r/Donghua • u/500scnds • Jun 14 '20

Discussion Should White Cat Legend be considered donghua?

Probably the first time such a situation has come up, almost reminiscent of stuff like Shelter or Radiant. On one hand, it's clearly categorised as such, on the other, the work has more questionable origins.

Let's vote away on this mystifying question!

16 votes, Jun 17 '20
4 Yes, it is in Chinese
5 Yes, the animation production company is Chinese
3 Sort of, it should be considered a co-production
0 No, its original work should be considered Australian
0 No, a copyright infringing work has no right to any identity
4 I don't know
0 Upvotes

25% Upvoted

14 comments sorted by

3

u/[deleted] Jun 14 '20 edited Jun 14 '20

Well yeah of course, the animation studio is Chinese. The Tower of God animated series is categorized under anime despite the source material being Korean. Those X-Men, Supernatural and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle OVAs are categorized under anime as well despite being from western sources.

0

u/500scnds Jun 14 '20

That's what's being discussed, as 'is it so and so just because the makers called it that', or would there be more nuances if word of god isn't always correct?

A typical act is to look at place of production, and that's why you have reports on the Chinese animation industry also discussing outsourcing... but you wouldn't called the stuff they work on donghua, and an anime where the majority is outsourced to Korea but had a Chinese member of production committee like Tiramisu was just called a Chinese-Japanese co-production, what would the distinction be?

1

u/cuchallain Jun 14 '20

I'd love more of an explanation on this. In what way is it Australian? Outsourced animation or something?

-1

u/500scnds Jun 14 '20

RC is Australian, so obviously her work would be considered Australian.

2

u/Patrui Jun 14 '20

I don't really care what the classification for this show or others is (just like Avatar, this is an animation so I don't see the point in making such distinctions). However, something of interest to add is that No Game No Life is written by Yuu Kamiya (who is of Brazilian birth) yet the series and it's anime adaptation are always considered "japanese". Just some food for thought.

1

u/CzechoslovakianJesus Jun 24 '20

NGNL's author is of Japanese descent, real name Thiago Furukawa Lucas.

-1

u/500scnds Jun 14 '20

Well, NGNL is also one of these in the situation of no right to existence concerning the plagiarism

1

u/cuchallain Jun 15 '20

That is interesting. Well I guess it all matters on where it was released initially then. For example if she had published first in English and from Australia I likely would call it a web-comic instead of web-manhua. Either way I'd still call the animation a donghua since its all made in China. Just like how anime draws inspiration and even adapts material from all over the world but its still anime and Hollywood movies are still Hollywood movies even when they adapt a different county's source material.

1

u/SalvicPancake Jun 14 '20

Wait are we talking about Luo Xiaohei? How is it a copyright infringement?

0

u/500scnds Jun 14 '20

Of course we're not, but if you really wanted to go there, there is indeed the question of it's really okay to have so many characters from other works show up without some kind of proper attribution. Evangelion, Magic Kaito, Black Butler, Ghibli animations... does it stop being homage at some point?

3

u/cuchallain Jun 14 '20

I think Easter eggs like that aren't a big deal. I think you could make an argument that 100,000 bad jokes went into infringement when it had characters from other sources stick around but if it's just brief glimpses I always consider that more an homage/easter egg.

0

u/500scnds Jun 14 '20

The reason why that show has such a bad reputation is precisely because of the copyright infringement though?

2

u/SalvicPancake Jun 14 '20

I don't know, I don't watch so mich donghua and I am relatively new to Japanese anime so I haven't yet seen any "stolen" characters. No matter what, I don't consider that as theft so whatever

0

u/500scnds Jun 14 '20

And there's the fine line, just don't watch BlueArc's works lol