The manhua drama market is expected to boom in 2025, with the industrial chain continuously improving, forming a value chain that spans IP scriptwriting – adaptation and production – investment flow operations – platform.
According to Zhitong Finance APP, Shenwan Hongyuan released a research report stating that, based on ByteDance's August sharing, the revenue scale of manhua dramas has increased 12-fold in the past six months; the number of related enterprises is expanding exponentially and is expected to surpass hundreds of thousands. The market size is projected to exceed RMB 20 billion. In terms of technological breakthroughs, multimodal large models have made significant progress in character consistency and action continuity, with current AI technology applied throughout the entire manhua drama production process, significantly reducing production cycles and costs. In terms of content expansion, there is an acceleration in adapting more high-quality novels, comics, and live-action short drama resources into manhua dramas, while actively exploring niche themes to achieve diversified and high-quality content, thereby attracting a broader audience. In terms of targets, it is recommended to focus on leading companies within the AI manhua drama industrial chain.
The main points from Sinolink Securities are as follows:
The manhua drama market is expected to boom in 2025.
Manhua dramas are animation-style micro-short dramas, including emoji-based micro-short dramas, comic-style micro-short dramas, and AIGC micro-short dramas. According to ByteDance's August sharing, the revenue scale of manhua dramas has increased 12-fold in the past six months; the number of related enterprises is expanding exponentially and is expected to surpass hundreds of thousands. The market size is projected to exceed RMB 20 billion.
Shenwan Hongyuan believes that the booming of the manhua drama market can be attributed to three main reasons: 1) Incremental demand. Manhua dramas combine the content characteristics of short dramas and traditional animations, meeting users' needs for strong plotlines, high excitement points, and fragmented content, while offering a wider variety of themes. Currently, the primary audience consists of young males in higher-tier cities, competing with live-action short dramas mainly targeting middle-aged women. 2) Technological breakthroughs. Multimodal large models have made significant progress in character consistency and action continuity, with current AI technology applied across the entire manhua drama production process, significantly compressing production cycles and costs. After Volcano Engine AI was introduced to manhua drama production, the production cycle was shortened by 80%-90%, and production costs were reduced by 70%-90%.
3) Platform support. For online literature and comic platforms with massive IPs, manhua dramas enable rapid and low-cost video adaptations of numerous IPs, thus monetizing them; for video platforms, manhua dramas represent a new content form that can maintain user stickiness, leveraging the infrastructure channels, business models, and review management systems used for live-action short dramas. The manhua drama market is currently in its initial growth phase (1.0 stage). After enjoying the technological dividend, the market may return to content competition, with greater long-term opportunities lying in IP derivatives and overseas expansion.
The manhua drama industrial chain continues to improve, forming a value chain that spans IP scriptwriting – adaptation and production – investment flow operations – platform.
1) The current bottleneck in the manhua drama industry lies primarily on the supply side, with two key directions for breakthroughs: ① Content expansion: Accelerating the adaptation of more high-quality novels, comics, and live-action short drama resources into manhua dramas, while actively exploring niche themes to achieve diversified and high-quality content to attract a broader audience. ② Enterprise expansion: Attracting diverse players such as anime copyright holders, short drama copyright holders, professional anime production teams, technology suppliers, and distributors to jointly build a more prosperous manhua drama ecosystem.
2) The rapid advancement of large AI video models and tools has laid a solid foundation for the development of AI comic dramas. Models such as Kuaishou's Kelin, Google Veo, Runway Gen, and Sora 2 have shown significant progress in video generation capabilities, with declining invocation costs, contributing to cost reduction and efficiency improvement across the AI comic drama industry chain.
In terms of investment targets:
Key focus should be placed on Mango Super Media (300413.SZ), Bilibili-W (09626), China Literature (00772), and Shanghai Film Corporation (601595.SH). Companies with competitive advantages within the AI comic drama industrial chain are recommended for attention.
1) IP Content: Chinese Online (300364.SZ), Palmread Technology (603533.SZ), Jiesheng Holdings (300182.SZ); 2) Production: H&R Century (000892.SZ), Bona Film Group (001330.SZ), Huace Media (300133.SZ); 3) Tools: Meitu (01357), Visual China Group (000681.SZ), Giant Network (002558.SZ); 4) Traffic Investment: Easy Global (301171.SZ); 5) Platforms: Bilibili-W, Kuaishou-W (01024), Mango Super Media.
Risk Factors
AI technology is still in its early stages and faces implementation risks; content companies risk being unable to adapt quickly to changes in the AI era, potentially placing them at a competitive disadvantage; copyright issues pose additional industry risks.
