Douluo Dalu

Do you like shounen battle mangas in the vein of Naruto? Then you'll probably love this, it has all the trademarks of the genre. From loud obnoxious kids who "call out" their super attacks, to enemies who becomes friends, friendship Über Alles, lots of (meh) humor, puppy romances, mild fan service and so on. Plus the art is amazing, and it's all in color. Really, the art is as close to 10/10 as it gets, even if it's not exactly to my own taste, it's nonetheless great.

Imo, Douluo Dalu is one of the (very few) good novels in the reincarnation/transported to another world genre that's flooded the market the last couple of years. That's thanks to good writing, characters with believable motives, an above average world-building and magic system, on top of that, it's also quite dark and serious at time. Especially when you compare to the Japanese "light novels" in the same genre, with their worthless, spineless, looser otakus as MC.

The manga is everything the novel is not, in a bad way. It's feels like a completely different story, with the same characters in the same world, told by a different author with a completely different demographic in mind. Personally, I hate it when clumsy directors/editors tries to make something original of a scripts based on book (or animes based on mangas for that matter). Some succeed of course, and turn a good story into something amazing, but the majority just fail horribly due to them lacking the talent that the original author had. A good example of this is Kurokami, which also was butchered and watered down for a different demographics.

Basically, the author took pretty much every single (interesting) adult element of the novel and turned it into a god damn childish battle manga, devoid of any depth whatsoever. Let censor the gruesome deaths, sex, prostitution, torture, slavery, psychological traumas etc, and lets turn it into something completely different. I know, why not add some idol elements, school life and slice of life moe BS to the mix, you know, to really set it apart from the novel? Done, done and done! What you end up with, is a watered down, cliched shounen battle manga instead of a interesting fantasy story. Then again, pretty much the whole anime & manga industry have gone down the road of epic fail the last 5-10 years or so.

I'll give it a 4/10, and that 4 is due to the amazing art.

Where do i start ? Sigh

Ok let me first start by the positives

The Good

1. Art work = Attractive and neat and thats where the good thing Ends LOL

The Bad like very very BAD

1. Character Traits and personalities eg: Oscars Sausages becomes Smelly Tofu, Fatty no longer likes girls etc etc
2. Plot deviation and events changed from the novel, EG: tournament matches, clash with Serpent pairs, Fatty and Tang San's Transformation etc (Novel did everything great imo)
3. PG13 Version with censoring so annoying they even changed the whole Berserker battle team to a "Lets not kill" scenario like WTF the whole purpose of tha fight was to teach them how to kill
4. Novel has a way more mature take on the subject alas the Manhua goes a bit shoneny route by adding more quirky traits which no longer seems funny but rather appears annoying
5. Leaving out details like eg: RongRong venture Home where she shows off the Tang sangs hidden weapons" or "Tang San's tentacles able to suck out life/Drain energy of beasts/human" etc

Manhua = PG13
Novel = Mature almost Seinen like

Sad to see such a Masterpiece butchered by a criminally bad manhua version

Go read the Novel! it's a Humble request!

Doulou Dalu Novel is a Masterpiece
Character traits are better in novel (sausages=tofu ehhh)
Plot points are changed for the WORSE

seriously guys

Douluo Dalu (Novel) >>>>>>>>>>>>>> Manhua

To date, this one has the most basic world building I've ever seen. There's no interdependency between its inhabitants. There's no believable reason about (1) why monsters don't wreck havoc in immediate vicinity when people capable of hunting them is numbered and unorganized, (2) why thousand years old spirit always in supply to be hunted by the so-called talented spirit master, (3) why the only education establishment presented only nurture combat skills.

Each entity is isolated from one another. No dynamic. This make the talent and skill supposedly possessed by characters is difficult to be appreciated. Characters may develop until they became the strongest, but if their strength doesn't have influence to the world they live in, I couldn't care.

