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The most devastating thing a show can suffer from is being mid in every category. For a yakuza anime, there's surprisingly little business happening. For a romcom, it's neither very romantic nor particularly funny. For a toxic relationship, there's a lack of morally daring moments. And for a high school setting, there's definitely no studying going on. Nothing much happens in the twelve episodes to be honest.

I can see where this is going, crazy yakuza power couple laced with romance and plotting, sexy and dangerous. But the whole premise falls apart because of Yoshino's bad characterisation. On the one hand, she's a yakuza anego speaks ... with Osaka ben, unrestrained, clever, and doing as she pleases. On the other hand, she's innocent, naïve, and most importantly, a virgin. This character is a sheer byproduct of a woman oppressed in a patriarchal society and how they imagined how someone in a higher position would act.

The way they show how Yoshino has guts is by selling her kidney. Apparently she can't possibly have kidneys and guts in this economy. This bizarre action is meant to demonstrate her defiance toward Kirishima when he suggests she become an escort. Let me check the calculator, she sold her kidney for 25k (USD) to give him to prove a point? Sorry, I know the yen is weak now, but is the Japanese yakuzas that broke that her family doesn’t have 25k??? Why would she give him the money? Why would she even need his approval in the first place?

They try so hard to show that Yoshino is on top that it ends up having the opposite effect. When has anyone in a position of power ever needed to explain themselves? The part in EP11 where she decided to date Kirishima is seemingly a power control over both Kirishima and Shoma is laughable. When you think you're Pavlov but you're actually the dog. Funnily, Tsubaki even points out something similar to Yoshino as well.

The only vaguely interesting women in the show is Tsubaki. Tsubaki is what I imagine the type of person Yoshino could have been, she's sharp and self-assured. Took one look at Kirishima and saw right through that facade. Yoshino should thank her for having some sense and not actually take her kidney. Obviously Tsubaki cannot be the main character because she does not have the attractive appeal of the innocence of the virgin. Nao on the other hand is also a sufferer of this, the way she is portrayed as a scheming woman is hostile. Later then revealed how Nao and Yoshino have been secretly eyeing each other is amusing, reducing two women to rivals competing over a man. Why should Yoshino care if Kirishima slept with Nao in the hotel if she's not interested or plan to be interested in him in the first place? Testing his loyalty with a hand made toy, what a joke.

It's obvious that Kirishima is the little beloved of the story. He's a classic fuckboi, sleeps around, beats people up, but at the end of the day he still has a heart of gold, loyal to Yoshino! It's okay they said he's a scumbag, so it shuts all of us up! He probably also has a meticulously crafted backstory to explain why he is the way he is, I don't even need to read the manga to know. It's always the 'bad' boy who gets character development.

The art style has a bit of a resemblance to older mangas, and it seems they do have some aesthetics from the stills in the OP and ED (not sure about the show feet though, I remain silent about that). But in the main body, it screams low budget, especially the side profiles, it's like Detective Conan side profiles.

One last thing, if she ever does falls for him under the name of 'true love' do @ me, I'll go file this under pampered wife literature and tap on the 'equal' power dynamics sign.

Let me preface this by saying I don't think this anime is horrendous, it’s not amazing either. It just exists. The first thing you’ll notice after watching this is that it's set in an omegaverse. This trope first came around as a trope for sexy times - which is non-existent in this anime as it appears to be a slice of life cutesy type. That’s fine, fluffy abo can exist. But tossing all the politics behind, there’s nothing revolutionary about this anime nor does it even do abo much justice. If you are here for the cute times and happy vibes, read no more of ... this review, advert your eyes to a better paradise.

There’s an inherently suffocating outdated Eastern idealism weaved through the entire plot, and it’s very hard to ignore. If you detached yourself from the abo, this is a Prince Charming and Cinderella story at its core. Hiromu comes from a rich well-off family who is the standard all well loving husband to his partner. Masaki is the poor (omega) looked down upon “Cinderella” who found a husband who is all accepting of his identity, in which he happily becomes a house husband for. Can’t believe I’m still seeing the rich CEO falls in love with a poor girl because she’s different, so the mom gives her money to leave his son trope in 2024, I'm talking about when Hiromu’s dad has a talk with Masaki telling him to break up with his son.

