(TV SERIES) Agent From Above Season 1 - An Interesting Blend of Supernatural Fantasy in the Modern World

I was away on some urgent trip for the past few days and during the nights, I decided to watch this series that was released on 2 April. But since I did not really focus, I could only finished it last night after I returned back home. Without further ado, here's more on the series.

Brief Story Line

Han-Chieh (Kai Ko - Till We Meet Again, Let's Talk About Chu TV series etc) had been working to kill demons and supernatural beings for many years after becoming vessel for the Third Crown Prince God aka Nezha (Wang Po-chieh - 96 Minutes, Us Without Sex TV series etc) in the human world. When a young woman named Yeh Tzu (Buffy Chen - Million-Follower Detective TV series, Little Big Women etc) requested Han's help to investigate haunting in her home, he agreed to help her. She would later be helping Han in dealing with other issues as well. 

Meanwhile police detective Chang Min (Johnny Yang - U Motherbaker TV series, A Tale of a Two-Timer etc) who knew about Han's ability also sought his help on some cases that might have supernatural involvement. Based on Prince's information and after investigating the latest cases, apparently the Demon King was planning to return and rule the world by engaging the help from a ruthless businessman Wu Tien-chi (Hsueh Shih-ling - Workers TV series, Eye of the Storm etc). Now Han-chieh had to fight against Tien-chi who used variety of evil methods to achieve his goals.

So how would the story conclude? You could find out in this series.

End of Brief Story Line

Few weeks back, I read few articles mentioned the release of this supernatural fantasy series on Netflix which seemed to excite the writers. Since it sounded interesting, I was quite curious and was intrigued to find out more. But as I said above that I was travelling, I could not give full attention to the series and took me much longer to finish a series with only 8 episodes. In addition, since I watched it rather late night and felt tired, I was not able to really concentrate from the start. Hence the first episode did not really stood out for me, except for the few rather terrifying scenes. Plus the main characters were not the type that I immediately liked.

As I continued watching the second episode, I still did not feel the excitement until I reached the 3rd episode where it became more intense and I was completely hooked when I watched the 4th episode that was filled with scenes that I had been expecting. From that moment onwards, I thought the series grew into something which I had hoped for, with a wonderful climax in the 7th and 8th episode. Got to say that I was satisfied with how it was concluded. The ending was OK enough but what interest me was the scenes after the title appeared before closing credits which felt like a teaser. Perhaps the series creator were already planning for subsequent seasons which obviously rely on the success of this first season. By the time I wrote this post, it's a bit unclear of its renewal status since they have just released less than 1 week ago. 

During the closing credits, it was mentioned the series was based on the novel The Oracle Comes by Xingzi which was hugely popular as it managed to combine Chinese folklore and fantasy element in the modern world. It is a Taiwanese production and said to be the most expensive and ambitious Taiwan series due to its heavy VFX and suffering long delays because of Covid-19 and injury to Kai Ko during one of the scenes (supposed to start in 2020 and even after postponement till 2022, they were only ready to release in 2026). The whole episodes were directed by Donnie Lai (Futmalls.Com TV series, Summers Desire etc).

The cast in particular Kai Ko was a great choice to my opinion. He was able to portray a moody & brooding protagonist having to fight evil spirits and the part where he tried to hide his emotions when dealing with Yeh Tzu was quite amusing and showed his acting capability just through his expressions. I also liked Wang Bo-chieh performance here. Other than the names I mentioned above, there were plenty of supporting cast like Chen Yi-wen (Monstrous Me TV series, The Pig, The Snake and the Pigeon etc) as Chen Chi-sa, Lin He-hsuan (GG Precinct TV series etc) as the ghost Wang Hsiao Ming, Phoebe Huang (Dad's Suit, Sisters TV series etc) as one of Han-chie's neighbor Sister Lo and many others.

As a supernatural fantasy series, I thought this one was quite entertaining. Though the start was not too convincing for me, but once I reached half way through, I thought it got better and more exciting. The characters also grew on you as the series progressed. The action was quite entertaining with decent (I would not say spectacular) special effects, but sufficient to deliver some suspense. With only 8 episodes having duration between 37-45 minutes should be pleasing to those seeking for a series that is not too time consuming (although in my case, it was unexpectedly longer than I anticipated). So if you are looking for such genre, this series might be to your liking, especially if you want to see a different kind of Nezha. But if you expect a really ground breaking and absolutely awesome series filled with visually stunning effects, then this could potentially be less satisfying. The choice is yours.

Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars