Beitian, an ancient celestial god is overwhelmed by an opposing faction of gods and is forced to put his spiritual consciousness into hibernation for thousands of years hoping someone will be able to become the heir to his god bloodline; Also known in the series as ancient inheritance. Mad Demon Lord follows Lin Xiao, a son of the Lin family patriarch who had crippled cultivation and became a target of harassment by other noble families. One day while recovering from an injury, Lin Xiao inherits the ancient god's powerful techniques commencing his journey to climb the ladder of cultivation while also gaining comrades and fighting noble families/fixing internal strife.
Story & Characters: 2/10
My recap is a dumbed down version of the story; In all actuality the story is very slow and when there is about to be progression, there's a random moment of absurd comedy that breaks that momentum and keeps the plot and character progression stagnant. The side characters feel superficial because they either disappear from the spotlight for long periods of time or are forgotten and there's no sense of real conflict so it feels the episodes are poorly improvised. Obviously we know that's not true because the studio used the novel as a cookie cutter for the donghua and didn't bother to revise the story by removing unnecessary encounters or dialogue. Also, the power scale is so irrelevant, any increase in power doesn't make a difference to Lin Xiao since it seems he somehow magically cultivates to the true yuan realm late stage. Now we're left with a poorly written story, dispensable characters, illogical power scale and terribly absurd comedy.
Art & Sound: 5/10
Viewers who usually watch Donghua already know that the 3D assets are reused between chinese studio projects and the same can be said for the character rigging skeletons. In this series the art and animation is mediocre, it definitely doesn't reflect an anime of 2021 and is more better suited to an anime of 2017 or earlier. The animation is pretty stiff and lacks the range of motion anticipation as well as unsatisfyingly mal-informed cinematography. For a typical donghua viewer though, it's probably unnoticeable from other series with similar story/characters.
The sound is also mediocre, the typical suspenseful music in background, comedic music when there is comedy or slow, soft melodic music during romantic scenes et.c
Overall & Enjoyment: 1/10
I can honestly say this was one of the worst series to be released in 2021. It lacks in a lot of aspects and worst of all can be very boring to watch unlike donghua that are bad, this is bad and boring.
