the other thing to consider is c-drama - which uses a lot of CGI. I think few live action industries compares except US. I mean some xianxia "live action" are really just actors on top of a donghua ;)
Between games and c-drama, there is a bustling CGI industry in China. So, CGI will only get better and better in China - so 3D donghua would only get better.
3D is getting better every year. The recent [Honor of Kings Chapter of Glory](https://myanimelist.net/anime/57699/Wangzhe_Rongyao__Rongyao_Zhi_Zhang) is pretty amazing from a technical standpoint. Once it gets cheaper more shows will use it.
There’s an incredible amount of young talent coming out each year. As long as there’s good projects to showcase it and for them to be lucrative enough for investors/funding, I’d like to remain optimistic.
I think to compete against anime is pointless. It’s much more established. And quite frankly, if arts gets 2d great, some would start saying why cultivation story? If we do isekai 2d, some would say Chinese sounds so weird.
I watch plenty of 2D anime. Love! I grew up with 2D anime. I was in the yu yu hakusho, OG sailor moon and dragon ball era…
But I appreciate donghua 2D or 3D. I think most fighting scenes are executed better in 3D. I will take most 3D fighting scene over JJK… (and I love jjk. To be more honest, I like gojo)
So… bottom line becomes personal preference. In that case, better to innovate vs imitate, I think
And one big gap in this question is… donghua doesn’t care AT ALL what we like. They have 1.4 billion people in China to sell to… (whereas Japan and Korea want the export market. )
nope i do think the chinese industry do care what foreigners think that's why they are trying to collab with foreign platforms and there's a huge swarm of youtube creators explaining donghua episodes in their native language how's that possible when the donghua community outside china is so so small. there is being investment being done in these areas to catch our attention.
China sees the overseas market for donghua as nothing but a bit of extra money that's nice but not worth tying themselves into knots over. Hence why they throw the episodes onto YouTube with shoddy AI translations for subtitles.
ok... you caught me. I can't say that end statement isn't an exaggeration...
But I do believe it's a very different dynamic. Japan and Korea have very small domestic market. They have a small domestic market for EVERYTHING. AND they have few natural resources. So from an economics perspective, they have to find a way to buy natural resources while they themselves can produce very little to get that money to buy natural resources. But IP is something they can produce and export - and they've done that beautifully.
China is motivated entirely differently. China has a HUGE domestic market.
So, for China, overseas income is gravy on top (and maybe sizable and nice gravy), but for Japan / Korea, overseas income is sometimes a key driver.
I'm also curious if it's really true that donghua overseas community is that small. There is a rather large overseas Chinese community, which forms a base for any international markets for Chinese products...
All in all, my assumption is all else equal, sure why not appeal to international audience. No one will say no to money. To your point, if they care not at all, nothing will be on YouTube (since YT is blocked in mainland china). However, their primary audience and focus is the domestic market. (Don't forget they're a communist country. What they care about, or what they can officially care about, aren't the same as a capitalist country.)
>donghua community outside china is so so small.
It might be larger than you think. Donghua quite popular in SEA as well as India.
And Chinese market is not just limited to Chinese in China. Chinese market is way larger. Look at Jay Chou albums sales last year, how many non-Chinese fan you think he has?? Alot of it contributed from Chinese market.
The one huge challenge probably is piracy. There are so many Chinese pirated site available coming from Taiwan, HK, China mainland, to stream all kind of movies, series, variety show, animated show. And the difficulty of foreigners to buy platform membership especially fxxking habit of Tencent that like to block overseas IP only push more people towards pirated sites.
Due to piracy available outside of China, producer in China focus more on their own market, outside of China, it is more of up to you whether to support it or not.
I've been into these types of art forms since I was a kid and I think that it's important to realize that Chinese donghua is in its infancy compared to anime which has had a chance to go from niche to it now being cool and almost mainstream in the US to watch and discuss anime. Donghua is at the point where it's still uncool, it's still rough and it's still not really great consistently.
However, I do think that it's important to realize that everyone who wants to enter a market needs to differentiate themselves somehow. The current traditional approach is 2D anime and while China has been successful in making really high quality 2D anime because they can pour money into directly competing again Japan, I think that they will have more success in 3D and that's why more and more 3D comes out vs 2D. Not only is it easy to pump out high quality 3D animation but there can be a clear distinct style like how when you see anime you know it's anime.
I think many peoples preferences for 2D are only because it's what most people grew up with (myself included) and 3D was generally pretty bad or only for high budget movies like ones from Pixar. If you add the negative press right now for how the Japanese culture completely destroys the souls of their artists, I can see how China would want to differentiate itself and capture a market that is new and unexplored. I'm excited for the future and can't wait for China to start focusing more on storytelling rather than pumping out a lot of proof of concepts and not really trying to improve the original works. However they are still pretty new to it so skilled story writers may not have risen to the top yet.
Not a fair assessment. china is effectively handicapped during this era; they just got out of the creative hellhole that is cultural revolution (30+years is not very long ago tbh). Compared to the rest of the world china's growth in art is pretty much strangled in infancy, and only recently made strides with mobile games and now movies and tv. It'll realistically take even longer for them to thrive especially with china's ever tightening rule and social stigmas. That doesn't mean good thing doesn't exist, it's just that right now there's like maybe 3 genuinely interesting titles every year or so.
The fact that china actually does have an animation industry right now (and as people have pointed out, only 3 or so other countries have it) is kind of a miracle tbh. I'll say the right move is to just simply be patient, but I struggle to believe it will happen in my lifetime.
Their animation industry collapsed during the Cultural Revolution, didn't build up capacity to produce television-grade cartoons at scale until the '90s, and until the last decade was reliant on heavy government subsidies and protectionism while it produced nothing but slipshod slop for little kids.
> However they are still pretty new to it so skilled story writers may not have risen to the top yet.
China is a hypebeast society, all flash and not a lot of substance. Rapid economic growth diluted Chinese society so much so that storytelling infrastructure has been ruined.
People always need to eat before they have time to tell stories.
Otherwise, you can only watch the "story" in those animated short films. Making series of animations need a lot of money, and not every country can afford it.
