It is probably one of the weirdest "cult" pop novel back in the Ming Dynasty. Like all ancient Chinese pop novels, the source could be tracked to the Song Dynasty. The story was loosely based on the late Shang Dynasty but it involved a lot of characters based on people from other dynasties. Pretty much everyone knows some magic, has magical beasts or weapons.
I remember I read it from front to back quite a few times. It is very entertaining, probably the most entertaining one with a lot of BS.
Thanks! When watching Ne Zha, I wasn't sure whether the oddness was because of the source material or because of the adaptation. It's a very odd story. But very fun.
China may very well overtake the US, but that isn't saying much, since both are minnows in the craft of animation compared to Japan. The US never really developed a market beyond children's cartoons due to religious zealots and moral crusaders, and China is too heavily censored (also why Korea lags behind Japan despite their studios being a vital part of the anime industry).
OP seems like an example of being highly selective. You start by ignoring the elephant in the room: 'animation' = 'anime'. Then you compare 'Western animation' to 'Chinese animation'. You cherrypick the largest Chinese success, _Ne Zha_, emphasize its commercial success while downplaying aspects like the increasing Chinese trade barriers to foreign films explicitly intended to prop up domestic productions, not mention context like the vast escalation in censorship or tax purges (*why* might Chinese animation be focused on such deeply apolitical topics like toilet humor for kids?), ignore inconsistent arguments (if _Inside Out_ is so direly depressing a franchise and _Inside Out 2_ merely 'good', then why should we be so impressed that _Ne Zha_ has a bigger box office than _Inside Out 2_?) give it some backhanded compliments (is it a *good* thing that OP can't describe the plot...?), and you compare it to _Despicable Me_ (surely if OP is *forced* to spend money on _Despicable Me_ that's actually a point for it?) and the, uh... *live-action* _Snow White_ bomb? (Do movies not bomb in China or something?) And Pixar's recent string of mediocrities (surely more a fact about Pixar having lost its magic - not that that was any surprise once they started breaking rules like avoiding sequels), and then throw in a comparison to a movie from 84 (!) years ago (_Dumbo_) or a franchise which stopped being good 61 years ago (_Bugs Bunny_; counting generously by ending it in 1964). Then make sure to not discuss any of the good ones like _Spider-verse_.
I mean, maybe there's a thesis here which could be rescued by an actual fair comparison over the past 10 years where you aren't pitting the very best of Western animation from over a period of 84+ years to what is in theaters right now or using live-action movies as your example, but OP sure isn't making it. Will we be watching only Chinese movies in 10 years, with things like _Demon Slayer_ so much forgotten pop ephemera? Maybe. But you sure can't tell from anything here.
"In my complacency, I still saw western animation as the wild fun stuff and eastern animation as, Miyazaki aside, inferior imitations."
As a long-time anime fan, I want to protest the unfairness of this generalization, but I'm well aware of the niche-ness of most of that medium. I'll try to restrain myself to discussing big global blockbusters.
First up, an update on the prestige auteur Japanese animation director du jour: for the last decade or so, Makoto Shinkai is the new Miyazaki. His three films since 2016 (Your Name, Weathering With You, Suzume) all have sales to match the best-selling Ghibli movies of all time, with Your Name fighting with Sprited Away for top ranking.
Second: Nothing Japan has ever animated, Ghibli and Makoto Shinkai included, lands with the same global impact of Disney / Pixar movies -- there's nothing Japanese on Wikipedia's list of Top 50 highest-grossing animated films ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_animated_films ). I am entirely unconvinced this is a good measure of quality OR fun -- I suspect a lot of that is just Hollywood being a cultural juggernaut. And that's not *just* because I'm being a snob about there being five Despicable Me / Minions movies on that Top 50 -- My tastes are frankly more upset by the three Ice Age movies up there, which I absolutely do not rate as all-time greats.