I’m not sure how this piece of media is viewed by the west or people who have grew up with western views, but to me, the fact that the premise is using a second gender still cannot escape the good old tradition of get married, have a kid, ideally male (or alpha in this case), if you can, have two kids, one of each gender, then your life is truly complete as a women (or omega in this case). Your honour, is this just nuclear family value to get people to birth more babies in this declining baby birth rate economy? There isn’t much of this type of anime in the hetero setting nowadays because women would not eat this shit anymore, unless they are riddled with systematic housewife dreams, which there is nothing wrong with it by the way, but the predicament of being a housewife is very clear if you ever interacted with one.

Masaki cannot escape this traditional concept either. He’s a good house husband and have doubts about his gender. Did he have a job before he met the rich husband? Does he have hobbies outside of looking after the baby? It’s all very surface level, they introduce the gender discrimination but never talk about it, as if they needed a “villain” aspect and that was the pick. It just sits there awkwardly like a pity factor.

The anime is like backwards and forward at the same time. What’s worst is that Masaki’s own baby, who he birthed does not even call him dad! Baby keeps on calling him Ma-chan, is that because it sounds like mama? Are you afraid that if the baby called him “mom” it’ll be too stereotyping? But calling him “dad” will be too avant-garde, so you chose an option that even a normal family will find weird by addressing your parent by their name directly. (If Ma-chan is a real Japanese term kids call their mom, I apologise and take my "addressing parent by their name" comment back but my hetero point still stands). Masaki gets referenced as “yome”, “okusan” which is “wife” in Japanese, which by default assuming the omega gender is the women, can we ever escape the hetero nouns. The whole gender situation is also unclear in this universe, as alpha x alpha seems to be the norm, which means alphas will also have the ability to carry babies and do they refer to the alpha carrying the baby as the “wife”? Does that mean Hiromu could carry babies too?? I do find it amusing that Masaki considered committing eugenics in his second pregnancy for a split second, I didn’t know the feudal ideology “son(alpha) preference” they couldn’t kill in China is transferred over to omegaverse Japan. We simply cannot escape the patriarch.

Am I reading a little too much in between the lines? Possibly. I did warn you in the first paragraph. I supposed a piece of omegaverse media that don't contain intercourse will have to advert the people's attention to world building.

Coincidentally the last review I wrote was about Link Click. As I anticipated in the release of the new season for 2 years, I don’t think I can give it a 9 this time around.

If you look for traces of season 1 in this season, you won’t find it. It’s migrated, or at least try to, into the “mystery” and “crime” category.

Plot:
The whole season is one case they are trying to crack. It’s not even cracked at the end? It’s full of pacing issues and bugs. I don’t even know where to begin because I stop caring halfway through. The “villain” Qian Jin is motivated ... by some stupid reason, it’s not even satisfying seeing him commit crimes. The police on the other hand are also unbelievable, there’s been murders and discovery of !!superpowers!! and they are doing nothing about it? Throughout the whole case there’s 1(one) person on it, wouldn’t you have gotten the SWAT team out to protect these people who have superpowers and in risk of dying?? And people started dying for sob factors, I was desensitized by the end like oh cool another person just got shot, thank you, next.
TLDR: we still don’t find out what Lu Guang’s real power is, they hinted it at the last 20 seconds which I presume will be the highlight of season 3.

Characters:
In my last review I said, “People might accuse Lu Guang and Cheng Xiaoshi to be queer baiting, which I digress.” I take it back. I’m not a big fan of participating in fandom drama, but for the last 2 years, shits have gone down on the Chinese side, and the director is basically pushing them towards this route under the table. They will never be canon because it’s just a gimmick to sell merch. (Trust me on this, them straight men do not care about real queer people if there’s no monetary gains)
Qiao Ling is the token girl in the group to show that in this economy we care about women #equality. Wouldn’t you have guessed; this formula has been used to death in anime. Including the hot airing JJK use the same formula!! I should’ve seen it coming!!!! HOWEVER, I do think they heard the people’s voice and gave Qiao Ling a little more screen time and possibly a superpower as well.

Art and sound:
I can’t even be bothered to talk about this because art and sound can’t make up for the lack of logical story. These elements act as the icing on the cake but it’s not the cake itself.

Extras:
They’ve been such a sellout by doing so many ad collabs and selling merch at high prices, which is fine whatever you need money to make the show, yet the quality of the story and money don’t seem to match up. Not to mention for selling the right to make a live action, and we all know how live actions usually ends.

