Nezha Zhi Mo Tong Jiang Shi

From the heavenly object known as the Chaos Pearl, two elements are extracted: the Spirit Pearl and the Demon Orb. In an attempt to suppress their power, the Lord of Heaven sends the Spirit Pearl to Earth to reincarnate as Ne Zha, the third son of Li Jing, while the Demon Orb is scheduled to be destroyed by a lightning strike. However, because of a conspiracy by the Dragon King to steal the Spirit Pearl for his own son, Ne Zha is instead reincarnated with the Demon Orb.

With no way to remove the cursed effects of the Demon Orb, Ne Zha is raised under the belief that he will become the great demon hunter the Spirit Pearl destined for him to be. Fighting against his chaotic and mischievous nature, Ne Zha must decide whether to accept his evil fate or rebel against it to prove he is worthy of the future his parents foretold.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Ao Bing Main

Nezha Main

Ao, Guang Supporting

Taiyi Zhenren Supporting

Madam Yin Supporting

Shen, Gongbao Supporting

Li, Jing Supporting

Yang, Yu Director

Cai, Tiannan Music

Reviews

Mar 30, 2025

Mandoriax

Recommended

Well the infamous chinese super hit ne zha... I know I'm late to the party but I do still like to write a little review for the first part.
I'll try to keep it short :)

What did I really like about this movie and why do I recommend it?
The biggest strenght of the movie is the story and the characters. It's not a typical good vs. evil story even though it appears to be at the very beginning. Rather it's complex with all characters having faults but also good or "just" intentions. The most noble and innocent tell lies and the seemingly most evil have been ... deceived and treated unfairly making their actions understandable. Wrap that in a good story structure, add phenomenal music and incredible voice acting (eng dub), top it off with great animation and fight scenes and you have movie that is highly entertaining from start to finish. You feel with the characters, feel their pain, their emotions and their inner conflicts.

Now what's to criticise?
The animation and art style is clearly tailored to a younger audience and needs some getting used to. Especially the MCs design is questionable imo. Also the humour is "childish" and can make for some unfitting scenes.

If you can (literally) overlook these last 2 points this is a great recommendation. Especially if you have kids, they'll love it and as an adult I was also very much entertained and invested in the story and characters.

Now I got to go and watch part 2...

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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May 26, 2020

WdaCdaShdaDid

Mixed Feelings

I really wanted to like this because someone I follow was just SO into it. And it made me cry a little, too, so clearly it connected with me on a deep level very few films ever do. But like... I just... don't like it all that much. And not because it made me cry. It gets a higher rating because of that very poignant moment.

This is a truly gorgeously animated film. The fight scenes are wonderfully made. The environments are breathtaking and beautifully detailed, with bright colors and fantastical landscapes and hyper-detailed towns that we really get to explore. The characters are for the ... most part really well designed and the humans are pretty diverse in design, too.

The biggest drawback is probably Nezha's regular human form. I just don't... find that appealing. At all. He's not cute. He's not funny. He's honestly kind of just cringe in a way that just grates at the back of your mind the entire film. Maybe if I liked animated features starring very young children more I would have been okay with this, but I just watched "The Legend of Hei" and that featured a very young child protagonist who I didn't mind at all, and found rather endearing.

That being said, it is Nezha in this form that made me cry, so it wasn't the sole thing that broke the camel's back for me in this film.

This is probably piggybacking on the overall story, which is "spoiled child terrorizes townsfolk". We get backstory that actually there are reasons he's the way he is - and it's not because he's a reincarnated evil spirit - and they are very sympathetic, and if you're watching the scenes where he's terrorizing people, he isn't actually don't that much that's really "awful", outside of one instance where he's using a giant wooden mallet to hit people poking their heads out of a carriage, and one instance where he nearly murders a group of children with a boulder. Mostly people just drive themselves into a panic and he gets close to them and they make things worse for themselves through self-injury.

That all being said, I don't really enjoy the story. It's not compelling. Particularly given that a good chunk of the story is just Nezha being a spoiled brat. Sure, he has reasons for how he is, and like I said, his story is sympathetic, but that's not... enough. I guess you have to remember this is a literal 2-3 year old who just wants friends, despite how mature he acts, and people are mean to him. But that's not a thrilling story for me. Yes, children shouldn't be bullied or ostracized, particularly because of their birth. And water is wet.

