Ugh. Due respect offered, Balinor, but please don't reduce Wurts' & Feist's wonderful Empire stuff to an animated TV series.
Way, way too much nuance and subtlety to have it stuffed into a TV format, I think.
While I'd like to see Magician done well, I think you're right about the "in-your-face" magic. On top of that, the Tsurani chapters are almost a movie onto themselves, regardless of the parts that take place in the Kingdom; no way they're cramming that book into 3 hours (which makes it a long movie, at that).