This one wins you over with motion before it ever wins you over with story. The animation is the whole argument: fluid, organic, weighty movement and character designs that actually hold up in close-up, the kind of donghua craft that makes you rewind a fight just to watch the follow-through again. The premise has real bones too, which is why the adaptation choices sting. If you came from the source material, brace yourself, because entire characters are gone and the plot takes turns the novel never took. Come in cold across these 16 episodes and it plays clean and gorgeous. Come in as a book reader and you will spend half your watch time mentally reinserting people who no longer exist. Both reactions are correct, and that split is exactly what makes this a thing people argue about instead of forget.

Chen Nan is a boy brought back to life from the Cemetery of Gods and Demons. On a new continent formed where East and West collided, he sets out to discover why gods and demons fell ten thousand years ago. He also wants answers about his beloved Yu Xin, about where his parents are, and about why he was resurrected at all. Every cause and grudge in the story circles back to him, and his search eventually opens onto the vast Six Paths and a chess game played between heaven and earth.