Late Night Thoughts & fandom Debates Tea Shop

MDZS: Donghua Adaptation

Spoilers for the donghua, live-action, and novel!

One of the first things I thought about for mdzs is the fandom's opinions on the adaptations.

As said before I have checked out the donghua, live-action, novel, and most of the manhua. MDZS does have a special place in my heart so it was so nice to have so many adaptations and to be honest I love all of them one way or another. The story seemed complicated and heartbreaking so I was naturally drawn towards it. The extra scenes with small hints that were only picked up after rewatching the donghua several times, the scenes the dongua altered or missed in the novel, the complexity of the story that came to light and interested me in the right ways...As you can tell, I love mdzs

In this one let's talk about the donghua. 

I actually found the donghua first after searching "mdzs" because I read a crossover fanfic. It wasn't the first time I'd seen xianxia worldbuilding but I've always found it interesting although I'd actually read pretty little on it and thus I checked it out. I watched the donghua and to be honest I don't really remember exactly how I felt about it, I only know I liked it and kept rewatching it, but the time skips were kind of hard at first. It definitely doesn't help that Mo Xuanyu and Wei Wuxian look basically identical hair and eye color wish which are like literally some of the only things to distinguish anime or donghua characters in most styles. I get that they want to convey that Wei is still him but I don't know, it doesn't really work for me. 

The animation was nice although I'm not sure I appreciate what's being done with the 3d and 2d combination, for a lot of the scenery its actually done well and It pretty cool but sometimes like the bowl spilling in the first episode where its suddenly very 3d just serves to be confusing. The 3d also tends to stick out like a sore thumb or just make the animation seem strange at times. I'm not completely bashing on the animation though, I love the animations for the  scenes of Wangxian fighting on the roof in the moonlight, seriously so pretty. Cloud recess in general is very beautiful both in my imagination and in the donghua. Also honorable mention to all the flowyness whenever a character is introduced lol. Do you guys remember when Lan Zhan was introduced?  Everything was swishing around, the wind is a paid actor.

Another aspect that might be confusing about the donghua and Grandmaster of Demonic cultivation in general are the names, I'm sure every character having like three names can be frustrating for people who aren't familiar with xianxia or chinese itself.  The sect clothing and colors can also make it hard to distinguish between characters. Many times when I'm searching my head for a character the color palette is inevitably one of the first thing that comes into mind and with each of the sects having the same colors and clothing the only thing that really discerns them is their hair. The only one you can tell apart is Wei Wuxan but he has that thing with Mo Xuanyu. 

There are a couple of scenes which were adjusted in the donghua such as the added scene of the watch towers with jin ling, or the whole big battle to reveal Wei Wuxian in his demonic cultivator form. I personally liked both of these. It's part of the reason I like the different adaptations they tend to mangify various parts of the story which really makes you think. I also really liked the parallels made with xiao xingchen and Wei Wuxian during the empathy scene. I love the quote from Xue Yang,"Saving the world? What a joke, you can't even save yourself..." It was soul crushing seeing the paralells and I loved it.  However, I don't like what they did to Jiang Cheng at the end. Let's be real we all needed the closure for the brothers and their messed up ass relationship.

In conclusion, my opinion on the donghua is that it is pretty good a solid 8/10 for me. However I think that you should also go read the novel if you've only watched the donghua, both of them will break your heart but the novel truly goes into much more detail. I finished the novel before the final season came out and honestly the impact of the core reveal I think was done much better and the closure was much better than leaving Jiang Cheng like that. 

If you haven't already, go read the novel and watch the donghua and tell me your favorite adaptations of mdzs.