Yao Shen Ji

Yaoshenji, or Tales of Demons and Gods, is one of those new Chinese anime that I really want to like, but really can't bring myself to. As an adaptation of a popular web-novel and manga, it already has really good plot behind it. However, the choices that the animation studio has chosen have severely undercut this massive advantage. One of the most glaring problems is the length of each episode. Episodes are around 7 minutes long on average, but if you consider that the opening and ending animations take up 2 minutes, then you're left with just 5 minutes of actual storyline per episode. While this comes out to about 200 minutes of total animation (around 10 episodes of a normal length anime), it severely limits the amount of information that can be added in a single episode. As such, each episode is only long enough to last exactly one scene or conversation, and it's impossible for them to fit in any extra narrative or background into the anime. On the animation side, they've chosen to go with 3d models for everything. While there are good examples of 3d animation, this is just on the borderline. The quality of the models is at the bare minimum acceptable standard, about the same as a video-game. It's very apparent that where ever possible, they've tried to reduce the complexity of the models by using textures instead of actual 3d detail. In addition, the quality of the motion of the characters is also sub-par, as there are very few examples where a character walks properly - most characters have stiff expressions or weird kinks in their walking animation that instantly catch your eye. Overall, it feels like they offloaded all the animation into an in-game animation software,such as Source Film Maker. This might be acceptable if they compensated with an increase in the amount of content, but as pointed out earlier, there's actually less content than a single season of an anime. On the other hand, it's pleasing to see that they've put in effort into working on special effects for the magic systems in the show. While the character animation may be sub-par, the effects associated with magic activation still look fairly good. In addition, it's also fun to see then using the obvious kinks in their animation quality to showcase unique character personalities on some of the nameless side characters. This is an amazing addition, as the side characters are no longer bland and identical, but actual people with their own unique (sometimes hilarious) walking styles and expressions. In terms of actual plot, the original story as well as this adaptation both focus on an OP character who was reborn and has a new chance at life. It is honestly fun to see this character, who represents the epitome of the saying "Knowledge is power", destroying people's expectations of him and coming out on top in clever and hilarious scenarios. However, as is the problem with most adaptations, it's very apparent that a lot of that content has to be skipped in order to translate the story onto the screen. This is sadly even more apparent here, where the 5-minute episode length severely restricts the amount of information that can be conveyed to the viewer. Overall, unless the viewer has already read the source materials, they can easily get lost in the terminology, magic and ranking systems introduced in the anime. At the end of the day, I think it's a cute adaptation of a very fun web-novel, but leaves me sad about the missed potential that it could have had.