Douluo Dalu 2nd Season

I've been watching Anime/Cartoons for 20+ years, and Douluo Dalu is one of my favorites and I genuinely believe it's a masterpiece. It's my favorite shonen and my favorite Isekai.
My PERSONAL enjoyment of the show was a 10/10.

Pro:
-The best power system out of any show I've ever seen. It's genius
-Great worldbuilding
-Having seen almost no Donghua before, this show felt EXTREMELY unique and inventive
-Lovable main cast (Shrek seven devils)
-tons of fighting
-there's romance, there's drama, I laughed and I cried; it's dope
-Although the Protagonist is OP, the other group members are still very strong and useful. There's a lot of fighting in this show, and they actually ... use TEAMWORK everytime instead of it being basically multiple simultaneous 1v1's like in many other shows.
-Sidecharacters matter and are basically never throw-aways, the show somehow manages to bring back many side character back in a way that makes sense and is satisfying.
-The end of the show ties up everything pretty neatly imo

Con:
-3D isn't for everyone
-The animation at the start of the show is not that great (it does getter better though!)
-It's Chinese so the english sub isn't that great. My guess is that chinese doesn't translate well to english in general? I've noticed this with other donghua as well.
-Due to covid, the last ~fifth of the show is somewhat rushed, with episodes being only 10 minutes instead of 15

This donghua is an adaptation of the first Soul Land or Douluo Dalu novel. This is way too long to actually accurately score as an adaptation, so instead, I will be giving my impression of this as an adaptation and noting some obvious changes from the source. This review may contain some spoilers and will be VERY LONG, given the high episode count. In addition, watch the 2-hour Director's Cut finale as opposed to the original.

TLDR: Douluo Dalu, or Soul Land, is now a completed donghua (and probably the first for this level of adaptation). It is a great watch for beginners to the Xianxia ... genre. It starts of good and stays exciting throughout, though there are some slower, dragged out parts (especially those episodes released during the worst of the pandemic). The ending was very rushed, but still a decent recommendation for donghua viewers.

Plot Summary: Tang San having just killed the human-faced man-eating spider, now absorbs his third spirit ring. Afterwards, Tang San continues his cultivation journey to become a more powerful spirit master and re-establish the Tang Sect in this new world.

Plot
A very basic summary of the entire story is Tang San's cultivation journey to become a powerful figure. Intermixed in this is his friendship with others, a revenge plot surrounding his family (and their enemies), romance between characters, etc. The story follows a rather normal progression; Tang San is reincarnated into a different world where his old world's techniques do not exist but can be cultivated, and so we follow him on his journey to become a powerful spirit master and recreate the Tang Sect in this new world. He has talent and works hard, slowly becomes stronger while gaining friends and allies. We, as viewers, follow Tang San in his journey of discovery; like in most novels, the scope of the world we see is limited to "beginners" and gradually expands as the MC gets more powerful. Overall, the world building is done well; it has explanations/monologues that inform viewers about how the world works and there isn't anything noticibly illogical.

Characters
The important characters all have their own backstories and are developed well enough throughout the course of the entire donghua. Each of the main characters has their own distinct personality, likes, strengths, weaknesses and goals. Even the main antagonists get development, fleshing them out to be unique individuals, rather than roadblocks/speed bumps for the MC to defeat. Of course, while the main cast (and antagonists) do eventually get decent development, they are still second string to the MC, Tang San, and thus the overall development can be somewhat inconsistant, as certain elements get pushed back to consolidate information because of plot shuffling (explained more in the adaptation section) or scattered as small pieces throughout (especially for the antagonists). There are, of course, throwaway villains that are 1D, but since they are not too important it doesn't matter.

Another point of interest about the characters is the romantic pairings. While most donghua have harems, this donghua has couple pairings. The couples of this donghua are paired up early and they don't change (even though some end up liking the MC, Tang San). The romantic parts of this donghua are emotional, but they can be a bit overdone and cringy at times. What makes this donghua unique is that almost all the important characters are in some sort of exclusive relationship, which is different from the majority of donghua availible currently. The donghua also makes great reuse its "one-time use" characters as extras, not super important but its nice to see recognizable faces from earlier episodes.