Third: I do feel like the best anime TV series of all time offer some serious competition for the throne of 'best animated TV series anywhere', though the differences in medium make it hard to compare any of them to the Looney Tunes you remember. Keeping it to blockbuster movies: I was aware that a dumb shonen anime TV series had a movie that became the highest-grossing anime film of all time: the one that also swept to the seat of highest-grossing *animated* film of 2020 - Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Mugen Train, aka "It'd be a shame if *something happened* in 2020 and all the traditional juggernauts didn't release a big movie": the movie, but did not realize until looking on wikipedia for top-grossing Japanese films of all time ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_Japanese_films ) how many other dumb shonen anime series also spun off movies that broke $100 million. Again, I'm not convinced this is a measure of quality, but it is interesting. Jeez, every one of the last six yearly Detective Conan movies have broken $100M, and the series that's based on is pretty much Murder She Wrote!
Last: on Western kids animation of recent generations -- I feel like Phineas and Ferb, Gravity Falls, Avatar: the Last Airbender, and that My Little Pony show are probably a higher tier of kids show than most Looney Tunes were? They all at least pass my Muppets-caliber test of appealing to adults as well as kids ( I recognize I'm a bit out of date, here -- I'm not sure what the latest generation of kids shows are from the last 8 years or so). None of those have translated over to big global blockbusters when they even had a movie entry, but then again -- Looney Tunes didn't do feature-length entries terribly well either.
Hey, I'm on the Anime train. I've been watching anime since the 1980s, and my family has seen a ton of it.
However, outside of the cultural bubble we share, most people don't know anime exists. Big anime hits are uncommon and do most of their business in Japan.
I don't think that is going to change. Over the years, it feels like anime has gotten incredibly strange and inward-turning. Mugen Train is a very pretty movie, but it is WEIRD. I wish their industry had taken the far more grounded Your Name and expanded on that, but I don't feel like it happened.
I'm a business guy. My interest here is in the stuff that becomes bug movers in the industry and culture. Anime got a fair chance when Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke got high-end dubs and major releases. I REALLY wanted them to succeed. Didn't work out that way.
And shortly after I read this, I find myself in a cinema watching a US film that opens with massive amounts of cartoon drinking and slapstick violence rendered comic through heavy use of knitted props and packing peanuts.
The spirit's still there, just not in the mainstream:
(suitable ages 12 and up - could do with being chopped into 3 or 4 slices, as nearly two hours of silent slapstick is really quite a lot, even if it's good)
An indie animation I would recommend is humans-b-gone. Its set in a biopunk world of giant Insects and Arachnids focusing on a giant (500ft tall) mantis that works in pest control where humans are one of the pests.
I think there's a problem with the idea of "pop culture" as something an hypothetical "everyone". What I see today is more and more weird niches forming and people having their own weird tastes, in a way a de-massification of media consumption, mostly thanks to the internet.
Its getting more and more difficult to make something that will work for "everyone" and thus why Hollywood is really struggling to make anything that has any degree of personality. Why ? Because the background thinking is all about risk prevention for investors, thus the obsession with finding a mass audience that doesn't exist anymore, thus why we have these constant woke and anti-woke debates each side trying to affirm they are the majority which in turn makes movie producers frisky and opting to not offend anyone by making everything super bland.
Japan animation, while it has a lot of problem, is focused finding its niches, it has some ill effects like too much focus on Otaku culture and fan service, but it is sustainable from a business standpoint. The same can be said about that Chinese animation, it has cultural flavor because its not made with a "risk free" mindset.
I believe there is a true hunger for a united culture, and great fortunes go to those who create the illusion of a united culture, even for a short time.
It doesn't have to do with it working for everyone. It doesn't have to work for you at all. It just has to create the feeling of being part of a culture. Of being less alone, just for a moment.
I've spent a bit more time looking into East vs. West when it comes to social media, creative content, and politics. I'm very much an amateur, but my investigation leads me to believe that China's basic ethos is, "All of us together," and Western ethos is, "Me me me!"
It's not surprising that people are looking for alternatives to the standard fare. I wonder if the difference in recent Western movies is trying to make everyone seen, and Eastern outings focusing on the story.
I have heard much the same thing. It's a very broad topic and I don't know enough about it to write about it at length. But I personally believe there's a lot of truth to it.
I could write about Inside Out 2 AT LENGTH, but I don't wanna. :-)
For anyone who is curious about the book behind, you can read it here with some knowledge of Mandarin:
https://www.99csw.com/book/5743/201773.htm
It is probably one of the weirdest "cult" pop novel back in the Ming Dynasty. Like all ancient Chinese pop novels, the source could be tracked to the Song Dynasty. The story was loosely based on the late Shang Dynasty but it involved a lot of characters based on people from other dynasties. Pretty much everyone knows some magic, has magical beasts or weapons.
