Lord of Mysteries Review: Beyonders and a ‘Beyond-My-Brain’ Pace
Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)
From an animation enthusiast POV: the dark-fantasy series ‘Lord of Mysteries’ was more exhausting than entertaining to watch. There’s just an overdose of visual stuff happening in the series, and while some of the frames do look great, a lot of them also either feel AI-generated, or like playing a video game.
While discussing the show with my brother, who watches more animated content than I do, he pointed out that viewers unfamiliar with Chinese animation styles might struggle to connect with ‘Lord of Mysteries’, much like how younger audiences today might not like the simple Cartoon Network-style designs of the shows we grew up with. If I have to give post 2024 examples of animated shows I enjoyed streaming, they would be ‘Blood of Zeus’, ‘Castlevania: Nocturne’, ‘Dan Da Dan’, ‘Leviathan’, ‘Love, Sex, Robots’, or even the ongoing ‘The Summer Hikaru Died’, and ‘Gachiakuta’…!
From the opening episode of ‘Lord of Mysteries‘, this is the basic plot I pieced together: Protagonist Klein Moretti is a ‘transmigrator’, someone who can travel to a different place and era. So he is from the future, where computers and cellphones exist, but he finds himself in a steam-punk, medieval alternate reality in 1352 AD. Klein needs to figure out a way to go back home in the future, so he decides to take the help of Dunn Smith, the captain of a secretive group called the Night-Hawks, that operates under the guise of a security company. Dunn Smith is also a ‘Beyonder’, beings that have supernatural powers and can rise to the level of Gods.
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The series dives deep into lore, rules, and drama surrounding the Beyonders, with Klein eventually becoming one himself. After joining Smith’s secret order, he begins working alongside them to solve cases that often involve dangerous entities. His first mission deals with a kidnapping, followed by a case involving a disturbingly powerful puppet that might remind some viewers of the creepy clown from Stephen King’s IT. While the plot of ‘Lord of Mysteries’ sounds fantastic on paper, the execution just didn’t work for me.
The animation of ‘Lord of Mysteries’ is a blend of steampunk aesthetics with weirdly Victorian-era styles and moods. The animation movements feel choppy, like you’re watching someone else play a mystery fantasy game online. The character designs mirror the style of Japanese anime, making the characters cat-like cute, but the episodes lack the energy, and emotional highs that make anime so gripping. Unfortunately, the voice acting doesn’t help either, as it fails to elevate the experience.
From the four episodes that I saw, the tone of the series was largely bleak, serious, dark, packing in a generous amount of demonic activities and bloodied violence. And even though I am a huge fan of mystery and horror series, each time an episode of ‘Lord of Mysteries’ got over, I didn’t feel any excitement over what would happen next. The creators jam in too much, both plot-wise, and visually, and maybe I am too simple-minded, but this show gave me a headache. It features too many characters, too many fictional places, weird fictional historical personalities, and too much name-dropping.
Give ‘Lord of Mysteries’ a chance if the idea of a guy from the future time-traveling to an alternate past, where powerful secret orders with supernatural beings thrive, sounds exciting. As long as you are a patient viewer who doesn’t mind a crazy mix of visual styles and an overload of information.
Watch Lord of Mysteries on CrunchyRoll or WeTV.
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