"In 10 years the Chinese animation industry will outperform the Japanese anime industry." These aren't my words but instead Yoshitada Fukuhara's. In this video I explore a bit more into the idea of donghua and anime as rivals and how the two industries may develop in the future. You can consider this an update to my older video about donghua transcending anime as that one was a little harsh in tone compared to this. Please let me know what you think.

10 years ago I think it's considered abomination that any Chinese smartphones able to compete with the likes of Sony, HTC, Nokia and Samsung but barely anyone see it coming.

No doubt animation is on a whole lot of different level where copying would end up something like Lion King being debated as copying some part of Simba the White Lion for ages.

I think most would agree they are catching up really fast in terms of animation quality but storytelling is a pain in the ass.

In my opinion making animation and comics in China were considered undesirable as an occupation compare to engineers, accountants, executive chefs and such but recent success with Ne Zha earning more than $600 million in China alone probably gave a huge slap on the mindset of its local investors and alike.

China must invest a lot of money on finding any kind of good writings, novels, comics and so forth around the world and bring them onto the screen. It does not have to be entirely Chinese culture at all just like Nintendo's Mario, Disney's Moana or Eiichiro Oda's One Piece but it should be done in a "Chinese fashion".

No offense, I'm really sick of seeing Chinese ancient stuff like Journey to the West or Legends of Condor Heroes that has been remade like

Japan animation actually started more than 50 years ago which in my opinion began to rise with works of Osamu Tezuka(Astro Boy, Blue Blink) and others during 1960s and slowly transcend into golden age that smoothly dominates the world but unfortunately for China it was tragic.

Here's something from Wikipedia:

Animation industry did not begin until the arrival of the Wan brothers in 1926 produced the first Chinese animated film with sound, The Camel's Dance, in 1935. Princess Iron Fan was the first animated feature film in Asia and it had great impact on wartime Japanese Momotaro animated feature films and later on Osamu Tezuka. China was relatively on pace with the rest of the world up to the mid-1960s, with the Wan's brothers Havoc in Heaven earning numerous international awards.

China's golden age of animation would come to an end following the onset of the Cultural Revolution in 1966. Many animators were forced to quit. If not for harsh economic conditions, the mistreatment of the Red Guards would threaten their work. By the 1980s, Japan would emerge as the animation powerhouse of the Far East, leaving China's industry far behind in reputation and productivity. wiki ends.

China's current animation industry is more of a restart which began after 1990 and while the last 20 years has been shameless copying and such, I find it serves more of learning than creating by catching up in terms of technical skills and management but in my opinion looking at the astounding success of the recent movie Ne Zha as well huge failures of many others, soul searching has already began where local investors slowly realize the industry is powered by creativity not capital.

Of course there's no easy way to predict 10 years from now but in my opinion it is long enough for China to transcend from copying into creating original contents.

I believe it is Mirayi Animation Studio.

Mirayi Website

In my opinion China should focus on one hit wonder such as the recent Nezha movie, Makoto Shinkai's Weathering with you and Disney's Frozen 2 as well working creatively hard to develop its own identity where the moment such animation appears on trailer, most young viewers would immediately recognized it as Chinese Donghua.

It would be amazing to see how well Chinese animation industry perform in 2025 if they continue to produce movies such as the upcoming one below and improve its storytelling and art style along the way.