Chinese Video/Computer Games

yungho said:

The most of the animation coming out now strongly traces its origin back to Japanese animation rather than the Chinese predecessors. It makes sense given how much the industry was inspired by Japan and leans on otaku culture. I do miss the classic style they used to make and show on TV though. Shows like Legend of Luo Xiaohei are more reminiscent of the classics.

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Doesn't this have a very simple explanation? It's not that Chinese style animation is fading away, Japanese influenced style simply came because a lot of post-production of Japanese anime got off shored to China in the early 2000s when interest in domestic animation was low. Once domestic capital/market is big enough, those workers brought the influence into their domestic works. Recent animation work/films have a markedly higher quality and stylistic choices than those of the early 2010s, once directors and animators have the time, capital and experience to strike out away from what's comfortable. Even indie studios can make exceptional content that rivals the best of the best in the rest of the world while being stylistically Chinese. i.e Fog hill of five elements.

I found the below video an excellent summary of the situation.

tankphobia said:

Doesn't this have a very simple explanation? It's not that Chinese style animation is fading away, Japanese influenced style simply came because a lot of post-production of Japanese anime got off shored to China in the early 2000s when interest in domestic animation was low. Once domestic capital/market is big enough, those workers brought the influence into their domestic works. Recent animation work/films have a markedly higher quality and stylistic choices than those of the early 2010s, once directors and animators have the time, capital and experience to strike out away from what's comfortable. Even indie studios can make exceptional content that rivals the best of the best in the rest of the world while being stylistically Chinese. i.e Fog hill of five elements.

I found the below video an excellent summary of the situation.

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Inventing a new style for the sake of inventing a new style is not going to work. It's like reinventing the wheel. There aren't infinite artistic styles out there. In fact, 99% of new styles artists try to invent, fail, because the sort of beauty humans appreciate make up a very small percentage of the latent space of art.

The Japanese were the first to discover the specifically Asian art style we now call "anime" and spent many decades developing it; and while it isn't the only art style Asians will appreciate, the Japanese have got such a head start in exploring the different branches of the style, that practically anything you come up with, some Japanese artist did it first. There's not much new under the sun in anime, and consequently very difficult to claim originality.

And I think the big revelation from Chinese and Korean companies, in the early 2010s, was to stop trying to be original, and instead just embrace the fact that, "yes, we're copying - so what?" Why should the Japanese be allowed to be the sole beneficiaries of their artistic discovery? Are Chinese the sole beneficiaries of gun powder or paper? The anime style is an invention like any other. That the Japanese had the fortune of being the first to discover it, doesn't make it their culture. It's like saying animation is Western culture because the West invented it. Clearly the Japanese didn't think so, so why would we treat the anime style like it's intrinsic to the Japanese?

The rise and market success of Chinese and Korean made anime art / games changed the whole dynamic of the industry. It resulted in what we have today, where Chinese and Korean developers can carve out a space of their own, instead of being dominated by the Japanese monopoly over anime products. This is a better result than 30 years ago, when nobody consumed anything but American and Japanese animation, with all their biases, and Chinese and Koreans had to literally beg for better representation.

But I'm going to be greedy and say that what I'd like to see from here is more innovation from Chinese artists on top of the style they've adopted. Like I was saying earlier, Chinese anime isn't and shouldn't be an exact copy of Japanese anime, because culturally and psychologically, Chinese and Japanese are not exact copies of each other.

For one thing, the Japanese are far more interested in neoteny, which is why the most successful genre of anime in Japan is middle/high-school settings with under age girls. By contrast, Chinese, from what I've seen, are more attuned to elegance, hence the elaborate clothing designs, frequent references to traditional Chinese culture, and prevalence of historical fantasy and military settings.

That's the direction Chinese artists should take to make anime into their own style - focus on what is unique to the Chinese market and its aesthetic appreciation, and the rest will naturally follow.

Eventine said:

For one thing, the Japanese are far more interested in neoteny, which is why the most successful genre of anime in Japan is middle/high-school settings with under age girls. By contrast, Chinese, from what I've seen, are more attuned to elegance, hence the elaborate clothing designs, frequent references to traditional Chinese culture, and prevalence of historical fantasy and military settings.

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I don't know about this part, all teenagers under the sun are the same. Content goes to wherever there is money. Look at the charts for something like Tencent manhua site, the top 100 are full of brain rot cultivation, marrying rich, isekai/system growth, harem esq titles, I wouldn't call them exactly gems of Chinese culture. The few gems that have rich Chinese culture, original art style usually don't last too long.

Eventine said:

Second, there is starting to be (or always was) a "Chinese anime style" that is clearly derived from Japanese anime but also distinct from it. It's similar to the American anime or "Amerime" shown in TV series like Avatar, games like League of Legends and Overwatch. The best example of this style is the 2.5D mobile gacha games, where I think it began to distinguish itself from Japanese anime in the transition from traditional 2D to 2.5D.

