Mo Dao Zu Shi

Another spring has come and gone Yet you are still nowhere to be found I await the day when we will meet again

@wangxianweek day 03: mementos

WangXian Week 2020: Day Three - Rebirth

Poor lwj ... 😂

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Artist : DOSAE_ANIMATION (twitter / youtube / weibo / IG)

hua cheng's arms, empty:

not to mention! the final shot is just all around excellent. lwj sits tall and dignified, an adult and we can’t see his face, so we SHOULD think him to be the one “in control” of the situation so to speak, but in reality his straight-backed dignity betrays his unease - in contrast to a-yuan, who is small and a child and sitting more loosely, but that’s he’s sitting more casually betrays the fact that he’s the person in the scene who is actually calm and comfortable.

as a-yuan looks at lwj the audience sees no one else either, and thus also understands that whatever a-yuan is seeing is not for meant for mortal eyes, and the Lack Of Someone We Can See is emphasized by the inclusion of the sketched background of the jingshi (i presume that’s the building they’re in). although they’re clearly in the cloud recesses, the background does not provide a sense of safety so much as it emphasizes that lwj is also Not Seeing and exacerbates the sense of unsettlement. it almost acts as a stamp of proof of his ignorance. and even though a-yuan is visually closer to the audience, the fact that his back is turned to us emphasizes the distance between us and him, and the differences in what we’re able to perceive.

finally i think this work is more effective in that it’s sketched out, uncolored, and not excessively detailed. this way it conveys all the information it wants to incredibly effectively without overloading or distracting the audience with other things. it makes a-yuan look super cute and innocent and sweet while also creepy as all hell with his blank-eyed gaze in the first shot, AND it suits the narrative that it’s trying to express about grief and ghosts and the fact that maybe being raised in the burial mounds by an infamous necromancer affected a-yuan a bit more than anyone might’ve expected …