Review of The King's Avatar

Having never watched any animations by Chinese studios prior to this one, I wasn't sure if I'd enjoy it. The eSports aspect was compelling because I had yet to find a legitimate anime centered around competitive gaming, so I decided I would give it a shot. Overall although several areas did not live up to my expectations, I found myself enjoying every episode and craving the next one after. (NOTE: Before I continue, many reviews that I have seen so far have disregarded the fact that the story is incomplete. Although I know that the purpose of the review is to only talk about thisseason, I still think it isn't fair to judge the story before it completely develops. There is a novel with over 1000 chapters that I'm sure dives deeper into the eSports aspect than this first season did, and I hope that there will be an animated continuation of the story. I hope this note doesn't break the guidelines.)

Story - 7/10:

Like I mentioned before, the story is far from finished, so this category cannot be accurately rated. If we are addressing this season as an individual story, then this score would probably be around 4. In this season alone, there isn't much interesting story development, even though the premise is really cool. This isn't an idea that has been done much before in anime and I hope this title will set a high bar for the future. The story begins with a professional player being forced to resign from his team, which was a very exciting start, however, later on in this season there wasn't much more about the actual competitive realm and it began to only show his personal life as he took a break from competing and worked in an internet cafe.

Art - 7/10:

The art is nothing special. The character and weapon designs are pretty cool, and the action scenes are done well, but although they definitely surpassed my expectations, they still were not outstanding compared to other anime in general.

Sound - 7/10:

Also nothing really special. I enjoy the voices of most of the characters (it helps that I can understand the language) and the effects don't seem too cheap. Still nothing memorable in the audio department.

Characters - 9/10:

I love the MC and his admirable skill. It's cool to see him teaching newer players and shutting down cocky opponents, but I'm sure that the character depth will increase as the series moves on and tackles the actual competition rather than him messing around in casual servers. He still has lots of friends from his time in the professional scene, but he also has many rivals who hate his guts and try to ruin his experience even after his retirement. The party he put together consists of a unique set of personalities that, although at first seem pretty pathetic, turns out to be not too bad of a team. Overall, this season had a fresh cast of memorable characters and I'm sure we will get to know them better in the sequel.

Enjoyment - 10/10:

I definitely enjoyed this series although some aspects were at best mediocre. I personally think that the subs (at least the ones I watched) didn't quite capture the charm of the original script, but I'm sure that it wouldn't have ruined the series for others. Another addition to my enjoyment was the anticipation for the future chapters, however it doesn't seem feasibly for this relatively small animation studio to catch up to the novel any time soon. Overall, I gave the series an 8 out of 10 (originally a 9, but writing the review definitely eliminated some of the recency bias as I reconsidered several aspects.) and I definitely recommend it if you are interested in the premise.