Anime Like Chang'An
Three hours of Tang dynasty poetry and it still leaves you wrung out. Light Chaser built this around the friendship between Gao Shi and Li Bai, and the whole thing works because Gao Shi is the boring one: the stammering, disciplined soldier watching his brilliant friend burn through every chance he gets. Then comes the 'Bring in the Wine' sequence, where the drunken recitation cracks open into cranes and celestial palaces, and you understand why people call this the most beautiful thing Chinese animation has done. The character designs lean hard into actual Tang proportions, broad faces and heavy bodies, and yes, it takes a few scenes to stop reading as odd. Subtitles struggle with nearly fifty classical poems, so you will lose some of it, and it's still worth every minute. It's about being the second-best man in the room and outliving the genius anyway.
SYNOPSIS
Chang'An is a movie from Light Chaser Animation.
