The Daily Life of The Immortal King – Don’t I Feel Silly

Production

I watched The Daily Life of the Immortal King on Netflix. That has absolutely nothing to do with the production but it still tends to make me more favourable to it because the player allows for higher resolution and I can smoothly sail from one episode to the other, making the entire series seem like one seamless glorious epic. So keep that in mind.

The actual studio is Haoliner Animation. I haven’t seen much of their works but what I have, I like a lot. I also like their little tag. Let me see if I can find it on YouTube:

Anyways, in my personal experience, Haoliners is the type of studio that probably won’t get a reputation as a powerhouse but is unafraid to experiment with production techniques. And they have created a lot of very different-looking shows. I’m not sure what the connection between Haolners and Studio Lan is. They seem to have worked on a lot of shows together and honestly, I couldn’t tell you which studio is responsible for the risk-taking and diversity.

I suppose this whole paragraph is kind of moot as The Daily Life of the Immortal King doesn’t have a particularly gutsy or unusual production anyways. I just wanted to talk about the studios for a bit because I see much less about Chinese studios. I’m getting distracted again.

The Daily Life of the Immortal King looks fine. I do like the colour palette quite a bit. There are a lot of shades of green and teal, which are not all that common in anime. I personally liked the character designs as well. Especially Yi Zhou and his ridiculous curl. But generally speaking, the art is fine, the animation is fine it’s all fine. I will say that animation gets a lot more impressive in the last few episodes. It got me pumped.

As for voice acting. I’m really still developing my ear for Chinese productions. I think it was good because I found the characters to be endearing and I have to assume part of that is due to the voice acting. I did believe they were friends and all. However, there is no doubt I missed the subtleties in the performances.

Story & Characters

I guess that was a rather reserved review for the production of The Daily Life of the Immortal King. So what was all the decent production in service of?

Like always, I went into The Daily Life of the Immortal King woefully misinformed. Actually misinformed is the wrong word, it implies I was informed in some way. At one point I opened Netflix and it said, you watch only anime, wanna watch The Daily Life of the Immortal King? And I said, put it on my to-watch list. That is the extent of information I had. From the title and the one image, Netflix showed me and the first line of the summary (who has time for entire summaries?) I figured it was a God of Highschool type story. And that’s what I was expecting. What I got was what I had always wanted God of Highschool to be. Which is basically, God of Highschool if it was Saiki. K.

I latched onto the Saiki K comparison pretty quickly. The two shows really do have a lot in common. The biggest difference is that Immortal King introduces a lot more action with an inner school competition and a faction of assassins all thrown into the mix. It gets properly tense. I remember finishing episodes and just thinking, I have to know what happens next, one more! I also remember thinking, is “The Daily Life” part of the title a reference to “The Daily Lives of High School Boys”, because it could be.

I will admit, I was pretty proud of my Saiki K. revelation. I was going to come here and blow all of you guys away by slowly laying out how the two shows are deeply similar and how The Daily Life of the Immortal King is actual a slapshot comedy with a warm heart and some really good action. Telling you guys you have been sleeping on it and you should watch it and stuff. Maybe not if you’re the type that is looking for deep intellectual stimulation, but if you want some carefree laughs and good action, then definitely.

So I was laying out my post in my head, with my chest all puffed up ever so happy to actually have something to bring to the conversation when I updated my AniList and went to get some info for the post and saw that absolutely everyone and their grandma had already made the Saiki K comparison and knew exactly what type of show The Daily Life of the Immortal King was. I might have known as well if I had read the second line of the summary or just glanced at the genres or something.

Shockingly, things that are obvious to me, are also just plain obvious to everyone else and I am not a pure anime viewing genius. This is a bitter pill, folks. Anime viewing genius was pretty much my last chance at genius. And now, what am I going to do with this post?

I can still tell you that I genuinely laughed throughout the season and as things got a little more serious towards the end, I was properly swept away by the action. There is a wonderful subversion of the damsel trope that had me cheering. I even got behind the romance subplot. I’m not saying it was my favourite part, but I still thought it was sweet. How often do I say stuff like that? If you’re new here not super often. I generally am not a huge fan of romance, but I have softened my views towards the genre lately.

Am I saying that The Daily Life of the Immortal King is a perfect anime? Well no. It is first and foremost a comedy, and a lot of my readers aren’t fans of that. There is definitely quite a bit of blue humour. It doesn’t get too explicit but if I picked up on it, apparently absolutely everyone else will as well. There are 15 episodes but they are only 18 minutes each (a format I really liked by the way), so with everything that happens in the show, it leaves little time for character development. They do a pretty good job with it all things considered, but I would call The Daily Life of the Immortal king a plot-driven anime. If any of that is likely to ruin it for you, then sadly you might not enjoy this show. Otherwise, it’s a good time! I will be watching the second season soon.

You might like this anime if:

You also wanted God of Highschool to be more like Saiki. K

I save all my screencaps on my Pinterest and you can find more there if you are interested. But I still like to show you a few in the post. If you’re like me, screencaps are something that really helps you decide to watch an anime or not.