How to Conquer Japanese Audiences? The Untold Behind-the-Scenes Secrets of The Legend of Hei 2's Overseas Release!

​The Legend of Luo Xiaohei 2 has been screening in Japan for over two months, with impressive results. As of this writing, The Legend of Luo Xiaohei 2 has grossed over 450 million yen at the Japanese box office, with more than 245,000 admissions. It topped FILMARKS’s “premiere satisfaction ranking” in Japan, becoming the highest-grossing Chinese-language animated film series in Japan.

The film’s success has driven a boom in IP merchandise and fan creations. The spin-off manga Lanxi Zhen sold out quickly even with a one-copy-per-person purchase limit, and fan communities have seen an influx of fan art and discussion from Japanese viewers — topics ranging not only around the Luo Xiaohei series itself, but also extending to differences in animation between Chinese and Japanese TV series, amusing anecdotes in Chinese–Japanese translation, and Sino-Japanese cultural exchange.

Beyond the film’s own quality, its translation, promotion, and distribution behind the scenes deserve great credit. Donghua Xueshupa reached out to the two major driving forces behind Luo Xiaohei’s overseas release: Omoshiro Eiga and Aniplex, interviewing Omoshiro Eiga’s Mr. Dong Zhiling and Aniplex’s Mr. Sun Zongzhen and Mr. Akiyama, asking them to discuss the key points and challenges of this overseas release from an industry insider’s perspective, as well as their outlook on future Sino-Japanese animation exchange and cooperation.

01 Origins: The Opportunity for Xiaohei to Go Overseas​

​Dong Zhiling: I am Dong Zhiling, founder of Omoshiro Eiga. Six years ago, I founded Omoshiro Eiga in Japan, mainly bringing Chinese-language content into the Japanese market, along with film distribution.

My personal connection with Xiaohei dates back to April 29, 2014 — more than a decade ago. Having known the series since 2014, I started following Xiaohei back then, chatted often with the director, and when the right opportunity for a film came along, we collaborated.

​Sun Zongzhen: I am Sun Zongzhen, a producer at Aniplex, mainly responsible for project initiation, production, and distribution. The person next to me is Akiyama, head of promotion for the two Luo Xiaohei films. At our company, a project typically involves one or two producers plus one or two publicity staff working together. The producer follows everything from finding projects and developing plans, to partnering with studios, to applying for budgets in post-production.

Personally, when Xiaohei was released in Japan in 2019, a family member told me about this great animated film, and I went to see it. At the time, Xiaohei had a single-theater release — that is, a small-scale release. After watching it, I felt it was truly excellent and began exploring a project collaboration.

​Dong Zhiling: I had already watched it many times before the official release — the earliest version I saw was the line-art version, so I already had certain expectations for Xiaohei 2, and the final version exceeded them. From an industry perspective, this film’s overall content and expression are more refined and superior than I imagined; as a viewer, I think Xiaohei 2 takes a further step toward commercial and mainstream appeal. Compared with the first film’s heavier otaku-oriented style, the second film’s final cut is more accessible and can attract a wider audience.

​Sun Zongzhen: Earlier this year (Editor’s note: referring to 2025, at the time of the interview; the same below), to prepare for the Japanese dubbing work, I watched the line-art version early along with a small group of staff. For the translation, we needed to watch the film repeatedly from start to finish to grasp its content — counting from the line-art version, I must have watched it about 15 times in total.

My impression is simple: it’s great — it’s just plain great. For me personally, this work also has an unusual atmosphere that you rarely encounter in Japan — actually, it’s been that way since the first film. I’ve lived in Japan for many years, and Luo Xiaohei feels very different from the domestic Japanese animation I usually encounter, so it delivered an impact beyond imagination, leaving me both surprised and delighted.

​Sun Zongzhen: If we’re talking about initial contact, discussions probably started in 2022 or 2023, while Aniplex’s internal greenlight came around fall 2024. After the greenlight, we first discussed two things with Hanmu Chunhua: when the film would release in China, and when it would release in Japan — preparing as early as possible would benefit later promotion and distribution. This spring, we set the Japanese release date for November 7.

​Sun Zongzhen: That’s right.

02 Content: Why Luo Xiaohei?​

​Sun Zongzhen: I wasn’t too worried about Chinese culture. I think the creative team handled it just right — the work contains no cultural content so obscure that it blocks foreign viewers from understanding the plot, and that isn’t Xiaohei’s focus anyway. Even viewers with zero knowledge of Chinese culture can appreciate how wonderful Xiaohei’s story is.

