Lord Su conceals and raises him in his household as his foster son alongside his daughter Daji (Wang Likun). Yang Jian (Luo Jin) is a half immortal child born with the Third Eye predestined to cause the down fall of King Zhou. The drama very broadly sticks to this overarching plot but is creative and loose with the details around how they got there. The novel likely emerged as a romanticized account of their epic struggle where gods and demons fought alongside mortals on both sides of the conflict. Many lives were lost in King Zhou's overthrow and these heroes were memorialized as gods in popular folklore. Even the heavens intervened and Jiang Ziya was actually an immortal tasked to raise an army of heroes to defeat this evil king. Daji is said to have distracted him from affairs of the state and exhorted him to acts of great cruelty. He was a tyrannical and decadent ruler who inflicted great suffering on his subjects under the undue influence of his favorite consort Daji.

The story recounts the reign of the evil King Zhou of the Shang dynasty (an early Chinese dynasty) a time during which allegedly both gods and demons still walked among man. It is obvious from the CGI, sets and costumes (albeit beautiful) that this is from an older vintage than the more polished 2019 releases but it also doesn't suffer from the excessive filler disease that is plaguing the latter. They were awesome together and it was quite evident from the rapport between the characters that they had big fun filming this. The all-star cast includes Luo Jin, (a very young) Deng Lun, Wang Likun, Yu He Wei and Zhang Bo. It is a quality production and the for early viewers, it is well worth going back to watch the last 10 episodes in full. Update: Initially only 56 of the intended 65 episodes were aired but at this point, all 65 episodes have been released. As someone who is not attached to the original story-line, I am good with it.Īlthough released in 2019, this drama was shot in 2015 and has struggled with censorship - yeah even ancient uprisings/regime change is not a popular topic with the Chinese censors. That is absolutely fair but the end result is a vast improvement from other cheesy, incoherent and lengthy versions. Most of the criticism highlights the plot changes and that it doesn't tell the whole story. Impressively, this production pulls it off by making storyline a very, very loose adaption of the original novel. It would not be easy to turn this tome into into a coherent and well-scripted drama with an engaging plot and proper character development. Investiture of the Gods is one of my less favorite Chinese classics because it is a lengthy, chaotic collection of Chinese myths and anecdotes involving gods and demons.

War of the gods season 3