OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)Zhou Mingrui awakens in the body of Klein Moretti and must navigate a strange new world while learning how to become a “Beyonder”, as well as begin to make connections of his own.OUR TAKEI learned a new word today: Donghua, which is basically the Chinese equivalent of Anime in Japan. I’ve probably covered some of these already and assumed they were anime, but now I have a new one to review. Lord of Mysteries, an adaptation of a Chinese web novel that apparently has such a following in its native country that it is one of less than two hundred web novels to be included in the National Library of China, the sixth largest library in the world! All that to say that this must be a pretty big story to cut through the anime dominance here in the West and get its own animated adaptation. From the jump, we can already see some shared DNA, as it begins with a character essentially being reincarnated in another world…only in this case, it’s jumping into the life of someone who already existed, as well as seemed to have recently killed themselves. That’s a pretty novel (pun not intended) take on this sort of scenario, but it’s not long until we’re back in familiar territory by having our protagonist Zhou, now Klein, learning he has some set of supernatural abilities and even making some friends/underlings out of it, so he’s off to a pretty good start from what I can tell.From there, as Klein gets a hang of being a “Beyonder”, what they call those with these abilities, he also ends up attending some sort of organization to get more experienced with these skills, though must also avoid the authorities who may be after the original Klein for stuff the new one may not be aware of. I’m trying not to be reductive with my descriptions of what’s happening and the worldbuilding, but unfortunately, these first two episodes kinda drown you in minutiae and lore where it feels like you’ll need a textbook just to keep up with everything. But this is a popular story for a reason, I’m sure, so I’m hoping that as we move forward, things will be relayed in a more digestible way. And while they most definitely are not for now, the presentation of this world and the happenings in it are quite stunning and immersive, though I do worry that if everything happens in as dramatic fashion as these first two episodes, the weight of these rapid camera movements and intricate graphics may get lessened over time. We’ll just need to keep watching to find out.