As a novel reader, my review is based on having read the novel. (I call all animated content anime).
For the non-readers:
The anime by itself is quite good. The animation quality is amazing and the music and storytelling (on a small scale) are good, but if you want to experience the story properly the anime is garbage.

(Beware spoilers)
For the novel readers:
I started reading Lord of Mysteries because of the older, low quality manga adaptation, which stops abruptly after 65 chapters. It was the first book I ever read digitally — before that I never considered doing so — but I found the setting and story captivating, and the book truly did not disappoint.

I really like the mystery part of Lord of Mysteries. In the novel you discover the world bit by bit together with Klein, and you can think and wonder with him about the unclear history, the nature of mysticism, and the terrifying horrors that lurk at every corner. Years after reading, I still get shivers down my back remembering the moment when Amon’s abilities were first described. There are so many unexpected turns, and Cuttlefish managed to blow my mind again and again. This slow discovery is part of the foundation that makes the novel so great.

Just like Klein, at the start you do not understand what kind of world he is in. You cannot even be sure whether gods exist or what kind of beings they are. You don’t know about potions or sequence pathways. It takes Klein until volume 2, chapter 265, to find out that humans can become gods at all, and he is understandably amazed. And yet, the anime spoils all of this away in an intro before the story even really starts. Are you kidding me?

That leads me to my first major criticism: The way the anime introduces the world. By frontloading such key information, it robs the story of its most powerful element — mystery. Instead of slowly piecing together fragments of knowledge alongside Klein, you are handed the big picture immediately. What should have been a breathtaking revelation becomes a throwaway detail.

The second disappointment is the way abilities and fights are portrayed. In the book, the powers granted by potions or artifacts are explained thoroughly and consistently. This precision made fights strategic and exciting, like the duels in JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. With limited tools, characters had to find loopholes, exploit weaknesses, or outwit their enemies. It was tense, creative, and rewarding.

In the anime, however, everything is turned into bombastic spectacle. Things glow, explode, and fly around without reason. Enemies suddenly morph into monsters without cause. Characters at lower sequences perform feats completely beyond their level (and surprisingly even vice versa: the Azik backstory "fight"). What was meant to feel eerie and mystical is reduced to chaotic action scenes. And paradoxically, the more everything glows and explodes, the less magical it feels.

Even the world itself suffers from this exaggeration. Take the underground market or the Nighthawk base: in the anime they are vast, elaborate underground complexes, carved 100 meters into the ground. But this is just a medium-sized city and it makes no sense that they exist in this size. In the novel the supernatural was powerful precisely because it was grounded in an otherwise ordinary, realistic setting. By blowing everything out of proportion, the adaptation loses the subtle tension that made the original so immersive.

And that, for me, is the tragedy of this adaptation, however high quality the animations are. Lord of Mysteries is not a story of random explosions, glowing canes, and overstatement. It is a story of subtlety, patient discovery, and the slow, terrifying realization of truths too large to bear. By rushing the mystery and inflating the action, the anime strips away the very soul of what made the novel unforgettable.

Praise the Fool, but I am glad the anime is over. I am tired of skipping through meaningless fight scenes.