5 posts tagged with "2D"

“Even though memories naturally fade and distort, animation offers another possibility of ‘preservation.’”

The animated series Memory Administration Bureau officially concluded on bilibili on August 30, bringing down the curtain on this dream of memory that spanned six years.

The series tells the story of the protagonist Guan Chao, who, in order to return to the past, searches for “Burning Stone,” the energy source needed to activate the time gun, only to unexpectedly enter the Memory Administration Bureau. Over the month since the series began airing, its plot, characters, and animation have sparked round after round of lively discussion among anime fans.

While these discussions occasionally sparked controversy, almost no one would question the creative team’s complete inheritance of the spirit of the original short film from six years ago, or their courage to keep thinking in their creation and expression and preserve their authorship despite the pressures of commercialization and production schedules. This sincere spirit of independent creation carved out, by sheer force, an inviolable plot of land for itself under the extremely cramped conditions in which Chinese 2D animation struggles to survive.

01 “Analog” Memory​

Memory is an ambiguous thing for human beings. It is a product of our sensory recording and secondary transcription of reality. Memory cannot replace reality, yet it is also a vital bond between human perception and the real world; how to balance memory and reality is a lesson one keeps learning throughout life.

The most distinctive feature of Memory Administration Bureau since its short-film days is that it concretizes, through its setting, the blurriness and ambiguity between memory and reality.

And in the series, I was delighted to find that the creators’ expression of the theme of “memory” was no longer confined to the setting and narrative text; instead, using different visual elements as media, they translated memory into something more perceivable.

Throughout the series version of Memory Administration Bureau, there runs a relentless pursuit of the texture of “analog media” (media systems that record, transmit, and reproduce information through continuously varying physical signals, such as film and tape, as opposed to digital media).

The pursuit of a “film look” is one of the show’s defining visual traits.

Compared to digital photography or reality itself, film photography is imperfect. The process from shooting to finished print is complex and cumbersome, and due to its own characteristics, the final images can deviate somewhat from the real scene. But it is precisely this imperfection that endows film photography with unique meaning—as if the temperature, humidity, and time of the moment of capture, even the mood of the recorder and the recorded, were all condensed into that imperfection. And film, existing as a physical object, makes the memory frozen in an instant feel almost within reach.

Memory Administration Bureau imitates this “imperfect” quality of film in its visual presentation. Every scene in the small town of Red Card Port glows with a sunset-like warm yellow, as if time and space here had stopped together with memory in the year 2000;

Flickering grain and noise fill the entire frame, making the image feel as though it carries temperature and humidity; the large white patches in the frame simulate overexposure in film photography, and around every overexposed patch—even including the linework—is wrapped a faint, orange-red halo unique to film. These details, as accents, give life to the frame as concretized memory.

In more extreme cases, Memory Administration Bureau even cuts in a few frames of live-action footage flashing by quickly, attempting to deepen the viewer’s perceptual confusion between the real and the virtual.

This imitation and use of analog media seems to signal the creative team’s attempt to weaken animation’s conventionality and connect the real with the virtual.

And just as memory can never truly equal or replace reality—in the age of all-digital animation, no matter how meticulous animation’s “imitation of analog media” is, it cannot transcend the limits of its own nature as a digital medium; yet in terms of the result, it can achieve the maximum degree of perceptual confusion.

In episode 5, the creators also put this speculative question before the audience through the Protagonist Halo’s line: “If you put a digital image transferred from film next to a digital image with a film filter, could you tell which one is film?”

What do “simulation and reproduction” truly mean? The creators buried this question within the exquisite imagery, leaving it for the audience to ponder. This keeps the visual presentation of Memory Administration Bureau consistent with the work’s inner expression of the concept of “memory.”

02 “Peering Into” Memory​

Perception differs depending on the stage of memory. Memory Administration Bureau divides its narrative structure into three spaces—the real world, the memory layer, and the Memory Administration Bureau representing the order of memory—and the element that visually distinguishes these three spaces is the aspect ratio.

The aspect ratio is like a window the image opens onto the real world; the size of the window frame determines the angle from which the viewer peers into the image. Memory Administration Bureau uses three different aspect ratios corresponding to the three spaces where the story takes place.

The different aspect ratios visually separate the three spacetimes at a glance, and also leave room for visual playfulness in the transitions between spaces.

Changes in aspect ratio make it easier for creators to steer the audience’s emotions. 16:9, as the standard ratio used at the opening, gives the audience a scale for perceiving rules, order, and reality at the story’s point of origin. Moreover, the creators portray Baizhong and Fangtang’s peering into Guan Chao’s memories as watching a movie—this both prepares for the later seamless shift from 16:9 to 4:3 and establishes the audience’s identity as absent observers.

Later plot developments reveal that the reality Guan Chao inhabits is not truly reality either. In episode 7, the thick black bars on either side of the 4:3 frame become a barrier that can be broken, shaking the audience’s identity as absent observers in an instant—and the enormous sensory imbalance brings with it a correspondingly enormous emotional impact.

The 16:9 and 4:3 ratios can interact and shift horizontally. By comparison, the space carried by the 2.35:1 ratio is relatively independent.

Under this ratio, you can regard the space presented on screen as a movie screen, or a theater stage. Whatever your perspective, the image’s quality of being watched is beyond dispute. This extremely clear positioning of the viewing experience lets the memory-layer segments serve, visually, narratively, and emotionally, as transitional filler between the Memory Administration Bureau and the reality portions.

Furthermore, the differences in aspect ratio also give viewers a chance to glimpse the creators’ intentions and understanding of the different spaces in the story.

The Memory Administration Bureau, in 16:9, is like an order of iron law. It is neither reality nor the mad private phantasm of an individual, but more like a set of established rules constructed within a world of illusion;

The 4:3 ratio carrying the story’s real world compresses the visual space on left and right, narrowing the field of view—seemingly mirroring the cramped, confined reality full of regret and loneliness that Guan Chao faces;

The 2.35:1 ratio, representing the memory layer’s environment, lends the fantasy world grandeur on the scale of cinema. Yet that splendor and brilliance are merely the swelling and distortion of protagonist Guan Chao’s intense obsession.

03 “Deconstructing” Memory​

If imitating the texture of analog media is memory made visually concrete, and manipulating the aspect ratio simulates the way memory is observed—then how can the mode of memory’s operation be reproduced?

How can the process of remembering, the retrieval of memory, even memory’s deviations and omissions, be structured—even deconstructed—through narrative and audiovisual means?

Memory is always divergent and disordered. To capture a specific memory, one usually needs to anchor it in a specific medium. Memory Administration Bureau’s presentation of memory likewise rests on pastiche of multiple media. This creative approach is concentrated in episodes 5 and 6.

In episode 5, the Protagonist Halo’s reconstruction of memory is achieved through an editing bench in a real theater. This dull tool that in reality only editors use becomes part of the narrative, forming one link in the staging’s playfulness and giving viewers a very concrete imaginative anchor for how memory operates.

In the same episode, Baizhong’s memory is also presented in the form of black-and-white comics. Through the creators’ deconstruction, the medium’s characteristics here follow the same line as the editing bench’s effect on memory.

The essence of comics is to break up and recombine a complete span of time and space through paneling, letting a sequence of static images operate on their own in the reader’s mind. This quality perfectly matches the power of the Protagonist Halo’s real theater—the ability to freely cut, collage, delete, or restructure memory.

At the same time, the actual viewing experience here is not entirely equivalent to reading a comic; it is more like an artificially created “force-played comic.” It retains the comic’s paneling, but strips the reader of the agency to turn pages, pause, or imagine within static images.

No matter how well the panel forms, speech bubbles, and screentone effects in the frame match the comic forms within the memory, they cannot replace the unique perception of actually reading a comic. By imitating the comic medium and letting animation’s medium characteristics clash against comics’, this segment gains a core of expression visually as weighty as its narrative one.

The same creative logic applies to the arcade-game structure nested within Guan Chao’s battle against the bug men in episode 6. Memory here is packaged as an immersive repetitive-experience simulator; Guan Chao’s struggle against memory trauma is concretely expressed through the arcade loop of failing, inserting coins, and starting over.

The video editing bench, comics, and arcade games—three media, each with its own characteristics, annotate the operation of memory from different angles in Memory Administration Bureau. In this process, the show demonstrates the manipulability of memory’s mechanisms—memory’s operation, though precise, is also extremely fragile. Every point along a thread of memory can be influenced by external forces and produce deviations in the outcome, like an editing bench that can be freely edited.

Such memory, though vivid, is not trustworthy, and pales next to true reality. Throughout its first half, Memory Administration Bureau continually uses setting, narrative, and audiovisual technique to emphasize to viewers the trustworthiness of memory—only to overturn that painstakingly built trustworthiness in the later plot. By simulating multiple media forms it shows the audience memory’s mechanisms, and repeatedly expresses through Guan Chao that his memories of those concrete experiences have long since blurred—that what the audience sees is not an unblemished reality.

04 Epilogue​

In just seven episodes, Memory Administration Bureau fully presents the creators’ understanding of memory as a mental activity, letting the audience experience the vividness of a memory and also sense its illusoriness.

Memory may be riddled with holes, may be fragile and easily destroyed, yet it is almost the only proof by which a person confirms their own existence, and the only vessel of sincere feeling between people. This theme, tinged with existentialist philosophy, is to me the most precious core of Memory Administration Bureau.

In the animation, Guan Chao would rather accept the death of his body than forget his memories, because memory records his real experiences, feelings, and existence. And those carefully crafted imitations of physical media in Memory Administration Bureau are likewise engraved in the audience’s memory of this anime.

Many works tell stories about memory, but few animations can, like Memory Administration Bureau, translate memory’s ambiguous and shifting inner workings from abstract psychological feeling into visual narrative. Perhaps its worldbuilding and plot arrangement are not yet refined enough, but those sharp, romantic, even reckless expressions are enough to make this summer unforgettable for Chinese animation fans.

Especially the final two episodes, which suddenly plunge into a cruel, realistic storyline, make the show’s existentialist landing all the more visceral. The creators did not let Guan Chao resolve his predicament in a conventional sense, delivering a happy ending that satisfies both character and audience. Nor did they try to offer a clear solution to the plight Guan Chao suffers. Instead, they acknowledge existence itself, wrapping the pain born of the predicament in memory’s powerful, genuine capacity for feeling. Perhaps the value of memory lies not in whether it is faithful to objective truth, but in that it once carried real feeling.

Even though memories naturally fade and distort, animation offers another possibility of “preservation.” Six years of creative labor have frozen those fleeting emotions within the frame.

Memory Administration Bureau offers its viewers, through its story, a reflection on memory itself. Even though reality cannot be relived, a memory that has been seen and empathized with gains a power that never fades. This six-year creative journey has, through animation, completed the act of treasuring memory itself.

Author / Rabbit

This article is republished with permission from “Reliable ACG”

There are countless undervalued animations, but relatively few can earn a genuine “good” review from the majority who watch them. A Will Eternal is definitely one of them.

With nearly half of the original novel remaining unadapted, and the project planning directly pivoting Season 4 into the final arc, the currently airing A Will Eternal animation progresses through the plot at a rapid pace, yet the production team has still maintained its footing.

That means, after six years of broadcasting across four seasons with 175 episodes aired so far, this traditional 2D animation, the sole annual 2D series in Chinese donghua, hasn't collapsed, deteriorated, or been grotesquely altered. It features effects, fight scenes, and traditional Chinese aesthetics, frequently delivering plot highlights and animation showcases. Stacked with these buffs, it is nothing short of a miracle in the contemporary domestic online animation industry.

Yet it doesn't seem very popular.

While it hasn't completely fizzled out, its popularity does not match its quality. We usually say an animation's quality falls short of the hype, meaning it doesn't live up to its reputation, but the A Will Eternal animation is the opposite: despite boasting near-flawless completion and high polish, it hasn't garnered the corresponding heat it deserves.

Bullet comments fly across almost every episode saying: “So good, why is the audience so small?” “No one's watching, what a pity,” and the official Weibo comments section always has people posting, “Why can't it go viral?”

Yeah, why?

Though more than half of the final season remains unaired and drawing conclusions now would be premature, we're even more afraid it will just end like this, quietly fading away without a sound.

It's 2026. For such a scarce, high-quality work in the market, what makes it receive praise but fail at attracting viewers?

The A Will Eternal animation seems to possess all the traits that today's hit domestic donghua should have, with practically no major red flags.

First, the IP is solid. Adapted from Er Gen's novel of the same name, it didn't start from scratch; its sibling works include Renegade Immortal and Beyond the Verse. Overall, the adaptation stays faithful to the original. Aside from a slightly fast pace, there are no bizarre alterations, and most original fans approve.

The production is arguably top-tier within the industry — VSG Animation, a domestic T0-level 2D studio, known for past works like Mo Dao Zu Shi, The King's Avatar S1, and Minediao Bureau Strange Records. Over the past six years, the core creative team behind A Will Eternal has remained highly stable, with almost no major personnel changes in key roles. The team cares deeply about this project, and you can tell the characters were loved by their creators. Handsome men, beautiful women, whether grand scenes or close-ups, daily life or peak moments, animation rarely collapses, plus there are cute chibi mini-theaters.

The scheduling is also flawless. It premiered in 2020, right when the annual donghua concept was heating up domestically. Having the capacity for a 2D annual series genuinely surprised the industry, setting off on a great note. Concurrent 3D annuals like A Record of a Mortal's Journey to Immortality and Perfect World also held the top spot in Chinese animation. The currently airing final season slots into the summer broadcast window. Although this year's summer slot is fiercely competitive, with decent quality works across various platforms, A Will Eternal's quality absolutely holds its own.

Even though it updates every other year, production quality is guaranteed, making the cycle understandable. This isn't rare in the industry; 3D annuals like Mortal's Journey and Cang Yuan Tu also take breaks between seasons to prepare materials, yet both become platform anchors.

In terms of story themes, A Will Eternal follows classic fantasy cultivation, just like most top-tier domestic donghua today._ It checks all the standard boxes: male-protagonist power fantasy. Bai Xiaochun's character design is flawless—gifted, overpowered, hardworking, naturally witty and humorous, punctuated with comedic moments, loyal, cute as a child and reliable grown-up. It's hard not to like this eccentric, spirited character.

Harem-leaning but not marketing pure romance. Each female character has distinct visual and personality traits, with independent facets rather than being mere props; romantic pacing is handled just right, neither forcing CP dynamics nor leaving too much ambiguity, instead offering a balanced space for subtle sweetness.

The supporting cast ensemble is fascinating, helping complete Bai Xiaochun's growth arc. He evolves from a little boy who cultivates solely for immortality into a mature young patriarch capable of standing alone and protecting his masters and friends. Every character boasts unique personalities and charming quirks: Uncle Lǐ Shū is reserved and resilient; Quē'er speaks contrary to his feelings; Xiǎo Mèi is cute and playful; Sòng Jiějiě is responsible yet gentle; Dà Shīxiōng is honest and simple; Zǐ Mò is powerful yet detail-oriented. Character development is never perfunctory.

The narrative pacing is incredibly viewer-friendly. Protagonist comebacks never happen at the worst possible moment, emotional climaxes aren't jarring, thanks to proper buildup and foreshadowing. It virtually eliminates those plot points that make you feel “either the writer or the audience needs a brain wipe.” In Episode 4 of the final season, Bai Xiaochun returns to his sect. Using a transmitting jade slip to gather information rapidly covers past flashbacks and introduces new conflict backgrounds. His subsequent return for vengeance is both satisfying and stylish, packing this highly anticipated key sequence neatly into one episode.

Emotional handling balances directness and passion with restraint and suppression, rather than mechanically applying templates and prop characters. In Episode 10, Bai Xiaochun's reunion with Senior Sister Dǔ uses a few lines of dialogue and alternating interior/exterior carriage shots to beautifully convey years of bond and long-separated distance. Sweet yet angsty, the emotional expression is complex yet delicate.

Everyday storylines are packed with modern memes that resonate with audiences. Season 3 features livestream e-commerce script performances for selling pills and starting chain stores; Bai Xiaochun creates his own cultivation mantras for slacking off to survive, essentially serving as a workplace survival guide for modern employees. Though set in the cultivation world, the underlying tone aligns with contemporary youth values: featuring rebellion, counter-culture, and anti-trope exciting sequences.

Highlights multiply in art and production. 2D fights are stunningly choreographed, settings oscillate between ethereal and classical elegance, and costume/prop details are meticulously crafted.

Effects are distinctive, color usage is eye-friendly—brilliant without blinding glare, lacking almost any harsh lighting pollution. Grand scenes boast imposing presence, high-tier battles carry visual pressure, storyboard compositions are dynamic, and everything looks cool.

In recent years, domestic 3D donghua favor pursuing Eastern aesthetics, often pausing ink-wash paintings or performing silent-movie-style segments. What A Will Eternal lacks least is precisely this kind of flexing technique. Within this traditional 2D piece, stylistic shifts come effortlessly. When tired of steady conventional 2D art styles, it switches to ink-wash, and internal monologues even feature chibi cuts. One could say the production team expresses the advantages of 2D animation to the fullest.

Highlights abound on A Will Eternal. These are exactly the promotional selling points current domestic donghua blockbusters chase. But why hasn't A Will Eternal, gathering all these strengths, caught fire? It shouldn't be this way.