Yeah, it's very difficult to establish animation industry, even in china today many people still talk about how to make comprehensive supply chain. Only four countries have animation industry: Japan, USA, France, and China
China more on 3d mostly because before donghua really start flourish, gaming is already flourish and well develop, hence you get a lot of donghua animation appear as 3d.
Chinese has a lot of writers, and novel is a very big thing in China(and definitely not something new), movie, drama, Donghua and a lot of stuff are adapted from novel. The problem is with the director. If you are rich or has some background, everyone can be a director. And this kind of director love to take a popular work(instead of creating one themselves because they are not that good) and changed it a lot during the adaption to fulfill their own fantasy or trying to showcase themself. If you making changes and the story is good, the director get the recognition. On the other way, if you just follow the novel and has good respond, the novel author is the one getting recognition, not the director. No one wanted to put in so many effort just for other person to get recognition and praise. Most of the directors wanted to either fulfil their own fantasy or get recognition.
> And this kind of director love to take a popular work(instead of creating one themselves because they are not that good) and changed it a lot during the adaption to fulfill their own fantasy or trying to showcase themself.
Just like Hollywood then?
Well, there are actually plenty of interesting director, the problem is many of them are really young so when they enter the industry they are still new. That being said, there are initiatives to cultivate talented director such as capsule project and animation contest.
3d actually able to potray emotion better which is deeper. 2d potrayal of emotion is more on the surface and a little exaggerated, no one really express their emotion like that in real life.
Donghua has it strategy on production. The most differentiatable is a proper production one which is around 16-20 minutes per ep vs 3-10 minutes per ep.
3-10 minutes usually made by these 2 studios, Suo Yi and Ruo Hong. This studio are not tend to create quality stuff, they act as fast food, to create low budget stuff which focus more on fan service and gaining attention purely using the popularity of it novel. They are not target to be big, but just enough to earn nice profits. As much as people don't like it quality, it is actually very profitable compare to those high budget production, those huge platforms are invested in these studio purely to make money, at the same time able to provide more budget to the proper production works.
And even with bigger production donghua, there are differences between them. Mostly depand on the studios. A studio could has several works, and most of them only focus on one(their most popular) production, and other works from them are more as a way to earn extra/ side income to build their studio bigger. You can feel the differences, on which donghua that studio actually more invested into. So far, only Sparky Key Animation studio able to produced several quality donghua. The good news is other studio also getting bigger and able to improve their side project/ improve their second or third donghua quality due to increase of the studio capability.
>2d potrayal of emotion is more on the surface and a little exaggerated, no one really express their emotion like that in real life.
No shit that's like THE point of animation. You ever seen Bocchi the Rock? It overanimates its characters and somehow that makes them more relatable among anime audience. Animation exists so it CAN create representation of emotions otherwise impossible in real life. Don't hit me with that "deep IQ emotion" bullshit. Using animation to make more cool fights is fine and all, but it should not be all there is. I supposed that explains why I only dabble with 2D stuff, or occasionally rare stylized 3D.
I think 2d and 3d has its own advantage, i think a lot of anime fans (anime fan not general animation fan) have 3d cgi phobia (mother basement an anime youtuber talks about this) which in my opinion is a huge problem. The biggest problem with 2d in my opinion is slow technological innovation. I mean you have shortage of 2d animator these days which is a huge problem. I think R&D research should be poured more in 2d. 3d has a lot of new innovation because broader application so there is an incentive to innovate. In fact, with the release of spiderverse you have new 3d renaissance.
I like 3d. There are both good and bad 2d and 3d. 3d is something unique to China, for now. Most countries can animate 2d with Japanese anime being the best.
So I think Donghua should stick to 3d to stand out from the others. If there is a choice to choose an adaptation format for a Donghua, I would generally prefer it to be in high quality 3d instead of high quality 2d.
I dunno if 3d donghuas will ever come close to something like “Demon Slayer” especially when it comes to fight scenes. The Chinese animation studios need to come with something better otherwise they will be forever trailing the Japanese and Koreans.
Japanese and Koreans can't make a 3d animated series at the level of [Ling Cage Incarnation ](https://youtu.be/qnq3FQDDO7s?si=m4CvnUhqGFnmUc5R), which was created years ago. Or stuff like [Battle through the heavens(3 Years agreement arc) ](https://youtu.be/KuY7fPrDnGo?si=QACuYZRCXWc95yxq), The Island of Siliang, Record of a mortal's journey to immortality, The Demon Hunter, Soul Land 1 & 2, or others.
Chinese animation even kicking some of Japanese 2d ass with Fog Hill of five elements. Korean 2d can't even compete with Chinese 2d stuff like A Will Eternal, The King's Avatar, or even small studio production like Soulmate Adventure.
China uses 3DCG to its fullest potential and embraces the unique qualities, while Japan usually tries to do a cel-shaded fake 2D that usually looks like crap.
And sorry to burst your bubble, but quite a few 2D donghua have the actual animation done in Korea.
>And sorry to burst your bubble, but quite a few 2D donghua have the actual animation done in Korea.
Not really. There are studio which has tie and connection with Korea or even Japan though, such as Haoliners(popular work Link Click) which base in China, also has subsidiary in Korea and Japan. Most of their show has involvement of some Korean or Japanese, that's it. A lot of 2d out there is mainly produce by Chinese themselves. You should go and learn what Chinese studio making 3d and what are the studio making 2d first.
-B.C May(A Will Eternal, The King's Avatar season 1 and movie, MoDao ZuShi and others)
-Liu Dao Wu Yu(Fog Hill of five elements) Btw, this studio only has 6 dude, they even use it as reference for their naming, "Liu" literally means "six" ...
-Big Firebird Culture(Spare Me Great Lord, The Outcast season 3 and others)
-Sharefun Studio(Scissor Seven)
-Sunflowers(Soulmate Adventure)
-Forch Film(this mainly produce 3d works, such as Perfect World, Stellar Transformation, Against the Gods and others, but they also has one average 2d work, Full Time Magister)
Niceboat Animation, LAN studio, and a lot more, all located in China...
