31 posts tagged with "Donghua"

“What we aim to create is a type of performance that makes audiences feel the characters’ inner worlds, which is actually quite rare in stop-motion animation.”

On January 1, 2026, after a three-year hiatus, Yao-Chinese Folktales 2 returned to Bilibili. Co-produced by Shanghai Animation Film Studio, Shangying Yuan, Bilibili, and Chen Liaoyu Studio, this original anthology consists of 9 short films. Twelve directors explore themes of “China” and “Strange Tales,” delving into the core of Chinese storytelling while using reality to reflect on personal perspectives of self, family, and social relationships.

Directed by Chen Lianhua, the fourth episode Xiao Xue stands as the only stop-motion animation in the series. Using medical records as a narrative thread, the film blends reality and fantasy within a supernatural atmosphere. With its distinctive wool felt texture, profound and introspective storytelling, and nuanced emotional development, it portrays the process of reconciliation between two generations, striking a strong chord with audiences.

Animation Academic Pa was honored to invite the director of Xiao Xue, Chen Lianhua, as well as Da Li and Xiao Hua, key creators from Lilliput Stop-Motion Animation Studio, one of the production teams. Join us as we follow their narration and step into this world woven from wool felt.

01 Concept & Creativity: From Story to Script​

​Chen Lianhua: As an anthology series, Yao-Chinese Folktales was planned holistically, centered around the keywords “China” and “Strange Tales”. However, regarding theme selection, the producers gave fairly free rein, hoping for diverse styles rather than homogeneity.

My work in the first season, Grain Buds, leans toward an artistic and stylized approach, and the second season maintains that positioning. The producers didn't impose many restrictions on me either.

Previously, my creative work was mostly solo, but the Yao-Chinese Folktales series allowed me to experience teamwork. In the first season, I collaborated with a few people, but this time the scale was much larger—an unprecedented experience for me. I’ve always been interested in 3D puppet stop-motion animation, and now I finally had the opportunity to be part of the production.

​Chen Lianhua: When we initially discussed themes, the directors and writers gathered to talk about what they wanted to shoot. We could start from topics we’re currently most interested in or have deeply experienced.

Actually, we initially wrote a script about mother-daughter relationships, complete with an outline, but it relied too heavily on formalistic aesthetics and lacked narrative substance, so it wasn’t adopted. At the time, the showrunner asked if I had any other ideas, suggesting I pitch a few more.

Honestly, I was quite disappointed then, but on the subway ride back that day—maybe within just a few dozen minutes—I came up with the current story. It started as a one- or two-line synopsis before evolving into today’s Xiao Xue. It still explores generational relationships, so the theme remains similar.

As for the book The Medical Records of Qiu Rongchuan, it doesn’t actually exist, but “medical records” are indeed a significant category in traditional Chinese medicine texts. I often enjoy reading TCM case studies, so I wanted to adopt that format. But I wasn’t entirely sure whether using a medical record to document a story of healing both illness and heart would be interesting or overly abstract. Later, I discussed it with Chen Liaoyu(Showrunner of Yao-Chinese Folktales), and he thought the pretentiously serious approach was quite interesting.

The title also has a backstory. “Rongchuan” pays homage to Tang Rongchuan, a TCM master I greatly admire, while “Qiu” was a surname chosen by the writer. Together, they formed “Qiu Rongchuan”.

​Chen Lianhua: During the production of Season 2, we held numerous gatherings. From initial concepts and storyboards to the near-final cut, everyone would come together to discuss, share progress, and give honest—even sharply critical—feedback. Meanwhile, seniors from the SAFS Art Committee would regularly review our work and provide feedback.

For me, the most important and crucial suggestion was to emphasize the mother’s “whistling” action.

Initially, when designing the storyboards, we didn’t highlight the whistling enough. Seniors from Shanghai Animation Film Studio, Showrunner Chen Liaoyu, and Zhang Junjie, director of Bai Shan, all pointed out: Whistling is a pivotal plot point. Audiences must see it clearly and understand it. If they miss or don’t grasp that Xiao Xue is whistling, the narrative falls apart.

Taking their advice, we put immense effort into adjusting everything from visuals to sound design, finally making that key action stand out.

​Chen Lianhua: First, from a screenwriting perspective, introducing multiple characters prevents anyone from feeling too flat. We needed another child and neighbors for contrast, so we placed another family on the floor below.

This family actually serves as a secondary thread in the design: a household with more parent-child interaction and likely stronger affection. The parents dote on the child, making toys like kites and fish lanterns, but it’s a normal giving dynamic, so the child doesn’t project excessive emotional attachment to any single toy. Thus, during the Lantern Festival, the kid putting the fish lantern in the temple isn’t a big deal.

In contrast, the protagonist Xiao Xue’s son holds a special fondness for the fish lantern, considering it extraordinarily precious. Overall, this family primarily serves as a foil, subtly conveying the idea that “other children might not value these things as much.”

02 Production & Craftsmanship: From Sketches to Screen​

​Xiao Hua: Lilliput is a team focused solely on stop-motion animation. Our core creators are two people: Da Li and myself, Xiao Hua. Initially, we specialized in stop-motion promos for gaming merchandise, like cotton dolls and figures made for games. After shooting a lot of them, we gained quite a reputation in the industry.

You could say that—we’re probably the best at filming cute cotton dolls across the entire internet!

Besides that, we have some original characters and a podcast called “Lilliput Chat”. Basically, we’re a stop-motion studio that wants to try everything!

We were also curious about how Teacher Chen found us, because our past style differs significantly from Xiao Xue.

​Chen Lianhua: At the time, I researched various domestic stop-motion teams and watched Lilliput’s previous work, including some small puppet animation test clips. I could sense that they were capable of expressing the characters’ inner worlds, which is very different from styles purely focused on martial arts actions or external flair. That was my primary reason for choosing them.

Another crucial factor was that I’d seen their videos and listened to their podcast. The content they discussed and their thoughts on stop-motion animation aligned perfectly with mine. I felt right away that this team would work well together. It might sound a bit “presumptuous”, but it turned out I was right.

​Xiao Hua: Thank you so much for your trust, Teacher Chen! Xiao Xue is arguably the largest-scale project we’ve ever undertaken.

​Chen Lianhua: The production of our film was divided into pre-production, mid-production, and post-production. While working on the storyboards, I invited partners like Da Li and Xiao Hua to join early on, adjusting the boards accordingly based on narrative, technical implementation, cost, and other factors.

