A strange title, I know, but I’ll get to it. First, it’s time to take a look at Xuan Yuan Sword Luminary itself. Funnily enough, it’s also based on a game, one out of a massive series of RPGs. But don’t worry if you’ve never heard of the Xuan Yuan Sword series or the particular game this show is “based on”. I hadn’t, and from what I’ve looked up about it after the fact it doesn’t really seem to have much in common with what’s on the screen.
Set in a fantasy world that resembles a
mythical version of ancient China, Xuan Yuan Sword Luminary follows a
trio of characters who had their village destroyed by the burgeoning
Taibai empire. Sisters Yin and Ning escaped, though the younger
sister, Ning, lost her arms in the process. Meanwhile, Zhao, a boy
that both sisters had a crush on and who had deep feelings for Yin
himself, was taken by the Imperial forces to serve as a slave. Zhao
assumes he’s the only survivor of his people, and the sisters
similarly think they’re alone and that Zhao was killed like the rest.
Years later, exceptional circumstances drag the three back together
on opposite sides of a major conflict.
Sounds like the recipe for some high
drama, doesn’t it? But even the best recipe can fail if the
execution is botched, and the execution in Xuan Yuan Sword Luminary
is… a problem, to say the least.
Let’s start with the summary. Zhao
works as a slave in the forges of the imperial capitol, helping build
the “Construct” war machines the empire uses to secure their
conquests, which are basically mechas (and possibly automata; it’s
unclear if they’re all piloted) made of wood and brass. If they were
more advanced, I’d call it Steampunk, but the “Engineering” in
this show is more in the realm of magic-but-not-technically-magic
artifice. Though a slave, Zhao has a keen mind and flawless memory,
allowing him to learn fantastic amounts of engineering, which earns
him the respect of the chief engineer Mo Heng and, along with his
creation from scrap of a little robot sheep, the friendship of an
oddly overdressed little girl. Things get complicated, though, when
Mo Heng defects from the Taibai to join up with rebels. Shortly
after this, the little girl who befriended Zhao and asked to call him
“big brother” reveals that she is, in fact, the Empress of the
Taibai, Cheng. She promotes Zhao to a position of authority in the
engineering department, assigning him to create new models of war
machines to defeat their enemies.
Meanwhile, Yin and Ning work as poor,
traveling performers. While on the road, Yin discovers a magic
scroll that allows her to summon both the titular Xuan Yuan Sword and
a powerful machine girl named Yun (made with an ancient lost mechanic
art distinct in undisclosed ways from the construct engineering Zhao
uses). After finding this phenomenal power almost literally under a
rock, she gets Yun to produce a pair of arcane prosthetic arms for
Ning (which Ning can move as her own, making her quite the little
badass) and in fairly short order ends up fighting back against
Taibai forces being puppy-kickers in a random occupied town. After
fighting back, she and Ning are wanted, and after fighting back again
to the tune of more damage when retaliation comes on the town, they
upgrade to persons of interest and catch not just the attention of
the military, but also of the rebels.
In the Empire, Cheng continues to dote
on and reward Zhao, both for his significant achievements and as
fairly clear shows of affection. He’s given a command of a construct
mobile force with his fancy new model, drawing the ire of a scheming
general, Meng. Zhao proves extremely adept at strategy, setting a
trap that catches rebel champions off guard and striking down
corruption in the imperial management with clever efficacy, an act
that nearly brings him into contact with Yin and Ning, who are
fighting the same corrupt official. Well, Ning wants to fight the
corrupt official, Yin wants no part of avoidable combat and joins it
primarily to save Ning. They nearly miss recognizing each other, and
Zhao returns to the Empress with successes on his record while Yin
takes way, way too long to accept that she’s basically already a
rebel and trouble has found her.
In the empire, we build up a complex
web of interactions. We have Zhao, of course, and he has some
excellent chemistry with Empress Cheng. Perhaps not romantic
chemistry, but it’s clear that her attachment isn’t one-sided and
that the two of them work well together. Zhao also interacts with a
trusted lieutenant, who gives us a chance to see how Zhao retains his
basic empathy even with his elevated position. Meng tries to
embarrass Zhao, and often gets egg on his own face in the process,
and behind the scenes Lady Pang, a scheming sorceress and consort to
the former Taibai king who had him killed and tried to off Cheng in
the process, moves in the shadows. All the while, Zhao is guided by
a great engineering project. That project is called the Zhengtian,
which is a massive construct superweapon designed but never built by
Mo Heng, using a “limitless” power source called Black Fire.
