Review of The King's Avatar
Quan Zhi Gao Shou is a Chinese cartoon, and it's not very good one. The plot revolves around playing an MMO, or some kind of multiplayer game, but they never once explain how the game works. It has some kind of open world like an MMO, and has loot and leveling up, yet reaction speed and input speed are important? Exactly how do you play this game? I can't truly believe that the main character is some kind of God at this game when I don't entirely understand what's happening in it! You will sit through scene upon scene of the show hyping up themain character, so this flaw basically ruins the entire series.
The anime looks pretty bad, to boot. Sure, the character designs are alright and they don't really go off model, but it's very clear that there weren't any decent animators around that knew how to get the characters to move. The fights are composed of rather awkward looking stock animations and ugly run cycles with a wonky perspective. Once again, I can't really be impressed by any of the gameplay, so I'm mostly twiddling my thumbs waiting for that scene to get to the point.
And did I mention this anime doesn't have a proper ending? There's no high point or climax, it just ends, to be continued next season guys! What a waste of my time. Really, the only reason why I kept watching was to experience the novelty of a Chinese anime. But after seeing some of these "novelties", I never want to see another piece of Chinese animation ever again.
This show has constant McDonalds' advertisements in every episode. A WcDonalds appears in most Japanese anime on occasion, in order to portray a fast food company while dodging copyright. It's charmingly free of corporate involvement and it actually shows some level of distance between the art piece and the company depicted. Quan Zhi Gao Shou is initially content to show the real McDonalds in the background, but then at the end of an episode a random character starts shooting an ad for a McDonalds ice cream for a good 3 minutes at the end of one episode. Then characters start randomly praising this product in every episode since, just as an aside. It feels slimy as hell.
An interesting counterwieght to this example is Neo Yokio, the Netflix anime, and how it uses its product placement of Toblerones. Sure, it's equally as random as Quan Zhi Gao Shou's McDonalds, but at least in there, there's a certain level of irony to it. It becomes relevant to the story and leads to some hilarious scenes and lines. Having a character walk around with a giant toblerone for no reason is part of the joke.
In fact, Neo Yokio in general is an interesting show to compare to Quan Zhi Gao Shou. Both are foreign made entertainment that visually resembles Japanese animation, yet Quan Zhi Gao Shou is recognized by MAL but Neo Yokio is not. Why IS that, though? Why is a website about anime allowing content from China and Korea, but not western shows that even have Japanese studios involved in its production? Of course, Neo Yokio isn't made for a Japanese audience, and the feel and tone of the series is very different from anime, but you could claim the same things about QZGS!
China, Korea and Japan are very different countries, you know that? The culture, history and political climate of each culture is not the same. Quan Zhi Gao Shou doesn't feel like an anime. The kinds of characters and tropes you see are different. The style of writing and dialogue is different due to the different language used(Beijing Mandarin). It is every bit as not anime as Neo Yokio is. Yet of course, arbitrarily, all East Asian animation is all lumped together as anime, while rejecting media that is very clearly inspired by anime on some level. What's the standard here?
Either you open the floodgates and let Neo Yokio in, or this doesn't count as an anime.
The moral of the story is fuck McDonalds and fuck Chinese cartoons.