During the mid-phase, the storyboards were basically finalized, and we moved to performance design. We first recorded live-action performances, spliced them into the storyboards, and evaluated whether the narrative flow was feasible and costs acceptable. This stage actually involved revisiting pre-production adjustments, creating an iterative loop. Essentially, once the performances and storyboard tests with actual acting were locked, nothing changed.

​Xiao Hua: That’s the workflow for Teacher Chen, but ours was more complex. Even before seeing the storyboards, only with a synopsis, we had to conduct character style tests first. Afterward, we built scene models based on the boards, simulating the entire animation process to check for logical consistencies or flaws.

Since Teacher Chen’s film pursues long-take blocking within scenes with very little montage editing, long takes cannot skip steps, demanding precise choreography. Normally, our stop-motion shots stay under 5 seconds, cutting every one or two seconds. A 20-plus-second take like in Xiao Xue is rarely seen and typically requires a week or two to shoot.

​Da Li: We used live-action tests mainly to verify blocking feasibility. Once the scenes were roughly built, we calculated dimensions for each set, filmed test animations, measured character stride lengths and frame counts, and finally locked the storyboard timings. So the 2D storyboard, live-action performance boards, and test animation boards all differ slightly.

The first test shot we filmed: Xiao Xue chases the doctor down the stairs. The doctor stops at their doorstep, and Xiao Xue catches up and bows respectfully.

There was a troublesome issue: I needed both Xiao Xue and the doctor in the frame simultaneously, but Xiao Xue couldn’t catch up to him or go out of frame. Their relative distance had to remain consistent—yet their strides and frame rates differed. The doctor marched forward angrily with wide steps, while Xiao Xue, constrained by clothing and gender, couldn’t stride as broadly. We constantly calculated step frequencies and frame counts, ensuring Xiao Xue stayed perfectly within bounds when the camera tracked the doctor. Extreme precision was required.

​Chen Lianhua: Correct. Xiao Xue emphasizes in-scene blocking over montage, demanding extremely high precision in staging. In 2D, computers can stretch or compress time, but stop-motion’s time and space are fixed. We rely entirely on blocking, which presents a massive challenge for the shooting team.

​Chen Lianhua: Actually, hand-drawn character designs and the final physical puppets are fundamentally different things.

In my past paper-cut animation work, I could maximize the hand-drawn feel because it essentially unfolds drawings into components—whereas puppets in 3D stop-motion are a completely different medium. So I initially sketched the main characters of Xiao Xue in my mind, clarifying their faces so everyone could grasp a three-dimensional understanding during scripting and storyboarding, even though they’d inevitably differ vastly from the final puppets.

Then I discussed it with Xiao Hua, who drew her envisioned version of the puppet. Afterwards, we made numerous adjustments between “my drawn puppet” and “Xiao Hua’s crafted puppet”, eventually shaping a fitting look for Xiao Xue. This process was like a “translation”.

​Xiao Hua: Yes, there has to be a “translation” phase. Because Teacher Chen comes from 2D animation, many of his line treatments follow 2D logic, but those lines are hard to realize in 3D puppets. We know better what can be physically achieved versus what can’t or will lose its flavor. So I had to draft my own vision of the puppet first, then merge it with Teacher Chen’s requirements into a buildable blueprint.

​Chen Lianhua: In the original design, the doctor wore a hat. But during practical puppet-making, we noticed the wool felt surface has a fuzzy pile; wearing a hat made the head look disproportionately large, feeling completely different from real-life hat-wearing. So we ultimately decided to drop the hat entirely, indoors or outdoors. This is an example of a design change driven by material properties.

The doctor’s appearance went through several revisions too. Initially, everyone thought the design looked too much like me, but I didn’t want the character to resemble myself completely, so we kept tweaking it.

​Xiao Hua: The front and back panels of the qipao used regular window mesh. Its thickness, stiffness, and moldability were just right.

Stop-motion moves frame by frame, so drapable fabrics need stabilization to maintain crisp shapes and prevent unruly skirt movement. Many similar solutions exist domestically and internationally: thinner fabrics can be starched and hardened for shaping, while conventional skirts use wire petticoats. But Xiao Xue’s qipao didn’t suit either method.

The qipao had moderate thickness and would wrinkle after washing; pure wire mesh was too stiff. So we settled on window screen material, which is softer. However, the aluminum wires in screens are extremely fine, frequently pricking the animators’ fingers during posing—a truly brutal process.

​Da Li: In the shot where Xiao Xue cries, the tears were made using nail polish glue.

Many stop-motion productions use slime for tears, but slime is too soft and sticky, making the tears look cartoonish. It wouldn’t match the tone of Xiao Xue, and audiences might even laugh at that shot.

So we chose adhesive used for nail art. It’s highly viscous and has inherent rigidity, making it easy to shape. We used tweezers to pull it into threads thinner than a millimeter, then attached them to the wool felt to create delicate tear streaks.

Actually, many nail art materials are exceptionally suitable for decorating puppets' outfits.

​Chen Lianhua: Absolutely. Standard puppet animation uses large hands for sturdy skeletons and easier posing, but Xiao Xue is a serious piece; oversized hands would make it look like a children’s show. So we altered the proportions, insisting on extremely small hands with articulated joints. This definitely brought huge challenges to the production team.

​Xiao Hua: Teacher Chen’s requirements were stylistic, while we had to account for animation needs. Hands needed to be small yet durable, unbreakable after a few frames, and capable of complex movements. Embedding just a single aluminum wire wouldn’t snap after a few poses, failing animation demands. Wool felt also posed a challenge—it gains strength and shape only through felting/poking. Making it cling tightly to the metal skeleton without gaps, while still leaving room for poking, was difficult. We tested various glues and mediums through numerous trials before succeeding.

​Da Li: We also built a dedicated oversized hand prop for shooting specific scenes, like the fishmonger catching fish, the mother caressing sheets, or the doctor writing notes—all requiring hand close-ups. Even so, we produced numerous backup puppets. Take Xiao Xue: with four shooting stages at the time, she had four heads. Because walking sequences drained skeletons rapidly, we custom-fabricated three steel armatures for her, plus three spare aluminum wire skeletons.

After all, genuinely reliable, cinema-grade steel armatures are highly labor-intensive and expensive; cheaper alternatives are sturdy but far less pliable than aluminum wire, unable to produce the delicate, micro-movements we desired. They’re better suited for skeletal-heavy shots. We also modularized Xiao Xue’s skeleton: if a hand broke, I could quickly reattach it without affecting other parts.

Stop-motion practically functions like a live-action set; our puppets, sets, lighting rigs, and animators all operate on separate schedules. So adjustments happen mid-shoot. For instance, if one animator finishes a shot early to move to the next stage, but the animator scheduled there isn’t done, schedules “clash”.