Zhao, however, saw the incomplete schematics once before Mo Heng
defected and has a photographic memory, so bringing the Zhengtian to
fully working life is now Zhao’s great task.
Meanwhile, the rebels jabber about
destiny, often giving us the same exposition multiple times. We find
out that Yin is the reincarnation of Yun’s maker and the former
master of the scroll, but ultimately nothing is done with that except
to say that “having a destiny” is the one argument that convinces
Yin of the blindingly obvious truth that she needs to fight.
Meng, hoping to put a feather in his
cap, has Zhao’s new model of construct mass-produced and sent out to
kill some rebels, namely going for the same hideout Yin and Ning are
headed to with the personality-deprived folks that recruited them.
There, the sisters meet Mo Heng and learn that he’s created a weapon
for the rebels: Black Fire Armor, an oversized shoulder pad with
cloak that amplifies magic and makes the wearer able to fly and fight
like a super hero, but that might have a few “Unstoppable
berserker” or “Burn your soul” kind of bugs to be worked out.
The Taibai attack, and Yin embarrasses Meng by smashing up the
expeditionary force using the Black Fire Armor. Zhao is the next one
to try his luck attacking the rebels, and does much better until he
comes face to face with the sisters on the field of battle.
Zhao and the sisters are swept away and
end up having a chance, after getting out of the river they were in,
to have a chat. Zhao reveals what he’s been up to, and how his
ambition (including a particular ambition to surpass Mo Heng) will
drive him forward. He offers the sisters the chance to come with
him, while the sisters implore Zhao to kick the empire to the curb
and join the rebellion. He works out some of the massive, lingering
feelings issues with Yin, but the reunion is cut short by the arrival
of both sides’ backup, including Zhao’s faithful lieutenant and the
generic rebels. Zhao goes to his side, Yin to hers… and Ning takes
up Zhao’s offer to come with to the Taibai empire, not wanting to
live in her sister’s shadow either in combat or romance.
Zhao, for some idiot reason, doesn’t
immediately tell Cheng about Ning when he returns, and instead keeps
her in his mansion, under the protection of his badass loyal
maidservant, another character who’s not on the cast list but has
much more interesting things to say than any of the rebels.
Eventually, Lady Pang and Meng’s attempts to disgrace Zhao turn up
that he’s sheltering a wanted woman, which forces the Empress’s hand.
She gives Zhao a slap on the wrist punishment, demotion in technical
ranks, but has some brilliantly harsh words in private about how
stupid he was for not coming right to her, which also fuels some
nascent jealousy when she learns that the girl in question is the
Ning from Zhao’s past that he talked about
Ning, meanwhile, is subjected to Water Torture. The sequence of her undergoing the punishment (for days on end!) is actually really well done, and communicates the paranoia, dread, and despair that Ning goes through, slowly and steadily breaking her mind until her thoughts are so twisted that she blames Yin and Yin’s kindness for all the misery she’s suffered in her life, filling up with murderous thoughts directed at her own sister.
When the Empress comes to visit Ning in
the torture chamber, torn up by her own guilt at having subjected
someone Zhao cares about to such a horrible punishment combined with
being unable to put away her envy at Ning also being special to Zhao,
one of Pang’s assassins attacks, and in the scuffle Ning is broken
free… and absolutely butchers the assassin. This earns the
dangerously insane Ning a new position, being sent to fight the
rebels (including Yin) with fancy new Black Fire arms made by Zhao.
Zhao, hoping to bring the Empress around, throws himself into the
construction of the Zhengtian. Meng and Pang scheme together,
preparing a straight-out coup.
Meanwhile, the Rebels… yeah, we check
in with them often enough, but they don’t really do anything
interesting, dramatic, or valuable. Yin angsts a little about
needing to save Ning (not that she knows the state Ning is in during
her angst) but it’s underplayed and kind of unemotional. We’re told
about twenty times that the Black Fire Armor is powerful before Yin
and the other Power Rangers with their own elemental-colored versions
try them out on a random Taibai army of no significance. So that’s
cool, I guess?
