Wu Shan Wu Xing (2020)

Story & Plot: 5/10
It is kinda jumbled in a mess, but it is not bad that it ruined anything.

World Building: 6/10
The world was very unique although it was left unexplored from the glimpse of it it looks very vast and beautiful.

Characters: 4/10
I guess the weakest thing about this are characters, i hardly felt anything when it comes to the charcters, they are inconsistent and one dimensional. everyone have their 1 main emotion and only on different ocassion does they suddenly become another character completely. The mc is just a tryhard to be cool.

Art: 6/10
The art is unique but i dont really enjoy it that much, ... but thats just my bias as a veteren anime watcher, the art is not that bad its just it takes time to appreciate it, but art is also subjective, some would love this art, some like me just have a hard time to process it, others would hate it outrightly. For me, the art is fine.

Animation: 10/10
Now this is the main selling point of this donghua, it is unfortunate that i know people will never find this donghua because not enough people are talking about it. but the animation and the fight choreography are up there with top anime studio.

Sound effect, Music & score: 5/10
I'm not going to talk much about music since its subjective, for musical score i also dont have any capacity to judge it since i rarely pay attention to it during my first watch, but for sound effect it is good and bad for me, the fight scene sound effect is fine but for the rest of the sound effect it is just plain or sometime none existent.

Enjoyability: 10/10
This is the kind of "shut your brain off and enjoy the epic fights the story has to offer" kind of show if you can just ignore all of its shortcomings, this is very enjoyable.

Overall: 6.6/10
All score aboved totalled and the average is taken as the overall value.
total score [5+6+4+6+10+5+10=46]
total average [46(total score) / 70(maximum score)=0.66]
convert into out of ten score [0.66=6.6/10]

I tend to forget how rocked my pants can get when that animation hits.

My hatred for “age-old” stories like this one painted my judgement way before I pressed play. They tend to focus on the world-building to a detriment. It's usually focused on explaining the dynasty, the rules, the relationships, how everything works, but “Fog Hill of Five Elements” lets you understand by yourself. No time wasted, show don't tell, that's how that dad talks to his daughter, that's how royalty talks to the ones below, that's how things work just by virtue of the dialogue. A good story that knows how to establish characters ... and their missions, their stakes, and their necessities. Not everybody is good, but instead of blatantly portraying them as evil, they're just desperate.

However, yes, short story, it doesn't have that much time to establish a story. I wholeheartedly respect a story that contains that kind of animation, and tries to give me an emotional response with it.

With that out of the way, DUDE, THAT ANIMATION IS F*CKING INSANE. A colossal display of skill by the characters, consistent in escalation, subtle in changes of the dynamic, even if it boils down to “I can now hit harder”. Weighty, brutal, gigantic, with give and take of damage, and clear showings of how much a punch damages the other even in the air. It's not just “hit hard, nothing happens until we get to the floor”. Fights are choreographed to end as soon as possible, since characters can't take such mass punishments. A fast, intense show of movement that climaxes with rapid moments that don't need much focus. It happened, we're not here to think about it.

As an action extravaganza, with SOME emotional drama, it sets up a great context for the next season. I'm excited to see where it goes, I like the characters, I love the animation, the acting, and the conflicts set work for me. The drama isn't perfect, but hell, it could work with the next season if possible. I'm amazed at what this context can allow, but with complete honesty, if the animation wasn't as good, I wouldn't care that much.

7.8/10. Eye heroin.

I’ll try to keep this short, since I never cared about donghua in general and this title is the first I completed and man did it make me want to watch more of it or something similar. I first knew about it some years ago where a tech demo of sorts was revealed showing an amazing fight between two men that controlled fire and ice. Then these three episodes came out this year and sadly that scene is not present in them.

If you are like me and thus are accostumed to japanese anime, the artwork will feel different and refreshing, yet very polished, there are ... some intances where the character figures don’t exactly match the backgrounds but they are a few and not very noticeable. The character designs resemble traditional stories a lot, and most characters are tall and muscular manly men and without any facial repetition amongst them, giving it a more than welcomed retro feel to it. The backgrounds are beautiful to look at.

The most important and well known aspect of the show in this regard is obviously the actual animation, which is very weak when the character talk, walk or do simple movements in general, the mouth and eyes movements are kinda sloppy and the same applies to every other bit of body language. On the other hand, during the action scenes, when the show needs to have good and fluent motions, it’s simply spectacular, every single motion is practically perfectly made, and what do you want me to say about the special effects? They reminded me of those used during the most impactful scenes in Demon Slayer, which is always a plus.

There’s also very good camera work, following every fast paced action scene perfectly, unlike, let’s say, Dragon Super Broly, where the camera becomes really crazy at times and don’t let you keep track of some action sequences.

So, great and distinctive artwork, great character designs, mostly good animation and superb special effects which constitute a perfect mix of awesome martial arts with epic super powers. There are some things that could be more polished but as a whole the visuals are an impressive job, especially with very few people working on them.

The sound design is not as good, the music is ok, a generic traditional chinese soundtrack which fits the story and setting well and when it comes to the voice acting, well, I have to admit that I’m not familiar at all with chinese voices and voice acting, but what I heard here felt just right, every character had a fitting voice and good interpretation behind in every scene, from the comical to the tragic ones. The sound effects on the other hand are pretty weak in both the relaxing moments as well as those when there are fights and they make those scenes lack quite the impact.

Even when the show cares mostly about the action, there’s a serviceable plot with serviceable characters behind, nothing groundbreaking of course, it’s just some guardians that can use the elements as their powers that fight against demons that threatens humanity, so it’s basically a combination of The Last Airbender with Demon Slayer, only with manliness and epic fights taken from Asura’s Wrath.

The first episode really lowers your expectations because is mostly silly comedy with wacky facial expressions, which reminded me a lot of Golden Kamuy, but then the second and third became a lot more tragic and serious without ever losing that tone. The power scaling in the show seems to be pretty high as the first demon alone was able to fight toe to toe against the protagonist, and he was incapable of saving most of the people from the village.

And the many deaths shown here weren’t just for showing the horrible powers of the demons, as there are enough scenes with the villagers to make the audience somewhat care about them when they die, although obviously not the point of getting emotionally attached to them, for they lack lot of screen time for that, and the way they die is genuinely tragic and almost heartbreaking.

The demons seem to be evil and kill humans just because at first, but as the last episode reveals, is actually a revenge against them for a horrible thing they did in the past, which in turn was not something done for sadistic pleasure, there’s a very good cause regarding a mortal decease behind that course of action. Very good conflict and very well presented with an appropiate tone.

Now for the negatives which prevent me to rate the show a little higher at least for now, the characters are serviceable as plot devices but none of them have much information revealed about them to let you get emotionally invested, and the plot, on top of simple and straightforward, is just a prologue, a kind of demo for more episodes to come if the small group of people working on it decides it’s worth it to keep going. That’s why it has no actual ending despite hyping you with the different agendas everyone has and the invasion of, I have to say, way less interesting demons, seemingly about to happen.

Besides that, it was a very serviceable promotion that did its job way better than, let’s say, Burn the Witch, for presenting an actually interesting conflict, with a serious tone, and mostly amazing visuals. I really want to see how the story continues, if it does, and if you happened to read this and know more about chinese series that you think are equal or better, please feel free to come to my profile and reccomend them to me, especially if they are similar to it.