The emergence of Chinese animation into mainstream of the anime industry had been witnessed in the past few years although Chinese anime were made in way back from 10 years ago. It is all thanks to some donghua (Chinese anime) getting international recognition for various reasons. It might be because of the animation’s quality, unique stories or fresh plot, interesting Chinese culture, and the internet that makes it convenient to access Chinese shows.
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| Crystal Sky of Yesterday |
On my end, I fell in love with Chinese animation due to its quality. In fact, the donghua industry is still growing with so many areas to improve and spaces to fill in. However, it is delightful to learn that Chinese animation could actually compete with those anime shows from Japan and even those animated series fro the west. So far, there are few exceptionally breathtaking Chinese anime that I had seen such as Mo Dao Zu Shi (Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation), Quan zhi Gao Shou (The King’s Avatar), and Douluo Dalu (Soul Land) to name a few. Although, majority of Chinese anime we’re still mediocre at its best when it comes to animation’s quality.
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| Flavors of Youth |
In some cases, Chinese animation offers a variety of unique stories and fresh plot that gives us an escape from the rampant generic anime cliche nowadays. Though, there are instances where donghua’s plot were kind of redundant too, especially the isekai and historical genre. But I wouldn’t really complaint that much about the similarities amongst historical Chinese anime as it only reflects their culture, tradition, and rich heritage.
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| The Wind Guardians |
What I am about to show is the official list how Chinese anime movies performed in the box office this 2018. Though, this list only covers January until November but it feels great to know which movie did great and were widely accepted by the people as this will give us insights on which movies we could add on our watchlist.
Among these movies, I am only familiar with some and Crystal Sky of Yesterday is the Chinese anime movie that I badly want to see this year. It is also noticeable that Flavors of Youth – a joint project of Haoliners Animation League and Comix Waves Films didn’t performed that well in the chart despite of its good reception from viewers outside of China.
What are your thoughts about this and have you see any movies from this list? If yes, please let us know which one and tell us of your thoughts about it.
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Code name: Yu Alexius is an ambiguous entity who loves to talk about anime and Chinese animation in general. An insatiable soul from the Pearl of the Orient, a frustrated writer and a Houtarou Oreki wanna-be. He is a piece of a lunatic and everything crazy.
