Heaven Official's Blessing Season 2

I really enjoyed this series. I haven't read any of the novels and came into this completely blind. I also don't really know anything about Chinese Mythology or whether this series has anything to do with it. I really enjoyed the animation style and the animation as a whole. The character designs are great, the landscapes are beautiful, and the fight scenes are phenomenal. Top tier animation right here. I watched the English Dub and the voice actors were awesome, really high quality and they all did a great job. The story is a little hard for me to follow at times, but overall I got the gistof it and enjoyed it. The hardest thing for me to follow is all of the names. A lot of them sound similar and it doesn't help that the main character, Xie Lian, calls them by different names than they are referred to as by other members of the story. For example, Xie Lian often calls General Xuan Zhen, "Mu Qing". So all of that was a little hard to follow. It was also compounded by the fact that a few of the Male Court Members look very similar to me, Pei Ming, Feng Xin, and Mu Qing all look very similar to me. Overall, I'd highly recommend this series to anyone, great animation, a lovely setting, and a very layered story with lots of hidden details!

It looks nice, and it sounds nice, but it is confusing as hell, at least before The Reveal. Unfortunately, it is so frustrating before The Reveal which occurs late in the series because we know there must be a reason why Xie Lian did what he did, but the show just wouldn't tell us. It almost feels like they are trolling us. After The Reveal is very satisfying, but I don't really feel like it was necessary to string us along for so long. There's plenty of interesting action occurring in the first half. Unfortunately, much of the tension is lost because Hua Cheng is OPas hell, and he favors Xie Lian so much that it feels unfair. I mean, it does not feel like there has been enough development between Hua Cheng and Xie Lian for Xie Lian to deserve such devotion. I know it has been explained to some extent already in season 1, but still, all of that was ancient history, and I want to see romantic development during the course of events in the present. We get to see Xie Lian showing a lot more power than he did in season 1. Season 1 presented him as a sort of weakling, but here we can see he is actually very strong (though not OP like Hua Cheng). We have some really nice painted backgrounds and sumptuous character animation. The Heavenly Palace and City of Ghost are mostly 3D, but the outdoor scenes are mostly 2D with a painted look to them. Both are done well, with the City of Ghost looking very lively and interesting, full of lots of visually distinct demons. The OP is very nice, with a different art style which somehow makes the characters look even more beautiful and emotional. The OP song is nice, too. The ED is nothing too special; background slideshow with some particle effects and music.

It's a continuation of the wonderful first season, so if you haven't already, go watch that first. If you liked that, you will find the same sumptuous artwork, above average animation, top-notch characterizations and fantastic voice acting from the english dub cast. Where this season falls ever so slightly short of the first season is in the narrative, It starts out solid enough, but I thought the middle episodes got a little sloggy and drawn out. Not exactly filler, but at times I got the feeling the director was stringing things out to fill up an episode. Happily though, that goes away as the seasonnears it's dramatic and satisfying conclusion. One has to give the writers and director props for reigning things back in, tying up loose ends, and making this a successful ending. That wasn't looking like a given in eps 6 and 7. First season was an A-, but this season slipped ever so slightly to 88/100 and a very high B+. If you enjoyed the first season, I certainly couldn't recommend this one enough.