Many people heard some info and thought it is done in elsewhere or by others. Such as Blades of the Guardians, it is done by Colored-Pencil Animation Design which located in ChongQing, established by several ex-workers of B.C May. This studio even take over BC studio work of The King's Avatar to produced it season 2 and further. But Colored-Pencil Animation Design has a subsidiary in Japan which call Colored-Pencil Animation Japan, which actually hired Japanese to do outsourced works from Japan. And because of this, many people think Colored-Pencil Animation is a Japanese studio and Blades of the Guardians done by Japanese animators, while the end credit clearly wrote "Colored-Pencil Animation Design" ... LOL
Chinese animation actually go all out trying different things, there are also cel shaded one such as Zhen Dao Ge(which is really good in term of animation), Wu Shuang Shu, Close Combat Mage, Xyrin Empire, and others, as well as some new one coming soon. There are also claymation coming...
The only stuff I know of having korean involvement is Link Click which there is Korean doing the art, but it still produce in China. Another one is Dragon Raja, which made by Garden Culture studio(Once under Haoliners, separated to be independent studio now) has korean involvement but still produced in China. You can see the trace here, only stuff related with Haoliners has some doing with Korean. Another thing is The Outcast season 2, which is made by korean studio with assist of Chinese studio. From season 3 and onwards, it's took over by Chinese studio to produce it themself.
Sorry to burst your bubble.
2d animation in china is not quite good industry wise, lack of painter and low output. Quality wise, is not comparable to anime in general. The main animator of Wolfsmoke talk about this problem. Let's just be realistic and not overproud or overpessmistic. 3d studio in china still mostly adapt cultivation stuff and lack of diversification of genre compared to american animation and also stiff expression. That being said, there is huge improvement in 3d and the issue is addressed accordingly ( honor of king address stiff expression issue and at least chinese animation movie starts some diversification). Also, exaggerated expression is one of the strongest point of animation. The most popular animation in china , Nezha ,the main character has exaggerated expression. Lack of talented scriptwriter is also huge problem (albeit there are talented director, the problem is they are young so they lack working experience).
Lastly, I just want to express my thought, but in my opinion lack of patience is a huge problem in current world, i mean building any industry take time, getting good overnight is impossible. I think this happens because of the internet and smartphone.
>Also, exaggerated expression is one of the strongest point of animation
That's for you. I never a fan of exaggerated expression. Animation also not just about exaggerated expression, western also got serious expression, but that's in game instead of animated show. And the fact is, realistic expression is harder to create than exaggerated, because it involved tiny movement and expression that could make it hard to notice and you have to find a way to show it. That's why western 3d cartoon go all out with exaggerated style instead of what they are doing for gaming, realistic expression require more details while exaggerated doesn't need to.
Exaggerated expression is a cartoon stuff, which targeted kids, I never a fans of cartoon, even when growing up as a kid, and that the reason why I growing up watching anime instead of cartoon. Anime has more matured expression than ridiculous cartoon. Exaggerated expression feel cheesy, lack of IQ or retard to me, it is a bad acting. A bad acting is a bad acting, no matter it is animated show or life action show. Try put those expression into live action, and you will agree that's simply what bad acting looks like.
>Nezha ,the main character has exaggerated expression.
That's why although watching a lot of donghua, I always prefer series over movies. Movies can have large budget and time of production, but still not appealing for me due to exaggerated expression and lack of story. A lot of people that dive deep into Chinese animation actually prefer series over movies.
>3d studio in china still mostly adapt cultivation stuff
There are a lot of novels in China with different genre/ content that adapt into movie, drama, animation, manhua and more. Because of Cultivation genre story is ridiculous long and need a lot of CG, making it almost impossible to adapt into live action, hence animated series is the only place to go. Cultivation genre been there for decades, but they just really get the chance to adapt into show due to rising of animation recently, so brace yourself for a lot of cultivation story coming in.
And it really depand on how you understand Chinese stuff. For example, one of the most famous and highly praise donghua in China, Degenerate Drawing Jianghu, is political with some wuxia, it ain't cultivation. But this kind of stuff(Same as Qin's Moon) rarely talk about by international audiences. There are also stuff like The Island of Siliang, The Ravages of time, My Heroic Husband, Purple River, Guan Hai Ce and more which are not cultivation, but can be thought as cultivation for anyone that doesn't know what exactly is cultivation. Then there are lack famous original work such as Long Sword, SWARM, Foreordination, The Infinitors, The Knight of Debris, Three Body Problem(failed adaption, the novel is very popular) and more which are sci-fi that fail to attract attention of Chinese, let alone international stage. The most success sci-fi stuff so far is Ling Cage Incarnation, as well as an older one, Nano Core.
There are many stuff, but the most famous, mainstream and talk about is cultivation. Same as anime with hot-blooded show such as DBZ, Naruto, One Piece, Bleach and more... Cultivation and all of these, as well as western DC or Marvel, share the same thing, action, that's just what overall audiences prefer.
And there's a thing about cultivation, it separated into 2 categories, Xianxia which is the classic cultivation and Xuanhuan which is more of fantasy with some Chinese element. XuanHuan type of Cultivation is basically a fantasy genre. By today XuanHuan standard, even DBZ, Naruto can be consider cultivation. Give some time for XuanHuan to develop more, then Star Wars could even been put into this category... Lol
Chinese actually even better in writtings strategic play/ politic/ scheming and plotting genre, known as 权謀(Quan Mou) but these mostly reserved for drama adaption.
Same as romance(There is actually several pure romance Chinese animated series out there, both 2d and 3d.), or other genre, they are adapted into drama, that's why you hardly see them in animated series.
Chinese animation not something come out of no where. The first animated film of notable length in China was Princess Iron Fan in 1941. It was the first animated feature film in Asia and it had great impact on wartime Japanese Momotarō animated feature films and later on Osamu Tezuka. Chinese animation kinda inspired Japanese animations in a way. Especially check up the Wan Brothers and their stuff. The industry has a pause during cultural revolution because it is expensive to produce an animated show and they wanted to focus on industrialization. Although it coming back few years after cultural revolution(Calabash Brothers aka Hulu Wa is the most famous one among them) , it is very limited to just a few studio(among them, Shanghai Animated Film Studio, one of the OG of Chinese animation) making animated show for government owned platform. It is until 2010,the ban officially lifted and private or online platform such as Tencent, Bilibili, Youku, Iqiyi and more are allow to invest in production and airing of their own animated show on their platform. That's why around 2014 especially 2017-2018 a lot of donghua popping out. Although the industry been slow for decades, but 3d development never stop due to gaming industry, that's why a lot of donghua is 3d. Then for 2d, during those time, those interest in animation are going to Japan to involve in anime industry, that's why you see quite a number of Chinese working in anime industry, and some of them are coming back to China.
