JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings Trilogy was written in just under 500,000 words. JK Rowling’s Harry Potter 7-volume series contains just over 1 million words. George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire that has five out of seven planned volumes published, comes up to about 1.8 million words.
Lord of Mysteries, a web novel by Yuan Ye, better known by his pen name Cuttlefish that Loves Diving, was written in 4.5 million Chinese characters packed into eight volumes and three side stories.
If you were tasked to read through the entire series and adapt it into an anime, where would you start? How do you take what’s written and present it entirely in visual form? Would you trim down the details? Should you? What will the fans say?
These are just some of the many questions that Lord of Mysteries Director Xiong Ke – who also serves as the Chief Technology Officer and Chief Director at B.Cmay Pictures – and Head Screenwriter Liu Xing, had to answer when producing the hit-series that airs exclusively on Crunchyroll.
Speaking to a media at an exclusive roundtable at Anime Festival Asia Singapore (AFA 2025), and to an audience at the Day Stage panel, they walk through every major element of translating the novel for the screen.
Working with Lord of Mysteries author, Cuttlefish that Loves Diving, on the anime
A dark fantasy, steampunk, Lovecraftian horror tale set in a Victorian-era inspired universe, Lord of Mysteries blends the hidden realms of magic and the fantastical with the squalor and shadows of a grimy English city.
Both Xiong Ke and Liu Xing were already big fans of Cuttlefish that Loves Diving’s critically acclaimed series: it is one of the first 100 Chinese web novels to be added to the National Library of China’s “Web Novel Category” collection in 2020.
The following year in 2021, Lord of the Mysteries was further acknowledged by the Chinese Writers Association, appearing on the China Internet Literature Influence: Overseas Influence List, alongside titles such as Dragon Prince Yuan, Tales of Demons and Gods, and The Legendary Mechanic.
Grandeur and magnificence are some of the words that Liu Xing would use to describe the novels. “Because the world is so vast, the script conveys world-building through the scenes and stories of the characters,” he shared. “Scenes serve as a more direct way for the audiences to experience this world-building through cities, streets, and houses.”
“In every episode, you will see scenes that we took great care to present. Such selections are deemed necessary for the sake of the plot, to keep pace with the story, and for you, the audience, to witness character growth, and how characters interact with one another,” he elaborated.
Some of these delicate scenes are found in episode one, episode six, episode nine, and episode 13. Care was taken especially when characters emote or are portrayed in an explosive manner, which leave a deep impact on viewers.
“We have regular meetings with Cuttlefish. And although both novel writing and script writing are text-based, their creative approaches differ significantly. These are two related, yet distinctive art forms,” said Liu Xing.
“In our discussions with Cuttlefish, he would offer suggestions that take into account animation and cinematic perspectives. So when everyone is on the same wavelength, we come to a consensus quite quickly.”
Challenges in adapting Lord of the Mysteries from novel to anime
Director Xiong Ke graduated from the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute and is a renowned Chinese animation director with deep experience adapting words to screen. He previously worked on the massively popular The King’s Avatar (Season 1) series by Butterfly Blue, and boys’ love classic, The Master of Diabolism, by Mo Xiang Tong Xu.
Compared to previous directed works, he found that Lord of Mysteries’ story and world-building requires a lot more structure. The challenges that came with it were also greater.
“How do we still deliver the storyline at the pace that’s inconsistent with the original novel? How do we deliver that to the audience with the same kind of background information?” Xiong Ke shared. “It’s a challenge trying to figure out what we want to adapt and what to omit.”
From a scriptwriting perspective, Liu Xing agrees. He understands that it’s a mammoth task to portray Cuttlefish’s complex world that contains so much information.
“If you were to read the lines in the novel, you probably would finish it in five seconds. But to portray this in animation, the whole sequence may take 20 to 30 seconds,” he shared. “So in scriptwriting, we need to make sure that the content is conveyed in a simplified and fast-paced manner.”
Liu Xing continued, “The span of time within the novel is actually very wide, so when a piece of information is mentioned in a certain part of the novel, it can come up again maybe 100 chapters later, or two to three volumes later.”
“So to a novel reader, if you read something, you probably would digest it and get enlightened in, say, about a couple of days later. On the other hand, for someone who watches animation, maybe you see this in, say, the first episode – but for the information to come back and for you to appreciate it, that might only be two to three years later. By this time, the viewer might have forgotten!”
The scriptwriting team is made up of three members — including Director Xiong Ke — and another female writer who meet regularly. They constantly ask themselves: For this piece of information, do we mention it now? Do we mention it later? At which point do we put it in the script? And how do we portray it? During which part of the plot do we mention it?
Pacing and world-building are the two major considerations that constantly come up in their discussions because of the long-spanning nature of Lord of Mysteries. “The audience might not see relevance at that point in time, but if we do not portray that piece of information, they won’t be able to follow the story later on. The biggest challenge is deciding when to surface various pieces of information,” said Liu Xing.
Lord of Mysteries is produced by B.Cmay Pictures and airs exclusively on Crunchyroll. Season 1 premiered in June 2025 and concluded in September.
