Kingdom Season 5: One of My Favorite Manga/Anime!
A couple of days ago i made a post regarding my top 3 anime that i am excited for this season. Something that i had missed entirely and i was happily surprised when i saw a random post on the web is that Kingdom season 5 will air as well this month. In fact, it was supposed to air along with the other anime the previous week (6-7/01/24) but due to the earthquake it was move to 13 January of 2024.
I don't think that i have mentioned it here but Kingdom is one of my favorite Manga/Anime out there for many and different reasons which i will tell you below. First, let me give you an idea of what this is about!
Plot
Kingdom is an adaptation of the actual period of the Warring States in Chinese history which ended with the unification of China. So the story follows Xin and Piao 2 war orphans who are working as servants in a poor village. Their dream is to become Generals in the army of Qin. One day Piao is taken to the palace for a reason that is revealed later in the manga/anime. A couple of months ago he returned nearly dead and revealed to Xin what happened.
Turns out Piao was used as a double to the king of Qin Ying Zheng who is nearly the same age as them. Due to some power issues, the brother of Zheng tried to kill him and become the king of Qin. That's when basically Xin decides to help Zheng in order to revenge his friend and come a step closer to achieving their dream!
Why I like it though?
To begin with, the silliest reason is that i like any decent Manga with many chapters and Kingdom has already 782 chapters out there! It's not just that though, the art and designs in the Manga are freaking amazing and very detailed. In fact the first anime season of Kingdom and i think a part of the second one was with that horrible 3d CGI visuals and everyone hated it!
An actual reason that i like is besides the constant action it can actually help everyone learn something in terms of history and strategy. As i said we are talking about actual historic events and many characters are based on actual ones. The fight scenes are something that the kingdom doesn't take lightly as we are talking about all-out wars!
It actually shows every aspect of the war in detail and it doesn't just focus on the fights, it hugely focuses on every strategy and how strategy can turn the tide of the battle which is quite true. It's not like the power of friendship will win, we are talking about war. Btw the manga has way more gore scenes!
Finally, something that is also quite interesting is that there is an actual plot with character development. We were basically introduced to 2 kids, one with a dream of becoming a known General and the other dreaming of becoming the King and uniting China. We get to see both of their stories parallel and how they achieve their goals, struggles and failures. It's like Game of Thrones without the sex scenes :p
In conclusion, Kingdom is a freaking unique anime, not for everyone as it doesn't have harem elements, or superpowers but if you want to see something with tons of fights, tons of different strategies and an actual plot with character development GO WATCH IT NOWW, or START READING! I will leave you with a season 1 3D design just for the lols and a manga design!
Can you imagine how terrible season 1 was while the manga was that detailed as seen above? I get that the 3d modeling is cheaper but come on, no reason to ruin such detailed and awesome Manga that exists out there!
I am really attracted to anime that are set in historical times and that describe in some way how societies were in those periods.
Also the plot of this series sounds very interesting.
The thing that prevented me from starting this anime was the same reason I never started the manga due to how the saga is expected to unfold up to thousands of chapters more to go if they were to follow the history timeline. The story is gunning for One Piece level of length and that's a feat that made me not start One Piece too.