Soul Land

The first impression of Douluo Dalu wasn't amazing. They say that the first 20 seconds of a show determines whether the show is good or not. And in most cases, that first 20-second rule is quite accurate from my experiences. Art (5/10) The animation and the art style were hard to convert into. I didn't like it at first, but I know I got myself into it and I shouldn't have expected much from it. It's not good but it's not something that I looked for so, in the end, it slightly matters, but it doesn't ruin the show. You can have a good story with terribleart and animation, and I'll still watch it. One thing that annoyed me the most about the animation was how fast it moved. It was like watching an extremely fast slideshow. Every second is a new cut from a different angle, it's hard to see what is going on. Character (3/10) I don't know what's so bad about it. It's just unbearable. The characters weren't that interesting at the start and they were blander at the end. The majority of the time, side characters get tossed away like last night's leftovers. There are characters I don't care about who gets more screen time than other decently developed characters. Character development is so weak in this show with the main characters not even getting a development. There are some characters I wanted to care about, but there was no development or screen time on them, instead, they focus on characters I don't find all that interesting They tried at some points to develop some characters, but in the end, after two episodes, they just give up on them, giving little to no screen time and reverts their personality to what they had originally. Story (6/10) It's unoriginal and predictable. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. It just means I zone out and I don't have to think much about what is happening. The show isn't something I would seek out, I don't think much about isekai and overpowered MC storylines. All I can say is it's predictable. What you would think would happen in a generic shonen will most likely happen. Every episode has a fight scene or at least the start of a fight scene. That in of itself is entertaining and carried the show. There weren't any meaningful plotlines that were touched upon, with even more useless and meaningless scenes that last up to one full episode, and it didn't even advance the story. It was fun to watch at least, but it didn't make the show any better or worse. It felt as if the show was being dragged on when it didn't need to be. It just reminds me of cutscenes of a free RPG game with all the cutscenes spliced together making a somewhat coherent and continuous storyline. They just forgot to add the gameplay elements. If they made it into a game, I would be down to play it, but as a donghua that it is, it's not that great, it's just meh. I will watch it, I just don't think much about it. Sound and Music (4/10) It's not the best, but I have heard worse. It's poorly edited. With music ending abruptly, generic and unsatisfying, probably royalty-free too, sound effects. Not saying it ruined the show, it just more distracting than it should be. The soundtrack isn't all that amazing, sometimes the soundtrack they use just doesn't fit the mood that the show is trying to show. It just ruins the experience and connection. Now it sounds like I have criticized the show with no positivity and all negatives. But I still somewhat found an interest in the show. Story development isn't that good, but I still have high hopes that it will improve and develop especially in Douluo Dalu 2. I hope the worldbuilding of the show can expand and improve.

It took some time to get used to the 3D animation, however after a few episodes it was totally fine; almost like watching cut scenes from a Teen rated fantasy/martial arts video game. The fight scenes are very fast paced: kinetic and filled with bright neon colors and moving particles to the point of being distracting or disorienting at times. Nonetheless, they are often exciting and fun to watch. Facial expressions can be stiff especially when characters are expressing affection or frustration which creates some disconnection as a viewer. Most of the female characters look the same and have relatively weak personalities (save for 2or 3), whereas the male characters have diverse body types and facial features and can be pretty funny. Regardless, few of the characters have much depth and most are 1D. Regarding episode structure, the first 3-4 minutes and the last 1-2 minutes of the 20 minute episodes are used on theme songs or recap and can be skipped. Occasionally, there will be extremely obvious product placement that seems totally out of place in the story's world; for instance the characters drinking or walking past Ito En bottled green tea. Also, this series is actually completely available for free with English subtitles on the Tencent Video channel on YouTube with over 112 episodes out at this point. The only downside to viewing it on this platform are the 5-6 quick, but unavoidable ads that will interrupt the videos. The sub quality is pretty good, however there is a pretty bad lag during episodes 11-13.

Something that I like about this anime is its art style. Before I watched Doulou Dalu, I only liked the regular 2D art style that most anime used. However, it seems to work for this type of genre. It makes the fight scenes cooler than they would've been in 2D. One of the only issues I have is that none of the characters really develop except for the MC; everyone has the same personality. Overall, it's a great anime. The MC retained his knowledge from his past life and uses it to his advantage. It's very satisfying seeing him becoming stronger and unlocking new abilities. For thosethat enjoy the anime, it's very difficult to stop watching.