Some might wonder: In the era dominated by 3D, is 2D animation original sin?

Obviously not.

2D animations boast numerous hits and strong monetization capabilities. In fact, during this era of hyper-homogenized 3D tech competition, producing 2D animation becomes a form of differentiation, making quality 2D easier to break into the mainstream. Whether it's VSG's earlier masterpieces Mo Dao Zu Shi and The King's Avatar S1, Bilibili's recent hits Link Click, Scissor Seven, and Non-Human, or theatrical releases Langlangshan Xiao Yaoguai and The Legend of Hei, they are all refined 2D works achieving success across heat, reputation, and commerce simultaneously.

Stopping updates certainly isn't the reason either. Plenty of seasonal hits exist, and many non-renewed works are still long-awaited under the label “until we die”.

Then why isn't it popular? I think the core reason is simply that A Will Eternal’s quality hasn't had the chance to be seen by more people. To ignite word-of-mouth, being good isn't enough; it needs talking points and fandom guidance, requires a vibrant secondary creation ecosystem and uninterrupted IP development updates.

Perhaps A Will Eternal is too ordinary, and so is VSG Animation itself: beautiful and strong but not pitiful. Viewers who enjoy it won't turn to social media pushing it out of sympathy-driven “save our donghua” logic, and because its completion rate is so high, there are hardly any flaws to complain about or roast. Thus, discussions remain confined within niches, becoming a niche blockbuster: watchers keep watching, finishers move on.

But it's already 2026. Surely no one expects a show's broadcast outcome to rely entirely on itself and its fans' efforts alone. Our domestic animation industry has already formed mature promotion/distribution, marketing, and commercial development models, backed by experienced teams, third-party vendors, and extensive supporting infrastructure. Don't even mention standard tactics like online/offline events, PR drafts, short videos, or fandom guidance; even less legitimate methods like hired trolls, anti-black ops, and smear campaigns are readily deployed.

We used to constantly debate whether “good wine fears not deep alleys”, because audiences are growing smarter, watching more films/shows, and accumulating richer viewing experience. For average productions, marketing gimmicks can't fool anyone; short-term hype cannot guarantee long-tail effects.

And now we suddenly realize: when the phrase “even good wine fears deep alleys” strikes back like a boomerang, piercing a truly excellent work, it feels utterly heartbreaking, regretful, and angering. Unknowingly, the alleyways of domestic animation have somehow become this deep.

A Will Eternal isn't an isolated case. Also airing this summer, Cha Ah Er Zhong Season 6 is another high-completion-rate animation trapped in a small circle. Its differentiated school setting, Northeastern dialect comedy elements, wonderful youth ensemble, and 12-year evergreen IP… Most importantly, it's one of China's scarce original 3D animations, with complete narratives, excellent pacing, main plots interwoven with side units, full of youth, memories, fun, and tears.

Just brainstorming brings up countless highlights for Cha Ah Er Zhong, yet Seasons 5 and 6 seemed to air and finish too low-key, failing to break out and leaving few memorable footprints. I believe its quality shouldn't be confined to niche status either. Comparing it to the cinematic IP earning 300-500 million RMB at the box office, which followed the same “series-to-movie-and-back-to-series” path, The Legend of Hei achieved broader mainstream breakthrough, with derivative products scattered everywhere. Cha Ah Er Zhong has already solidified its foothold in lower-tier markets and deserves more opportunities to expand, achieving greater IP commercial development results._

Regrettably, asking animation studios to proactively handle this is extremely difficult. Most companies' skill trees currently point toward creation rather than the market. Just nailing the creative process itself is already outstanding. Perhaps buried in creation, they lack negotiation skills or aren't particularly sensitive to the shifting tides of external IP commercialization. This is normal; everyone has weaknesses.

Therefore, the heavy burdens of distribution/promotion and IP development are mostly handed to video platforms, which share co-production status.

So here's the question: as distribution channels, isn't a platform's primary duty to ensure quality works reach more eyes, and help different projects find their matching audiences? Could it really be this batch of audiences failing? For a piece akin to a perfect-stat powerhouse, receiving zero response… with platforms feeding so many staff, what are they actually doing? What exactly are they protecting? Hard to guess.

I don't know if anyone outside the production team and fandom truly cares about the fate of such works. After all, the industry's torrent rolls onward. Over a hundred titles update annually, many suffer sudden cancellations and forced endings, yet only a handful can etch themselves into history books, repeatedly savored, becoming timeless classics.

So beyond recommending the work, this article aims to explore a deeper question: as scarce industry assets, how should premium production capacity and elite creative teams leverage existing industrial resources to secure reasonable attention for their works, thereby realizing a positive feedback loop for quality output and preventing vicious cycles where inferior drives out superior?

Platform responsibility is unavoidable. Interestingly, reviewing current mainstream video platforms investing most heavily in domestic donghua reveals stark differences in how they treat varying works.

Fortunately, most platforms within the industry maintain positive and flexible attitudes toward premium capacity and excellent works. We can observe that when a series performs well, platforms immediately upgrade to annual formats and increase funding/resources; standout plot points and memorable characters trigger boosted internal/external traffic pushes, ad placements, and reputation management to attract new fans and retain veterans; favorable audience feedback accelerates IP development plans, merchandise production, and licensing partnerships; if a title truly flops in quality, resource allocation flexibly adjusts to cut losses promptly, avoiding forced fake virality.

Most platforms accurately grade annual and flagship slot titles. S+ and S tiers guarantee highest quality, meriting matched resources. While differing S-tier animations each shine uniquely, none commit egregious errors or basic mistakes.

Only a minority of platforms suffer poor flexibility, grinding routines regardless of quality or release cadence. If a series starts as platform transparent, it stays invisible forever, whereas favored darlings receive top-tier resources to sweep under the rug even when production and reputation crater. Ironically, ignoring ROI and dumping resources yields inflated metrics, yet universal audience reception and commercial validation never lie. Then again, given strategic mandates for cost-cutting efficiency alongside long-termism, can cost-performance really be ignored?

