Ten years after Bloodborne’s launch, its followers are nonetheless exploring the sport and discovering new secrets and techniques, whereas stubbornly ready ready for a sequel. I additionally want for extra tales about previous secrets and techniques and the goals of hunters. The hopes for a doable sequel solely make me extra wanting to get in contact with something that would even barely hit the identical notes Bloodborne does. As an alternative of a brand new sport, I discovered my reply in a Chinese language animated collection. The donghua Lord of Mysteries provides hidden risks, fascinating magical powers, and eerie secret societies that comply with mindbending gods — the proper substitute for the never-released Bloodborne 2.
Tailored from an online novel written beneath the title Cuttlefish That Loves Diving, Lord of Mysteries (at present streaming on Crunchyroll) is the story of a Chinese language man who wakes up in one other world after performing a ritual in his room to reinforce his luck. As an alternative of the Twenty first-century China he used to reside in, he now inhabits the physique of Klein Moretti, a citizen of Tingen Metropolis, in a Victorian-esque place the place the streets are stuffed with horse-drawn carriages and the alleys are crowded with demons. On this new world, Klein turns into a beyonder, an individual with supernatural powers, and he begins working with the Nighthawks, a gaggle chargeable for battling the occult and different shady figures of Tingen’s society. B.CMAY Photos (chargeable for the Mo Dao Zu Chi donghua adaptation) dealt with the animation for the collection, making it one of many best-looking reveals airing this season.
The beyonders and their powers are on the core of Lord of Mysteries. Able to changing into highly effective sufficient to rival gods, beyonders purchase their magical expertise by ingesting particular potions. What are they manufactured from? We don’t know. The recipes are secrets and techniques saved by essential households and organizations. We do know that totally different potions unlock particular pathways of supernatural energy. Some beyonders have divination powers, whereas others change into stronger in the course of the night time. A beyonder can unlock extra talents by ingesting different potions and advancing of their pathway.
Though it appears much less suspicious than Bloodborne’s Therapeutic Church blessings, which use the blood of an alien for therapeutic, the beyonders’ potions are nonetheless surrounded by thriller. On the similar time, their powers are able to turning them into godlike figures, abandoning their humanity — a destiny much like those that bought the previous blood in Bloodborne, like Vicar Amelia.
If that thread, with characters buying supernatural powers by ingesting suspicious potions, isn’t sufficient of a parallel, most characters in Lord of Mysteries are related to a god in a technique or one other. As defined in Outdated Neil’s Mysticism Class (a miniseries overlaying some lore from the present, out there due to a fan translation of the unique episodes launched on YouTube), the international locations on this world usually comply with a number of divine beings with fascinating names like “The Everlasting Blazing Solar,” “The God of Steam and Equipment,” and “The Evernight Goddess.” However the names don’t do justice to the strangeness of their visuals.
After some bizarre designs from Bloodborne, I used to be undoubtedly prepared for when B.CMAY Photos animated the True Creator within the present, an upside-down humanoid physique coming from the sky with open arms, surrounded by golden magical circles, chains, and a single purple eye in the course of its face. It’s the type of picture that warms the hearts of Bloodborne followers.
Picture: B.CMAY Photos/Crunchyroll
This weird occult world isn’t accessible by everybody in Lord of Mysteries, although. Tingen Metropolis looks like a maze of Victorian buildings, darkish alleys, and crowded streets; a maze beneath which the town hides its true risks. Not like the grim and decrepit Yharnam in Bloodborne, Lord of Mysteries’ Tingen Metropolis feels extra alive, since mundane day-to-day actions nonetheless happen there. We see individuals available on the market shopping for meals, and birthday events occurring on the homes of wealthy households. However this society has one other side, one which turns into extra specific beneath the sunshine of the large purple moon that seems in Tingen’s night time sky. These similar individuals ask unknown entities about their futures, worship demonic forces, and carry out rituals on the finish of the night time of their homes, utilizing harmful texts.
In Lord of Mysteries, we are able to see a setting the place esoteric arts, otherworldly beings, and on a regular basis life coexist, bringing a little bit of the sensation we discover briefly tales like H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Name of Cthulhu” and Arthur Machen’s “The White Individuals,” which make us really feel discomfort quite than concern. This sense isn’t solely attributable to what we see within the present, but additionally by what it implies in regards to the actuality across the characters. As Klein learns extra about beyonders and the powers at play on this planet, we perceive the thinness of the fact these characters suppose they reside in.
Picture: B.CMAY Photos/Crunchyroll
An interesting side of Bloodborne’s mythology is the centrality of summary ideas like goals and questioning actuality, two concepts the story in Lord of Mysteries performs with as nicely. Within the present, goals will be created and manipulated by beyonders’ powers. These of the Darkness Pathway can lure individuals inside nightmares and torment them. In Bloodborne, a dream is a manifested actuality, an area inside which the sport takes place. (A conceit that does depart gamers confused.) Though within the present, we all know characters live within the “actual world,” Lord of Mysteries’ narrative forces us from the primary episode onward to at all times query whether or not what we’re seeing is actual.
Whereas Lord of Mysteries lacks when it comes to the joys of Bloodborne’s battles, the remainder of the present greater than compensates, given its eerie ambiance and complicated ideas it really works round. The enchantment of Lord of Mysteries’s world is greater than sufficient to tide me over for some time, as I wait alongside the opposite Bloodborne followers for a sequel which will by no means come. That is the proper nightmarish fantasy I’ve been in search of.