There are some very good messages at the core of this story. Messages about loving your family, giving people a chance, being a good neighbor, avoiding stereotypes and prejudgment, making time for the people you love, and I think that core message of making your own destiny, of choosing to do what's right, even if no one cares, even if it doesn't change how other people perceive you, even if you don't win accolades, even if you don't get to see that better tomorrow, is a very good message. It's painful, but it's a good message. I think. It's kind of just sad, really. And it's nice to see a story about parents with a cursed kid where the parents don't just kick the bucket before the principal story starts, or they're not incredibly abusive towards said child. And hey, Nezha's mom has lines! Multiple lines! In different scenes! And a story arc! And she fights AND cooks well! That's all a bit out of the ordinary. Usually that character is dead, abusive, or either cooks well or fights, not both at the same time! And dialogue lines on top of it all, jeez! Although it's more of an indictment on other writers/companies than praise for this, since the bar is so low.

I didn't find the fart and dick jokes and general gross humor all that funny, but that's par for the course, and they're not as bad as they often get in similar media. Although they are a bit more disturbing than usual when you consider that one party is a 2-3 year old. I didn't find the alcoholism interesting. The pig jokes... had their moments. Mostly the remote control nose thing. I even generally liked Taiya, but the gross humor frequently featured him, so he was really an eh character overall. His scenes also tended to turn flat really fast, and he does some of the more blah things in the story, so... Eh.

Ao Bing's cute. And apparently smart but completely oblivious to the entire reason for his existence, but okay, he's the info dump character I guess.

The music was pretty good, or at least it was used well. Probably the best two jokes in this are around the music and they're amazing. The other good jokes I can recall are also repeated, but used quite well, and these are all rather minor jokes. But good on that.

Overall I just... find this film kind of okay at best. I wish I liked it more. I wish I wanted to rewatch it, or watch a sequel, or watch a story in the same universe. But I don't.

If you want to watch a Chinese animated film about spirits with good fighting and gorgeous animation, if you can find it, watch "The Legend of Hei". That's pretty great. Or if you want something that's got spirits and stars an ostracized child who's working on changing his destiny, watch "Natsume Yuujincho". Or if you want a fantasy story about changing your fate with the central theme, watch "Revolutionary Girl Utena".

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Apr 11, 2025

1stDecame4Danime

Not Recommended

I won't waste effort on a wall of text like some shills since this is a silly children's action movie of no depth.
Full 3d childish art style of silly caricatures doing silly things. At least 3D allows for decently fluid animation.
The characters are mostly action set-pieces, slapstick potty humor machines, cartoonishly evil, assholes, etc. It's very hard to like or care about any of them since we barely get to know any of them, and the MC is a childish gremlin interacting with a walking ha ha fat dumb person joke. The only nonsilly characters in the whole movie are MC's parent's and brother.
Borderline deliberately ... offensive tokenism of minorities in a movie that preaches "do not be biased (against your rulers and their nephews for their incompetence and destructive acts). Prejudice (against the elites) is bad." while going out of their way to uphold divinely approved prejudicial societies of both heaven and earth.
The world itself is generic Chinese mythology of everything magic bs and (un)enlightenment cultivation to curry enough favor to go from courtly aristocracy on earth to (identical) courtly aristocracy of gods in a divine realm. Lauding a culture of greed and supremacism.
The plot is willfully dumbly cartoonishly contrived. The few emotional moments are extremely hard to care about and almost exclusively just the MC (an asshole gremlin surrounded almost exclusively by assholes and silly idiots) crying because sad. The movie is effectively just a bunch of pointless action sequences that are drawn out with completely excisable filler and mostly accomplish nothing but fill time with boring weightless spectacle since cartoon logic is in effect so none of the impacts actually matter and everyone is completely fine. The end.
Also that narcissistically long string of premovie credits including a animation/production company advertising itself as a shitty performance the audience doesn't like followed by them mass electrocution murdering the audience as a threat to enjoy this movie or else was quite on-the-nose.
The english dub is pretty good, though the lines are mostly dumb jokes only a child could enjoy.
And yes, a child could enjoy this movie. There are however way too many far better movies out there with better ideals.

Reviewer’s Rating: 2

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	Poll: Nezha Zhi Mo Tong Jiang Shi Episode 1 Discussion tingy - May 28, 2020	13 replies	by Alvie48xi »» Apr 7, 3:30 AM
	End credits theme? NamaloomShacks - Jun 15, 2021	0 replies	by NamaloomShacks »» Jun 15, 2021 5:28 AM
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