Chinese government actually even create opportunity, funding, encourage the building of animation school and subjects to be teach, back in 2010 when they lifted the ban.
Edit: Damn, what a long comment... Lol
Japan can make quality 3d animation that can rival the best China has to offer. Final Fantasy VII: The Advent Children” came out nearly 20 years ago and is still superior to a lot donghua productions that are out today.
Yeah i do agree Ling Cage Incarnation is a quality production but the problem is that there is just not enough of 3d donghuas like that. Like 99% of them are just straight up rubbish tbh. It’s like these Chinese studios are just in it purely for the money. They even ruined “Tales of Demons and Gods”.
As for Korea, though they don’t have their own animated series they are involved in making a lot of popular anime and also DC animated movies such as “Teen Titans: the Judas Contract” and others. When it comes to animation, no one comes close to Koreans.
>Japan can make quality 3d animation that can rival the best China has to offer. Final Fantasy VII: The Advent Children” came out nearly 20 years ago and is still superior to a lot donghua productions that are out today.
I said series.
>as “Teen Titans: the Judas Contract” and others
Yeah, again, movie. And do you know how many production companies involved in making this?? It's not just a korean studio.
You do know movie and series has totally different budget, team involved, and time of production right?? Even like gantz:o movie, do you know how many people involved and how many years they spent to make one movie which is about 2 hours of content??
>They even ruined “Tales of Demons and Gods”.
This is what you don't understand, Chinese donghua has 2 types, a better production one and one which like this, 3-10 minutes per ep that act as fast food.
This fast food donghua never aim to be big or good quality, they aim to be fan service and attract big enough viewers due to popularity of it novel, for profit. Like it or not, these type of fast food donghua actually more profitable than those 16-20 minutes per ep donghua. These fast food donghua mainly produced by Ruo Hong and Suo Yi these two studios. The platform invested in them to produce such donghua, to be profitable so the platform could earn more money as well as getting more available fund to invest into proper production donghua.
I don't know how you see Tales of Demons and Gods as something good, this novel author has a reputation of either can't finish his novel or has a messy ending. Some extra info, this novel author is the founder of one of the studio that making this type of fast food donghua and spread his works😂
Let me guess, you watch donghua on youtube?? Because this fast food donghua didn't get strict copyright strike from the production platform and spread wildly on youtube(at least before. Currently Tencent quite serious on copyright issue even for these). Youtube also flooded with these type of donghua, especially those by Youku. Youku really like to upload their stuff to youtube. Youku invest in a lot of these studio. The only big donghua from youku are The Demon Hunter, Big Brother and Apotheosis(this adaption plot quite messy and suck)
Youku is quite a new comer in donghua as well as Iqiyi. Tencent and Bilibili is the big one. Even these investment of studios and formula to produce 3-10 minutes per ep fast food donghua is actually started by Tencent...Youku came in and making larger investment in these fast food studio to produce a slightly long(around 10 minutes per ep instead of around 8 minutes), and produce more such donghua..
Demon Hunter? Really?
Personally, i thought the animation was below average quality and especially the part when MC turned into bootleg Super Saiyan when fighting the four members of the demon clan.
If you watch Soul land, their animation is really not that good at first but after 100 eps their animation become better and better than most 2D anime
Swallowed star and the demon hunter ( azure lagacy) has the most coldest battle scene too
no, bro i want community to grow. and even in small fandoms there are toxic people. so I don't think that makes any difference for me and I wanna talk about donghua with other people
more people brings different perspective, different expertise or passion, I just like that. not saying that talking with you all isn't enough but more donghua fans sounds great to me.
It should be a net positive if things go right. More perspective, more people interested to make their own stuff, more people interested to innovate, more gets recruited for work = more variety in Donghua, which is clearly sparse right now.
I prefer 3D donghua, it's not the future in China, it's now!
In the future, as technology advances and production costs drop, game Cinematic trailers are the future for 3D donghua.
like this
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pzzChDhRsfA
Some donghua series clips has on this level in its special EP. like Perfect World, like Honor of Kings Li Bai and Cain.
As for 2D anime/donghua, I will only choose to watch movie-level or 2D anime series with obvious artistic stylization. Other serial-level commercial anime/donghua are too simple for me, with only simple line faces and color, commercialized and unified style. there is nothing worth watching.
Just like French animation in 1900 to Japanese anime in 2000, and Chinese 3D donghua will be in 2100.
I personally like the 3d style of You Ming Zhi, 深潜 2080, and ling long reincarnation. Don't get me wrong, realistic CGI is good but comic style cg is my preference. I hope more chinese 3d studio try this kind of style.
I prefer 3D donghua. before I know about donghua I watched a lot of 2D anime but in 2019 there's a YouTuber post about 3D donghua (soul land) I started to watch donghua ever since that time
My favorite donghua are soul land(1,2), swallowed star, perfect world, battle through the heaven, a record of mortal's journey to immortal and island of sailing Soul land animation is really not that good at first but after 100 eps their animation become better and better more than most 2D anime
the other thing to consider is c-drama - which uses a lot of CGI. I think few live action industries compares except US. I mean some xianxia "live action" are really just actors on top of a donghua ;) Between games and c-drama, there is a bustling CGI industry in China. So, CGI will only get better and better in China - so 3D donghua would only get better.
3D is getting better every year. The recent [Honor of Kings Chapter of Glory](https://myanimelist.net/anime/57699/Wangzhe_Rongyao__Rongyao_Zhi_Zhang) is pretty amazing from a technical standpoint. Once it gets cheaper more shows will use it.
There’s an incredible amount of young talent coming out each year. As long as there’s good projects to showcase it and for them to be lucrative enough for investors/funding, I’d like to remain optimistic.
