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Sep 8, 2024
This was the first 3D Donghua I personally liked, but this might be a hard sell for a lot of people.
I still think it's worth giving at least a try to see if you're into it. But don't go in with big expectations.
I want to touch a little on future seasons, so this review reveals what you can expect later on without going to any plot details.
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Visually, I think the artstyle is inconsistent. Some environments look way too empty & unnatural. At times it's like the characters are driving through barbie land with a couple of plastic trees on a plastic ground. Even texture quality
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is inconsistent.
Animations are very stiff, and the combat sequences are not that well made. It's especially bad when the main character fights beasts for the first time. You won't even see the sword making contact with them. After first 12 episodes there are some improvements I noticed though, since the swords start making cuts on the enemies.
Both the visuals & animation do slowly get some improvements as episodes pile on:
The scifi style is pretty well pulled off & the show gets more futuristic the further you go. Past first season most fights are done midair & it's a lot prettier to look at than ground combat choreography. Nice visual effects & the animation quality feels less relevant.
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The plot begins with humans defending earth from beasts, but future seasons eventually start to become more & more scifi & eventually there's even space travel & space combat.
I think the story writing is pretty terrible outside the major plot of winning the earth back. The subplots are always very surface level "You offended me, so I will end your bloodline" type of deal.
Personally I wasn't a fan of fighting overgrown beasts or dinosaurs & thought the subplots were cringe, so the future seasons with their scifi settings are where this show shines: dope armors, lots of nice visual effects during combat, nice spaceships, nice metallic interiors, lots of combat.
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Overall I'd say first 2 season are a 6/10 on average, but seasons 3-4 are a 7/10 for me.
It's cringe, but it's also fun.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Sep 8, 2024
An early review, but this show is a total disappointment for me.
Going in with no information on the source material has been a pretty miserable experience.
The visuals are fine. The animations are fine.
The story is not. The pacing is not. The characters are not.
You are constantly starved of any sort of meaningful character development, fights feel meaningless & there's no plot ever being developed. There is barely any context as to what the main character is trying to do at any given time, or what happened between time skips. You are constantly asking who these random characters who look identical to eachother are.
The official?
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subtitles seem to be machine translated & also ignore on screen text.
Only reason I'm not giving it a fully negative review is because it has okay visuals & I think some people just want to watch the main character kill people occasionally & that's enough for them. Or maybe people familiar with the original novel want to watch it & perhaps it's good for that.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Sep 7, 2024
Reasonably good. Sometimes the story has these moments where I feel like I should bring my 5 year old sister to watch the show instead. But if you don't mind watching some My Little Pony type moments every now and then, you will probably enjoy this.
Consistent visuals & a reasonably enjoyable artstyle. But often the high contrast color scheme feels out of place. Bright red / pink hairstyles. Pink/rainbow color horses. Everything pops out a little too much for my tastes. Also environments are often very flat & lack details in textures & debris, furniture, trees etc.
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Story revolves around a humans vs demons premise, where
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the war has been at a deadlock for 6000 years. It's overall well told, abilities, strength, character thoughts are all expressed well. And the show pacing is very good.
However I personally find that often the show feels too contradictory between characters & world lore:
There are several virtues that the knights are trying to uphold. "Compassion, honesty, bravery, fairness...", yet the people who receive screen time are always bickering and fighting like toddlers, adults included. There are moments where some bystanders even mentioned a knight freezing people around her during a fight. Another time some temple officials overlooked a murder attempt. They seemingly can also fight in the middle of busy towns for some reason. One of the central adult characters for this season was even willing to beat up a child in a fit of rage because the child gave him praise.
The characters are all mentally unstable & it's never explained that the knights would be corrupt or anything. I can only assume it's a narrative conflict.
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For the most part I enjoy fights & I actually could tell how most skills used between different disciplines were consistent with their class. It didn't feel like everyone had developed completely unique skills, it was consistent with lore. None of the fights thus far were that over the top, usually they were very simple trading of blows. You attack. I block.
