Reviews for Lord of Mysteries

As a webnovel reader, I had high expectations for Lord of the Mysteries, and based on the first few episodes, it’s off to an impressive start. So far, it shows strong potential across all major aspects — originality, art, story, characters, and music. Here's why it's standing out to me early on: ----------- Originality ----------- One of the things I value most is originality — something that seems to be fading from many modern anime. A lot of current titles feel like rehashed pieces from past successes. Lord of the Mysteries, however, introduces a distinct and intriguing world. The setting blends Victorian steampunk with detective drama, supernaturalelements, and alchemical themes. The “Beyonder” system, based on paths inspired by mythological beings, adds depth and complexity to its worldbuilding. Even within the first few episodes, it's clear this universe has a lot of thought behind it.

----------- Art -----------

Visually, it’s stunning so far. The animation is polished, smooth, and richly detailed — reportedly using up to 30,000 frames per episode. Each scene feels cinematic, and the investment in production quality is noticeable. Even in just the opening episodes, the visuals elevate the story.

----------- Story -----------

Having read the novel, I can say that the story is built on a solid foundation. Even within the initial episodes, you can see how carefully the plot is constructed, without resorting to clichés. The pacing is a bit fast, but it’s clearly laying groundwork for deeper developments ahead.

----------- Characters -----------

The characters introduced so far are already distinct and engaging. Each has their own motivations, and they feel like real parts of the world rather than background extras. Leonardo Mitchell, in particular, caught my attention early on.

----------- Music -----------

The soundtrack is immersive and fits the tone perfectly. The music adds weight to key scenes and contributes to the overall atmosphere without overwhelming the visuals or dialogue. Furthermore, the ending music "Dark Dream" by Curley Gao has become one of my favorites... the lyrics and her voice are amazing.

Conclusion:

Based on the first few episodes, Lord of the Mysteries shows great promise as an adaptation. If it maintains this level of quality, it could become one of the standout series of the year. Looking forward to seeing how it develops. It's a pity the chinese studio will never make a donghua out of the legendary novel Reverend Insanity too. Anyway, Praise The Fool, the King of Yellow and Black, the ruler above the gray fog, the Great Master of Mysteries.

In an attempt to claim a cultural milestone similar to Korea’s Solo Leveling, Chinese animation enthusiasts rallied behind this series, touting it as a contender for anime of the year. For that prophecy to fulfill itself, however, 2025 would need to be astonishingly barren in terms of compelling releases. And yet, the summer season that it aired in proved to have more than enough contenders. So much for that. The Lord of Infodumps is often promoted as a mystery show, but it is not akin to Sherlock Holmes. There is no trail of evidence to follow, and no deductive process takes place in a closed meetingroom. The mystery is just the deciphering of arcane power systems instead of investigating crimes. The world is constructed like a video game, replete with a class tree and spell lists that read like programming on C++. The protagonist is constantly bombarded with terms and names while having no prior knowledge, forcing a substantial portion of each episode to be devoted to terminology dumps. Thus as a whole it is not really a mystery show. It’s more about you not getting what is going on and waiting for someone to infodump the lore or the power system to you.

The infodumps are done mechanically and become a detriment to characterization. If you rely on empathy with the characters in order to engage with a narrative, then the Lord of Infodumps will be an uphill battle. Its characters are not people in the traditional sense, but bundles of stats, defined by their class, level, and specialization. Personality, history, or emotional depth are treated as optional luxuries, if acknowledged at all. From the very first episode, the protagonist’s blank slate persona (he has amnesia and comes from a different world) serves as a narrative excuse for exposition rather than as a dramatic device. With no roots in this world and no memories, his only guiding impulse is curiosity than long-term plans that any denizen of the world would normally have.

This sense of alienation is only intensified by the show's visual language. With each new character introduction comes an onscreen status panel, complete with attributes and titles, hovering beside their face like a statistic screen. How does the protagonist, a clueless outsider, immediately perceive all this information? The answer, of course, is poor exposition. Rather than letting viewers discover the world through organic dialogue and visual storytelling, the series defaults to blunt info-delivery. The characters are not citizens of a living world; they are tutorial pop-ups, engineered solely to spoon-feed lore.