Animation
The animation for this "season" starts off close to that of Season 1, since it only started a few months after that season's end. But throughout the remaining 230+ episodes released over a 5 year period, we see small incremental increases that result in significant change in overall animation quality in later episodes. The animation quality is consistantly high quality for when the episodes were released. They may feel a bit dated when you watch the earlier episodes, but the newer episodes are definitely state-of-the-art. When it comes to character and environmental designs, they mostly stay consistant with the style that was set in the first season.

Despite the high quality animation (for when it was released), the episodes themselves suffer from overuse of repeated scenes and "derp" faces. This donghua seems to love "transformation" and "ultimate move" scenes, often repeating the same animation whenever there is a spirit release/reveal or use of a spirit ability (ring). There are some times when they play the same animation for the one character 2 or 3 times in a single episode. This overuse takes up unnecessary time, bloating/padding the run time. It is especially bad when they do it for each of the seven from the main cast individually. The fights are mostly done well, but the "ultimate move" spirit ring animations and commentary/explanation mid-fight tend to break the flow of the action and sometimes makes it feel like a drag. In addition to the repeated "transformation" scenes, they also seem to love the derpy faces that result when slapping someone or beating them up, that "slow-ish motion face across the screen with their tongue sticking out" animation; it was funny the first few times, but it gets old after a while.

Breaking Immersion
There are two main immersion breaking elements (other than the some of the overused tropes mentioned above): the Spirit Battle Arena/competition fights and advertisement/logo placement. The spirit arena and competition battles break immersion because the design choice for the arena and team presentations. The Spirit Battle Arena design, like I said in my S1 review, looks much like the modern virtual idol concert stages, which is VERY different from the medieval-ish world design that the rest of the world adheres to. They also have weird out-of-place introductions, like with the Water Spirit Academy team doing a weird MMD style dance when they are first introduced. While the animations and designs look nice, these stylistic design choices (psudeo-modern/futuristic style) are very out of place for this type of world.

Advertisements
Other the above mentioned stylistic choices of the competition stages and team introductions, advertisments are the other category of immersion breaking elements. Most of the advertisements in this donghua are labeled and placed either at the beginning (before the episode) or during the mid episode "commercial" break. While some are not labeled, this donghua does do a good job adding the advertisements label, so it doesn't become too intrusive. However, there are some product placements and the more ergregious logo placements that do show up. While the product placements are not too bad, since they are integrated well, the brand/logo advertisements are quite jarring, especially during the competition, when it is placed all over their uniforms. I understand that (from an adaptation perspective) it is a play on Flender's love for money, but they could have chosen something more native to the world.

---War Arc (some spoilers as I talk about narrative inconsistencies)---
Everything in the review up to this point applies to the pre-war arc, which started around EP???. Before this, most of the fights and journey were either solo or small group based; however, once the war started, the scope of fights exceeded small groups the "rules" that the previous portions built up started to go out the window, making things less believable. The visual specticale (how cool it looks) is the main focus now, as individual abilities are no longer as important. While the return of familar faces as extras is great, the battles in the "war" are very effects heavy and the progression of the plot is no longer smooth. For example, there are tons of flying spirit masters (on flying sword spirits or the wasp sect), yet when the angel brigade arrives, the strategists start talking about how the Spirit Empire wants to employ/use flying spirit masters to gain an advantage; excuse me, but they were already employing tons of flying spirit masters so this discussion doesn't make sense. They also character assassinated Bibi Dong, the main antagonist. They initially built her up as a powerful and collected rival, but in the subsequent fights, she asks like a deranged and insane stock villain even using the classic "this is impossible" line. Also, whenever they fight, despite them stating that she's equal to a rank 99 limit Douluo, she is the one that keeps getting injured while Tang San miraculously only gets "tired" and and only needs rest before jumping right back in. Overall, the war arc is just a huge mess, which I will talk more about in the adaptation section. Finally, while the war arc was okay, my engagement fell as they boosted the MC to ridiculous levels while nerfing the enemies and breaking pre-established rules of the world.

---Finale (mostly Director's Cut)---
The finale itself has huge problems. The main focus, starting with the seagod arc to the war arc, started to shift away from narrative consistancy and adaptation of the novel to a more visual effects appeal. Alot of the fight started to be less tactical and more visual effects/wow-factor heavy. This ballooned into a kind of narrative disaster by the finale. The original finale, at 90 minutes, had many problems, which the subsequent Director's Cut release tried to fix. However, despite the two different releases, there are still plenty of narrative problems with too much focus on visual grandeur. The narrative presentation is very disjointed, feeling very choppy as they rush the ending. The finale feels disconnected from EP260 which originally preceeded it, because they back track a bit. The director's cut (at 120 minutes) tried, but failed to fix many of the original problems with the finale, but it feels like a greater disjointed mess because they simply spliced in extra scenes. Overall feeling of the finale is: an unfulfilling ending and narrative mess.

