Mao Yao de Huo Han

This donghua is an adaptation of a manhua with the same name. The english translated name is "Temptation of the Cat Spirit" I have only done a cursury skim of the manhua so I won't be doing a adaptation review, but I will make some remarks about the changes I have seen between the original source (manhua) and the donghua.

Plot Summary: The donghua opens to a woman (cat spirit) waiting for her lover, after having a 3 month promise. When he does arrive, we see that he shoots an arrow through her heart, killing her, and leaving her wondering why. Because of the two's promise ... to each other, she waits for 1000 years without reincarnating, hoping to meet his soul. The long period of waiting bred hatred towards her lover for her death, leading her to take a devil's deal: she will reincarnate with her memories intact to find her lover again for revenge (or not), but will belong to the one offer her the deal for eternity. Once back in the modern world, she quickly reunites with her former lover, but as she associates with him and digs deeper, she finds out that her death was not as simple as it appears.

This story is a classic shoujo with some love triangle (or maybe reverse harem?) elements. The plot is fairly concise and it does the romantic parts well (the slow motion emphasis on the romantic/emotional . The story jumps between the past (flashbacks) and the modern world/current life. The flashbacks provide context to the two main characters' past relationship and how it influences their current actions/love. The story was quite enjoyable and emotional. Other than this, the story does include plenty of comedy typical of shoujo stories: clutzy FML moments, the heart-struck moments, and misunderstanding/jealousy moments. There is a bit of forced/artifical complications surrounding the deal the FMC made to reincarnate with her memories which caused unnecessary drama, but overall a good love story.

The characters are pretty standard for shoujo; you have the main lead who is female and you have the cool and handsome male lead and antagonist (the past lover and fox). The FMC is cute/beautiful as you would expect of a shoujo lead, she does have a split personality and has some interesting development. The main male lead is also very standard for a shoujo story, he's handsome, rich, etc, all qualities of a "perfect" man; unfortunately his character is a bit flat, not super compelling, with his only real standout point is his love and dedication (over 1000 years) to the Su Ranran (or Su Qinghan), the main character.

The animations and models are pretty good. They could be better, but since action is not suposed to be the focus of this story, they are good enough. The transformations are not cringe and done quite well (they are also not overused).

Overall, a pretty good romance story with nice character models and animations. The story is good and most of the questions that arose in this season were resolved. At the end of the season, there is a clear direction for the MCs to follow, if this should get a season 2 (hopefully it does so I can see a continuation of their love story). If you like romantic shoujo dramas, this is a good watch.

Adaptation Remarks:
This donghua "adapts" chapter 1-138; Adapts is in quotes because there are quite a few portions of the manhua that have been removed from the adaptation.

First, the donghua's plot is much more focused on the love between the two main leads, Su Ranran (Su Qinghan), the FL, and MoQing, the ML. In the manhua, there are current period stories and flashback memories detailing love stories that the main characters witnessed, but were not participants in between demons(spirits) and humans. The flashback at the end of this season was also changed to be more concise. They reduced the cast to the core characters and elimiated many of the irrelevant side stories.