Consider my review as a fan of the whole story, so this review may seem biased to you
Mo dao zu shi, Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, The Founder of Diabolism, The Founder of Evil Magic or 墨香铜臭 is a donghua ( Chinese animation ) adapted from a Chinese novel with the same name ( and have manhua as well )
For me this animation is a point of revolution in the Chinese animation ( I'm not joking )
The story is simply about the cultivation world, In this world there are cultivation sects ruled by prominent clans ( Jiang - Lan - Jin - Nie ), the cultivation generally is a Chinese folklore about purging ( purify ) evil souls or spirits who can't rest in peace .
The protagonist is a reincarnated person who was feared by the whole cultivation world by his dark cultivation named Wei WuXian, seeking revenge for the one who sacrificed his body for Wei, Wei WuXian start his second life, but after that he face a lot of crisis.
The story for me is one of best XianXia stories ( about cultivation ), There is a big character development your gonna notice in the whole anime.
The animation is perfect, the backgrounds are a flawless work of art, the movements of the animation are flexible, a good combination between the hand drawing and the cg .
For me I find the biggest studios mistakes are :
- Changing the timeline of the story, you're gonna notice in the second episode, there is a return to the back in the end of the episode, which will continue for the whole 10 actual episodes, in the novel the past of the protagonist is represented in flashbacks from time to other, so that make some difficulties for the audience to understand the plot .
- There are some parts also changed from the main story, which can make a little difference between the animation and the main story.
So for me :
Story : 10/10 , As I have explained before , a cultivation story with good plot + futuristic bl between the protagonists, makes this story evolved for other XinXia stories, also the evenness are good relied, there is a good work in the story
Characters : 10/10 There is a brand new characters development in this story, totally different from others animations, which remains for me favorable
Sounds : 8/10, for some, you are going to find the voices ( Chinese ) unbearable , but after some some time it's gonna be normal, as for the songs, there is good work on it, some songs are quite good, for me the opening was the great deal .
Art : 10/10, for this animation, the combination between the cg ( no shity japanese cg ) and hand draw is flawless - perfect - fascinating - admirable, to some points your gonna find backrounds somehow realistic .
Overall enjoyment : 10/10, for me as fan of onmyouji ( japanese exorcism ) and cultivation, the enjoyment is reaching it climax, including drama, comedy, historical ( my favorite genre ), all I could say its peace of art .
Note : for some who found the story hard to understand and have passion to read novels, I recommand immediately to read it, the novel is in a total different league from the animation .