Overall/Final Thoughts
This adapatation can be split into two distinct arcs based on the age of the main character, his childhood years and his young adult years. The first 140 or so episodes could be considered part of the "childhood years" where the main focus is on team work, and defined by the general goals of growing up and growing stronger. The rest of the donghua has a very concrete goal, defeating/destroying Spirit Hall, where things start to turn more forced and illogical, especially the forced powerups in order to level the playing field for the main cast against the antagonists who have lived decades longer. Many "established" rules also start to get broken in order to create more drama/tension and raise the stakes for the war. However, from an overall perspective, the donghua is still enjoyable and worth recommending to those new to the genre.

Score: 7 -> 5; Overall: 6

Adaptation (GUARENTEED to contains spoilers for novel comparison):

This is too long to give an accurate score; instead I'll describe some general and list specific plot changes that I noticed while watching the series. Also note, I don't remember the final parts (Sea God Island and War Arc) as well as the earlier parts of the novel.

TLDR: This adaptation of Douluo Dalu or Soul Land is quite accurate to the novel. The most obvious and significant change is plot shuffling, where they move certain plot elements and group them together; most of these changes are done for more concise storytelling, so that certain world building details are presented together instead of in a scattered manner, but it does also hurt when it when they push back exposition for some less important characters. As for the plot progression, it follows the novel, though it starts to get more rushed at the end of the donghua, cutting or altering many of the finer details. Other changes from the novel include increased focus on Tang San (pushing back backstory of other characters) and a greater focus on action (less focus on the nuanced emotional/character/relationship development). The shift in focus in the story also drags it down because the plot no longer progresses naturally. The original goals (getting stronger) were general, but as the goal became to fight against the Spirit Empire, the powerups to "level the playing field" became too obvious and felt forced, leading to degradation in quality (fights were still good and enjoyable though).

The Douluo Dalu or Soul Land adaptation comes with all the typical adaptation changes. The biggest change is plot shuffling, which acts as a double-edged sword, both helping and hurting the plot development in this donghua adaptation. Many of these changes helped the overall plot development, especially earlier on: revelations surrounding Tang San's family's grievences are hinted at much earlier, consolidating some of the explanations (like regarding blacksmithing) into one continuous exposition rather than scattering it; all of these help the plot be more concise and engaging. However, on the flip side, some exposition regarding less important characters (not Tang San) is pushed back, so much so that certain developments don't make much sense; for example, Da Mubai and Zhu Zhuqing's background and fiance status should have been explained during the spirit arena competition along with the origins of their spirit fusion ability, yet this gets pushed WAY back to when they meet their older siblings, and Ning Rongrong's spirit limitations are not explained at all until later, which may confuse others regarding why she was so elated she kissed Tang San when her spirit evolved from 7 levels to 9 levels.

The adaptation also likes to play fast and loose with some of the rules that were in the novel or change them outright. Examples of this include the ability to fly, which was considered VERY rare in the novel: only those who had beast spirits and had spirit ring abilities that allowed flight usually had it; this is also why Oscar's third spirit ring ability is so OP (not to mention the time limit seems to be forgotten during later parts). Modification of Ocsar's 6th spirit ability is another example: he can now use his personal rings AND everything from the copy, INCLUDING spirit avatar and domains, instead of the limit up to 6th spirit ring of the copy and NONE of his abilites; others can also use the mirror sausage when it was originally limited only to him. Tang San can be seen using dual domains and spirits together when the novel explicitly states he cannot, because spirits can only be summoned one at a time and domains are linked to individual spirits; also, even though Tang San can be explicitly seen using both spirits and domains at the same time, other times he seems like he is unable to use both together because that's "now" how the rules of the world work.

Censorship of gore/killing/murder is also a big change, especially in the earlier parts. When the main cast first killed in the underground spirit arena, the donghua described it as only crippling the opponents when it was an explicit killing in the novel. The Slaughter City arc was also completely butchered; it was supposed to be full of slaughter, but most of the cooler parts described in the novel were just told to us rather than shown.

