Quanzhi Gaoshou 3

It's hard to know where to draw the line in this review between this season, the previous seasons, and the live action drama adaptation.

Sequentially, S3 of the anime is the last of these I've seen to date, and while I feel the latter challenge league drama was better illustrated in the drama, But some areas seem glossed through.

Mucheng remains <3

Music remains iconic. The soundtrack is well established. And it hits many of the safe soundscape points of the previous season.

Animation is smooth.

Art is most like S2, but it has shifts I believe. honestly, at this point I hope to see ... yet another shift for S4. (Of high caliber quality)

Voice acting is peak. 11/8

This was satisfying. I'lll rate it a 10/10 in conjunction with the other seasons and drama in the outlined viewing order. (s1, s2/drama, s3) the ultimate conclusion feels better with the anime after the drama in terms of viewing order.

I want to see S4 go all out!

As someone here since the first season, Quanzhi Gaoshou 3 is disappointing. The plot feels rushed with necessary details/ plot missing and yet other seemingly random scenes thrown in the mix that seem to just eat into time better used for character/ plot development. The fact that we never see Lord Grim use any gunner moves when they have been a staple throughout the series is a huge letdown, not to mention the absolute decline in animation from the previous 2 seasons. I still love the series and am so glad that we finally got a third season but it feels bittersweet when you look ... back at the series as a whole and just feel let down. I love the series, if this Quanzhi Gaoshou 3 the only season out I wouldn't be so critical, but it's hard not to notice the decline with plot fluidity and animation when the other two seasons are spectacular. The character design is still wonderful and certain parts of the plot do really shine. It just feels bizarrely rushed and yet like it drags out in all the wrong places. Despite saying all this I do hope we get another season, that it is more coherent, and that the plot is back on solid gound.

Great news for the sole person who liked the CGI crowds in the first two seasons, the team has heard your feedback and decided to turn most of the anime into CGI. Jokes aside the budget of this anime seems to have taken a huge hit leading to a very poor third season.

Basically everything is worse this season. There is still a story and the only credit I can give this anime is that the story moves forward. However the pacing is horrible and some pretty important fights were completely cut out even though at the start of the season multiple episodes were spent ... on gathering materials and other shenanigans. After all the effort that the series has spent on building up the team so far the most important battle of the season still managed to have a character in it that I didn't recognise because they didn't appear at all after being introduced. Also the anime's idea of a climax is apparently just making a fight last very long without anything particularly interesting happening. The build up of the previous seasons gets ruined and is not worth it.

The characters and tone of the anime also changed very noticeably. Overall the characters don't feel as interesting and part of the anime has just been downgraded to chibi gags which is a painful tonal shift from the previous seasons. Character interactions felt slightly more clunky and I actually had some trouble identifying previous characters because of the change in animation style and because some characters look similar with the CGI.

Speaking of which, most of the anime is now CGI and it doesn't look good. I will say that you get used to it slightly after a few episodes but overall it's just such a massive downgrade. Actions don't look natural at all, from walking to holding a piece of paper. The animation feels incredibly lazy. A lot of the fights simply skipped or animated by having two character icons bash into each other. Lots of small details are also ignored and pcs that should show the game now show a black or white screen instead. They couldn't bother making a CGI model for the younger Su Mucheng so the flashback scenes look weird. The layout of every room from the previous seasons changed to match the new animation style so the internet cafe now has a capacity of like 30 people. Ironically enough some scenes with crowds don't actually have all seats filled which is exactly what you can use CGI for, right? Aside from the main CGI used in the anime there's also a worse looking background CGI.

Overall this season is just not a good sequel, the animation sucks, the character has a partial personality change and the tone of the anime changed. The story does continue but the pacing is horrible and the story wasn't as good. I don't recommend watching this even if you liked the previous seasons. It's too big of a downgrade for no real payoff. If you do end up watching this then be prepared for a worse show in every aspect.