Ah, Heaven Official's Blessing. Seriously, I have no idea how I first learned about this show, and if I'm being honest, I wouldn't have known this had even existed, both in its original danmei format or the donghua, if I hadn't heard people gushing about it on the internet long after the fact. Like...how the hell did this donghua become so popular? I had no idea what donghua or danmei were before 2021, and the only thing I knew about Chinese animation was that there were some old news headlines years ago about some studios stealing and plagiarizing assets from other movies and shows for their own stuff. I guess China decided to step up their animation game or something. I don't know. But I was bored one day and figured I might as well finally watch Heaven Official's Blessing to see what all the hubbub is about, especially since its long-delayed English dub finally got released. Though maybe checking out the donghua first wasn't the right call, since as of right now Seven Seas finished putting out the original novels in English, and the donghua only covers a small part of them. Having only seen the donghua...yeah, I'm still not quite sure why people are going ga-ga over this.

The story goes as follows: Once upon a time, Xie Lian was the Crown Prince of the Xian Le kingdom. He was loved by his citizens and was considered the darling of the world. He ascended to the Heavens at a young age; however, due to unfortunate circumstances, was quickly banished back to the mortal realm. Much later in his immortal life, after being banished twice by the Emperor of the Heavenly Realm, Xie Lian again ascends to the heavens to work as a godly official. Now known as a peculiar, peripatetic scrap-collector with perennially bad luck, Xie Lian is ridiculed or ignored by most other heavenly officials, reduced to a laughingstock. Nevertheless, he retains his good-hearted nature and only wishes to fulfill his duties as a god. For Xie Lian's first assignment of his third ascension, he is tasked with solving the mystery of a number of brides who have disappeared during their wedding processions through Mount Yujun in the mortal world. During his investigation, he is unexpectedly greeted by a ghost who calls himself San Lang, who seems to resemble a feared ghost king named Hua Cheng. After his first mission is complete, Xie Lian encounters San Lang once again, and the two of them become friends, working together and becoming steady fixtures in each others lives, unaware of just how long their pasts have been entwined.

As far as the animation goes, the 2D animation for this is alright. The backgrounds are picturesque and fit the feel of the show's fantasy setting, the actual animation is serviceable, costumes are amazingly designed even if the character designs themselves lean a little too far into the generic bishounen look, and the watercolor imagery in both the opening and ending themes are absolutely luscious. This is admittedly my first exposure to Haoliners Animation as a studio, and I think they do a fairly good job here. Unfortunately, their CGI is utter crap. Seriously, there are several CGI monsters and animals that are so obviously 3D-animated that they make no effort to even remotely blend with the 2D animation whatsoever, making it stick out like a sore thumb, and they're animated in a very stiff, janky manner. They may as well have come right out of a bad Nintendo 64 game, the CGI is so poorly rendered. Sorry Heaven Official's Blessing, but in that department, Link Click has you beat. Thankfully the soundtrack fares much better, even if I didn't find any background music that didn't use the erhu to be particularly memorable. All the opening, ending, and insert songs, on the other hand, are all amazingly sung and are used to great effect, the insert songs in particular. I knew nothing of Jeff Chung and Li Xinyi before this, but God damn, they have amazing voices and I want to hear more of their work now.

Sadly, I can't extend that same level of praise for the characters. I'm not gonna mince words here, I found all of them to be pretty bland and uninteresting, though to be fair, this particular season of the donghua largely serves as set-up. At eleven episodes and one extra OVA, it doesn't have the time to really delve into and flesh out the characters, main and side characters, in detail. I heard later arcs of the novel are much better, but I haven't read it yet so I can't confirm. But because of the series' nature as a prologue to a much bigger story, none of the characters really grow or change, nor are they really challenged in any real way. Hua Cheng in particular just comes off as a living plot device who always seems to figure things out and always knows what to do, to the point where he almost comes across as a Gary Stu. I especially hated Fu Yao because he spends the entire series being nothing but a needlessly cynical jackass who can't seem to keep his temper in check and never stops arguing with Nan Feng over petty shit. Even what little information we have on Xie Lian doesn't really amount to anything because, as I mentioned before, this season of the donghua is largely just set-up consisting of episodic mysteries that establish something bigger going on, something that we ought to be in for the long haul, but never really addresses. It doesn't help that while some episodes run for 30 minutes as opposed to the usual 22 minutes, some episodes are surprisingly short, running around 15-18 minutes including the opening and endings, with their pacing becoming too fast and suffering as a result of the short episode length.

That's pretty much this season of Heaven Official's Blessing in a nutshell: It's an incomplete adaptation of a much larger novel series, and this season serves as just a prologue. Because it began on a few episodic mysteries, the best way I can describe this show is that it has interesting ideas, but all the depth and follow through of a kiddie pool. There's no real overarching narrative that drives the season, and nothing that happens into the show feeds into one in the first place, other than Xie Lian wondering who the heck this guy in red is that suddenly latched onto him like a lost puppy. Granted, a second season has been announced, and for all I know, it might improve on this season's flaws, but at this point, I don't know if I feel like watching it. I might read the novels if I feel like it, but I don't know when that'll be. At least Seven Seas put them out in English in their entirety, so you can read the entire saga of Heaven Official's Blessing beyond what the donghua covered. But tl;dr, I'm kinda meh on this season of Heaven Official's Blessing, but if you're into stuff like this, good for you. You got more enjoyment out of it than I did.