In essence, a platform's current actions—or inactions—dictate the lifespan of most animations, and even their studios. Low popularity guarantees cancellation; poor metrics might trigger payment withholdings akin to live-action dramas. Originally leveraging platform advantages for domestic donghua IPs, platform inaction now directly backlashes upon creation, compressing opportunities and spatial margins.

Should a premium animation partner with the wrong platform, its fate is sealed from day one. It squanders hundreds of people's years of sweat, drains creative passion, and mortgages future opportunity costs. The domestic animation sector accelerates rapidly, particularly in commercial development; the IP value of tier-one animations long transcends mere millions or tens of millions in production budgets.

Having contacted numerous animation creators, most diligently binge-watch their entire series post-release, meticulously reading bullet comments and reviews—a highly ritualistic act for them. Production cycles stretch long: 2–3 years typically, sometimes 4–5. Throughout repeated, drawn-out creative hibernations, immense positive audience feedback becomes essential sustenance to persevere, maintain passion, and prolong the vitality and creative spark of the industry.

I wonder if they catch bullet comments asking “So good, why isn't it popular?” and what they'd feel upon seeing them. Calm? Regret? Sorrow? Anger? Or, like me now, mainly a accustomed sense of powerlessness.

We wholeheartedly hope excellent creators enjoy pristine environments, that quality works secure rational resource allocation and wider visibility—they deserve broader affection. As ordinary viewers limited to writing articles, our agency remains minimal. But we consistently believe worthy animations merit us deploying numerous essays to fight for something on their behalf.

Hopefully this piece arrives before it's too late. Rest assured, however: this isn't the first, nor will it be the last.

On July 20, 2026, the original Chinese 2D animation White Lightning celebrated the second anniversary of its premiere and officially announced the production of its second season.

Two years on, this youth story about high school girls who bond over table tennis and strive both on and off the court has not faded from the industry's view.

Last summer, White Lightning went overseas as a compilation film screening in Japanese theaters; this summer, on its second anniversary, the official team also held offline commemorative events in many cities across the country.

Behind it is Huamei Animation, founded in 2019. Though a relatively young animation studio, it has shown astonishing creativity in recent years.

Multiple wildly popular game PVs, Capsule Plan short films, two consecutive original 2D animation series... Every animation studio has its own original dream, but very few can truly “be themselves.”

How did Huamei Animation step by step find its own original path, turn ideas into works, and further develop them into IPs?

On the occasion of White Lightning's second anniversary and the conclusion of Action! Monster Movie, we interviewed Huamei Animation's co-founder and producer, Jia Xuewen (Yibei). From the perspectives of project development and IP management, she talked about the road the team has traveled and what comes next.

01 From Working for Others to Originals​

“Even if the decision itself was made rationally, the essence of original animation is still a gamble.”

Rewind to 2019, when Huamei Animation was founded: the production team, including Yibei, had only 6 members. Though the team was small, its members had all accumulated rich experience in 2D animation production, lived through the era when web animation was on the rise, and participated in producing many commercial animation projects.

But unlike the past, when they only did contract work, Yibei says Huamei Animation had a clear goal from day one: to create original IPs “held in its own hands.”

But ideals can't keep a company running. Original work requires time and money, and the team first had to solve survival. The company's startup capital came from founder and director Jiafei selling an apartment worth about a million yuan. In addition, all full-time employees at the time received a uniform monthly salary of 6,000 yuan, and things only improved slightly once contract projects came in. Beyond keeping the company running normally, investing all profits into original R&D was everyone's consensus.

Looking back at Huamei Animation's early Weibo posts, their earliest content was mostly “claiming credit” for commercial projects they contracted or assisted with, including the promotional PV for the game Ninja Must Die 3 and the opening animation for the web series Really Want to Be With You; among these, the Punishing: Gray Raven animation PV and Stone Hero Feels So Lonely were co-produced with Big Firebird Culture.

In fact, the survival strategy Huamei Animation has adopted since its founding is constantly alternating between “original + contract work” and “long-form + short-form,” with the two supporting each other.

On one hand, contract projects provide the team with stable cash flow, keeping the company running; on the other hand, producing different types of projects continuously hones the team's abilities while waiting for its own opportunity.

In Huamei Animation's third year after founding, the White Lightning PV was officially released on August 11, 2021.

Energetic high school girls, familiar cityscapes and school settings, and a relatively rare domestic sports theme... Within a day of the one-minute-plus short's release, its view count quickly surpassed one million, sparking heated discussion across major video platforms and social media, drawing attention from both audiences and the industry.

But Yibei revealed that although White Lightning was Huamei's first planned original project, it was not the earliest original project to begin PV production. From the company's founding in 2019, the team had been planning multiple original directions, and first launched PV production for the fantasy-themed original project Code: Birdman Plan. Due to the pandemic, that PV's production was suspended in early 2020. On the sports front, the team had also considered directions like running and badminton.

Ultimately, weighing the theme's popularity, animation production difficulty, the potential sports boom from the Hangzhou Asian Games, and table tennis's nationwide recognition and popular base as China's “national ball sport,” Huamei decided around 2020 to prioritize White Lightning.

Even if the decision itself was made rationally, the essence of original animation is still a gamble.

Without external investment, the team took on commercial projects while producing the White Lightning PV.

Production of the White Lightning PV proceeded intermittently for over half a year. But when the short was actually finished, the team seemed less excited than expected. As stated in the announcement after the PV's release, the team was still “in a daze” at the time, and Huamei's daily routine continued to be rushing between different projects. From a professional 2D animation production perspective, the team itself felt the PV still had plenty of room for improvement.

On August 11, as the White Lightning PV was released, Yibei was at a hospital in her hometown in Hunan accompanying her mother and hadn't looked at her phone all day. Only in the evening, after receiving messages from many friends, did she log into Huamei Animation's account backend — her phone immediately froze, flooded with a massive wave of notifications and private messages.

