Ani-May-tion: Jiang Ziya: Legend of Deification (Dir Teng Cheng & Li Wei, 1h 48m, 2020)

1941 was something of a bumper year for animation. For Disney, Dumbo would see the studio begin to regain their composure and their bank balance from the financial disappointment of Fantasia, whilst their shorts would continue to build on the popularity of Donald, Mickey and the like, with their arguable 1940s masterpiece, Bambi still in production. Across Hollywood, Tex Avery and Bob Clampett were busy turning Bugs Bunny, the Looney Tunes and the Merrie Melodies cartoons into a fast-paced and often daring answer to Walt's more genteel shorts, whilst Universal's Woody Woodpecker, and Hanna Barbera's Tom and Jerry contiued to be popular.

The full-length animated film, though, was almost exclusively Walt's domain for much of the 1940s, with animated films from the rest of Europe only truly springing into life in the latter half of the decade, entirely from the USSR and Northern Europe. The sole outlier, of course, is the Japanese propagnda film Momotarō: Umi no Shinpei releasing barely months before the end of the Second World War, a forerunner to anime and an influence on its architect, Osuma Tezuka. .

Except, of course, this idea of Disney being the bastion of animation in the war years is a complete fallacy, and, in the same year as Disney's return to form, a bold new animation scene, from China, would erupt onto the world stage, in the form of 1941's Princess Iron Fan (Tiě shàn gōngzhǔii) from animation pioneers, the Wan Brothers, and telling the story, from the pages of Journey to the West, of the vengeful Princess Iron Fan and the folklore hero, the Monkey King, and their battles against, and with each other. It would not only be a huge influence upon East Asian animation, but would kickstart perhaps the greatest unheralded animation powerhouse.

Over the next eight decades, through Mao's propaganda co-opting of the medium, to experimentation in the 60s (best seen in Havoc in Heaven (1961)) to an explosion of creativity in the 1980s, topped by Monkey King Conquers the Demon (1985), the swansong of the medium's godfather, Te Wei, so China's animation revolution occurred largely unnoticed by the rest of the world. Even into the 90s, at the point where films like A Chinese Ghost Story: The Tsui Hark Animation were marrying hand-drawn and CGI animation, years ahead of Japan, and with the same accomplishment as Disney, the industry seemed largely sealed away from Western industries, despite the huge influence of Chinese works on the burgeoningly popular anime scene. By the 2000s to 2010s, despite Chinese and Western co-productions becoming common, most notably in the case of Kung Fu Panda 3, Western views of the Chinese animation industry seem to have been either dismissive if not downright offensive stereotypes.

And then Nezha (2019) came along and changed everything, breaking animated box office records, becoming the highest grossing non-American animated film in history, and racking up a longlist nomation for best Foreign Language Film. In its tale of a demonic boy and the son of a powerful dragon king battling destiny and a curse, it also kicked off an entire cinematic universe adapting the colossal 16th Century novel Fengshen Yanyi (Investiture of the Gods), and its interwining pantheon of deities and their battles together and against each other. With a box office gross close to a quarter of a billion dollars, the sequel was inevitable. Enter, thus, Jiang Ziya: Legend of Deification, another film in this universe, in which the mythical figure and warrior and a girl cursed by her connection to a vengeful fox spirit race to find a way to free her.

Whilst much of the film uses computer generated imagery, that walks a nigh-perfect stylistic line between the cartoonish style beloved of Disney, Pixar and Dreamworks, and the more angular CG-heavy anime such as Dorohedoro and Land of the Lustrous-best seen in the designs of Jiang Ziya and his companion, Xiao Jiu, we begin in undeniably jawdropped traditional animation. With the tyranny of Emperor Zhou revealled as the ploy of the sinister Nine-Tail (the Chinese fox spirit, Daji), masquerading as the Emperor's consort, so we are greeted with colossal battle scenes in rich hand-drawn animation that rivals anything Japan-or indeed any Western studio has put out in years. The scale is colossal, colossal warriors battling each other as our hero (voiced by Christopher Sabat of Dragonball fame in English, and Zheng Xi in Chinese) rides through the chaos to vanquish Daji ( Morgan Garrett in English, Ji Guanlin and Shan Xin in Chinese)

Everything about this scene is not simply a tour-de-force of character introductions-Daji's forces represented by reds and blacks, leading to her introduction bathing in blood, whilst Jiang is a figure of near-light against the dark sky-but a masterclass in animation, and indeed voice-acting, fluid and characterful animation that bring to mind the spectacular Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo (2004), in their use of texture and bold animation filling the screen. Daji is soon captured and dragged to heaven to await trial, and the day seems won. And then, Jiang Ziya pulls its first of many smart twists. We cut, following a pan across a frozen and battered landscape, with beached ships and icy peaks, to Jiang Ziya in exile, with his comrade, Shen Gongbao (voiced by Tutehameng).

