Tian Guan Ci Fu (Heaven Official's Blessing)

The heavens shake, the thunder rumbles, and Xie Lian appears with an apologetic smile—again! Eight hundred years prior, he was a beloved martial god, known as the Crown Prince of Xianle. Now, he ascends to the heavenly realm for the third time, but simply as a pitiful scrap-collecting god with no followers behind him.

On his first mission, Xie Lian finds himself alone in the dark moonlit night. There, a gentle man dressed in red guides him through the forest. However, as abruptly as he appeared, the man suddenly dissipates into a swarm of silver butterflies.

Xie Lian later learns that this mysterious stranger was none other than Hua Cheng, the Crimson Rain Sought Flower, a Ghost King feared by both demons and gods alike. But before Xie Lian can figure out why Hua Cheng would help a Heavenly Official like himself, he meets San Lang. A young man possessing great knowledge on not only the Ghost King, but also the now forgotten Crown Prince, San Lang decides to accompany Xie Lian on his journey of unveiling the mysteries of the past.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

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Background

Adaptation based on a Chinese web novel of the same name, written by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu (墨香铜臭). The show falls into the xianxia genre (a fantasy genre influence by Taoism, Buddhism, and Chinese mythology).

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Related Anime

Adaptation:	Tian Guan Ci Fu, Tian Guan Ci Fu
Sequel:	Tian Guan Ci Fu Special

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Characters & Voice Actors

Hua, Cheng

Main

Fukuyama, Jun
Japanese

Xie, Lian

Main

Kamiya, Hiroshi
Japanese

Shi, Qingxuan

Supporting

Kawasumi, Ayako
Japanese

Ling, Wen

Supporting

Hikasa, Youko
Japanese

Fu, Yao

Supporting

Kobayashi, Chiaki
Japanese

Mu, Qing

Supporting

Kobayashi, Chiaki
Japanese

Nan, Feng

Supporting

Furukawa, Makoto
Japanese

Ming, Yi

Supporting

Mori, Nanako
Japanese

Pei, Ming

Supporting

Suwabe, Junichi
Japanese

Pei, Xiu

Supporting

Masuda, Toshiki
Japanese

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Staff

Li, Haoling

Director

Bickham, Clint

Script

Amamiya, Sora

Theme Song Performance

SID

Theme Song Performance

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Opening Theme

	"Wu Bie (无别)" by Jeff Chang (张信哲)
	J1: "Jiu no Kuchizuka (慈雨のくちづけ)" by SID

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Ending Theme

	J1: "Freezia (フリイジア)" by Sora Amamiya
	1: "Yi Hua Yi Jian (一花一剑)" by Li Xinyi (李鑫一) (eps 1)
	2: ""Bu San (不散)" by Isabelle Huang (黄龄) (eps 2-8)
	3: "Hong Jue (红绝)" by Hu Xia (胡夏) (eps 9-11)

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Reviews

Jan 1, 2021

11 of 11 episodes seen

Overall Rating: 6

Aisukurimu (All reviews)

114 people found this review helpful

Thanks to Mo Xiang Tong Xiu (MXTX) and very devoted BL fans, the MDZS review I wrote is the most upvoted review I have ever written. How could I miss the opportunity for clout by dropping another bomb review? (You can interpret ‘bomb’ as amazing or terrible)

However you look at it, MXTX have done pretty exceptional, even with the ongoing court scandals. She hasn’t written many novels but all three of her existing novels have been massive hits. Gaining a huge Chinese and foreign following. As we know, MDZS’s popularity is already off the roof and now comes the TGCF anime. And no, I’m not read more

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Jan 1, 2021

11 of 11 episodes seen

Overall Rating: 4

Nyanza (All reviews)

98 people found this review helpful

Chinese animation is on the rise.

With anime enjoying an explosive surge of popularity in China over the past decade, it’s a bit of a surprise as to why higher budget, domestically produced works tailored to an older audience have taken so long to appear. Nevertheless, donghua has finally begun to make its mark on the wider anime community, most notably with The King’s Avatar in 2017 and Mo Dao Zu Shi in 2018.

Tian Guan Ci Fu is the first donghua that I’ve watched in its entirety - like many others, I was intrigued by its placement in the top airing list, alongside the eager recommendations of novel readers. Unfortunately, thanks to a horrifically executed second arc, almost non-existent character development, and some of the worst editing I’ve ever seen, Tian Guan Ci Fu is a resounding disappointment.