But when it comes to the differences between Chinese and Japanese, conveying the feel of the original was indeed a huge challenge, especially getting certain jokes across. Take the pun on “closed-door disciple” (closing-disciple vs. door-locking disciple). A literal translation would create two problems: first, the line would be too long and wouldn’t match the character’s lip movements. Even as a subtitle, it would be too long for viewers to finish reading. Second, the expression wouldn’t be localized — to native Japanese speakers, it would be hard to understand. There are many similar issues; we could only do our best to preserve them during localization, but we couldn’t reproduce 100% of what the Chinese means. Moreover, Xiaohei 2 has more dialogue and more characters than the first film, so the localization workload was inherently heavier.

One moment that left a deep impression on me was the scene where Luye and Chi Nian bicker and argue over whether Wuxian is a suspect — the character relationships are complicated, the content twists and turns, and Luye speaks a lot and fast. A literal translation would definitely require trimming lines, but I didn’t want to stray from the original content either. That part was the most painstaking to handle.

​Sun Zongzhen: Actually, compared with past Japanese animation, I feel the work as a whole has many different parts. For Japanese viewers, it should all feel quite fresh. For me personally, while I’m not qualified to make professional judgments, through producing the official program book and interviewing the creative team, I feel Hanmu Chunhua’s production pipeline does differ somewhat from traditional Japanese animation production.

Through multiple viewings, I felt that the film’s “photography” (in Chinese animation circles, post-production is commonly called “later stages,” while in Japan it is conventionally called “photography”) and the visual effect it ultimately presents — call it “texture” — differ from past Japanese animation. I also once discussed this with Mr. Fujitsu Ryota, the lead writer of this program book: the post-production of The Legend of Luo Xiaohei 2 really does differ from past Japanese animation. Character shadows aren’t so pronounced, yet the image as a whole has a strong sense of depth. For example, the soft, squishy feel of Xiaohei’s body — especially the scenes where the soft texture of his cheeks is fully expressed — showed me its top-tier animation technique.

​Akiyama Takayoshi: Honestly, everything felt quite fresh. If I had to pick one, it would be the final sequence’s direction.

In Japanese animation, flashbacks without a single line of dialogue are extremely rare. Perhaps because Japan is heavily influenced by TV-station animation culture, creators generally choose more easily understood forms of expression, having characters narrate past events through dialogue. But Luye’s flashback was deliberately made wordless, which I find very creative.

Also, generally speaking, for a sequel, following Japanese animation conventions, if the first film is a hit, the second will continue focusing on the first film’s protagonist’s story. But in The Legend of Luo Xiaohei 2, Xiaohei and Wuxian’s story isn’t expanded much; instead, the film focuses on the new character Luye. That also takes confidence in and command of the work.

​Dong Zhiling: Since I’m not a Japanese viewer, I can’t speak for them. From my personal perspective, I think Xiaohei has two characteristics: First, its overall expression is highly accessible. Whether the art style, the plot, or the character design, it’s relatively easy for Japanese viewers to understand.

Second, the content has depth. By the time Xiaohei reached Japan, it had been serialized in China for nearly ten years. Though updated slowly, it had already accumulated depth in content and detail, as well as commercially. What Japanese viewers encountered was a work that already had a certain depth, and they enjoy digging into and understanding it.

Of course, Japanese viewers’ interests vary — everyone’s focus is different. Some say the kitten is adorable, some say Wuxian is so handsome; these scattered points of interest come together to form overall attention for the work.

​Akiyama Takayoshi: It can be broken into three points. First, over these five years, Luo Xiaohei’s official account has updated illustrations nonstop, maintaining its popularity among fans — I think this is very important. The updates for the 24 solar terms illustrations were synced with China.

Second, in the early period of The Legend of Luo Xiaohei 2’s release — around July, when it premiered in China — Japan had already announced that both a Japanese-subtitled and a Japanese-dubbed version would be screened, building buzz very early, and the fans were delighted.

Third, of course we value attracting new audiences with a new work, but what matters more are the longtime fans who have supported Xiaohei over these five years. We wanted to create an atmosphere where Xiaohei feels lively in Japan too, to stoke the excitement, letting people discuss details of the content. With this in mind, we carried out our promotional work.

03 Promotion: How Many Steps Does It Take to Send the Kitten Abroad?​

​Dong Zhiling: Omoshiro Eiga was mainly responsible for liaison and assistance. For this second theatrical film, as a co-producer, Omoshiro handled the copyright-related advancement work on the Japan side. On-the-ground execution was mainly left to Aniplex, with distribution also led primarily by Aniplex.