I remember I read it from front to back quite a few times. It is very entertaining, probably the most entertaining one with a lot of BS.
Thanks! When watching Ne Zha, I wasn't sure whether the oddness was because of the source material or because of the adaptation. It's a very odd story. But very fun.
China may very well overtake the US, but that isn't saying much, since both are minnows in the craft of animation compared to Japan. The US never really developed a market beyond children's cartoons due to religious zealots and moral crusaders, and China is too heavily censored (also why Korea lags behind Japan despite their studios being a vital part of the anime industry).
OP seems like an example of being highly selective. You start by ignoring the elephant in the room: 'animation' = 'anime'. Then you compare 'Western animation' to 'Chinese animation'. You cherrypick the largest Chinese success, _Ne Zha_, emphasize its commercial success while downplaying aspects like the increasing Chinese trade barriers to foreign films explicitly intended to prop up domestic productions, not mention context like the vast escalation in censorship or tax purges (*why* might Chinese animation be focused on such deeply apolitical topics like toilet humor for kids?), ignore inconsistent arguments (if _Inside Out_ is so direly depressing a franchise and _Inside Out 2_ merely 'good', then why should we be so impressed that _Ne Zha_ has a bigger box office than _Inside Out 2_?) give it some backhanded compliments (is it a *good* thing that OP can't describe the plot...?), and you compare it to _Despicable Me_ (surely if OP is *forced* to spend money on _Despicable Me_ that's actually a point for it?) and the, uh... *live-action* _Snow White_ bomb? (Do movies not bomb in China or something?) And Pixar's recent string of mediocrities (surely more a fact about Pixar having lost its magic - not that that was any surprise once they started breaking rules like avoiding sequels), and then throw in a comparison to a movie from 84 (!) years ago (_Dumbo_) or a franchise which stopped being good 61 years ago (_Bugs Bunny_; counting generously by ending it in 1964). Then make sure to not discuss any of the good ones like _Spider-verse_.
I mean, maybe there's a thesis here which could be rescued by an actual fair comparison over the past 10 years where you aren't pitting the very best of Western animation from over a period of 84+ years to what is in theaters right now or using live-action movies as your example, but OP sure isn't making it. Will we be watching only Chinese movies in 10 years, with things like _Demon Slayer_ so much forgotten pop ephemera? Maybe. But you sure can't tell from anything here.
"In my complacency, I still saw western animation as the wild fun stuff and eastern animation as, Miyazaki aside, inferior imitations."
As a long-time anime fan, I want to protest the unfairness of this generalization, but I'm well aware of the niche-ness of most of that medium. I'll try to restrain myself to discussing big global blockbusters.
First up, an update on the prestige auteur Japanese animation director du jour: for the last decade or so, Makoto Shinkai is the new Miyazaki. His three films since 2016 (Your Name, Weathering With You, Suzume) all have sales to match the best-selling Ghibli movies of all time, with Your Name fighting with Sprited Away for top ranking.
Second: Nothing Japan has ever animated, Ghibli and Makoto Shinkai included, lands with the same global impact of Disney / Pixar movies -- there's nothing Japanese on Wikipedia's list of Top 50 highest-grossing animated films ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_animated_films ). I am entirely unconvinced this is a good measure of quality OR fun -- I suspect a lot of that is just Hollywood being a cultural juggernaut. And that's not *just* because I'm being a snob about there being five Despicable Me / Minions movies on that Top 50 -- My tastes are frankly more upset by the three Ice Age movies up there, which I absolutely do not rate as all-time greats.
Third: I do feel like the best anime TV series of all time offer some serious competition for the throne of 'best animated TV series anywhere', though the differences in medium make it hard to compare any of them to the Looney Tunes you remember. Keeping it to blockbuster movies: I was aware that a dumb shonen anime TV series had a movie that became the highest-grossing anime film of all time: the one that also swept to the seat of highest-grossing *animated* film of 2020 - Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Mugen Train, aka "It'd be a shame if *something happened* in 2020 and all the traditional juggernauts didn't release a big movie": the movie, but did not realize until looking on wikipedia for top-grossing Japanese films of all time ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_Japanese_films ) how many other dumb shonen anime series also spun off movies that broke $100 million. Again, I'm not convinced this is a measure of quality, but it is interesting. Jeez, every one of the last six yearly Detective Conan movies have broken $100M, and the series that's based on is pretty much Murder She Wrote!