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Putting aside the conflict between how you'd expect this society to work & how it actually seems to work, I genuinely don't have anything negative to say. It's a pretty good show.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Sep 5, 2024
Having read some cultivation novels, it is really refreshing to be watching one.
A Record of a Mortal's Journey to Immortality has a simple premise of a normal boy following the road towards immortality by chance. It doesn't focus on his powers & doesn't spend time explaining how cultivation works in detail. It focuses on the relationships he forms & the hardships he faces.
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The skin textures & facial models look extremely good, and animations are fairly fluid. Most environments & enemies are decently designed. Same goes for all the SFX like fire/sparks. Unfortunately the show is made to be weirdly PG & they don't really show
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gore, which I think should have been a crucial aspect of the show considering how many people are killed or injured.
There is one major issue regarding graphics that will be relevant even in later seasons, and it has to do with several characters looking very similar to eachother. This is amplified with women, since for men they can add beards & make them uglier, but all women have a similar, beautiful face shape.
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The prologue in my opinion is a 9/10 from a storytelling perspective, although perhaps the pacing could've been adjusted to be a little slower when it comes to explaining the cultivation aspects, especially for people new to the genre. Some camera cuts also are a little too fast & if you blink you may lose context. Past the prologue there won't be anything notable regarding story, but it's all reasonably well written in the sense that it's usually not bad & is fun to follow.
The fights past prologue will however be larger in scale, which I am fairly sure some people will enjoy.
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My two dislikes for this show are how often the main character Han Li will stand around like a tree stump whenever interacting with women, and how sometimes combat scenes drag on for a little too long.
Overall this should be a good watch for most people.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Sep 5, 2024
When I previously tried 3D Donghua back in 2018, the high rated shows like Soul Land & The Legend and the Hero were wildly unimpressive visually & pacing wise. Some of these post 2020 releases however are clearly beginning to raise the bar.
This show has consistent visual delivery, good animation quality & nice SFX. I think character designs are mostly good, but somehow the main character's transformation/power up design is a complete flop & I prefer just about all side character designs. The fight choreography is enjoyable, and some moments mix music & animation in a way that's a little reminiscent of Arcane's music video
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segments.
It just sucks that the story is not the best & there are some cringe moments. But for every bad moment, there's a good moment to balance it out.
Looking forward to the next season if one is coming.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Feb 26, 2024
This manwha is quite the amalgamation of genres & themes, so I think writing a review to warn readers could help some people.
The main character is a 70 year old male from a murim world, who gets transported to another world & eventually turns into a female.
Most of the fights are done with mechs, rather than martial arts. The MC is also often times sidelined in order to showcase plot developments & other characters. Later on the politics will be about 90% of what you read.
From my personal view:
I honestly never liked the characters or plot in this manwha. I kept going because I was
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curious where the story was going and was hoping to see some fun scenarios unfold. But I never feel like I got the payoff I was hoping for at any point.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Jul 15, 2023
This murim has many ups and downs, but overall it's a captivating read. Despite having a main character with futuristic technology in him, the story has always been in a historical setting thus far.
Story (6,5 / 10):
Yeo-woon is the son of a cult leader & one of his servants. He and his 6 brothers who are full blood nobles are in competition for the throne, but due to the mixed blood status Yeo-woon faces great difficulties. He had made a pact not to cultivate and therefore is in no shape to compete against his brothers when the time to enter the demonic academy finally arrives.
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However before he can even join the academy, he is assassinated... Or at least would have been, but he is saved by someone from the future and is injected with nano machines, which can alter and repair his body, and is also accompanied by an artificial intelligence.
Sometimes the story is quite nice to follow, but there are many times where practically nothing is happening, or the way the story is told is way too chaotic for my tastes. It's mostly basic fights between the antagonists and main character, but with real story elements sprinkled here and there.
I have some difficulties following the dozens of sect names & events, so story isn't the easiest to follow, but this might be because I read it with translator changing nonstop.
Characters (6 / 10):
There is real character development to be seen for everyone, but it's not done in a way that feels significant. It's also hindered by the fact that there are far too many characters in the manhwa to properly explore. Everyone is mostly sidelined, but after maybe chapter ~120 some side characters have received more time in the spotlight.