In other activities, Omoshiro Eiga also handled some on-the-ground execution in Japan for rights holders. For example, this year’s China Festival held at Yoyogi Park in Tokyo, as well as sales in Japan of some Chinese licensed merchandise, were handled by us. Going forward, some Japanese merchandise will be sold to China, and we’ll assist with that too. Overall, we mainly do support and liaison work, building a bridge for Sino-Japanese exchange.

​Sun Zongzhen: A 30-minute slot (including commercials) is the most common format for TV anime broadcast in Japan. To air on TV and make time-slot scheduling easier, several shorts have to be bundled together into a full runtime. This model was already tried three years ago when All Saints Street went to Japan, and we adopted the same approach this time.

As for editing, no major adjustments were made — we basically bundled the original episodes together with their openings and endings; mainly out of respect for the original. We synced this approach with Hanmu Chunhua, and since little was changed, not much supervision was needed, and communication went smoothly. Only a few assets needed adjusting due to format issues to match Japanese requirements.

As for the changes to the homage sections that everyone’s been discussing, we ask for everyone’s understanding (laughs) — some homage content had to be modified, resulting in some differences between the Chinese and Japanese versions.

​Dong Zhiling: My consideration was fairly simple: hoping to solve the difficulties and problems encountered during the release of The Legend of Luo Xiaohei 1. Aniplex did most of the rest.

​Sun Zongzhen: For promotion, we usually first set an outline and a theme, then carry out specific work based on it. As for the things you mentioned — anime pre-release buzz, collaborations, and so on — that’s standard practice in Japan; everyone does it.

​Akiyama Takayoshi: For Japanese viewers, five years have passed since the previous work. Regaining momentum among the Japanese fans who have always supported Luo Xiaohei was our top priority. Also, we need to attract new fans for the new film.

What is it that people love? We did a lot of research. Surprisingly, while some love the action scenes and the dazzling fights, among Japanese viewers, what people love most is the gentle emotion in the work. Centered on that, we ran many promotional campaigns in Japan to remove the sense of distance viewers felt.

​Dong Zhiling: Back then, the difficulties were everywhere — basically everything was a difficulty. For instance, no budget, no theaters willing to screen it, not knowing how to make a dubbed version, and so on. After Aniplex joined the project, many of these difficulties were gradually eased and resolved.

But the first film’s overseas release to Japan coincided with the pandemic, making communication difficult. Some things are better discussed face-to-face, but in-person communication was extremely hard at the time. On top of that, five or six years ago, the barrier of mutual understanding between the Chinese and Japanese animation industries was still high — releasing a Chinese animated film in Japan was an enormous challenge for both sides.

These were the problems we worked hard to solve while promoting Xiaohei 2. Much of what Omoshiro Eiga does and solves is rarely seen — it’s all behind-the-scenes work. But we believe, if you want to build a tall building, you can’t just look at what’s above ground; how high a building can rise often depends on how deep the foundation goes — yet the foundation is invisible. From my perspective, I don’t care whether some things get seen; what I hope is to dig the foundation deeper, easing problems step by step, just as we went from Xiaohei 1 to Xiaohei 2.

As for the new problems Xiaohei 2 faced, I think they center on three changes.

First, the change in the industry. Over the past two years, film markets worldwide have been struggling. As part of the film industry, The Legend of Luo Xiaohei 2 inevitably felt the impact of these broader shifts.

Second, the change on the market side. This is a big year for the Japanese film industry, with many blockbusters — especially many major domestic Japanese animated films. Numerous well-known titles clashed with Xiaohei’s release window, and competition was fierce. This change means the final result depends not only on Xiaohei’s own quality but also on the contest with other works.

The third difficulty comes from audience expectations. Because Xiaohei 1’s final performance exceeded everyone’s expectations, people raised their expectations for the second film. Could we meet the audience’s new expectations? That was an extremely challenging question.

​Sun Zongzhen: When promoting a work in Japan — whether a TV series or a film — partnering with a singer to create a theme song is a very standard practice.

Since our company is an animation company under Sony, we tend to collaborate with Sony Music artists. We considered whether the singer matched the work’s tone, and whether the singer was known in China, and finally decided Aimer would perform the film’s theme song.

Also, since it had already been decided that the Luo Xiaohei TV series would air on Japanese television, we simply had her sing the TV series’ ED as well. As for Aimer writing the lyrics herself, we didn’t make any hard demands — we just required that the final deliverable be approved, and that was OK.

