
a review by Philow

a review by Philow
Ok.
My first reiew, so be kind.
Xiang Ling Jin has proven to be a good product.
It's my first chinese anime and i watch this show with a bit of suspect.
After all, the chinese anime production is a recent business and i fear it would be a disappointment.
Instead i found a product under many ways.
It's not a masterpiece, this must be said loud.
There are a lot of difficulties.
The main ones are jerky animations, expecially during fights, when the images are static and you hear only the voice; sometimes there are bad synchronizations between voice/images.
The biggest problem, however, is the plot, infact 15 minites for episode are too little to tell all that would been.
Although the plot in the end is not unintelligible, some subplots would have deserved more space, even if only to appreciatethe characterization of the characters more.
This for what regards the negative sides.
Episode after episode, the show has improved both the design (which in the last episodes was really beautiful), and the animation, where we had some very fluid fights (especially towards the end of the season).
The characters, starting from the protagonist, turned out to be very nice and since I love the girls who beat the people Hua Jin was immediately nice to me using swords and magic instead of the abused wester archery(swords in western world, seems, are regarded as little female)
Even the secondary characters turned out to be very nice, but because of the limited time available, some, like the Taoist and the Buddhist priest were only sketched, a pity because there was potential to tell and that instead remained unexpressed.
Very well, however, was painted the relationship between the other main character, Seven lord, and Hua Jin .
Their relationship has grown over time, point after episode, and even if the outcome was very obvious, the authors did not immediately jump to conclusions, indeed they managed to create both the right emotional and comic tension.
The main villain deserves some attention.
His reasons are well described and absolutely not nebulous, as it can happen.
More time would have allowed to tell his story better explaining better the relationship between the protagonist and the father of the villain, a very important relation for the economy of the story.
In conclusion it is a show that passes abundantly the sufficiency, but with some critical areas that, at least for the plot, could have resolved with episodes of 20-25 minutes.
However, remains a very enjoyable product, recommended for those who like stories of wuxia and magic
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