Sorry for anyone who liked my original review, but I’ve changed my mind too many times and there’s a word limit.

I love how we are introduced to the characters, and how Ma HongJun has a more fleshed out story in this. The actors casted as each character really showcase the personality of their characters in the best ways. The overall story is great, fair warning for everyone though, episode 16 is a little cringey as though xiao Zhan is a great actor, the entire spider legs scene is just not it. The show is awesome so far and is making its own take on the story. If it were it’s own original show, it’d be awesome, but there are bound to be some people who read the source material who don’t like the changes. One last little thing that I’d like to know, does tang San learn poison from du gu bo or does he never learn about poisons and never encounters dugu? And one last thing completely, the actor for grandmaster (Calvin Chen) has done awesome at portraying him and I think he really captured the essence of xiao gang. (But kind of more like the dumbledore goblet of fire thing where in the books he’s composed but in the movie he’s more straightforward and assertive, ya know?) The directors really hit snake eyes on the dice roll for episode 1 because it is a great introduction, but it probably pushed away a lot of the audience who had read the manhua/book or seen the anime.