Mo Dao Zu Shi: Xian Yun Pian (The Founder of Diabolism Season 2)

Alternative Titles

Synonyms: Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation 2, The Founder of Diabolism 2, Mo Dao Zu Shi 2nd Season, The Founder of Diabolism: The Reborn

Japanese: 魔道祖师羡云篇

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Information

Type: ONA

Episodes: 8

Status: Finished Airing

Aired: Aug 3, 2019 to Sep 21, 2019

Producers: Tencent Penguin Pictures

Licensors: None found, add some

Studios: B.CMAY PICTURES

Source: Web novel

Genres: Action, Adventure, Drama, Fantasy, Mystery

Themes: Historical, Mythology, Reincarnation

Duration: 24 min. per ep.

Rating: R - 17+ (violence & profanity)

Statistics

Score: 8.37¹ (scored by 49,151 users)

¹ indicates a weighted score.

Ranked: #201²

² based on the top anime page. Please note that 'Not yet aired' and 'R18+' titles are excluded.

Popularity: #2008

Members: 105,414

Favorites: 1,230

Available At

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@mdzsjp

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Synopsis

Continuing his masquerade as the deranged lunatic from the Lanling Jin Clan, Wei Wuxian resides in the Cloud Recesses while his former cultivation classmate, Lan Wangji, searches for answers about the demonic severed arm they have in custody. With an overwhelming dark energy emanating from the arm, the two are forced to work together in order to keep it contained. However, the demonic arm is not the only dark force lurking in the region, and as spiritual tensions rise in the mountains of the Gusu Lan Clan, it is up to the two of them to try and restore the natural order.

The story of Wei Wuxian's fall from grace continues as more light is shed on his descent into the path of demonic cultivation. The demonic arm only further strains his mischievous spirit. This is the time for him to prove that he has truly broken free from the forbidden path and is not the maniacal sorcerer that everyone remembers him to be.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

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Related Anime

Adaptation:	Mo Dao Zu Shi
Prequel:	Mo Dao Zu Shi
Sequel:	Mo Dao Zu Shi: Wanjie Pian
Other:	Mo Dao Zu Shi Q

More characters

Characters & Voice Actors

Wei, Wuxian

Main

Kimura, Ryouhei
Japanese

Lan, Wangji

Main

Tachibana, Shinnosuke
Japanese

Jiang, Cheng

Supporting

Midorikawa, Hikaru
Japanese

Wen, Ning

Supporting

Shimazaki, Nobunaga
Japanese

Nie, Huaisang

Supporting

Hanae, Natsuki
Japanese

Lan, Sizhui

Supporting

Tsuchiya, Shinba
Japanese

Jin, Ling

Supporting

Kaji, Yuuki
Japanese

Lan, Xichen

Supporting

Morikawa, Toshiyuki
Japanese

Jiang, Yanli

Supporting

Hayami, Saori
Japanese

Jin, Guangyao

Supporting

Ishida, Akira
Japanese

More staff

Staff

Xiong, Ke

Director, Art Director

Liang, Sha

Script

Liu, Xing

Script

Zhu, Ke

Script

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Opening Theme

	"Shirube (導)" by CIVILIAN (Japan Broadcast)
	"Zui Meng Qian Chen (醉梦前尘)" by Terry Lin (林志炫)

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Ending Theme

	"cold rain" by Aimer (Japan Broadcast)
	"Shao Nian Ru Gu (少年如故)" by R1SE

Reviews

Sep 18, 2019

lt_wassile

Recommended

Arguably one of the best Chinese studios out there, G.CMay Animation, decided to develop a season 2 for Mo Dao Zu shi -also known as Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation-. What they’ve managed to create is an emotional and stunning piece of animation, along the lines set out on the first season.
However, instead of taking the time to unfold the extensive backstory of the characters as they did in the onset of season 1, this time they took the plunge to the action-packed wonderful pace of the end of the 1st season from the very start, making it really enjoyable.

Without changing too much the recipe ... that lead to the success of season 1, Mo Dao Zu shi presents a character-driven story based on a Chinese cultivation world setting with a fair amount of action scenes, Wei Wuxian comedic paintbrushes, and an amazing work in the artistic department; still, a darker tone is set, mainly due to the darkening/despair effect that both the misfortunate events and the demonic arts have in our protagonist.
Besides, the moral conflict WW brings to the table much more complexity and tragedy making the show much more interesting. So, though we are not facing a really complex story, they way things are told and conducted make it a really nice piece of storytelling.