​Xiao Hua: This explains why Xiao Xue has so many heads and bodies. One head per animator, plus a backup body for each. Hence, the number of bodies is double the heads.

​Chen Lianhua: There’s a funny thing: whenever people see the actual sets, they exclaim, “I didn’t expect the sets to be this big!” But in reality, the sets are scaled according to the characters.

​Xiao Hua: Exactly. Xiao Xue stands 30cm tall, and the doctor is nearly 35cm. These heights are considered highly exaggerated in stop-motion. Typical stop-motion puppets hover around 25cm—a comfortable height for animators that keeps set sizes manageable.

Why scale them up so much? Because our puppets’ facial features simply couldn’t get any smaller. Don’t let the eyes fool you; they’re actually triple-layered: a white fabric base, embroidered eyeliner stitches, and individually attached eyeballs. Stack these layers and shrink further, and construction becomes impossible.

Xiao Xue’s pupils measure only 2.5mm in diameter, while extras’ eyes might be a mere 1mm. Swapping expressions requires tweezers to pluck them out. Eyes are incredibly easy to misplace; even with numerous backups, loss rate stays high. This dictates the minimum viable puppet size at around 30+ cm, meaning the house we see now is already at its smallest functional scale.

In the final wide shot where Xiao Xue plays in the temple, spanning over seven meters horizontally, it stretches across our entire studio. Her home’s walls are exceptionally tall; during the scene where the son stands on the second-floor windowsill, our tallest animator had to stand on a ladder to shoot. For every single frame adjustment, he’d climb down to hit record/stop on the computer, then climb back up to pose the next frame.

​Xiao Hua: Honestly, very few domestic studios specialize in stop-motion auxiliary equipment. The technology itself is highly complex, and machines are exceptionally pricey; overseas, usually only major corporations can afford them. Given stop-motion’s niche status, track systems are rarely used unless tackling cinematic projects requiring extensive long takes or motion shots.

We turned to veteran equipment specialists in the industry who had developed relevant tools themselves. They designed our track lengths and instructed us on installation. Thanks to their guidance, we could utilize so many long takes in the film.

​Chen Lianhua: Primarily, it served narrative necessity. This segment marks a major turning point, symbolizing the divide between the physical world and the psychological realm.

Technically, it’s a sequence of 2D frame-by-frame animation, where a new puppet had to be manually poked/felted for every single frame. Without 3D printing, it’s rather “clunky” and required tremendous effort.

​Da Li: We referenced a previously shared wool felt 2D animation titled Dialtone, which uses felt to sculpt light and shadow. We loved the piece and tried adapting its technique for Xiao Xue. However, the two actually differ significantly.

Visually, that work still maintained a “relief-like” spatial depth, whereas Xiao Xue was crafted thinner and more translucent, pursuing a watercolor-like texture.

In production, Dialtone was a solo directorial effort made by an animator felting and shooting simultaneously with no division of labor. Our sequence required collaborative splitting, so we pre-felted over 50 layered “son” puppets before staging them.

Regarding lighting, we initially used flat lighting, but Teacher Chen felt it looked too cartoonish. We switched to backlighting, using it as the key light to outline the wool felt edges, then filling in with other lights—for instance, the fire glow from the fish lantern was actually a handheld small lamp placed underneath.

​Xiao Hua: But this lighting approach somewhat diminishes the inherent texture of the wool felt, so we adjusted its thickness further during shooting.

​Da Li: We did consider saving effort at times. For the son’s sequence, we previously tried pushing the camera inward, but found the result rigid. When the subject lacks variation, the frame becomes dull. So we opted for frame-by-frame felting instead; this ensures the son changes slightly each frame, yielding a lively feel akin to 2D animation outlining jitter.

​Xiao Hua: This enhances the underwater atmosphere. Additionally, while felting the son, we stuck to his original colors, but during shooting, we applied four different blue tones for environmental coloring and white wool felt for splash effects, allowing the puppet to seamlessly blend with the watery background.

​Chen Lianhua: First, stop-motion inevitably carries influences from traditional American performance systems—the Disney-style squash-and-stretch mechanics—making characters appear to “nod and sway”. But in my view, that style externalizes everything, leaving audiences disconnected from characters’ internal worlds. What we aimed for was a performance that evokes the “inner life”, which is actually quite rare in stop-motion.

Secondly, animated performance is heavily influenced by each animator’s personal interpretation and temperament. This film highlights that distinctly. We conducted animation tests where everyone shot frame-by-frame clips of Ruan Lingyu’s The Goddess. Right then, we noticed differing approaches—young animators projected differently than mature ones, easily distinguishable. An animator capable of capturing these subtleties inherently crafts exquisitely nuanced characters.

​Da Li: I faced similar dilemmas before, as American performance mechanics aren’t naturally intuitive to me. So while shooting Xiao Xue, I actively explored performances aligning more closely with Chinese kinetic logic. Xiao Xue’s torso exhibits minimal motion, focusing instead on details like fingers and eyes. Yet her core can’t remain entirely static, lest she appear rigid or wooden. Every subtle movement was meticulously staged by our animators.

​Chen Lianhua: Endowing mundane, everyday gestures with dramatic meaning—this effectively summarizes our philosophy on movement design.

03 Release & Resonance: From Details to Empathy​

​Xiao Hua: The audience is incredibly talented. Many interpretations never crossed our minds initially. For example, the doctor plays the flute narratively, but viewers commented, “The doctor’s also in a band?”, treating him as a modern musician—quite fascinating.

​Da Li: Including the son. Viewers noted his athletic talent, exceptional breakdancing skills, even nicknamed him “Board Kid” due to his frequent floorwork in the film. All such comments are delightful.

​Chen Lianhua: Two points particularly surprised me. First, viewers found the fluffy fish incredibly adorable, with unexpected danmaku requests for identical plush toys.

Second, regarding the flute-playing detail. Knowledgeable viewers noticed every finger position was anatomically/musically correct, surprising and pleasing me. During filming, we hired a flute specialist to record reference videos, which animators painstakingly replicated frame-by-frame. It confirms that viewers indeed scrutinize minute details.

​Xiao Hua: Audience appreciation for the underwater sequence thrilled me! Seeing your painstakingly crafted shots leave viewers amazed validates all the effort poured into them.

​Da Li: Someone mentioned crying alongside Xiao Xue upon seeing her weep—warming my heart.

​Xiao Hua: I teared up watching it for the first time too, viewing the earliest music-less demo cut. Though I knew Da Li was posing it, I still fully absorbed Xiao Xue’s emotional weight.

