English Dub Review: Lord of Mysteries “Losing Control”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Klein meets a colleague of his professor Old Neil, though a new investigation uncovers a dark secret.

OUR TAKE

After watching eight episodes of this and a few viewings of both Ne Zha films, I’ve noticed a similar stumbling block in my attempts to critically analyse the two. If you asked me to explain what things are happening thematically, or how a given character is developing or moving along their personal arc, I could probably tell you rather easily. In Ne Zha’s case, a rowdy child is yearning to express himself freely while also yearning for acceptance through trying to fit into expected norms. For Lord of Mysteries, a young man is attempting to return to his home while also finding himself surprisingly adept at strange and mysterious abilities. However, if you asked me to describe the plot or what is physically happening in any given scene, I fear my brain will try to eject itself out of my skull. I have no idea if this is something exclusive to fantasy stories of Chinese origin, but it’s a weird quality that these two properties share. We’ve still got a handful of episodes left to try and handle that better, but the sheer amount of lore flooding is most definitely going to end up being a major flaw of this series when it’s all said and done.

In the case of this specific episode, the main character development for Klein is that he learns more about his colleague Old Neil and his past with a previous band of Beyonders, including his wife, but the only one left besides him is a burly man named Havre (had to look up how exactly to spell that because everyone’s thick accents made it hard to tell what they heck they were saying). Then, during another investigation into Secret Organizations (along with a dump truck of organization names that left my mind almost as fast as they got there) they encounter a humanoid monster, only to find out that said monster was in fact Havre, having lost control of his Beyonder powers and needing to be put down by Neil, his last friend. The idea a Beyonder could become that is not entirely out of left field, seeing as they are all dealing with wild and arcane powers that could have any number of lasting side effects, but we had never seen someone lose control of their abilities to that extent before. But what’s more intriguing is Klein’s response, as he has a bit of a Light Yagami moment and decides to brush off the fear of this incident and how he may end up like this one day, and instead commits himself to becoming a stronger Beyonder. I just wish I could feel less confused when the badass line to end the episode was “it’s time to level up and advance to clown”. What’s worse is I kind of get what that means, but also not. Anyway, see you next time when we level up and advance to clown!