There's only one other review on here, and they mention it's a show with mixed reviews. They gave it an 8, and I'm going to present the opposite 3 out of those mixed states.
I actually really like a well done show that's filled with cheese. Tropes, cliches, the obvious. I've seen some amazing low budget productions. Budget won't easily stop a good story. I sincerely hope the book was better written, lord knows I've seen my share of great books turned to garbage by a badly written screenplay.
The costuming isn't awful, the props are a little cheap but also not awful. I could have *really* done without the weird modern-esque-isms, it served no purpose except to further break attempts to overlook what's often already hard to swallow.
I couldn't say much on the acting. The roles weren't designed to showcase acting ability. Even an otherwise good actor would have trouble shining through this script.
Still, I enjoyed the first ten episodes or so.
My goal is to be vaguely descriptive with things you would guess would be in a show of this nature, without actually giving anything away.
Unfortunately, as soon as the 'story' started to become more 'complex' I just.. struggled.
The plotlines themselves aren't bad, just cliche, but the dialogue especially is teen writer amateur at best with a huge streak of 'probably never been within visual distance of an actual relationship before'.
The characters are caricatures that never develop or change, and if anything prove themselves more and more stupid and childlike the more you see them in action.
The only thing that actually prevents bad guy plots succeeding is the fact everyone involved is too stupid to be effective.
And the only reason the good guys win is sheer coincidental luck and an ongoing unkillableness.
Neither side ever seems to have an actual upper hand, except that the bad guys tend to not die, so they just keep being bad guys. (Think of the average plotline of one Power Rangers episode, but stretched out over the length of multiple episodes.)
Everyone fully believes every single lie, while fully ignoring every single truth, coming up with justifications that are against ever single evidence in hand.
Ten year olds would roll their eyes watching these interactions.
The average IQ of anyone in Daxia or Beast Clan seems to be similar to the future people of Idiocracy, but more innocent, with the smartest ones being at max on par with the leads of said movie.
No less than 6+ assassination attempts in this less than six week span, but after each one they all just say 'oh, they got away, we should look into that, I sure hate being guarded, I guess I'll just go wander in the woods by myself, *again*', like some NPC guard in a PS1 video game meets every teen murder victim horror parody.
How many times can you trust someone 'just this once' when they've openly stabbed you in the *face* while telling you they hate and use you every other time you've trusted them 'just that once', with no actual trustworthy actions in between?
And don't get me started on the timeline. I've had my share of Disney day long soul mate affairs. But these people aren't *just* falling in and out of love and hate faster than a Frozen princess, they're also recovering from fatal heart stabs overnight and detoxifying fatal poisons within hours, all with a little bed rest and a few herbal concoctions, not even magical ones.
I have seen zero reason for these people being 'beast people', the first episode made it seem pertinent and even important to the storyline, but in actuality was completely useless and so far down the list it's ten pages back. With the lack of purpose, the budget didn't even bother to keep putting people in makeup. You'd think they could have at least done a bajillion shots of the one makeup day to pretend later that they hadn't blown the budget on the one day.
I don't even know man. I don't leave many reviews of any kind. I'm just venting my frustration over the ruination of what could have been charming. I made it through, but the last 8 odd episodes I could easily skip through most scenes missing nothing because I could guess everything that would happen after a single setup sentence, if it even needed that.