Without any planned promotional resources, the White Lightning PV surpassed one million views within 10 hours of release, was shared over 10,000 times on Weibo, and topped Bilibili's trending chart.

The PV's response clearly exceeded the team's expectations. Facing this unexpected popularity, Yibei nonetheless declined interview requests from multiple media outlets. “I found it odd at the time — we only made a PV, why interview me? Let's talk after we finish the actual series.”

During that period, Huamei gradually came into contact with several potential investors. But facing demands from some investors to invest in the company or buy out its production capacity, Huamei rejected them all — the team wanted to preserve the company's independence and long-term control over its original content. Yibei said: “It's not that we didn't lack money. We sought investment a few times in between, but somehow it never worked out — maybe fate arranged for us to run an experiment. We didn't understand investment back then; without investors, naturally no one interfered with the creative work, so if we did poorly it was on our own inadequacy. This is the dumbest, hardest way — I really don't recommend it.”

Ultimately, White Lightning was confirmed as self-produced by Huamei Animation, streaming on both Tencent Video and Bilibili, with Aniplex handling overseas distribution. Originally scheduled for October 2023 during the Asian Games, it was delayed to July 2024 during the Olympics.

The bewilderment caused by the PV's viral success in 2021 also made Yibei realize her understanding of traffic-driven marketing and IP monetization was very limited. Between “making an animation” and “running an animation IP,” there is still a long distance.

So, as White Lightning progressed from PV to a real animation IP, she began consciously “letting go” of on-site production, investing more energy in areas she previously knew little about: intensively “cramming” knowledge of promotion, commercialization, supply chains, and other aspects of full-chain IP management.

02 How Many Steps Does It Take to “Run” an Animation​

“From the past focus on animation itself's 'work logic' to a deeper understanding of the 'commodity logic' surrounding an IP.”

To run an original animation IP, “knowing how to produce” is only the first step.

Looking at Chinese animation in the internet era, most original works are backed by major video platforms or companies that already possess film/TV development and IP operation capabilities. By contrast, studios like Huamei Animation — where the production team itself initiates an original project, successfully lands it as a long-form series, and participates in the entire commercial process — are actually rare.

This is one reason Huamei Animation draws attention: they not only “made” a PV or an animation, but also built a “commercial closed loop” around their work.

In Yibei's view, the work of “running an animation IP” can roughly be broken into four major areas: production, distribution, promotion, and commercialization.

The first step is mastering the core business of animation production — staying afloat and completing the work.

As mentioned above, Huamei established an alternating model of “original + contract” and “long + short.” As the team kept refining its collaboration, the company's production efficiency steadily improved. In Yibei's view, Huamei's 2D animation management pipeline is now relatively mature. “We break down processes like first key animation and second key animation extremely finely. Because we were so poor, this maximizes cost savings while ensuring quality — it really tests management ability. Without exaggeration, in the field of 2D animation project management, I might be the person in China who has studied it most deeply. From 2022 to 2024, lacking production capacity for our original work, I visited animation companies all over the country almost like doing fieldwork, and with everyone's help we finished the project like ‘eating from a hundred households.'” This detailed pipeline and management approach also allowed her to somewhat step back from on-site management and devote more energy to other areas.

At the company-management level, balancing the team's capacity across different projects was equally difficult. Especially in the company's early years, Huamei long faced an “impossible triangle”: “If you want to do things well, you have no money; if you want to make more money, you have to sacrifice quality; but if quality suffers, partners won't be sure they'll give you projects next time.” So throughout Huamei's startup years, Yibei jokes that nearly every year was spent “teetering on the edge of bankruptcy.”

After White Lightning entered full production, when negotiating external commercial partnerships, Yibei gradually shifted from focusing on project revenue to prioritizing “stable demand” and “brand exposure.”

“So in some cases, (our) project pricing was relatively cheap at the time, or we partnered with other companies to share risk. Projects must be stable, risk must be small, no recklessness. Because our company has no financing, we have no slack — we cannot afford a single project going wrong. We have no payment terms buffer to gamble with.”

The second step is stepping out of the animation production comfort zone and filling in full-chain IP management capabilities.

For distribution, she wanted White Lightning to “have it both ways”: serve core anime fans while also having the potential to spread to general audiences. In those years she noticed some animations had begun experimenting with simultaneous multi-platform streaming, so from the second half of 2022 she proactively approached major video platforms to explore multi-platform co-streaming.

But for an original project from a young company, this path was not easy. Yibei recalls the initial talks went unsmoothly, and platforms also needed time to evaluate this cooperation model. Fortunately, the platforms themselves were seeking change, and after nearly a year of negotiation, White Lightning finally secured dual-platform exclusive co-streaming on Tencent Video and Bilibili in winter 2023.

For promotion and marketing, Yibei keenly perceived the drastic changes in social platform dynamics between 2021 and 2023, and focused the team's limited operational resources on two major social platforms: Douyin and Xiaohongshu. The team set up official accounts, continuously released character materials, and encouraged user secondary creation, gradually building buzz for the work.

In this process, Yibei also maximally mobilized the personal connections she'd built over many years, proactively learning from professionals in different fields and exploring collaborations.

Very luckily, her high school classmate Nicole was a supervisor at an operations company with mature ACG marketing experience, so Huamei entrusted that company with a full-service operations partnership; her friend Qiqi had a background in managing real-person talent, so Yibei asked her to join the team in 2024 on a project basis to manage the operations department overall, working in tandem with Nicole's team.

Around 2023, as project production advanced steadily, Huamei began facing a new challenge: how to do IP licensing and commercial development? How to catch up on business knowledge for cross-industry partnerships?

“Many animation creators actually aren't good at expressing their value to the outside world.” To find answers, Yibei attended numerous comic conventions and licensing expos, trying to get more people to know about Huamei's original projects and build connections with industry professionals up and down the chain.

