The King's Avatar

The upside and downside of this series is that it is 40 episodes. Anything of that length is likely to have its ups and downs. King's Avatar is no exception. To its credit-- and the reason I give it 9 stars instead of 8-- is that the large percentage of its episodes are very good, with lesser episodes countable on one hand. Even the poorest of its episodes are still pretty good.

In this case, the downsides first: First the #1 peeve: English captioning. The worst part of the series is the English captioning, which is very poorly done. The captioning is tied to actual spoken timing rather than readabiity, which doesn't give viewers near enough time to read what is said. Very often the captions merely flash on and off the screen. I found myself constantly keeping my finger on the pause button and was regularly forced to rewind just to see what the blazes they just said. Not the worst captioning I've ever seen, but pretty close to it. I didn't discount the series because of it, but if I did I'd have given this 4 stars based on that alone. The captioning is that bad.

Reviewing the show itself: At times it can be a bit slow and emo-bound. On rare occasions the plot leaves the viewer wondering what just happened. Although strings are mostly tied up and revealed later on, sometimes the timing is poor, creating a weak story line. This was rare, but confusing when it happened. (No details on that: spoilers.) For the most part though, the story held together.

On the plus side: just about everything. Excellent sets, interesting characters without cliche, and top-notch game-emulation animation. They did go a bit overboard sometimes in that area, putting player emotions into the game character's actions (such as the game character sighing when the player was unhappy) but we can cut them some slack for dramatic license.

The general plot and story was interesting, if perhaps a little sappy toward the end. The series retains its momentum. One thing I did like about it is that the featured game team was not invincible; as would be the case in real life, they had their wins and losses. That bit of realism added to the show. People sometimes complain about the "unbeatable heroes". No worry on that score here.

The individual characters, acquired on the team person-by-person, gave viewers time to become acquainted with each and to be involved in their singular stories and personalities. We could feel the concept of team-building and the difficulty in overcoming obstacles... as well as individuals making blundering mistakes. This kept the viewer a bit off-balance so we didn't take anything for granted... and added to the drama.

It wasn't a perfect presentation; thus the general ratings of 8-9 stars. But for a series of this magnitude and length, 8 to 9 stars is a sure win. I binge-watched the whole thing on Netflix in just a few days, and pretty much enjoyed the whole thing.

I would have enjoyed seeing a more imaginative ending, which is why I didn't give it 10 stars. Would have given it 8 for "needing a more creative final episode"... but it was good enough up to that point to deserve the extra credit of well-done overall.

The King's Avatar has a rather unique presentation and story line. As a bonus, it presents (or so I imagine) a decent inside look at professional eGaming, even if a bit of drama-com was thrown in. Good series, well worth watching.

I got completly addicted to it over summer. Now I'm watching it again (more slowly) on netflix. Netflix subs are better than those from WeTV. Not radically different (maybe they reviewed the originals?) But better.

I've recomended this tv series to anyone I thought could like it. Now that is in a well known platform even more.

Completely stunned by the gaming scenes! Some of the best mocap combined with CG rendering. In my view even better than some Hollywood productions. The story is fascinating and extremely well told, completed by equally amazing editing and background music. The crown jewel is hands down the lead actor Yang Yang, who convincingly starred the once-famous esports player and effortlessly portrayed his inspiring comeback story. And his face, oh his face! A young Cruise/Reeves!

As a reader of the original novel (still in the process of watching the Anime & Donghua) I must start by saying there were parts of this film that I found pretty off-putting. For example, I was disgruntled that Liu Hao (such a key antagonist, IMO) was written out of the story. And don't even get me started on Chen Guo's character! I deducted a whole star just because of her. :( Don't get me wrong, the actress who played her was fine, but I hated the fact that her personality was made so weirdly clingy and airheaded. It was impossible to relate her to the original Chen Guo at all. I also thought the interior of Happy Internet Cafe was completely unrealistic (honestly, who could game properly with all that ambient light glaring off the screens?)

That being said, if I had watched this series before reading the novel, I probably would have loved it. Even with all my nit-picks, it was still great. The cast, script, CG and soundtrack were pretty darn near perfect. Even the added content was surprisingly solid. For example, the flashbacks with Muqiu, and those little philosophical object lessons Ye Xiu used to explain things to people. And I was grateful that the added/altered parts with Ye Xiu's family brought some much needed emotional depth and humanity to the story and Ye Xiu himself (the novel really didn't provide much character development for him as a person).

I will also say that I'm SO glad the writers didn't try to add any romance, and kept the interpersonal dynamics ambiguous, just like in the book. I really hope they'll make a season 2, because there's still tons of story left. I would absolutely watch it in an instant!

Fans of the original novel, the donghua (animation) or the manhua (comic/manga) may at first be irritated with some of the changes to characters and story lines, as well as some of the deliberately skipped over bits that developed those characters.

(I know I was at first.)

HOWEVER:

After you get past that and treat it on it's own it's an engaging story and about as good an adaption as you're going to get. (Not to say it's great, but the bar has been set pretty low for live action adaptations of manga/anime) There were some obvious errors in the game side animation in competitions (3 battle mages together, but the icons on the mini-map show 2 battle mages and someone with a gun icon for example) but you can pretty much brush that off. The actors well well chosen and performed their roles well, Story wise a several events that occur later in the story were brought forward, but I am assuming that's because there may not be a 2nd season. (1st season is 40 episodes). On the actor side as I mentioned they matched actors to roles rather well, though I was personally irritated by them writing Chen Guo as a different type of personality in several parts, the actor who was playing her did well. As a westerner watching it was somewhat weird however to see many of the actors in the Live Action actually had their voices dubbed over by the voice actors of the Donghua. (Everyone's favourite mouthy Blade-Master is a good example).

Another change from the originals is the game being in a timed format. I am not sure this was a good choice as I feel it cut them off from some potential options game-side if they go further. They also over-explain some areas and just brush past others, so there are moments when you have to just take a leap of faith on what's happening.

Over-all I'd rate it a good watch, (provided you are taking it as itself, and not an adaptation of the source material) the only real downside. And it's a majour one, is that the official English subtitles are .. well .. complete crap. They are inconsistent, there are actual typos and spelling mistakes throughout. (As in a basic spell-check would have flagged them). They also read, word choice wise, like they were done by Google Translate. I am hoping they re-release it with a better calibre of subtitle. (Having a single native English speaker read through the script once, and run press F7 in word would fix 75% of it) The subtitles were obviously done by someone with English as a distant second language, and no knowledge of the gaming terminology he's translating in parts. My suggestion is either develop some thick skin when watching, wait for a re-release, or find some good fan-subs out there.

As an aside, the music is fantastic, a little over-used of the same music, but it's still beautiful. My hats off to composer/performer.

Hope this helps.