Review of The King's Avatar

As someone who grew up speaking Chinese, I seriously wanted King's Avatar to succeed as a positive representation of Chinese culture and language in animation. While King's Avatar proves that an excellent anime-style Chinese donghua is definitely within the realm of possiblility, it pains me to say that this donghua is a victim of the same infuriating tendencies of modern Chinese media. They are more focused on rushing to certain "cool" scenes instead of giving us a coherent experience. Story: 2 - Missed potential The plot goes something like this... Ye Xiu is basically the world's best pro-gamer in a game called Glory. The story starts whenhe is unrightfully removed from his pro team Excellent Era because he has no public image and is thus unprofitable. From there on out, he starts working as a network manager at a local game café where he continues to play Glory in his free time. He starts breaking records in the new season, and begins cultivating a team of talented players to break records with him. Really, that's all there is to it. It's completely open ended and the show feels like a compilation of random encounters instead of planned story arcs.

King's Avatar had an opportunity to tell a uniquely Chinese story. Unlike Japan where Esports are relatively unknown, China has a booming Esports industry. From the way I see it, the show could have viably went down two pathways: 1) a better Sword Art Online that gets into the nitty-gritty of game mechanics, or what I think would be much more interesting, 2) a depiction of the lives and struggles of pro-gamers in the Esports environment mixed with action from gameplay. King's Avatar does not capitalize on either of these opportunities and instead awkwardly straddles somewhere in between. The game world is vague and feels like it exists solely for eye candy and for our characters to randomly jump in and out of. At first you get the impression that Glory is a VR isekai fantasy world that our characters are transported in, but instead everything is being controlled by mouse and keyboard. This glaring oversight is never addressed and is made even worse by the jarring CHAT BOXES that we're somehow supposed to WATCH. The Esports aspect is never really addressed because our characters literally only talk about Glory. They have practically no personality or life outside of the context of the game. Glory is also an MMO, which makes little in the sense of Esports. The PvP mechanics are rarely explored, instead focusing the majority of the show on clearing dungeons which is apparently supposed to be Esports?

Art: 5 - Meh except certain instances
King's Avatar tries to blend CGI with traditional animation, and I'll give credit where credit is due. The real world scenes look great where CGI is used to build backgrounds in contrast to the bold drawn characters. The bridge scene in the first episode where Su Mucheng tries to catch up with Ye Xiu after he leaves Excellent Era is beautifully moonlit and gives off a melancholy feeling of his departure. Too bad those scenes are far and few. The in-game world of Glory has some good settings, but broad daylight shows the rather subpar animation quality of action or combat. Combat essentially consists of a shot of one character unleashing a barrage of attacks, followed by a shot of the other character defending all of the strikes. Running animations from a distance look like 3 frames recycled on loop. Not what I consider up-to-par for 2017. Some animations are recycled, but I'm not as bothered by that because it's supposed to be a video game where animations are coded in. CGI, used well in some cases, was used very poorly in others. Look at all of the CGI people sitting in the gaming café and tell me that that doesn't look horrible. Regarding art style, characters look way too similar. They all basically use the same face templates but with different hair and eye color. The use of real-life photos along with animated characters and CGI characters is just a mess and a big no-no.

Sound: 7 - Not bad, but a little jarring
I really liked the soundtrack, which has an epic fantasy rock theme to it. The opening song also has an awesome Chinese battle vibe to it. This was also my first time watching an anime-style show in native Mandarin. It actually works quite well. I wish the VAs used a more southern accent, although that's nitpicky and personal preference. The rough part is the fact that the show was most likely made without much consideration for western viewers. Despite already poor pacing, the characters talk very fast and the subtitles just fly by. On the scenes with message boards, it's literally impossible to tell what's happening unless you're fluent in Chinese and can listen along since there's so much text bombarding the screen. The Glory usernames do not translate very well into English, since the characters will say names that sound nothing like what appears in the subtitles. They will say the actual Chinese characters, although to English speakers it will generically be translated as some adjective + verb. In these cases, it's hard to remember names because you can't connect the cue of hearing a name along with reading it. Keep in mind, there is no official English subtitles, and even then, translating Chinese to English subs is still a relatively underdeveloped community, so I'm willing to give the show the benefit of the doubt here. One guy near the end of the show does get REALLY annoying, however...

Character: 2 - No development aside from clichés
All of King's Avatar's characters are 2-dimensional and lack intricacy. Ye Xiu is the least boring, which he should be as a main character. He has a cool "anything goes" attitude and a mysterious past that he wants to leave behind, but overall still comes off as a loner who does nothing but sleep, eat, and play games. We're supposed to cheer for him as he aims for redemption by starting a new character, but that's hard to do when he is so obviously overpowered and the bad pacing gives no sense of progression. Su Mucheng is supposed to be his love interest, but this relationship is HARDLY explored at all, and he seems to just use her to help clear out dungeons. The rest of Ye Xiu's team can be described by various archetypes, such as the girl with raw talent but lacks experience, comedic relief characters, the shy dude, the bossy lady, and the complete klutz with a good heart. At least our "good guys" are likeable, as they should be. The "bad guys" are so obviously dislikeable, like the manager of Excellent Era who is made out to be the personification of greed with no redeemable traits as he kicks out Ye Xiu with a smirk for not being marketable. We are also simply blasted with too many characters who don't have enough screen time. Compounded by repetitive character design and confusing names, I didn't know who anyone was aside from Ye Xiu's team. Our main characters have cool outfits or show lots of cleavage for fan service, the other characters have generic armors making it even harder to tell apart who is who.

Enjoyment: 3 - I had hopes
I think I found myself watching King's Avatar more for what it could be rather than what I actually got. What I really wanted was a show about PEOPLE in Esports, but I would have settled for a more generic shounen centered around gaming. King's Avatar sort of tries to do the latter, but doesn't make it's intentions very clear. Instead, it kind of just meanders by having the characters accomplishing random feats without any clear purpose. The show had an okay start that was intriguing enough for me to keep watching. By half way through I found my patience wearing thin, and by the last few episodes I just wanted to get it over with.

Overall: 4 - A step in the right direction
King's Avatar has a long way to go...it lacks the nuance and subtlety found in my favorite animes. I've seen the Chinese industry make the same mistakes again and again. They start with an original story but strip it down bare until only the iconic scenes remain, resulting in a final product that is little more than a bunch of nonsensical cuts. Despite me roasting the season pretty hard, it serves as a pretty good benchmark for Chinese animation. There's potential buried among this mess, and I think things can improve from here. I'm sure the novel does a better job at storytelling, and I hope that the second season is able to take its time telling that story. Someday, I think I'll give it a go...