The Kings Avatar Live Drama (Quanzhi Gaoshou) Review of Episode 07 – Great!

Although last weeks show was probably the best of The Kings Avatar saga so far, this episode was still pretty good. We were introduced to the a relatively new character and one that I personally am having trouble with getting to like.  We also found out some background about the venerable Yu Wenzhou and the story pretty much meandered along interestingly as usual.  It wasn’t particularly exciting, but it wasn’t boring either. If you need to catch up with the story so far, the previous episode reviews are here: Kings Avatar Live Action News & Reviews Thread).

Pre-amble: The Kings Avatar Episode 7

Episode 7 is about the introduction of one of the key players for the rest of the saga.  It deals with a little of his background and shows us just what a winey, moany little wimp this character is!  

There is very little to appreciate about this person other than his ability to hit things hard in-game.  He is quite innovative but the emotionally-wimpy-baggage that he brings with him when playing Glory, is considerable and if you were to see him in your guild, you could be pretty sure that he wouldn’t be picked for any raids of dungeon runs.  From a story perspective, this character is implausible garbage and the main reason that the episode was rated much lower than normal – personally, I thought it was poor writing and direction.

Lol, the rest of the show is great though.  🙂

Key Players Appearing In This Episode

Name:  Ye Xiu ID:  Lord Grim Class:  Un-Specified Guild:  Unassigned (sometimes plays as member of Lanxi Pavilion).  Once known as Fighting God Ye Qui when he was with Excellent Era (Jiashi).  He now works for Chen Guo who does not know he was once Ye Qui (who was her idol).

Name:  Chen Guo ID:  Chasing Haze Class:  Gunner Guild:  Unassigned. Manager Happy Internet Cafe (pet name of GuoGuo by Tang Rou).  She is a very enthusiastic supporter and player of Glory but we rarely see Chen Guo win a match.

Name:  Tang Rou ID:  Soft Mist Class:  Battlemage Guild:  Unassigned. Tang Rou is affectionately called Xiao Tang (Little Tang) by Chen Guo. She originally thought that Glory was boring but was beaten by Ye Xiu in a duel and has vowed to get even.

Name:  Bao Rongxing ID:  Steamed Bun Class:  Ranger/Brawler Guild:  Unassigned. Works in a warehouse. Unusual way of playing but quick and agile fighter with a good sense of spacial awareness.  His ambition is to game professionally.

Name:  Qiao Yifan ID:   Ashen Moon Class:   Assassin Guild: Tiny Herb (Wei Cao). Considered a very weak player and not usually picked for any team activities.  Poorly respected by team colleagues but not the Team Captain who thinks he has potential.  He also has a really good friend (Gao Yingjie) who believes in him and tries to support him where possible.

Name:  Yu Wenzhou ID:  Swoksaar  Class:  Warlock Guild:  Blue Rain (Lan Yu).  Very highly respected player and venerable team captain of Blue Rain.  Accomplished tactical player known as one of the Four Tactician Masters in Glory

Name:  Huang Shaotian ID:  Troubling Rain Class:  Swordsman Guild: Blue Rain (Lan Yu).  Vice-captain of Blue Rain.  Is sometimes used as a weapon to disorientate his opponents with his quick speech and aggressive, antagonistic banter.

Name:  Wang Jiexi ID:  Vaccaria Class:  Witch (possibly Warlock or Wizard class since the non-gender use of the word Witch has not been in use in it’s original form since the 16th Century) Guild: Tiny Herb (Wei Cao). Wang Jiexi is the very highly respected Captain of Team Tiny Herb. he is famous for unorthodox play style and is often referred to as the Magician.

The Kings Avatar Episode 7 Review

In the previous episode, Yu Wenzhou had tasked Huang Shaotian with ‘getting’ the Thousand Machine Umbrella for him.  I honestly couldn’t see how anyone could do that.  You would theoretically have to kill the avatar of the character with the weapon so that you could take it as loot.  The only other way is for the character to discard it and allow someone else to pick it up.  Even this would be nearly impossible since such items are usually account-bound and not transferable without a duel or after defeat in combat – or it may be that Yu Wenzhou simply wanted more information on the weapon so that he could work out how ‘special’ it was.

