Three episodes, and you will spend most of them leaning forward for reasons that have nothing to do with the story. This is Chinese animation flexing: the fog rolling off those mountains, the five elements going off in fight choreography that actually has weight and follow-through, camera work that treats every clash like it costs something. Then the plot shows up and mumbles. The elemental-chosen legend gets sketched in rather than built, characters exist to move the setpieces along, and by the end you are not entirely sure where it thought it was going. That is exactly why people either evangelize it or bail at episode one. Watch it the way you would watch a fight reel from a studio that clearly has more in the tank, because the animators here are working at a level the script never earns.

An old legend holds that monsters once granted certain chosen officials the power to master the five elements. Claiming that gift means crossing a range of perilous, fog-covered mountains. The story traces the adventures of one of these chosen officials. A short three-episode ONA, it mixes action, drama and fantasy.