Donghua vs anime: what are the differences?

Two words for "animation"

Donghua (动画) and anime both mean animation, one in Chinese, the other in Japanese. The two words are even written with the same characters: 動画 in Japanese means an animated video.

In everyday use outside Asia, "anime" refers to Japanese animation and "donghua" to Chinese animation. So it is first a question of origin, but behind the word lie very different industries, sources and habits.

Two parallel histories

Chinese animation goes back a long way. In 1941 the Wan brothers made Princess Iron Fan, the first Chinese animated feature, which Osamu Tezuka would cite among his inspirations. In the 1960s, the Shanghai Animation Film Studio produced masterpieces such as Havoc in Heaven (大闹天宫) and invented ink-wash animation.

In Japan, modern TV anime was born in 1963 with Tezuka's Astro Boy. The Japanese model of weekly series adapted from manga then spread around the world. In the 1980s and 1990s, Japanese series were widely shown on Chinese television.

The donghua revival began in the mid-2010s. In 2015, Monkey King: Hero Is Back broke the box-office record for Chinese animation. The platforms Tencent Video, Bilibili, iQIYI and Youku invested massively and adapted the most-read web novels. In 2025, Ne Zha 2 became the highest-grossing animated film in history, with more than 2.2 billion dollars.

The main differences

The most visible differences come down to where the stories come from, the technique, the genres and how the series are released. The table below sums them up, and then we look at the most important ones.

Why so much 3D?

It is the difference that jumps out: much of action donghua is in 3D, while anime remains overwhelmingly 2D. Soul Land, Renegade Immortal and Perfect World are all in 3D.

The reason is mostly economic and industrial. For sagas of more than 100 episodes, 3D makes it possible to reuse characters, sets and effects, and to keep up a weekly release schedule for years. Chinese studios also grew up with teams trained in CGI and video games.

2D is still very much alive, though: Link Click, Heaven Official's Blessing, Fog Hill of Five Elements and The Legend of Luo Xiaohei are hand-drawn, and some studios, such as Haoliners and HMCH, have made it their speciality.

Web novels versus manga

Anime mostly adapts manga, light novels and video games. Donghua draws first on Chinese web fiction: novels published chapter by chapter on platforms such as Qidian or Jinjiang, sometimes over years and thousands of chapters.

These novels have their own genres: wuxia (chivalrous martial arts), xianxia (cultivation and the quest for immortality) and xuanhuan (freer fantasy). Hence the central place of cultivation, with heroes who train to climb power realms. Manhua, Chinese comics, often act as a bridge between the novel and the donghua.

This origin also explains how long the series are: a 2,000-chapter novel cannot be adapted in 12 episodes. The big sagas air continuously, sometimes as "nianfan" (年番), seasons that run all year round.

Different regulations

Donghua is produced under the oversight of China's broadcasting regulator, which is stricter than Japanese rules. Some themes are toned down on screen, such as the male-male romances of danmei novels.

Mo Dao Zu Shi (Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation) and Heaven Official's Blessing are the best-known examples: the romantic relationship of the novels becomes a very deep friendship, which fans know how to read between the lines. Violence, the supernatural and ghosts are also handled with care.

What they share

The two industries talk to each other more and more. Chinese studios employ Japanese animators, donghua such as Mo Dao Zu Shi and Link Click have been dubbed into Japanese for broadcast in Japan, and To Be Hero X was co-produced with Aniplex.

Audiences overlap too: Crunchyroll, ADN and Netflix offer donghua alongside anime, and many fans discover one through the other. Visual codes blend, to the point where it is sometimes hard to guess a series' origin at first glance.

Where to start if you come from anime?

The simplest is to pick a short 2D series close to what you know: Link Click, Scissor Seven or Heaven Official's Blessing. If you want to discover cultivation, A Record of a Mortal's Journey to Immortality is a good way in. And for a gentle first contact, nothing beats a film like Ne Zha 2.