The Yin Yang Master

Another high budget blockbuster from China on Netflix, this comes from the same series as the awesome Dream of Eternity I reviewed a while ago.

 

 

And again it starts Qingming, the Yin Yang master.

 

So is this a prequel or a sequel?  Nothing, because both movies have nothing to do with each other.  yet they have everything to do with each other.  Confused?  Bear with me...

 

It is tradition in China to release a high budget blockbuster movie every year with the Chinese New Year, and in 2020 that was Dream of Eternity, based on the novels of Qingming the Yin Yang Master.  Now in 2021, The Yin Yang Master came out, based on a mobile game, based on those same novels.

So this makes that both titles are similar, and they both detail the adventures of Qingming, but yet the stories are totally seperate from each other.  And also why his "right hand man" is called Boya in both movies, though are totally different characters. 

 

 

Now, the tone and style of the movie is completely different, with Qingming being an outcast half monster, half human hybrid living withdrawn with other monsters without homes.  He shelters them, forming a small community, but when one day one his Ferret monsters swallows a stolen mythical gem, he becomes the center of a hunt by the Yin Yang Bureau, an agency of monster hunters.

Together with Boya, a captain out to redeem himself, and Shenle, a wizard apprentice, he must face his former commander and the Bureau to save both the human and the monster realms from the machinations of evil... at big sacrifices.

 

 

Another enjoyable, and beautiful, fantasy epic, though I must admit personally Dream of Eternity left a far bigger impression on me.  

 

But still, it's worth to check this one out!