Xuan Yuan is an anime about an evil empire with Giant Mechas fighting Little Guys with summoning/magic sent in Ancient Psuedo-China, and if you think that sounds interesting, then I have bad news for you my friends.
While the produces did manage to score a pretty decent musical score, that’s about the only thing they managed to get right. The animation is boring, the character design is generic and slightly off-putting, the CGI is obvious, the transitions are shoddy, and the plot is well… ploddy. For as much talking as these people did – and there was a lot of it, let me tell you – I managed to learn very little about what was going on, and what I did learn, I forgot within seconds. Best I can figure the evil empire mentioned above is called the Taibai Empire? And they’re ruled by a child-empress named I-forgot-and-didn’t-write-it-down-even-though-it-was-a-lame-plot-point-for-a-minute-because-that’s-how-little-I-cared-at-that-point. The most interesting part about the whole thing were the sheep and inaccurately tiny lamb at the beginning.
Empress I-Forgot manages to befriend a slave boy named Pu Zhou, who’s name I did write down solely for shaming purposes. Pu Zhou is apparently a genius, because he hasn’t slept in three years, and instead of going crazy or dying like a normal person, he spent his time reading blueprints. He’s also an absolutely moron who doesn’t check that the coast is clear when he’s blatantly breaking the law.
Pu Zhou used to be friends with two sisters named Ning and Yin, and is very sad because he thinks they’re dead. They’re not dead, however, but working as traveling entertainers who stage boring fights and sing? or at least they sung in their first performance, and it was weird and boring and moving on. Ning lost her arms in an Incident that Yin Blames Herself For, and dammit I’m making them sound more interesting than they are again.
Also there are Can Lang, who has really stupid white hair, and (Yun? Yung?) who has a stupid scarf, and I think they’re rebels? Maybe? They show up for a minute, they use magic, and then they’re gone, and that’s all I know about that.
Which is a pretty big problem all of the characters have, if I’m honest. Throughout the episode, we jump from character to character to side character, and we never see any of them longer then a minute or two. We’re never given any time to care about them, so when, say, one of the characters is shown to have been killed at the end of the episode, there’s very little in the way of emotional pay off.
This is an anime that involves magic and mechas fighting throughout this episode at least, and every single fight was, quite frankly, super boring. How is that possible, you say? I didn’t think it was either, until I watched this farce.
I will not be watching this show again (unless paid large, large amounts of money), and neither should you.
May Robo-Fifi be too full to feast upon thy soul.
Ace Anime Reviews 