Awesome to see you Back!

Nice review. It even shared some info that some who are new to Link Click wouldn't have known, and I think that will be very helpful. Season 1 is great! Season 2, imho, is even better! It will be fantastic if you guys review it too~

@SonicMTD

2 ай бұрын

Glad you enjoyed it. :3

My comment may have been swallowed up by Google which is disappointing-or maybe it’s under review?-but I guess there could be a number of reasons for that (it was too long? It touched on potentially sensitive topics like censorship? It included a non-KZread link?). It happens sometimes and it’s a bit disappointing, especially since it _was_ kind of a long comment. 😔 If it’s actually gone to the ether, I just wanted to say that donghua gets a lot of flack for not being anime and/or for the Chinese government, but most people don’t realize how diverse donghua can be and how there are many hidden gems in there!! I hope more people give it a chance. 🫶 I have a list of recommendations that’s almost 300 pages long now with summaries, links on where to watch, and images, and just in case, I’ll leave a link in a reply (so this comment specifically won’t be swallowed if Google doesn’t like me linking things (they’re pretty finicky and on-and-off with this)).

@SonicMTD

2 ай бұрын

Usually when you include links to other sites KZread will flag it as spam. I had to watch a few snippets of Donghua when editing this video. There’s a lot of poorly made ones. The ones that got me interested was Heaven’s Official Blessing, and Cinderella Chef. There’s some good stuff in there, you just have to dig through a lot of mediocrity.

@kuku8846

2 ай бұрын

Yeah I know about the links thing since I have a lot of experience with it. You could say I have an agenda to sort of spread donghua or at least share resources with newcomers to donghua. 😂 Because of that experience, I also know sometimes Google actually lets me leave a link, which is the frustrating part. The fact it’s so finicky and unpredictable! With that being said about mediocrity though, isn’t that how it is with anime too? ;P Anything these days that can be mass-produced will mean a lot of mediocrity alongside some actually good-and actually bad!-stuff. I brought up some titles in my old comment before Google ate it, but yeah, there are lots of underrated hidden gems within donghua that unfortunately get lost in the shuffle _because_ people aren’t familiar with donghua. For example: Besides the big danmei ones like _Tian Guan Ci Fu_ and _Mo Dao Zu Shi,_ for 2D animated shows, we have _Scissor Seven; Legend of Luo Xiaohei; Fog Hill of Five Elements; Biao Ren; All Saints Street; Fei Ren Zai; You Shou Yan; Alita’s Trial; God Troubles Me; False Memory; Quan Zhi Gao Shou;_ the later seasons of _Fox Spirit Matchmaker_ and _Yi Ren Zhi Xia; Bai Yao Pu; Salted Fish; Cat’s Tea_ aka _Mao Zhi Ming; Beryl and Sapphire; Dragon Raja; X&Y; The Dining [Room] of Link Lee; Dalisi Rizhi_ aka _White Cat Legend;_ and so on. Even with 3D CGI donghua, which is the one that usually throws people off due to a) the appearance and b) the sheer multitude of shows being produced each time, still has some good ones: _Ling Cage; Ringing Fate; No Doubt in Us; Rescue Eternal Desert; The Island of Siliang; Shaonian Ge Xing; The Young Brewmaster’s Adventure; Tales of Dark River; Lie Huo Jiao Chou; Legendary Twins; You Yao_ and so on are all quite unique and/or pretty well-animated in style. This also doesn’t touch on the movies, which some are famous in the west (like _Nezha_ 2019 and the _White Snake_ films), but there’s also _I Am What I Am; Dahufa; The Storm_ aka _Dayu; Jiang Ziya; Deep Sea; The Legend of Hei;_ the _New Gods_ series; and _20,000 Miles from Chang’an_ (and for those curious about classics, you’ll find them under the Shanghai Animation Film Studio in films-and some television series-such as _Nezha Conquers the Dragon King_ and _Havoc in Heaven_ etc). All quite gorgeous and generally have some stories that can tug on your heartstrings a bit, even when they can be somewhat overambitious. And that’s basically what I’m getting at here: I could highlight _my_ personal favourites, like _Beryl and Sapphire, White Cat Legend, Fei Ren Zai_ and its two sister series _All Saints Street_ and _You Shou Yan, The Legend of Luo Xiaohei, Scissor Seven, 20,000 Miles from Chang’an, Dahufa,_ and many, maaany more, but a lot of this is subjective! I simply wrote my recommendations list of now almost 300 pages _because_ I want to offer a wide range of choices to people new to donghua and show them that the industry has a lot more to offer than you might expect. It just requires digging-and I don’t fault people for “not digging far enough.” There’s the language barrier and the fact China uses entirely different websites and streaming services, which is exactly _why_ I did all that digging-for myself and for others. 😆 Whether the donghua I listed above can grip someone emotionally and whether they are written well is subjective, but I do think there are some in there with good storytelling and cool ideas. And thankfully, claiming many of these _look_ gorgeous or unique and _move_ very fluidly is a much more _objective_ statement, so although newcomers ultimately have to find for themselves which stories they like in donghua, I can still easily direct them to actually good-looking animation from donghua. ^^ It’s also nice that donghua doesn’t rush its workers quite the same way anime does (I assume because everything’s streaming online and there’s no TV deadlines to meet) and series are unlikely to get outright cancelled (I’ve seen donghua come back 5+ years after they seemingly went dormant, like _Beryl and Sapphire, Cinderella Chef,_ and _Psychic Princess_ as some examples). Studios are also quite supportive of each other and promote one another’s works, which can be seen in shirts like _Light Catcher_ or _What Is the Light You Are Looking For?_ or shorts compilations like _Capsules_ and _Yao-Chinese Folktales_ (and other shorts include _The Scenery of the Seasons_ or 万华镜, while if we want to go even more indie, there’s DaddyLoong and Lostreak Chicken’s channels). The lack of rushing also means there’s some works that are being polished very carefully, like _Lord of the Mysteries, Saye, Shuofeng: Po Zhenzi, Linglong Mountain, To Be Hero X, Guai Xiang Shou, Jing Wei Qing Shang,_ 《紫禁御喵房》 , _Guwei Nanting, Postman Above the Clouds, Bronze Crazy Horse, Fox Fairy, Slaying the Dragon,_ etc are some examples of that. Even children’s shows like _Xi Yang Yang yu Hui Tai Lang_ aka _Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf_ have gotten a lot better in story and animation, as seen with everything after the Mighty Little Defenders season. It’s kind of blown me away how rapidly the donghua industry has grown since 2017 and I wish more people would embrace the excitement of that. Like I know China is controversial and feels unfamiliar in its history to many people, but the animation community is always talking about wanting more unique and diverse animation from the west’s standards, and while anime has always been seen as a pinnacle of an alternative, donghua has developed pretty nicely for the much shorter time it’s been expanding, and that means a whole new world of possibility. So yeah! As you can tell, I’m quite passionate about this haha, but it’s exactly because there’s so many cool things out there in the donghua world that get overlooked as “just mediocre Chinese anime” that I try to share it.

@SonicMTD

2 ай бұрын

I'll check out some of your recommendations. I know for a fact Harriet has been begging me to start watching Heaven's Official Blessing.