The King’s Avatar Anime Review: Anime About Esports
The King’s Avatar or Quanzhi Gaoshou is a chinese animated series based on the themes of competitive Esports, depicting the life, personality and environment of the career really well. The King’s Avatar anime is animated by B.CMAY PICTURES, a subsidiary of Tencent animation, who has animated countless of Chinese animation. The series comes with 3 seasons, and 3 OVA specials being first aired on 2017 with season 3 set to be around 2022 or next year. Ever since, it has gained a lot of traction over the japanese anime community achieving global popularity during its airing. So, what is this show about exactly?
Synopsis and Review
The King’s Avatar starts off with our main character, Ye Xiu, who is the best of the best professional player of a competitive mmorpg game called Glory, belonging to the top esport team of the game as well, sadly, a predicament befalls him, being forced to leave the team and work as a network manager for a computer net cafe. Although, his retirement doesn’t last long, as he finds himself playing the game once again wanting to go back to the professional scene.
The King’s Avatar is, probably, a special anime in this case, as there is really no Esports themed Anime series, The King’s Avatar being the only one of its kind in the industry for now, having a lot of anime gamer enthusiast flock to the series to binge. Surprisingly the show has recieved a lot of positive reactions from the community, albeit some disappoints here and there, but in the end, the show has an overwhelming positive review with a 7.91 rating on myanimelist for season 1.
Story and characters
The story of The King’s Avatar presents itself as a slice of life drama anime, where our main character, Ye Xiu, is a well-known professional player in the video game called Glory, an mmorpg competitive game, where thousands play and watch the renowned players fight in big comeptitions. Having the main character face a dilemma that forces him to leave his team, and step down as the “best” player from the best team, and giving up his game character along with it, he finds himself in temporary retirement.
If you’re a gamer, you’ll likely know how the esports world works, and how professionals behave around their specialized games. Which is exactly why in most cases, if you play games, and are into the competitive world of gaming, you’ll most likely enjoy this chinese anime as it does a great job representing that interest of the esports world. Giving us a main character, who’s widely skilled and popular at the game facing temporary retirement, and seeing him try to get back into the industry with a starting character in the mmorpg game is a journey and excitement to watch through.
If you enjoy animes like Sword Art Online, Log Horizon or of similar to them, you’ll feel a rather same vibe when watching The King’s Avatar, aside from it being a “im stuck in a VRMMO” plot. Again, there’s not a lot and probably The King’s Avatar being the only animation about esports as a plot theme, which is rather unique and something to appreciate, as we don’t really get such a plot in Japanese Anime.
Animation and Music
As you might not know, season 1 has been criticized for its subpar animation constantly in reviews, and that is understandable due to the series not being widely known yet, however the story really does make up for it. The reason for bad animation quality was obviously due to low budget constraints, and in which it probably didn’t have a lot of support until it started airing which definitely trended worldwide when the Animation did air.
The King’s Avatar season 1 reused alot of frames, and overall it didn’t really feel high quality in the art style itself, however in season 2 and the 3 episode OVA series, they redeemed themselves by completely changing the artstyle and animation quality altogether, which drastically improved compared to season 1, although, every now and then, a reused frame is spotted still, though, not as frequest compared to season 1.
The Music is great in the show, especially, in my opinion, season 1 OP song was awesome to hear everytime and stilll is. This goes for the ED and as well as for season 2 OSTs. Great work they have done with the series, and I always come to find myself listening to the OSTs every now and then.
Writing about Anime is pretty fun.