04 The Future: Chinese and Foreign Animation Moving from Parallel to Intersecting​

​Dong Zhiling: Changes in mutual understanding definitely exist. Two reasons. First, since Xiaohei, quite a few Chinese animations — at least at the film level — have entered Japan. Some did reasonably well, others less so, but compared with the year Xiaohei 1 was released, overall, a from-zero-to-something progress has been achieved. And every time we do a project, we communicate with Japanese theaters, distributors, and other players across the chain, and through this process everyone deepens mutual understanding, more or less.

Second, Omoshiro Eiga is now in its sixth year in Japan. For me personally, and for most of my team, we’ve gained a deeper understanding of how things operate in Japan.

As for the work related to The Legend of Luo Xiaohei 2 specifically, I still hope that through what we do in Japan, industry professionals and some fans can gain a fairly direct understanding of certain things in Japan. So far, the expected results have basically been achieved, because quite a few people in China are indeed following what’s happening on the Japanese side. I also hope Luo Xiaohei 2 receives good feedback in Japan, which would give our partners confidence.

​Dong Zhiling: This trend is indeed a fact — more Chinese animation is going to Japan, and more Japanese animation is coming to China. But from an industry perspective, I think the logic behind Japanese animation coming to China and Chinese animation going to Japan isn’t the same; they just happened to both occur this year. It’s like two directions on the same road — my side is mainly responsible for bringing Chinese content to Japan.

Although more works are indeed going overseas to Japan, I think there are shortcomings at present — at least this year, the vast majority of Chinese animated films brought to Japan came through our single company. That’s nothing to celebrate, because one company fighting alone is far too weak. If more companies were willing to join in and push the industry forward, the situation might improve.

Also, while bringing overseas film and TV content into China isn’t my business — the two operate on different logic — at least this year we can see that exchange between the two sides has genuinely increased, which I consider a very positive thing. I hope this exchange continues in the coming years.

​Sun Zongzhen: I’d say it’s something to look forward to. I remember when I first entered the Chinese industry, everyone was saying: Japanese animation sells so well overseas — how can our Chinese animation sell just as well? But in fact, the Chinese animation industry has only really developed in recent years, while Japanese animation has been at it for forty or fifty years.

So I think there’s no need to rush. We have talent anyway; just take it slowly, accumulating experience and content along the way before going overseas. Relying on marketing alone won’t get you far. In fact, while Japanese anime and manga perform well in overseas markets, many sell poorly even in Japan itself — no amount of promotional effort can fix that.

I’d still hope everyone focuses on making good content. Just like Xiaohei — as long as it’s good, it will attract attention and followers. Of course, I’m not denying the role of promotion, but the premise is still that the work itself is a good work. I feel that since China has the talent and resources, it should build a creative environment capable of producing good content, then think about making what kind of fun, beautiful work, and only after making it consider how to sell it abroad — that’s generally the right order.

I was very lucky to encounter The Legend of Luo Xiaohei. Its quality is excellent on its own; all I had to do was keep my head down and promote it — that’s a virtuous cycle, I’d say.

​Dong Zhiling: From my perspective, the answer is simple: “Chinese animation going overseas” requires a dedicated team to do it, and that dedicated team must do it continuously — I think that’s the precondition for everything.

Someone once asked me: “Why, before Omoshiro Eiga, did it seem like no one was bringing Chinese animation to Japan?” I said, please drop the “seemed like” — no one was doing it. Because no one was doing it, no one in Japan would pay attention; the same applies in other overseas countries.

And our company’s goal is to achieve a breakthrough from 0 to 1 — to have at least one dedicated team continuously doing this, regardless of whether it succeeds.

​Sun Zongzhen: I think you need to maintain a long-term cooperative relationship. With The Legend of Luo Xiaohei, it started with Mr. Dong, then I took over, and both sides have kept doing the work continuously. It’s not that I make a lot of money in one sale and call it a day — it’s about continuously doing localization locally, along with various promotional activities.

With Xiaohei 1, the Japanese side was still fairly passive; this time we were much more proactive. Because our company maintains a good relationship not only with Omoshiro Eiga but also with Hanmu Chunhua, both sides know what the other is doing, which makes communication and requests go smoothly. Although our promotion looks very robust, we actually just did the standard things — but the trust built between both sides made the promotion advance smoothly, achieving twice the result with half the effort. So, working out a good cooperative relationship is also very important.