Review of The King's Avatar

2012 of the summer season... that was the 2nd coming of God and the day when he blessed us with such a beautiful creation that is Sword Art Online. This gift from him brought great joy to everyone. It inspired tons of lazy authors to write something with a similar storyline, it becomes a cash cow for every shameless Anime studios and most importantly becomes a meme for everyone to make fun of and ever since, titles with an RPG setting is drastically populating the anime medium like a fidget spinner populating the rate of people with autism. Now I'm not saying it is sucha bad thing, to be fair, I share an interest in some of them. The point is, it is going too well to the point that even our fellow weeaboos from China hopped in and gave birth to Quan Zhi Gao Shou/The King's Avatar or Ching chong chang which I prefer calling. If you have seen its promotional video already, you can really tell they put a lot of effort and especially budget into making this anime, one could say it's a Ufotable work but made by a Chinese studio instead but the question here is, besides its breathtaking quality production and unlimited budget animation, did it do good? welp, I can't really say it's a big help for the RPG genre.

In the story, Glory is a really hit MMORPG game that seemingly holds the interest of almost everyone in the world. Your boy, Ye Xiu, is our dear protagonist and a proud no life professional addict of Glory. In fact, he's the number 1 top player of the game and earns a shit load of money for being the most influential in the game. Glory for Ye Xiu is basically not only a hobby but a career as well but not until when he was forced to retire by his teammates for some unclear reason. Losing your max Lvl account that you have been playing for ages and had probably spent countless of money on with tons of rare and limited items/weapons is probably the worst nightmare for some, but if it was only the case for Ye Xiu. Again, Glory is not just something he does for fun but something he does for living too. He's basically someone who just lost his job and is in a critical situation. Now this made me sit properly on my chair. It had me thought the anime will take a mature approach with this. Like An external conflict between the main character and him being a jobless while the game related thing is still, of course, relevant to the story. It would have been really amusing if that did happen but sadly he just effortlessly found a job from a nearby internet cafe and the conflict was resolved like there wasn't even one at all. It's pretty disappointing especially when one of Ye Xiu's friend who is also part of the team who made him retire was even trying to stop ending his career contract from happening and had the friend elaborate just how bad it will affect Ye Xiu. There's also the fact that he purposely wasted all of his earnings from helping a number of friends.

This got me think of what's even the point of all of it, of why even make the protagonist retire in the first place, of what's the author actually want to do with the story and where he intends to take it. Well, since Ye Xiu begins his new life as a supervisor in a local net cafe, he as well begins his new life in the latest release server of Glory. Being a completely unfamiliar face to the sight of both casual and top players while at the same time being such a pro as he is, he quickly attracts everybody's attention with his "flawlessness" and also gradually gives some the opportunity to know he is. This made things seem more pointless and just shallow to me. The issues here that I want to be pointed out can be seen from how effortless for others to find out his real identity. See, Ye Xiu doesn't really try to hide the fact that he was that Almighty God in Glory who retired. As a matter of fact, he seems to be even interested in telling it about to others. And because of that, It doesn't bother him to set his limit from being always at max and just blatantly show it off to everyone. He has no intention of toning down his decade of experiences and avoid getting exposed. There's nothing like a block, a wall, a conflict, that keeps him under control and nothing to keep the charm stable. Most of the time, the anime is just him breaking a new raid record and watching him so gets really uninteresting over the time because of "Muh SKilLz", and wouldn't the show become more intense or thrilling anyway when he actually tries to play the game secretly but there are some who already have suspicion on him? like a bit of a mind game where he tries to convince someone that he's not that Legendary Glory player who retired. It's an interesting concept and will be a good obstacle to make Ye Xiu tone down his opness. Of course, by no means, I'm suggesting it should be on the same level of Light's and L's mind warfare from Death Note, lose its direction if it completely goes there lol.

The animation and quality are where it does well though. It's the only part that doesn't look bland and I'm sure anyone who has seen the promotional video will agree. Surprising part is, while it may be really highly budgeted, the fight scenes can still sometimes bore you. Sure, well made and detailed fight can be so pumping but Ye Xiu's opness continuous to suffer even here and allow me to briefly explain why. Ye Xiu is strong and knowledgeable, which make sense as he used to be the strongest in Glory, but it's noticeable only from how amazing he plays with his hands. Oher than that, you rarely see a real tactics and strategies in the anime and more of "JuSt LiSteN aNd fOlLoW Muh CoMmaNd", nothing like a real team cooperation. It can get pretty lame when the bosses and other players are getting raped so much because someone is comboing them to the point that they can't even land a hit. I just feel sorry for them getting humiliated like that. That said, I don't mean to trivialize how breathtaking the animation and quality of this anime. So regardless, this particular department receives a positive note.

Ching chong chang, is one of the 1st anime we have from China. They seem to be both really skilled and passionate on working to this title which you can clearly see how much effort and budget they put in the production, but besides it, doesn't seem they put the same effort for other things. Still, it's either a good thing and a bad thing that we can expect more anime to come from China in the near future. Cheers.