Meanwhile, she began proactively getting to know senior veterans in animation business and IP management, working hard to close the “information gap” between herself and the industry.

“From the second half of 2023 to the first half of 2024, I visited dozens of people, (many of them) seasoned professionals, and everyone generously shared with me. Looking back now, many of my questions were extremely ‘rookie-level,' but everyone patiently explained, helping me get up to speed quickly and giving me a grasp of how business licensing works.”

Looking at White Lightning's end credits, the staff and acknowledgments related to promotion and commercialization number over 80 people.

Through continuous exchanges, Yibei gradually completed a shift in perspective: from the past focus on animation itself's “work logic” to a deeper understanding of the “commodity logic” surrounding an IP.

When first preparing to develop merchandise, since the work had not yet aired, market awareness and reference cases for this original IP were limited, and White Lightning's early merchandise licensing went poorly. Facing partners' doubts, Huamei chose to prove it themselves with action. “No data or cases? Then we'll run the experiment ourselves and give everyone data and cases — otherwise we'd be stuck here forever.” To complete the first batch of merchandise, Huamei learned from scratch how to build e-commerce and warehousing systems — the person who led the team through this was Yifeng, a friend Yibei had met playing JX3 Online in college, who happened to work in e-commerce.

During the promotion phase after the animation aired, the team likewise had to constantly seek partnership resources. Exposure opportunities that seemed ordinary from outside required enormous trivial communication and coordination, and many collaborations depended on support from industry “friends and family” and even the Hangzhou local government.

From mall big-screen displays, to brand collaborations, to preview screenings — even inviting Olympic table tennis champion Li Xiaoxia to an offline premiere event. Huamei kept securing more exposure for White Lightning, further expanding the work's influence.

Through the full-chain development of White Lightning, Yibei gradually formed her own preliminary understanding of animation IPs:

“Animation production is the ‘point,' the full pipeline is the ‘line,' and long-term IP operation content is the ‘plane.' Getting more viewers to see it relies on promotion and commercialization bringing continuous exposure, forming a thicker ‘plane' — combined together, this is the ‘three-dimensional object' that makes an animation IP stand up.”

03 Withstanding the Pressure, Reaping the Results​

“Though I did a lot and worked myself hard, it was really the team colleagues behind me who kept supporting me.”

When the team first decided to incubate an original IP, the starting point was quite simple and the mindset relaxed. Yibei says everyone only thought, “First get the original animation made; once it's done, that's success — the work itself is the reward, everything else can wait.”

But when the team actually got the chance to invest in original production, its mindset quietly changed.

Yibei recalls that around March 2024 was when her stress peaked. At that point, less than half a year remained until White Lightning's official launch, and Huamei Animation faced an enormous funding gap. Because several major payments had not yet arrived, the company needed bank loans to keep running.

“I did the math at the time: because the production scope grew from the original 3 episodes totaling 45 minutes to 6 episodes totaling 84 minutes, we were already way over budget — that's why we had to ‘eat from a hundred households.' Promotion and business would cost about another 2 million. I was extremely anxious and told the director: ‘Once that 2 million is spent, it's a 2 million gap, and we may not recoup it...'”

“The director and the others said: ‘We all agreed you'd handle (promotion and business) — we all consented, it wasn't your decision alone.'”

“I was under huge pressure then, because I was the one spending the money, and I worried so much — this was money everyone earned through hard work, and the company had to take out loans on top of that...”

But even at the hardest times, Yibei says Huamei has never once delayed paying salaries over these years; all the pressure was absorbed internally through management's “extreme micro-management.”

In the most cash-strapped second half of 2023, Huamei at one point suspended all outsourced second key animation, controlling mid-production costs through phased production. This approach compressed post-production time and left some regrets in the work, but at least kept the company running.

Beyond that, Yibei also notes that Huamei's survival through the crisis depended on the long tradition of mutual assistance among domestic 2D animation companies, and some accumulated “good karma.” After the yen exchange rate fell in 2022, a friend's company working on Japanese animation projects approached Yibei for business introductions. Through such chains of mutual help, Huamei in 2022 received the Honkai Impact 3rd New Year special animation, which supported the company's cash flow. Yibei says: “We're domestic self-taught animators who started from Flash, so we've never done Japanese-card work — it was only in 2022 that we learned how much exchange rate changes affected friends doing Japanese projects.” These market changes also strengthened her resolve to pivot toward original work.

White Lightning was originally scheduled to launch during the 2023 Asian Games, but after the pandemic lockdown ended everyone fell ill one after another, production time doubled, and the director unexpectedly broke a bone in a fall, disrupting the original plan. By the time White Lightning officially launched during the 2024 Olympics, Yibei described her and the team's state as “utter chaos.” “Looking back now, I don't even know how I got through 2023–24.”

But this gamble on original animation also reaped feedback beyond expectations. In its launch year, the work's main episodes exceeded 40 million views, its Tencent Video heat score broke 14,000, and its Bilibili rating reached 9.8. Within one month of its summer launch, merchandise sales across all platforms surpassed 1 million yuan.

Meanwhile, Huamei reached culture-tourism collaboration deals with the Hangzhou local government and scenic areas, launching itasha cars, stamp-collecting check-ins, and other events. The regional familiarity brought by the work's real-location references also earned the team proactive interviews and exposure from multiple Hangzhou local media.

A year later, a film version merging the 6 episodes of Season 1 into roughly 86 minutes, distributed by Aniplex, landed in Japanese theaters, with Japanese dubbing by well-known voice actors including Shiina Nana, Amamiya Sora, Asakura Momo, and Tomatsu Haruka.

And all of this was achieved without selling any rights, while maintaining the IP's independence.

Looking back now, Yibei reflects that the realization of White Lightning, this “extravagant original dream,” depended on the team's own persistence and investment, and even more on the opportunities of the era and the support of many parties.