As for the world itself, calling it “living” would be a generous overstatement. Rather than presenting a breathing, dynamic setting, the environment functions more like a sandbox, devoid of the nuances that suggest a civilization with history or personality. Interactions with common townsfolk are minimal to nonexistent. The city, the central stage of the plot, feels less like a populated locale and more like a glorified hub, from which the characters are teleported from one magic location to another, each one serving as a platform for further infodumps about arcane mechanics.

All the above are mostly the result of the adaptation cutting out significant portions of scenery descriptions and internal thoughts from the source material. It’s not just me saying that; look around for opinions other than my own and most will be about how fast the pacing is or how the plot makes no sense. It’s because most of the context and the worldbuilding were taken out. The animators didn’t care about creating a living setting that is populated by people. They instead focused on making everything being bombastic. And true to that, the production values are impressive on a surface level. The backgrounds shimmer with attention to a steampunk-Victorian setting, and the visual effects, from sigils to explosive magical bursts, are designed to dazzle. In that regard, it is very much in the vein of Solo Leveling from the year before. Eye-candy spectacle catering to a viewer that gets distracted by shiny visuals and complex terminologies, and has little concern for character depth. On a purely sensory level, it "pops."

However, the moment you peer beneath the glittering facade, it doesn’t take much to realize the storytelling is shallow, the characters are hollow, and the worldbuilding is undercooked. This becomes apparent immediately with the protagonist awakening in a borrowed body, and attempting to access the memories of its former occupant. But instead of flashbacks or visions, all he receives is dry data points. Lists of names, credentials, affiliations. It’s as if he’s reading a résumé rather than reliving a life. The narrative offers no visual cues, no emotional context. You hear the name of a university, but you never see its architecture. You’re told he’s studied magic, but you’re shown nothing of how it’s taught. The world is like a PowerPoint presentation, bullet points without embodiment.

This pattern repeats whenever a new character is introduced. Take the protagonist’s sister, for instance. Her arrival is marked not by emotional resonance, but by more exposition. She drones through paragraphs of worldbuilding infodumps, all while ignoring a gunshot that happened right next to her, a shattered mirror in the room, and the smell of blood. She offers no visible distress, no believable reaction, only mechanical narration. And when she suddenly smiles at the end of her monologue, it lands with all the warmth of a malfunctioning automaton. Same thing when the guild members are introduced or a meeting takes place at the table of the grey fog. You never believe these are actual people. They only exist to infodump.

The incessant exposition becomes grating very fast, which is why a lot of viewers quickly became lost with what is going on. Not so much because the plot is hard to follow, but because it’s just not fun to follow constant lectures on spell hierarchies and alchemical theories, even in the middle of combat. Characters don’t fight; they annotate their abilities like YouTubers doing a frame-by-frame analysis of their own lives. The end result is a story that feels like it’s written by a machine. It’s a world constructed to look interesting, but lacking nuance and emotions to be interesting.

In conclusion, the Lord of Infodumps is perfect for anyone easily mesmerized by jangling keys, and intolerable for anyone else. Its high scores come from those who have read the novel and don’t care about characterization or organic storytelling. It stands out from most anime, but only in an alienating manner. As a whole, it is a chore to watch, at a time when there are countless formulaic anime that at least make you feel something other than boredom.

There are currently 23 reviews that gave this anime a 9 or a 10. Out of those, 13 are legitimate, while the other 10 come from empty accounts with no other anime in their history. So take the total score and all the praise with a grain of salt. Now, my review: I'm glad that novel readers finally get to see their story adapted into an anime, but man, is it confusing for anime-onlies. The entire anime feels like a highlight reel of the novel’s most important moments. It's like watching a 5-minute "best scenes" YouTube compilation. The story constantly jumps from one plot point to another withoutexplaining where the characters are or what they’re trying to achieve. It’s almost as if the confusion is intentional, pushing viewers to buy the novel just to understand wtf is happening.