The apprehensive look on Huang Shaotian’s face says it all:

As motor-mouth heads off to get the umbrella, Yu Wenzhou remembers who he met Ye Qui and the troubles he had playing Glory in the early days.

We enter into a backstory flashback and see a younger Yu Wenzhou playing a Glory duel with some other gamers.  They are all wearing the same uniform/tracksuits but they dont look like they are from the same guild.  They are at a gamer training camp.  A bunch of them are playing on the opposite side of the table to Yu Wenzhou – it seems that his opponent is considerably more popular that Yu Wenzhou.  

It certainly doesn’t look like a friendly place (for Yu Wenzhou at any rate).

You Wenzhou loses the match and later, when a training officer attends, she points out that he has not won a single match and that if his losing streak continued, he would have to leave. 

There is a training tournament planned next day and each member of the group has to draw a ballot paper to see which instructor/trainer they will play against.  Yu Wenzhou draws the trainer, Ye Qui.  His fellow trainees jeer at him but it seems to spur him on to improve his tactical training.  He practices hard and specifically looks at how a Warlock (his class) can beat a Battlemage (Ye Qui’s class).   He manages to work out that he may be able to stun/incapacitate Ye Qui for a period of time so that he can cast one of his major spells.  This would cause Ye Qui difficulty in completing the match before the time limit is reached and would save Yu Wenzhou from defeat (he doesn’t hope to beat Ye Qui, he just wants to last the maximum amount of time before the game is considered a draw).

He practices all night, battling not only the simulator but his nerves and his inhaler (it seems that Yu Wenzhou suffers from asthma).  After a gruelling bout next day, he manages to stave off defeat in the last second. 

He not only saves his place in the camp but gains considerable amount of confidence and possibly learns the importance of tactical play for the future (of course that’s not stated, it’s an assumption, but it seems plausible as he is not only one of the most successful Team Captains, but also recognised as one of the top four professional tactical Glory battle specialists).

Back to the present day – when Huang Shaotian returned, he has a life size model of the 1000 Machine Umbrella that Ye Xiu had been building. Yu Wenzhou positively smiles at the silliness of Huag Shaotians actions until they are interrupted by Ye Xiu who has followed Huang Shaotian back.  Ye Xiu greets Yu Wenzhou with, “Long time no see?”

Yu Wenzhou returns the greeting.  Huang Shaotian says that they are clearly old friends and that he should leave them to talk. Then, in the embarrassing silence, he leaves.

Yu Wenzhou mentions that he was interested in the 1000 Machine Umbrella and that he needed to see what it was (capable of).  The two sit down at a gamestation and play each other. Yu Wenzhou sets himself a target of 2 minutes and 18 seconds to see if he can survive against Lord Grim and the 1000 Machine Umbrella.  Again, this doesn’t quite fit.  Yu Wenzhou’s Glory character is a professional at a high level and with better gear.  If Lord Grim is playing at the level 27, Yu Wenzhou just needs to sneeze and the character would die.  I have to assume that Yu Wenzhou has a similar level 27 character that he is using to test Lord Grim.

Sure enough, Yu Wenzhou is almost killed by Ye Xiu’s character, Lord Grim.  So convincing was the nature of Yu Wenzhou’s near defeat, that he felt the need to ask if Ye Xiu was holding back.  Ye Xiu replied that he always fights to win.  Yu Wenzhou breaths a slight sigh of relief and concerns that the 1000 Machine Umbrella may indeed change the face of the alliance (league of professional player guilds).  He even jokes how this will affect his status of ‘God’ (Fighting God Ye Qui was Ye Xiu’s old nickname amongst his fans). Ye Xiu smiles and says that Yu Wenzhou thinks too much.  They both laugh and Ye Xiu tells his friend that he is more concerned with how Yu Wenzhou will put a ‘leash’ on Huang Shaotian.

Then, as Ye Xiu leaves, there is a bit of a corny sequence where Yu Wenzhou throws away his inhaler as though he has suddenly been cured of asthma (or more probably, the nervous condition that aggravates his asthma has been cured).  Additionally, there is some dialogue which mentions that ‘what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger’ (I’m probably over-dramatising the poor subtitles – it was a really good part of the show that became a little too silly at its end).