I hope Xiao Xue joins the ranks of discussed stop-motion classics, becoming a reference point whenever the medium is conversed upon.

​Chen Lianhua: For me, the takeaways are immense. Firstly, despite monitoring stop-motion chronically, this hands-on involvement taught me vast photographic knowledge of the medium. Such expertise can’t be gleaned merely observing finished pieces. Future projects will draw renewed inspiration from this, spawning fresh ideas.

Secondly, collaborating closely with a team offered experiences I’d never encountered, accumulating irreplaceable interpersonal synergy skills.

Thirdly, academically, I continuously pondered what defines stop-motion’s uniqueness and irreplaceability. This film deepened that reflection. The authentic materiality of a “puppet” delivers sensory and spiritual realism—that’s its unreplicable essence. Puppets carry an inherent uncanny eeriness; this sensation penetrates humanity’s deeper recesses, embodying stop-motion’s charm.

Lastly, I deeply admire the women on this team for executing such meticulous craftsmanship!

​Xiao Hua: Thank you, Teacher Chen, truly too kind! He’s already a highly mature artist with a distinct style. We’re thrilled to collaborate with him. Without this partnership, accessing such aesthetics would’ve been unlikely. Creating work is most joyful when exploring uncharted stylistic territories.

Since Teacher Chen lacks prior 3D stop-motion experience, his storyboard and textual designs continually delighted and challenged us, especially through poetic expressions and long takes. Many doubt whether tangible stop-motion can convey poetry and ink-wash sensibilities like 2D animation can, but I believe it absolutely can—and our collaboration with him proved exactly that.

​Da Li: Previously, we mainly shot cute puppets or environments with low narrative stakes. Xiao Xue’s scale and depth were entirely foreign territory for us. Though fraught with production hurdles, its exceptional storytelling multiplied the sense of accomplishment.

After producing Xiao Xue, I feel our studio broke through significant barriers in aesthetics, technique, emotional perception, and narrative expression. Revisiting other animation projects now feels remarkably effortless. Not formally trained in animation, accompanying Teacher Chen in refining storyboards, dissecting character emotions, and analyzing narrative logic marked my first real lesson in crafting stories—an invaluable learning journey.

“There will always be dreamers roaming the world with sword in hand, always little kids draping bed sheets over their shoulders and wielding brooms as knights-errant, and always newcomers yearning for new legends of the jianghu.”

Among this year’s Spring Festival films, Blades of the Guardians—adapted from the manhua Blades of the Guardians—stands out as something different.

It is one of the rare purely domestic live-action manhua adaptations (note: meaning the original comic is Chinese and the film is made by a Chinese team), and the first domestic live-action manhua adaptation to brave the Spring Festival box office. What’s more, it is an uncommonly seen hardcore wuxia production.

Looking at the cast, the film not only has “the world’s greatest action choreographer” Yuen Woo-ping at the helm, but also gathers Wu Jing, Nicholas Tse, Jet Li, as well as Yu Shi, Cisha, Liang Biying, Lin Qiunan and other action stars spanning five generations.

Looking at the texture—desert, yellow sand, flashes of blades and swords—it easily evokes classic wuxia films like New Dragon Gate Inn, Ashes of Time, and Flying Swords of Dragon Gate.

However, the thick “dimensional wall” between manhua and live action, an increasingly niche wuxia theme, a dazzling array of casting choices, the original’s complex narrative versus the film’s limited runtime—these all make one anxious about the final product.

Is the Blades of the Guardians movie worth watching? Can this “hardcore” wuxia blockbuster, as it claims, revive the glory of Chinese-language wuxia and break the curse that “domestic manhua adaptations always flop”?

01 Purely domestic live-action manhua adaptations always flop​

Counting them up, there have actually only been a handful of domestic live-action films adapted from Chinese manhua.

The earliest domestic live-action manhua adaptation dates back to Mr. Wang, created by Ye Qianyu during the Republican era.

In 1928, inspired by the American humor comic Bringing Up Father, Ye Qianyu wanted to create a humorous, satirical comic focused on the lives of ordinary Chinese people. And so the skinny, comical, henpecked Shanghai everyman “Mr. Wang” was born.

The work was first serialized in Shanghai Manhua until 1937 and was well received. Starting in 1934, the Mr. Wang comics were successively adapted into films, with more than twenty entries released up through the latest one, Mr. Wang: Consumed by Desire, in 1993.

Then came the childhood memory shared by generations: the “Sanmao” comic series created by Zhang Leping. The series was adapted into films four times, in 1949, 1992, 1996, and 2003. Among these, The Wanderings of Sanmao, shot and screened in 1949, was the first domestic feature film publicly released after the founding of the People’s Republic of China.

Both of the above comics took shape during the turbulent Republican era and bear distinct marks of their times. The “Sanmao” series in particular, through the eyes of the street orphan Sanmao, exposes the bitter lives of those at the bottom of society. Though published in commercial magazines, the theme of “national salvation” was always the main thread of comic creation in this period.

The first contemporary live-action film adapted from a domestic manhua was Go Away Mr. Tumor, released in 2015. Its author, Xiong Dun, depicted her own real experience battling cancer in comic form, publishing it simultaneously on Tianya and Weibo; her positive, optimistic spirit moved countless netizens.

In 2012, Xiong Dun passed away from illness. Three years later, the film Go Away Mr. Tumor, adapted from her comic, was released. It ultimately earned 510 million yuan at the box office with a Douban score of 7.4.

Afterward, Take My Brother Away, created by the comic duo You & Ling, was twice adapted into live-action films: Take My Brother Away released in 2018, and What Happened to Big Brother? in 2021. The former earned 375 million yuan at the box office with a Douban score of 6.8—decent results—while the latter grossed only 30 million yuan with a Douban score dropping to 4.2, a truly dismal showing.

In 2023, the film Under the Light of the Underworld, adapted from the popular manhua The Outcast and directed by acclaimed director Wuershan, was released.

Yet this much-anticipated “dream collaboration” of a manhua-adapted live-action blockbuster saw its reputation plummet after release. Criticisms from audiences included, but were not limited to: drastically altered plot, broken characterizations, vulgar content, shoddy special effects, and miscasting; some angrily condemned the work for “completely failing to grasp the spirit of the original comic.”

In the end, Under the Light of the Underworld earned only 118 million yuan at the box office with a Douban score of 5.1—a crushing defeat.

In addition, there are the manhua-adapted live-action web films Baimen Wujia and Chunhui, which never saw theatrical release.

