Welcome everyone, to round 2 of me making a fool of myself to talk about Chinese animation, this time featuring Tian Guan Ci Fu or Heaven’s Official Blessing. Just like the last series we talked about, Fog Hill, odds are you haven’t heard of it. And if you have then congratulations, you anime hipster you. Just like last time, this isn’t actually a review and is in no way meant to be taken as such. In fact the series is still airing right now, having just shown its 4th episode on Bilibili. Rather I just want to talk about its production and the cool things going on in the Chinese animation scene right now. So let’s just jump into that shall we? Directed by Haoling Li and made by studio Haoliners Animation League, this is Heaven’s Official Blessing!
So first up, who the hell is Haoling Li and Haoliners Animation League? Unlike Samsara Studio from my last post, these two have actually been around the block a few times. Haoliners is based in Shanghai, China, and according to their website was founded by Haoling Li in 2013. Prior to this, Haoling Li primarily worked as a storyboard artist on projects for Shanghai Television, though I was unable to find which ones. Meanwhile Haoliners is a different story, their earliest works being Lu Shi Dai and Man Tou Riji, the second co-produced with Studio Lan. Since then they have done steady work, airing consistently on Bilibili and QIY streaming platforms, slowly growing their staff. It wasn’t until 2018 that they achieved their “western debut” so to speak with their contribution to the anthology series Flavors of Youth.
All that said, you didn’t come here for a history lesson, you came to hear about that sweet sweet animation. And oh, how sweet it is. Tian Guan Ci Fu is nothing like Fog Hill. Where Fog Hill was fast and explosive, burning brightly but quickly, Tian Guan Ci Fu is dimmer but steadier. Its animation is clean, focusing on consistency beyond anything else. Contrast this to Fog Hill which put all of its effort into these explosive, and admittedly beautiful, combat scenes; using rough linework and smears to really sell its motion and abuse its bright colors, allowing everything to stand out. This isn’t to say Tian Guan Ci Fu is inferior to Fog Hill, especially since Fog Hill is releasing an episode every few months rather than a regular weekly schedule. Rather, it’s to point out how impressive this kind of consistency really is.
Tian Guan Ci Fu’s strength, in my opinion, lies in this consistency, particularly in its character acting. As you can see in the clips above, the series does a great job of keeping the characters moving. Of letting them interact continuously with the scene rather than standing around, straight backed and blanked face. There are very few, if any, of the sorts of sliding frames we might see in other series. Static images of characters sliding across the screen, growing larger or smaller as they do to fake movement. This isn’t to say that Tian Guan Ci Fu never has still shots. Rather that they take an approach similar to Ufotable, where they use mitigate those stills with post processing effects. Whether it be cinders floating in the air, smoke effects or dust, something is always moving on the screen.
Now, that in turn doesn’t mean that Tian Guan Ci Fu lacks combat scenes. It has its fair share of them. But unlike Fog Hill, which had these DBZ-style “flying through the air” sort of conflicts, Tian Guan Ci Fu goes for something more classic. Its fights are closer to the Kung Fu movies of the 1970’s. The sort where characters sore across the screen on wire work and the focus is on hand to hand combat. Of course the flash effects still exist, but they are not really the focus of the scenes I have found. They serve more to augment the expressive martial arts more than anything else. That said, Tian Guan Ci Fu isn’t perfect either. It still makes use of oddly-comped CGI and occasionally over compensates with the post-processing effects. All in all though, I think its a respectable end result for the series. But what about the animators?
Of them, there was only one whom I could confirm their work in the show, Kamille Areopagita. Kamille is a young Philippines based animator and you can find her twitter here. While Tian Guan Ci Fu appears to be her debut in the anime world however this is not her first official work. Many of you might have already seen her work in the D&D Beyond/Critical Role theme song, found here, or from her many fan-works in various online communities. To say that she is new to the scene would be a terrible injustice and it’s a joy to see her find greater and greater opportunities out there. If you look around her twitter a bit you can also find some WIP pieces for Tian Guan Ci Fu, other fan animations by her, along with a link to her patreon if you want to support a budding animator!
All of that said, what do I actually think of Tian Guan Ci Fu as a series? Is animation all it has going for it, what about the narrative? Well so far I can say… maybe? It certainly isn’t bad, and unlike Fog Hill it doesn’t rely on just its animation to keep people engaged. Tian Guan Ci Fu has an actual story it is telling, whether I understand it or not. Unfamiliar with Chinese culture and religion as I am, I am not ashamed to admit I don’t quite get this whole “ascension” thing. Nor do I know any of the many Gods referenced throughout the series. Yet despite my ignorance the first arc still delivered on an enjoyable horror/mystery plot. We had zombies, betrayal, twists and turns. It was a pretty good supernatural horror and I am looking forward to watching more as it releases.
So all in all, why am I writing this post, what makes Tian Guan Ci Fu special? To be perfectly honest… not much, at least in the anime scene. We have seen well produced shows, supernatural horror and up-and-coming animators before. But the with Tian Guan Ci Fu being made in China, everything feels… different. You get used to the cultural traits of Japan in anime, its something many look for to distinguish it from western cartoons. So it’s very refreshing to get another culture represented in the medium, to see their approach to story telling. So while the language and setting may be unfamiliar, while you won’t know the histories nor be able to pronounce the names, I think it’s worth giving a shot. The worst that can happen is that you get some pretty animation and are introduced to another culture, if only for a short time.
