AI Webtoons in 2025: Technological Surge, Cost Revolution, and Incremental Space

By the end of 2025, it is certain that AI technology will continue to develop at a pace that makes it difficult for ordinary people to keep up. The balance between the production costs and content quality of animated series will continue to be adjusted and finally reach a turning - point that the entire industry cannot ignore.

While short - films, like feature - length films, are gradually worried about the rising remuneration of leading actors, the AI - animated series, as a completely new form of content, has achieved an astonishing rise to a new level in 2025.

In terms of popularity, the market for animated series has achieved in one year what short - films took three to four years to achieve. Many market analyses suggest that the market for animated series could reach a volume of over 20 billion yuan this year. Data released by ByteDance in August shows that the supply of animated series had a compound growth of 83% between April and July 2025, and the number of views and likes increased by 92% and 105% respectively. The data from Kuaishou Keling is even more impressive: the daily sales of the AI - animated series in the third quarter of 2025 increased by 900% compared with the fourth quarter of 2024, and the monthly production of animated series episodes increased by 567%.

Moreover, the willingness of major video platforms to participate reflects how important the AI - animated series is as a rapidly growing "new field". On November 3rd, Hongguo launched its independent app, Hongguo Animated Series. Qimao Fiction, a subsidiary of Baidu, announced the establishment of Qimao Animated Series, and iQiyi also announced the launch of an animated series channel. At the same time, almost all video platforms and IP platforms have launched their own promotion programs for animated series and promised extremely high commissions to producers.

Looking at the development of the AI - animated series, its rapid rise was not accidental but the necessary result of the dual effects of technological innovation and market demands. From the early "Senseless Comic" mainly featuring "Panda - Head" emojis to today's overall AI - based production of animated series, the driving force behind this change lies, on the one hand, in the reshaping of content creation by rapid technological development, and on the other hand, in the increasing size of the short - film market and the sharp rise in the costs of live - action short - films. Market players are forced to look for ways to save costs and increase sales.

The animated series may have precisely hit this "double turning - point" of technology and market.

Technological boom drives the AI - animated series to top speed

Since the emergence of the animated series, approximately four content forms have emerged:

Senseless Comic is the earliest form, based on emojis, panda - head pictures and other minimalist images, mainly relying on absurd and funny stories with many punchlines and rapid twists. Dynamic Comic is based on static comic IPs and is transformed into a unified sequence through camera movement and scaling, dynamizing key frames, overlaying AI voices and lip - syncing, while maintaining the original visual style of the comic. Novel - Series reads the content of online novels aloud and combines it with simple scene animations and text effects to enable rapid content changes, which is roughly equivalent to the "video version of an audiobook".

All three forms of animated series already existed on a large scale in the short - video market before AI production was introduced. The Senseless Comic is closely related to secondary creation on platforms like Bilibili, Douyin and Kuaishou, while the Dynamic Comic and the Novel - Series efficiently utilize existing IP resources and quickly explored the commercial feasibility of video adaptation of comics and online novels. They are the preferred option for the easy development of non - top IPs.

In contrast, the latest AI - animated series is produced using AI tools throughout the entire process. The finished product resembles a traditional 2D or 3D animated series as much as possible. The complexity of the images gradually increases, the stories are continuous and have the ability to tell independently. The storyboards, characters and scenes generated by AI also remain highly consistent. Reports say that AI technology penetrates the entire process from script generation, storyboard design, character animation to voice translation. The production time is shortened from the traditional several months to a few days, and a team of ten people can produce a 100 - minute series in ten days. The costs can be reduced to one - fifth or even less compared to the traditional model.

In the series list of the Hongguo short - film platform, most entries are already high - quality AI - animated series. The individual episodes are 1 - 3 minutes long, and the entire work consists of 60 - 120 episodes. The viewing experience is similar to that of mainstream short - films.

The two most popular series in the "Hongguo Animated Series List" are currently "I shocked the gods under the divine guillotine!" and "My ancient husband can't be that good - looking!". Both works are very representative: the first is a typical male - oriented genre, and the second is a typical female - oriented genre.