With his backstory and his role as a warrior for heaven quickly fleshed out, the film then leaps back across the ten year timeskip to the trial and pending execution of Nine Tails, and the sudden revelation that Nine Tails has taken an innocent girl hostage, tying their lives together. In a moment of hesitation, trying to save the life of the innocent brought into the conflict, so Jiang accidently frees the demon, and despite its execution, he is not only banished from Heaven, but has his power sealed away, so that he, now dressed in ragged garb, and with a world-weary and faded look, and Shen Gongbao spend their days in exile and resigned contemplation.

From here, in an inn otherwise occupied by all manner of spirits (who also find themselves exiled in the human world), in a rich-rogues galley of enjoyably crass and infighting, so Jiang Ziya, down on his luck, and increasingly jaded, comes face to face with the girl that has haunted him for the last decade. With the girl Xiao Jiu, (another bit of nigh-effortless character design, and a perfect foil for Jiang,  wonderfully voiced by Yang Ning), looking for Mount Yordu, almost certainly the girl of Jiang's visions, so he protects her from the Inn. But, when she makes a break for the map to Yordu, she is soon unmasked as a fox spirit, and chaos breaks loose, the action, which takes more than a few cues from Wuxia cinema, hyperkinetic, slowing down or speeding up shots to heighten tension, or show off just how beautiful this film is for great chunks of its action.

Catching back up with Xiao, and with the links to the seemingly dead Nine Tails increasingly obvious, the duo are promptly attacked by fox spirits, the aftermath a tense start to their relationship, with Xiao's memories hazy, driven by her search for her father, and Jiang trying to make sense of who the girl truly is, and nearly driven to violence. Yet, despite their mistrust, and Xiao's teenage snark, their relationship begins to thaw, aided by Si Bu Xiang, Jiang's animal companion, and their shared experiences, even as the true hardship that Xiao has had to go through, marked as she is by her fox ears, become apparent.

Where the film is strongest, though, is in its action setpieces, from a skeletal monster piloted by the spirits of the dead arriving into the film a la Jason and the Argonauts, and put to rest by the rattles of a windchime, to the pure scale of the duo's journey across a land shattered and scattered by giant weapons and armament, to a visitation by a colossal bird flying across a dawn sky, bringing pece to fallen warriors. This companionship isn't to last, though, as, arriving at Mount Yordu, Xiao finds herself falling into the clutches of the god of marriage, the former consort of Nine Tails, whilst Jiang and Shen Gongbao do battle in a brutal slugfest where every blow feels personal.

With Xiao cornered, Jiang finally comes to her rescue moments too late, as, despite his best efforts, the fox spirit once again enters the world, Jiang only just managing to rescue Xiao from her. What follows, in a tense, beautifully edited, fast-paced, and all-round visually stunning battle is two stunning revelations, first, unveilling Xiao's true identity as the real Daji, and secondly, that the link between her and Nine Tails was forged, not by the demon but Jiang's master, in the Heavens. With Xiao/Daji badly injured by her ordeal, and with Si Bu Xiang fatally wounded by defending the travellers, and attempting to break the spell, so our heroes must turn to another way of saving Daji.

What follows, in the final third of the film, is a power struggle, between Heaven and Earth, which lends itself masterfully to shocking revelations and epic battles for the girl's resurrection, that ends in Heaven and Earth being split by a vengeful Jiang, and, finally, Daji being reborn. It is-in a word-the complete antithesis of the typical Western animated movie, its gods liars and betrayers of both their servants and their enemies, innocents cast to the wind in order to keep their power-and Jiang's revenge is not against the monsters that supposedly threaten heaven, but against the gods that have manipulated both sides. It's a remarkably clever, and visually stunning piece of cinema, through which is shot a remarkable sensibiity of the fantasy epic.

Jiang Ziya is, like its prequel, a bold new addition to the world of animation-it may have taken decades but Chinese animation has finally exploded out into the world, on the back of one of its great myths. Jiang Ziya, though, even without its cutting-edge arrival on the animation world stage, is a superb fantasy action epic, in which a hyper-stylised take on CG animation and a bold cinematic universe based on centuries-old myths collide in a smartly told, and visually stunning film.

Rating: Highly Recommended

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