Yao Shen Ji

In his past life, although too weak to protect his home when it counted, out of grave determination Nie Li became the strongest Demon Spiritist and stood at the pinnacle of the martial world. However, he lost his life during the battle with the Sage Emperor and six deity-ranked beasts.

His soul was then brought back to when he was still 13 years old. Although he's the weakest in his class with the lowest talent, having only a red soul realm and a weak one at that, with the aid of the vast knowledge which he accumulated from his previous life, he decided to train faster than anyone could expect. He also decided to help those who died nobly in his previous life to train faster as well.

He aims to protect the city from the coming future of being devastated by demon beasts and the previous fate of ending up destroyed. He aims to protect his lover, friends, family and fellow citizens who died in the beast assault or its aftermath. And he aims to destroy the so-called Sacred family who arrogantly abandoned their duty and betrayed the city in his past life.

(Source: Goodreads)

Li, Nie Main

Xiao, Ninger Supporting

Ye, Ziyun Supporting

Ze, Du Supporting

Piao, Lu Supporting

Mad Snail Original Creator

Reviews

Jun 11, 2024

ST63LTH

Recommended

Tales of Demons & Gods, a Chinese 'anime' adaptation of the popular Martial arts Manhua and Light Novel by the same name is quite underwhelming. After reading the Manhua and checking if the adaptation was any good, I can confirm that the series follows the story line of the Manhua very closely but the camera angles and shots make watching it so and so. Overall, would have loved the adaptation to be in 2D but there may have been time restrictions that permitted the used of 3D rigged animation instead.

Story: 7/10
Nie Li, the protagonist travels back to the past after dying by defending the Glory ... City and being overwhelmed with demon beasts, he maintains his knowledge and uses it to elevate the influence of Glory City and its people to avoid catastrophic events from destroying Glory City. All the while, he travels around the plains looking for treasures, secret portals etc. There's a good reason why the popular Manhua was able to adapt into a full series and I stand by the story. Nobility looking down on commoners in Chinese texts are popular and this is no exception, but when commoners have the power to overwhelm Nobility, they become a target for themselves. The overall story that had been adapted followed satisfyingly close to the Manhua which was decent.

Art: 4/10
The CGI used in this series is much better than Japanese CGI anime because there is a lot of texture and details in the foreground and backgrounds. They did make the CGI very appealing but the camera angles and shots don't stay true to the Manhua which was unexpected. The Manhua had specified frames which showed more potential for detail yet most of the adapted scenes were a mix of random camera angles. Some of the character models in the fight scene where Nie Li fakes being killed are FLYING from suspended ropes and YOU CAN TELL. Demon beast models are much smaller than what they're represented to be in the Manhua - The gorilla boss in the Manhua was at least 20-50 metres tall yet the adaptation has it at a puny 10 metres tall, even in the chase scenes it wasn't as terrifying because of the lack of 'aura'.

Sound: 6/10
Sound wasn't as bad as art and animation but there was a noticeable difference. The SFX were pretty good quality and synced well.

Character: 7/10
Character development flows well with the story line. There are a lot of details however, that are omitted in the beginning while everyone is at the academy, there are also a lot of missing scenes of Nie Li being harassed by the Nobility in his class but I estimate it was to cut back on animation to being resourceful.

Enjoyment: 4/10
The art style and camera shots are enough for me to be discouraged with it if it wasn't for the story. Watching Nie Li being a badass in Glory City for a second time doesn't seem too bad.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Oct 12, 2017

GimmeDatDonut

Mixed Feelings

Yaoshenji, or Tales of Demons and Gods, is one of those new Chinese anime that I really want to like, but really can't bring myself to. As an adaptation of a popular web-novel and manga, it already has really good plot behind it. However, the choices that the animation studio has chosen have severely undercut this massive advantage.

One of the most glaring problems is the length of each episode. Episodes are around 7 minutes long on average, but if you consider that the opening and ending animations take up 2 minutes, then you're left with just 5 minutes of actual storyline per episode. While this ... comes out to about 200 minutes of total animation (around 10 episodes of a normal length anime), it severely limits the amount of information that can be added in a single episode. As such, each episode is only long enough to last exactly one scene or conversation, and it's impossible for them to fit in any extra narrative or background into the anime.

On the animation side, they've chosen to go with 3d models for everything. While there are good examples of 3d animation, this is just on the borderline. The quality of the models is at the bare minimum acceptable standard, about the same as a video-game. It's very apparent that where ever possible, they've tried to reduce the complexity of the models by using textures instead of actual 3d detail. In addition, the quality of the motion of the characters is also sub-par, as there are very few examples where a character walks properly - most characters have stiff expressions or weird kinks in their walking animation that instantly catch your eye. Overall, it feels like they offloaded all the animation into an in-game animation software,such as Source Film Maker. This might be acceptable if they compensated with an increase in the amount of content, but as pointed out earlier, there's actually less content than a single season of an anime.

On the other hand, it's pleasing to see that they've put in effort into working on special effects for the magic systems in the show. While the character animation may be sub-par, the effects associated with magic activation still look fairly good. In addition, it's also fun to see then using the obvious kinks in their animation quality to showcase unique character personalities on some of the nameless side characters. This is an amazing addition, as the side characters are no longer bland and identical, but actual people with their own unique (sometimes hilarious) walking styles and expressions.

In terms of actual plot, the original story as well as this adaptation both focus on an OP character who was reborn and has a new chance at life. It is honestly fun to see this character, who represents the epitome of the saying "Knowledge is power", destroying people's expectations of him and coming out on top in clever and hilarious scenarios. However, as is the problem with most adaptations, it's very apparent that a lot of that content has to be skipped in order to translate the story onto the screen. This is sadly even more apparent here, where the 5-minute episode length severely restricts the amount of information that can be conveyed to the viewer. Overall, unless the viewer has already read the source materials, they can easily get lost in the terminology, magic and ranking systems introduced in the anime.

At the end of the day, I think it's a cute adaptation of a very fun web-novel, but leaves me sad about the missed potential that it could have had.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Mar 13, 2022

math20082

Not Recommended

Preliminary (2/40 eps)

I guess that one is not from me. Tales of Demon and Gods is a rather famous webnovel (which I've read a huge part of) which was later adapted into a manhwa and a donghua.
I think TDG is pretty overrated and isn't as good as over well known webnovels.
I've also read the manhwa which I found rather average, but I decided to give the anime a try.
Unfortunately right of the bat I have several problems with the anime and here is why:
1) 7 minutes per episodes. I just hate that format, a good episode length is between 18-25 minutes and nothing happens in 7 minutes ... but that's just my personnal taste.
2) The animation is really badly done. I didn't think the art was especially good in the manhwa but they decided to animate it and it somehow makes it way worse.
3) Bad subtitles. i guess that one isn't the anime itself but even sites I would recommend have bad subtitles, and not in sync with the actual story.

Overall I may give it a new try in the future but I don't recommend this one. 4/10

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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