Two major arcs occur throughout the course of this series. The first, taking place over the course of a brisk three episodes, is the better of the two. In order to pay off a massive debt caused by his third ascension to Heaven, our main character Xie Lien travels to the mortal world as a Heavenly Official to solve the mystery of the ghost groom at Mount Yujun, accompanied by the hot-headed Nan Feng and Fu Yao. On most accounts, Tian Guan Ci Fu actually does really well with this first arc. The mystery is well crafted – the suspense is built just right, and with some nice action sequences sprinkled into the mix, it does a good job with drawing in the viewer.

Much of this introductory arc’s success hinges on a couple of key points. Hardly any of the world’s mechanics are explained: the ascension/banishment process, magic formations, and what actually goes on in Heaven are some of the many details that are barely elaborated on. Character development takes place - mostly on Xie Lien - but is minimal, although this is pretty forgivable since most of the focus is on the mystery. And the resolution of the mystery itself is lacklustre – the rationale behind the apparition’s actions had more or less been deduced by Xie Lien, but for some reason the writers decided it was necessary to have a convoluted flashback backstory written out, something that added little to the overall experience for the amount of screen time it took (kind of difficult to make a character morally ambiguous after they’ve murdered seventeen innocent brides). Addressing these issues was key if any initial momentum was to be kept.

Tian Guan Ci Fu doesn’t just ignore the issues, but flat out magnifies them to the point where later episodes are legitimately painful to go through. Recurring characters get ZERO development, and I’m not exaggerating when I say this. Apart from basic character traits established by superficial interactions, we really don’t learn anything about the personalities of any of the characters. The biggest offenders of this would be Nan Feng and Fu Yao. Their sole defining traits are that they have temper problems and that they dislike each other. As a result, they’re also the main source of comic relief, but their antics get old very quickly, and the constant yelling does not help. The world building is awful, with constantly shifting, unconnected settings that largely remain unexplored – a real shame, because the world itself is really intriguing. There’s a critical lack of cohesion here, and everything feels more like an arbitrary chain of incidents stringed together than a natural progression of events.

A major reason for all of these problems stems from Tian Guan Ci Fu’s boring and flat-out wasteful dialogue. The second arc is extremely heavy on dialogue, but it’s dialogue of the worst kind: sloppy exposition dumping. So much of the show is spent on a character explaining really minor plot points in intricate detail, usually accompanied by a flashback of some sort. Any time there’s a “twist” or a character feels the need to explain their actions? Flashback. Not only does this feel clunky and unsubtle at times, but it also eats up runtime that would have benefited way more on character or setting development, and it’s also just a mind-numbingly tedious thing to go through. So it’s a double blow of sorts: lazy, boring exposition that has no right to take as much time as it does. The second arc in general is a bizarre change in direction and I’m struggling to understand why this decision was made.

Because there’s so much exposition, not much actually takes place over the course of the second arc, and everything moves at a snail’s pace. The majority of the exposition is delivered by San Lang, a mysterious young man who seemingly knows about everything. Well-written dialogue can convey both information and the personality of whoever’s delivering it in a concise manner, but the laziness of the script means that San Lang joins the list of flavourless characters. Apparently there’s supposed to be some romance going on between San Lang and Xie Lien, but when characters with the personalities of wet flannels flirt with each other for no clearly established reason, it’s hard to get invested.

Good editing can often save scenes that would otherwise be a slog to get through. But Tian Guan Ci Fu’s editing is just horrible. The editor has this really weird obsession with fade to black transitions when switching between scenes. Due to taking significantly longer than something like a cut, fade transitions have a major slowing effect on pacing. This isn’t the greatest choice, because if an episode spends half of its runtime on information dumping, the last thing you need is something that makes things even more slow paced than they already are. Some conversations and interactions awkward too, with characters regularly reacting in unnatural time intervals.

Then there’s the completely inexplicable errors: in episode 6, there’s a shot involving a botched looped animation of Xie Lien walking that has a frame with his mouth open, which cycles for about ten whole seconds. In the same shot, Xie Lien’s mouth movements stop prematurely, and then San Lang’s mouth starts moving while the audio of Xie Lien talking still plays! Speaking of which, the show has a consistent issue in lip flap and audio sync problems, but this segment is the worst offender by far. I also need to mention how this shot happens to involve one of San Lang’s many exposition dumps, so the fact that the shot lasts over ten seconds in the first place is another big no-no. In episode 10, there’s a shot involving a girl dancing to the beat of Xie Lien’s clapping and a person playing the tambourine… except that Xie Lien's clapping very clearly does not match up with the tambourine player. And in certain episodes, the VAs for Nan Feng and Fu Yao stand way too close to the mic, because whenever they yell (which happens a lot), you can hear this annoying distortion effect on their voices. These are really basic errors and the fact that all of them went unnoticed by the editor is mind-boggling. At times the result can be funny, but more crucially it's distracting to a fault. I honestly don’t remember the last time I got this distracted by bad editing. I raise these examples at the risk of coming off as nitpicky, but these are just the ones I can think of from the top of my head. I don’t mind the occasional mistake, but when it happens consistently like this, it just completely takes you out of it.

