Wu Geng Ji

Wu Geng Ji Review


Story (8/10) Very Good
More Specifically (8.75/10) Very Good+

The Story of Wu Geng Ji starts off just like the Manhua as we see through the perspective of Zi Shou as he reigns his Kingdom and the struggles that come with it. There really is not that much of a difference when it comes to the adaptation from a story standpoint I think is fine although the fact that this is a ONA not an actual Dong Hua and only runs for 15 minutes at a time does feel a bit more fast pace than the Manhua, as you know usually the ... first chapter of any Manga, Manhwa or Manhua are usually the largest and for reason. Seeing as chapter one of this is quite heft this first episode doesn't cover all of it if someone was leaving with first impressions they can be hindered because of such a decision when it comes to how much that adapted per episode, even with that being said it's the only con I can think of the actual content as far as I can see has not modified so it's still very good from an adaptation standpoint.


Art and Animation 7/10 (Good)
CG Quality at it's best (9.50/10) Great
CG Quality at it's worst (4.50/10) Bad


So this section is the absolute most controversial section in this review and with reason... COMPUTER GENERATED ANIMATION... If you couldn't tell already I am giant Feng Shen Ji fan (probably the biggest you'll ever find) and when I found out this existed and was in CG I was ready to punch a baby. After watching episode one I was disgusted by this adaptation asking myself "How could this happen?", "I was waiting for FSJ to get animated for so long and I finally get one and it's this CG piece of shit!" trust me this went on for about a week in a half of my just disappointing in China/Hong Kong for shitting on their chance to make FSJ known positively. I still watched it because I am a fan of the series and I feel like if I call myself a true FSJ can I have to see this through. So animation quality of episode 1 (because of how I went there I didn't like it) but by every episode I watched I came around slowly but surely. And by episode 5 and especially 6 certain scenes actually look gorgeous and I can't deny that. Now it's not consistent as just like the scenes I considered gorgeous (The Zi Shou Phoenix Unleashed vs Tian Kui) there were small scenes I felt were still either cringe worthy to look at or just mediocre. So I'm going to have to average this out because trust me although I still today hate that this is CG, it is FAR better than the CG in Berserk, Kingdom, Knights of Sidonia and Ajin (yes I know KoS and Ajin are both made by the same people but u get my point). If I had to rate the CG quality as a whole for the other anime I named above it would be Berserk 5, Kingdom 4 and Kos/Ajin 6, and with that being said if that's what I would rate their CG quality I would put WGJ's at a 7 as I'm taking the amazing scenes and cringe worthy/mediocre scenes and averaging them out. I think this cringe worthy/mediocre scenes are still better than Kingdom's but not that better so I'll give that a 4.5, the gorgeous scenes in my opinion are right below the quality of the CG quality you see from Final Fantasy: Advent Children, Kingsglaive or Saint Seiya: Legend of Sanctuary and I think those 3 have a CG quality of 10 so I give the best CG animate scenes in WGJ a 9.5. With all that being said 4.5+9.5/2 gives you 7 which is something I can agree with as I stated before I think WGJ's CG animation Knights of Sidonia and Ajin which I gave a 6 so a 7 sounds about right to me taking everything I've said into consideration. LASTLY I have to point out that China just recently started doing CG animated Dong Hua so they are still learning while Japan has been doing this shit for years and the stuff still doesn't look that good, so I gotta give them some what of credit for doing something better than Japan who's been doing this shit for years upon year.


Sound (8/10)
More Specifically (8.75/10) Very Good+

Now the sound section for this is actually very good. The music I feel matches the many many hype moments that this series brings to the table, the Chinese voice acting is very good and the opening and ending songs I've taken quite a liking to by the time episode 6 came out they are quite unique and catchy as I don't really hear Chinese music that often in my usually day.


Characters (9/10) Great
More Specifically (9.25/10) Great


All of the characters that I've seen so far are being adapted 1-1. Which is a good thing. But there are a few characters they have changed the actually character design behind them and it urk me more than I thought it would. The first one doesn't bother me that much only because it they didn't change that much plus it actually looks a bit cooler in this Dong Hua and that's Tai Ji who they changed his hair for white to red with a bit of fire which was cool it really showed their fire effects which look phenomenal so I give him a pass. But the other character I can't let ride out what so ever and that's Shi Xing, in the manhua he's is the big buff red skinned, white eyes and white haired beast who easily caused the most trouble through out FSJ1. When I first saw him in this Dong Hua adaptation I didn't even recognize him. They turned him into this slimmer version of himself with purple armor and purple aura around him with light purple hair and red eyes. Honestly it's a big step down in my opinion and the making Tai Ji look cooler doesn't balance out how bad they made Shi Xing look. Don't get me wrong he as a character design doesn't look bad but I think it's bad when you put Shi Xing's name behind it, if you know how important everything that has to do with Shi Xing is to the overall story of FSJ then you should understand my pain. With all that being said none of them actually break character and acted differently but looks are something that mean a lot in FSJ in my opinion and changing them is changing the character to an extent. Other than that everything else seems spot on and I've review all the manhua and I gave this section a 10/10 so with these to new changes, changes are made to my score also. (Also if there are any more characters in the future that are changed trust me I'll come back to this review and change it accordingly also!)
Tai Ji (+0.25/10)
Shi Xing (-1.00/10.25)
This gives you a (9.25/10)


Enjoyment (8/10) Very Good

Like I said before my first impressions of this Dong Hua was quite bad as going in know it was CG, Episode 1 only being 15 minutes and the hand full scenes looking mediocre at best for episode 1 and 2 as far as I can remember my enjoyment for it was around a 6. But over time as I got used to the CG and the story, characters and music are still very good my enjoyment rose episode by episode and the fact by episode 6 the good CG scenes outweigh the bad CG scenes by quite a lot. As of right now my enjoyment for this Dong Hua is an 8, it's something I actually can say I look forward to watching bi-weekly when it releases.


