English Dub Review: Heaven Official’s Blessing “The Bride Prince” and “Mountain-Locked Ming Guang”

Overview:

The heavens shake, the thunder rumbles, and Xie Lian appears with an apologetic smile—again! Eight hundred years prior, he was a beloved martial god, known as the Crown Prince of Xianle. Now, he ascends to the heavenly realm for the third time, but simply as a pitiful scrap-collecting god with no followers behind him.

Our Take:

I want to start by saying the animation in this show is absolutely beautiful. Haoliners Animation League is a studio I have pretty much zero experience with but I am pretty sure they just gained a fan. Apparently, they animated one of the coolest fight scenes I’ve seen from an anime called Hitori no Shita: The Outcast 3rd Season. Seriously, they do good work and I’m a fan. I’ve been hesitant to give some of the Chinese anime out there a try but I’m a believer now.

It’s not all animation though, there’s a story here too. If you like the supernatural, some mythological stuff, or Chinese history I think you’ll like Heaven Official’s Blessing. Plus, I think it might fit into the boy’s love genre based on what I am picking up from the show and some of my research. So, there might even be some romance! Definitely gaining points for me.

Then there’s the voice talent. Howard Wang plays the main character Xie Lian, and man is my guy Howard everywhere these days! He’s really blown up this past year or so, or maybe I just really started getting into VA’s who knows? Lucien Dodge and Wendee Lee are also in the first two episodes but I don’t know how important their characters will be. So, hopefully, they have a big impact later.

There are monsters which I think is really cool and the fight scenes were really well done. I already gushed about the studio earlier but the fight scenes were smooth and the transitions were fantastic. Heaven Official’s Blessing looks like it might have more action than I was expecting and it being good is a plus!

Funimation dropped two episodes and I’m glad they did two. Since these episodes were pretty linked with the plot and character developments that happened. I don’t know if Funimation will be bringing this one to us weekly but since it was a show that aired in the fall of 2020 I hope they can. It is also the first donghua (Chinese anime) to get an English dub so far!