Chinese film, television, music
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Question for folks here - the mainstream art style of Chinese games and animation seem to be basically the anime style, which is a Japanese aesthetic. How does that square with the rising ambition of China's entertainment industry? I've noticed in Chinese online space some recognition of the irony of using Japanese aesthetics to promote Chinese games, animation, etc. But what do most people think? Do they criticize this fact, or do they see Japanese anime aesthetic as a general Asian style that has already been nativized in China?
No doubt there are a lot of Chinese animation that uses japanese style art but I don't mind it as it isn't representative of Chinese animations in general. This is especially true for our 3D animations and for 2D stuff, we got shows like Fog Hill of Five Elements and Scissor Seven. Even for stuff that is much closer to anime, the style we draw people and the world is very different from how japan draws theirs. There are enough differences to separate them.
There are some games like Genshin Impact that are based on the Japanese aesthetic, but in general the Chinese aesthetic is different from the Japanese aesthetic. It may be difficult for Westerners to tell the difference though. I agree that manhua closely resemble manga due to the longstanding popularity of manga in China, but there are some differences. To me, Chinese animated characters tend to look more East Asian than Japanese ones. Also, Chinese animated characters are not as sexualized as Japanese ones. Nonetheless, in the realm of comics and animation, the Chinese aesthetic is still strongly influenced by the Japanese aesthetic.
Outside of comics and anime, the Chinese aesthetic is completely different from the Japanese aesthetic though. Chinese songs, dramas, and cinema are unique and enormously popular in greater China, although they are not popular in the West so you probably don't know what I'm talking about.
There's a noticeable aesthetic difference between manhua and manga. There is a huge between cpop and jpop.
Jpop is basically 1970s-1980s American music in Japanese language. This is unsurprising since Johnny Kitagawa basically imported US pop music to Japan as the founder of Jpop. They use very modern (well, 1980s) techniques and splash a ton of English words to try and appear more "international". To my knowledge there are 0 jpop songs in classical Japanese. There are classical Japanese songs, but they're not pop. Classical Japanese is a dead language.
Cpop is a huge category but anime style Cpop is classical Chinese music in an anime skin. In general, anime style Cpop has become associated with classical language lyrics. Classical Chinese is a living language in no small part due to manhua and dongman - living in the sense that new literary works are still being produced in it.
Just a few examples:
So the origins and message could not be more different. Jpop is fundamentally a US dominated music format that looks to foreign sources for inspiration, Cpop is fundamentally a classical Chinese music format that looks internally for inspiration.
BTW getting into animation was the best decision Chinese studios made. Koreans failed to promote their animation industry with domestic IP and instead allowed them to be back office slaves for Disney and Netflix. Now you have the destruction of K dramas inside Korea itself since Netflix has taken over.
One prevailing sentiment that I see in Chinese forums is that; if the Japanese are free to use/appropriate Chinese culture and retell Chinese stories then there's nothing wrong with the Chinese using the anime aesthetic to tell Chinese stories since the gesture should be repaid in kind. And even in the anime medium there's still room for distinct art styles like these
which I've personally never seen from any Japanese studios.
Anecdotally, I've been browsing the Genshin subreddit since the game was released and it's kind of amusing to witness the transition from people happily mistaking Genshin as a game originating from Japan in its early years, to now where anyone claiming/wishing the game was from Japan is corrected/downvoted. So I do think as time goes on the anime aesthetic will be seen less as a Japanese thing and more of an East Asian thing.
As for sexualization, like the poster above mentioned, I would argue that aspect is kept in check by the Chinese censor department. All you need to do is a little digging into the less popular titles flying under the radar and you'll see they're able to get away with ALOT more in terms of risque designs.
which I've personally never seen from any Japanese studios.
Anecdotally, I've been browsing the Genshin subreddit since the game was released and it's kind of amusing to witness the transition from people happily mistaking Genshin as a game originating from Japan in its early years, to now where anyone claiming/wishing the game was from Japan is corrected/downvoted. So I do think as time goes on the anime aesthetic will be seen less as a Japanese thing and more of an East Asian thing.
As for sexualization, like the poster above mentioned, I would argue that aspect is kept in check by the Chinese censor department. All you need to do is a little digging into the less popular titles flying under the radar and you'll see they're able to get away with ALOT more in terms of risque designs.
Here are some Chinese-style songs I like:
Obviously, China also has a lot of Western-style pop songs but those aren't particularly unique.
For some reason, Chinese people seem to love ballads more than any other people. In my opinion, Chinese ballads are the best in the world. Mandarin just sounds so good in sad songs.
Chinese instruments also sound pretty good. Here's a cover of a Japanese song that I love:
My personal opinion is that we are still in the learning stage.
The commercialization process of animation in our country is very slow, and social cognition has always remained "only suitable for preschool children.". Once children enter school, they must stay away from these "childish things".
The older generation has a pathological hostility towards this new type of entertainment, so don't expect them to have any development in the new era.
Don't even think about it, these conservative things have no resistance against Japan's mature and powerful industrial strength.
Therefore, China's ACG industry can be said to be struggling to learn from scratch. The prerequisite for discovering your own style is to first survive and learn them.
I personally miss the artistic style of our country during the past.
This is one example:
However, this style is destined to be costly and difficult to commercialize.
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