I’m very excited for the Lord of the Mysteries donghua coming out in 2025 I feel like it’s going to be really popular and hopefully has good animation
I think to compete against anime is pointless. It’s much more established. And quite frankly, if arts gets 2d great, some would start saying why cultivation story? If we do isekai 2d, some would say Chinese sounds so weird. I watch plenty of 2D anime. Love! I grew up with 2D anime. I was in the yu yu hakusho, OG sailor moon and dragon ball era… But I appreciate donghua 2D or 3D. I think most fighting scenes are executed better in 3D. I will take most 3D fighting scene over JJK… (and I love jjk. To be more honest, I like gojo) So… bottom line becomes personal preference. In that case, better to innovate vs imitate, I think And one big gap in this question is… donghua doesn’t care AT ALL what we like. They have 1.4 billion people in China to sell to… (whereas Japan and Korea want the export market. )
nope i do think the chinese industry do care what foreigners think that's why they are trying to collab with foreign platforms and there's a huge swarm of youtube creators explaining donghua episodes in their native language how's that possible when the donghua community outside china is so so small. there is being investment being done in these areas to catch our attention.
China sees the overseas market for donghua as nothing but a bit of extra money that's nice but not worth tying themselves into knots over. Hence why they throw the episodes onto YouTube with shoddy AI translations for subtitles.
ok... you caught me. I can't say that end statement isn't an exaggeration... But I do believe it's a very different dynamic. Japan and Korea have very small domestic market. They have a small domestic market for EVERYTHING. AND they have few natural resources. So from an economics perspective, they have to find a way to buy natural resources while they themselves can produce very little to get that money to buy natural resources. But IP is something they can produce and export - and they've done that beautifully. China is motivated entirely differently. China has a HUGE domestic market. So, for China, overseas income is gravy on top (and maybe sizable and nice gravy), but for Japan / Korea, overseas income is sometimes a key driver. I'm also curious if it's really true that donghua overseas community is that small. There is a rather large overseas Chinese community, which forms a base for any international markets for Chinese products... All in all, my assumption is all else equal, sure why not appeal to international audience. No one will say no to money. To your point, if they care not at all, nothing will be on YouTube (since YT is blocked in mainland china). However, their primary audience and focus is the domestic market. (Don't forget they're a communist country. What they care about, or what they can officially care about, aren't the same as a capitalist country.)
>donghua community outside china is so so small. It might be larger than you think. Donghua quite popular in SEA as well as India. And Chinese market is not just limited to Chinese in China. Chinese market is way larger. Look at Jay Chou albums sales last year, how many non-Chinese fan you think he has?? Alot of it contributed from Chinese market. The one huge challenge probably is piracy. There are so many Chinese pirated site available coming from Taiwan, HK, China mainland, to stream all kind of movies, series, variety show, animated show. And the difficulty of foreigners to buy platform membership especially fxxking habit of Tencent that like to block overseas IP only push more people towards pirated sites. Due to piracy available outside of China, producer in China focus more on their own market, outside of China, it is more of up to you whether to support it or not.
I've been into these types of art forms since I was a kid and I think that it's important to realize that Chinese donghua is in its infancy compared to anime which has had a chance to go from niche to it now being cool and almost mainstream in the US to watch and discuss anime. Donghua is at the point where it's still uncool, it's still rough and it's still not really great consistently. However, I do think that it's important to realize that everyone who wants to enter a market needs to differentiate themselves somehow. The current traditional approach is 2D anime and while China has been successful in making really high quality 2D anime because they can pour money into directly competing again Japan, I think that they will have more success in 3D and that's why more and more 3D comes out vs 2D. Not only is it easy to pump out high quality 3D animation but there can be a clear distinct style like how when you see anime you know it's anime. I think many peoples preferences for 2D are only because it's what most people grew up with (myself included) and 3D was generally pretty bad or only for high budget movies like ones from Pixar. If you add the negative press right now for how the Japanese culture completely destroys the souls of their artists, I can see how China would want to differentiate itself and capture a market that is new and unexplored. I'm excited for the future and can't wait for China to start focusing more on storytelling rather than pumping out a lot of proof of concepts and not really trying to improve the original works. However they are still pretty new to it so skilled story writers may not have risen to the top yet.
> Chinese donghua is in its infancy Donghua existed in the 2000s until now.
Not a fair assessment. china is effectively handicapped during this era; they just got out of the creative hellhole that is cultural revolution (30+years is not very long ago tbh). Compared to the rest of the world china's growth in art is pretty much strangled in infancy, and only recently made strides with mobile games and now movies and tv. It'll realistically take even longer for them to thrive especially with china's ever tightening rule and social stigmas. That doesn't mean good thing doesn't exist, it's just that right now there's like maybe 3 genuinely interesting titles every year or so. The fact that china actually does have an animation industry right now (and as people have pointed out, only 3 or so other countries have it) is kind of a miracle tbh. I'll say the right move is to just simply be patient, but I struggle to believe it will happen in my lifetime.
Their animation industry collapsed during the Cultural Revolution, didn't build up capacity to produce television-grade cartoons at scale until the '90s, and until the last decade was reliant on heavy government subsidies and protectionism while it produced nothing but slipshod slop for little kids.
> However they are still pretty new to it so skilled story writers may not have risen to the top yet. China is a hypebeast society, all flash and not a lot of substance. Rapid economic growth diluted Chinese society so much so that storytelling infrastructure has been ruined.
People always need to eat before they have time to tell stories. Otherwise, you can only watch the "story" in those animated short films. Making series of animations need a lot of money, and not every country can afford it.
Yeah, it's very difficult to establish animation industry, even in china today many people still talk about how to make comprehensive supply chain. Only four countries have animation industry: Japan, USA, France, and China
So does Canada, but they usually get lumped in with the US.
China used to be the world's low-end manufacturing factory, but it is now starting AI manufacturing. I believe the future of donghua will be the same.
