Renegade Immortal — the manhua
Before the donghua, Renegade Immortal got a manhua adaptation, published online from 2014 to 2023. It covers Wang Lin's beginnings, from his entry into the Heng Yue Sect to his first fights for survival, with art that emphasises artefacts and battles.
Origins and publication
The manhua was born at a time when Chinese online comic platforms were adapting Qidian's big hits en masse. Xian Ni was chosen for its fame, long before Tencent launched the animated series. Publication stretched over nearly ten years, with pauses, and stopped without covering the whole novel.
How it differs from the donghua
The manhua predates the donghua and offers a different image of Wang Lin, younger-looking and closer to action-comic conventions. It stays faithful to the novel's darkness in its early arcs but has to condense the long phases of meditation and training. The more recent, better-funded donghua established a more mature Wang Lin and more cinematic staging.
Reception and success
The manhua found its audience among readers who wanted to see Xian Ni in pictures before the animation arrived. Its halt before the end of the novel disappointed, and it is now overshadowed by the donghua. It remains a curiosity for tracing how Wang Lin's portrayal has evolved.
Trivia
- The manhua launched almost ten years before Tencent's donghua.
- It mostly covers the early arcs in the Zhao kingdom, a favourite with many readers.
- Wang Lin keeps his distinctive trait from the novel: his hair turns white through his ordeals.
- Publication stopped in 2023, the very year the donghua launched.
My take
This manhua is a decent but skippable read. It deserves credit for respecting the novel's hardness, and some fights are well paneled. But the art is uneven, the adaptation stops too early, and the donghua does better on every front today. I only recommend it to fans curious to see another version of the young Wang Lin.
Who is it for?Renegade Immortal fans who have seen and read everything, and lovers of 2010s action manhua.
— Spidermas, for Donghua Fan
The authorEr Gen 耳根The melancholy poet of xianxia