I watched this movie without understanding the world view of Onmyoji, and I was surprised to find that it was a very good story. Although it was not told well, the story itself and the performance of the actors still moved me. What moved me was the story in this story. genuine feeling.
The core of the film is the relationship between "Onmyoji" and "Shikigami", that is, "Shishijin protects Onmyoji", and at the same time Onmyoji also has people to protect. The so-called "Onmyoji's mission is to protect, not to attack." , so the guardian spell is a spell that Onmyoji must learn. The whole story is built on these two guardianship relationships.
The male protagonist, Seimei's master, Zhongxing, has 3 shikigami, who appeared in the opening scene when he fought with the phantom of the snake, and sacrificed one. In order to protect Seimei who could not protect Seimei, Master was poisoned with snake venom. Before he died, he had a very lengthy and sensational dialogue with Seimei on a snowy field, and he flashed back many times in the following text. This passage is actually very crucial, but it is really hard to read when there is no background information at the beginning and the characters cannot be substituted. After Master's death, Seimei inherited Master's two shikigami, and on his way to Tiandu to kill snakes, he thanked another male protagonist Boya, and recovered another one. After this, there is a long and slow deviating from the main line and the foreshadowing of the difficult progress. Specifically, the four snake-killing officers who were ordered to wake up the four sacred beasts of the Qinglong, White Tiger, Suzaku, and Xuanwu gathered in an inn in Tiandu. One of the oldest died inexplicably. After that, everyone suspected each other and started a werewolf killing dungeon. While guessing the real culprit, the priests were busy subduing demons, collecting spiritual power to wake up the beasts, and creating space for Seimei and Boya to get involved. This episode really took up too much time and was too water-filled, which led me to think that this was the main content for a while, but then I found out that the middle part was just a foreshadowing. In fact, nothing happened, just let Boya Seimei make fun of lesbians, and the real amount of information is concentrated in the back.
The main content actually revolves around the emotional line between Seimei's master [Truyuki] and the current queen and princess [Fangyue]. Fangyue sealed the evil snake with her body. The source of life of the evil snake is people's desires. The desire is endless, and the evil snake is immortal. Therefore, she is immortal and has lived for thousands of years. In the long years of her existence, the people she loves have grown old one by one, and in the end she is alone; and in order to use the power of the four great beasts to suppress the evil snake, she must stay in heaven forever and cannot leave, so It's a very tragic existence. The last person Fang Yue loved was Zhong Xing, Zhong Xing once lived in Tiandu temporarily when he was young, and had a deep-rooted love with Fang Yue. But after that, Zhongxing returned to his sect and was busy cultivating the next generation of Onmyoji represented by Seimei, while Fangyue still stayed in Tiandu to fulfill the mission of sealing the evil snake, so the two parted. Although Zhongxing left Fangyue, he created an unprecedentedly powerful shikigami and gave him an order to "protect Fangyue forever". Since then, this loyal shikigami has always accompanied Fangyue. But with the death of Zhongxing, the shikigami will soon dissipate. This shikigami has already fallen in love with Fangyue in the day and night with her, and even changed his face to what Zhongxing looked like when he was young. In order to fulfill the mission of "[forever] guarding Fangyue", he began to want to gain immortality, and the way he thought of was to release the evil snake and get the power of the evil snake's eternal life, together with Fangyue and the evil snake to be immortal (but later It was he who swallowed the woe snake boy who just came into the world, and turned himself into a woe snake, which merged with the woe snake. In this case, wouldn't Fangyue have no power of eternal life? I don't understand). This shikigami was one of the four snake-killing officials who killed two of them and replaced one of the werewolf behind the scenes. His name is He Shouyue - guard Fangyue forever. When the burden of this name was shaken out, I was really stunned - wonderful.
After talking about Fangyue - Zhongxing - He Shouyue, I came to the emotional line of the two male protagonists, Seimei and Boya. As messengers of justice, the two of them, of course, will not allow such things as the evil snakes to come to the world and harm the world. So in the end, there was a fierce battle between Seimei, Boya, and Tsuru Shouyuki, who had turned into a snake of evil. Seimei released his three shikigami as the master did at the beginning: the snow dog with ice, the mad painter with pen, and The newly recovered killing stone. But He Shouyue has been integrated with the evil snake at this time. When attacked, he will be hit with hard scales, and he can also get into the snake's body and disappear from any place. It is very difficult to fight, so the three shikigami They were a bit overwhelmed, and one of them even sacrificed. Before, because He Shouyue was involved in the "Four Heavenly Kings", he deliberately did not wake up the sacred beast Suzaku, who was in charge of him, so Tiandu's suppression of the snake was not formed. Seeing that the calamity snake was about to emerge from the sky, Boya proposed at this time that he would use his own flesh and blood to awaken Suzaku, and at the same time offered to be Seimei's shikigami. So when Boya's body fainted because he had fed Suzaku too much blood, the Shikigami Boya who was incarnated as Suzaku was born: he was naked, showing his muscles, with wild tattoos on his face, and on his back A pair of black wings scuffled with the same topless Woe Snake Crane Shouyue... Obviously, this is an audio-visual feast carefully planned for the rotten girl, and her heart is very clear. In the end, when the fight between Boya and Tsuru Shouyue reached a decisive moment, the snake made another nirvana that attacked Master Seimei at the beginning of the game, and only the guardian spell could resolve it. So Seimei's fatal flaw of not being able to protect the curse was exposed again, but this time, he had someone he wanted to protect. Seeing that Boya's shikigami stood in front of him, using his body to resist the attack of the evil snake, Seimei finally launched With the guardian spell, he protected Boya and himself.
Crane Shouyue on behalf of Zhongxing guards Fangyue, Boya guards Seimei, and Seimei guards Boya, probably that's what it means.
In short, Fangyue's story line is very predictable. Her 100-year loneliness really touched me. Wang Ziwen's acting skills feel that she is playing opponents with real objects anytime, anywhere. Traces captured by the lens. Although Deng Lun didn't have a few lines, he was very stable. The mirror on his face was very good-looking, and the pure black shape was dazzling throughout the whole process. Wang Duo, the actor of He Shouyue, also amazed me, I feel that he is the character himself, especially the image of the evil snake after the blackening.
In short, the story itself is very watchable, many lines are buried deep, and you really have to see it very far in order to meet the front and back, and then suddenly realize. In fact, when you watch the film, it is definitely not as clear as what I wrote, and you have to think about a lot of places before you can outline a complete story map. The story itself can and should be told better, but the director's mind may not be much on how to tell the story well. I feel that if the whole film can be compressed into an hour and a half, it should be a more comfortable narrative rhythm.
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