Min Diao Ju Yi Wen Lu

This was an easy donghua to watch, but difficult to understand. Shen Shuang, our hero is a top echelon military operative (like Seals, SAS, Special Forces) whose unit tasked with apprehending drug dealers with the help of their fat undercover operative Sun Desheng. Everything goes wrong when they are lured into a cave containing the Kunlun Pagoda, which is a conduit between realms and stores energy from otherworldly entities - Demons, spirits or aliens, depending on your take. The Pagoda is destroyed and in the ensuing blast the dark energy grounds itself in our hero. Rather than killing him, the top person Wu Hao recruits ... him to join the Bureau of Paranormal Investigation.

Most viewers were made aware of this from its trailer as it is made by Studio B.C. May, who also did Mo Dao Zu Shi and The King's Avatar so expectations were high. The animation is freaking gorgeous and the action scenes are fast paced, well choreographed and exciting. Visually and sound wise, you couldn't ask for more.

The story and characters are were things start to fall apart, because the series is way too short to do either any justice. I probably enjoyed this more since I just finished watching all the Candle In The Tomb live action dramas, there are 4 series (20ish episodes each) and 7 movies that have been made from Zhang Muye's Ghost Blows Out the Light novels. If you've watched or read the source material, then you'll know exactly what the Shrine is, why one character is looking for a way to break the "curse" and pretty much all the backstory, what the energy represents etc.

Unfortunately none of this is explained in the donghua, which leaves the viewer "guessing" at many unknown elements and turns the story into one of those trite James Bond meets X Files shows. You know the formula - new recruits to secret agency get to meet new agents with special powers and get super cool equipment from a 'Q' like character then go on missions to solve strange happenings.

Honestly, given how GREAT the art is, I'm pretty disappointed with how full of holes the story is. This should have been Awesome, but it's just good and that's only because the action and animation is so good, I can't really rate it any lower.

Note: Eng Subs available for episodes 1-11, I ended up giving in and watched episode 12 Raw but have some Mandarin so could figure stuff out. Not sure when Eng Subs will be available for the last episode, it wasn't on my usual sites as at February 2021.

This is far from what I expected. They change a lot of things regarding plots, characters and even their personality. I mean base on the original work - the novel.

- First off, I believe anyone would be annoyed with that amount of unnecessary CGI they used, the 2D art is awesome but i can't bear the CGI.

- Secondly, they're suppose to use talismans, charms and magic, like ancient Chinese culture things, not advanced technology.

- And something happened in the first episode violate to the very rule of the Bureau - which is i won't mention it as if it was a spoiler.

If you ... completely enjoy the donghua, that's good but i recommend you to try read the original work, it is too awesome somewhat comparable to "The candle in the Tomb", at some points even better from my point of view.

I don't even know how to rate this.
I think this donghua was the greatest disappointment of everything I've ever watched.
Not because of some expectations getting crushed when I started - I literally knew nothing about this show before I started it except for the PV - it was more the expectations I had AFTER watching the 1st episode!

If I had to give a rating to the 1st episode alone. I'd rate it a 10/10 with all honesty in my heart. It started original, had tension, very amazing fight scenes and the MC was apparently a skilled sniper and came off as cool-headed and calculating. ... All in all it was absolutely amazing and I didn't understand how this could have such a low rating.

And then all of that just, *poof*, as if it never existed. Nothing of what happens next makes any sense, the MC's skills just don't matter anymore because he's suddenly using a knife (as a skilled sniper should, right?), only gets kicked around together with his annoying tag-along and there's an useless amount of CGI even in scenes where they're not even moving and I was wondering why they didn't just make the whole thing CGI in the first place.

All in all I felt like watching a completely different show after the 1st episode and had to drop it at the 5th because it's boring, confusing and annoying me at the same time at this point.