Battle Through The Heavens

[bakato]

In a land where no magic is present. A land where the strong make the rules and the weak have to obey. A land filled with alluring treasures and beauty, yet also filled with unforeseen danger. Three years ago, Xiao Yan, who had shown talents none had seen in decades, suddenly lost everything. His powers, his reputation, and his promise to his mother. What sorcery has caused him to lose all of his powers? And why has his fiancee suddenly shown up?

And yet another chinese web novel turned anime. 3DCG if you couldn't tell.

[AB079]

The summary looks interesting but... 3DCG turns me down.

[Eisdrache]

I quit reading this after the first ~25 chapters since it had all the things that bother me in so many web novels. Incredibly overpowered MC? Check. Harem? Check. Unlikable female lead? Check. Also overpowered? Check. Antagonists are big talk but get easily defeated? Check. Add to this that the world is the type in which the stronger can bully / kill those who are weaker, something the MC regularly makes use of while it is justified by being the "good guys".

[Chichiryuushintei]

Originally Posted by Eisdrache

I quit reading this after the first ~25 chapters since it had all the things that bother me in so many web novels. Incredibly overpowered MC? Check. Harem? Check. Unlikable female lead? Check. Also overpowered? Check. Antagonists are big talk but get easily defeated? Check. Add to this that the world is the type in which the stronger can bully / kill those who are weaker, something the MC regularly makes use of while it is justified by being the "good guys".

Thanks, now I know to avoid this harder than the plague. Shame though, the CGI looks cool.

[Marcus H.]

I quit reading this after the first ~25 chapters since it had all the things that bother me in so many web novels. Incredibly overpowered MC? Check. Harem? Check. Unlikable female lead? Check. Also overpowered? Check. Antagonists are big talk but get easily defeated? Check. Add to this that the world is the type in which the stronger can bully / kill those who are weaker, something the MC regularly makes use of while it is justified by being the "good guys".

It's the problem with most wuxia novels. Expect more of them to show up (as well as xianxia novel adaptations) in Japanese anime in the future.

[felix]

I read most of this. My first impression was that the CG looks weird and the character designs look even weirder.

Originally Posted by Eisdrache

I quit reading this after the first ~25 chapters since it had all the things that bother me in so many web novels. Incredibly overpowered MC? Check. Harem? Check. Unlikable female lead? Check. Also overpowered? Check. Antagonists are big talk but get easily defeated? Check. Add to this that the world is the type in which the stronger can bully / kill those who are weaker, something the MC regularly makes use of while it is justified by being the "good guys".

(I'll answer this a bit generic just to avoid spoilers of the setting)

Mostly correct. Although I feel you're spinning it in an overly negative way.

It's true that the world settings for these types of stories is generally very cutthroat, scheming, lawless and what have you. But that's perfectly in line with the setting and balance of powers usually portrayed.

Personally I find the need to modernize the establishment, mannerisms, speech, education, architecture (and facilities) and "democratize" the government (as well as the law and order) to be the more annoying trend. It's a low technology extremely violent world with monsters, of course things are more loose. That said in most of these stories the rule of thumb is generally that, if you go to the big bad monster infested mountain nobody gives a shit if monster eat you or people kill you, but if murder happens in town then the powers in charge will hunt you down and justice will be carried out. So long as you're not some random off the street in which case it's not that the laws are blind but that the laws usually explicitly state that the "nobel" party has the right to kill you any time with out consequence; this usually applies at higher ranks too, so a viscount can usually kill random "nobels" with out repercussions just from an insult or on a whim—depending on the story of course. Sometimes these stories mix in western themes, as is convenient.

As for the MC & other characters being over powered. As far as I see there are 5 types of heroes you can do,

1. hero who dreams of changing things but is powerless and incapable of gaining power
2. hero who has no power (and I mean ZERO power) and no ability to gain power but manages change though other means
3. hero who has incredible power (even if it's subtle) but is otherwise an incompetent and change (if it happens) happens because the world turns in his favor (for the most part)
4. hero who has incredible power (even if it's subtle) and is NOT an incompetent when it comes to using it
5. hero who starts out with little to no power but slowly gathers power as he fights his way to the top of the "food chain"

(1) is generally the realm of tragedy

(2) is hard to do for this kind of setting. You have random beasts that by themselves could probably annihilate an entire city. Even if the hero manages to kill or fend of some of them, unfortunately there's way more of them then he could handle with tricks, eventually the story would reach depressing conclusion of the hero being "powerless." And that's not even accounting for all the human powerhouses.

