Never have I created an account just to comment on a show.
Even if it happened, I thought it would be because it had impressed me that much. But here I am now, and it's not for anything remotely good.
Here's the reason: the anime Lin Dong is a blithering idiot. Every time I think that his intelligence has reached its lowest attainable point, he just goes and digs another sub-basement for himself. It's almost admirable, albeit in a blood-boiling way.
So let me qualify this point: I've read the original text before, so I know what Lin Dong is supposed to be like. Not the sharpest sword in the sect (and you thought cultivating mental energy would at least help you a little up there), but it's not too hard to imagine him as a proper protagonist with enough help, luck, and fateful companions. Hell, he's even ahead of many other protagonists in the genre in terms of his ruthlessness and overall smarts (the bar is truthfully set pretty low in xianxia).
This is not the case for anime Lin Dong. The phrase "too stupid to live" comes to mind, and this same phrase continuously rang in my head as I watched episode after episode of almost mindboggling stupidity from this protagonist.
Let's raise a few examples from this season alone.
Episode 1. Xiao Yan (his Python Tiger) is about to be captured by an archetypical Arrogant Young Master and 4 of his cronies, who have used light whips to bind each of his limbs. Lin Dong is unnoticed and in position for the perfect ambush. He forgoes this opportunity entirely and uses his daggers to cut the whips instead, and the cronies suffer nothing except sore asses from falling on the floor. Hey, that's still fair; maybe he doesn't want to make enemies unnecessarily. He then shows himself and lightly berates the AYM, who in turn rages and make unreasonable demands while demanding his capture. Weapons are pulled out and the AYM even attacks Lin Dong with his spear. Lin Dong's response to this murder attempt is to leave the AYM unharmed, only taking his spear as compensation. And so, for a spear that he does not need (the one he owns is far better), Lin Dong manages to induce hatred in an enemy with considerable means, while at the same time leaving him alive to carry out said revenge at an unspecified later timing.
Wait, it gets better.
Episode 2. Ling Dong has managed to sneak a electrical Rare Candy (TM) during a battle between an electric Boss-level beast and a tag team consisting of the AYM and his father. I won't comment on the battle itself; while Lin Dong could have struck at a different time to improve his benefits, it's less to do with idiocy and more about his chosen tactics. He's now being chased by the AYM's father, who he is clearly no match for at this point of time. Despite this fact and several very close shaves, he chooses to fucking stop moving during the chase just to taunt his opponent, who is coincidentally still very much after his bloody life. Later on, he consumes the Rare Candy and confronts the AYM's father after leveling up. This time, the father is joined by a colleague who is around the same level of power, but neither of them are on particularly good terms. The father sees the need to join hands so as to improve the chances of taking Lin Dong down, however, and he begins to negotiate with his colleague for his help. Lin Dong has a lot of choices at this point of time: convince the colleague that he only has beef with the father, thus reducing his opponents by one; immediately attack the father while he is unprepared so as to increase the chances of killing him; hell, he could even convince the colleague to join him in attacking the father, thus more or less guaranteeing a kill.
These are all good moves. Naturally, Lin Dong chooses none of them. Instead, he just stands there and watches as the alliance is made and the two take him on together, thus making the fight way harder than necessary. And of course, after winning, all he does is to extort the two while keeping them alive and ready to take revenge in the future. My gosh.
Episode 7, and he's met yet another stronger AYM who's a mental energy user like him. Such users control their weapons remotely and attack from afar. As a response, Lin Dong chooses only to engage his lackeys while suffering repeated dangerous sneak attacks from the AYM. Despite this, he continues to run away even further, thus ensuring that the remote attacks continue ad nauseum. He even has the nerve to comment that the AYM is difficult to fight. Fuck, there're only so many ways to screw yourself over, but if there was a Platinum achievement for collecting them all, anime Lin Dong would have gotten it long ago.
The same episode, and Lin Dong is still struggling against the AYM. Said opponent uses his mental powers to grab a nearby rock structure and pull it down on Lin Dong. The thing is, this happens over a course of 5 seconds or more, with Lin Dong watching throughout the entire process. 5 seconds may not sound like a lot, but do remember that this is a world where people are insanely superpowered and run / fly around at blistering speeds. 5 whole seconds, and Lin Dong literally just stands there and watches as the structure collapses on him. He gets out of it by expending a considerable bit of his mental energy, and is noticeably shaken after doing so. Seriously, what was the point of doing that? Showing off?
Episode 10, and I'm wrapping up with my personal favorite as this post is getting too long. Lin Dong is in a tomb to search for opportunities, and happens across a Corpse Sect elder who is in the process of refining a powerful battle puppet. He's entirely helpless if not for his mooks, and even they are easily dispatched as Lin Dong ambushes them from the darkness (finally, +1 to intelligence). What Lin Dong chooses to do next, however, drops the intelligence meter to negative values; he then gives up the ambush and approaches the elder openly while sending 2 of his mentally-controlled daggers to attack him head on. The elder barely manages to defend against this with an energy shield from his free hand, but with the daggers continuing to press on his shield and his other hand refining the puppet, he's basically helpless as can be. Lin Dong can, at this point, choose to attack the elder from any other angle to take him down permanently; instead, he inexplicably chooses to continue attacking the elder's shield with his 2 daggers. Remember, Lin Dong could already use 3 daggers simultaneously way back in season 1 and 2, but he somehow forgets this and continues to attack exactly only where the elder can defend. This allows the elder to finish refining the puppet (which can crush Lin Dong easily), and Lin Dong, for some fucking reason, looks shocked and exclaims about this, almost as if he never expected this situation to happen.
This is the genius of the anime Lin Dong. I'm almost convinced that someone up there in the storyboarding process hates him, because I never once had the impression from the original text that Lin Dong was prone to making such baffling decisions. It's even worse to see him saved by lucky coincidences and mile-thick plot armor, because he'd be dead in an episode or two without them. Any thoughts (or curses to add)? |
