Lord of Mysteries is a Chinese donghua, based on a webnovel, and boy, does it live up to its name. Mysteries abound in this gas lamp fantasy, isekai, cosmic horror cultivation story. But don’t be overwhelmed. I’ll take you through all you need to know to decide if this anime should be on your watch list, and maybe include a few secrets to godhood as a treat.
Death Is Only the Beginning for the Lord of Mysteries
Lord of Mysteries starts with the Chinese youth Zhou Mingrui transmigrated into a new world. He’s placed in the body of the mysteriously dead, possibly self-terminated, Klein Moretti. I say “possibly” and “mysteriously” for a reason. One of the first things we learn about this Victorian-style world is that Klein was handling mind-breaking Cthulhu-style ritual magic shortly before his death. Turns out, when humans experience cosmic knowledge beyond our understanding, suicide is among the least shocking results. So maybe Klein killed himself, perhaps he went mad. Maybe it was a complex scheme by an unseen evil. We’ll see.
Klein finds himself in a world of magic and cultivation. Trying to escape, Klein soon replicates the ritual he thinks spirited him away. Unfortunately, instead of sending him to Earth, the ritual sends his mind to a realm of strange grey fog. He learns he can form the fog into any material he wishes with his thoughts, but Klein also accidentally summons two random people from his new world into the fog. Not sure what to do, he calls himself The Fool, and turns these strangers into his agents to feed him knowledge in exchange for favors.
Then, as he returns to his body, he figures out that a bunch of magical wizard types are trying to interrogate or possibly even kill him.
Cultivation Beyond Mortality
See, while the grey fog is a power system with dangerous potential, it acts as a side plot more than anything. The main story of Lord of Mysteries is focused on the cultivation system. Magic users called Beyonders develop power, and some solve magical crimes. Cultivation is an originally Chinese genre involving the pursuit of immortality through sequential upgrades on a path to enlightenment. It’s inspired by the Dao and other Chinese cultural elements, like Chinese alchemy and martial arts. In Lord of Mysteries, this takes the form of a nine-step system, where Beyonders take a potion to put them on one of twenty-two paths to godhood. They need a specific potion for the next step, but not until they’ve digested their previous one to the point where they embody the role it gave them.
Why does Klein get involved in this system? It’s complicated. The original Klein discovered a dangerous magical text. The transmigrated Klein suffers the consequences. He has to join a magical society for his protection and to find a way home, which means becoming a Beyonder. Specifically, he becomes a Seer. Joining the Church of the Evernight Goddess as a Nighthawk (investigator), Klein is well-positioned to find magic to take him home.
Existing Godhood
As a Nighthawk, Klein is a trainee. He needs to learn new magic and fighting skills. However, in the grey fog, Klein acts with confidence and behaves like a god. In fact, one of his fog acquaintances, The Hanged Man, believes him to be a god. It’s an interesting take on the cultivation genre. Normally, a cultivator must actively seek godhood and is vulnerable to those more powerful than themself. Klein stays weak in the real world for a while, but the grey fog gives him a trump card that enemies can’t expect.
I’d say Lord of Mysteries is trying to have and eat its cake, except Klein experiments with the fog, too. The fog doesn’t make him invulnerable; it’s at best an occasional advantage, but the fog is a key mystery. Is Klein possibly closer to godhood than he may think?
There’s Always Another Mystery
Klein’s always learning, and his pursuit of answers is intriguing. His curiosity is another good excuse to teach the viewer and drive subplots. With every episode, the mysteries grow. New sects are introduced. New magical items are found. Klein and his friends defeat many goons, but the main antagonists remain hidden. The name Lord of Mysteries is a fitting one. I don’t think I’ve watched any anime recently as serious about its investigations as this one is. Maybe I never have. The gas lamp fantasy setting allows for investigations into everything from kidnappings to hauntings, and solves conflicts with seances and dream analysis as much as with gunfights.
The vibe is Sherlock Holmes if Watson were a diviner. Anime-wise, the investigations remind me of early Bungo Stray Dogs (NSFW), before that show became a shounen battle anime with gangs. Yet neither of those comparisons does the detective element justice.
Beauty Is in the Eye of the Lord of Mysteries
Unfortunately, while the investigations are a pleasure to watch, they have two issues. One is that they’re on the simple side. No mystery is mind-blowing; rather, it’s the journey that’s enjoyable. The art here is amazing and surreal, with wicked long camera angles that give a grand sense of scale, and a ton of settings that look like oil paintings. The investigations, as previously mentioned, have good vibes, even if they’re not complex. Klein’s personal involvement and the risks the Nighthawks face in confronting dangerous magic had me invested early on. Yet the investigations built on those elements are simple enough to be solved and explained in one episode.
Dangling Into Infinity
The dangling plot threads are another issue. Those new sects and items I mentioned? They’re clearly setup for a massive world. Antagonists have also appeared more to introduce their sect, or magic, than to be thwarted. At least that’s how it feels. So I looked up the web novel. It’s gigantic. 1,432 chapters on Webnovel. It’s over 2.7 million English words long. This is a story that likely won’t make it into an entire series of anime, because it’s so damn big that it would take a decade or more of seasons to broadcast it all.
As a result, the setup and foreshadowing give me mixed feelings while adding richness to the world. On the one hand, I like the mysteries that build on each other. I enjoy how answers create more questions. But if I’ll never see the ultimate answers, there’s a chance of letdown. The very richness and lived-in feeling of this magical world that gives it more weight than other quite tasty fantasies I’ve reviewed this season, like Clevatess and New Saga, risks making the ultimate destination worse than it might be if it were written with a couple of seasons of anime in mind from the start.
Lord of Mysteries Is About the Journey
However, I’m willing to risk a lack of closure. Plenty of anime never complete their main plots. As cultivation often emphasizes, Lord of Mysteries is about Klein’s journey. Whether that’s his journey to immortality and then godhood, or home to Earth, or something altogether different, doesn’t matter as much as the journey itself. This concept comes up in more than one episode. Antagonists are on journeys to power. Allies are on journeys of revenge. Or regret. Cherishing moments with loved ones is emphasized, even as Klein’s work often takes him far from home. The events and the richly detailed setting, not the probable outcome, make Lord of Mysteries so fascinating that I watched all its aired English episodes over one night and the next morning.
Do You Prefer Questions, or Answers?
Should you watch Lord of Mysteries? What I’ll say is that this is the first time an anime has convinced me to read the web novel. Who has time to read 2.7 million words? We’ll see if I do. For you potential immortality seekers, and dear readers, if you’re sold on the show, go watch it. If you’re not convinced, watch the first two episodes. Lord of Mysteries starts off in a surreal and confusing way to emphasize Klein’s own confused transmigration, and giving the show two episodes to explain itself is well worth it.
At that point, your fate is in your hands.
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