Chinese Animation Guide – Part 4: Chinese Traditional Animated shows

Welcome to the last part of our Chinese animated guide. This part will cover Chinese traditional art style, for me personally this is the most enjoyable group. The first thing you might notice in these shows are they were in different format ratio, lean more towards the Academy ratio format. I always find their traditional art style more compelling, but somewhat conservative approach (since for long decades the Chinese insist to use this style over and over again). Luckily, these restricts have been loosen up in recent years without locking into any particular one style. As a result we have those shows below as a more relaxed and more updated version of their traditional style. Here are again the 6 shows in no particular order:

Romance of Three Kingdoms (三国演义)

This is a 2009 Chinese adaptation, so not to be confused with the various anime versions. Based on the popular work “Romance of Three Kingdoms” (which people regards its influence in East Asia literature is like that of Shakespeare in English literature). What we have in this episode are the three legendary warriors Liu Bei, Zhang Fei, Guan Yu become brothers and they fight together. I love the traditional character designs, and they provided solid enough animated scenes. But I can’t get pass the fact that a girl who was pushed down a cliff, not only she’s not die, but seems unharmed and she then proceeds to play musical after that. Weird. She must had been on crack I think! Besides that, I always meant to read the actual book, but its length (800,000 words) always put me off. This series so far is solid enough for me to follow it through.

Rainbow Sea (星游记)

Rainbow Sea is a Sci-fi fantasy where a young man goes on a journey to find his father. The first episode follows the kid and his sister, running away from those security guys, and somewhere along the way they bring the talking mouse from outer space down with them as well. Man, what an inspiring episode. The whole episode creates the world so creatively (this world is constantly under surveillance, any outside activities are restricted), while at the same time maintains a sense of fun and adventurous. I really love the character designs of Rainbow Sea: the security guys for example, are all dressed in black hooded robes and masks, made them look really like Death Eaters, but never for once look scary. It’s a really fun watch, I love every moment of this first episode.

Go Juvenile First (围棋少年)

This is a Chinese animated version of playing Go. For those of you who don’t know, Go is an ancient board game that really popular in East Asia, mainly China, Korea, Japan. Most westerners get introduced to the game by the anime series Hikaru no Go. In Go Juvenile First, Jiang Liu is a child of high-court ranking father, who love to play Go. While his father undergoes a secret investigation, he was sent temporary for a foster care in a pagoda. The old monk realizes his potential and teaches him to become a master of Go. The story is decent enough, on one hand it’s interesting to see him transform from an annoying kid to become grandmaster in chess competition, but on the other hand the art style is very simple and below average and I don’t think it will get any better.

Absolute Field (绝对领域)

This one features an adventure of a kid from what it seems to be a medieval European setting. Not much plot is provided in this first episode but for once I appreciated the unusual setting. Heck, they don’t even shy away from showing the entire written characters which for me look like an ancient Egyptian characters. There are some supernatural elements mix in the show as well, and with the comedy overtone, this is quite a unique blend. Unfortunately, the characters themselves are not interesting enough and the humor is not quite hit. But this is overall a pleasant watch.

Splendid China Tour Odd Track (錦繡神州之奇游迹–第)

The story of Chinese mythology is modeled about the ancient gods after the evil war. After a long time, the forces of evil strikes again, Epox with friends to get to know the new solidarity, courage, bravery against the attempt to subvert the world of evil, to protect the world. In the end, the hero and his companions traveled together in the vast land of adventure, a taste of the fascinating scenery around China, and solidarity, shattered the forces of evil and protect the world peace. This is a rare children show of this list. This first episode follows the children running through vast sceneries, and this is the show’s best strength: the utterly care in background design, its backgrounds are stunning and rich and just plain beautiful to look at. The episode ends with great hook when the children got captured by a mysterious force. It has a bonus point for the character designs, which are totally Chinese style. The show is like a typical shounen show in anime counterpart and quite it was an easy watch, but I’m not eager to see more from it.

Brave Adventure (勇者大冒险)

We started with a guy who is processed by a mummy, the main character got kicked out from a bus and the next morning he realized that he’s dead. If this synopsis means anything to you. Yes, this is quite a ride here. For once this is not a wuxia or anime-influenced show. The setting is the mix between modern day and mummy/zombie, which are an interesting mix. The humor works for me most of the time and the action is quite solid. The leads are fun to watch and I don’t mind to spend time with them one bit. This is a title that you need to check out.

Princess Fragrant (天香公主) (PREVIEW)

This is just a preview (so no more than 3 mins long), but from what I’ve seen, I’m sold. This is a feminist touch of a princess who had to go to an adventure to rescue her father. I already like the settings, and princess Fragrant already looks like a strong head protagonist, and the adventure seems promising as well. The only bad point I would give is the mascot rabbit(?), he’s just unattractive.

CONCLUSION

Like most of you guys, before making this impression, I was very unfamiliar with Chinese animation. I just know couples of titles without any attempt to watch them. So this is my attempt of stepping out of my comfort zone. So why watching them raw and just 1 episode, isn’t it too short to know the quality of a show you ask? Well, because there are two factors that I would consider from these shows’ package: the depth and the richness of the movement.  By depth I will look for shows that have great quality, can they be able to become a classic. By richness I will look for the range of those shows, a diversity. The more diversity in terms of genres, art design, storytelling… get, the richer the Chinese animation are.

So in term of depth, the 5 best shows are: The Legend of Qin, Shalen, Chu Feng BEE, Rainbow Sea and Brave Adventure. The first 3 shows excel in their production and animation quality. While those last 2 shows shine for their creativity.

In term of richness, the most noticeable factor is the extensive use of computer animation. Their main genre is of course wuxia. When they are drawn in 2d though, the art style looks awful lot like anime. I don’t mean to say their computer animation is that great, but the it is a necessity. As much as I hated the movement, computer animation has expanded tremendously since the 00s and it will continue to rise and rise. These Chinese shows might look dated 10, 20 years from now, but they can improve the animation quality based from those attempts to make it look more polish and realistic than ever.

Chinese Animation don’t offer much of great range though, they are mainly comedy and action so if you are into those, you get lucky here. For genre recommendation, if you really want to check out the typical computer wuxia shows, look no further than Spirits of Main Rivers and Lakes, it has all the good aspects (beautiful choreography, great character designs, fun huge cast) as well as bad one (incoherent plot, lame dialogue). If you reach for comedy, I would say Nuwa’s Growth Diary has all the ingredient of solid comedy show (from likable cast, good chemistry and enjoyable dialogues). For thriller/ genres stuffs, DIE NOW and The Devil Ring are your pick. And lastly, if you just want to check out the Chinese traditional art styles, watch Romance of Three Kingdoms.

~SuperMario~