(3) it's not too common in anime but most superhero stories fall into this (doesn't need to involve superheroes though). Enough said.

(4) this is the standard japanese harem power fantasy formula. We get 1-2 per season usually involving "Academy-like-something" and girls in some sort of flying-spandex.

(5) standard wuxia / xianxia formula; should probably add that in these kind of stories as opposed to the above the idea that the main protagonist is both kind and horrible/overlord-ish is more on the common side rather then being special cases. Usually because they don't take their families being murdered as idealistic as is generally expected of the other two, but instead keep grudges all the way though.

So then, (1) and (2) can be considered "special cases" just because they're either super hard or fall into more complicated themes. (3) and (4) are things we get enough of already or otherwise have the highest probability of falling into the realm of "And then I The_Author_Character unsheathed my *sword* and killed the big overlord in one swipe and all then all the female characters worshiping my greatness dropped their [...]" bullshit plot. Not that (5) is exactly immune from this, it's just much harder to pull off when the world follows the hard rule that "there's always heaven beyond the heaven and horizon beyond the horizon" or in other words, the main character always has to account for the people above him in power. Of course there's always better and worse, this particular one should be better then something like dragonball though—well, that's a big "should" there.

In the end it's all about what kind of poison you want.

And if you don't like any of them stay away from anything involving the characters having "power" since what you want has probably not been invented yet.

-

All that said I'm honestly not too sure how well wuxia and xianxia translate to animation. Fights should be awesome enough, especially when there's no "charge time" usually in these types of stories but I'm a bit worried about how well other parts translate. Honestly I would probably be more hopeful of this myself with out seeing that CG trailer; everything looks horrible. I'll probably try it anyway. That little fight looks decent enough.

[bakato]

Originally Posted by Eisdrache

I quit reading this after the first ~25 chapters since it had all the things that bother me in so many web novels. Incredibly overpowered MC? Check. Harem? Check. Unlikable female lead? Check. Also overpowered? Check. Antagonists are big talk but get easily defeated? Check. Add to this that the world is the type in which the stronger can bully / kill those who are weaker, something the MC regularly makes use of while it is justified by being the "good guys".

About the overpowered remark, it's not so much he's overpowered so much as he gets a bullshit powerup whenever he's in a pinch.

I too loathe the recent flood of dumb stories with their dumb protagonists. I hate this series, but the scary thing is I actually thought this might be good watching the trailer. Like nearly all OP protagonist stories these days, the writing is terrible. Characters and their cliche lines are just so flat. The lack of description of the setting and what's going on make it feel like I'm reading a summary. This isn't writing! But the trailer with it's design seems to compensate drastically for this deficiency, which makes me wonder if there can be an actual story here.

[Pierre]

We must be looking at two different works because the MC is not OP.

I will admit at the end of the series from what I hear he is basically a God, but you can say that about basically every single Shonen. But through out the series he is usually outclassed by at least one or two characters in every arc and he has to actually constant train and develop his skills to match their level.

Hell two of his own harem members may actually be stronger than he is for the majority of the series.

Also with all due respect wuxia works are actually a breath of fresh. They stop this bs you see in Japanese works about "I can't kill anyone, yadada", in these you normally have the hero kill people and its more realistic for the setting and a refreshing change. Even when done by MC in Japanese works its usually glossed over.

Also wuxia tend to stick to their guns and have actual harem endings, unlike in Japan where most harems cop out and either go with no resolution or MC picks one character. Luckily enough the new trend of Light novels is bucking this trend, but if think about basically the most well known harem from 1990-2010, name anything besides Tenchi that actually has a harem ending.

My only gripe with Wuxia is that they seem to be relatively raw in terms of writing, but in terms of influence I would have no problem seeing Japanese works take some ideas from them.

[Lhklan]

Originally Posted by Pierre

We must be looking at two different works because the MC is not OP.

I will admit at the end of the series from what I hear he is basically a God, but you can say that about basically every single Shonen. But through out the series he is usually outclassed by at least one or two characters in every arc and he has to actually constant train and develop his skills to match their level.

