Anime: Kingdom

I approached this anime with an opened mind because I had seen review saying the art and animation are bad in the beginning but the storyline and characters more than make up for it. I almost gave up not even 3 minutes into the first episode but I bore through it and I am so glad I did.

I grew up watching long epic historical/fantasy chinese dramas(the late 80's to late 90's were the best years for it) where you follow a protagonist through his trials of making friends, departing with them, facing harsh adversary and coming out on top for 30+ hours. This is the same feeling I get from watching Kingdom. This is only the first stretch in the marathon. This is really about introducing the characters, their relationships and their motivations and setting the stage for the next part.

There are different characters, some strong and some weak with their own goals and motivations that are built upon by ongoing events. Yes, the main character is an idiot but he is hardworking. He doesn't get a shortcut or easy route to his dreams but works for it through blood, sweat, and tears. The support characters are likeable and have amazing points that will have you rooting for them and hoping to see more of them and how they will grow too.

You won't see big boobed girls flashing their undies, romantic drama/love polygons, super cutesy/clumsy/needy girls. There are female characters who are strong and can fight on par if not better than the men. There are also weak ones who need protecting but they are not useless. Like many of the male cast, they are strong willed and they do what they need to to attain their goals. The down side, is there is very few female characters.

There are generic villians who strive for their greed/pride, but there are more complex ones as well. They have their reasons and why they are fighting. They also don't suddenly change their opinion/views because of a few words from the protagonist.

The major down side to this anime is the art and animation. I nearly stopped watching because of the terrible animation when they talk, and the background doesn't fit with what the characters are doing, and sometimes characters walk like a duck with their head moving back and forth. But it does improve. The movements become smoother. One thing I loved from the beginning, and what kept me going, is how the eyes are drawn, especially Hyou/Piao and Sei/Zheng's, just beautiful. There is quite a bit of ugly art and some character designs that aren't pretty.

I'm not too sure about the bgm, but I wasn't thrown out of the mood like in HxH(2011) where I cringed in horror at the music they chose. The voice actors did very well, especially Shin/Xin and Ouki/Wang Qi. I thought the voice actor for Sei/Zheng was too low/mature for the character, it would suit him more if he was a few years older. But I loved his voicing of Hyou/Piao.

I think this anime certainly has quite rewatchable. Even knowing what will happen, I am enjoying it again now, and will do so another time before watching Kingdom 2. I certainly hope that this will change future anime and pull it more towards having plot, character, and character development instead of fanservice/romance types that seem to be the popular thing now. This isn't a fully complete series yet, but I think it is a very good first piece to be built upon.

I certainly enjoyed this anime quite a bit. Once I finished the first ep, I had to watch the second, and it kept going so I marathoned the entire thing in three days. I enjoyed the female characters are awesome and not sexualized. I really enjoyed the fact that Kingdom didn't revolve around romantic love but focused on ties of friendship. I enjoyed trying to figure out the characters and their motivations and loyalties. There is some character growth in this, but it is just the first steps. Some grow more than others but it is there and I really look forward to how they are further developed in the future. This is a good start to hopefully, a wonderful longer series.

THE STAFF
- Animated by Studio Pierrot, which automatically means a shounen show with average to bad production values. In this case, very bad.
- Directed by Kamiya Jun, who has a most unimpressive roster. His best work was Blue Seed and even that was just an average watch.
- Based on a manga close to nobody knows about, written by a guy nobody cares about.

There didn’t seem to be much to expect from this show and as soon as it began WHAT A SURPRISE it was indeed nothing. This anime is the perfect example of what a blunt anime is all about.

1) Boring title
Kingdom??? Just kingdom? Why not the Seven Kingdoms? Why stop there with the trimming; how about just King?

2) Horrible CGI
The series is made with cell-shaded polygons and it looks completely low quality. Everything feels crude and artificial, from body motions to action scenes. It’s like you are watching cut scenes from a decade old videogame. I give them a credit for trying to experiment on 3D effects in order to better use them in later shows but this leaves the show as nothing more than a crude and eventually failed experiment.

