The review contains major spoilers so read at your own risk!
There's something about some chinese animations that really makes them stand out, the way they give life to drawings when they talk about the back story, the same thing happened in the movie The Great Wall and it made it so much more interesting. The way the entire donghua is animated, it's so unique, so beautiful and so pleasing to watch honestly.
This particular donghua looks amazing, I absolutely love the landscapes, the setting they chose, the way the characters act and how they added that pinch of humor that I found so rare nowadays, almost cartoon like taking me back to Kung Fu Panda.
Aside from those it really shines like a diamond when it comes to fighting scenes, god tier scenes as some would say, it gave me Avatar: The Last Air Bender vibes and I absolutely loved every second of it.
So let's get back to what actually happens in the first episode. Xuan gets to open the seal and fight the Sacred Beast Qilin with the intention of acquiring it's help to cure his mother's illness (Lin), during his fight the other elements tag along fighting alongside Xuan, but during the battle Qilin's son runs away, Qilin realizing that, he captures Lin and Yuan Shu (Shen's sister) and gives the fire element and water element the task of bringing him back ending up closing the seal with those two.
The story then centers Su Xiao An, the daughter of one of the village leaders that ends up meeting the fire element unintentionally. He helps her get back to her village but when they get there they find some of the leaders fighting the 3 demons that Su Xiao An helped on her way. He ends up killing the first 2 quite easily but the 3rd absorbed the malice of some villagers and gained a humanoid form that seemed to have made him stronger to deal with, in episode 3 we find out it was the Beast of Wrath that he kills. This gets the Beast of Insanity and Beast of Greed to finally take action. Meanwhile Xuan finds out what the leaders were hiding and why the Beast of Wrath came there, he retrieves the son of the Sacred Beast from the leader's hands and leaves without talking to Su Xiao An when he passes her.
Su Xiao An then finds out from her father that she lost her memory 3 years ago and the cause was the plague that killed half of the village back then. He told her that when they lost hope a demon appeared (the son of Qilin) and while venturing around a well one of his scales fell in there and the villagers who drank the water miraculously recovered, he left the rest for her to figure out since she saw Xuan leaving with that demon. Su Xiao An suggest to her uncles that she could talk to the fire element and retrieve it while actually wanting to find out more I guess.
They leave us quite teased at the end of episode 3, showing all the fire elements that saw the signal the Beasts gave. We have to keep in mind that this isn't the end, because of the poor staff it took them 3 years to make those 3 episodes and it will for sure take as long for the next ones to appear. It is a great donghua and I really recommend it to people that feel like getting something new.