Baimen Wujia was adapted from the wuxia manhua of the same name that began serialization in 2013, and premiered in 2018. The original comic won first prize for Most Promising Comic at the 4th Xingman Awards, but the Baimen Wujia film scored only 3.9 on Douban, ranking dead last among the domestic manhua adaptations listed above.

Chunhui was adapted from Ruan Yunting’s semi-autobiographical manhua of the same name. Seen through the eyes of a young art teacher named Xiaochun, the work strings together one warm, healing little story after another, attending to students’ psychology while also voicing the teacher’s own confusion. Gently telling readers that “it’s okay to fall behind,” the work soothes readers’ anxieties like a spring breeze.

The film version is a single-episode short, shot on a phone and only 24 minutes long, released in early 2026. But whether it’s Baimen Wujia or Chunhui, judging by results or scale, neither managed effective reach among the general public.

It’s fair to say that the domestic market hasn’t seen a manhua-adapted film with broad reach, impressive results, and outstanding reputation in a long time.

Can Blades of the Guardians break through this time?

02 The most promising adaptation contender?​

The story of Blades of the Guardians takes place in the final years of the Sui dynasty.

The male lead, Daoma, is an armed escort. Carrying a child named Xiao Qi and bearing several blades of varying shapes on his back, he doesn’t do heroic deeds—he just takes escort jobs for money.

One day, his old acquaintance Lao Mo refers a special job to Daoma: escorting the court’s wanted criminal Zhishilang to Chang’an.

Along the way, all manner of jianghu figures—Ayu, Shu, Madam Yanzi, Pei Xingyan—take the stage in turn, each with their own schemes and their own codes of honor. At court, Emperor Yang of Sui, the Yuwen clan, and the various Western Regions tribes each plot their own moves; undercurrents surge in and around Chang’an as a great battle is about to break out along the Hexi Corridor.

Blades of the Guardians combines the seriousness of historical fiction with the romance of wuxia, weaving major historical events and portrayals of famous historical figures into its semi-fictional narrative, giving the story a more authentic texture.

The author, Xu Xianzhe, drew on primary historical sources such as the Book of Sui and the Zizhi Tongjian in creating the work, striving to “write in the blank spaces of history” so the story doesn’t stray from basic historical facts. His research includes boldly imagined and reasonably inferred plot elements, constructing a solid and credible world for Blades of the Guardians.

The various historical buildings, clothing, weapons, and props that appear in the comic also mostly have historical prototypes, subconsciously leading readers to believe such a legend really happened in the final years of the Sui dynasty.

But what draws readers in at first glance is its heavy art style and intensely dynamic battle drawings.

The comic’s lines are rough and forceful, fully conveying the speed, power, and impact of martial arts action, getting readers’ blood pumping; the refined paneling controls the pacing of reading, so that merely looking at the static comic, one can imagine the dynamic moves—like “watching” a movie through the page. The “heavy-industry”-grade art style carries an inherent weathered quality, further highlighting the aesthetics of violence and the cruel era in which the story is set.

The fight scenes are also a major selling point of the Blades of the Guardians film.

Director Yuen Woo-ping is known as “the world’s greatest action choreographer,” and his own résumé is a living history of film action design: Drunken Master, Once Upon a Time in China II, The Matrix, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Kung Fu Hustle, The Grandmaster… Classic action sequences from many Chinese and foreign films are his masterworks.

Lead actor Wu Jing is famous for being able to fight and fighting for real. He once trained with the Beijing Wushu Team, won multiple national wushu competitions, and his signature works are essentially all wuxia or action films. Setting aside his controversial remarks, looking purely at his résumé as an action actor, he genuinely lives up to audiences’ expectations for the fight scenes.

Nicholas Tse, Max Zhang, Kara Wai, Jet Li are regulars of wuxia and action films; the moment their names come up, one classic scene after another automatically surfaces in wuxia fans’ minds.

And the several new-generation actors also mostly have martial arts or opera training. Among them, Yu Shi has won awards multiple times in national mounted-archery competitions; the fighting prowess of Cisha, Lin Qiunan, Wen Junhui and others was already proven in last year’s hit film Catch the Shadow; Chen Lijun, who plays Ayu, and Li Yunxiao, who plays Madam Yanzi, are Yue opera performers who rose to fame with their joint performance of the Yue opera New Dragon Gate Inn.

Coincidentally, the prototype for Blades of the Guardians’ male lead Daoma was precisely Zhou Huai’an, played by Tony Leung Ka-fai in the film New Dragon Gate Inn—and Tony Leung himself has taken on the important role of “Lao Mo” in Blades of the Guardians.

Half of Chinese cinema’s action-film “pillars,” and the old and new “flag-bearers” of wuxia film, all gather here—this truly is a spectacle unseen for many years, and perhaps unlikely to be seen again.

Judging from the trailers already released, the action scenes take up a large portion of the film, and all are well executed. The long-missed on-location desert shooting, real actors on real horses, real blades against real steel—these make audiences feel as if they’ve dreamed their way back to the golden age of wuxia cinema, eager to regain that satisfying, “fists landing on flesh” sensation.

03 A maximally compressed jianghu, a narrative fraught with peril​

However, what determines a film’s reputation isn’t just the action scenes—it’s also the story.

Unfortunately, Yuen Woo-ping’s track record as a director and screenwriter Yu Baimei’s past results don’t seem able to reassure audiences…

The Blades of the Guardians manhua has two main plotlines, overt and hidden: the overt one, centered on Daoma and his companions, is the jianghu line recounting the conflicts along the road from the Western Regions to Chang’an; the hidden one, centered on real historical figures with alternating narration, is the court line revolving around official history and political struggle.

The film appears to have cut the court line entirely, focusing its lens solely on the jianghu. Given the film’s limited runtime and the story’s sweeping setting, dual-line narration would risk dropping one thread while catching the other, so this choice is understandable.

But the film’s script also spans a very long period of time. Judging from the trailers, the film may cover most of the important jianghu-line plot from chapter 1 to chapter 168—and bear in mind that Blades of the Guardians has only 172 chapters total since it began serialization in 2015 (per Bilibili Comics), and these are interspersed with a great deal of side stories, ensemble narratives, and flashbacks.

One of the charms of Blades of the Guardians’ story lies in how it cares about every microscopic life caught in the tides of the era. Even villains, supporting characters, and extras are shaped with depth and realism. Consequently, the main plot of Blades of the Guardians advances slowly, while the side stories branch out lush and abundant; countless vividly drawn characters populate the stage, together composing a wuxia world that is vast yet richly detailed.