Hi pals of MAL, it’s me again! Back at it with another Chinese anime review. Shiguang Dailiren, where do I begin. It’s very, very impressive for an anime(donghua) original, it’s not based on a big IP, none of that manga spoilers or the manga was better. The cliff-hangers week after week is truly compelling. Heck even EP11 left us on the cliff, or shall I say it pushed me off the cliff. Time travel is no new subject, as the Chinese saying goes, it’s not embarrassing to have the same theme, it’s embarrassing for the one who did it worst. At a first glance, the ... first few episodes had little explaining and it’s difficult to see how anything ties in together, I supposed we are on the same boat as Cheng Xiaoshi who fail to see the consequences and the cases are just one-off requests. Later when everything unfolds, the closed loops make sense, and you just go HOLY SMOKES. I totally had that /oh/ moment when the time travel pieced together.

Story:

Entering the past through a picture taken at that point is definitely a fresh idea I have not personally seen before. However, the bigger highlight is its ability to resonate with all audience. The stories have covered love/platonic/family relationships, from real life natural disasters to real crime cases. This is well received with the Chinese audience with a rating of 8.3 on Douban (Chinese rating platform). The 2008 Sichuan earthquake was one of the most devastating natural disasters that took lives of thousands, while an international audience may not have as strong as attachment towards Xiaoshi’s actions, many Chinese people were sympathetic towards Xiaoshi’s actions to save our loved ones. The kidnapper was based on a real kidnapper who to this day still out there which the police haven’t managed to locate, sadly reality did not bring a happy end like the episode.

As age get to me, I begin to feel these types of stories closer to the heart. The helplessness at work, distancing from friends once very close, parents growing old etc…each episode managed to pull a string in my heart.

The time travelling aspect I will not try to explain because it will spoil the story, that’s the best bit. I will briefly mention Xiaoshi’s “hot-headed” actions, it may seem annoying to the audience, but we got to remember we are viewing this from an outsider god point of view, we know a lot of things the characters don’t know, Xiaoshi trying to change the past and save people is not crazy, it shows he’s a very caring empathetic character. And throughout the series, he learns the consequences of changing the past too. Hashtag character development.

Characters:

People might accuse Lu Guang and Cheng Xiaoshi to be queer baiting, which I digress. Think some people have gone a little crazy just watching two guys on screen together, and to be fair, it could be canon for all we know. The girlfriends in ep2 were named after staff working on the animation, the director revealed they have a CP name too. His explanation was “it’s difficult to come up with names, but when I thought about the characters I immediately thought of them(the staff, apparently they were really friends at uni, both dudes btw) so I insert them in.”

Anyhow, at first glance, it seems Xiaoshi is the more interesting character, but I do think Guangguang has a lot of potential. Guangguang’s past is yet to be revealed, the official posters say his age is unknown which lead to a lot of speculation. Perhaps this will be revealed in season two.

Art:

If one ever read Korean Manhwa, the art style of Link Click might remind you of that. Yup, they commissioned the Korean artists @inplick for character designs. They got some big names working on this, they got a good connection with CoMix Wave, so a lot of staff from CW worked on this. Tanji Takumi as art director, known for working with Shinkai on 5cm, Your Name etc... Background art by Asami Tomoya, worked on Weathering with You, Fate Zero etc.. There are no major issues with the art, colourful, flows well, does the job.

Sound:

Best OP and ED this season, this slaps so hard!!!! The English lyrics are funky and catchy, you should really stop thinking about it…stop thinking about it, stop… I CAN’T. The lyrics are intricately written to match the story. Same with the insert songs, the lyrics and melody hit me hard and brings the right mood to the stories.
Voice acting. I know the Mandarin is a pain for people, I even read comments that said Mandarin sounds ugly, fuck you and your Japanese superiority complex. The voice acting is actually not bad here, the dialogues are not stiff, it’s not the Japanese translated to Chinese kind of speech, it’s fully how Chinese people speak. Voice director A’Jie is also a very experienced famous Chinese voice actor/director.

Overall great Donghua, might even be one of the best ones this year. Very looking forward to season two, hope the quality don’t drop (eyeing Li Haoling because he directed Flavours of Youth and we know how badly that went).

Until next time, I’m about to lose my mind~

***THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS***

Wu Liuqi has a very special place in my heart, to the point that I want to write for it the second time. I have not written for an anime twice before – not that I’ve written many reviews in the first place, anyhow, that’s beside the point.

I have previously mentioned in my first review about the biggest charms of the show (shamelessly plug in my own review). It is the Cantonese style humour and style that makes it so unique and different from any other Chinese animation out there on the market now. This style continues into season three.