That being said, it’s not like Tian Guan Ci Fu does everything wrong. It has a decent, well-produced soundtrack. The voice actors do a serviceable performance. And, as mentioned earlier, the first arc was great. In fact, earlier episodes in general were fairly enjoyable, benefiting greatly from gorgeous backdrops, fluid animation and well-choreographed fight scenes – qualities that degraded as the episodes progressed but nonetheless remained at a reasonable level. It’s clear that some serious time, money and effort was put into producing this, which makes it all the more confusing why they couldn’t hire a better editor, or director for that matter.

Tian Guan Ci Fu’s novel is widely lauded by readers for its masterful storytelling. This quality does not seem to have translated to its donghua adaptation. It really is quite frustrating because it had all of the tools needed for something special: a possible fate hinted by an encouraging introductory arc. Unfortunately, the show fails to maintain its initial high and spirals lower and lower into the abyss as the episodes go on, before crashing in a heap by the end. Because of how uninteresting I found the second arc to be, I have to say that Tian Guan Ci Fu has overall been an unenjoyable experience. Unless watching beautiful men flirt with each other is your thing, stay clear from this one.

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Jan 2, 2021

11 of 11 episodes seen

Overall Rating: 10

Marin-Chan (All reviews)

53 people found this review helpful

Outstanding, beginning to end. A pity that the end came so soon!, i seriously hope we get more seasons on this.

When i started watching this, i did not realise that it was from MXTX, the same author as another of my favourite donhuas MDZS - shame on me!.

I had not read the novel prior, but i have now, and cannot wait for more of this beautiful animation to come back. And really looking forward to the extra episode in February.

I have not watched near as much Chinese animation as Japanese, but recently, they have nothing to envy the other. This is an read more

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Jan 2, 2021

11 of 11 episodes seen

Overall Rating: 8

Yoonzino_03 (All reviews)

47 people found this review helpful

Coming here to review the donghua after completing all 11 episodes.

Preface: I am stating beforehand that I have not read the novel of Tian Guan Ci Fu, thus, all my opinions are based on whatever the show depicted. Despite being familiar with the main characters for a very long time (since knowing about MDZS about 2 years back), I didn't have much ideas about the plot of TGCF. All I had been hearing about it is that it has angst and a very emotional setting.

STORY
As the genres suggest, TGCF features cultivation, martial arts (xianxia) and romance (danmei).The show kicks off with our protagonist, Xie Lan, ascending to the heavenly realm for the third time! Considered a failure for being banished from heaven twice, the reasons behind it are mysteriously unknown. While working to build up his own shrine and reputation in the living realm, he meets a young man named "San Lang", who well, has secrets of his own. Together with San Lang and two subordinates, Xie Lan solves mysteries surrounding spirits and the heavenly realm itself.
8/10

ART
The art is beautiful. The backgrounds and the color palettes used are visually pleasing. The art in the opening is perhaps one of the best I have ever seen in all of animated media. The character designs are commendable, but my only problem is that they aren't uniquely distinguishable. Basically, if you swap Xie Lan's hair and outfit with San Lang's, you won't be able to tell the difference at first glance. Unique facial features, in my opinion, are lacking.
9/10

SOUND
The voice acting is well done. The voices suit the characters perfectly. I love traditional Chinese music so the opening and the two endings were like a treat to my ears. Apart from that, the background score also blends in gracefully with the visuals.
9/10

CHARACTER
There are a heck ton of characters, but the story focusses mainly on the dynamic between the two main characters, Xie Lan and San Lang, who are both very interesting and likable. Supporting characters like Fu Yao and Nan Feng are also uniquely characterized.
9/10

ENJOYMENT
I thoroughly enjoyed TGCF. I was always looking forward to Saturdays in anticipation of the next episode. I don't know how the novel readers feel but I felt that the pacing was decent and every episode was satisfactorily executed, keeping the viewers engaged.
8/10

OVERALL
8/10

I loved watching the show and I am very much excited for the second season, which I hear has already been announced. The plot is very promising and I am very excited to see the development in interactions and dynamics between all the characters. The first season raised many questions and there are many past mysteries yet to be resolved. With the next season (seasons?), I hope we'll get clarity and I'd be able to appreciate the series more.

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