Towards the dream Qin Shi Huang, aka Ying Zheng, the ruler of the Chinese kingdom of Qin, who managed to unite the disparate kingdoms into a single empire. Of course, this is a really controversial person, his reign is marked by incredible cruelty, covered with many legends: this is the Terracotta army, and the search for immortality. Actually, the entire era - 200 BC. e. - is the era of great heroes, cruel kings, incredible legends; than a beautiful platform for creating another world of anime.
However, the creators quickly moved away from historical realities, nevertheless, the chronological framework allows you to do this, and the style of narration and orientation of the project speak of its free flow. Anime was born on the basis of the manga of the same name, so do not try to cling to historical mistakes. The necessary historical basis here was the characters (and even then not all), the place and time of action (China 200 years BC) and the circumstances of the action (the internecine struggle of the seven kingdoms).
The plot, for the most part, revolves not around the king, but around a simple man whose name is Xin (probably also a historical character, at least there is a coincidence of names in the book by L. S. Vasiliev “Ancient China”). Together with his friend Hyo, he dreams of becoming a general. However, a revolution occurs in the kingdom, Hyo dies, and Xin meets with King Ying Zheng, as young as himself. From this time begins the path of just a servant of Xin to the title of the greatest general of the Celestial Empire, and the path of the young king Qin to the title of Emperor of China.
As you can see, this is quite a typical plot for many anime series, where the main role is played by heroes of simple origin, driven into very difficult circumstances, meeting new friends and enemies, and eventually glorifying their name. However, directors Akira Ivanaga and Jan Kamiya had their own “aces up their sleeves”, who, in my opinion, managed to improve the project, distinguishing it favorably from such similar series in concept as “Attack of the Titans”, “Berserke” and others.
First, it is a historical base, successfully combined with mythological moments that are mentioned in the chronicles, or invented by scriptwriters and authors of manga (battles of hundreds of thousands of armies, gods of military art, etc.).
Secondly, the characters, there are many of them, each has its own story and its rich inner world (Piao, Qiang Lei, Meng Tian and many others), even those who lit up only for a few episodes are worked out so perfectly that they are remembered for a long time (General Fu Hu Shen, from the middle of season 1, a vivid example of this).
Third, the technical side. Here it is worth noting the incredible improvement in the picture and drawing of the characters in the second season, the creators did a great job - improving not the most outstanding picture from the first season, mind you - not left as it is, it speaks of love for your child and the desire to grow professionally. The sound is perfectly worked out, I will not talk about the original voiceover, I will only say that the Russian dubbing turned out to be famous. But the musical accompaniment is worth noting, it really made me happy, and replenished my track list, and it is not only about the starting and final compositions, but also those background soundtracks that accompanied the battles and deaths of the characters.
P.S. It’s been more than a year since I watched Season 2, there’s still nothing to hear about 3, probably the project went to the “long box”, I hope not forever. The directors, writers and the Pierrot studio have a wonderful story that I want to see continue. I never had a bad attitude towards anime, but I spoke negatively about comics in general, and manga in particular, despite the fact that they are the ancestors of many highly valued projects. And against this background, the fact that I got acquainted with the chapters of the Kingdom manga that have been released so far only further demonstrates the success of this project.
10 out of 10