I won’t wishy ... washy around with meta for this one…okay maybe just a little bit…

It seems like it took forever to finish since the show started airing around Chinese New Year because they wanted it to be a new year kind of watch, however they only managed to release five episodes because they needed longer time to animate the rest. One of the top comments I keep seeing is “this is a filler season” which I have to disagree. I truly admire He Xiaofeng’s (the director) writing style and the messages he wants to deliver. Granted I do think sometimes he writes stuff that aren’t exactly plot related. For example, EP3 in this season, Ah Qi arrives on an island where everyone has been turned “ugly”. It follows a story of this guy who have faced harsh rejections in life due to his looks, and this guy, is in fact, He Xiaofeng. It’s an anecdote. He attempts to speak about how people are being judged by the cover, whether they are handsome or not. In the end, to break the “ugly” curse, they just needed to kiss someone, but nobody discovered that because nobody wanted to kiss an ugly person. Call me old and sappy and will get emo over anything, but I’m sure a handful of us have experienced anxiety towards how we look on the outside and that shit hits hard. This kind of commentary on society have been weaved in since season one and I like that about it.

More plot related episodes, EP4 brought back He Dachun, one of the people on Chicken island. On his way to Xuanwu we learn a bit more about his character, the dedication he has to continuously improve himself. I do think he’s a little tribute to Bruce Lee, “Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself, do not go out and look for a successful personality and duplicate it” if that isn’t Dachun in a sentence. Dachun is another one of us amongst the crowd, we may not be born gifted, or even if we were, without hard work, being gifted is not enough to achieve the best of yourself. Dachun is doing his best in his job and to protect Eleven, his client. This follows on from the previous ep, he’s not handsome, a bit straightforward, but his heart of gold (or body of steel lol) and sincereness is enough to move Eleven. If you didn’t get emotional when Dachun said he will be her umbrella on rainy days!??? Are you just a sinical brick???!?

These episodes are equally as important to build up on characters apart from the main cast, the side characters will play a role, makes the story fuller and more interesting, reoccurring characters is the bomb. Besides, the episodes are 10mins long, so the whole season is 5 episodes of a typical Japanese anime, that’s not a lot of episode for built up. If you only care about fight scenes, then this is not the anime for you.

The only downsides are EP6,7, which was not directed by He Xiaofeng but his students and colleagues. You can sort of tell, I watched EP6 and went what the f was that and then the ending credit listed a different guy directing it. I think the writing is mediocre (to bad) in EP6. The fights sequences are absolutely beautiful as per usual, the dialogue and logic were not on the other hand. However, he brought it back alive in EP9,10. The twelve imagery shots were brilliant, encompassed a lot of artistic symbolism. One being the ant climbs over the window and witness the bloom of an epiphyllum, which represent the Chinese idiom 昙花一现 (tán huā yī xiàn) literal translation is “epiphyllum at once”, which describes a concept of good things are “short-lived”, symbolised Ah Qi’s current state and his happy life on Chicken island is short-lived.

EP10 showcased a well written Thirteen, which I adore with my whole life. He Xiaofeng mentioned in an interview that he wishes to write a truly strong female character and I have to say, he delivered. We see Thirteen who have constantly struggled with her abilities to become stronger, to be able to protect the things she cares about. She has her own thoughts, her own judgments, her Shifu wants her to kill Ah Qi, but due to her fondness towards him she decides to protect him instead. In the fight against Black Bird, she knew she was not strong enough to fight against him, but she did not want to be a coward and back out, instead she closed her eye, charged at him with all she has. We see her knife gets shattered by Black Bird as expected, what sliced Black Bird’s mask was Ah Qi’s sword that were in her hands. Can you tell how magnificent this writing is? Hero who saves the beauty trope is cliché and puts women in a weaker position that require a man to come to the rescue. Ah Qi’s love towards Thirteen not only ends at protecting her but also a respect towards her decision to do something for herself, he aids her on her journey to get stronger too. This is your fight, but here is my sword to help you win, you don’t need to stand behind me. An equal relationship is not I do this for you, it is we help each other to become better versions of ourselves on the way. To quote a popular Chinese phrase 双向的奔赴才有意义 (shuāngxiàng de bēnfù cái yǒu yìyì) “only fighting alongside each other is meaningful”.

Did I say I love Thirteen? I’ll say again, I love Mei xiaojie too, Ah Qi, you have a competitor.

To wrap up, art was good quality, the pipa and music was amazing. Comedy still delivered despite being the “serious” season. You gotta give it to them, the whole team is less than 20 people. They only have funding now because they emailed an investor, sugar mama thought it was cool so she funded He Xiaofeng to set up an entire studio. They are pretty poor to the point the animators are also the OST makers, voice actors, and song writers. Did I mention He Xiaofeng is the voice of Liuqi as well? One of the animators working for him was previously slicing chicken at a restaurant Xiaofeng regularly eats at, he just discovered that while the dude can slice chicken, he can also draw.