This donghua is an adaptation of a novel of the same name. I have read the novel, so I will give an adaptation review in addition to a review of the donghua as an independent work. Plot Summary: Tang San, an outer sect disciple, violated the rules of the Tang Sect and thus was pursued as a traitor. In his final moments, he reveals that the techniques and designs he stole, allowed him to recreate the technologically lost legendary weapons weapons of the Tang Sect. These weapons would be his last gift to the Tang Sect, as he knows his treasonous actions would not be forgiven.Since he was an orphan raised by the sect, he returns everything, including his life to back to the sect (via suicide as atonement). After this, he reincarnates up in the Douluo Continent (Dalu), cultivating the skills he learned from the Tang Sect and slowly learning about this world and applying his previous life knowledge to strengthen himself while learning about this new world and beginning a new life. The plot for this season is pretty simple. Tang San reincarnated into this new Douluo Dalu world; we have a brief look at this previous life before jumping to Tang San at age 6 in the new world. We get a bit of infodumping in the earlier episodes, but they are important in quickly establishing the world. Considering this donghua is now finished with 263 episodes, this S1 (first 26 episodes) barely scratches the surface, covering from when Tang San starts "elementary school" then time skips to when he is 12 and starts to attend an advanced academy, Shrek Academy. With the aid of some infodumping, we get a decently fleshed out world, giving us a basic understand of how this world works. The story does contain romance, and given the makeup of the main cast, the pairings are obvious; it can feel a bit overdone as there are cringy/sappy romance moments sprinkled throughout. The atmosphere of the world is quite consistant, with the only weird portion being the spirit arena (colleseum part) as the flamboyant design felt out of place. Tang San is the obvious main character, but other than him most of the core main cast has been introduced. They all have different/unique spirit and abilities. The core cast is shown to be the seven monsters of Shrek academy; all of them have unique personalities, backgrounds, and quirks. The mentors have been (mostly) introduced as well, making the overall cast well-rounded. At the very end, the implied antagonist group gets a very very short intro to finish off the season with a cliffhanger to the rest of the story. The animation and designs of this donghua are quite good; they are dated (clearly as this was released back in 2018 and it is now 2023), but they still hold up in 2023. Despite being released in 2018, the animations are better than the "trash tier" donghua being currently released. Most of the character designs are unique, which make each character easily identifiable. The world is designed to be a medieval-esque/ancient world type world. The environments, presentation of spirits, spirit rings and beasts are all done well. The movement can sometimes be a bit stiff, with action scenes suffering the most due to the age of the donghua (especially the all-out-assault with hidden weapons), but the quality is still considered quite high. One complaint I have regarding the animation is that they overuse the "transformation" or spirit release scenes. Hopefully, they will tone those down since it can get repetitive. On another note, the architecture of this medieval-esque world is mostly consistant with one sole exception, the spirit arena. The colloseum type arena that was shown was the only immersion breaking aspect of the overall world. It felt super modern, with the lights, "tv screens", and floating announcer platform (reminencent of virtual/VR concert stages); this felt out of place in comparison to the rest of the world, but since it had little focus, it wasn't too bad. I cannot review Soul Land without talking about the embedded advertisements. There are commercials in each episode, usually one or two, with some labeled and others not. Luckily, the advertisements are mostly for the same products so your brain can tune them out after a while, but they might confuse some viewers the first time they show up. Also, there is product placement within the episodes themselves, which, for now, are not very immersion breaking, but they are still quite noticeable. The Soul Land S1 is a pretty good introduction into the Soul Land world. It does a good job explaining the basics of the world, building up the characters, and staging plot for the continuation of the story. There is some info dumps early on which can get a bit overwhelming, and there are some product placements within the donghua which can be immersion breaking. However, despite these flaws, this donghua's S1 is good, featuring some decent world building, action and plot. If you like chinese cultivation stories (with a rather unique cultivation method), this certainly deserves a watch. Bonus is that this donghua is a completed (one of the first) so in 2023 and beyond, you can watch this from start to finish with no waiting. Adaptation Review: This adaptation felt very close the the original novel, though it didn't follow the plotline 1:1. The most obvious general change has been a bit of plot shuffling around to better build up the world in earlier episodes. The first example of this is the blacksmithing portion: they originally introduced some of it before Tang San left the village to attend the school, but here they consolidated and presented it during his "job-seeking" where they did some flashbacks that showed his father teaching the technique to him. I have to say this was pretty good, since the information is more concentrated and concise (it was presented in a more fragmented way in the novel). One point of obvious confusion is that Tang San appears to use both his spirits at the same time, when he was fighting the human-faced man-eating spider, since it appeared like he trapped the spider with his blue-spirit grass before summoning his hammer to strike it; this was something that was explicitly stated to be impossible in the novel. In the adaptation, they also seem to reference Tang San's previous life alot, bringing it up when explaining his hidden weapons/cuiltivation methods, and especially when he has any mental struggles. This is a bit different from the novel, where this plot point was mentioned only offhandedly. Overall, the adaptation was quite faithful to the original work, it covers roughly 1.5 to 2 arcs of the original novel: the childhood all the way to the beginning of Shrek Academy. The romance is a bit overdone, but still a great watch. Adaptation Score (how faithful to the source): 8/10