Overall (8/10) Very Good
More Specifically (8.35/10) Very Good

Only 6 episodes in need I say and it has changed my opinion immensely. I say give it until that before you make a fair judgement of this series seeing as the episodes are only 15 minutes each it shouldn't take that long to get there, episodes 1 and 2 I don't think are a fair representation on what to expect from the entire series I believe episodes 5 and 6 are though. I'm surprised that I can give this above a 7 right now with all of the hatred I still have for it being CG. But this is my putting all my subjective thoughts to the side and rating it objectively. For one of China's first CG animated ONAs this is very good I guess and it is indeed getting better by every episode that releases.

I only write reviews for shit I wanna rant about cuz it's more fun and I can explore the crevices of sarcasm the lowest form of wit,
I recently happened to be really into Chinese anime. The latest seasons of Japanese anime have been nothing short of boring and unpalatable. Not to mention the 2D persona charecters we have today, intense pandering, intense fan service, annoying main and side charecters, plot armor too thick I can't even
Not that Chinese anime are perfect, they are far from perfect.
But this anime exceeded all of my expectations. The main charecter is someone who was once the son of ... a great King and a God. But he has since gone thro many troubles and decided to take revenge against the gods for what they did to him, family and his kingdom
Well it's good stuff everything about it was a masterpiece so go watch it

After watching several Chinese anime, I was about to give up on it. But then I stumbled upon Wu Geng Ji and after watching the first 2 episodes I was hooked. The story is much more nonlinear than Japanese anime (after episode 10) in a very refreshing way. The first 10 episode battle is the greatest of any anime that I have seen, and I have watched plenty. It is epic with a good sense of moral.
Although the first 30 episodes are just the beginning, I enjoyed all, and cannot wait to see the rest. I am looking forward to more anime like this.

The Legend and the Hero S1 Review

The gods in Wu Geng Ji are overexerting beings that control humanity from behind the scenes by enslaving prisoners of war and citizens to collect blood crystal, a rare ore consumed by the gods. The shang Dynasty, one of the great powers in the world of Wu Geng Ji rejects the overbearing gods orders to open a new blood crystal mine which leads the gods to destroy the Shang Dynasty. Zi Zhou, the King of Shang Dynasty experienced the struggles in the mines and decided to fight against the gods for the people of his Kingdom. He and ... his younger brother Zi Yu fight to the death against many gods; However, even with the power of a Pheonix one of the most powerful Celestial beings Zi Zhou loses when Tian intervenes killing him. Wu Geng discovers his mother is a goddess, who shares her dying breath reincarnating him into another body to follow fate and end the gods ruling.

Story: 6/10
The story starts off with great promise. The first impressions are that Zi Zhou is a tyrannical ruler by rejecting the gods messenger in the beginning. However, as the story develops and more details are revealed to us it becomes apparent that the gods are exploitative and have been for many generations. Zi Zhu's rebellion is a spark that will start a war between the gods and the humans eventually leading the war is Zi Zhu's son Wu Geng. However, in the first season we only see the character training arc and world building through the enslaved miners.
The story shows a lot of promise and is actually very structured from the beginning despite being generally focused on combat aspects more than plot and character development.
This fights in this series feel dragged out, the beginning fight alone lasted almost an hour, you're crazy if you think I'm going to watch back and forth fighting for that long - it does this several times in the season which is ridiculous.

Art & Sound: 6/10
This series was released almost 4 years from now which is a surprise. The details and animation are pretty good for an older series. Series as old as this tend to have cheap rendered CGI and character rigging but I seem this is an exception.

The sound effects and music design are average.

Character: 4/10
Killing a lot of the main characters and even the MC in the first few episodes is very bold of Wu Geng Ji. It feels like this series doesn't really value character development unless its the main character otherwise everyone else serves as stepping stones for MC to get out of sticky situations. A few examples is when Wu Geng saves the ogre he fought and treated him like a friend yet he is on his deathbed at the entrance of the mines and Wu Geng does nothing to preserve him. Or the old guy that is worried for Wu Geng's health when he leaves the sleeping chambers - Seems like it could have been omitted or elaborated instead of just being an add on character scene. These gaps in character development are noticeable and distracting dead ends that I hope are fixed in the future of the series.

Overall: 6/10
I might stick around on this series because I hear there is a lot of praise in the later seasons. So far, this might be a series like Battle Through the Heavens where it gets much better in the latter seasons because of change of art and story approach.

To start with this show looks like Ps2/Xbox 360 era cutscene, tings looking like fable 1 out here.
I think however that is acceptable since I kinda enjoy the slight nostalgic feeling and I'm not fussy about it anyway. Its like loading up a 90s era version of Final Fantasy set in China and not having to actually play the game as you watch 14 minute cutscenes.

The story line for me is very good, straight up fantasy about per-warring states China and about the people trapped in serfdom, a charismatic leader, a spoiled prince with naive and arrogant outlook on life, his caring queen ma vs ... a controlling god king n gods that demands the world and dehumanizes humans. There are good tense moments and twists, the characters can seem a little OP at times but the fights are somewhat entertaining.

There is also decent character development which can seem sudden at times but its also understandable given the circumstances and pressure some of the characters are under.

The voice acting is well done, I don't really take issue with the soundtrack but I think it would have been better with more funding and longer episodes. Also theres a fair few homages to some manga and other media.

Also WEIBO?????????????????????? chill .

I will watch til the end and maybe update this review.

Thanks for reading.