After clashing with Crazy Ning once,
the rebels find out about the Zhengtian via it test-firing and
obliterating a few miles of hill, which is quite the surprise to Mo
Heng who thought there were no engineers skilled enough to manipulate
Black Fire. When complete, the Zhengtian is set to be an impossible
Death Star, a flying fortress with impregnable armor and a main
cannon that can obliterate cities at will. Before its able to take
off and therefore aim, they need to destroy it if there’s to be any
hope of the Taibai not taking over the world.
At this point, the climax throws tons
of stuff at us at once. Lady Pang tries to assassinate Cheng, but
fails and gets killed when it turns out that Cheng is basically the
Avatar, able to use all magical elements rather than just one (and
incidentally heal herself from being impaled with ice lances). Meng
decides screw it, going with the coup anyway, and assumes command of
the Zhengtian, throwing Zhao in prison. Zhao’s loyal maidservant
carries a message overland to the Empress that’s supposed to be
amazingly important, and the Rebels with their Black Fire Armor
champions and disposable army move against the Zhengtian.
In the fight, it turns out that the
Zhengtian (though incomplete on its armor) can already fly, and it
roasts the rebel army. To be fair, it didn’t really need to fly to
do that because they were running up the same trench it carved with
the test shot, but Meng wants to show off. Zhao’s lieutenant
activates Ning and springs Zhao as Meng prepares to turn his second
shot (which has a long, long recharge) against the imperial capitol
to destroy Cheng.
Zhao gets in the robot. Oh, I didn’t
mention the robot? Neither did the show, but as of this scene Zhao
has a black-fire powered flying mecha that’s fast, maneuverable, and
stronger than the Black Fire Armor rebels without needing a sorcerer
to pilot it the same way the Armor needs one to use its full
potential. Um… Call me crazy, but not everybody has to abide by
the Tarkin doctrine. I’m pretty sure mass-producing that thing would
provide a far more military might than spending the equivalent
resources on just one Zhengtian. Anyway, to save Cheng, Zhao takes
the robot into the Zhengtian, intent on destroying its reactor core.
He meets up with the rebels trying to do the exact same thing and
succeeds where they failed at cracking open the defenses, though
backlash from the same ends up destroying his eyes.
Meanwhile, Ning fights Yin in the
depths of the now unsound Zhengtian, damaging her Black Fire Armor
and causing her to go berserk. Eventually, Ning, both arms
destroyed, gets pinned under some rubble, which seems to cause her to
snap back to herself when no other amount of pain or pleading would
(weak) and the blind Zhao shows up. Zhao and Ning tell Yin to flee
since the Zhengtian is about to blow, but she refuses, ultimately
though having to cut off Ning’s legs to free her before booking it
with both the now quadriplegic Ning and blind Zhao. The Zhengtian
blows up, and we see that months later the Empress has been hardened
by her experiences into a cold-blooded conqueror, the Rebels continue
to harass the empire, and Zhao and Ning are living on some farm
somewhere being utterly helpless fragments of people. This is
presented as a mostly happy ending with a side of “the adventure
continues.”
Screw that noise. There are problems
throughout Xuan Yuan Sword Luminary, but the way the ending is
handled is pretty much the worst of its many sins. In part, that’s
because it’s a culmination of the most recurring sin: waste. Xuan
Yuan Sword Luminary is not without good ideas or even good
characters, but they’re often poorly established and almost always
squandered.
For the ending itself, I feel like Xuan
Yuan Sword Luminary missed who the audience would actually be
invested in. We’re expected to be following Yin, who has the special
destiny (which is never explained or expounded on), the titular
sword, and the biggest presence on the promo art and in the intro,
and the rebels along with her. But as a character, Yin is about as
interesting as watching paint dry on her own, and is only made
interesting through her relationships with the more individually
compelling Ning and Zhao. The rebels, meanwhile, do nothing
interesting and say nothing interesting with the possible exception
of Mo Heng having one OK scene where he explains his motivation for
abandoning the Empire – he sees the constructs he’s created, even
though they’re unthinking machines, as his children, and it breaks
his heart to see them commit evil deeds because they’ve been “Brought
up” wrong by the Taibai, causing him to rebel to free his precious
constructs from the destiny of becoming tools of terror and
oppression.
Zhao, in particular, is more the center
of the web of characters that are well enough sketched and
interesting enough that the audience is engaged. He and his
relationship with Cheng are given enough screen time with enough good
writing and meaty things to say that we care about Zhao and Cheng.