Yes, the animation is incredible, easily the best of any anime this year. In terms of environmental design/architecture, I would put it in top 10 of all time. But the plot is what matters most, and this one fails miserably. If you haven’t read the book, don’t expect to grasp more than 10% of what’s going on.

Could the entire first season just be setup for Season 2? Sure, the novel is long, so that would make sense. But if you want to keep viewers engaged, you need to give them breadcrumbs, something to make them come back for more. Instead, this anime bombards you with 10 new terms every episode, none of which are ever explained.

Watch the first two episodes and judge for yourself. If you love the animation quality and fight scenes, you might enjoy the rest. But if you’re left confused, hoping things will make sense later, you’re wasting your time, because they won’t. At least not for now, maybe they will make sense in the second season.

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 notmeant 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.

Having watched the first three episodes, I can say for sure that this is an anime made for fans. The reason is that it's too fast-paced. Too... I don't want to see art, I want to see interesting stories. Those in the community who have read the original and support it will no doubt be upset by this opinion. However, I can definitely say that I would not recommend this to anyone who hasn't read the novel.If I had to pick one good aspect, it would be the artwork.

However, there were many places where the animation felt awkward, as it didn't blend in with the 3D backgrounds.

Alright. Let’s not waste time. Lord of Mysteries anime is a mess. The animation? Top-tier. No complaints. The studio clearly dumped a truckload of money into it. But it’s wasted. They keep throwing beautiful shots at you for half a second and then cutting away before it even hits. It’s like they’re terrified of letting you actually enjoy a scene. Every good moment is rushed. No buildup. No weight. Just pure visual spam. And the pacing. Bruh. This anime is in a constant state of speedrun. There’s no breathing room. No time to think. Every minute is packed with lore-dumps, new terms, world-building, and zero explanation. Youdon’t get to absorb anything. They’re cramming what should be 10 episodes into 2, and it shows. People aren’t confused because it’s “complex.” They’re confused because the story refuses to slow down and explain itself. This isn’t “mystery writing.” This is a director who has no idea how to pace a story.

Transmigration? I guess? The MC got isekai’d into a novel or a diary? Honestly, I don’t even know.

The fights? Yeah, they look great. But they’re insanely hollow. The MC picks the “Seer” class, and five minutes later he’s using asspul mind power card trick. No explanation, Just powers out of nowhere. Like the clown mf, man’s got smoke powers logia, blood bending whips conjuring, telekinesis, you name it. Why? Nobody knows. His powers change depending on what looks good in the next scene. And don’t get me started on the Rose guy pulling a “domain expansion - Rose Garden” out of nowhere. The anime never explains how these abilities work. It’s just random cool effects. And who's the villain again? mosnters, beyonders that "lost control" man wtf is this dogshit mann... Storywise I'd rather watch some dumbass slice of life anime. What happened to the rescued kids afterwards? how about the "gamblers" who turned to monsters. you know what, I don't know if I'm going to keep watching this.

And I know some people are gonna defend this. “You don’t get it! It’s meant to be confusing! It’s a mystery!” No. That’s cope. Good mystery stories give you pieces to work with and room to breathe. They guide you through layers of information. This anime just dumps everything on you and says, “Figure it out yourself dumbass.”.

Others will say, “Bro, you gotta read the novel!” Yeah? Maybe. But here’s the thing. I haven’t read the novel, and I don't want to. And I’m starting to suspect it’s not as deep as people pretend it to be. A lot of folks who hype this up most likely do it because it makes them feel smart. They mistake being confused for being challenged.

And if you’re one of the novel readers? Congrats. You’re filling in the gaps yourself. The anime isn’t doing the heavy lifting, you are. You’re mentally patching all the pacing issues because you already know what’s supposed to happen. But for everyone else? It’s a trainwreck.

Overall enjoyment: 6/10. And I’m being extremely generous because of the visuals. The story pacing is awful. The direction feels very amateurish.