Qian Ren Xue, the one with the Angel Spirit, gets quite a bit of development and focus in the donghua, especially during her final ascension trial. She is clearly a favorite by the adaptation team, and thus she did not get quite the same ending that she had in the novel. They changed her final ascension trials to combat with the actual people who symbolized "inner demons" that she had to overcome rather than illusory replicas in the novel. These modified ascension trials, and attempts to link her current predicament/grudges with past ones tried to paint her more as a victim of cicumstance rather than personal flaws. This attempt to clean her up and present her as a victim and paragon of virtue really rubbed me the wrong way. Also, Qian RenXue's romantic subplot with Tang San was removed.

Bibi Dong feels like she has been both nerfed and character assassinated into oblivion so she can be both the main antagonist and a sandbag for Tang San. For her powerlevel, she has dual spirits, good rings, was an god inheritee (not really explained well in donghua), and supposedly a rank 99 Title Douluo, yet she keeps getting crushed in every fight by Tang San during the war; Tang San apparently only gets exhausted and just needs "sleep". It makes no sense. Bibi Dong's character and development were also greatly hindered due to plot shuffling. In order to keep Bibi Dong relevant and explain her progress alongside the main characters, short clips of her actions were spread throughout many episodes instead of consolidated so we could get a concrete picture. The finale (at least the Director's Cut re-release), tries to consolidate all this information, with Bibi Dong's final confession, but it did not feel as impactful as it did in the novel. This is because Bibi Dong's final confession was basically cut in half, focusing more on her regret and referenced her suffering, but did not talk about her actual sufferings (her rape is left heavily implied via imagery rather than told explicitly), and why she took each of her actions (like why she didn't go after Xiao Gang [her love], why she destroyed the Blue Lighting Tyrant Dragon Clan, or what her goals in the war were). Then when it comes to her character, she was initially presented as a calm, collected, and powerful individual, yet she exhibits petty "villainous" behaviour (like cliche villains), like having the "evil laugh" or spouting lines like "This is impossible" when her attacks don't work. Her character is molded to fit whatever makes Tang San look good in their confrontations.

---War Arc---
The war arc is great when it comes to visuals and it featured a return of many familiar faces as extras. However, due to the shift from solo/group battles to war with many more (hundreds of thousands, though that number is not animated), the pre-established rules of how spirit masters fight/operate is greatly changed. All these rules are broken in order to create a more visually spectacular display, but then "re-applied" because they need it to return back to being an adaptation. In addition, despite it being a war, the personal fights of the Shrek 7 are the focus instead of the war, often having the MC plot armoring his way through things. The focus on Tang San also overdramatized everything, making the fights all hinge on him and eliminating the more tactical/strategic plot from the novel.

There is focus on the importance of the "Angel Battalion" joining the battle because of their flight ability, but this importance has been diluted since so many others, like the wasp and sword sects (in addition to all Title Douluo), can now fly unlike how it was in the novel. The Angel Battalion was supposed to be the only pure flying battalion that Oscar's sausages were supposed to help counter (because they gave anyone who ate them the ability to fly).

This is a personal pet-peeve of mine, but the Buddha Lotus hidden weapon got turned into a nuke, because why not right? It is suppposed to be a MECHANICAL type hidden weapon that explodes releasing many blades. Kind of annoying they just turned it into a bomb. It should have exploded similar to the animation in the first(?) opening montage. This unfortunately followed the trend of showing off the "hidden weapons" and using them as guns/nukes of this world.
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Then, in Tang San's final ascension trial, they really rushed them and changed the order (the order is really a nitpick though). First, the trial was announced to be testing his 8 virtues as opposed to the 7 base sins because of his extra spirit bone; it was not a choice to evolve them all, it was required for his ascension. The order was supposed to be in the reverse in which he obtained them (not really that important), and he was supposed to grow noticible weaker as each trial progressed, because the fusion with spirit bones would noticible strengthen him (and the reverse would be true too). The trial involving lust was also supposed to involve Qian RenXue and Nana, both of whom's romantic subplots with Tang San were removed to preserve the single line romance that was present. Overall rushed, but still acceptable.