What’s not to love about an anime created by an eccentric mad genius?

It was only a matter of time before Korean content start to appear on MAL as Chinese content have comfortably found their position on this site in recent times. The reason why I decided to search True Beauty on MAL is after reading the latest chapter. The webtoon continuously astound me after every chapter since the newer arcs and I just needed to talk about it with someone, something, a wall, anything!

I started read this around Chapter 40 when my friend urged me to read this cute webtoon. Few years later, needless to say my friend stopped reading this and moved on, as for me ... I’ve stopped being friends with them and haven’t moved on because they left me with the dumpster fire that I cannot look away from.

The beginning arc of the story starts in a high school, like a typical shoujo high school manga. The catchy point of True Beauty is that our main girl Jugyeong, she is considered “ugly” and had been bullied because of her looks, later, she learns how to do makeup and turns herself into a “goddess” and everyone suddenly loves her. This includes two very handsome boys, Seojun and Suho. Yes, you know it, it’s a love triangle. Reading the comments section on the app is absolutely eye-opening, nobody is talking about how shit the story has become but rather STILL debating whether they are team Suho or Seojun like it’s the 2000s Twilight team Edward or team Jacob fight.

Let me open the review up by saying how the English translation of the webtoon is misleading, the original Korean name directly translates to “Descent of a Goddess” and not “True Beauty”. To this point in the webtoon I have failed to see how it has lived up to the name. The reason the story gained a lot of popularity is the ability to resonate with its audience with the premise, the chances are most girls probably have experienced what Jugyeong have experienced with society’s obscene beauty standards. In the early days of the webtoon, everyone had hopes that as the story develops in a way that Jugyeong will gain confidence and discover her “true beauty” eventually! Except that did not happen and I’m pretty sure that was never intended to happen but rather the English translation gave it too much credit.

The development or the lack of is really disappointing, literally the same shitstorm happens every week and nothing has changed. Jugyeong was aspirational at the beginning trying to find herself and pursue things she’s interested in. After Suho fucked off to Japan, everyone’s lives just stopped and lived on a loop. Why did he not call/text/email/fax anyone is beyond me, he is also very rich, a flight from Japan to Korea is not that expensive, there is no valid reason why he cut out all of his friends in the modern era just because he moved to a new country. Before you have a go at me saying he has depression, let me start a new paragraph.

Missed opportunities to tackle societal problems:

Suho’s depression was never tackled, it was used as a gimmick to say he sad boi who found out a girl he liked was going out with his best friend and oh his dad was sick or something. None of it was explored, it was just brought up whenever it was convenient for the plot’s sake.

Briefly mentioned above about finding one’s true beauty, Jugyeong never come to terms with herself and she’s still just fucking about every day on Instagram living this superficial influencer life she has created for herself. What’s more hilarious, Jugyeong shows clear dislike at this guy who she went on a date with, the reason, right, you won’t believe this, because he looks different to his filtered pictures, how contradictory. With a story premise like this, it would have been great to talk about beauty standards, how it physically and mentally harms the public, in particular in Korea where the standards are ridiculous.

Tragic back story suicide gimmick. Suho and Seojun have a best friend called Seyeon who committed suicide as kpop idol who received immense amount of hate online. It was mentioned briefly in early chapters and then the details of it were brought back up in a later day. Yaongyi was underfired for bringing this back up during a time where a real kpop idol have committed suicide. Again, it was the perfect time to depict on the Korean entertainment industry, idol and fan culture etc…except it never happened, Seyeon was just a tool used to create feud between Suho and Seojun so they have a reason to be angry at each other about.

The most recent topic is Seojun becoming a kpop idol and how his relationship with Jugyeong will conflict with it. Kpop idols are famously not allowed to date because of this toxic culture of fans taking ownership of their idols, it’s a big issue in the current idol fan culture, not just in kpop, it’s also very prominent in jpop and cpop. Nope, nothing happened, they just broke up, boo hoo let’s move on so she can date the other guy.

Well you might be saying, aren’t you expecting too much from nothing? Sure, I described these topics as interesting points from my own perspective, I just think if Yaongyi have the balls to use some sensitive topics for clout, they should at least do it some justice.

