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I'm really not normally one to write reviews -- the last time I wrote a review (and also first time, might I add) I only wrote to warn people with photosensitive epilepsy about extreme amounts of flashing in something I watched, while attempting to tack on somewhat of a proper review so it didn't feel pointless. I'm just not good at writing out my thoughts in this sort of formal, long form format, and thus I don't enjoy doing so. The WEP special though has me so blown away (in a bad way, obviously, based on my score) that I just have to write *something*.

I ... wasn't expecting some big explosive end to everything like some people seem to be thinking anyone giving this special a low score was, and I frankly didn't 100% mind the recap either. I was just expecting there to be something to tie up SOME loose ends and maybe introduce new ones since, after finishing episode 12 (and honestly even before) it was pretty obvious this wasn't going to be the end. This didn't really do either properly, only seemingly aimlessly introducing new loose ends. It felt like a metaphorical pitching machine on the fritz, constantly throwing plot softballs at your face without any rhyme or reason. You don't have proper time to process what's happening, all you know is that it IS happening. The things that happened felt poorly thought out, or like the way to actually fit them into this episode was the part that was poorly thought out since the events almost felt like something that needed to be stretched over maybe another episode. Everything felt incoherent.

I just don't even see a point for this episode's existence, 12 would've been a better end to the season, though abrupt, and I kinda feel like it'd be better to release the recap as it's own special online on YouTube or something sometime near when the next season begins (if it ever happens). As it stands now this is a really piss poor end to the season and would almost make me not want to bother with a season 2 were it to ever come out, had I not just watched a bunch of other episodes literally directly before watching this one.

Before I go onto the actual review, I'd like to quickly mention that this is probably not something that you should be watching if you have photosensitive epilepsy. There's lots of instances of high-speed flashing visual effects in this anime that I found extremely irritating, with the worst instance being in the intro where there is red and white flashing.

Ling Yu's story is very hard to follow as it doesn't give much of any background as to what's happening, to the point where it almost feels you're watching the 2nd season of this show while skipping the first. Everything also moves way too fast (likely ... due to the episodes being so short) and this also makes things more confusing. This show really felt like it could've used one or two extra episodes to set everything up.

There also doesn't feel like there's much if any character development, again probably the fault of the short episode length and total episode count. Maybe the only character who I'd say changes at all over the duration of the show is Tang Siqi, but even then she barely changes at all.

Then there's the visual effects, which I've already talked about at the very start of this review. The lightning in the show flashes in a way that frankly sometimes hurts to look at. Instead of doing something that could be tolerable, like having the lightning be full opacity one frame and then slightly transparent the next or something similar to that, you have brightly coloured lightning that's at full opacity one frame, and gone the next.

All in all, Ling Yu was frankly kind of disappointing. I was originally excited to watch this because the synopsis made it sound interesting, but I mostly just found it boring and confusing.