Because they threaten those two, we care about the threats posed by
Meng and Lady Pang. Even the minor characters like Zhao’s military
right hand man and his badass maidservant, get more good and
worthwhile scenes than Yin and the Rebels do, and they don’t get many
scenes.
For instance, when the maidservant, who
we ultimately learn is a pretty good fighter when put on the spot, is
tasked with taking care of Ning and Ning threatens her with death,
she shows some interesting, different character by standing her
ground and proclaiming that her loyalty to her master is such that
yes, she would allow herself to be killed in order to hold to the
orders she was given. That’s weirdly compelling and not perfunctory,
which is more than I can say for anything Yin does in the whole show.
Ning as well is somewhat interesting on
her own, at least in the middle arcs after she’s started to resent
being in Yin’s shadow but before she’s driven to almost mindless
murderous hatred of her sister by psychological torture. She has
conflicted wants, particularly after she follows Zhao to live in the
very empire she previously blamed for her suffering, hated, and
eagerly slaughtered members of the armed forces of. She’s divided
between love for the sister who cared for her, romantic love for her
childhood friend, envy of her sister’s gifts, and hatred for her
childhood friend’s present allegiance. Sadly, this is all only
touched on; if she was given a deep study she could be a very
compelling character but as-is she’s only given enough to be an
also-ran to Zhao and Cheng.
Cheng, similarly, has some
independently interesting conflicts of her own. At first she seems
fairly in-control, with her desire to rule (and rule in a just and
good manner) not really being at odds with her burgeoning love of
Zhao. However, her favoritism puts both her and Zhao in danger from
political rivals, and when Ning enters the picture we see how poorly
she deals with the threat of not getting everything she wants. She
still comes off as a mostly good person, seeing as she’s wracked by
guilt even as she’s unable to stop herself from acting out as a
twelve-year-old tyrant.
That “unable to stop herself” note
also underscores Cheng’s relationship with destiny. Destiny or Fate
is a concept that comes up several times in Xuan Yuan Sword Luminary,
and I have to say I’m not usually a fan of “Destiny” being a
major player in fiction because the conceit that the roles and
outcomes are predetermined removes agency from the characters and
drama from the story. A standard example is the all too tired
prophecy cliché in Western fantasy, where some ancient somebody
already told everyone what was going to happen and how and is never
ever wrong. Once you’ve heard the prophecy, unless there’s ambiguity
(As in The Dark Crystal, which permits multiple outcomes) or a major
twist (As in Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn; perhaps the one element I
think that series did legitimately impressively) there’s not a lot of
point in watching the puppets play it out.
In Sword Luminary in particular, we set
up the very story with the idea of fate, as the Taibai’s conquest of
their first rival was inscribed on some ancient artifact, altering
the flow of history as the narration tells us repeatedly through the
early episodes. The Wheel of Fate artifact that did that is, I
think, briefly glimpsed in the Taibai palace at the end of the show,
but never actually comes up. Yin is said to have destiny controlling
her twice; once before she joins up with the rebels when they declare
her meeting with them destined with no rhyme nor reason to it, and
later when Yun reveals that Yin is the reincarnation of Yun’s maker
and former master. We’re not really clued in on what her destiny is
or what it’s supposed to mean for her other than that she’s somehow
“special”, but it seems to make her placidly go along with the
idea of joining the rebels that she’d previously been hesitant about.
Cheng, meanwhile, sees herself as
destined to rule as the Taibai Empire is destined to conquer.
However, that doesn’t mean it’s a pleasant outcome for her. Rather,
she comes to see herself as being swept up in an inexorable tide,
especially once her own inner demons, and the dark underbelly of
Taibai rule, both become known to her. Her breakdown and hardening
both come from a despairing idea that she can’t fight her fate or
decide for herself what will happen, but must instead accept the hand
she’s been dealt. No matter how much Cheng may desire a comfortable
life with Zhao and a peaceful dominion, circumstances (whether
supernaturally ordained or not) push her onto a darker and more
painful road even if she’s not quite suited to it. This idea of
fate, combined with Cheng’s reaction to it, is much more interesting
than Yin’s “I have a magic destiny” nonsense.
