The Master of Diabolism

I never really write any reviews on anime but this time I felt like I had to. This anime is truly a masterpiece. The plot is outstanding and it doesn't get tiring at all. Although it is a bit confusing at first it's not hard to understand and follow it. All the characters are very well drawn and portrayed. The animation is beautiful too, their movements are so smooth and it's almost hypnotizing to watch. The voice actors have done an amazing work showing the characters feelings (especially in the last episode). The music is truly magnificent as well. I really liked the fact thatthe opening and ending were both created specifically for this anime but the music during the episodes is absolutely perfect as well. I thoroughly enjoyed this anime and the novel a lot more since the plot is explained more and a lot more has happened which has not been animated (yet, I hope). Definitely a great anime, worth watching

Hi, I'll make it short for you guys, put some headphones, and dive into it, the music, art and plot will do the rest. You'll get hooked, and get sadder and sadder as the prospect of the end of the season approaches. The ancienT China lair, and character development are really sofisticated, voice actors are great and it deservs its reviews. The 3 best points are for me : the main character , the music, and the art and smoothness of the animation, the combining of ccg and drawings is really well done, and immersive, I know really few japanese studios that could rival with this levelof dedication. Pay attention all along to the backgrounds and number of frames used. That's all for me have a try, it's tagged shounen ai, but it's clearly from someone that didn't read the novel or understood the anime, only brotherhood is displayed, and later passion will be shown elsewhere ♥

Where do I begin with? I was doing a search on pinterest for some traditional media pictures and some fanart of chinese illustrations and some pictures with long haired guys that looked like anime images would pop up again and again. So I finally decided to do a reverse image search. And I can't believe what a gold mine I stumbled across!! This anime... first and foremost there are breathtaking landscapes in almost every frame of each single episode. I kept on imagining how ancient China must look like before its modernization but I feel that most part of China (probably the central parts) mightstill be as breathtaking to look at as they have been depicted in the anime. The backgrounds in this anime are simply heavenly!!! The story... It has a solid base- an action, adventure, fantasy story, very good pacing and very good narration. For me, watching this story was like imagining the lives of ancient people of China even though there are lots of fantasy elements. But the way the towns, or transportation, the temples and school ground has been shown, there's something really captivating about it. A jolly troublemaker protagonist, the hardships he goes through and how in all this he's unconsciously drawn towards someone again and again. It's just a treat to watch. The story of Wei Wuxian's past has been animated in these 15 episodes. In this how, he's sent to study the cultivation arts, what tasks are given to these young students where they can use these arts to slay the dark forces is shown. The animation and sound... It's really lucid. CGI used in this anime doesn't disturb the scenes. The background music throughout and opening and ending songs are beautiful and have traditional Chinese musical instruments in it of course. Very harmonious. The voice actors have done a very good job. Since this is the first time I've heard dialogue in Chinese, I can't really say much, but I liked hearing how each person spoke. Their way of saying sentences reminded me a lot of how Korean is spoken. Characters... The most important in the anime after the story and the best part all male characters are long haired handsome boys and men!! <3 <3. The two main characters, Wei WuXian and Lan Wangji have been fleshed out very well. They both are really adorable but I must say I like Lan Wangji a tad bit more than Wei Wuxian. Simply because he's such a tsundere character who deeply cares for Wei Wuxian. If you read the novel you'll probably fall deeper in love with this character. Since this anime is going to have another season, maybe we'll see more character development for other characters as well. All in all, I can;t get this series or the two main characters of this series out of my head. And am impatiently waiting for S2 (schedule in July 2019). Please do see these 15 eye candy episodes and also read the manhua and novels.

Long ago, the cultivation clans lived together in harmony. Then, everything changed when the Wen clan attacked. Only the Yiling Patriarch, master of harnessing negative energy, could stop them. But when the world needed him most, he went kinda batshit crazy, killed a bunch of his friends and exploded. Now, my brother and I have found the new Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, a lunatic named Mo Xuanyu. And while his fluting skills are great, he's got a long way to go before he's ready to save anyone. Ok, I promise I'll try to keep the ATLA comparisons to a minimum from here on out, but youget the picture. While this series has the bones of a good story and some awesome art and sound, its plot languishes unnecessarily for almost the entirety of the series. All the information in the paragraph above is revealed within the first 2 episodes, and the next 16 or so are exclusively flashbacks retelling those events in incredibly long detail, meaning that there is little actual progress or character development happening in those episodes beyond what is already revealed early on. The end result is that the vast majority of the series (stretching into the second season) is written as its own unnecessary prequel with all the subtlety of a 16-ton weight dropping from the ceiling. Story/Characters: 5/10. The story had a lot of possible directions it could go from the start: starting a new life without the baggage of notoriety, hiding one's identity from former friends/frenemies, learning how the art he invented has grown and changed in the years he's been dead, observing the social changes that occurred after the overthrow of both the Wen and the Yiling Patriarch, living as a freelance demon-hunter, etc. etc. The story chooses to explore none of these and instead re-tell what it already told in the opening episodes. While toward the end of the second season we do get a glimpse of things going on behind the scenes, unfortunately most of the episodes are spent telling us stuff we knew from the get-go: Wei really likes his sister-figure. His relationship with his adoptive brother soured. He developed a way to harness negative energy, which makes him a hero to some and a heretic to others. Various miscommunications, misunderstandings and petty partisanship have cast him as a villain when really he is just trying to protect his people. etc. About 10 hours of the series is spent slapping the audience in the face with things they already know, while what was introduced as the main plot (Mo Xuanyu) is abandoned. The length of the exposition steamrolls any nuance out of the plot and twists itself in circles to justify the purity of its characters rather than exploring their flaws. Most of the characters have fewer than 2-3 character traits, one of which is almost always "loyal to family/clan" so the vast amount of time spent expounding on just how justified Wei Wuxian was or how much of a major asshole Wen Chao is was a vast amount of potential for actual storytelling in a fascinating setting wasted. Minor gripe: the character designs are far too uniform, especially Mo Xuanyu and young Wei Wuxian. I suppose since basically everyone immediately recognized Mo as Wei Wuxian anyway, it's a bit of a moot point, but it felt lazy. I don't know if they were TRYING to make the Wen clan leader look like Fire Lord Ozai, but they did. The ubiquitous sun and flame motifs among the Wen does not dissuade this comparison. On to the good parts: Art: 9/10. Docking a point for lazy character design, but the art and animation were incredibly compelling. There's a good amount of noticeable-but-not-terrible CGI interspersed throughout, which works effectively with the storytelling in parts. The art really makes me wish it had a more compelling story to fill it out. Sound: 9/10: Music is used as both theme and symbol throughout the series, with the guqin and the bamboo flute offsetting each other. Both are traditional Chinese instruments, but their use in the series underlies the difference in tone of their characters: the guqin's music is usually calm and resonant, while the bamboo flute instrumentation is often high-pitched and frantic. It was a masterful way of showcasing the light side/dark side interactions as the characters became closer entwined. Unfortunately, because the main plot spent most of its time flashbacking, the audience gets a very limited amount of the most compelling musical dynamic in the series. The VAs were generally good, although I have a feeling that they gave about five too many people the voice direction "You are an angry but scholarly middle-aged man," though that would arguably be a problem with character design. Enjoyment: 5/10. I went into this series and loved the first few episodes, so I was incredibly disappointed to spend almost the entire rest of the series waiting for something new to happen. The art and music kept me afloat long enough to reach to the end, but ultimately it never gets far enough away from its starting point for me to have enjoyed it.