Art (7 / 10):
The art is good, but character designs are sometimes far too samey and I get lost in understanding who is who.
Enjoyment (7 / 10):
I enjoyed beginning and the currently ongoing arc, but the middle part was an unenjoyable mess to me.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Jul 12, 2023
Wuxia that is nonstop action and infantile humor. This might be exactly what you're looking for, or it might be exactly what you want to avoid.
Story (3 / 10):
A strong martial artist that was considered insane and had earned himself the nickname 'Mad Demon' dies and is reincarnated. He forms a guild and fights anybody he deems an evildoer for fun. Then he combines the guilds he defeats with his own. The pacing is breakneck speed so it's 0 plot all action.
Characters (5 / 10):
The characters are mostly used for comedic reasons & aren't deeply explored. Our main character's insanity might provide a
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lot of enjoyment to some people, as his decision-making is basically whatever he wants to do in a whim rather than what would make the most sense. There is however some method in his madness and he is in many ways virtuous. Whether you like the characters or not can heavily depend on your sense of humor.
Art (7 / 10):
Nothing wrong with it.
Enjoyment (6 / 10):
The humor wasn't for me and I would've hoped for a more plot centered read, but at times it's pretty fun. Even if I didn't enjoy the plot, the fast pace led to new situations nonstop so it was hard to hate reading this.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Sep 27, 2022
If you've enjoyed the other 3 seasons of overlord, I don't see why this one would be an exception.
The season starts with Ainz seeking to expand his kingdom with enjoyable slice of life like episodes, and then leans more towards it's power fantasy aspects towards the end. Fan service is also present in many of the episodes with female characters acting thirsty.
Unfortunately narratively speaking, there isn't much to talk about. It lacks any sort of tension or a sense of payoff.
Even the visuals aren't worth talking about, not in a negative sense or positive. They don't distract, they don't wow.
I enjoyed the beginning of the
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season when there wasn't any particular buildup more than where the show ended up.
It's quite a shame that whenever we get any sort of action, there isn't any reason to be invested in it as the narrative is completely uninteresting and the lack of good animation just reinforces that sentiment I have.
The show's strengths currently lie in world and character building rather than the power fantasy aspect, and it doesn't capitalize upon them.
All in all, I don't have many positive or negative thoughts, but I found this season moderately enjoyable.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Sep 13, 2022
TL;DR: Not perfect, but there's a lot of heart in it.
The first episode is a great introductory to Cyberpunk's violent and degenerate world. Seeing the world from the eyes of a more ordinary individual is great and quite immersive. Story picks up after fast, and we get many action sequences in episodes to follow. The action scenes are very gruesome, but also cartoony. What truly makes this an adult animation however is the amount of nudity within the show.
If you are familiar with the game, you will find this show to be faithful to the game world down to sound effects, vehicles, music, elements
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of the user interface, Night City and implants. There's also a few new things it has to show. A lot of the storytelling is also similar to how you'd pick up missions as V, and how people would communicate with you through calls. They even have some mission debriefing moments.
I think the dub is a great way of watching. I've always been a sub only watcher for anime, but I thought dub would fit the show, and I was right. Aside from a couple of parts in episode 2 where the show was extremely "anime", the dubs were great. Pretty much felt like the dub was always kept in mind rather than as an afterthought.
What I liked:
- Animation quality was good for most of the show, and although the style is cartoony, it worked quite well all things considered.
- The animation being extremely faithful to the game is also a nice touch for anyone who's played it.
- I loved the first episode, and I thought the following few episodes were good also. Some great emotional parts and action parts.
What I didn't like:
It felt too similar to how the game played out:
- I wanted to explore the world from the eyes of a more normal person for longer, but the show becomes very similar to how Cyberpunk 2077 was. You're doing gigs left and right, and there's no chance to explore the world outside the eyes of a mercenary. Only first episode, and a couple of the episodes after felt fresh. This might be different for new viewers though!
- Worst thing was probably how the show only half stuck the landing for me, the final arc felt weak at parts, but when the curtains closed I wasn't dissatisfied.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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