And hey, if this works out – if Tian Guan Ci Fu and Fog Hill succeed – maybe we can get more of this and less of the moe-blob bullshit many of us have gotten tired of. See you next time a foreign animation strikes my fancy. Maybe I can find something in French next time, who knows.
“Unfamiliar with Chinese culture and religion as I am, I am not ashamed to admit I don’t quite get this whole “ascension” thing.”
You’re not familiar with cultivation stories? They’re super popular in China, to the point where nearly all manhua (Chinese manga) share the same basic kind of power system: characters grow stronger through cultivating their qi, which they do by meditating, absorbing qi, and speeding up this process by using certain stimulants, often derived from Chinese medicine. And the process of cultivation is typically structured in several stages, often culminating in “ascension” of some kind, where you attain immortality, transcend humanity, or whatever. If you’re interested in trying some, I recommend “Tales of Demons and Gods” (the most popular of the bunch, which reads like a typical battle shounen) and “Reverend Insanity” (about a sociopath who is absolutely ruthless in his pursuit of power, which is the kind of story you don’t see very often – it’s on an indefinite hiatus, though, possibly for censorship reasons).
Anyway, I tried the first episode of this a while ago (it got my attention because it has the top spot among seasonal anime on MAL), but personally I wasn’t a big fan. One reason is that it tells nearly the exact same story as “Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation” (another Chinese series): from the strong and easygoing protagonist who has fallen from grace (but is really kindhearted) to its close-to-but-not-quite-BL-because-of-censorship relationship between its leads and its supernatural setting, if you’ve already watched that earlier show, this one feels entirely unoriginal. And the other reason is that I’m just not a big fan of stories of this kind: the leads tend to be boring pretty boys, tailored to tastes that are not mine, and as BL stories, they are arguably more about the relationship between the leads than any overarching goal they have, so if you’re not into BL, it can be a hard sell (though I did quite like the first season of Grandmaster, which had a clear story to tell). I’d love to see this included in the weekly round-up, though, and based on your impressions there I might pick it up again.
No doubt part of why I enjoyed it is because of how unfamiliar I am with Chinese media/stories. Like you say, I had no idea cultivation stories were that popular in China. I haven’t consumed much of their media at all, mostly sticking to more historical texts and even those are in the single digits. I’ll definitely check out some of your recommendations here and see if I can’t get more familiar with them!
For the 2nd point, I get that. If you have seen this kind of story a lot, it makes sense you wouldn’t be as enthused. Because of how little Chinese media I have consumed, it comes off as very fresh for me. Its like how even SAO can feel fresh if its someone’s first anime, but with Chinese works.
I’ll see about adding it to the weekly roundup and commenting as I go. I have no idea how it will turn out as a show, but I thought it was pretty and wanted to try and expand some horizons if nothin else. Thanks for letting me know just how much more I have to learn, haha!
I’m hardly an expert on manhua either, to be honest: I’ve probably tried less than 10 titles overall. Compared to manga (and manhwa as well, to a lesser extent), there seems to be a lot less variety in the Chinese market (censorship doesn’t help, I suppose), so there aren’t that many hidden gems to be found.
There are a few pretty good titles out there, though, so if you have time I do recommend trying some. It’s not a cultivation story, but I’m pretty sure you’ll also enjoy Feng Shen Ji, for example, which is this … super loud and bombastic battle manhua about a kid who decides to challenge the gods.
Recommendations aside, I quite like your posts about Chinese anime: they are rarely discussed in the anime community (if I hadn’t seen HOB on MAL, I’d never have known it existed), so it’s nice to see them get some spotlight here. 🙂
I’d say my knowledge of manhua is relatively minimal. I read one YEARS ago I can’t remember the title of, something to with archeologists and it was a horror story.
There’s an action scifi manga called school shock and a wuxia one called song of the long march, though I think the latter became a very different story as it went on and slowed down, its also on hiatus.
While it was never translated, there is a manwha called steel rain, it got a film adaptation, North Korean soldier escapes to the south during an uprising, carrying an unconcious Kim-Jong-un around.
Oh, regarding Chinese animation, there is one about Karl Marx, not joking.
I know a Chinese animation called Fox spirit exists and there’s the Begonia movie.
I recall Yichang Shengwu Jianwenlu being quite horrible from the first episode bits I sampled.
I’ve read Song of the Long March too, though I don’t remember that much about it (other than that it has a strong female lead and got stale towards the end). Not sure why it’s on hiatus, but the author has actually started working on a different series, which also seems to be rated quite highly: https://mangadex.org/title/38539/song-of-the-sky-walkers
Other than the series I already mentioned I also tried Ravages of Time, an adaptation of Romance of the Three Kingdoms in which all the characters are overpowered geniuses, haha. The ridiculous mindgames aren’t really my thing so I ended up dropping it, but I do respect it for its complex story and philosophical ruminations on war and history. And then there’s Release that Witch, about a guy who uses witches’ magical powers to kickstart the industrial revolution. And I’ve tried a few other cultivation stories (Battle through the Heavens, Soul Land and Star Martial God Technique) that I have mixed feelings about. But that’s about it, I think, which brings me to … 9 titles? Seems about right.