I recently watched all of Heavens Official Blessing on Netflix. I found the show to be captivating and very different from what I am used to. But just how good was it and is it worth a watch?

Disclaimer, this is my experience with the show. I want to do a review based on my thoughts of the 13 episodes I got to watch, yet I will try my best to keep spoilers out of it. Any and all art used is owned by the creators of this series. I watched subbed, as It was the only option available on Netflix, where I watched the entirety of Heaven’s.

What is Heaven’s Official Blessing?

Heavens official blessing is a donghua, Chinese animation, that is based off of a Chinese web novel series written by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu (Wiki). The animation is being produced by Bilibili and Haoliners animation league (Wiki). The first season came out in October of last year and has concluded since January of this year, and the second season has been confirmed to be in the works by Bilibili (Wiki).

My summary.

I am going to go ahead and give a spoiler free summary to the story. I will include plot points about 1 to 2 episodes in with a general premise of the show and it is as follows. We see immediately off the bat the main character ascending to heaven as what seems to be a crowd are confused as to who it is. We then learn that the main character has an immense debt to the heavens that must be paid and to pay it he goes to the human realm to hunt down what they call ghosts. The show follows him and a small group as they hunt down these ghosts as well as general antics . To divulge much more would be going into spoiler territory so I will leave it at that.

Story and plot forwarding.

Here I would like to talk about the techniques used to advance the plot of the show and develop their writing to keep the plot flowing foreward. They use great storytelling methods like quick flashbacks; nothing that is too long and nothing too brief at different intervals in the story. They do this to establish all different kinds of character lore, yet I am not the biggest fan of how they are implemented. They can sometimes catch you off guard and leave you wondering what happened, and who was involved in that particular flashback. They try to keep it short and I can appreciate that, as I hate being pulled out of the plot for too long, but they may have glossed a bit too quickly a bit too often.

This was a common problem that I had with the show overall. I often thought to myself, what is going on? How are these characters related? What is a heaven ascension and who are all these characters that are in heaven? The current plot flows really quickly and smoothly, it is the underlying character plot and world building plot that I think is a bit too sparse and convoluted. I often think that since it is themed around ghosts and gods, and that it is from a different culture, it may just be a lack of education on my part understanding certain references to gods and deities from Chinese culture.

Characters.

I think a show can really be made or broken by good characters and character writing. I think this show does a solid job at character writing. I loved all the characters that I encountered when seeing them interact with each other and thought they had a lot of depth to them. Although this often left me wondering the intentions or reasoning of some characters and why they might do certain things in the story.

One of the good things about me having questions with the plot surrounding the characters is that the characters thusly have a lot to them and are not all surface level tropes that we can often see in anime. There is a lot there that I want to know about these characters I just wish I learned it in a more cohesive way. I felt by the end of the first season they had tried to explain the main character, but up till the last episode I was still learning new things about him when the previous were not answered. With that said, that makes me feel a bit more inquisitive about he characters, making them seem a bit more genuine in a way. In doing so, the characters are written in a way that can make us feel deeply for the events happening to them, or the things that they say by playing so well to emotions.

Art style and animation.

I thought that this was the shows strongest point. The show is absolutely gorgeous and the animation felt very smooth and was very pleasing to watch. There are moments where the camera would rotate and there are many times I see them animate the area as a 3d space in a way that still feels 2d, but not here. It felt like I was in the area and could reasonably fit in without it being awkward, no side lines of objects that refused to turn on time and they do a great job with perspective in this show. Let alone how great and polished the art of the characters look. I love the proportions of the characters and the expressiveness on their faces, you can really feel what they are feeling just through their expressions.

Soundtrack.

Equally on par with the art of the show for the best part of it. You can tell whenever you hear the music where their inspiration was drawn. It definitely sounds like traditional Chinese music adapted to the needs and feel of the show and events. They use what seem to be very traditional instruments and Chinese choir to boot that instantly can set a mood. It is elegant, soft, and when it needs to be it can be strong. It is music that can make you feel a range of emotions, but never make you feel disappointed in the music direction they took.

Closing.

Heaven’s Official Blessing was definitely a ride. All in all I definitely enjoyed it and I want to watch the next season when it comes out. It can be confusing at times and if you do not understand bits of the plot be ready for them to leave you behind. The show is great at keeping a good pace throughout and the music and art will keep you captivated. All while the characters keep you enamored and asking more questions, as you grow attached to them and want to know more about them! If I had to give this a numerical rating I would give it a 7.5 out of 10. I really like the show and was entertained the whole way but at times it really was just a bit too confusing lore wise to ignore. I still highly recommend you check it out, as it is easy to find a way to watch it if you want.

Quickly I wanted to mention as well that while checking around for this post, I saw their website. There is clearly a lot of love for this project and it wanted to point out that it definitely shows as you watch. They wanted to make it the best they could and the love for this series from original author of the web novels really shines through when watching as well as when checking out the websites.

With all that said thank you all so much for reading all the way through I highly appreciate it. I hope that you will come back and if you plan to, or simply like this or my content, please follow me here or on twitter. I try to keep people updated about everything over there and leave a comment, I won’t bite and am always super happy to see comments here or on twitter, my DM’s are always open. Until next time!