3) Unimpressive soundtrack and dumb dialogues
There are no interesting songs and the dialogues are all very silly and typical shonen fare. Nothing to bother listening to.

4) Lame action
There are lots of action scenes and they are all very basic. Despite having huge armies clashing with each other, you hardly feel any excitement coming out of that. Aside from how the soldiers move in a very crude way because of the terrible CGI, they also never get any wounds despite occasionally bleeding a bit. Call it cencorship because this is aimed at young teenagers, or lack of budget if you prefer, the result is lame battles. Heck, the mooks don’t even have eyes most of the times to the point they don’t look like people but rather like mass produced blind robots. Even when the main characters are fighting, you hardly get any actual battle choreography, as it is mostly static people jumping around with a few rays of light to substitute motions. Doesn’t that render the whole use of 3D pointless? You are supposed to have polygons for elaborate perspectives and complicating body motions and instead you get the usual frozen cardboards. This doesn’t look any better than your typical 2D shonen show.

5) Basic story
- The story takes place during the warring states period of China and plays out as basic as possible. If you happen to have watched or read The Romance of the Three Kingdoms or at least be aware of a few well made Chinese war films, this will feel completely dull and childish. I mean the setting is better suited for an epic saga full of politics and hundreds of characters and all you get is a simplistic fighting shounen revolving around a dozen people.
- So what is the story you may wonder? Well, there this bunch of nations fighting each other. A prince is hunted by his usurper brother and befriends a villager boy whose best friend was used as a look-alike for the prince. Together they fend off some assassins and head to the mountains where they ally themselves with the mountain folk and they storm the usurper's fortress. These three lines of text took 15 whole episodes to happen and everything else in-between was either dead time or shounen bs.
- The second arc is supposed to make things more interesting by including battles with thousands of warriors. There are absolutely no significant politics, mind games, field tactics, or common sense; it’s just some imba guys attacking and winning, and then calling that smart. I guess it may seem smart if you still think Naruto is an intelligent series but for someone like me who has watched stuff like the live action Romance of the Three Kingdoms series, this felt more like kids playing cops and robbers. Calling it shounen as an excuse still doesn’t change the fact that the setting deserved to be seinen.

6) Annoying characters
The cast is as generic as it gets, separated to black and white, with each character easily described in two lines of text, and behaving in a most immature way. Which makes sense since this is a shounen story. But then again the setting is making you think it will be dark and complicating, when it hardly is and everybody behaves like angry dumb teenagers, even if they are adults. It just doesn’t feel plausible.
- The villains are complete assholes with absolutely no depth or redeeming qualities to have a reason to like them even for being evil.
- The way everybody acts during fights is lame. They are mostly talking than fighting for their lives. Especially when it comes to mini bosses, they kill mooks in seconds without exchanging a word but when they face the hero they just can’t shut up and just kill him. They also constantly don’t try to slay him in one strike but keep playing with him, as if this is not a duel to the death but a childish game.
- The hero is not any better. He will constantly be acting like a delinquent who loves to scream for no reason and will be winning against elites who have decades of experience. He trained a few years with wooden swords by playing cops and robbers with another kid, and that magically made him a million times stronger than men who were training with REAL weapons in REAL camps with REAL trainers and who fought in REAL battles. Basically, he wins all the time with nothing more than willpower, which the show will constantly try to present as skill and tactics.
- Even the reactions of the characters feel completely bullocks. Imagine a scene where a professional assassin kills someone. All you see is a ray of light (since the show is not making use of its own technology) followed by a most ridiculous remark by the victim’s friend. “Hey, I know this style of fighting; let me describe it to you in 5.000 words.” Aside from the fact this nobody magically recognizes a fighting style just by looking at a simplistic ray of light, he also does nothing more than infodumping us instead of saying something more natural, such as “OMG HE KILLED MY FRIEND!”

Thus all you get is a big zero of a show. I know many who like this show and constantly try to make it seem like it’s awesome because the setting looks interesting and the premise sounds cool. That doesn’t save the show from being a run of the mill shounen with 2D characters and the power of friendship winning over brains and cunningness. Since we have shows like FMAB and HxH, I see no reason to consider this as anything more than a time waster.

And now for some excused scorings.