Art/Animation
The first thing, which caught everyones eyes was the animation, and it was not because Kingdom has a high quality animation, but it has the most horrible animation I have every seen since Ajin (Ajin was better though).
The uneccessary 3D, CGI Animation, the censorship ruined the whole seriousness of this so called "seinen" anime. I liked to drop the anime after I watched 2 minutes, but I thaught to myself, that it will be getting better, and I will get used to it.
No, I didn't get used to it. It was easier to overlook because the anime constantly switches artstyle (from unmature to more mature, from censorship to non censorship). I can say, that the animation ruined most parts of the anime for me.
Genre: Seinen
When I red seinen, I expect an anime to be realistic, believable, as if it could have happend in real life. I really liked the fact that some events took place in history.
But Kingdom is not a seinen anime, it is a shounen.
While I myself can overlook the really bad animation, the realization, that the MC is an overpowerd, young boy, who is loud and annoying masacred the whole atmosphere.
There were points where I had forgiven him, or said to myself, that the MC grows mentally, I get dissapointed again by him throwing a bunch of adults in the air. That is shounen for me, not seinen.
Characters
MC, Xin, is not that great but nevertheless he knows, what he is doing. He isn't questioning to long, he knows what needs to be done, thats good.
Our king, Zheng is a great character, I love how quiet but clever he is. Everytime I thought I know what he will say based on sterotypes he acted different.
One scene however didn't fit into his character (when he got angry, after Buwei leaves the hall and Zheng acts like a little child having a tantrum).
Diao, the child doesn't fit in. I wished for her (its so obvious that he is a girl) to be more powerful and not childish (in the past "children" were more mature than children are now) especially, because she survived all alone in the most dangerous places in Qin. Pointless Character.
All generals are great characters, I especially loved Wan Qi and Buwei, I wished we could have seen more about the six great generals rather havin Xin has our MC (he really weren't that much of a MC in the Nuan Peng arc)
War
I want to talk about the Wei war and Zhao war (Feixin wu). The Wei arc started promosing and introduced us to the wu group building, also, how war really looks like (the long marsh, motivation, people dying just because they get trampled on from their own comareds). I enjoyed the Wei arc, but the Zhao, Feixin Arc was unrealistic. Xins whole unit survives even when they are clearly outnumbered? Not even one died!
Final Statement
It was not, what I wanted it to be, just like Vinland Saga. I hope, Season 2 will be better. Kingdom has definetly high potential but it was wasted because of poor, bad, horrible Animation and false genre potraying.
Overall
Story: 8
Art: 2
Sound: 5
Character: 5 (MC: 4, Zheng: 6 Diao: 2, Generals: 8)
Enjoyment: 5
Overall: 5, but thats to harsh, so 6