As someone who hasn't read the source material, and having watched the first 4 episodes, I'm dropping the show. After 4 episodes of 30 min duration, I still don't understand whats the point of anything. The characters we have seen so far feel extremely plain, without any kind of personality nor personal objectives. I feel like they are there bcs the plot needs them to be there. The show is extremely confusing and has too much information that is not clear at all. They just keep bombing you with new people and terms while mixing some action to show off the animation, but it justends up making everything more confusing and convoluted.

People who have read the source material say this is "perfect" and "amazing", but tbh, if they cant make someone who hasnt read the og novel understand what is this about nor make newcomers interested, I dont know whats the point. Some people say "everything will be clear at the end", but tbh, I dont think so. And I dont think this is a good writting either (at least in the anime side of things, I cant speak about the novel). I literally can't remember all the terms, people and stuff they have mentioned in 4 episodes, how is anything going to make sense.

The animation is very good, but I dont think this is enough to justify putting my time into watching this. Its a shame really, because I love mystery plots and fantasy, but the way this is written and done just makes me feel distracted and deattached/uninterested in the show, since again, I cant understand anything or what to even look forward to.

This is the first time I deleted a review and rewrote it, because of how upsetting it is. Let's get one thing clear, this Donghua does not represent the webnovel in any shape or form. They made so many changes to the events and the over arching tone of the series that at this point it's difficult to say that any of this is cannon. The Beyonder fights makes zero sense because they've been using fake abilities for the sake of making the animation more exciting for almost every fight scene. Leonard is a Midnight Poet, he's meant to be a supportive dream manipulator with slightphysical enhancement, anything beyond that is just bs. He's suppose to be in stasis when trying to pull someone into a dream and can't chain them into a combo like how they portrayed it in the Donghua. What he's been doing is equivalent to Klein doing divinations mid-fight and predicting enemies moves during battle. The vines that can wrap up enemies and has physical properties are completely made up and has literally ZERO relevance to his Sequence. The comedic elements in fight scenes are also so strange and it just goes to show that the director is ego tripping, putting his own spin on everything.

The Tarot meetings is VERY important to the development of the story and the amount of times they were out right skipped or speed ran is ridiculous. They don't even feel integral to the story at this point, almost like a pre-roll ad mid episode with how poorly it's integrated.

Also the way they handled the mystery aspect of the adaptation is so insulting. The first episode dedicated to the "mystery", they outright spoil everything! The biggest mystery this entire time is who green lit this adaptation? Cuttlefish should be ashamed to stand idle and let his work be tarnished like this. The adaptation has been a major flop in China, and it wouldn't surprise me that the subsequent Seasons getting cancelled with how much money they burnt.

An adaptation of an acclaimed fantasy-mystery Chinese novel that tries to accomplish too much in too little time, resulting in nothing at all. Lord of Mysteries is an isekai into a fantasy Victorian setting with elements of intrigue. This makes for very good potential for world-building, and this series does it quite well - with more parties, factions, and characters than one can keep track of. There's an elaborate magic and skills system that is designed to keep viewers engaged. And there is certainly substantial budget for large set pieces to plunge the viewer into faux-Victorian England, and good VFX animation to accompanyvery good action animation scenes.

But unfortunately, all of these things that prop up this show are also the things that drag it down. It's been well-documented that the showrunners were pressured to speed up the first three episodes and cover a whopping amount of novel content to fit the three-episode rule by producers. For an incredibly dense setting like Lord of Mysteries, this was probably the biggest bullet in the foot. If you did not read this novel, you will not understand the hours of exposition dump that you will be subjected to. Characterization of the extremely expansive cast is reduced to Solo Leveling levels of aura farming and descriptions of their roles as opposed to motivations and real dialogue. The powers and magic system are described as if they were tutorial boxes in a gacha game. Combined, I found myself asking the question during the acclaimed clown fight: why do I care?

As mentioned, the combat choreography is good, and the 3D backgrounds acceptable. But often the compositing, lighting, and VFX combine into a distasteful mishmash that often obscures the good key animation at best and is nauseating at worse. More than once I found myself wondering if I was watching a GoHands show.

