenery look beautifull, the budget doesnt allow for anything even resembling sakuga animation. This weakness is most noticiable whenever Kyou Kai (Lei Qiang) is present. Kyou Kai is supposed to have a dance-like style of swordsmanship, but due to the limitations of the animation, this simply cannot be portrayed and her fights end up looking rather poor.

The weakness of the animation is the main reason i can't in good conscience give this show a 10, but the other aspects of the show make up for it and make this a great worthwhile show.

The show features some political elements and battle strategy, combined with the "overpowered" charachters typical of shounen anime (those that can single handely beat dozens of enemies by themselves). This makes the battles very entertaining as there are always at least two layers of engagement. On one hand you have the conflict of strategies and on the other hand you have the expectation of the "one on one" encounters, where the powerfull soldiers face each other. Due to the large scale of the battles it is often not clear who will end up facing who in one on one battle, so the show can occasionally surprise you.

Before ushering my criticism, I would like to register that despite the flaws, this is a well above average show and is worth watching. I particularly like the artwork and overall aesthetic of the show.

That being said, I'm somewhat disapointed with the final season. While i would rate the first 2 seasons of this show among the best in anime in the last decade, this final season dropped significantly in quality.

Firstly the story in this season is rushed. For the sake of comparison, in the live action version the story in this season accounts for half of the show runtime, ... while here it is compressed into less episodes than the first season. This leaves significant characters without proper development. Many moments are robbed of their due emotional payoff. Also some of the transitions will be confusing for those who only seem the anime, at parts the characters jump to a new place without it being clear how and why we got there and episodes often end at rather unatural moments.

Besides the rushedness, the voice acting is also weaker in this season. Wei Wuxian is annoyingly monotonic, he sounds the same in highly tense or emotional moments as when he's just hanging out and being his typical sarcastic self. I can forgive Lan Wanji being monotonic, as that is part of his character, but not Wei Wuxian.

Even the writing itself is weaker and many of the emotional payoff moments fall flat.

The soundtrack of the show is functional, there is nothing particularly remarkable, but all in all it is competently done.

***
In what follows I'll draw some comparisons between the anime and the live action version of the show.

For the first two seasons the anime compares favorably to the live action version, being superior in visual aesthetics, action and even pacing, while being relatevely equal on other aspects.

In the third season, the anime is still ahead in visual aesthetic and action scenes. But in the acting and storytelling, the live action version compares favorably.

Neither version of the show is well paced, the live action moves too slowly, while the anime moves too fast.

To give one specific example of the differences in writing, one particular difference in the order of events robs the anime of one of the most emotionally impactfull moments in the story:

**** SPOILERS AHEAD ****


In the live action version the Jiang Cheng golden core reveal happens before the final confrontation with Jin Guangyao, this makes it much more impactfull and emotional since at this point Wei Wuxian is not "fully cleared" in the death of Yanli and Zixuan and Jiang Cheng has legitimate reason to behave how he does.

In the anime version this is left for the last episode, which makes Jiang's actions appear out of place and the reveal fells more like rubbing it in his face than something with actual emotional impact.


To finish the review, overall I give this season a 7, while the show as a whole would be an 8.5 for me. I think this season could greatly benefit from a good english dub, improving on the extremely flat voice acting displayed in the original.