Last: on Western kids animation of recent generations -- I feel like Phineas and Ferb, Gravity Falls, Avatar: the Last Airbender, and that My Little Pony show are probably a higher tier of kids show than most Looney Tunes were? They all at least pass my Muppets-caliber test of appealing to adults as well as kids ( I recognize I'm a bit out of date, here -- I'm not sure what the latest generation of kids shows are from the last 8 years or so). None of those have translated over to big global blockbusters when they even had a movie entry, but then again -- Looney Tunes didn't do feature-length entries terribly well either.
Hey, I'm on the Anime train. I've been watching anime since the 1980s, and my family has seen a ton of it.
However, outside of the cultural bubble we share, most people don't know anime exists. Big anime hits are uncommon and do most of their business in Japan.
I don't think that is going to change. Over the years, it feels like anime has gotten incredibly strange and inward-turning. Mugen Train is a very pretty movie, but it is WEIRD. I wish their industry had taken the far more grounded Your Name and expanded on that, but I don't feel like it happened.
I'm a business guy. My interest here is in the stuff that becomes bug movers in the industry and culture. Anime got a fair chance when Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke got high-end dubs and major releases. I REALLY wanted them to succeed. Didn't work out that way.
The movie is not freely available everywhere as I get error message "The uploader has not made this video available in your country"
Is there a workaround for this?
And shortly after I read this, I find myself in a cinema watching a US film that opens with massive amounts of cartoon drinking and slapstick violence rendered comic through heavy use of knitted props and packing peanuts.
The spirit's still there, just not in the mainstream:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundreds_of_Beavers
(suitable ages 12 and up - could do with being chopped into 3 or 4 slices, as nearly two hours of silent slapstick is really quite a lot, even if it's good)
An indie animation I would recommend is humans-b-gone. Its set in a biopunk world of giant Insects and Arachnids focusing on a giant (500ft tall) mantis that works in pest control where humans are one of the pests.
https://www.youtube.com/@HumansBGone/featured
I think there's a problem with the idea of "pop culture" as something an hypothetical "everyone". What I see today is more and more weird niches forming and people having their own weird tastes, in a way a de-massification of media consumption, mostly thanks to the internet.
Its getting more and more difficult to make something that will work for "everyone" and thus why Hollywood is really struggling to make anything that has any degree of personality. Why ? Because the background thinking is all about risk prevention for investors, thus the obsession with finding a mass audience that doesn't exist anymore, thus why we have these constant woke and anti-woke debates each side trying to affirm they are the majority which in turn makes movie producers frisky and opting to not offend anyone by making everything super bland.
Japan animation, while it has a lot of problem, is focused finding its niches, it has some ill effects like too much focus on Otaku culture and fan service, but it is sustainable from a business standpoint. The same can be said about that Chinese animation, it has cultural flavor because its not made with a "risk free" mindset.
I believe there is a true hunger for a united culture, and great fortunes go to those who create the illusion of a united culture, even for a short time.
It doesn't have to do with it working for everyone. It doesn't have to work for you at all. It just has to create the feeling of being part of a culture. Of being less alone, just for a moment.
Yes, I am writing about the Minecraft movie.
Your commentary makes me think of Deadpool 2, which is essentially a crass, ridiculous, live-action cartoon. I couldn't believe Disney 'made' it.
I've spent a bit more time looking into East vs. West when it comes to social media, creative content, and politics. I'm very much an amateur, but my investigation leads me to believe that China's basic ethos is, "All of us together," and Western ethos is, "Me me me!"
It's not surprising that people are looking for alternatives to the standard fare. I wonder if the difference in recent Western movies is trying to make everyone seen, and Eastern outings focusing on the story.
I have heard much the same thing. It's a very broad topic and I don't know enough about it to write about it at length. But I personally believe there's a lot of truth to it.
I could write about Inside Out 2 AT LENGTH, but I don't wanna. :-)
I feel that comment deeply 🤣 there are many things I’ve seen of late I just don’t want to visit again in my memory palace 🤣