Could have been more promising, but as it stands, this is only for fans of the original material.

Lord of the Mysteries was one of the most successful chinese web novels of all time, entering the National Library of China and even receiving literature awards. In 2021, the author CuttleFish and Tencent Animation basically announced that an anime for the novel would be made. To make sure the anime really captures the novel, even the author was called to supervise the process. Now, with this context, things seem very straight-forward, a popular source material + a lot of funding will surely lead to a massive success not only as a product, but as a story... right? The visuals and music are absolutely stunning. Whenevera scene happens in a new location, we get a few seconds of the camera just moving to show us the place, accompanied by music that always suits the mood, it's a literal dessert for the senses. However, as time passes, you suddendly realize that you've only been fed sugar. Perhaps you have a sweet tooth and don't mind it, but if you demand an actual meal in this experience you'll find... cocaine?

Enough of metaphors, i'll just spell it out at this point. The show is FAST, and you better be high to be able to understand what is happening most of the time. Normally in mysteries, a few clues are scattered throught a story while the pacing varies so that viewers have time to think, but not here. The experience is the equivalent of watching a cutscene playlist, a lot of scenes feel disconnected from each other and you're not given any time to breathe. This causes the tone to be all over the place sometimes, to the point i couldn't help but laugh at the whiplash and rewind to confirm i wasn't crazy. By the way, you better get used to being thrown a bunch of information one after the other and don't you DARE try to reflect without pausing or else you'll miss another "mandatory clue" so that we can wrap up the current situation in 30 minutes.

Characters.... there's a lot of them. I don't know what else to say. You'll get hints that they have a personality here and there in the scenes that they appear... but that's it. They couldn't be more bland so far. The show might occasionally focus on a specific character and how they interact with the protagonist, but you never get a sense that it's organic. It's as if something is missing or wrong (perhaps something to do with the cut interactions that gave them more depth). Even the protagonist somehow got this treatment for most of the time. You NEVER slow down to see how characters live their lifes. You might get a few glimpses of how they think, but it doesn't matter because you'll barely see them as we move to the next scene (one (1) exception is a character in episode 6, but we have the complete opposite problem where we basically get bombarded with his lore with no breaks).

After everything said so far, my enjoyment with the music and visuals was GREATLY diminished because my immersion was fully broken. Highlights basically go down to fight scenes that have a 30% chance of causing you a stroke if you're a newcommer who never touched the novel, if that's your case i recommend to not bother trying to understand the fights. Speaking of understanding, the power system was barely explained at all, to the point i only remembered to mention it at the end of this review despite being the main tool that drives stuff to happen.

Is this review biased because it's from a novel reader? No. I recognize that concessions had to be made to adapt something 3x the size of the bible. Since they wanted to make a huge breathtaking experience, they had to make a lot of changes. I actually liked how a few scenes were changed compared to the original. My gripe is that the show doesn't feel like an adaptation, it feels like it DEMANDS the viewer to be a reader to understand the bare minimum of what they're watching. I expected a show that tried to stand on it's own and like i said, it feels like candied cocaine. I can only hope the next episodes break this trend but i honestly have no hope. Somehow, this show needed to be 2-3 times longer so that you can actually follow it organically. For what they wanted to do, i think they actually had to cut out more stuff to add depth to the show.

TLDR: Expect an extremely confusing FAST spectacle and don't blame yourself if you get lost, the mystery aspect really was poorly handled.

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 abit 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...

My review as a non-lightnovel reader: Lord of Mysteries is probably going to take anime of the year for me (ik its a donghua), so far only 3 episodes are out, but all of them are phenomenal. I'm writing a review for this simply just because of how distinct this series feels, it seems to be a mesh of every genre and theme that I enjoy. Animation - 11/10 - geniunely the most visually stunning anime, I've ever watched. It's like I'm watching an anime movie, but with consistent 30 minute episodes. The backgrounds are some of the most visually stunning ever, and pretty much every sceneis a wallpaper.