Hell two of his own harem members may actually be stronger than he is for the majority of the series.

Also with all due respect wuxia works are actually a breath of fresh. They stop this bs you see in Japanese works about "I can't kill anyone, yadada", in these you normally have the hero kill people and its more realistic for the setting and a refreshing change. Even when done by MC in Japanese works its usually glossed over.

Also wuxia tend to stick to their guns and have actual harem endings, unlike in Japan where most harems cop out and either go with no resolution or MC picks one character. Luckily enough the new trend of Light novels is bucking this trend, but if think about basically the most well known harem from 1990-2010, name anything besides Tenchi that actually has a harem ending.

My only gripe with Wuxia is that they seem to be relatively raw in terms of writing, but in terms of influence I would have no problem seeing Japanese works take some ideas from them.

Yeah. In fact, the 2 heroines pretty much outclass him from the start, with him only catching up to his siter figure much much later. He had to constantly constantly train, cultivate and do many things to grow strong, instead of :"bullshit power ups".

The only thing that could be called that is the fact that his shifu was sealed inside the ring he owns, and even then he had to pay for that: He lost his power for many years, his clan look down on him, hell the entire plot started because his fiancee comes to annul the marriage all while looking down on his clan.

Also, the 2 females leads are actually quite decent - Medusa is a more mellow Tsundere while the sister is very very in love with him.

To be fair though, this series does get rather tiring later on, and I dropped it when it appears that Yun Zhi/Yun Yun don't appear anymore.

[felix]

In most of these types of stories one of the most common themes (sometimes illustrated though the story as blatantly as possible) is that even if you are THE BEST, that doesn't mean you can do shit if you're completely alone. Usually even ridiculously overpowered characters would only be able to take on something like 6-10 other more powerful opponents, before droping out from fatigue (some energy limit is always present even if not explicitly stated).

In all these stories a faction having hundreds of experts to count on is not unusual at all. The hero with infinite stamina that's so above everyone the entire world being against him doesn't matter, just doesn't apply. This is fundamental to the balance of the world: you're powerful, you have followers, your powerful followers have followers, and so on. If you go to war against a faction that's much bigger fish then you in the world then you just get annihilated even if "you" are a bit more powerful then any expert of the opposing faction. And don't worry, there are PLENTY of stories where the main protagonists faction goes though this, there's little to no plot protection at all when it comes to this.

That's why in many stories one of the protagonists main objective or at least secondary objective is usually to become a charismatic leader that attracts useful talents to his side. Being extremely strong is in many ways a form of charisma (especially in these settings), as is sometimes the character having a unique specialization/service other influential peoples require.

As for the whole godlike business. There are indeed certain cutoffs where if the character is the equivalent of 20 to 40 years of martial experience above another, the effort required to kick his ass is just so insignificant that hundreds of them couldn't do a thing to the character in question. However this most of the time applies in the main characters disfavor, and when it does apply the other way, it's usually a case where it would be quite absurd to see random martial apprentice that couldn't hold a candle to say some master/grand-master actually have strength in numbers—given the extreme martial arts portrayed.

[Pierre]

Yeah I am def a big fan Medusa in this one, curious how the reaction is going to be in the manhua when the whole daughter thing comes about. I especially want to the ice guys reaction that his quasi student and his hated enemy have a kid.

I do agree certain section could probably be compressed and certain section altered, but I feel that comes from the raw writing style. Like I said it reminds me of Web vs Light novels, where one is more polished than the other.

[abhjetgon]

I remember when I read 800 chapters of this in a week, although I doubt it's going to be turned into a decent anime

[RedWingFM]

Really? Bet they make this anime very boring

[felix]

Originally Posted by abhjetgon

I remember when I read 800 chapters of this in a week, although I doubt it's going to be turned into a decent anime

The visuals in the trailer were horrid.

[bakato]

So the first season's over. Never got subbed and apparently there's a second season on the way. Say what you will about 3DCG, but this looks really good. I mean like Disney good. It's smooth and the girls are hot.

[felix]

@bakato Can you post some screenshots.

[bakato]

Here

[felix]

That does look quite nice.

[Valky]

It looks weird and kind of creepy.