‘Ne Zha 2’ review: Energetic Chinese sequel is the highest grossing animated film of all time

Dir: Jiaozi. China. 2025. 144mins

An unruly pre-adolescent demon spawned from the Chaos Pearl and his new-found friend fight off vengeful dragons from four seas and their despotic immortal ruler in Ne Zha 2, writer and director Jiaozi’s animated Chinese blockbuster. Simultaneously fresh and enlightening (for non-Chinese audiences) but familiar – in both negative and positive ways – Ne Zha 2 is a distinct fantasy epic and a technical achievement that stands up to the best that Disney, DreamWorks, Aardman or Studio Ghibli can offer, even if it frequently gives in to the same proclivities for excess as its peers.

The dense story is wrapped in impeccable artwork

This bloated sequel to Jiaozi’s (otherwise knows as Yang Yu) 2019 surprise hit Ne Zha is now the highest grossing animated film of all time, earning US$2bn in ticket sales since its Lunar New Year release in late January, and putting the two-time feature director in elite company alongside James Cameron, the Russos and JJ Abrams. Based on Xu Zhonglin’s 16th century epic Investiture of the Gods (on which the other big holiday release, Creation of the Gods II: Demon Force, was also based), the story is as familiar to Chinese audiences as the legend of King Arthur is to those in the West, and its humour (at times on the toilet side) and resonant core values made the film an easy sell.

Ne Zha 2 opened in the US in February and has now secured distribution in the UK, Ireland and across Europe, but beyond China is unlikely to pose a threat to the reigning non-English language box office champion, Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (currently US$130m to US$32m worldwide). As it rolls out into more territories, it could easily catch Amélie and Pan’s Labyrinth thanks to its wholesome family messaging delivered in a relatively original package. Streamers looking to take advantage of repeat viewers could be a secondary platform, but Ne Zha 2 was made for the big screen.

There’s a great deal of narrative in Ne Zha 2, sometimes too much, though anyone who missed the first film should still be able to follow the action, which begins immediately after that film’s final battle between two brothers born of the heavenly Chaos Pearl. One is the Spirit Pearl, or Ao Bing (voiced by Han Mo), who was adopted by the Dragon King, Ao Guang (Li Nan). The other is the Demon Orb, or Ne Zha (Lü Yanting in a nimble performance), adopted by Li Jing (Chen Hao) and Lady Yin (Lü Qi), the guardians of Chentang Pass.

Unlike the more passive Ao Bing, Ne Zha is loud, vulgar and often out of control and his struggle to control his otherworldly powers was the main thrust of the first film. When his immortal instructor Taiyi Zhenren (Zhang Jiaming) is unable to reconstitute a corporeal vessel for Ao Bing, they share Ne Zha’s and head out to find the elixir that will save him. The quest takes them to Yu Xu Palace where they must complete three trials for Master Wuliang (Wang Deshun).

That is just the set-up in an often unwieldy narrative that manages to incorporate angry dragons, magic water fountains, long lost siblings, warrior rodents, warrior sea creatures and several conspiracies – not always effectively. The film is bogged down by frantic editing and egregious motion for the sake of motion, the kind of overly kinetic visualising common in Kung Fu Panda or Encanto. Like so many sequels Ne Zha 2 repeats what worked the first time around and simply does it louder and for longer.

As creative as the script is with its themes, the second act sags under the weight of repetition – a martial arts fight with the rodent warriors need not have four endings – and, ironically, underwriting. For all the lead up to Ne Zha and Ao Bing’s trials, there’s no explanation of what they are. A protracted finale overstuffs the screen with anonymous copy-paste characters and a requisite post-credit sequence is a complete scene, not a 30-second stinger.

To its credit, Ne Zha 2 teems with imagination – the underwater world is particularly vivid – and stays faithful to its fantastical, and very Chinese, source material. Jiaozi’s script is its strength; assured in its identity but universal in its concepts. Though the bonds of family, parental sacrifice and unconditional love buoy the film overall, it also delicately trades in themes of duality as personified in Ao Bing and Ne Zha: of nature versus nurture, destiny versus choice, and the timely (and quietly subversive) notion of rebellion versus capitulation to corrupt power. The dense story is wrapped in impeccable artwork that has a vibrancy surpassing Ne Zha’s scrappier aesthetic, and demonstrates China’s increasing confidence in its homegrown artists and technicians.