Compressing everyone’s story into a single film inevitably means simplifying character motivations and “label-ifying” complex characters so audiences can quickly remember them. In that case, the depth of characterization is bound to suffer.

And the removal of the court line leaves the original’s brilliant portrayals of historical figures with nowhere to go, inevitably weakening the work’s sense of historical weight. The vivid gallery of characters and the heroic struggles of larger-than-life heroes so dazzling in the comic may never be seen in the film—or at least not in this film.

Moreover, that “dimensional wall” from comic to live action isn’t so easily crossed either.

The Blades of the Guardians manhua skillfully alternates literal and figurative depiction to create an intense sense of atmosphere. What readers see on the page isn’t necessarily “objectively happening”—it may be a character’s inner thoughts made external, or an intentional symbolic, impressionistic technique by the author.

The comic techniques used in past live-action films mostly appeared in exaggerated, comedic, non-serious narrative contexts, but Blades of the Guardians clearly doesn’t suit that path. If the handling of seriousness misses the mark, the solemn plot can easily turn into a chuunibyou flare-up, breaking the immersive viewing experience.

In addition, there are certain traits unique to comic characters that can easily achieve stunning effects in the original but are hard to replicate in reality.

Take Pei Xingyan for example. In the comic, Pei Xingyan is tall and imposing, with deep-set features and a bold manner; his very entrance carries an air of menace, the very image of a great general who could take an enemy’s head amid an army of ten thousand. But ask about his age—he’s only 17!

The extreme contrast between his ferocious appearance and his youthful age adds a layer of cuteness to the character’s ferocity, enriching his persona.

However, perhaps because a suitable “max-level teenager” is too hard to find in reality, this contrast was unfortunately flattened in the film version, and Pei Xingyan became a generic “dashing young general,” diluting the character’s anchor point.

Similar casting regrets are also visible in characters like Ani and Di Ting. Voices of dissatisfaction with the casting appeared early in the film’s promotion and remain loud to this day. Even if you’re not a fan of the original, you might still avoid this film because you feel some actor doesn’t fit their role.

04 Manhua, cinema, and wuxia—a three-in-one self-rescue​

While I have regrets about some of the adaptations, I don’t believe audiences are obligated to read the original manhua in advance before watching the film.

When a work undergoes cross-media adaptation, trade-offs are inevitable, and works that “drastically adapt” the original and still win acclaim are hardly rare. For example, Brigitte Lin’s Dongfang Bubai in Swordsman II, though never endorsed by original author Jin Yong, became a generation-defining classic in the hearts of many viewers.

But this raises a question: even if the film succeeds, to what extent can its glory flow back to the manhua?

The plight of domestic manhua is a well-worn topic—after the bubble burst, the once-flourishing comic platforms have dwindled to three mainstream players: Kuaikan Comics, Tencent Comics, and Bilibili Comics.

The living space for domestic comic creators is far from rosy: some comics can only occupy the downstream derivative niche of web novels already validated by the market, while riskier original comics struggle along, axed mid-run or abandoned by their authors as a matter of routine.

Even among domestic original comics, Blades of the Guardians is an outlier: page-format, black-and-white, read right-to-left—running contrary to the current mainstream trends of domestic comics and invisibly raising the barrier to entry. Despite its excellent reputation, the Blades of the Guardians manhua has yet to demonstrate a matching ability to monetize.

Even if the film succeeds, it doesn’t mean success for the Blades of the Guardians IP as a whole. The general audiences who make up the bulk of ticket sales don’t care whether it’s a manhua adaptation—many may not even know it has a comic original. Whether the casting is faithful or the plot changed—things the original fans care about—mean nothing to general audiences; for them, the first Blades of the Guardians they encounter is the film, and Daoma is simply the Daoma played by Wu Jing. Those willing to seek out the comic after watching the film are, after all, a minority.

What’s more, the film industry itself isn’t doing so well either.

After Ne Zha 2 became a smash hit at the start of last year, none of the several key holiday windows that followed produced a hit film to carry the torch; not until Zootopia 2 was released at year’s end did the overall box office warm up somewhat, though overall it remained bleak.

On the other hand, short videos, micro-dramas, AI comic-dramas, and other cheaper cultural products with faster feedback are stealing people’s attention. According to QuestMobile’s video content industry report, in 2025 the supply of films on online video platforms rose somewhat, yet their share of views declined slightly, accounting for only 2.2% of total views across the four platforms—iQIYI, Youku, Tencent Video, and Mango TV.

In other words, even on streaming platforms with lower barriers to consumption, people are increasingly unwilling to watch movies.

As it stands, the 2026 Spring Festival slate has no obvious super-headline film, and overall expectations are lower than in previous years. And how many viewers the wuxia genre can still attract is itself an uncertain factor.

Think back: what was the last theatrical wuxia film that sparked nationwide buzz, earning both acclaim and box-office success? Brotherhood of Blades? The Grandmaster? The Final Master? Or something else? Whichever it was, it’s already a work from over a decade ago.

Good wuxia doesn’t rely on piling up visual spectacles with special effects; it relies on solid, grounded moves, placing extremely high demands on choreographers, directors, and actors alike. This is a genre where, without real kung fu, you can’t take the stage. “Lack of good scripts,” “a generational gap among action actors,” “special effects flying everywhere,” “no chivalric spirit”—these are audiences’ most common complaints about current wuxia films.

Wuxia animation is caught in a similar bind. Compared with purely physical combat, animation is naturally better suited to—and better at realizing—more fantastical genres like magic circles and immortal arts. Pure wuxia animation faces not only technical challenges but also an emotional-threshold crisis of “not thrilling enough, not hype enough.”

When investment and return are out of proportion and satisfying wuxia works grow ever scarcer, it seems to seal the fact that “wuxia is dead.”

And yet, whenever a big production claiming to be “orthodox wuxia” launches, good or bad, it draws widespread attention; also in recent years, several wuxia-themed games have been enthusiastically embraced, with some sparking massive discussion before even officially releasing.

Some non-wuxia IPs have also launched wuxia-themed events to much acclaim, such as Wuthering Waves, Love and Deepspace, and Path to Nowhere. And the twelfth-anniversary installment of the Spring Festival stalwart Boonie Bears series likewise carries a strong wuxia flavor (the kung fu bear theory, that is).

Perhaps it isn’t that audiences have abandoned wuxia, but that the market has overdrawn audiences’ trust in wuxia-type works—audiences still crave quality wuxia that looks good and fights well.

And right at this moment, Blades of the Guardians arrives.

