Doupo Cangqiong

Doupo Cangqiong, known in english either as "Battle through the heavens" (BTTH), or as " Fights Break Sphere", is the absolute quintessential Cultivation anime (or donghua if you prefer). If you have never seen a cultivation story, Doupo Cangqiong will get you familiar with all the tropes of the genre in their purest form.

Cultivation stories are very popular in China, in this type of story individuals accumulate some form of energy, usually called Qi, by a process similar to meditation. The accumulated Qi is that individual's cultivation and allows then to become powerfull and prolong their life. The cultivation process is often subdivided into several ... stages, which allows one to have an idea how powerful an individual is by which stage of cultivation he is in.

Doupo Cangqiong follows the story of Xiao Yan, who as a kid was touted as a genius with great talent for cultivation. However, suddenly and without apparent reason, Xiao Yan's cultivation stopped progressing and in fact started to regress, which made his reputation take a turn from genius to trash. The show follows Xiao Yan's climb in the cultivation world, from trash back to prodigy.

One of the staples of cultivation stories is that the main character is both overpowered and weak at the same time! You may find that statement odd, but because cultivation takes place over many years, older characters tend to be stronger than younger characters. There are no "old man past his prime" in cultivation stories, the older a character is, the more time he had to cultivate. Doupo Cangqiong makes full use of this dynamic, alternating situations where the main character is heavily outclassed and situations where he gets to be an overpowered badass dealing with people around his age.

It must be said that season 1 is by far the weakest of the show. This show was a pioneer in the recent explosion of chinese 3D shows and as such, it took then a while to get a proper handle on it. Based just on season 1, I wouldnt recommend this show. However, having seen the subsequent seasons I definitely recommend getting through it to get to the latter seasons. The latter seasons have improved character models, the animation steadily improved from season to season and the fight choreography improved as well.

For me, season 1 earns a rating of 5, but the show as a whole (up to season 5) earns a score of 7, with the more recent seasons being clearly better than the early seasons.

As someone who is familiar with the Douluo Dalu series, this story doesn't feel quite refreshing or original. Despite that, it's highly enjoyable, hence I finished it in a couple of hours.

Story [6]:
The story is like something I have seen before, which is not necessarily a bad thing, as long as it is done right. So far, the story is good, but not outstanding. There are things I personally would like to see go in a different direction, but for now these are OK.

Art [7]:
This series art isn't your typical 2D anime, instead it's more 3Dish. I personally appreciate the 3D animation and art style. ... The way this series looks, reminds me of a PS3 game or perhaps a Final Fantasy game. It isn't thát pretty, but very well done.

Sound [7]:
Unlike many other shows that I have watched, where I barely noticed the music, there were some sound effects in this show that I actually noticed. The music and other sound effects are more present, which adds to the show.

Character [7]:
The characters are not very outstanding in comparison to other similar shows. Yet I feel like they're still written pretty well. The protagonist is this cocky, weak lad who develops very well. I can't go in further detail about character development due to spoilers. The rest of the characters are not per se developing, yet you come to learn more about them, which is also fun and intriguing.

Enjoyment [7]:
Pretty much sums up the above combined.

I have started and tried to watch this original season 1 of BTTH multiple times, but the difference in style and storytelling from the rest of the series has pushed me away each time. Now about 1.5 years since I watched Origins -> NianFan 1 (S5 P1), I've finally decided to tough it out and do a full watch and write my review on both as BTTH's S1 donghua and as an adaptation of the novel.

Plot Summary: Xiao Yan is a fallen genius, once having reached the Dou Zhe level at age 11. But due to reasons unknown, his cultivation fell back down to Dou ... Zhi Qi rank 3, making him the ridicule of everyone in the family. Because of this, his fiance, borrowing the name of a powerful sect, comes to force the annullment of their marriage agreement. Prompted by her immense disrespect, Xiao Yan stands up to defend himself and the agreement; Nalan Yanran (the fiance) concedes and strikes a Three-Year Agreement with him to delay the annulment. After that agreement, Xiao Yan finds out the reason for his decline in cultivation and under the direction of a mysterious teacher, trains in preparation for the Three-Year Agreement duel return the humiliation Nalan Yanran foisted onto him.

Plot
The plot for BTTH S1 is pretty standard, especially for a cultivation story. The MC, Xiao Yan, is a fallen genius, and is now the ridicule of others who once looked up to him. Others come to kick him while he's down, including his fiance. But he soon finds out why he has fallen and once again regains his talent under the guidance of a mysterious teacher. This storyline is (now, maybe not back when this novel was written) a very common opening for a revenge-type story.

The portrayal/plot presentation does have many issues, but that's mostly an adaptation problem; as a standalone story, it is not as bad as I originally thought, but it does seem way to childish and convenient.

