Guimi Zhi Zhu: Xiaochou Pian

Anime only here,
Lord of Mysteries is a fascinating show with a compelling story revolving around a unique steampunk setting in a world full of magic and dangers.

I have some disclaimers though, this anime is not for everyone.
Like a lot of Chinese source material, they do not spoon feed you answers. They will only drip feed you with hints.
If the MC is confused, chances are, you are going to be confused as well, that's just how it works. Now hold your questions and prepare for a journey of twists and turns.

While the pacing in the first three episodes is indeed fast, this show is definitely not ... meant for you to watch in one go. In fact the more I paused, replayed and confirmed my suspicions, the more I enjoyed it. The people who like to theorize and solve mysteries are the ones who are truly going to enjoy this.

There are episode extras' that I enjoyed and helped in my digestion of information but are featured separately. (Good job Crunchyroll)

Putting other viewers' skill issue aside,
The animation is fluid and crazy good looking, with amazing background art that truly immerses the viewer into the world's setting. The eerie, yet beautiful powers, send a chill to my spine. Each location is displayed cinematically providing a sense of dimension to the world.

The sound direction and quality makes for tense and exciting moments and the ending itself is pure ecstasy.

The world building is godlike, if this is season one, then I can't wait for what season 2 has to offer.

Every detail was carefully crafted to provide a moving story to my eyes. A rollercoaster of emotions.

I haven't truly enjoyed a show for quite a long time and I can say this one is a true masterpiece.
10/10 would rewatch.

I'll tell you the truth about this Anime adaptation of Lord of Mysteries that people don't accept, it's very simple, basically the anime was made mainly for fans of the Novel, which doesn't necessarily mean that those who haven't read the original can't enjoy the anime, but as the original is extensive, deep and detailed it becomes an impossible task to add all that amount of information and elements present in each chapter.

Many events were done in a different order than in the novel or simply cut and shaped differently, so to put it simply, is it worth watching as a mystery anime with a ... bit of supernatural action? YES! WITHOUT A DOUBT, but those who haven't read the original will be able to pick out all the nuances of the plot between the lines? NO DOUBT THAT NOT!

But I recommend that anyone who watches until the last episode reads the novel afterward, because you will not only read a masterpiece, one of the best novels ever made, but also depending on your time and reading, you will be ready for the second season of Donghua, That's it...

This show is creatively bankrupt. Visually high-budget, but creatively it's mostly just a ripoff of Bloodborne, (mind you the source material was apeing Bloodborne, but the show took that and decided to just make entire scenes ripped straight out of Bloodborne.) The whole thing feels artificially generated from direction to design. The ED literally sounds like someone gave it a prompt of "generate a song in the style of a James Bond theme song like Skyfall mixed with Moonlight Sonata with dark and mysterious lyrics adlibbed from the text of Lord of Mysteries": "Stirring or delay, rebirth or be same." These are definitely words.

Every scene ... is entirely spectacle noise at the expense of any substance. It's effectively a high-strung trailer (much like the pointlessly thrown in opening scene of ep 1) that just keeps going. Scenes are full of: overdone BWUUUUA sound effects like I'm watching Dark, AI-generable renditions of classical music tastelessly thrown in, endless sky-opening-up dream bs spectacle for no reason, bs action asspulls devoid of choreography in preference to shaky closeup flashes of inscrutable noise and aura farming filler around every corner. All that noise never accomplishes anything beyond "10/10, I like it when the pretty colors go by." Now allow me to quote 𝓵𝓸𝓯𝓽𝔂 sounding words loquaciously at you in a deep and resounding voice while saying nothing of substance to aura farm even harder.

There's no mystery plot so much as a random series of contrivances and asspulls. The main way the MC solves every 'mystery' (aside from the answer immediately falling upon him by pure contrivance) is by literally divining the answer to every question with divination magic: "Where is the missing person? ... Oh, he's over there." Why doesn't he just immediately ask for the answers to all the big mysteries like how to get home? Well first he'll have to drag the story out a bunch and then wait for the big bad to coincidentally fall into his path, and then and only then, when the writer is ready will he solve those mysteries... using divination no doubt (wait, no, they actually did it oh god, Moriarty expy noooo).

1/10 (where 5/10 is average)

Now allow me to summarize some invalid critiques of this show:

Different bad. (Ehehm, I read the source material and achktually, this is a bad adaptation because in the book Dong is supposed to do this scene earlier and with as much redundant monologuing as possible, and therefore this is bad. The only correct adaptation is a 2D medium of text-based characters to reproduce the book line for line into another edition which is why you should buy more copies of the book this is advertising.) (Frankly I have actually tried the source material and it is wordcount pumping garbage, I wish they would've actually improved on it here).

Tacit racism/nationalism. (Ew, I only listen to Japanese voice actors say things I don't understand, I don't need to understand anything to tell how great they are. The Chinesians can't make an an-i-may, they will always be inferior to the great Niponese delegation of animation-production factories and outsourcing. For you see, this animation is not an an-i-may but a dong-hua for nationalistic reasons of my being a pedantophile therefore you must stop calling it a shortform of animation and instead speak Chinesian in reference to this filth.)

I don't understand anything that isn't literally spoonfed to me through explainlikeimfive level exposition dumps. Even the exposition diagramatic opening of every episode of this show could not possibly be enough for me to understand such basic concepts as: generic RPG logic skill trees of the cultivation cliche in every Chinese fantasy anime, or the generic isekaing into a fantasy world cliche of every isekai ever to then have memories of both lives as someone from beyond who transmigrated. This mystery show expects me to think for myself? I can't do that. Where are the child-friendly exposition dump waifus to overexplain everything with the subtlety of a brick to the face just hard enough for me to vaguely understand what is happening?

Easter Egg: "Somehow, Dong returned." just in time for season 2 of The Lord of All Contrivances