The story of "I shocked the gods under the divine guillotine!" combines the worldviews of "Journey to the West" and "Investiture of the Gods". It is a story that, like "Black Myth: Wukong", reinterpreted traditional mythology. The main character, Li Tianjun, is brought to the divine guillotine for massacring Buddhist disciples. During the process, his astonishing identity as the brother of Sun Wukong and the truth behind his rebellion against the hypocritical gods and Buddhas are revealed by the Listening Tower Mirror. The special feature of this work is its strong conflict - based narration, which is exciting from the start. It highly integrates elements from national IPs like "Journey to the West" and triggers the resonance of the audience through its "anti - convention" plots and high - density emotional climaxes, making it a phenomenal hit.

"My ancient husband can't be that good - looking!" tells the sweet and fantastic story of an 800 - year - old "age - stopped" ancient man, Ye Wuque, who goes down the mountain to marry the most beautiful woman in the world, Su Qingmei. After dealing with various challenges at the wedding, he lives in seclusion with his beloved for 60 years.

The visual presentation of "My ancient husband can't be that good - looking!" is significantly better than that of "I shocked the gods under the divine guillotine!". There are many continuous camera shots and smoother full - body movements of the characters. The scenes are more abundant and the interactions are more complex. It is said that approximately 80% of the content of this series was automatically generated by "Juri Agent", which enables high - quality production with continuous character movements and smooth long - takes. This is an example of the agent becoming a mature productive force in the animated series.

It is really astonishing that technological development in the AI era can no longer be measured in years or even months. There is really a feeling like the saying "One day in heaven, one year on earth". In March this year, when I wrote the article "2025 - The prelude to the explosion of AI short - films", I summarized the content of AI short - films as follows: "The coherence is insufficient, the duration of individual frames is usually less than 5 seconds, the films rely on fast - cutting techniques to avoid the shortcomings in movement logic, the camera language is one - sided, and there is a strong feeling of assembled dynamic PowerPoint presentations... Currently, AI short - films are still in the stage of questioning their existence, but ordinary audiences care about quality."

Today, there are AI - animated series everywhere that look decent and are no worse than many small - and medium - budget animations in the past.

At the same time, the Japanese animation "One - Punch Man Season 3" was severely criticized on the Internet for its poor production quality and static PowerPoint - like images. Many viewers say that they could achieve better results with AI, and this is not an exaggeration. This shows how strongly AI has influenced traditional workflows.

At the beginning of the year, AI - generated video creation still had the problem of "character consistency". Producers often encountered problems such as incorrect character proportions in the generated videos, "facial changes" of the main character in different camera shots, and had difficulties in realizing complex camera movements, which made continuous storytelling like in traditional animations impossible. However, today's multimodal large models have made significant progress in character consistency and movement smoothness. AI technology can now penetrate the entire process of animated series production, from script development, storyboard design, video creation to voice recording and sound design. The applicability of almost all mainstream video - creation models has made a qualitative leap.

For example, Kuaishou Keling released a new version in November 2025, which supports the creation of high - quality videos over 30 seconds and has especially optimized the character - consistency function. Its "Character Memory" technology ensures that the same character remains visually consistent in different scenes and solves the long - standing problem of "character fragmentation" in AI - animated series. Jiying of ByteDance also made an important upgrade in October 2025 and supports the creation of 1080P videos and mass production. Its "Intelligent Storyboard" system can automatically create storyboard scripts based on the script, reducing manual intervention.

Looking back, we can say that 2025 can be called the "Year of the Animated Series". The central driving force for its explosion was undoubtedly the rapid development of AI video - creation technology in the last six months. This type of technological evolution has directly solved the fundamental problem of content production - the contradiction between efficiency and quality. Even if AI is not able to generate animations with a rating above 80 points in large quantities, the current technology is completely sufficient if it is only about achieving a quality of 60 - 70 points. Such animations actually have a large market, and AI has already defeated traditional models in almost all aspects in the ecosystems of many third - tier Japanese anime series and small - budget Chinese animations.

"Double temptation" of cost control and growing market

Besides technological development, there may be some other factors behind the explosive growth of the AI - animated series in 2025 that cannot be ignored, such as the cost pressure from the improvement of live - action short - films and the growth space for the Z - generation.

Looking at the development of the short - film market, the production costs of live - action short - films have increased significantly between 2022 and 2025. The trend of improvement has become irreversible. Instead of simple and direct sto