New Gods: Nezha Reborn

Three thousand years later, in a port city called Donghai. The De family, who hold the monopoly on water, run the place. Li Yunxiang is an ordinary young motorcycle racer; when rage takes him during a race the power inside him surfaces and it emerges that he carries the spirit of Nezha. Nezha's old enemies come back too. The subject is not mythology but inheritance as a burden. Li Yunxiang does not want to be a hero; he becomes a target because of what the Nezha before him did, and has to pay a debt he never took on. The form is a genre mixture: a cyberpunk city, motorbike races, rock music and Chinese mythology in one film. The underwater and neon sequences are among the technically most ambitious in Chinese animation. The production is the first film in Light Chaser Animation's New Gods series. Another Chinese animation from 2019 dealing with the same Nezha legend had been a huge box office success; this is not its sequel but a separate reading set in its own universe. Netflix handled international distribution. Zhao Ji directs. The voice cast includes Yang Tianxiang and Zhang He. Who it is for: viewers who like Chinese animation and works fusing mythology with modern settings. Who it is not for: anyone who does not know the legend; the film assumes you know Nezha's story and moves through the background fast.