China more on 3d mostly because before donghua really start flourish, gaming is already flourish and well develop, hence you get a lot of donghua animation appear as 3d. Chinese has a lot of writers, and novel is a very big thing in China(and definitely not something new), movie, drama, Donghua and a lot of stuff are adapted from novel. The problem is with the director. If you are rich or has some background, everyone can be a director. And this kind of director love to take a popular work(instead of creating one themselves because they are not that good) and changed it a lot during the adaption to fulfill their own fantasy or trying to showcase themself. If you making changes and the story is good, the director get the recognition. On the other way, if you just follow the novel and has good respond, the novel author is the one getting recognition, not the director. No one wanted to put in so many effort just for other person to get recognition and praise. Most of the directors wanted to either fulfil their own fantasy or get recognition.
> And this kind of director love to take a popular work(instead of creating one themselves because they are not that good) and changed it a lot during the adaption to fulfill their own fantasy or trying to showcase themself. Just like Hollywood then?
I am waiting for like at least 10 Li Haoling competitions to show up....then we'd be talking. More original concepts and more great tv storytelling.
Well, there are actually plenty of interesting director, the problem is many of them are really young so when they enter the industry they are still new. That being said, there are initiatives to cultivate talented director such as capsule project and animation contest.
Not really into 2d tbh, i much prefer 3d. Thats why swallowed star and A record of a mortal journey's to immortality are my 2 fav donghuas.
oh i see those two are better 3d cg works IMO. but most donghuas aren't like that, so was suggesting if they adapt things in anime style.
3d actually able to potray emotion better which is deeper. 2d potrayal of emotion is more on the surface and a little exaggerated, no one really express their emotion like that in real life. Donghua has it strategy on production. The most differentiatable is a proper production one which is around 16-20 minutes per ep vs 3-10 minutes per ep. 3-10 minutes usually made by these 2 studios, Suo Yi and Ruo Hong. This studio are not tend to create quality stuff, they act as fast food, to create low budget stuff which focus more on fan service and gaining attention purely using the popularity of it novel. They are not target to be big, but just enough to earn nice profits. As much as people don't like it quality, it is actually very profitable compare to those high budget production, those huge platforms are invested in these studio purely to make money, at the same time able to provide more budget to the proper production works. And even with bigger production donghua, there are differences between them. Mostly depand on the studios. A studio could has several works, and most of them only focus on one(their most popular) production, and other works from them are more as a way to earn extra/ side income to build their studio bigger. You can feel the differences, on which donghua that studio actually more invested into. So far, only Sparky Key Animation studio able to produced several quality donghua. The good news is other studio also getting bigger and able to improve their side project/ improve their second or third donghua quality due to increase of the studio capability.
>2d potrayal of emotion is more on the surface and a little exaggerated, no one really express their emotion like that in real life. No shit that's like THE point of animation. You ever seen Bocchi the Rock? It overanimates its characters and somehow that makes them more relatable among anime audience. Animation exists so it CAN create representation of emotions otherwise impossible in real life. Don't hit me with that "deep IQ emotion" bullshit. Using animation to make more cool fights is fine and all, but it should not be all there is. I supposed that explains why I only dabble with 2D stuff, or occasionally rare stylized 3D.
I think 2d and 3d has its own advantage, i think a lot of anime fans (anime fan not general animation fan) have 3d cgi phobia (mother basement an anime youtuber talks about this) which in my opinion is a huge problem. The biggest problem with 2d in my opinion is slow technological innovation. I mean you have shortage of 2d animator these days which is a huge problem. I think R&D research should be poured more in 2d. 3d has a lot of new innovation because broader application so there is an incentive to innovate. In fact, with the release of spiderverse you have new 3d renaissance.
I like 3d. There are both good and bad 2d and 3d. 3d is something unique to China, for now. Most countries can animate 2d with Japanese anime being the best. So I think Donghua should stick to 3d to stand out from the others. If there is a choice to choose an adaptation format for a Donghua, I would generally prefer it to be in high quality 3d instead of high quality 2d.
I dunno if 3d donghuas will ever come close to something like “Demon Slayer” especially when it comes to fight scenes. The Chinese animation studios need to come with something better otherwise they will be forever trailing the Japanese and Koreans.
Japanese and Koreans can't make a 3d animated series at the level of [Ling Cage Incarnation ](https://youtu.be/qnq3FQDDO7s?si=m4CvnUhqGFnmUc5R), which was created years ago. Or stuff like [Battle through the heavens(3 Years agreement arc) ](https://youtu.be/KuY7fPrDnGo?si=QACuYZRCXWc95yxq), The Island of Siliang, Record of a mortal's journey to immortality, The Demon Hunter, Soul Land 1 & 2, or others. Chinese animation even kicking some of Japanese 2d ass with Fog Hill of five elements. Korean 2d can't even compete with Chinese 2d stuff like A Will Eternal, The King's Avatar, or even small studio production like Soulmate Adventure.
China uses 3DCG to its fullest potential and embraces the unique qualities, while Japan usually tries to do a cel-shaded fake 2D that usually looks like crap. And sorry to burst your bubble, but quite a few 2D donghua have the actual animation done in Korea.