General character problems:

Jugyeong – Judging other people’s looks even though she suffered the same, never learnt from the past, lost aspirations and is now wishy washy with her studies, she couldn’t get into the makeup school she wanted so god knows what she’s doing at university now where there’s more guys hitting on her. All she thinks about is love, her passion for special effects makeup have gone out of the window. She constantly gets drunk even though she knows she’s lightweight and then cause a bunch of trouble. (This would have been another perfect commentary on Korea’s drinking pressure)

Seojun – He’s been alright, probably the only character who have a goal right now, working hard to support his mother and sister. But the story paints him in a bad light ever since he started going out with Jugyeong, he’s insecure about money so he does many part-time jobs to buy gifts for her and do his best for her. Yet she never stood in his shoe and thought about him, all she wonders is why he don’t reply to her texts – arguably that’s communication problem on both parts. He becomes jealous and suspicious because Jugyeong got a little too close to Suho and didn’t tell him, especially when these two had romantic feelings for each other in the past, his emotions toward them are totally valid, what’s more Suho still have feelings for her. Basically, he looked after Suho’s girlfriend for three years in a nutshell.

Suho – He is actually a stale as a brick character, he has the bare minimum of personality, his whole personality breaks down to rich, unemployed and has too much time on his hands to centre his life around Jugyeong. He leaves for Japan and we literally never heard anything from him, he suddenly returns…for what? To participate in this shitty variety show and then hanging around to see if he can bump into Jugyeong hoping she’s single?? All these girls screaming about Suho is really looking by everything because he’s good looking. If you swap his gender to a girl, people will be calling him a sly third wheel bitch. He comes back knowing the other two are now happily together but continuously test the waters with Jugyeong, yeah she’s dense and he is too or? Not saying opposite genders can’t be friends, Suho clearly still have feelings for her, he hangs out with her, he stands up for her when she gets drunk RIGHT IN FRONT OF SEOJUN trying to I don’t know…one up him, come on! Wake up!

Bottom line:

I am not saying you can’t have cute romantic shoujo stories, but the webtoon have just gone bad and superficial, no development of characters, the same plot just keeps repeating, the characters are no longer likeable, the only thing left is the bling bling cover and nothing inside, there is no “true beauty” to be discovered, only a pretty ugly shell.

However, if comes a time when it gets good, I will come back to edit this and eat my own words, until then, annyeong!

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?)

You look over at The God of Highschool and come have a peek at this and look again, hang on a minute, they are both by MAPPA this season???

It would be wrong to say that I didn’t contribute to the production of this anime as I have made a full on 188rmb in app purchase on the game. While I’m no whale player, I am a LV.70 player, as of writing this review, the diary function of the game tells me I’ve met our four boys for 1000 days, and Ling Xiao (Shaw/Siho/Sho) for 575 days, the Chinese server of the game existed for 1016 ... days to put that into perspective.

All the players of this game will passionately inform you that Mr Love: Queen’s Choice (Who even came up with the cringy English name, the localisation of the English names is also a bit crap in my opinion but I’m not going to dwell on that for now) is not like your average otome gacha game, joseimuke to be exact. It really is one of a kind, 50 hours down the game your ‘love interest’ will be pointing a gun to your head threaten to kill you.

Story:
The story from the game is just a mediocre superpowers plotline, and frankly that didn’t change for the anime either. “I” have EVOL (superpowers) and “I” try to uncover the evil organisation who is trying to destroy the world, that’s it in a nutshell. Safe to say the story doesn't make a lot of sense as you continue to watch on.

I don’t know how other players see it, but the plotline of the game isn’t even the fun bit, the story is a bit messy and have plot holes here and there. Season 1 of the game didn’t even have a conclusive ending and season 2 was just the MC rebirthed into a new world, literally an AU. The whole story of this game is dragged out to make sure it never ends and make players pay more money.

The MC not having a name is a self-immersion device put into the game, Chinese players of this game gets really really really angry if there was ever a hint of a name given to our MC. But man, getting called Poteto-Chippusu-hime takes you out of the immersion if anything, flipping hell, stop being a ween, just give her a damn name.

Art:
Let’s be real, you are lying to yourself if you watched The God of Highschool this season and come here to say this is even remotely equal in art quality. If you showed me EVOL and then told me MAPPA was doing season 3 of SNK I would be anticipating in a One Punch Man season 2 travesty.

This is a quick money throwaway anime, the whole point of this is to make more merch get more people to play the game, as if anyone on the production cared to draw anything properly, but the developers of the game know even if it’s shit people will still buy into it, they look down on you for playing otome games and then feed the otome game to you, kaching! Kaching! We know this because the fangirls are screaming at this saying how good it is and how MAPPA did a great job. Paper Games be clowning you.

