Nobody

Yu Shui’s feature debut (an expanded episode from the popular series Yao-Chinese Folktales, 2023) broke Chinese box office records for 2D-animation. Critics linked this success to the recent triumph of Jiaozi’s Ne Zha 2 (2025), the highest-grossing animated feature of all time worldwide, as a symbol of the growing self-confidence of the Chinese animation industry.

Nobody, a creation of the Shanghai Animation Film Studio, returns to the roots of this renowned studio in both content and form. The story, about four nameless ‘nobodies’ who impersonate the heroes from the sixteenth-century novel Journey to the West (including the monk Tang Sanzang and the mischievous Sun Wukong, ‘The Monkey King’), continues a long line of adaptations of China’s possibly most famous literary work, with as its classic animated version SAFS’s own Havoc in Heaven from 1961. The way in which traditional Chinese brushstrokes and ink wash paintings are incorporated into the design – note the beautiful backgrounds – are also a studio signature.

But Yu’s interpretation is unusual in its focus on a few insignificant minor characters from the original, four yaoguai (yao, for short), a type of supernatural being with erratic morals. Although there certainly exist more powerful yaoguai than our four protagonists, Pig, Frog, Weasel and Ape, who have roughly human capabilities. Nevertheless, these lively hustlers, with their emotional issues and small hearts, set out together, through trial and error, in search of a better life. According to local critics, their struggles with poor working conditions and impossible clients struck a chord with many Chinese viewers.