At her low points, in particular, we
see Cheng struggle against this. In one of the show’s best dramatic
scenes, we see her in the torture chamber with Ning and Zhao. She
threatens to kill Ning, and gives Zhao a knife and tells him to kill
her to prevent that. This works with both her emotional distress
over who Zhao would choose and her feelings of helplessness to
control her own actions and outcomes. Zhao, horrified, can’t accept
either outcome and does his downright best to force a third path,
rejecting the choice between Ning and Cheng as one that needs to be
exclusive, at least in terms of which girl can live and be happy.
Cheng’s regent breaks up the nonsense, mercifully, but its easy to
see how that interaction scars both Zhao and Cheng.
In the final episode, I mentioned, Zhao
sends his maidservant away with a letter for Cheng. In the letter,
he declares his devotion to Cheng, and his dedication to find a path
where everyone he cares about – Cheng, Ning, and Yin – can be
happy. This mirrors Cheng’s own earlier interest in taking over the
world in order to build not an oppressive regime but a peaceful and
enlightened dominion that would never after have to know war or
strife, and offers Cheng a different perspective, one that denies
that her role and those of the sisters are set and inalterable, and
that Zhao, who Cheng cares about deeply, will dedicate everything he
has to working for that future for her. It’s a good letter, weirdly
proving that Zhao and Cheng are a good match. The scene where he
sends it, knowing that nothing but an order of the utmost import will
remove his maidservant from his side, which is a dangerous position,
is good too.
All of this is good material. And
that’s why the ending is so insulting. It throws away everything
that was interesting about Zhao, Ning, and Cheng in favor of
promising a continuation of Yin’s story that was hollow, unemotional,
and really had no business continuing long after the fall of the
Zhengtian and Meng’s coup. Because, when you think about it, she and
the rebels have Zhao, the Empress’s favorite, six of seven functional
sets of Black Fire Armor, and an imperial army in disarray. If they
feel like a peace can be negotiated, that’s the time to do it, with
Zhao as a go-between to broker consideration of their demands. If,
on the other hand, they believe the Empress must be toppled, they’ll
never get a better opportunity to strike. So either way, the
rebellion should have moved to end things that night.
Really, the post-script doesn’t make
sense for anyone. Cheng is shown to have become ruthless enough to
order an all-out attack on a kingdom willing, potentially, to
negotiate and bend the knee, and it’s a little much: her transition
from nice kid with lofty principles but maybe the ability to go dark
into full on evil overlord is either too sudden or just too late in
the game. Even after subjecting Ning to water torture, she was still
torn up about things so it’s really only in the last two episodes or
even that last scene where she seems to have gone ‘off the deep end’.
Zhao and Ning are shown as happy being
helpless and dependent on one another when that doesn’t make sense
for either of their arcs. Ning hated being helpless throughout the
entire show, and even if she insultingly easily snaps back to nice,
she should still have that drive. And besides, she has both Zhao
(who has made prosthetic limbs before) and Mo Heng (who can still see
and craft) to get her walking and grasping again, she shouldn’t be
reliant on powerless sticks. Hell, according to Yun, legs were the
first thing Yin’s past incarnation made, perhaps she could retrieve
those? Zhao, who had such lofty words for Cheng, also shouldn’t be
struggling to pick peaches. He should be returning to his place in
the Taibai because even if his eyes are ruined he still has his
brains, still has his voice, and still has his connections to Cheng
to guide his actions. I really think he could probably learn to do a
lot of his engineering by touch and sound, and even if he can’t he’s
more than skilled enough to instruct others in both construct
crafting and military tactics. He’s a valuable person, he just needs
some time to retrain himself and some extra support, the latter of
which shouldn’t be hard since he was shown to have earned deep
loyalty in both the civil and military command structures with his
brand of leadership and the intense personal loyalty of people like
his lieutenant and maid. And he sure as hell isn’t going to be
working towards that peaceful future if he’s magically lost all his
ambition and become content to live as an invalid. Not to mention
he’s just unceremoniously partnered with Ning because they “need”
each other (even when they really shouldn’t), never resolving the
fact that he and Yin had the mutual bond and utterly disregarding
what he’d built with Cheng (however strained Ning’s outcome had made
that).
And, for the rebels and Yin, they’re
off to bop a Taibai expeditionary force as it goes on the attack.
They don’t seem to have an exit strategy or even a goal, they just
sort of exist to slap Cheng’s hand away when she reaches for other
kingdoms, with no indication that they’ll actually find a lasting
solution, when fighting literally forever was one of their stated
anti-goals. Nothing about this epilogue is worthwhile, or supports
the tone it’s given.
