China’s Animation Boom Must Lead to Creative Risk, Not Repetition

The director of Ne Zha 2, the highest-grossing animated film in Chinese box office history, is urging his peers to embrace greater diversity in storytelling, as the industry grapples with the unprecedented $2.2 billion global haul of his record-breaking sequel.

As recently as a decade ago, the Chinese animation industry was still taking baby steps but a recent boom has been led by talents such as Yang Yu (aka Jiaozi), responsible for both Ne Zha and the sequel that went ballistic. While the world has warmed to the tale of the little demon boy struggling along his quest for immortality, Yang urged caution when it came to other Chinese filmmakers looking – or even dreaming – of replicating that success.

“I think in the next five to 10 years, as more and more young people transition from animation enthusiasts to creators, they will have more space to experiment with diverse content,” said Yang.

“I am optimistic because the animation industry in China actually does not have very large numbers of directors and creators. If you look at the credits behind a film like Ne Zha, there might be around one to two thousand people. At the moment, that’s basically everyone in the Chinese animation industry.”

Yang is this week serving on the jury for the Golden Goblet award for animation at the 27^th Shanghai International Film Festival — China’s largest annual industry gathering — and spoke alongside fellow jury members: Oscar-nominated Irish filmmaker Nora Twomey (The Secret of Kells) and Japan’s Koji Yamamura (Mt. Head). The festival has long supported animation, as has the city that hosts it, given that Shanghai was where the first-ever Asian animated feature (Princess Iron Fan) was produced way back in 1941.

There are five international productions in the running for the Golden Goblet, with markets represented including Japan (Make a Girl from Gensho Yasuda), France-Switzerland-Belgium (Antoine Lanciaux’s The Songbirds’ Secret) and Australia (Magic Beach from Robert Connolly)

China has two films involved, and they showcase just how far the genre reaches these days, given there’s the IP-driven U.S.-coproduction Tom and Jerry: Forbidden Compass (Zhang Gang directing) the Li Wei, Weng Ming, Shinichiro Watanabe, Shuhei Morita-directed, war-shadowed fantasy Edge of Time.

“If you look back at the last 10 years, from the success of the big productions from White Snake (2019) and now to Ne Zha, each movie is based on very classic Chinese traditional IP as a starting point,” said Yang. “It’s not that these creators only want to do this, it’s because in the past decade, if they don’t do this, the film may not sell.

“More global audiences are also eagerly looking forward to seeing more excellent Chinese animation works, which are also a reimagining of traditional Chinese mythology,” he continued. “So I think this has injected a new power into the industry. Over the years, more and more audiences have started to believe that China can also produce excellent animated films and, gradually, different types of content will begin to emerge.”

For her part, Twomey welcomed the “inspiration” Ne Zha 2 had provided for the global animation industry.

“I believe that now is a very special time,” she said. “We currently have many interesting situations, but also face many challenges. For example, the popularization of AI and the audience’s high expectations for animation have become very high. So, we hope that our imagination will not be constrained and that with endless creativity, we can bring audiences works worth looking forward to.”