A well-funded production team, an original of proven quality, a cast with formidable “combat power”—these make Blades of the Guardians the meeting point of manhua, cinema, and wuxia as they explore the road to self-rescue.

As a second-generation anime fan who yearned for the wuxia world since childhood, I sincerely hope Blades of the Guardians can deliver a good story, bring a jianghu legend of gratitude and vengeance settled with a sword, and make a few new ripples on the jianghu.

The age of cold weapons is long gone, and wuxia may well become a niche genre in the end. But there will always be dreamers roaming the world with sword in hand, always little kids draping bed sheets over their shoulders and wielding brooms as knights-errant, and always newcomers yearning for new legends of the jianghu.

This may be an opportunity, or it may be flowers in a mirror and the moon in water—illusions all. As for how much it’s really worth, we’ll only find out on the first day of the Lunar New Year.

​References: The Beijing News: “Blades of the Guardians” Season 1 wraps with a score of 8.8—interview with original creator Xu Xianzhe on history and imagination

Author / Huiye

Edited by < Reliable Editorial Desk >

Spring Festival is just around the corner, and the entertainment world is buzzing with excitement! Movies, TV dramas, and variety shows are all going all out to bring everyone good fortune for the new year. This year, Chinese animation has entered the fray in a high-profile way, delivering surprise after surprise right out of the gate and becoming an eye-catching force that cannot be ignored in the Spring Festival season.

iQIYI's animation lineup is fully "armed to the teeth": three new titles—The Great Ruler Season 2, How Dare You? Season 2, and Ze Tian Ji—have launched one after another with impressive results, and together with hit series like Nine Yang Martial God, Love Between Fairy and Devil Season 2, and Peerless Pill God, they have completely filled the watchlist of Chinese animation fans for the entire Spring Festival.

Just press the remote, turn on the screen, and the "Manchu-Han Imperial Feast"-level animation banquet prepared by iQIYI Animation is guaranteed to satisfy! This Spring Festival, if you love anime, you're in luck!

Right after New Year's Day, iQIYI Animation's Spring Festival slate began rolling out. On January 9, The Great Ruler Season 2 returned at max level. As a classic IP from Tian Can Tu Dou's universe, its premiere delivered the first全网 hotspot for Chinese animation in 2026 (the first full-web buzz moment for Chinese animation in 2026). The playful and lively Xiao Xiao made her entrance, calling Xiao Yan "daddy" and Cai Lin "mommy," then adding "Xun'er mommy"—directly pushing The Great Ruler Season 2's on-platform heat index past 5,000 and sparking flood-level discussions across Weibo, Douyin, Bilibili, and other platforms. With its faithful recreation of the original characters and emotions, The Great Ruler Season 2 quickly captured the hearts of core viewers and successfully joined the mainstream ranks of platform-level annual series competition.

Many netizens spontaneously created fan works, hailing Xiao Xiao as "the strongest star kid" and teasing Xiao Yan as a certified "daughter's slave" in The Great Ruler. Some creators even watched the show together with their 60-year-old fathers, and had the "Flame Emperor" Xiao Yan turn "commentator," breaking down The Great Ruler Season 2's iconic return scenes. Reportedly, Lin Dong, the Martial Ancestor and another major male lead of the Tu Dou universe, will also appear in episode 59 of The Great Ruler Season 2, joining this "max-level reunion." Fans across the web are already gearing up, waiting for every Friday to open iQIYI and dive into immersive binge-watching mode.

Speaking of fan creations sparking a site-wide binge-watching wave, How Dare You? certainly has plenty to say. Whether it's "How are you?", "SOS," or hotpot dipping, everything takes you back to that summer of 2024 when the first season premiered. Now How Dare You? Season 2 has made a surprise return—before its premiere, on-platform reservations exceeded 1.5 million, and within just 5 hours of its debut it broke iQIYI's original animation surge record, with a heat index as high as 5,264, sweeping TOP1 on the platform's overall chart, animation chart, and multiple other rankings, while also storming the trending lists of Weibo, Douyin, Kuaishou, Xiaohongshu, and more, with tremendous momentum.

To express their love and support for the "Yu-Dan CP," every episode's bullet comments are filled with fans' passionate confessions. Messages like "Yu-Dan 99," "Sister Yu, Boss Dan, your soldier has arrived," and "Ahhh so sweet!" paired with pink heart-effect bullet comments push the sweetness to the max. Social platforms are full of enthusiastic unpaid recommendations—high-sweetness iconic moments like "She is my driftwood" and "I am Zhang San, your wife Wan Yin" have been widely circulated after fan edits, with people recommending: "The world is in chaos, but Yu-Dan's heart never changes" and "Greatness needs no words." Some netizens even made "Boss Dan's life" mashup videos set to Zhou Shen's songs, showing just how beloved this show is. With this level of buzz, not watching it would truly be "how dare you" indeed.

After watching a hot-blooded youth's growth story and a transmigration-into-a-book romance, it's time to try a new flavor. Ze Tian Ji, which premiered on January 31, offers viewers a kind of "emotionally stable" satisfaction. Upon its premiere it topped iQIYI's fantasy Chinese animation heat chart at TOP1. With a single line—"Only by following your heart can you defy fate"—Chen Changsheng brought book fans carrying 12 years of nostalgia back to their youth. The young boys and girls who once followed the novel's serial updates can now open iQIYI and see all their imaginings of the book's story finally come to life as dazzling visuals.

The two-way connection between the work and its audience is vividly embodied in Ze Tian Ji. Netizens have been reminiscing on social platforms about their history with this IP: "2016 to 2026, ten years together" and "I love Ze Tian Ji, because I too am living by following my heart." After watching the animation, fans have been generous with praise, saying the production team "truly understands Mao Ni" and "truly understands nostalgia." As the "white moonlight" of a novel with over 10 billion clicks, the reboot of Ze Tian Ji as a 3D animation has also won countless accolades: "Congrats on winning the resurrection match, the 3D remake is amazing" and "Finally here—catching the 3D era is a blessing." Riding on this word-of-mouth, Ze Tian Ji scored 12 hot searches across the web during its premiere week, with short-video topic views exceeding 1.5 billion, comment sections bustling non-stop as the buzz kept fermenting.

Every good Chinese animation has its own strengths, but for seasoned anime viewers facing the question of "which one to watch," the answer is inevitably "I want them all." All three flagship Chinese animations are iQIYI Animation originals, and their staggered premieres have kept fans happily busy—liking, commenting, and playing with memes everywhere, with messages like "Support them all!" and "Hurry up and add more episodes!" carrying the lively vibe of Spring Festival house calls, making this Chinese animation Spring Festival season all the more festive.