The choreography in the 3rd episode was also amazing, the way each pathway and sequence has their own strengths and weaknesses, and they move in the styles that best represent their abilities, and holy fuck is the midnight poet ability cool.

Plot - 8.5/10 - so many things are unravelling so far, it'll be interesting how it goes, i've got like 10 unanswered questions that i'm assuming are going to be answered at later points in the episodes, but the current arc in the first 3 episodes were quite captivating, the antigonus notebook, zhou/klein waking up, him learning about the world, encountering mysticism (if thats how you spell it)

World - 10/10 - the world instantly hooked me in, the 22 pathways of the divine, each with their own sequences that give more abilities, all with their own kind of archetype, like how the clown sequence has acrobatic abilities and trickster abilities, and how Sleepless has all these different dream abilities. The societal structure with the churches is also interesting, especially with the nighthawks.

Pacing - 8/10 - I'm used to paying a lot of attention to shows, so I honestly didn't think the pacing was that bad, it was a quite fast in the 1st episode, but it started to slow down, it's very noticeable in the second episode, I think the 3rd episode has a good pace. To be honest, it's mainly because of how fresh these concepts are, all the systems seem to be quite original. Not a problem if you pay attention, which you should be doing, you wouldn't watch HxH and just not lock in when they are teaching you how nen works. I think not having dubs in people's native languages yet harms it a bit, though.

Music - 10/10 - Originally probably would've put this at a 9, but the theme that played during the 3rd episode was so good.

Favourite Characters so far (in order): Leonard, Daly, Klein, Dunn, Melissa, Benson (i want more of melissa and benson), Old Neil

This deserves a 10/10 rating just for how fresh it feels. Other anime just feel like consistent regurgitated slop at the moment, other than a few standout anime of a genre that I don't really find much interest in.

Every now and then, there is a series that stands out as being more passionate and involved in the effort it expends to develop it's characters and properly establish a setting. There are no copy-pasted demon kings, no expelled party members living slow lives, and no vanilla magic system. That makes it all the more disappointing to say, this adaptation doesn't live up to it. Lord of the Mysteries manages to explain the damnedest things meticulously, yet breezes over the most important information that turns the character's logical leaps into non sequitur exclamations. Yes, even in Chinese this is still the case. This isn't to say thereis nothing good about this series, the 3D models are absolutely austere and should make all Japanese studios jealous, and the visual designs for the characters are some of the best this year has to offer. The series even has occasional moments of good storytelling that might surpass the original content, but after finishing Episode 7, I'm reminded again just how fleeting they are.

Ultimately, the inexperienced directing and storyboarding shines through. Events are rushed forward to meet expectations for the initial pilot episodes, and content squeezes turn into info dumps or unintuitive leaps.

At this point I'd consider the show passable, yet the music/sound direction is absolutely abysmal. The melodic pieces copy entire phrases from classical/romantic composers—fine—but everything else is rubbish that is bombastic, generic, and never fits the scene. It's the Michael Bay of soundtracks. It imbues a... *clown*-like feeling to epic moments and for that I will endure this show no further.

The most overhyped anime adaptation of 2025 that failed to hit the nail. If you are the type of anime watchers that would like your hand to be held in order to understand a story, Im afraid this show isn't for you. Why? Because this show has either poor writing or poor direction for the author nor the director to consider the audience's knowledge to get context to whatever the terms, power, faction, or whatever information every scene trying to tell. And even if you already understand what they mean, they will be sprinting to the next one making it impossible for you to get ahint of what is happening. It feels like they aren't telling a story, it's a MESS.

Don't get me wrong, the ideas are cool. I get the authors vision. The secret societies, rituals, beyonders but they never sticks due to lack of exploration towards these concepts in the show. Every feels like in a rush and nothing lands. I think the term "speedrunning" is the perfect word to describe this show.

And the characters? They are Solo Leveling equivalent type of writing. Why, you ask me? Because they will show up, drop a line, then boom disappear! I swear to God, just like how bland and boring Klein is (which the main charcter by the way), you will never remember the names of any side characters in this show neither will you care about them.