Moreover, though the cast is pretty much the same, we can observe that on season 2, G.CMay Animation steps up in the characterization of both our main cast and the intricacy of the villains/evil, as on season 1 felt kind of cartoonish, given the usual pillory attitude which Wei Wuxian displayed combined with the childish goals –and attitude- our main villain -Weng Chao- had. They have managed to portray much better their feelings, their ambitions, what they seek in life, generating in the viewer different impressions depending on the characters –and their actions/state of mind/circumstances- displayed on screen. Furthermore, the score was absolutely breathtaking and well used during the course of this season, endowing much more emotion to a lot of shots of this anime.

Speaking about visuals, this show continues to do things incredibly well. Striking use of angles, elegant coloring, and smooth shading gave so much detail that even the slightest feeling was portrayed on screen; even conversations felt much more realistic than on your usual anime thanks to the animators work. That being said, this last statement can also be applied to action sequences, as both are amazing –even the use of CGI was nice-. Last but not least, backgrounds, oh backgrounds, what can I say other than what an amazing display of talent it was (again)?

So, to sum up things, season 2 has hands down taken another step forward in its project of making Mo Dao Zu Shi franchise one of the all-time great productions of the Chinese anime industry.

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Oct 1, 2019

souji5okita

Recommended

I’m not very good at expressing my opinions in writing but I felt that I needed to try for this show. I absolutely adore the novel and the 1st season of the donghua (Chinese anime) and I have been obsessed with it since I found the show last October. While this 2nd season is still beautifully animated the characters are still wonderful, the story is sorely lacking and I feel really bad for “anime only” watchers. I don’t know how they followed along with the story as its messy. It’s just difficult to follow the story if you don’t have knowledge from the novel to ...

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Aug 24, 2021

SleepySera

Mixed Feelings

I can't fathom why this season is rated as high as it is, giving it a 5 feels overly generous already. I have never seen a show as rushed as this, to the point where literally nothing makes sense unless you've read the source material. Watching it feels like sticking eight bookmarks randomly into a book you haven't read and then ONLY reading the eight pages you landed on with zero context.

The story wildly jumps through time by huge increments, often without ANY indication that time has passed, nothing is ever explained, characters and things just show up and immediately are forgotten for the rest ... of the story.
I don't know why they only got eight episodes to work with instead of fifteen like the first season, but the creators seemed determined to squeeze fifteen episodes worth of story into eight anyways (and then add their own fanfiction on top of it which takes up another 2+ episodes, which is MAYBE not such a great idea when you are seriously pressed for time already...).

The result of that is a jumbled mess of unrelated scenes just vaguely strung together without rhyme or reason. A few episodes in I gave up and read the novel instead. Armed with that knowledge, I could finally understand what was going on, but even then, it was a rather unsatisfactory experience because they combined several scenes from the novel into one to save time more than once, regardless of the scenes fitting well together or not and absolutely shredding any natural character interaction in the process (for example, one character goes from hating and accusing a girl of fraud to shouting at her to awkwardly being in love to having a baby with her and getting murdered in like 30 seconds flat, without the fraud case ever getting resolved, without us ever seeing how/why they fall in love, NO TIME, GOTTA MOVE ON TO THE NEXT SCENE).
It's frustrating to watch even if you do know about everything that was cut out in between, because it leaves the characters as empty husks that just stumble through the vauge resemblance of a plot, with no time to actually show character traits or relations that make them unique.

From an adaption standpoint, there's also the issue that core concepts of the plot were completely changed, and at least in my opinion, for the worse.
SPOILER NEXT.
A big part of what makes the characters in MDZS so intriguing is that many of them aren't just shining perfect heroes. They struggle and fail and do terrible, unforgivable things, especially the protagonist, but the reader can hardly hate them for it because the circumstances they do these things in are relateable.
The animation takes these interesting, multifaceted characters and declares "Nope! Anything bad they ever did was because they were the victim of an evil conspiracy!" Not because they gave in to their anger and grief. Not because they used a power that they had always been warned they would lose control of. It's because someone secretly fed them evil energy or some bs like that. Turns out, the heroes were always perfect and never did anything risky or wrong, immediately stripping them of that entire interesting aspect of their character. Demonic cultivation is in the title, for god's sake, but I guess the writers for this animation thought it was better if it is just the same as normal cultivation, lol.
SPOILER OVER.

The only thing elevating this season is the art and music, which are once again absolutely stellar, though they did reuse quite a few shots from the first season, which does make it feel a bit lazy in comparison.

Summary:
A beautiful show that got absolutely RUINED by the abysmal pacing and massive cuts to the story. Watchable only if you've read or seen the source material or another adaption already, and even then you have to be okay with detrimental changes to the core narrative. If you enjoyed season 1, don't ruin that enjoyment by watching this.

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Mo Dao Zu Shi: Xian Yun Pian

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Mo Dao Zu Shi: Xian Yun Pian

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