In creative practices and academic research, Chinese animation has maintained an intrinsic connection with nationalism. This study examines the operational mechanisms of animation, comics, games, and novels (ACGN) nationalism in Chinese animation, focusing on I Am What I Am 雄狮少年. This animated film series, centring on lion dance and Chinese martial arts, has received support from official institutions but generated a public opinion crisis because of its unconventional artistic style, character designs, and thematic expressions. This article argues that the national identity of Chinese animation is no longer a unidirectional self-definition but instead requires three levels of validation: recognition by official discourse, conscious construction by creators, and cultural identification by audiences. The last, and third, is critical as audiences not only determine commercial returns but also are active participants in the nationalist discourse. Since ACGN audiences are aesthetically conservative and culturally perceptive, innovation in animated filmmaking leads to market risks and public controversy.
For the first time, a film from an Asian country has broken into the top 5 of the global box office, with Ne Zha 2 becoming the highest-grossing animated film worldwide. Centered on the Chinese mythological figure Ne Zha, the film demonstrates both technical sophistication and powerful narrative design. This study adopts apparatus theory to analyze both the technical apparatus and the institutional apparatus in order to understand the film’s ideological function within contemporary Chinese society. Employing multimodal critical discourse analysis, the study explores how Ne Zha 2 constructs and disseminates ideological narratives through visual storytelling, character development, and the reinterpretation of mythology. The findings contribute to a deeper understanding of how contemporary Chinese animation functions as a vehicle for ideological expression and cultural diplomacy, offering critical insights into the intersection of film, politics, and soft power in the context of China’s global media strategy.
Nineteenth century Belgian physicist Joseph Plateau developed a series of colour discs as part of his PhD thesis exploring retinal persistence. In histories of science, animation and film, these perceptual experiments are often only briefly alluded to, due to the outdated cause of retinal persistence on motion perception and its lingering misattribution in moving-image histories. As an artist-researcher interested in Plateau’s experimental oeuvre, engaging firsthand with his colour discs provided an opportunity to develop creative reconstructions of Plateau’s collection of colour disc experiments. This practice-enabled investigation, culminating in the artwork Plateau’s Dream , provides new insight into the significance of these discs for theories and practices of expanded animation. It discusses how Plateau’s colour disc experiments present a kind of ‘animation thinking’ and how his interest in and ability to imagine the in-between state of things aligns with the concept of metamorphosis. Additionally, the article relates how developing Plateau’s Dream , revealed resemblances between the hand-painted discs and digital techniques for reducing frame rates. Lastly, it speculates on how Plateau’s disc experiments inadvertently created a system of harmonics of virtual colour.
