Kingdom Season 6

First cour of the new Qin & Zhao arc is finished. The new season sparks a major conflict, quickly reintroducing key figures, motivations, and active military leaders. The rest of the season focuses on showcasing Xin, Meng Tian, and Wang Ben's achievements in the early stages of the campaign. Mountain Queen Yang Duanhe returns on screen for a major role, already confronting another legendary tribe on the enemy's side. The show improved its animation over the years, but storytelling shines with epic scale, fast pacing, and clever tactics delivered through sudden plot twists. The only negative is the heavy exposition, which comes at the expenseof quality character moments. Usually, we learn about character from another character who tells us how great and talented that particular person is. However, strategic explanations make it easier to understand the situation on the battlefield. This part of storytelling is not something you can "just show, don't tell". Also, I’m not a fan of the 13-episode structure. It might be due to budget or scheduling issues because there's no artistic reason to change the 20+ episode formula used to cover all previous Kingdom arcs. So far, the main story has become intriguing enough to wait for the next cour. We'll see how the Qin versus Zhao war unfolds.

*** Kingdom Season 6 *** This is an epic anime with six seasons so far. Possible more seasons to come. This is not my favorite season. I'll give score to each season to give an idea of where I think this season is compared to the others. Season 1: Negatives: CGI and Dub. CGI is often horrendous. Positives: OST. (for some reason it reminded me of Legend of the Galactic Heroes) My Score: 7/10Season 2: Negatives: CGI and Dub. For dub, the kings english dub is notably bad. At this point I felt the main character sucked as he seemed to be too stupid compared to the generals My Score: 8/10 Positive: Improvement on animation and CGI Season 3: Negatives: Pikemen battalions were so ineffective in battle Positive: Later half of the season is very good. My Score: 8.5/10 Season 4: Positive: Animation improved. Reduced noticeable CGI. OP and ED good. OST good. My Score: 8/10 Season 5: Positive: Good animation. Moral complexity of battle. Our side(Qin) are the bad guys no doubt! In no other season is this more apparent. The OST, OP , ED to my liking. My Score: 9/10 The season 6 is good in a lot of ways. Good animation, good OP and ED. Good OST. Yet I am disappointed compared to season 4 and 5. Its only 13 episodes and doesn't conclude the arc. So there will be a season 7 or season 6 part 2 I guess. In general I highly recommend this to those who like large scale battles in anime. This is an anime where the Generals in armies are important characters who drive the plot. They are like the special characters in strategic video games. If they are captured or killed battles tide of battle is changed. While the battle are great I was a bit disappointed how ineffective Pikemen were. From playing Total War I do remember pikemen are used to counter charging cavalry units. But its so ineffective in this anime. Cavalry seems to breakthrough the formation every time. You will be following the story from the point of view of Qin, who I felt were the bad guys. This caused me to have a moral dilemma. Its interesting as the story is not told from the point of view of the good guys. Qins army commits war crimes and genocide. My Rating of season 6: 8/10 (Great)

As an anime observer, I'm usually not the type of person who likes to post a review on a whim. But this time, there are just too many reasons for me to do so. Kingdom Season 6 (first cour), similar to all the seasons thus far, is fraught with many elements that makes mockery to the best of Japanese animes: regular drawing flops, over-the-top character design, cringy character reactions, laughable low-budget special effects, cheap comedies, cheesy/unnatural turn of events, not to mention the little boys' "impressionable lines" they think can impress girls. The truth is, It has been like this since pretty much the beginning of theseries, and although the story plot is captivating and the animation overall has improved dramatically, the cheap and mediocre essence of this anime remain. To be sure, there are some moments where the execution is kind of good, but because the season has many meaningless moments in between, those good moments became rather flimsy in retrospect. The music, in general, is well composed but its placement can sometimes get embarrassing. The animation team is trying to pull off the underdog's victory theme as in season 3, but because the theme gets stale and the execution is mediocre, literate viewers may get disappointed (and the hasty finale certainly doesn't help). If you're a youngster, be prepared to be hyped by this caliber of execution as always, but if you're more anime-mature, be aware that this is nothing compared to Kingdom the manga. There is a reason why this anime's audience is 100+ times smaller than the more popular animes, and this is the 4th time that we cannot blame it on the legendary 3D flop.