Thoughts on episodes 1&2 of Lord of Mysteries
Heya! So, the first 2 episodes of the Lord of the Mysteries anime came out recently. If you don't know what Lord of the Mysteries is: Go and watch the Anime. I promise you, you won't be disappointed.
Slight Spoilers for the first two episodes ahead.
Anyways. I've seen a couple people complaining about how the first two episodes were a bit too rushed, too fast-paced. Honestly? I don't agree.
Lord of the Mysteries - especially the first arc - is really slow. It takes its time. That is both its greatest strength and its greatest weakness. Because it means a lot of readers read the first five chapters, get bored by Klein doing chores and baking bread and then drop the novel, thinking its not for them.
I think having the first two episodes be really fast paced and front loading a lot of the action really helps with that. It shows viewers the sort of 'ideal' Lord of the Mysteries - what it's like at its peak. The most hype moments, the coolest parts. You get a bit of everything. You get a tarot club meeting, you get cool fights, you get introduced to the Nighthawks, you get to see Beyonder powers being used in interesting ways. And yeah, maybe its a bit confusing for new viewers, but its in a way that makes you want to learn more about the world. It introduces you to a bunch of new interesting concepts and gives you hints at how deep the worldbuilding of lotm really goes. Yeah, some character moments got cut, but theyve already altered the order of things, who's to say they can't just change it again to include them? If things slow down more after these first two episodes, I'd say the pacing here was totally fine. Its a good way to get viewers hooked right away, to basically give them an elevator pitch of Lord of The Mysteries and showcase all it's high points while still doing a pretty faithful adaptation of the first few chapters.
If this pacing continues, its a different story. In that case, fair point, too fast. But I've already heard people talking about how apparently theres official sources saying the first two episodes will be by far the most fast paced. I could not actually find said official sources though, so take that with a grain of salt. Still, i trust cuttlefish and the team to make a really good adaptation, so I'm quite hopeful. If nothing else, we'll still get to see all of the memorable moments from the novel animated incredibly beautifully.
As for the translation: It's fine. I don't hate it. Yeah, its not 100% accurate, but the mistakes that are there aren't exactly unforgivable. "Spectator" being translated as "Audience" isn't that big a deal in my opinion, for example. It still gets the point across of what the sequence is supposed to be, if slightly more ambiguous. But, hey, the "proper" names of some of the other sequences can also often be vague and ambiguous, thats kind of part of the fun - figuring out what exactly the name means. Won't say it's great, I would have preferred more accurate translations, but it's not as big a deal as some people make it out to be.
Anyways. Go watch/read Lord of Mysteries, it's awesome. Also, I know I keep alternating between "Lord of Mysteries" and "Lord of the Mysteries", but thats just because I'm too used to the latter when it's actually the former - because, ironically, "Lord of the Mysteries" was a translation error (as confirmed by cuttlefish). Still not quite used to the official name lol.