Hello and welcome to Project Nitsuj. This week’s review is going to be a quick one as we’re still looking at The King’s Avatar. The King’s Avatar was met with high praise in its country of China and everyone was crying out for a second season. Rumors were going around that a second season was in the works and would make its debut in 2018. 2018 came and went with no second season but instead a 3-part special/movie called All-Star Tournament. While it may not have been a second season, everyone was excited to see more of the series and today we’re here to look at it to see if anything changed in that one-year time span. Let’s take a look at the All-Star Tournament.
So the special starts off where the first season left off where holy shit they upgraded the animation (this shit looks amazing). We see Ye logging out and get approached by Chen and Yang with tickets to the All-Star Rookie Challenge (sponsored by McDonald’s. Something that they constantly remind us about). Basically, it’s a fight night for each pro team’s rookie players who are free to call out anyone they choose whether it be rookies or pros from other teams or even members of their own team (show the world who the next big player is). They go to the tournament which opens up with this amazing hologram presentation (where was this during the Olympics in Beijing?) and then go to the first match where it’s Tiny Herb’s Gao facing his master the Magician. The fight begins where we see both characters have the same class and have an incredible fight sequence (glad to see the fights never lost their step). As the fight progresses, Li and a few other pros figure out that the Magician gave Gao a handicap (but, he hid it very well that only true veterans could find it). He wants Gao to win because he wants him to be the next leader of Tiny Herb, so in order to build up his confidence, the Magician plans to lose all for the sake of his team to grow stronger under new leadership (scene here: https://youtu.be/_jegwj5ZkBM, there goes a selfless man). In the next match it’s One Inch Ash (real name Qiao) against Team Void’s (sounds like the name for bad guys in the next Pokémon game) pro player Li who has the same class as Qiao, so Qiao was hoping to show off his skills to everyone (that’s way too audacious kid. Look, you improved a great deal in a short period of time, but this is a pro player we’re talking about here. He’s trained with this class longer than you, you’re not ready for this kind of challenge). Li completely destroys Qiao in front of everyone not even giving the kid a chance to counter attack (scene here: https://youtu.be/g1hmTou2w34). He leaves defeated but receives encouraging words from Ye himself.
Moving on to episode 2, the fights continue where the next match is Sun the new leader of Excellent Era taking on Tyranny’s leader Han. As if this was bad enough, Sun is using Ye’s old account to fight (the disrespect). They have a great match as it’s nice to finally see different classes face off against each other and despite Sun’s somewhat arrogant behavior he is a talented fighter. However, he screws up at the end of the match. Just when it seems like Sun has the victory, Han dodges his last attack to get a hit in and defeat Sun (scene here: https://youtu.be/aJzBaMIrk4g). The next day Chen and Tang get to participate in a fan event with Mucheng that’s similar to King of the Mountain (scene here: https://youtu.be/L01lLtc4Yj0). That’s pretty much all that happens in this episode. It does end on an interesting note with Tang finally figuring out Ye’s true identity (don’t tell Chen, her heart will explode).
In the final episode we end on a high note. Tang gets selected from the audience to go up against a pro player named Du. Because her original character is under-leveled, she gets a stand-in character to face Du. It’s here we see that while Tang is good she lacks experience and Du easily gains the upper hand until Tang makes up for experience with speed. Her hand speed overwhelms Du as she slowly chips away at his HP until she ultimately wins and embarrasses Du in front of everyone (scene here: https://youtu.be/sK7pwUTQZNo). Hoping to save face (and breaking so many rules for his ego) Du challenges her again only this time he wins. Tang calls for a rematch where she wins and he challenges her again where he wins. They continue to keep challenging each other where Du seems to be win a majority of the matches until sponsors beg Chen to step in and calm Tang (no, let them keep going they’ll tire themselves out). Ye steps in to stop Tang and take her spot (let the king show you how it’s done) where he goes to school on Du in what has to be the best fight out of this special (scene here: https://youtu.be/jlh4Dww5ido). After the match, Ye escapes the stadium and goes to get ice cream with Mucheng (in the middle of winter). He arrives back at the hotel room before Chen and Tang where Chen has so many questions for him. As the credits role Chen decides to start her own team called Happy with her, Tang, and of course Ye.
Final Thoughts
So those were The King’s Avatar specials and they’re fun a watch. The fight scenes and the new animation is spectacular. I’ve heard some people complain about it, but honestly I like this animation style over the first one. It looks cleaner, it’s no longer grainy, the attacks look flashier, and the fight scenes look smoother. The music also got a big improvement. They use more genres of music that match up with the scenes a lot better. The only downside is that it’s only 3 episodes which just fuels my hunger for the second season to come out already.
Final Score
I give the specials a 8.5/10. If you liked the first season than definitely check out these specials as they’re a good bridge between the first and second season. Sadly, the specials aren’t on Youtube so you’re going to have to get tricky if you want to watch them but definitely check them out, they’re worth watching. Thanks for reading and I’ll see you next time on Project Nitsuj.
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