Sound:
The music and ost is mediocre I don’t have anything to say about it. I wanted to talk a little about the CVs of the anime. There’s a Japanese and Chinese dub to it, pretty faithful to the game with the same voice actors in both versions. The Japanese dub is pretty good, the Chinese dub on the other hand is not as polished as the Japanese one I have to say. The issue I have with the Chinese dub is that the mouth flaps don’t match, they didn’t even bother to match it, funny enough, the text in the anime has been changed to Chinese, like the text on the whiteboards and notebooks, but not the mouth flaps!

As for “my” voice, “Watashi” is much better in the Japanese version, voiced by Kanemoto Hisako. In the Chinese version I don’t even know who it is, there’s very little information on “Zhang Qi” on the internet, I have a feeling they kept it low because again, allowing players to self-insert.

The four boys in the Chinese version is alright. If you are familiar with the voice of these four voice actors, you’ve pretty much watched every Chinese anime (and drama and any media that requires a voice). The voice acting industry in China is not as mature as the one in Japan, the same old voice actors will literally do every other show there is. They are very versatile, so versatile you probably didn’t even notice Kira and Lan Wangji is the same voice actor. Haku is also Wei Wuxian fyi.

Overall:
Happy Mid-Autumn, what terrible anime.

I don’t know how to convince you to read my long review, I might have to say something click bait, I will explain the BUTT character in my review, yes that butt that only appeared in the ending song, yes it has a back story! Please hold on…

Amongst a sea of saturated Japanese styled animation, Chinese animation have struggled to create a style for itself. When The King’s Avatar (Quanzhi Gaoshou) was initially released, there were comments on how characters have Japanese looks towards them – which I have to agree, if you ever watch anime you will know what I mean, it’s the way ... how Japanese anime draw eyes and hair, it’s not something you see in the western animation. Cike Wu Liuqi have managed to develop a style that is unique and simplistic, but still pleasant to the eye. I got to give it to the ED too, the colour palette and style both give a warm happy chill vibe.

However, the true highlight of show is the comedy, voice acting, voice acting and VOICE ACTING, have to say the important things three times! If you don’t speak Mandarin it might appear to be not funny, the Mandarin dub is in fact Cantonese Mandarin, what does that mean? It means the Mandarin is not the standard, it’s mixed in with dialect, it’s so prevalent amongst the Chinese Canto population that there’s even a term for it “广普(guangpu)”. This information is pointless for you who is reading this who don’t speak Chinese, let me give you few examples of why it’s funny in the show. The “鸡霸蛋(GaiBa Egg)” can be interpreted as the Cantonese say for “don’t talk bullshit” or “penis”, the “Flying chicken” is a pun on airplane in Mandarin, Dai Bo sometimes also swears in Cantonese “扑街(Puk gaai)”, Cantonese profanity is just flipping hilarious.

The comedy of the anime heavily resembles early Hong Kong films, often found in Stephan Chow films. This slapstick humour has a term “无厘头(Mo lei tau)”, popularised in the late 20th century, there’s a whole detailed Wikipedia page on it if you’re interested. The HK cinema and films in general have suffered in recent years, people often sigh that who will inherit Stephan Chow’s greatness in the cinemas, who will arise in the new era??? I can put my hands on my heart and say Cike Wu Liuqi have portrayed the Mo lei tau slapstick comedy well, it has multiple tribute towards Chow’s films, A Chinese Odyssey, Shaolin Soccer, Forbidden City Cop etc... Chinese anime (and TV in general) have a standard for how they want Mandarin to be spoken, this is a breath of fresh air with its crocked Mandarin, big applause to Jiang sir’s vocal team directing.

Moving on!

Of course, what terrible review this will be if there is no insight? What seem to be a comedy show have a healing element with a melancholy undertone. Episode five probably stirred up the most discussion on China’s side. The new mission was to assassinate a granny who is a tyrant and uses her old age to scam people, this scenario reflect the society in China where there’s old people who act like this to get their way and scam money, this has become a phenomenon it’s almost on the news every other day. Soon enough, Seven realised the person who hired him to kill Grandma is in fact her own son, unable to fathom why you would want your own mother dead, Seven decided to save her in the last instant when Grandma attempted to shield her grandson from the arrows.

“Let me be the one who go to hell, don’t hurt my family.”

