CONTAINS MINOR SPOILERS

Mo Dao Zu Shi [Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation] is a Chinese anime which revolves around the cultivation clans from different regions. The story revolves around the clans Jiang, Lan, Jin, Wen, and Nie, with Yanmeng Jiang Clan and Gusu Lan being the main focuses.
Our MCs; Wei Ying/Wuxian and Lan Zhan/Wangji are a part of the Jiang Clan and Gusu clan respectively.

The story is about the past of these two characters, and the 5 clans, as well as the present of Wei Wuxian, who is currently in the body of Mo Xuanyu.

The plot itself I will not reveal much about, as there are huge revelations throughout the story which I don't want to spoil.

But I will say, the plot is so intricately written and is so well presented that towards the end, I did not want to stop watching until I got a resolution to the whole plot towards the end of this season.
There's gut wrenching moments which gave me anxiety, the voice acting from the VA of Jiang Cheng especially sent chills down my spine towards the end. Overall, the voice from not only him, but all the characters were so well done, that even if you weren't used to listening to Chinese audio, you wouldn't care. You would just get engrossed in natural voice acting.

The animation uses a lot of CGI for backgrounds and other objects but never have I ever seen cgi being implemented so well. There were a few scenes which looked really off-putting but that only happens like 4-5 times and barely for a few seconds so I let it slide. Doing CGI this well, does deserve a lot of praise.
The direction was really well done, I could feel like I was standing right there, watching everything happen. The fights were well choreographed, they always showed the complete fights instead of 2 seconds of fighting and a minute of monologue.

I can't even begin to imagine how much effort the animation of the fights must have took. They showed full hands-on fighting with little to no scene cuts, and the clothes were animated so naturally as well. As someone who does draw, i can say for sure that it's a challenging task to draw clothes even as a still image but to do it so flawlessly during a fight baffled me. Every movement of each cloth was done with proper care and attention. Mind you, there's like tons of characters in almost each scene, so it's visible that the animation team really cared about what they were doing and gave it their best. Chinese animation studios are scary, someone once said to me, after watching MDZS, I understood what they meant.


Also as a sucker for hair animation, they did that flawlessly as well. With long hair, there's bound to be a lot of flowiness to it, and they showed that perfectly with such smoothness.

Nothing except a few CGI scenes here and there looked out of place, and I commend the animation studio for that level of detail. Even the SFX was so well done, like there were sound effects for rain falling onto a sword in ep 5, and it was a nice little touch

Onto the part that actually disappointed me, because I went into this anime mainly because it was tagged BL. Tho I have read the manhua too, and knew there was little to no romance, there was even less of it in the anime. While it doesn't affect my overall rating for the show, it's more of a personal taste thing, I still feel like there's too much chemistry being developed for something that leads to nothing so far. Lan Zhan was being taunted by Wei Ying and he hinted that he did indeed liked Wei Ying, as he would be really Tsundere around him, but it all led to just a worried Lan Zhan and Wei Ying not even noticing. I hope that changes in the remaining two seasons.
Though, the lack of romance does attract a bigger audience, which it truly deserves, so at least I'm happy about that.

Wei Ying, Lan Zhan, Jiang Cheng are the main focus of this season and they truly are well written characters that I have come to love and care for after reading the manhua as it releases and now, watching the anime with pure dedication. I would definitely recommend this show to people who love groundbreaking fights, good animation and historical themes. It's a masterpiece in my eyes.