English Dub Season Review: Heaven Official’s Blessing Season One

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:

Heaven Official’s Blessing is kind of a pioneer. It’s one of the first Chinese anime (otherwise known as donghua) to get an English dub. While I wasn’t personally interested in this particular show, the importance of it getting dubbed isn’t lost on me. This opens the door for a lot more and to be honest, after researching some other popular donghua I hope they start getting dubbed soon.

As for Heaven Official’s Blessing, I think it is a good show and apparently, so do a lot of people because it’s getting a second season. As you know that is usually pretty rare in the anime business but it doesn’t seem quite as rare in donghua because a lot of them have multiple seasons, so again hopefully a precedent is being set.

The animation in this show is fantastic and that alone is almost worth the price of admission. Whether I was interested in it or not I was never disappointed in that regard. There were some solid voice actor choices for this one but the only one that really set themselves apart to me was Howard Wang as Xie Lian. It was one of the first series leads I had heard him in and I feel like he is getting more and more roles like that. I can see why with performances like this one.

Heaven Official’s Blessing is a story firmly set in the BL genre. Or yaoi for you anime and manga fans. I’m not sure if there is a Chinese word for it but it’s clear it’s a popular genre everywhere. Though if that is the only thing you are here for there isn’t much. Not in this season at least, but I imagine that will change in the second one. But there are just enough teases to make it still enjoyable.

In the end, Heaven Official’s Blessing is definitely an important anime milestone but that’s about its most important feature. I’m not saying it’s bad but it just doesn’t do anything all that special aside from the animation. But it was definitely worth a watch if you are someone who only watches dubs. But if you aren’t and are looking to get into donghua there is better out there.