But, let’s lay the end aside for a
moment and talk about the problems in the show leading up to it. For
one, there’s an awful lot of discontinuity. The good stuff I talked
about is mostly from what I’d sort of call “show two”, springing
up in and around the second half without being properly presaged.
Ning’s bitterness and envy, Zhao’s ambition, Cheng’s talk of
destiny… they all crop up fully formed fairly late. They don’t
contradict what came earlier, but there wasn’t any buildup; these
characters were as generic as Yin and the rebels, until they suddenly
sprouted personalities part way through.
Similarly, there’s an add/drop problem
with the supernatural elements. After Yun brings up what should be a
huge reveal, Yin being the second coming of her maker and the one
true inheritor of the great power and destiny that is the scroll and
the Xuan Yuan Sword… pretty much no one ever mentions it again. In
fact, Yin’s special power, that saw her recruited in the first place,
takes a complete back seat. Yun also stops being a character. She’s
called out for action scenes, but never really does anything ever
again. The sword, which was formerly this great thing able to cleave
right through constructs, is also just Yin’s cool-looking sword after
the Black Fire Armor enters the picture and with it magic of the
seven elements and so on. For that matter, the Black Fire is a kind
of confused plot device. In Mo Heng’s hands it’s used to make magic
items that grant superpowers and amplify elemental sorcery at the
risk (at first) of damaging the user’s soul with darkness. In Zhao’s
hands, it’s just an energy source, arcane nuclear power suitable to
run a huge reactor or super-charge a robot or some mechanical limbs
for Ning.
This wouldn’t be so bad, but the
technical aspects of this blend of fantasy and technology are never
really dug into. We don’t understand the relationship between the
magic that some characters use and the construct creation that is
sort of magic and sort of not in that it doesn’t fit the real world’s
physics but is seen as science here. We have no idea how or why
they’d use the same energy source in different ways, or how Mo Heng
goes from making robots to making enchanted items. Nor do we really
understand what it means when Cheng suddenly erupts with the power to
use all elements. Clearly it’s impressive and not something that’s
supposed to happen, but if there’s any deeper spiritual significance
(like the Avatar in the Nickelodeon cartoons) we don’t know it, nor
do we understand where this unique power may have come from or why
Cheng seems unaware that she has it until the second time that it
acts up in her life. The Wheel of Fate, inscribing on which changes
the course of history, is also narrated on several times in the early
episodes and then never mentioned again (or in character) until it’s
maybe seen in a final, silent scene. What was the point of it? Is
it the secret power of the Taibai? Can they write destiny whenever
they want? If they can, why doesn’t Cheng just scrawl her own fanfic
on it and get the future she wants with Zhao and peaceful world
domination? If not, who inscribed the thing about Taibai in the
first place to cause history to take a turn? Is the inscription act
that’s mentioned over and over just a metaphor for the Akashic
Records or something, and not a thing that was unnaturally modified
to bring about this timeline? If so, why harp on it like that?
Speaking of harping on things, I need
to mention again how bland, generic, and really quite useless the
Rebels are. They have distinct visual designs, but for the entirety
of the show they say and do nothing interesting, engaging, or
representing unique characters with personalities. It’s to the point
where I’m pretty sure you could cut out the entire rebellion – the
thing that the show treats as the main plot – and the story you’d
be left with would not just be unaffected, but actually stronger for
it.
Try it on for size. Yin still finds
the Xuan Yuan Sword and gets in trouble with the law all the way up
to the military; she did that before the rebels proper entered the
picture. Instead of angsting for episodes that she doesn’t want to
join a war when she’s already kind of joined a war, struggling
against Ning who wants to be part of the rebel group, Yin has to come
to terms with the fact that she’s killed and may still have to kill
in order to survive, and her desire to stay on the defensive versus
Ning’s desire not to join an established rebellion that can support
and protect them as they fight back, but to put herself in
legitimately more danger by becoming a vigilante. You still get the
corrupt province arc, including Ning making trouble, Yin saving her,
and Zhao getting caught at the same time and nearly missing the
sisters. You ditch the broken record of “All our homes were
destroyed” “The Taibai must be resisted” and “It is your
destiny”, and can use the time to show more steady growth with Zhao
and Cheng, and have more scenes with Zhao’s lieutenant and more and
earlier scenes with his maid. Perhaps we’d have time to get a hint
of Cheng’s jealous streak if the maid nearly misses tripping it.
