Tian Guan Cifu

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]

Hua, Cheng Main

Fukuyama, Jun Japanese

Xie, Lian Main

Kamiya, Hiroshi Japanese

Shi, Qingxuan Supporting

Kawasumi, Ayako Japanese

Mu, Qing Supporting

Kobayashi, Chiaki Japanese

Ling, Wen Supporting

Hikasa, Youko Japanese

Ming, Yi Supporting

Mori, Nanako Japanese

Fu, Yao Supporting

Kobayashi, Chiaki Japanese

Pei, Ming Supporting

Suwabe, Junichi Japanese

Nan, Feng Supporting

Furukawa, Makoto Japanese

Feng, Xin Supporting

Furukawa, Makoto Japanese

Li, Haoling Director

Bickham, Clint Script

Amamiya, Sora Theme Song Performance

SID Theme Song Performance

Reviews

Jan 2, 2021

Marin-Chan

Recommended

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 ... example of one such wonders.

The story grabs your interest from episode 1, i’m a sucker for historical and supernatural, and this one also focuses on the lore of the gods and the three realms, with a twist, where not all gods and ghosts are what they seem like.

It starts introducing the characters that certainly have quite the story behind, cannot help but to be captivated by every single one of them, from the main to the supporting, you just want to continue to get to know more about them.

The animation, the voice acting, the expression on their faces, is just great.
The action scenes, with an exception on one that uses too much cgi, are excellent.

Pleasing to the eyes and ..the ears!! the soundtrack is something else. I love animes that bring sound into the equation, and this one did it beautifully, i have quickly downloaded the ost for further enjoyment.

Sure, it is meant to be a BL story, and there are some tiny hints of it on these first episodes, so if you dislike it, be warned. The story is absolutely awesome, being BL or ‘brotherhood’ or whatever you wish.
And having read the novel now, because i could not wait to know what happens next!, this is, without a doubt the best love story i ever read, nothing comes near. The story just keeps getting more interesting, action pack, mystery, is just awesome, definitely recommended.

I have thoroughly enjoyed watching TGCF, every scene, every detail has been crafted so beautifully and brought to life with such care. Is it deserving the rave? absolutely! There is no doubt in my mind as to this is going to be the first to be dubbed in english next year

It may not have been the best year, but thank you 2020 for bringing this jewel to us!
xxxx

Reviewer’s Rating: 10

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Jan 1, 2021

Aisukurimu

Mixed Feelings

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 ... going to write a review about Scumbag System, in fact, let’s pretend the anime didn’t exist, I want clout but not that desperate.

Okay, I’ve hit my intro quota, let’s get dive right into the pit! No need to pull me back up Ruoye.

I gave the anime a very warm 6 instead of a neutral score of 5 because I think it is actually an alright anime and go easy on it, not too critical for once, rare occasion. If you clicked in from seeing this ranked 22 (dropped to 67 as I revisited it now, 2 above Fate Zero s2) on the top anime category, you might be thinking what’s this? Why? I will reveal to you right now, read the first line of the review. China continuously brings us content that they censor, crazy, I know.

Story:

Not to be that person “THE MANGA WAS BETTER” but TGCF is a one-million-word slow burner type novel, 1,144,742 to be exact. (For reference, The Harry Potter series is 1,084,170). On top, one million Chinese characters is much more than one million of English words due to succinctness of the language.

The anime is alright in terms of adapting, due to censorship, some details and story is either cut or been made tame, however, it doesn’t have a major effect on the main body of the work. Okay, so it follows the novel closely, why does it still feel so damn slow?? As mentioned above, the story is a long slow burner, the 11 episode is 10% of the whole worldview, we are just hovering on top of the iceberg, haven’t even landed on it. There are so many foreshadows in the anime that is glanced over if you never read ahead which is why it’s dry if you don’t see how it’s a twist later on. Like whom the fuck is this San Lang guy why is he so op?? TGCF is another Chinese Xianxia novel, the genre has a lot of lore and terminology which can be difficult to digest for a new watcher. The story itself has lots of lore that isn't explained in the anime, so that’s a double whammy on concept and story.

Animation:

The section that pains me regarding Chinese anime. Let’s talk about the good part, the animation compared to other Chinese animated series, it’s pretty good. The art for the OP and ED, absolutely beautiful.

However, in the sea of good Japanese animations, it is hard to break through. TGCF is pushing it in terms of fight choreography, some frames are subpar. Not to mention that one fight scene in Ep9 that looks oddly similar to a scene in Attack on Titan. Yike Haoliners, that’s low, plagiarising a top airing anime of the season like nobody will notice…

Some scenes have 3D incorporated which is a bit off since the eyes can clearly recognise it’s not the same. Ep6 was just bonkers, the mouth flaps don’t match, random loop footage, wrong audio mixing, they fixed it now but my god if you saw the first upload you would be like what the heck.

As for character designs, it has the same problem as MDZS and a handful of Chinese animes. Everyone has the same face more or less. There are only two type of design that exist here, bishie main cast and then ugly commoners, this is actually a good way to see the foreshadow, if the character is drawn like a bishie, they are important, eg. the reveal in Ep11 of that Bishie which apparently nobody recognised because everyone look the same. Before anyone have a go at me how this is Danmei (Tanbi in Japanese), which is a pursuit of two beautiful handsome men in a romantic relationship but come on I want to differentiate the characters too. I’m not the only one with this problem because I’ve seen people in the comment go “omg is this xxx what a plot twist”, no sweaty, I know they have a cape on so you can’t tell what clothes they are wearing because that was the only indication.

Sound:

The OP and ED are amazing, all sang by very good Chinese singers. The 2nd ED contains acrostic lyrics, which is a neat detail.

Voice acting is overall not bad, little stiff for some characters but it’s not big problem.

As for music, I’m about to slap the editor. If you watched this on Funimation you won’t have this problem. I watched TGCF on official Bilibili, which has an ad that features a yoghurt at the beginning of the episode after you press play, the ad is animated with Xie Lian saying ad lines with music playing in the back. When there’s an emotional or climatic scene in the anime, they play the same soundtrack, I have been conditioned to associate that specific soundtrack to the yoghurt and it become a reflex reaction and I just go ah full of peach bits, full of love, this yoghurt is the real thing, this takes you out of the scene and you can’t go back. Come on, do you not have budget for this, you took a sponsor, get a new track on that ad please.

And the very end:

The anime has ups and downs, not a bad watch. Hard on new viewers, you've been warned newbies.

Until next time
天官赐福 (Tian Guan Ci Fu)
百无禁忌 (Bai Wu Jin Ji)




(What's with the rated 10 reviews written by accounts made two days ago with this as the only review they have written, who paid you to do this, where can I sign up?)

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Jan 1, 2021

Nyanza

Not Recommended

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.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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