Chinamation

There is a lot of animation going on in China at the moment, but it's mostly outsourced work or is aimed at the domestic market and just doesn't get licensed or exported. There's no perceived demand for it, which is a shame because some of it is wonderful stuff. Lotus Lantern was made in 1999 and the animation I've seen from it rivals Disney's Aladdin -- not too impressive until you find out that the movie was made for the princely sum of US$2.6 million, vs. Aladdin's estimated US$28m.

Lotus Lantern was made by the Shanghai Animation Film Studio, which has been in operation since the 1930's or 1940's, I believe. I wrote about SAFS's Te Wei's 90th birthday DVD a while ago and the ink-and-paint animation on there is still some of the most amazing stuff I've ever seen. I have a stack of just-issued DVDs of their classic films from the 50's-70's that I grabbed the last time I was there, and really need to sit down and watch 'em.

Chowder is animated by a Chinese studio. Ni Hao, Kai-lan is also, although that's not as technically dazzling as Chowder is. Disney is also working with China, but on films for the Chinese market, and their first film (The Secret of the Magic Gourd) was really just a CGI character integrated with live-action actors. Still, the Phineas and Ferb DVD revealed that they are going to release Magic Gourd on DVD the US, which was a bit surprising to me.

Admittedly, a whole lot of the stuff that is on TV in China is crap, but the same is true about American animation (and Japanese animation, despite what the extreme anime partisans will claim). I've seen some really crappy stuff on TV while I was traveling in China, but I got turned on to SAFS watching a movie on TV. If you want to get any Chinese animation on DVD, your best bet is to surf around on YesAsia.com or HKFlix.com, or walk into a larger bookstore if you're traveling there.

"Afghanimation" is a much better term than "Chinamation," and I'd be first in line to see it once they have it. I think they have far more immediate concerns, though.

-- Ed
 
I'm just getting into the world of Chinese animation myself. It really is a shame that so few of their animated features make it across the Pacific, because some of them sound excellent. The only feature-length animations I've seen from China so far are Princess Iron Fan and Uproar in Heaven, but I would love to see more. Since it is so cheap, I think I'll go ahead and order a handful of things from yesasia.com, even if they don't necessarily have subtitles. The film I'm most interested in is Nezha Conquers the Dragon King; I've seen some clips on Youtube, and it looks completely awesome.
 
I'm with MonkeyFunk -- "Chinese animation" is a fine term until we have so much of it that it becomes unwieldy to say or type.



Of note is that all of those films (other than Princess Iron Fan) were Shanghai Animation Film Studios productions. They also had pretty top-notch paper-cut and stop-motion films back in the day. I've pretty much taken it for granted that seeing their name on a DVD meant it was worth getting.

Happy to see more of them popping up on YesAsia.com, too.



I believe the Chinese word for cartoon is "katong," which is just a phonetic lift from the English word. Always sounded harsh to my ears. I know SAFS uses a different term that's more arty, but it's also much less commonly used. Judging by how many people don't pronounce "Beijing" properly ("jing" like "jingle bells," not like "zhing"), I don't hold much faith that using the proper Chinese term will gain much traction.

-- Ed
 
You've obviously never seen any of the Playhut features, or you wouldn't have used the word "quality" to describe them. The ones I saw were awful beyond description, and that's probably why Playhut isn't marketing them anymore. And is wasn't the animation, which was occassionally interesting. It was the way they were written. The translations were apparently very accurate, which was part of the problem. The dialogue was very formal and the pacing was very stagy and deliberate. That's the way drama often is in mainland China, which has largely been segregated from the Western influences that shaped the Hong Kong film industry before the takeover.
 
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