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Answerman - Will China or Korea Ever Compete With Anime?

Because rather than have there own style they come off as pale imitations of Japanese styles.

For Japan animation started as a way to do ambitious shows with a limited budget and they have been doing it for over a century. For Korea it's a combination of businesses seeing profit in exporting animation due to Japan's success and Korean's making there own versions of the Japanese anime they watched as kids.

Ushio wrote:

Because rather than have there own style they come off as pale imitations of Japanese styles. For Japan animation started as a way to do ambitious shows with a limited budget and they have been doing it for over a century. For Korea it's a combination of businesses seeing profit in exporting animation due to Japan's success and Korean's making there own versions of the Japanese anime they watched as kids.

But that's basically how the anime industry works in Japan as well now, it's less about passion projects and more about finding the next big hit that will make them a profit. And being inspired from growing up watching anime doesn't necessarily mean it will be a cheap imitation, both the Avatar series and RWBY from the US are an example of that.

Sad reality China and Korea can make any anime they want but it'll never get the same attention-popularity as the Japanese animations since people prefer the original, which is Japanese made. It's the same case with Japan or China having their own J-doramas, or C-dramas but internationally K-drama reigns, added with Jpop and Cpop Kpop still reigns in competition. Well China is fine in their own, they can't compete internationally with Japanese animation but their secluded country is big, they compete with themselves and still profit high.

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As for Chinese animation, I would be remiss if I failed to point out Wolf Smoke Studio. These scrappy underdogs have succeeded in creating a distinct house style that, while clearly in the limited animation tradition, stands out with its use of heavy, pointy outlines. You can see it at work in the Batman of Shanghai shorts they made for D.C. They've seem to have struggled to land any big projects, but they have a short at Annecy, so hopefully that will attract some more attention!

Can't recall if it was Big Fish & Begonia, but when it (or another) movie's trailer first came out people were comparing it to Spirited Away and calling it a rip off despite it being very different.