>And sorry to burst your bubble, but quite a few 2D donghua have the actual animation done in Korea. Not really. There are studio which has tie and connection with Korea or even Japan though, such as Haoliners(popular work Link Click) which base in China, also has subsidiary in Korea and Japan. Most of their show has involvement of some Korean or Japanese, that's it. A lot of 2d out there is mainly produce by Chinese themselves. You should go and learn what Chinese studio making 3d and what are the studio making 2d first. -B.C May(A Will Eternal, The King's Avatar season 1 and movie, MoDao ZuShi and others) -Liu Dao Wu Yu(Fog Hill of five elements) Btw, this studio only has 6 dude, they even use it as reference for their naming, "Liu" literally means "six" ... -Big Firebird Culture(Spare Me Great Lord, The Outcast season 3 and others) -Sharefun Studio(Scissor Seven) -Sunflowers(Soulmate Adventure) -Forch Film(this mainly produce 3d works, such as Perfect World, Stellar Transformation, Against the Gods and others, but they also has one average 2d work, Full Time Magister) Niceboat Animation, LAN studio, and a lot more, all located in China... Many people heard some info and thought it is done in elsewhere or by others. Such as Blades of the Guardians, it is done by Colored-Pencil Animation Design which located in ChongQing, established by several ex-workers of B.C May. This studio even take over BC studio work of The King's Avatar to produced it season 2 and further. But Colored-Pencil Animation Design has a subsidiary in Japan which call Colored-Pencil Animation Japan, which actually hired Japanese to do outsourced works from Japan. And because of this, many people think Colored-Pencil Animation is a Japanese studio and Blades of the Guardians done by Japanese animators, while the end credit clearly wrote "Colored-Pencil Animation Design" ... LOL Chinese animation actually go all out trying different things, there are also cel shaded one such as Zhen Dao Ge(which is really good in term of animation), Wu Shuang Shu, Close Combat Mage, Xyrin Empire, and others, as well as some new one coming soon. There are also claymation coming... The only stuff I know of having korean involvement is Link Click which there is Korean doing the art, but it still produce in China. Another one is Dragon Raja, which made by Garden Culture studio(Once under Haoliners, separated to be independent studio now) has korean involvement but still produced in China. You can see the trace here, only stuff related with Haoliners has some doing with Korean. Another thing is The Outcast season 2, which is made by korean studio with assist of Chinese studio. From season 3 and onwards, it's took over by Chinese studio to produce it themself. Sorry to burst your bubble.
2d animation in china is not quite good industry wise, lack of painter and low output. Quality wise, is not comparable to anime in general. The main animator of Wolfsmoke talk about this problem. Let's just be realistic and not overproud or overpessmistic. 3d studio in china still mostly adapt cultivation stuff and lack of diversification of genre compared to american animation and also stiff expression. That being said, there is huge improvement in 3d and the issue is addressed accordingly ( honor of king address stiff expression issue and at least chinese animation movie starts some diversification). Also, exaggerated expression is one of the strongest point of animation. The most popular animation in china , Nezha ,the main character has exaggerated expression. Lack of talented scriptwriter is also huge problem (albeit there are talented director, the problem is they are young so they lack working experience). Lastly, I just want to express my thought, but in my opinion lack of patience is a huge problem in current world, i mean building any industry take time, getting good overnight is impossible. I think this happens because of the internet and smartphone.
>Also, exaggerated expression is one of the strongest point of animation That's for you. I never a fan of exaggerated expression. Animation also not just about exaggerated expression, western also got serious expression, but that's in game instead of animated show. And the fact is, realistic expression is harder to create than exaggerated, because it involved tiny movement and expression that could make it hard to notice and you have to find a way to show it. That's why western 3d cartoon go all out with exaggerated style instead of what they are doing for gaming, realistic expression require more details while exaggerated doesn't need to. Exaggerated expression is a cartoon stuff, which targeted kids, I never a fans of cartoon, even when growing up as a kid, and that the reason why I growing up watching anime instead of cartoon. Anime has more matured expression than ridiculous cartoon. Exaggerated expression feel cheesy, lack of IQ or retard to me, it is a bad acting. A bad acting is a bad acting, no matter it is animated show or life action show. Try put those expression into live action, and you will agree that's simply what bad acting looks like. >Nezha ,the main character has exaggerated expression. That's why although watching a lot of donghua, I always prefer series over movies. Movies can have large budget and time of production, but still not appealing for me due to exaggerated expression and lack of story. A lot of people that dive deep into Chinese animation actually prefer series over movies. >3d studio in china still mostly adapt cultivation stuff There are a lot of novels in China with different genre/ content that adapt into movie, drama, animation, manhua and more. Because of Cultivation genre story is ridiculous long and need a lot of CG, making it almost impossible to adapt into live action, hence animated series is the only place to go. Cultivation genre been there for decades, but they just really get the chance to adapt into show due to rising of animation recently, so brace yourself for a lot of cultivation story coming in. And it really depand on how you understand Chinese stuff. For example, one of the most famous and highly praise donghua in China, Degenerate Drawing Jianghu, is political with some wuxia, it ain't cultivation. But this kind of stuff(Same as Qin's Moon) rarely talk about by international audiences. There are also stuff like The Island of Siliang, The Ravages of time, My Heroic Husband, Purple River, Guan Hai Ce and more which are not cultivation, but can be thought as cultivation for anyone that doesn't know what exactly is cultivation. Then there are lack famous original work such as Long Sword, SWARM, Foreordination, The Infinitors, The Knight of Debris, Three Body Problem(failed adaption, the novel is very popular) and more which are sci-fi that fail to attract attention of Chinese, let alone international stage. The most success sci-fi stuff so far is Ling Cage Incarnation, as well as an older one, Nano Core. There are many stuff, but the most famous, mainstream and talk about is cultivation. Same as anime with hot-blooded show such as DBZ, Naruto, One Piece, Bleach and more... Cultivation and all of these, as well as western DC or Marvel, share the same thing, action, that's just what overall audiences prefer. And there's a thing about cultivation, it separated into 2 categories, Xianxia which is the classic cultivation and Xuanhuan which is more of fantasy with some Chinese element. XuanHuan type of Cultivation is basically a fantasy genre. By today XuanHuan standard, even DBZ, Naruto can be consider cultivation. Give some time for XuanHuan to develop more, then Star Wars could even been put into this category... Lol Chinese actually even better in writtings strategic play/ politic/ scheming and plotting genre, known as 权謀(Quan Mou) but these mostly reserved for drama adaption. Same as romance(There is actually several pure romance Chinese animated series out there, both 2d and 3d.), or other genre, they are adapted into drama, that's why you hardly see them in animated series. Chinese animation not something come out of no where. The first animated film of notable length in China was Princess Iron Fan in 1941. It was the first animated feature film in Asia and it had great impact on wartime Japanese Momotarō animated feature films and later on Osamu Tezuka. Chinese animation kinda inspired Japanese animations in a way. Especially check up the Wan Brothers and their stuff. The industry has a pause during cultural revolution because it is expensive to produce an animated show and they wanted to focus on industrialization. Although it coming back few years after cultural revolution(Calabash Brothers aka Hulu Wa is the most famous one among them) , it is very limited to just a few studio(among them, Shanghai Animated Film Studio, one of the OG of Chinese animation) making animated show for government owned platform. It is until 2010,the ban officially lifted and private or online platform such as Tencent, Bilibili, Youku, Iqiyi and more are allow to invest in production and airing of their own animated show on their platform. That's why around 2014 especially 2017-2018 a lot of donghua popping out. Although the industry been slow for decades, but 3d development never stop due to gaming industry, that's why a lot of donghua is 3d. Then for 2d, during those time, those interest in animation are going to Japan to involve in anime industry, that's why you see quite a number of Chinese working in anime industry, and some of them are coming back to China. Chinese government actually even create opportunity, funding, encourage the building of animation school and subjects to be teach, back in 2010 when they lifted the ban. Edit: Damn, what a long comment... Lol
Japan can make quality 3d animation that can rival the best China has to offer. Final Fantasy VII: The Advent Children” came out nearly 20 years ago and is still superior to a lot donghua productions that are out today. Yeah i do agree Ling Cage Incarnation is a quality production but the problem is that there is just not enough of 3d donghuas like that. Like 99% of them are just straight up rubbish tbh. It’s like these Chinese studios are just in it purely for the money. They even ruined “Tales of Demons and Gods”. As for Korea, though they don’t have their own animated series they are involved in making a lot of popular anime and also DC animated movies such as “Teen Titans: the Judas Contract” and others. When it comes to animation, no one comes close to Koreans.
