2 posts tagged with "IP adaptation"

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.

“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