Ep. 01: Lord of the Mysteries

There’s been a lot of hype leading up to the release of Lord of the Mysteries. I’ve been prepping to cover ten new shows, yet this seems to be the one that people have fixated on. And it’s not all that surprising. Lord of the Mysteries has been touted as having aspects to its story that come from Lovecraftian lore, Steampunk, and Tarot. Then blending theoe together with a decidedly Victorian inspired setting.

It’s beautiful artistic style, blending dark, rich hues with a subtle shading that makes them often seem like they are blended with a swirl of smoke, definitely convey the atmosphere this story is trying to inspire.

We are following a man from Earth, who has entered this new world as a young man who has just finished university named Klein Moretti. Our protagonist is in an intriguing situation: he still remembers his life on Earth, but he has access to bits and fragments of Klein’s memories as well.

This is great because it allows the story to present our main character as a fish out of water who is leaning things as we do, while equally provided him with the means to learn those things even if he is on his own in a scene. It’s doing a good job of not overwhelming me with too many info dumps. Something I appreciate since at first, with the names of people and places being flung around lose and fast, I was a little worried about that.

The way that our main character ‘becomes’ Klien, a process he refers to as being a Transmigrator, has put him in something of a pickle, though. Klein has been up to something prior to our character entering his body. And our boy can feel that, via throbbing in his skull, when he first awakens to find himself as Klein. A glance in the mirror shows that Klein took a bullet to the head. What the hell happened here? And how the heck is he still alive?

It appears our first mystery has begun. But we’re not the only ones seeking to solve it. Like our world, this one has police. Unlike our world, these police can–among many others here–have powers as Beyonders. People who have special abilities in one of 22 distinct tracks of study which, as a person goes deeper into them, is capable of granting them new and unique powers. This means that they can potentially do things like manipulate physical space, or enter a person’s mind and rummage through it like it’s a kitchen junk drawer. Undoubtedly an unpleasant experience.

Fortunately for Klein, the attempt at this brain drain is not successful. Because Klein is connected to something called the Gray Fog, and it seems to protect him in a way that is not necessarily available to other people. It’s through our first introduction to this Gray Fog that we also meet two more characters that I’m predicting will be important going forward. A young noble girl who picks up the nickname Justice, and a blue haired man who decides to go by Hanged Man. They, along with Klein–who names himself The Fool–form the beginnings of something called the Tarot Club and decide to meet in the Gray Fog on Mondays to trade information.

Despite a shaky beginning, it seems that things are looking up for Klein as the episode draws to a close. His connection to the Fog–which I’m still a little confused on the details over, to be fair–is helping him make friends and influence people. He has his new connection with Justice and Hanged Man, and also seems to be avoiding actual prosecution by those investigating the suicide of two of Klein’s classmates, Welch and Naya.

As the episode ends, we see the investigators inviting Klein to come with them and become a Beyonder himself. Our hero seems to have received his ‘call to action’. With any luck, now that the show has taken the first episode to present an overall interesting situation, it will use the second episode to help the viewer get their bearings a bit better. But I suppose we’ll talk about that when we get there and I’ve watched it.

Overall, the first episode succeeded in piquing my interest and making me want to see more. I love the art style and character designs. I don’t feel a particularly deep connection to Klein yet, but we’ve only watched episode one so far, so I’m not worried about that at this point. I’m calling it now that I’m probably going to be a big Hanged Man fan, but that’s based purely off a few minutes of story and his overall really cool design.

So, are you watching Lord of the Mysteries? What did you think of episode one? I’d love to know, so feel fee to share in the comments.