“Though I did a lot and worked myself hard, it was really the team colleagues behind me who kept supporting me, enabling me to go out and run (business). Many animation studio producers can't get away — they have to keep the company running, and there's no money to hire promotion and business staff. I was able to step out because my colleagues bore enormous pressure.”

“And if back then I hadn't pushed White Lightning forward under pressure, and instead accepted investment or contracted other projects, it might have made running the company easier, but the IP's buzz would fade, the window for greenlighting would close, and there might never have been a chance to restart.”

“You have to understand: if you don't do original work at that juncture, you may never get to do it again. So you have to gamble.”

Persisting in original IP development and expanding full-chain management capabilities won Huamei more “chances to survive” and gave the team valuable experience. After White Lightning, Huamei Animation continued exploring more original directions.

This April, the original 2D animation Action! Monster Movie, co-produced by Bilibili and Huamei Animation, launched. The animation tells the story of Monqi, a director obsessed with monster movies, who partners with Lia, a demon-realm girl, to shoot a demon movie — only to discover along the way that the otherworld's truth is closely tied to himself.

Compared to White Lightning's grounding in a Chinese-style school youth setting, Action! Monster Movie takes a completely different style: a fictional fantasy worldview, a light-comedy narrative style, and more exuberant, outgoing character designs.

Worth noting is the work's exploration in art and character design. On one hand, it attempts brighter, more vivid color palettes and more fashionable character designs; on the other, the fictional fantasy worldview placed higher demands on the art, and the team conceived rich setting details around the demon realm's ecology.

This project let Huamei Animation further accumulate production experience in non-realistic themes, fictional worldviews, and effects-heavy action scenes. Especially in controlling character design consistency in long-form 2D animation production, the team showed clear improvement over the White Lightning era.

Speaking of the narrative regrets this animation left behind, Yibei says the team had originally hoped to maintain a relaxed episodic structure early on, then gradually advance the main plotline, using two seasons' worth of content to weave in reflections on real issues like cultural collision. But under various unforeseen factors, the project underwent multiple major adjustments after launch, and the later production schedule was extremely tight. Yibei admits that although Action! Monster Movie has its regrets, in the current industry environment, completing another original long-form animation with Bilibili's support is itself already remarkable.

At the same time, this project deepened her understanding of the rapid changes in the domestic animation market in recent years.

“Under current conditions, doing a large project inevitably means ‘spanning a cycle.' Choosing the right theme and predicting the market matter a lot. (As a project greenlit) in 2020–21, none of us thought there was anything wrong with the light-comedy direction... but now, times have changed.”

04 A New Role, Old Questions​

“The longer you work in this industry, the more you know it's determined by those upstream. But why is upstream the way it is? I still don't know, so I want to explore.”

By 2026, Huamei Animation had grown from its initial 6 people to a stable staff of around 60. Despite personnel turnover, the company has built a relatively mature management system, with production capacity sufficient to support one long-form animation per year.

This July, White Lightning officially announced the production of a second season. The second season is planned at 12 episodes of 20 minutes each, hoping to make up for the first season's shortcomings in production and storytelling, with greater emphasis on ensemble character growth and new maps unlocked, targeting broadcast in 2028. “The project is currently seeking investment — interested partners of all kinds are welcome to contact us!” Yibei added.

Recently, Huamei further expanded beyond animation production, founding a new company in Shanghai, “Wanxiang Donghe”. On one hand, the company handles refined operations of animation IPs like White Lightning; on the other, drawing on the team's experience in full-chain IP operation, it builds bridges to market for more IPs and provides support for creators.

Meanwhile, Wanxiang Donghe has also invested in new IPs such as indie games and the original character convention OCO, and co-organized offline events like Beijing Animation Week. The team hopes that through these attempts, creators can dialogue more with audiences, engage with the market, and grow together with the times.

It looks like a cross-industry leap, but in Yibei's view, it is a natural extension of her career path over the past decade-plus. In developing the White Lightning IP, she increasingly realized the limitations of creators themselves and the importance of IP commercialization.

“I do feel a sense of mission, because I was ‘lifted up' by others.” Yibei says she happened to live through the era of the web animation investment boom and the rapid growth of Chinese anime-style mobile games, and received help from many seniors and peers. Now that she possesses the knowledge and ability to run an IP's full chain, she hopes to build more bridges.

Having struggled and “leveled up” in the animation industry all this way, Yibei explains the spiritual drive that has supported her:

“I think our generation of animators all probably have questions when entering the industry: Why is Chinese animation the way it is now? Why the generational gaps? Why can't (many things) get done? The longer you work in this industry, the more you know it's determined by those upstream. But why is upstream the way it is? I still don't know, so I want to explore.

How does an animation project actually get in front of audiences? How does full-chain operation work? Why do animation companies themselves so often fail at it? Over my decade in the industry I've always been curious — it's also just my personality (that drives me). So I'm willing to do investment, promotion, commercialization, and many other things that may seem unrelated to animation.”

She believes that Huamei has so far only completed the “from 0 to 1” work for itself, and that continuing to advance original animation production and IP management going forward is like “from 1 to 100.” Yibei relays a friend's evaluation of Huamei: “Like Sun Wukong before being pinned under Five Fingers Mountain — now he's out, but obtaining the scriptures still requires eighty-one tribulations.”

Now the peak of the web animation era seems to have receded, short-video content formats are on the rise, and AIGC continues to impact society as a whole. In Yibei's view, under these conditions, today's 2D animation teams cannot simply bury their heads in improving a single link of the craft — more than ever, they need to re-understand animation's position within the broader content industry: animation is still deeply loved and consumed by audiences worldwide, and it is both one of many creative media and one link among many forms of commerce.

No one can give a definitive answer about the future of original animation. But Huamei Animation and Yibei are setting out with their questions, learning bit by bit, trying step by step, and building their ideal commercial closed loop with concrete action.