Narrative Structure in Chinese Hero Mythology 3D Animated Films: A Study Based on the Hero’s Journey Framework

Abstract

Although Chinese mythological animation has been rather successful in the commercial world, there is a lack of systematic narrative analysis. This paper focuses on the analysis of three Chinese 3D animated movies, namely, Nezha: Birth of the Demon Child (2019), legend of deification (2020), and monkey king rebirth (2021) and how they negotiate Western narrative structure with Chinese cultural values. We applied the Hero Journey of Vogler as a comparative construct with Chinese textual traditions of narrative (qi cheng zhuan he) to a qualitative and inter-rater textual analysis using a =.87 of Krippendorff (a =.87). The results show that there were three trends of adaptation structural continuations with cultural content modification (Nezha), philosophical reconstruction with more focus on the inner development (Legend of Deification) and not fully integrating and becoming fragmented in narratives (Monkey King Reborn). Good movies incorporate the Chinese philosophical ideas, tianming, xiao, xiuyang in the story structure instead of simply imposing cultural decorations. This study shows that the cross-cultural adaptation of narratives must be heavily philosophically entrenched, with further research on the question of how non-Western animation can both adapt to the conventions of global storytelling without being culturally inauthentic.