Overall, animation is amazing but even this I feel like too much. In certain scence, the seemingly high budget shots looses detail and the characters movement are chappy. Like? They allot budget for the background art but the characters movements sometimes is out of place.

Anyway, if you like glossy looking art, a story that you won't understand and a show that keeps your hopes up that something interesting will happen after wasting your time for 11 episodes of extended 30 minutes of nonesense then this show is for you.

They BUTCHERED it. This adaptation is DEAD ON ARRIVAL As a lover of the novel I am saddened to say this. The pacing is just too fast, no way around it. After watching the first five episodes of the anime I can confidently say that everything the novel stood for, with the slow burn, the world building, the interesting conversations and interactions, the action and everything else are non existent. I remember when reading the novel, the Nighthawks ARC being one of the most defining and amazing thing. An insane way to begin a story and let us viewers understand it while moving slow and steady, creating a goodrythm of action, slow burn and everything in between.

We get none of that here, Klein is basically going from starting out to getting more than halfway into the arc in 3 episodes.

Most of the characters are barely mentioned and the captain, which has an incredible impact on Klein's early life in his new home, his morals and the way he lives as a Beyounder, is basically portraied as the dude that coughs a lot.

Don't watch it.

Just read the god damn novel, it's a 100 times better

I have no idea what I'm even supposed to say. The story for someone who hasn't touched the novel is an incomprehensible mess without any cohesion or direction. Characters lack any development, and worldbuilding consists of unintelligible info dumps. With pacing so fast, and I'm assuming so much of the story being skipped, nothing makes sense here. Characters aren't likable or interesting either. I'm actually disappointed, as I heard a lot of good things about Lord of Mysteries. The Victorian setting, combined with Chinese isekai tropes, sounds interesting as hell, but it all goes to shit thanks to a lackluster storytelling. The visuals are probablythe most liked thing in this show, and the only reason I didn't give it a score of 1. But I'll complain even about them. It's like Solo Leveling. Yes, I don't think SL has outstanding animation. It moves nicely, is very flashy, but watching it doesn't give me an impression of looking at art. It might sound corny, but both SL and LoM lack soul. It's like an animation made by executives who poured money into the project to make it look good, instead of people with talent and passion working towards creating something truly amazing. I'm not saying it's bad per se, or that people with talent who cared didn't work on it. Only that it lacks any personality.

It gives off that strong corporate vibe reminiscent of the American anime made in Korea for Netflix, like the animated Witcher movies. They, too, look decent, flashy, and well animated. But lack any personality and are just boring to look at in the long run.

So that's about it. The biggest mystery in Lord of Mystery is where the plot has gone.

as a webnovel reader who has been following the novel since 2018, I have to say I'm disappointed with the pacing. it skipped a lot of crucial information and inner monologue. and this is not a good thing for a donghua that relies heavily on plot, mysteries and world building since those information will be very important later on. LOM is all about world building and mysteries, action is just secondary. but it feels like they skipped a lot of important information for the sake of godlike animation and action. many people seem to misunderstand the mystery genre here. this is not a story whereMC will find every murder cases and solve them. this is about discovering lost history, truths within fabricated history, and conspiracies. this is why world building is so important which unfortunately are removed. so if you're looking for detective story with murder cases to solve, this is not for you.

they literally remove ALMOST EVERYTHING that makes LOM loved and popular in the first place (world building, side characters POV, Tarot Gathering, Power Level, Mysteries) and go lengths to make all the fights that adds nothing to the story flashy. I don't know who they are trying to appeal. the shounen masses ? many new watchers seem to be confused. the novel readers ? many novel readers are pissed.

episode 1 and 2 are the worst episodes period. it's so all over the place, the pacing is horrible and the story is confusing because they remove EVERY INFORMATION available. of course glazers will tell you that you simply don't pay enough attention and that's why you're confused. tell you what, the novel isn't that confusing. yes the novel leaves you with questions, but it's more like curiosity. but the donghua leaves you with big "WTF" question because it's so bad and confusing. so why they remove all important information ? to make some spaces for flashy fights of course.