On the imperial side, something would
still have to remove Mo Heng to provide a power vacuum for Zhao’s
elevation. Ideally, it would also have to be unexpected, rather than
him just dying because he’s old, since there’s not an orderly
succession into the post of Chief Engineer. But it’s not like
there’s a scheming villain in the Taibai empire who might want to
weaken Cheng’s stand by eliminating a reasonable, moderate loyalist
with vast personal clout and irreplaceable (except by Zhao, who is an
unknown factor) abilities… there are two. Once that’s sorted out,
it’s not like the Taibai need a band of plucky “unlikely hero out
for an adventure” rebels to have no shortage of enemies foreign and
domestic. Zhao could still be placed on patrol to prove his quality,
and still ultimately run in face-to-face with wanted terrorists Ning
and Yin at that. And when Yin refuses to go with him, it wouldn’t be
a passive “she’s being ushered on by these other jokers”, it
would have to be out of her own strong convictions about justice, so
maybe she could sprout a character in this.
From there, Yin would be on her own.
Yin is literally never seen on her own, and could use that chance to
grow and show us who she is as a person when she’s brought to a low
point by an experience of loneliness she’s never previously suffered,
presaging Ning’s own breaking time under the water torture. She’d
have Yun, but Yun’s not quite a full person unless she morphs into
one in this. Instead of relying on a big group to tell her what to
do, she’d have to work it out for herself, starting from a difficult
situation. The Black Fire Armor is, ultimately, unnecessary. If Yin
needs to power up, like the Xuan Yuan Sword and Yun aren’t enough
super powers, we could actually see that past life of hers, who was
the user of a now lost art of magic and craftsmanship, come into
play, and have Yin’s special-ness matter as she taps into it to give
herself the tools she needs to complete her goals… an act that
incidentally causes her to have a strong compare/contrast with Zhao
in the same way as Cheng does but on a different axis: Cheng and Zhao
have similar ambition but opposite takes on their own agency while
Yin and Zhao, in this hack, would perform similar acts of engineering
creation, but on opposite sides of the divide between art/magic for
Yin and science for Zhao, setting them up to accomplish similar
things in different ways.
Yin could easily catch wind of the
Zhengtian. It’s not as though the test-fire is subtle, and Zhao may
even brag about it in their one talk before he leaves with Ning or
Crazy Ning might talk after their first clash so Yin has some inkling
what she’s up against. And, if she’s gained (by the time of her
meeting with Zhao) the conviction to fight for what’s right on her
own, maybe she’ll have the will to stop the Taibai from gaining an
unstoppable superweapon even if it means going against and
potentially hurting her beloved Zhao, a conflict that would both be
dramatic for her and draw strong parallels to Cheng’s quandary over
getting what she wants versus hurting Zhao. When Meng’s coup fires,
the battle for the Zhengtian would go down in a very similar way,
except Yin and Yun wouldn’t have backup. The confrontations that
maim Ning and Zhao could be compressed to a three-sided battle of
emotions and morals between two sisters and the man they both love
over the Zhengtian’s core… possibly with different results, but
certainly with a different epilogue. Zhao would return to Cheng as
he made clear he meant to, where he has a life waiting for him
whatever state he’s in. Yin, perhaps, wouldn’t be willing to go with
him, unable to forgive and forget and possibly frightened by the
prospect after what happened to Ning. Ning could go either way, but
maybe Zhao even pushes her away (and Yin with her) in a reversal of
the earlier scene where he invited the sisters to come with him,
deciding that he wants the people he cares about to be happy more
than he wants to be with his first love. With Zhao’s return and the
coups from Pang and Meng foiled, the Taibai empire is in a position
to move forward, and it can be left to the audience to ask themselves
if Zhao and Cheng will make a better world or a worse one, while the
sisters, Yin able as she should be to put Ning back together again
with her ancient crafting art, question whether to leave Zhao to what
he seems to want or “save” him against his will, leaving the
story open for further adventures but with a deeper emotional stake.
That’s how useless the Rebels were.
They made this show infinitely more generic and passionless than it
could have been.