The next part of the episode moves to the Tiny Herb guild headquarters and in particular, a small photoshoot with the coolest of the Glory Guild Captains (yep even more cool that Yu Wenzhou), Wang Jiexi.

After the photoshoot finishes, he is chatting with one of his guild officers who mentions that there is a Lord Grim on the 10th Glory server who is distinguishing himself.  The officer doesn’t believe it is a professional from the other guilds.  He shows Wang Jiexi some footage of his gameplay and the Tiny Herb Captain considers where he has seen play like that before.

Meanwhile, Ye Xiu playing as Lord Grim, Bao Rongxing playing as Steamed Bun and Tang Rou playing as Soft Mist begin a quest together.  They all focus intently on their screens and this is noticed by Chen Guo and her office assistant who complains that Tang Rou hasn’t played Glory with ‘the girls’ for a while.  Chen Guo goes over to try and chat to her friend and asks if she would like to go out to visit a cake shop with her.

Tang Rou is too busy to go with Chen Guo and she politely declines. It seems like Chen Guo’s efforts to get Ye Xiu to tutror Tang Rou in the art of Glory is backfiring.  Her friend ‘Little Tang’ now seems to spend all her spare time with Ye Xiu and not with her.

Meanwhile, back at Tiny Herb, weepy music is playing in the background as Wang Jiexi tells one of his weaker players, Qiao Yifan, that the current in-house training regime is not working for him and he need to go back to training camp first, then come back and continue the training at Tiny Herb. Qiao Yifan packs his clothes and heads off to Training camp but not before he is caught up by is close friend Gao Yingjie.  

His friend tells him that there is a great exercise that he should take part in before he goes to training camp.  Gao Yingjie believes, I think, that if Wang Jiexi can see Qiao Yifan take part in the activity, he will think more highly of him.  Little did they know that Want Jiexi had set them the challenge of surrounding and incapacitating Lord Grim!

Qiao Yifan frantically tries to set up his PC while the rest of the team get ready to ambush Lord Grim.  When they finally catch up, Lord Grim, Bao Rongxing and Tang Rou they are quickly killed off one by one.  Soft Mist is killed off in the attack too but when Qiao.  The Tiny Herb team are told by Wang Jiexi that they didn’t play very well.  He explains patiently what each of the team did wrong and at the end tells them that they were actually playing the best Glory player ever, Ye Qui.  They are all suitably impressed (and shocked!)

Qiao Yifan arrives (too late), and while Wang Jiexi is explaining things, the rest of the team notice him playing – he puts up a much better fight that the others and Lord Grim is suitably impressed.  Irritatingly (for all of us) nobody in Tiny Herb is impressed, I guess they thought his play skills were a fluke. 

Qiao Yifan is suitably put back in his place and heads off to Training Camp. Alas, that was another overly sympathetic, poorly written scene of mushy scentiment. I appreciate that we are meant to feel sympathy for Qiao Yifan, but all I felt was that the dude should just have been dropped by the team – for Tiny Herb, he is genuinely useless!  It was really difficult to see why Lord Grim thought the was particularly good and why we should have thought any better of him when his own teammates thought he was, at best, average.

When Qiao Yifan arrives at the Training Camp, he sees some pictures of some of the past attendees – players and masters of the game.  He smiles – I guess he feels inspired.

And there the show ends.  It was still a great episode, the comedic crap we have come to know and hate wasn’t so evident and if it wasn’t for the over sympathetic stuff with Qiao Yifan, it would have been rated much more highly. I hope the next show tells more of the story of the other characters, Qiao Yifan is a little bit too boring to keep this sadgeezer interested.

The Kings Avatar, Episode 07 rated a great 8.2 out of 10 for production and cool game sequences. The only thing that marked it down was the poorly written and directed story concerning Qiao Yifan!  If you disagree by the way, that’s ok, why not review this show yourself by clicking on the Users tab in the review block at the top- right of the page.  You don’t need to register and we’d love to see what you thought of the show too.)

See more details of this on the Kings Avatar thread of the Sci Fi forum

The pictures, story, news details and everything else about the Kings Avatar Live action TV series are copyright Tencent Penguin Pictures, Linmon Pictures and Phoenix Entertainment. All rights reserved.

This article is copyright Tony Fawl and not for reproduction without the authors express permission.