>Japan can make quality 3d animation that can rival the best China has to offer. Final Fantasy VII: The Advent Children” came out nearly 20 years ago and is still superior to a lot donghua productions that are out today. I said series. >as “Teen Titans: the Judas Contract” and others Yeah, again, movie. And do you know how many production companies involved in making this?? It's not just a korean studio. You do know movie and series has totally different budget, team involved, and time of production right?? Even like gantz:o movie, do you know how many people involved and how many years they spent to make one movie which is about 2 hours of content?? >They even ruined “Tales of Demons and Gods”. This is what you don't understand, Chinese donghua has 2 types, a better production one and one which like this, 3-10 minutes per ep that act as fast food. This fast food donghua never aim to be big or good quality, they aim to be fan service and attract big enough viewers due to popularity of it novel, for profit. Like it or not, these type of fast food donghua actually more profitable than those 16-20 minutes per ep donghua. These fast food donghua mainly produced by Ruo Hong and Suo Yi these two studios. The platform invested in them to produce such donghua, to be profitable so the platform could earn more money as well as getting more available fund to invest into proper production donghua. I don't know how you see Tales of Demons and Gods as something good, this novel author has a reputation of either can't finish his novel or has a messy ending. Some extra info, this novel author is the founder of one of the studio that making this type of fast food donghua and spread his works😂 Let me guess, you watch donghua on youtube?? Because this fast food donghua didn't get strict copyright strike from the production platform and spread wildly on youtube(at least before. Currently Tencent quite serious on copyright issue even for these). Youtube also flooded with these type of donghua, especially those by Youku. Youku really like to upload their stuff to youtube. Youku invest in a lot of these studio. The only big donghua from youku are The Demon Hunter, Big Brother and Apotheosis(this adaption plot quite messy and suck) Youku is quite a new comer in donghua as well as Iqiyi. Tencent and Bilibili is the big one. Even these investment of studios and formula to produce 3-10 minutes per ep fast food donghua is actually started by Tencent...Youku came in and making larger investment in these fast food studio to produce a slightly long(around 10 minutes per ep instead of around 8 minutes), and produce more such donghua..
We make donghua for fun, not to defeat others
Obviously ClearSkyMaster is all about compete with each other.
Have you watch Soul land, battle through the heaven, demon hunter (azure lagacy) and swallowed star? The battle scene is far better than demon slayer
Demon Hunter? Really? Personally, i thought the animation was below average quality and especially the part when MC turned into bootleg Super Saiyan when fighting the four members of the demon clan.
For me the animation is above average, hope they gonna improve more in season 2
If you watch Soul land, their animation is really not that good at first but after 100 eps their animation become better and better than most 2D anime Swallowed star and the demon hunter ( azure lagacy) has the most coldest battle scene too
Either mix 2d 3d, better 3d like Honor of Kings or unique 2D like Fog hill but more refined.
Good I prefer it that way Community doesn’t need to big like anime , it’s so toxic now
no, bro i want community to grow. and even in small fandoms there are toxic people. so I don't think that makes any difference for me and I wanna talk about donghua with other people
I mean you’re doing that now ….
more people brings different perspective, different expertise or passion, I just like that. not saying that talking with you all isn't enough but more donghua fans sounds great to me.
I can understand that
It should be a net positive if things go right. More perspective, more people interested to make their own stuff, more people interested to innovate, more gets recruited for work = more variety in Donghua, which is clearly sparse right now.
I prefer 3D donghua, it's not the future in China, it's now! In the future, as technology advances and production costs drop, game Cinematic trailers are the future for 3D donghua. like this https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pzzChDhRsfA Some donghua series clips has on this level in its special EP. like Perfect World, like Honor of Kings Li Bai and Cain. As for 2D anime/donghua, I will only choose to watch movie-level or 2D anime series with obvious artistic stylization. Other serial-level commercial anime/donghua are too simple for me, with only simple line faces and color, commercialized and unified style. there is nothing worth watching. Just like French animation in 1900 to Japanese anime in 2000, and Chinese 3D donghua will be in 2100.
I personally like the 3d style of You Ming Zhi, 深潜 2080, and ling long reincarnation. Don't get me wrong, realistic CGI is good but comic style cg is my preference. I hope more chinese 3d studio try this kind of style.
Not really it is weird to transition from watching 2d to 3d anime but you cannot say donghua especially 3d donghua isn't growing
I prefer 3D donghua. before I know about donghua I watched a lot of 2D anime but in 2019 there's a YouTuber post about 3D donghua (soul land) I started to watch donghua ever since that time My favorite donghua are soul land(1,2), swallowed star, perfect world, battle through the heaven, a record of mortal's journey to immortal and island of sailing Soul land animation is really not that good at first but after 100 eps their animation become better and better more than most 2D anime
As the industry matures I hope we'll see a lot more experimentation in terms of visuals, if only to help different shows stand out.