Ni Zhuan Ci Yuan: AI Jue Qi

Reversal Dimension - Rise of AI Recap
Reversal Dimension follows the duo Shi Jiajie and Xiao Lei, runaways that live in an abandoned factory in the slums; Their livelihood is playing VR games with hacks until they get a mysterious package shipped to them with the full-dive VR headset of trending MMORPG Epoch. Unbeknownst to them, Shi Jiajie and Xiao Lei have just activated a trojan virus in the headset that infiltrates the servers and supposedly gives the AI awareness. The AI 'god' overlooking Epoch has the ability to trap humans in the game world and steal their bodies when they are killed in the game ... world. Shi Jiajie's headset is modified so it has authority to the 'key' - an administrator privilege to add and remove anything in the game world. In order to save his beloved and everyone in the game, Shi Jiajie has to make compromises with the AI characters in Epoch.

Story: 5/10
The story is actually really well executed; It follows game mechanics much better than SAO and has a logical reason to why humans are stuck in a game world. However, I feel like the decision to drag the series to get a sequel really screwed with the ending. Throughout the series Shi Jiajie is chased by Xiao Zhiyao* because of the trojan virus and it doesn't get revealed until later that AI try to save him by diverting his path. In the beginning, an AI in hellish clothing tries to recruit Shi Jiajie in the shadiest way and it isn't until Xiao Zhiyao shows up that he wants to kill Shi Jiajie - The evil-looking sect leader turns out to be an AI; It happens again when Shi Jiajie is about to enter the tournament and is instead sent to an underground prison by the AI girl that entered him into the tournament. Finally, we have the shadiest character - an AI girl with blue hair that tries to control the group situation at every corner in order to save other AI characters, it seems like the moment Shi Jiajie stepped into the game world the AI gained awareness. It could have ended in episode 12 if they skipped all the unnecessary fighting because we know that they (the main chars) will be saved by some plot armor if they lose.

Art & Sound: 7/10 & 6/10
The art and animation of this series was pretty high quality with the hair and clothing physics. Some settings have terribly low quality though, like the chase scene with Shi Jiajie and Xiao Lei where the background is just low poly blocks colored in grey to represent buildings.

The VA was above average, same with the sound effects and background music.

Character: 6/10
Character development felt rushed in the beginning with Shi Jiajie and the redhair female MC. They trust each other pretty fast despite Shi Jiajie being wanted and she monopolizes on that fact and the fact that he's weak to control him - It isn't until she realizes why he's being chased yet she still does nothing about it and instead continues with whatever he says. That lack of reasoning is why we are left with odd character development; The romance or character conflict feels superficial as a result.

Enjoyment & Overall: 6/10
I did enjoy this if I turned off my brain and let the series do its thing. Realistically, it does have a lot of plot holes and rushed char development but the story itself is well structured and deserving of a 6/10 - above average rating.

Shi Jialei is an adept VR gamer with acrobatic skills. Xiao Lei is a hacker. Together, they team to win game competitions so that Xiao Lei could afford to attend his dream college, the most prestigious engineering (?) college in China. His parents want him to study law internationally, so the duo move out to an abandoned warehouse. One day, a drone delivers the latest VR headset to a game with a huge prize pool, exactly what Shi Jialei needs to help his bro's college situation, so he excitedly rushes to put on the head set and... cue the beginning of SAO. The game company ... loses control of their servers, the players lose the ability to log out... Except in this world, for whatever reason, they did not think to put the players on IV drip, but instead the company just starts paying out the families of the gamers.

The problem with this show is exactly what you'd expect from the comparison. The plot is filled with holes; or at least, since they're trapped in a game, one could argue that the rationally of the events are just contrived. One should assume that if such a system existed in real life, the log out function would be implemented locally, on the hardware, instead of in the game. Also like SAO, the main villain has... dubious... motivations. Like SAO, there's a bit of a forced romance with a tsundere girl. And like SAO, Shi Jialei is a dual weapon wielder (knives instead of swords) that go from a complete noob to over-powered champion over the course of a day. At the end, he's able to compete with the game's previous level 99 champion.

There are differences. For one, the characters often seem like weirdos, which, to be fair, a lot of SAO's minor characters were weirdos as well -- and Reversal Dimension doesn't have any degenerate siscon arcs. Another big difference is that there is a huge twist, which I will not spoil, but I get the impression that there's another layer to the story, that the narrative is unreliable, that the events we see throughout this entire season may or may not be what actually happens.

But really the biggest difference is in the tone. I hate to admit that Kirito was quite a bit more charismatic than Shi Jialei, until his smug complacency got on my nerves. In comparison, Shi Jialei has that typical shounen cockiness, but he's more animated, emotional, and isn't always in control. He acts selfishly, except in key moments, so that he doesn't fit too much into the pocket of a hypocritical holier-than-thou white knight. I think, depending on your perspective, this overall less polished feel of Reversal Dimension could tip the scales either way compared to SAO.

Finally, I must admit that there was a scene that triggered me to empathize with Xiao Lei. He's on a hacking reconnaissance mission to potentially save Shi Jailei's life, and his parents storm into the room and disconnect his laptop, admonishing him that he should be studying instead of playing video games. That reminded me of my own parents who always assumed the worst, yet still ironically wanted me to get a computer science degree. The "hacking" in this show is one of the more realistic, and involves Xiao Lei looking through the game's source and presumably running commands. Of course, it is doubtful that he would have been able to disassemble the game and execute changes in real time without recompiling, but at least it's leaps and bounds more realistic than all the binary Matrix-like 0's and 1's, or jumping into the computer like VR, a cardinal sin that practically every Japanese anime that features hacking commits.

In summary, if you love the whole MMORPG trope, or you love the idea of artificially intelligent NPC characters being treated as human (like that disgusting Yui character in SAO), then you might want to give Reversal Dimension a try. Otherwise, it's entirely skippable, in my opinion, mediocre at best. While its plot is a bit more realistic than SAO, the execution is equally questionable (although the fact that it doesn't have an incestuous imouto, an AI with a daddy complex, and all that incel-level damsel-in-distress white knighting and fanservice makes Reversal Dimension 100 times better, but that's not saying much).

I know the is an adaptation from a manhua source, but I haven't read it so I won't comment on that.

This donghua has a similar premise to SAO, but it has people outside who are trying to influence the situation, unlike what happened in SAO. Characters are trapped and it is turned into a death game. The characters designs are nice, and though the animation (especially for the action scenes) are nice, they are a bit mismatched with the scale of some of the fights. I kind of understand why though, since character attack animations don't really fit all that well when compared to bosses ... that are 10x bigger than them. Other than this, there are some big problems with the plot. Everything feels to convenient and even when the MC asks poignant questions, they just get ignored. While the "villains" or "PK players" are realistic to a certain degree, the donghua rarely questions any irrational actions of characters or people given the very unexpected situation they are in. There is also the mismatched skill of the MC. He somehow grows to be able to compete with high level characters when he's been stuck in the game for only a few days? What?

Overall, an nice watch, but not very deep. It's suitable for entertainment, but leaves much to be designed in terms of story.