Review: Urban Fantasy Hanson and the Beast is Men in Black meets chick flick

Millions of years ago, aliens, now known as  yaoguai or demons, landed on Earth. To blend in, they hide their animal forms by shapeshifting into humans. To make sure their secrets are hidden from the humans, the Bureau of Transformers was formed to monitor yaoguai actions in our world.     When young arctic fox demon Bai Qianchu (Liu Yifei) comes to the human world to repay an act of kindness and accidentally exposes her true form, she’s being chased after by the bureau’s agents.

Her object of interest is zookeeper and swindler Yuan Shuai (Feng Shaofeng), who saved her when he was a child.  When Bai Qianchu falls for Yuan Shuai, the two become caught at the center of a power struggle in the demon world between those who want to live apart from humans and those who want to cohabit the world with humans.

Urban fantasy film Hanson and the Beast takes the exciting concept of an alien registration agency and made a rom-com whose main feature is Liu Yifei being charming and beautiful. Luckily, it does that well enough if you like Liu Yifei.  Plus, unlike her last blockbuster,  the rest of the cast can actually act and the set-up is refreshing enough that you sit through it and enjoy Liu Yifei. A drama spinoff of the series starring Wang Ziwen and Chen He was released last week.

Liu Yifei as a fox pup

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Promos Round-Up: Bureau of Transformers

The answer to, what if Men in Black was a miniseries in China?

Millions of years ago, aliens, now known as yaoguai or demons, landed on Earth. To blend in, they hide their animal forms by shapeshifting into humans.  Join the cast of alien animals  and one lone human vet as they try to regulate the underground alien world in  urban fantasy/sci-fi Bureau of Transformers 动物管理局.  The series is set in the same world as that of Hanson and the Beast and stars Chen He, Wang Ziwen, Tang Xiaotian, Huang Tianyuan, Kong Songling, Huang Yilin, and Longbin.  It premieres today on iQiyi here with two new episodes every Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.

Previous trailer and stills; Promo song.

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Wang Ziwen, Chen He star in Hanson and the Beast spinoff Bureau of Transformers

 

 

No, not those Transformers. More like reverse animorphs. Urban fantasy series Bureau of Transformers has Wang Ziwen and Chen He working for an agency in charge of regulating transformers, or animal-looking aliens aka yaoguai that can also transform into humans. Wang Ziwen is an agent of the agency, while Chen He is a human veterinarian that got roped in . Together they must solve a series of cases while trying to maintain the delicate balance between the human and transformer worlds. The series is a spin-off of Hanson and the Beast, which I thought had a great premise that deserves to be flushed out more.

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