Grandma is not necessarily evil, everything she have done is for her family, even with the money she scammed she intended to spend it on her grandson. In the ED we take a glimpse of Grandma’s whole life, she spent her whole life raising her son to raising her grandson, but in return she experiences loneliness as the family she cherishes leave her be.
We see in the final moment when Grandma returns home, her son hides a piece of paper behind his back which is an accident insurance. The son will get big money if she dies of an accident, explains why he hired seven to assassinate her. So, is he the real bad guy? Is Grandma innocent?
There are no absolute black and white with a lot of situation, Grandma’s tyrant behaviour market is still not excused, but does she deserve to die because of that? At the end of the episode, Seven concludes:

“I really don’t understand.”

Neither do I, but they did not include lyrics in ep5 ED for you to ponder over the matter. There are plenty of moments in the anime that makes you ponder.

As for the Butt character, the back story is he was a regular person before, one day he fell off a cliff and the cat doctor (the one who basically fixes everyone on the island and charge a ridiculous fee) saved him. The damage was so bad that the top half of his body is no longer functional, so the cat doctor amputated him and moved his brain to his butt, he was then brought back to life. However, because he has a butt face, everyone on the island singled him out and bullied him, he hired Seven to assassinate himself. But Seven convinced him to live on and he was slowly accepted the people on the island, happy ending.

I wish I were making this up but it’s all official, because of it being so obscure it was cut out after review. That episode still exists on the internet, if you know how to use Bilibili, the code is av96802282, it’s a clip of the original PV.

Which leads to the conclusion, if you made it this far, I’m glad, I have the power to go on and write more “insightful” reviews. Chinese animations are on the rise, Cike Wu Liuqi have proved that Chinese anime could be of quality with great humour, the different songs in the anime is so iconic, it matches the each individual story and character. Go check the anime out /lengzai/, you deserve it.

Until season three, snip snip~

Move along, I’m Chinese, this show is targeted at me and I’m telling you, it’s shite, other Chinese people think so too. End of review.

Okay.

This review took a yearlong because I struggled to finish the film when it first came out, here I am a year later, finished it, felt compelled to write a review because it was bad bad.

First of all, the Netflix version and the Bilibili version is not the same, not only the voice actors are different, the music is different. The Netflix Chinese dub was absolutely awful, the writing was extremely inarticulate, almost seems like it was written and read by ... a 7-year-old. Even the English dub sounded way better, heck the Brazilian Portuguese was good too and I don’t even understand it. Netflix didn’t even bother dubbing the second story in Cantonese or the dialects in the third story.

Second, after switching to the ‘original’ version, it’s still shit! What the fuck!! Like the voice acting is slightly better, but it’s still terrible! The second story was set in Guangzhou, so the characters spoke Cantonese, but it wasn’t done very well not because the Cantonese was inaccurate, but the voice actors just read lines with no emotions put in. The dialogues across the whole film sounds like as if I wrote it (and I have Chinese writing skills of a 5-year-old).

I have very fond connections and memories with the three cities in the film and was excited to see a film around them. The name of the film could also be translated as "four types of youth”, the three types are the ones in the film and the final type is supposed to be your story, you’re meant to self-insert your youth to make up for the fourth type. Poetic sounding right? Except, the other three types of youth story are a bit lame, even my pathetic youth have better dialogues. The first story may as well be “noodle noodle, noodle noodle noodle noodle, noodle.” Second story is shallow and unlikable. Third story is rich pretentious dude reminisce missed youth except he didn’t miss it because he’s rich.

This type of short story telling really challenges the writer to be concise and deliver an impactful story in significantly less time. In a traditional film you may get an hour or two to build up characters and plot whereas here there’s only 20 minutes to tell one story. If I was the writer, I would really contemplate the purpose and message that you want to deliver to the audience. Quite frankly, I failed to see a good meaning (I didn’t say deep because not everything needs a deep meaning, but it needs at least a good meaning) in the three stories. The first two was just boring and the characters serve no purpose, the third one is slightly better but then I got frustrated because the guy indirectly got the girl lying on the hospital bed, then at the end he got rich because his old house got knock down and the girl came back, what kind of pretentious Mary Sue is that, it would have been more emotional if she never came back, it could have delivered a ‘sometimes we pass by things that were important to us’ kind of message. For once, a sad ending might have made it a better story. After the credits, it forcefully put the characters in the three stories together, what was the point of that??

However, there is one good thing about the film and that is the still background scenes, it’s got that Shinkai look to it, that’s it, nothing more because the character designs were bad.

TLDR: bad story, bad characters, don’t bother watching. It might actually be worse than Uchiage, is that even possible.