Characters are drawn impossibly pretty, costumes are very fashionable and far from practical, bullying is a normal tendency (if you're insulted you fight, if you're strong you beat the shit out of the weak), use of strict power level to show characters' strength (Ugh, pathetic. You didn't use game setting!) pacing is a wreck, translator submit to the spur of the moment in their choice of word. You can say author's imagination runs wild and his editor is asleep. If you're not grade schooler, move on.

Against popular belief, the novel is NOT way better than this manhua. In all sense, this manhua has better pacing. I feel like I'm wasting my time over the endless nuance in all the power level B.S. and bitter details in the novel that are nicely skipped over in this medium.

The manhua does shift plot details around often in the timeline but the main points are all there. The only things that are truly different (as of chapter38) are the sexual references and innuendos. Good examples are Oscar and Fatty not being so innocent as portrayed in this manhua.

If you enjoy reading about people masturbating over power levels and going over and over about "how is his level is so big when he's this young?!?" then the light novel is for you. OR if you've caught up with the manhua translations and are too impatient to know more about the plot... Just a heads up though, 40 chapters (~5,000 words each) in the light novel is still behind 38 chapters of this manhua. Pretty crazy how much fluff is thrown in the LN.

...the novel is way better IMO, and the manhua fast forwards a lot.. also the story is different, and is better told in the novel.
Not everything is bad though, especially the art, which is ok.

Everything essential you need to know is there I think. The reason why the public gets exited too as well as the purpose of the tournament. There are only 2 characters that are actually 14 years old around chapter 90. The rest are older...and about adds, just use add-block or something similar. If you want any further clarification or learn more about the story, please read the novel translation~

over-powered protagonist dies and finds himself in a child's body, one which shares the same name as him! His new body follow new rules compared to his old body. He no longer has his whole repertoire of martial arts at his grasps, he even finds it hard to get pass the first level of his old martial arts! He goes through the whole life thing again and found things he need to protect. He resolves to get stronger. But Dou Luo, a land foreign to him, has different rules about getting stronger.

Art 8/10, give the artist some credit, every page is in colour and he does up to several chapters each week. The character designs are non offensive. Only problem you might get, every single scans i can find online is watermarked or in low quality, sometimes both, i have given up.

Story 7/10. Gosh everything gets draggy and gets hard to read at around chapter 90. Everyone gets excited over the smallest things and the story almost seems to be dragging on forever without development. I have the highest tolerance for bullsh*t among my friends and I am already tired of reading it. The manga would probably be 300++ chapters long as so far each chapter covers about one chapter of the novel it is adapted from. Some parts are expressed in such a manner, it makes me embarrassed to even read. Imagine "getting serious over a children's card game like yu-ji-oh" type content showing up every so often, hopefully it will lessen as the characters grow up more, they are still 12-14 around chapter 90.

Background 10/10. Colourful world, with solid rules of its own. Everyone in the world Dou Luo has a "martial spirit", "military soul", I have no idea how to really translate it to make sense. The closest I can get it is Soul, hence soul land right? Everyone gets awakened to their Soul since young and those displaying spiritual powers are sent to train. Souls can be the form of animals, weapons, armor, even miscellaneous objects like the protagonist's "blue silver grass", akin to the common weed in the fictional world. People with spiritual powers can train to achieve higher levels of spiritual powers, every ten levels they have to go hunt a spirit beast to obtain its soul halo and new abilities.

Characters 8/10. Tang San is a non-offensive character... if not for how overpowered he is, and how he keeps astonishing me with how overpowered he is. The number of freebies fate hands him is too much, you would almost suspect he is the author's relative. The other characters are more balanced, they each have deep character development and likeable personalities.

Overall 7/10. If you are out of manga to read, can read Chinese, does not mind watermarks, you can give this a shot. There are just too many difficulties in the process of enjoying this piece, not to mention China's unfriendly internet, bombarding me with stupid advertisements and slowing my manga from loading, not to mention their internet is already not strong to start with. Though this is just a preliminary judgement since I am just at chapter 90+ (the rate it is going it will finish at around 300 chapters). I hope everyone will give this manga a chance!