Genres & Themes

Worlds of qi, spirit beasts, immortal sects, and ancient artifacts. Fantasy is the backbone of modern donghua, from xianxia to xuanhuan.

Donghua built around combat and spectacle, from martial arts choreography to large-scale battles between cultivators, soldiers, and spirits.

Journey-driven stories: expeditions across continents, secret realms, and hostile wilderness in search of power, treasure, or answers.

Character-first stories where relationships, loss, and difficult choices carry as much weight as any fight scene.

Donghua that lead with humor, whether absurdist gag series, workplace satire, or parodies of cultivation tropes.

Love stories across lifetimes, sects, and species, from slow-burn court intrigue to modern city romance.

Cases, conspiracies, and slow-burn puzzles where finding the truth drives the plot.

Fists, swords, and technique. These donghua center trained combat, whether grounded wuxia or superpowered tournament arcs.

Ghosts, spirits, curses, and hidden worlds threaded through otherwise ordinary settings.

High-tension donghua built on danger, deadlines, and dread rather than pure spectacle.

Donghua drawing directly on Chinese myth: Journey to the West, Investiture of the Gods, the White Snake legend, and the wider celestial bureaucracy.

Spacefaring civilizations, post-apocalyptic ruins, and technology-driven futures. A fast-growing wing of donghua led by 3DCG studios.

Stories set in (or inspired by) China's dynastic past, from the Warring States and Qin dynasty to the Tang golden age.

Low-stakes, everyday stories: school days, small shops, and quiet neighborhoods (sometimes with immortals in them).

Competition stories about training, teams, and mastery, including esports as China's signature entry in the genre.

The dark end of donghua: body horror, hauntings, and creatures out of Chinese folklore.

Stories about cultivators refining qi through stages of power in pursuit of longevity and ascension. The defining power system of Chinese fantasy.

Growing up on screen: first failures, found mentors, and identities earned the hard way.

Fox spirits, river gods, and small-town legends drawn from Chinese folk tradition.

Written-off protagonists, wasted talents, and fallen geniuses clawing their way back.

Mysterious fantasy: Chinese-flavored high fantasy that mixes cultivation with invented worlds, bloodlines, and battle-power progression.

Beings who outlive dynasties, and the loneliness and politics that come with it.

Classic legends rebuilt with new engines: Nezha, Yang Jian, the White Snake, and the wider mythic universe on modern screens.

Immortal heroes fantasy rooted in Daoist cosmology: immortal sects, heavenly tribulations, and journeys that span mortal and celestial realms.

The hidden world next door: powers, spirits, and secret societies inside modern Chinese cities.

Second lives and returned souls, carrying old memories into new bodies and eras.

Ability-users and hero systems outside the traditional cultivation framework.

Crews, sects, and odd households that become family along the way.

Courts, factions, and long games of power played behind the scenes of the action.

Alliances, betrayals, and succession fights inside cultivation sects and martial clans.

Grudges that fuel decades of training and very satisfying paybacks.

Brackets, rankings, and arena arcs where advancement is settled in single combat.

Adaptations of danmei (male-male romance) web novels. On screen the romance is usually softened into intense devotion, but the source lineage defines the category.

Donghua set in and around games, from MMO worlds to streamer culture.

Rewinds, loops, and windows into the past, where changing anything has a price.

Humanity after the fall: ruined cities, scarce resources, and what survival costs.

Martial heroes in the jianghu: grounded (or lightly superhuman) martial arts, codes of honor, and rivalries between sects and clans.

Professional gaming as sport: teams, tournaments, and the grind back to the top.

Killers for hire, reluctant or otherwise, and the jobs that get complicated.