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I would never think this was Japanese

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Probably because it's just chock full of Chinese culture references. The style itself is hard to distinguish from Japanese anime.

Eventine said:

First, Chinese animation is already popular globally, but via video games, rather than TV/movie format. People waiting for the grand renaissance of Chinese animation in TV/movie format are missing the forest for the trees. Youths today watch short format videos on Tik Tok and play mobile games like Genshin Impact. You shouldn't be expecting Chinese Dragon Ball Z.

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Actually, Chinese animation is already successful, and not just from video games (which honestly is just Genshin Impact and similar gacha games).

This is good Chinese animation:

Black Myth Wukong being released early in some places. Personally I like games where I can explore. People earlier said this game didn't let you do that. It was all following the path designed by the game. Apparently not true. I remember playing one of the Castle Wolfenstein games and I happened to be on a balcony looking down into a room where the Nazis had to run across that were coming to get me upstairs. For some reason at this one spot I was at and no where else on the balcony I was able to use an unlimited amount of dynamite sticks to throw down into this room and kill all the Nazis coming to get me. Was that a glitch or was that an easter egg by design? I would've never have found this without exploring. My ammunition would've been depleted if that wasn't there.

One thing they haven't really been able to do that I know of is being able to destroy the environment around you and having the debris left being a part of the game play. That's why also why I stopped playing these games. The only thing that improved was graphics and not game play.

solarz said:

Probably because it's just chock full of Chinese culture references. The style itself is hard to distinguish from Japanese anime.

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I disagree. The style is derivative of anime, yes, but still unique in its own way. The main thing here is the transition to cel shading. China did a better job - in my opinion - in the transition to cel shaded 3D than Japan itself did. We can compare the style of a cel shaded Japanese game like Persona 5:


Or Granblue Fantasy:


Versus a Chinese game like Honkai Star Rail:


There is an obvious difference. The Chinese cel shading looks cleaner, sharper, and more expressive.

You can do the same for e.g. Genshin Impact vs. Tears of the Kingdom, and draw a similar conclusion. The Chinese characters' fashion and level of detail also tend to be higher compared to similar Japanese cel shaded games.

solarz said:

Actually, Chinese animation is already successful, and not just from video games (which honestly is just Genshin Impact and similar gacha games).

This is good Chinese animation:

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I recognize that there are occasional break out successes in the cinematic and TV domains, but I think this is both less consistent and less sustainable due to changing market conditions. Simply put, traditional formats like TV and movies are falling out of style, while new formats like short form videos and mobile games are dominating the youth market. That's the same sort of opportunity we see in the transition from ICE to EV cars.

I think one reason why it is hard to distinguish anime styles in terms of region is outsourcing. Japan has been outsourcing animation to the rest of Asia for several years. Any style from those regions would have been merged and blended with the Japanese anime style over the years. When it comes to manga, manhwa and manhua. Anyone who read long enough can instantly tell if it is Japanese, Korean, or Chinese artist/author by looking at a single panel.

FriedButter said:

I think one reason why it is hard to distinguish anime styles in terms of region is outsourcing. Japan has been outsourcing animation to the rest of Asia for several years. Any style from those regions would have been merged and blended with the Japanese anime style over the years. When it comes to manga, manhwa and manhua. Anyone who read long enough can instantly tell if it is Japanese, Korean, or Chinese artist/author by looking at a single panel.

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Yes, and it's important to realize that the art industry is largely globalized these days, and the surge of independent contracting studios - many created as out sourcing destinations originally - have been instrumental to breaking the Japanese monopoly on East Asian animation. Most of these studios have content pipelines that stretch across the whole of Asia, and have blurred the distinction between artists from different countries, allowing any company to get access to great art, as long as they can pay, and any artist to get training, as long as they have talent.

What this means in practice is that Japanese companies no longer have total control over anime production, a fact that's gone virtually unnoticed by its fanatical followers in the West, who still operate under the delusion that "Japanese are just superior, the only reason they're losing to Chinese and Koreans is because they're not even trying!"

To make it more clear, here's a recent example that I liked. You'll notice that while the character concepts & story boards are by the mobile game company Kuro, the animation production is done by a company called "DOVFX," which is a contracting studio based in Nanjing: . This is the sort of thing I'm talking about:

This game is also looking awesome.




In my opinion, successful games should be universally appealing and is transparent of the developers national origins. Love Nikki has been long a very successful game franchise long before Hoyoverse and people don't know, or care, that Nikki is from a Chinese developer. Love Nikki is essentially a digital dress'em Barbie kind of game franchise.

Good games should be universal and boundless. How many of these would you think were Chinese from the first glance?