Fortunately for everyone, there is
something that Xuan Yuan Sword Luminary reminded me of on multiple
levels that’s massively better in just about every way: the card game
tie-in novel I mentioned in the title, The Brothers’ War. It is a
Magic: the Gathering novel, but it’s actually a fairly good fantasy
novel in its own right, and in my mind is, rather than the RPG to
which this show is loosely tied, the good piece of media that takes
the strengths this show squanders and spins them into a legitimately
compelling narrative. I’ll try to keep it short, even though I
really do love that book
The Brothers’ War, depicts a fantasy
world with a focus on archeology and engineering, where instead of
active casters of magic spells, artificers create devices that blend
what we the readers understand as magic and science. In this world
two brothers, Urza and Mishra, end up separated and on opposite sides
of politics on their continent, rising through the ranks of their
respective nations to become leaders who ultimately come to blows in
an extended conflict that engulfs the whole of the known world. The
relationship between Urza and Mishra is strained and complex, between
their history as siblings and their different positions and
approaches to adulthood. They’re both brilliant artificers, growing
the power of the nations they ultimately come to lead, but beyond
that they’re very different people: older brother Urza is more a
theorist who wants to do science, to the point where he wins a
contest to marry the princess of a nation for a technical manual he
spots in her dowry. Mishra, on the other hand, is ambitious, hungry
for agency in a way that ultimately brings him to make a deal with
the setting’s equivalent of the devil, knowingly or not losing his
humanity for knowledge and power. The conflict spans a lifetime,
starting with the brothers as apprentices and ending in their grand
final battle when they’re old. Along the way, they’re supported by a
huge cast of memorable side characters with their own personalities
and stories, many of which have to grapple with how the conflict
between the brothers warps their lives.
In dealing with the fates of a pair of older and younger siblings pulled apart by the younger’s resentment, in depicting individuals with deep connections stranded on opposite sides of an irreconcilable war, and in portraying a fantasy world full of constructs and magical machinery and the innovation and production that goes with it, the Brothers’ War and Xuan Yuan Sword Luminary are very similar. The delta is that The Brothers War is competent and well-written, while Xuan Yuan Sword Luminary is not. The Brothers War evolves its characters in an organic way, which is especially important given its epic scope, while Sword Luminary suddenly decides that someone has a personality now. The Brothers War has an expansive cast addressing many unique angles on a major conflict. Sword Luminary can’t even manage to pick the low-hanging fruit of “plucky, colorful rebels stand up against the evil empire” because they made the empress sympathetic and forgot to give the rebels personalities or roles in the story. Sword Luminary has an insultingly botched ending I’ve already talked to death. Brothers’ War ends with a climactic final battle that’s truly world-shaking. Basically all of Sword Luminary’s strengths, Brothers’ War has as strong or stronger, and basically all of Sword Luminary’s weaknesses, Brothers’ War corrects. If you get a chance and are up for a western fantasy novel… well,I have mine both released and upcoming, but personal stake aside I really would recommend looking up The Brothers’ War as kind of a hidden gem of 90’s Western fantasy that’s neither just for kids nor copying JRR Tolkien’s notes. Certainly, if you invest the time to consume one and only one piece of Fantasy media with magic constructs and world-spanning war, make it The Brothers’ War and not Xuan Yuan Sword Luminary.
So, all that said, how does Xuan Yuan
Sword Luminary rate? The show is, in a word, broken. That it
reminded me so much of its better isn’t actually a strike against.
If anything, it actually speaks to how much potential there is here
and how well the show works when it actually does work. The problem
is it works so rarely that ultimately the good pieces don’t come
together into a good whole. I enjoyed some scenes, and respected
others, and I enjoyed some of the characters some of the time but…
the show is not good. I can’t recommend it. I’m not grading the
best scenes from the best episodes, I’m grading the whole thing, with
all its peaks and valleys, and the valleys are at least as deep as
the peaks are tall and far wider.
In the end, I don’t think that merits a Fail; rather, I offer Xuan Yuan Sword Luminary a D-. It made me mad. It offended me with its squandered potential and awful turns. But to squander potential, it had to have potential, and to take a bad turn to the wrong destination it had to be on a good road for at least a while. Its sin is less in being abjectly, objectively bad and more in refusing to achieve what it ought to have achieved. There are many shows that tried less and therefore achieved less. And for me, that means Xuan Yuan Sword Lumanry earns not a Fail like Hundred, but the grade directly above.