---Finale (I watched only Director's Cut, not the original)---
The finale is super rushed, like I said previously, and it has plenty of narrative/adaptation problems. They "finally" kill of members of Tang San's group (some of whom weren't supposed to die), but only to raise the stakes. And they really messed up some of the presentation for when Tang San was killed: he was winning against Qian RenXue and when she teamed up with Bibi Dong, they barely won, both almost being killed by having their divine souls severely damaged and thus basically bluffing to force the other side back. Now it doesn't look like either got seriously injured and makes for a huge narrative plot hole. They also cut out much of the narrative explanations from the novel about the ressurection and other details, doing a short-on-detail rewrite in order to rush world building elements so they could present more visual effect heavy ("epic") final battle. Overall a very poor adaptation of the finale.
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Additional List of Specific/Nitpick Changes:
-Some of the hidden weapons aren't very stealthy, with some of the designs being "cool" rather than practical.
-Spirit Avatars were supposed to be physical transformations, not illusory
-The "death's invite" is supposed to be a hidden weapon in the shape of a needle made purely of condensed poison, which melts into the body of the target, with no other forms and not reuseable like the show suggests.
-Blue Tyrant Lightning Dragon clan's unique transformation feature was excluded (in the novel it was each 10 ranks they could transform an additional body part, which is different from most beast spirits which require rank 70+ for a FULL avatar transformation.
-Tang San's Trident, when he lost it, was smack dab in the middle of the fortress, unlike at the base, which would have made more sense if retrieving it. They made it so he somehow solo'd everyone with his plot armor and forced powerup in order to make it seem more epic. It is illogical that he was able to retrieve it given where it was.

Final Thoughts: Best part of the donghua in my opinion is the beginning up to the end of the spirit competition arc (EP108-ish); after that, while the story was still good, it was not as exciting because of: excessive censorship (Slaughter City Arc), dragged things out in the intense training (Sea God Island Arcs), or too much "plot armor" (things felt to convienent unlike the early days where there were at least reasonable explanations). The later parts also felt more like a one-man show (Tang San focus), unlike the earlier parts where the team as a whole contributed more evenly. Still enjoyable overall, but not as engaging as time passed on. Finally, the ending was really rushed.

Adaptation Score (how faithful to source): 7 -> 4
[Started as a 7 but the numerous changes and rushing towards the end and downgraded it to a 4.]

TL;DR This is objectively bad and I only recommend watching if you enjoyed the manhua / novel and want to see parts animated. Read on for specifics.


Story
Classic Xianxia novel type stuff: OP MC can never lose (even to people almost double his level) and gets many power ups. If you like Xianxia you'll like the story.

Art
This looks like it was animated by the same people that made the game Shenmue. I'm not kidding it looks like an xbox 360 game. There is bad syncing of lips where at times you can't even tell who is speaking because nobodies mouth moves. There are weird jerky movements ... at times like the characters hit a lag spike and become a slideshow. I won't lie there are a few still shots that look nice but that's about it.

Sound
They reuse the same grunts / sfx over and over which is really awkward and at times there is no background music during parts so all you're left with is these awkward grunts, like 3 grunts from 1 person within 2 seconds.

Characters
The characters are actually pretty good and are individuals but they have almost no backstory. I'm 50 ep in and I don't know anything about fatman, oscar, Zhu Zhuqing, Dai Mubai etc... This is more a problem with the pacing than the characters themselves since the backstory is better in the novel. (edit: you get some backstory around ep 80ish but only for Mubai and Zhu Zhuqing so yeah pretty late for that. Fatman and Oscar no backstory yet.)

The pacing is terribly slow. There is a lot of wasted time on spirit summoning over and over every time they get into a fight with the same exact animation. On the topic of time they also put in advertisements everywhere like ~6min 30 sec of every episode is just garbage you will skip and they're only 20 min episodes.

If you can find a decent translation good luck. I looked all over and they're all pretty bad, constantly changing names / translations calling male characters "granddaughter". Some episodes I feel like I could of skipped reading subs and just guess what they're saying because they made 0 sense.

Somehow despite this I still enjoyed it but I'm not sure if that was because it was decent or because it was so bad I couldn't stop kinda like a car crash, you know you shouldn't watch but you do.

Overall, definitely dumpster fire tier.

Extra: sometimes there's scenes where they use chess as a visual representation of their "bigly" brain power but it's really awkward because whoever animated it doesn't know how to play chess. (2 kings 4 bishops 3 rooks for one side, pawns in back row, pieces in impossible positions??)