The current development of the Chinese animation market still relies heavily on word-of-mouth fermentation and spread. The reason these three iQIYI Animation titles have won so many fans lies in the production teams' meticulous craft and full sincerity—it is precisely this reverence for content that has earned the audience's enthusiastic response.

The Great Ruler Season 2 builds on its predecessor's strengths with a dual upgrade in both production and storytelling. From character modeling and fabric textures to action details and micro-expressions, the new season feels even more realistic. In terms of special effects, The Great Ruler Season 2 breaks away from the traditional line-and-light combat style of xuanhuan animation, using richer and more varied pattern designs to recreate classic skills from the original work such as the Luoshen Sword Art and spirit arrays, creating an immersive viewing experience.

Beyond visuals on par with top annual series, The Great Ruler Season 2 has precisely grasped what viewers love to watch. The protagonist's revenge never drags, his appearances never stall the plot, the pacing is brisk and clean, with dense yet natural payoff moments. The powerhouse pairing of Mu Chen and Luo Li sweetens things up constantly—their pure-love interactions strike the perfect sweetness level, making viewers screech "sharp explosions" in the bullet comments, crying that they're "shipping it like crazy." The youth's hot-blooded growth is interwoven with the flutter of young romance, delivering both hype and tears, so fans of every age group can find resonance in it.

iQIYI Animation has not only maintained the quality of its annual series—the standard of its seasonal sequels is just as high. How Dare You? Season 2 carries on the brilliance of the first season: the "Yu-Dan couple" takes the stage in style, step by step escaping Beishan and locking horns with Prince Duan. The nested transmigration plot takes a brand-new turn—after the Empress Dowager's passing, the classic imperial intrigue storyline grows ever more thrilling. At the same time, the "Yu-Dan CP" daily interactions are full of highlights; the intimate scenes no longer just brush the surface, with both sweetness and tension upgraded.

As one of the rare animations using 3D-rendered-into-2D technology on the market, How Dare You? Season 2 has a distinctive visual style combining the strengths of both 2D and 3D. Scene art leverages Unreal Engine technology to optimize lighting, rich in detail without feeling cluttered. Character design blends 3D performance with 2D linework to create especially expressive facial acting, ensuring the tyrant and the demon consort are never mere descriptions but vivid, three-dimensional drama kings and queens.

Reportedly, How Dare You? Season 2 will reach its finale this season, with Wan Yin's big-heroine aura beginning to emerge. Where will Yu-Dan end up amid the mix of sweetness and heartbreak? What awaits supporting characters like Prince Duan, Xie Yong'er, Aunt Bei, and A'Bai? All the answers viewers crave are about to be revealed. As one of the rare female-oriented Chinese animation works on the market, How Dare You? Season 2's strong start and continued rise is refreshing multiple records for shoujo-oriented Chinese animation.

Beyond sequels with accumulated buzz, Ze Tian Ji—the first all-new IP animation iQIYI launched this year—equally showcases the platform's production quality and dedication. The moment protagonist Chen Changsheng appears, he shatters the usual stereotype of xuanhuan protagonists: unlike the "conquer the world with brute force" formula of most fantasy animations on the market, Chen Changsheng breaks through with wisdom, resolving crises with his knowledge and clear-minded outlook, brimming with personal charm. His life philosophy of "following your heart, defying fate" reflects a portrait of our times—young people's self-awakening, staying true to themselves, and pursuing personal growth. No matter the predicament, he always relies on his own knowledge to find solutions, and this clear-headed approach to life perfectly aligns with the internet's current core topic of "personal growth," making it easy for viewers to resonate with.

From a green-robed young Taoist entering the Divine Capital, to growing into the youthful dean of the National Academy, Ze Tian Ji naturally weaves Confucian-Daoist traditional Chinese cultural concepts into its plot progression. Knowledge and philosophy are often abstract and hard to grasp; integrating them into animation especially tests a production team's imagination and creativity. In episode two, the scene where Chen Changsheng enters the sea of stars to light up his fate star can be called a new iconic moment in the realm of Chinese-aesthetic animation. Using elegant guofeng aesthetic elements like ink-wash gradients and gold-and-blue landscape painting, combined with experimental music design, the production team sketched out a richly layered audiovisual spectacle.

Three hit animations launching one after another, each a masterpiece—iQIYI Animation is really going big to start the year.

Whether you're a fantasy fan who loves hot-blooded growth stories or a female viewer drawn to unconventional narratives, iQIYI Animation's Spring Festival programming strategy covers virtually every core audience segment of the Chinese animation market. The popular Chinese animation genres currently on the market are all assembled on iQIYI; this content matrix of diverse genres both meets different users' individual tastes and offers viewers accustomed to a single genre a seamless way to try something new.

Beyond the three flagship titles premiering in succession—The Great Ruler Season 2, How Dare You? Season 2, and Ze Tian Ji—iQIYI Animation has multiple fresh, hot series airing simultaneously, enough to fill viewers' entire Spring Festival holiday with binge-watching and completely banish any content drought. Nine Yang Martial God updates steadily every week, as protagonist Ye Yunfei is reborn with cheat-level powers and descends the mountain like a returning king, letting you enjoy the invincible satisfaction of a new-generation "face-slapping Heavenly Emperor." For a taste of "calling in the troops" lighthearted comedy, check out Love Between Fairy and Devil Season 2, where Little Orchid and the Devil Lord Dongfang Qingcang set off once more to unveil the mysteries of the three realms' reincarnation. And if you prefer a double track of pill refining and monster slaying, don't miss the classic fantasy Peerless Pill God, which just wrapped up this week—herb gathering and pill refining alongside thrilling monster battles, plus delicate emotional entanglements, satisfying every kind of viewer's watching preferences.

At the start of 2026, iQIYI Animation has kept up the momentum with move after move, showcasing a fresh new-year energy. Launching three hit titles at once while keeping multiple works on air reflects both the foresight of the platform's past strategic planning and years of solid accumulation. Notably, after the How Dare You? animation blew up, the IP has already achieved multi-format development: the short drama version set a Maoyan short-drama category heat record on its release day, and the long drama version starring Wang Churan and Cheng Lei premiered today, becoming another benchmark for iQIYI's "animation-drama synergy."

At this key Spring Festival juncture, the bold and aggressive iQIYI Animation has won users' favor with abundant content supply and earned positive market feedback from this wave of buzz. After this campaign, it may well usher the platform's Chinese animation business competition into a new stage. At least for now, with the strength to command the Chinese animation audience's entire Spring Festival, iQIYI Animation's 2026 is off to a beautiful start.