Animated movies produced in mainland China are hitting Japanese theater screens, with titles primarily aimed at the nearly one million Chinese residents in the country also finding Japanese fans.
Outside a movie theater in Tokyo’s Ueno district, a large poster for The Legend of Hei II hangs on the wall. The Chinese animated film is set for release at about 150 theaters nationwide on November 7. The sequel takes place two years after the events in the 2019 hit The Legend of Hei.
The first film gained popularity for its fantasy world and cute characters that appealed even to those unfamiliar with Chinese culture. Its reputation spread quickly on social media. It was distributed by Tokyo-based Facewhite in partnership with another Japanese company.
Facewhite was founded in 2019 by a group of people involved in Chinese comics for smartphones and other content, with a goal of bringing Chinese content to the rest of the world. It has worked to distribute Chinese movies, which generally have few screening opportunities in Japan. The company of just 14 people also handles merchandising and licensing. At least ten companies from both China and Japan, including TV Tokyo and movie hall operator Cinema Sunshine, have invested in the company.
China’s film market is enormous, with more than 90,000 screens—at least 20 times as many as in Japan. In 2025, the animated film Ne Zha 2 earned the equivalent of more than JPY 300 billion (USD 2 billion) in box-office revenue, making it the highest-grossing animated film around the world.
But the Japanese subtitled edition earned only about JPY 300 million (USD 2 million). “Chinese films lack the name recognition of Japanese or Hollywood stars and scripts, making them difficult to promote,” Facewhite’s An Yang said.
Past Chinese movies that succeeded in Japan, such as Hero in 2002 and Red Cliff in 2008, were live-action movies that had already gained acclaim overseas. Films made in mainland China are generally viewed as separate from those made in Hong Kong or Taiwan, even though they are all in Chinese. Moviegoers are familiar with Hong Kong stars such as Jackie Chan and Jet Li, but they are much less aware of stars who are popular in mainland China.
Chinese animated films in particular have struggled to make it to screens in Japan. The style of 3D animation popular in China does not always appeal to Japanese consumers. And while tales like “Investiture of the Gods” and “Journey to the West” are household stories in China, many Japanese are not deeply familiar with the characters that appear.
Facewhite’s lineup often includes screenings of Chinese-language films without Japanese subtitles, or with English subtitles. They are shown in limited screenings of one to two weeks, often on smaller screens in theaters that seat about 80–120 people.
Their main target audience is the Chinese community in Japan, numbering more than 900,000 nationwide and with nearly 300,000 in Tokyo alone. To reach Chinese residents eager to see hit films from home, the company negotiates early access with rights holders in China and arranges screenings while the films are still showing there.
The English-subtitled version of Ne Zha 2 premiered in Japan about six weeks after its Chinese release. The high demand crashed theater websites during opening-day ticket sales. Leveraging this success, Facewhite secured cooperation from such major cinema chains as Toho and Shochiku, screening the film at 55 theaters nationwide.
Based on audience turnout, the company has extended screening runs and raised funds for subtitled or dubbed versions of films, building a track record for screenings at a growing number of theaters. More Japanese people on the street are becoming aware of such movies, and the number of fans is slowly increasing. The film White Snake: Origin, released in 2021 in Japan, featured popular idol Daisuke Sakuma as one of the voices in the Japanese dub.
“More than 90% of Chinese films’ revenue still comes from within China,” An said. “There are many intellectual properties unknown to the rest of the world that could be a major business opportunity.”
“We’ll start in Japan, then we want to expand to the rest of Asia,” he said. The company has begun distribution in Southeast Asia, with branches in Malaysia and Indonesia.
This article first appeared on Nikkei Asia. It has been republished here as part of 36Kr’s ongoing partnership with Nikkei.