Characters
The characters for the show are also pretty normal for this type of Xuanhuan cultivation story. The MC was a genius, fell, and is now a genius again. The villains/bullies are your typical stock "bad guys". There isn't anything exceptionally good or bad to say about them. The show (and novel) are more known for Xiao Yan's personal adventure than the world building, plot, or the villains.

Animation
Okay, so despite my initial impressions on the character design that made me choose to watch Origins as my starting point for this donghua series, I have to say the designs of the environment are not that bad. The animation overall is also done fairly well, considering the age of this season. The character models, however, are horrendous. The character model designs/style remind me of disney character designs (though the clothing is inspired by ancient chinese clothing), except they are not as polished and thus I consider it a discounted disney aesthetic; the "good" characters look better than the "bad" ones in a very disney-esque fashion. When it comes to the fighting animation, it is also very basic and average, nothing to write home about; they follow the same basic design/appearance as the characters and I personally consider them unappealing(ugly).

Final Thoughts
Despite my severe distaste with BTTH S1 because of how it presented the plot in the donghua medium, it was not as bad as I thought once I put down my disgust for the plot changes and the character designs. The animations and designs are, as a whole, consistant and pretty good, the plot is cohesive enough, and the important characters have their own distinct traits. However, the biggest problem by far is how childish everything seems, especially compared to the rest of the seasons.

Score: 5/10

Adaptation Review:
Okay, this part is the review of it as an adaptation with a comparison to the "remake" Origins. I WILL eviserate this because I think it does a great number of things wrong as an adaptation.

To start, after watching this in full, I still suggest going to Origins, both because of the uniform character designs with the rest of the donghua (this S1 was done by a different company, which got fired after the disasterous reception of S1) and because it presents the most important parts of S1 in a more novel-accurate light.

Now, let's talk about BTTH S1 and what it does right from a adaptation perspective. There are two main things that this does well: it covers more of the events from the novel (including many of the frivolous and annoyingly childish confrontations) and it has all the basic information for understanding cultivation basics presented in some kind of infodump explaination. The infodump format isn't the best, but at least it has that information (unlike Origins). But that is where the good ends.

Now when we get to the things that BTTH S1 does wrong:

The first and most obvious change is that they changed the atmosphere. Starting from the hook, the marriage annulment, the scene got changed to be VERY VERY childish, both the characters and the atmosphere. Xiao Yan was supposed to be matured after 3 years of ridicule while Nalan Yanran was selected as the successor of a very powerful sect, yet the two engage in a name-calling shouting match? This doesn't conform with their respective positions. After that, many other scenes feel dumbed down and childish.

After this would be the changes to the actual plot. There are numerous changes here, changes make developments too convenient or don't make sense. For example, Xiao Yan's interaction with Ya Fei, the proprietress of the auction house; in this scene, instead of the business negotiations in the novel, she is simply attacked by kidnappers when he is doing a negotiation: that is the dumbest way that negotiation could have ended in Xiao Yan's favor, why would you leave potential witnesses for something like this AND he revealed his identity unlike the novel where Ya Fei figured it out herself. Other examples include: Xiao YiXian's entire encounter with Xiao Yan; the donghua encounter felt like a very cliche harem member introduction instead of the more nuanced and complicated realtionship beginning that the two had. Finally, in the ending of the season, they made Xiao Yan some kind of chick magnet where basically every girl he interacted with has some kind of feelings for him or he has some kind of feelings for her setting up a harem setting when romance was not the focus of this portion of the story at all.

Then comes change to the characters and how they act. Xiao Yan, rather than the matured individual from the novel, acts much like a child. He crys easily and makes very dumb decisions among other things. For example, he cries after the marriage annulment, which is out of character when compared to the novel. For the villains, the head of the other families are just empty suits, as the son, Jia Lie Ao is the one apparently making the plans for his father.

For Xun'Er, this season was the best chance they had to develop her relationship with Xiao Yan. They did some decent scenes, but most of her concern and helping Xiao Yan in the dark (without his knowledge) was mostly cut out. In the novel, Xun'Er clearly has a powerful background, but this isn't really even hinted at in this season and most of her covert actions to help Xiao Yan were excluded, like: paying off the family when Xiao Yan's father wasted money on the pill from the auction, sneakily trying to take out more money when Xiao Yan looked like he didn't have enough, or giving him a powerful Qi Method other than simply mentioning it in the donghua. They also eliminated some of the subtle but not subtle implications of Xun'Er's affection for Xiao Yan (like the comment about Xiao Yan only treating her like a sister when she wanted more).

Finally, I was annoyed by the fact that they changed Xiao Yan's signature weapon from a ruler to a greatsword.

Ugh, anyway, I think I have made it very obvious that I dislike this season's adaptation of BTTH. There are so many changes to the story that I have given up trying to point them all out, and even though it covers more events than Origins, I think it does a worse job presenting to story. I still prefer the Origins "remake" to this.

Adaptation score(how faithful to source): 5/10