they also give 0 effort to make the side characters interesting and likeable, which is opposite to the novel that go to lengths to flesh out side characters. most of the conversation are shortened or completely removed just to make some spaces for flashy fight scenes. the same goes for side characters POV that's crucial for character development.

the most unforgivable part is removing tarot gathering. it's the most important part of the story that every information given in the gathering will stay relevant even until the end of the story. but of course they remove this too. why ?! to make some spaces for flashy fight scenes!

and you know what ?! they realized that they really did something bad especially removing important information. so they made chibi version for slice of life and old neil class for the missing information, especially information related to sequence power that no one will watch except die hard copium glazers.

of course the copium glazers will praise this donghua no matter what and give it 10/10.

The pacing is horrific. If anime could give you motion sickness, this would be it. They don't allow the beautiful scenes to breath, only moving on to the next scene in a instance. Leaving the viewer trying to understand what they just saw and heard previously before they are thrown into a new scene of new characters. I read that the pacing seems to be fixed with English dubbing, but the audio is another problem. The music is so incredibly loud you can hardly hear what the characters have to say. I dropped it after 3 episodes, hoping it would improve on the aspects I highlighted abovebut it did not.

One positive is that the story is very interesting and unique. Reading the web novel might do the story more justice than the anime.

Imagine turning a deep, slow-burn psychological mystery into a generic lightning-flinging slideshow. That’s what this anime did. As someone who’s read over 600 chapters of Lord of the Mysteries, I’m honestly disappointed by this adaptation. I expected a dark, immersive atmosphere, rich world building, and the slow-burning mystery that made the novel so compelling. Instead, the anime feels rushed, shallow, and stripped of everything that made the source material special. The pacing is one of the biggest problems. The story flies through events, skipping essential scenes and cutting out the very substance of what made the world feel alive. Important character development, key moments of tension,subtle foreshadowing, and world-building details are simply gone. What remains is a disjointed sequence of scenes that barely makes sense. And while I personally understand what’s going on thanks to the novel, the way it's portrayed here is a complete mess and would be confusing or frustrating for newcomers. Fans looking for a straightforward, fast-paced show with flashy visuals might find it more appealing.

The animation technically looks good but somehow feels fake it’s good but dead, not alive. Visually, the anime fails to capture the steampunk, occult, and horror aesthetics that define the novel. But what frustrates me the most is how they handled Klein’s powers. As a Seer, his abilities are meant to be subtle, eerie, mysterious—a slow, creeping power rooted in the unknown. Instead, they throw in flashy lightning effects like this is some generic action shounen. It completely kills the mood and shows a total misunderstanding of what the Seer path is even about.

Klein himself, once a complex and carefully developed protagonist, comes off here as bland and unremarkable. Without his internal thoughts, his struggle with identity, and his gradual descent into the unknown, he becomes just another forgettable MC.

This adaptation feels less like a passion project and more like a soulless highlight reel made for people who will never touch the novel. It's a massive wasted opportunity and an insult to one of the most unique and layered stories in modern web fiction.

They tried. That's the best way to sum this show up so far. While visually a pretty good show, nothing about it makes sense. The plot feels disjointed with the characters simply bouncing around at the whim of the plot. This is not helped by the fact that the world building is very hard to track with. It some how manages to be both too much explaining and too little explaining at the same time (and at all the wrong plot points). As for the characters, they are far from likable or interesting. On a different note, if you are looking for a goodmystery show, this will probably not be it. Most of the 'mysteries' are 'solved' by the protagonist simply being at the right place at the right time. There is no deductive reasoning nor is there a traceable trail of clue that is presented. It is coincidence 90% of the time.

It feels as though the show was created for the people who are already heavily invested in the web novel. There are too many parts that feel awkwardly paced and too many missing details for this to be anything but the case. I, myself, haven't read the web novel, so this is purely speculation.

Disappointing that this is how the show turned out, especially given how much hype everyone gave it.