No CP Female Protagonist, Cyberpunk, Infinite Flow: What Have AI Short Dramas Verified for Full-Length Dramas?

Compared with the main genres of traditional long-form dramas, the current classification of AI short dramas is as complicated as preparing for a postgraduate entrance exam.

Back in 2025, the category of live-action short dramas expanded from 44 to 65 in only 10 months, adding 21 new segmented genres. In 2026, under the general framework of 65 categories, AI short dramas have further derived differentiated themes such as unrestrained imagination, catering management, stockpiling flow, sci-fi mecha, and social hot topics.

AI short dramas have completely rewritten the theme verification logic of the film and television industry. By conducting trial and error with massive content, they have compressed the verification cycle of "whether a theme is feasible" to be measured in weeks or even days. In contrast, the project approval decision, shooting, release and broadcast of long-form dramas are still calculated in years. Nowadays, which themes can achieve market success are no longer defined by the project approval meetings of long-form dramas, but directly presented by the hit lists of short dramas.

Which key themes have had their market demands verified by the "volume" of short dramas, while long-form dramas are still waiting and seeing?

The Rise of CP-Free Heroines: Are Short Dramas More "Feminist" Than Long Dramas?

Long-form dramas have been hesitating and making little progress on the track of CP-free heroines, while in AI short dramas, this path has not only become a mature broad road, but also subdivided into four different directions.

The most mature one is the immortal cultivation / fantasy killing type, represented by the masterpiece *The Legend of Ten Thousand Demons*. The heroine Jiang Yuechu is the orphaned daughter of a disgraced official. She keeps killing enemies and leveling up all the way relying on the Ten Thousand Demons Record that allows her to "slay demons and seize cultivation techniques". There is no romantic line throughout the story, and she is decisive in killing without being overly naive and kind. The series has been serialized to the 13th season, with total views exceeding 6 billion.

The core expectation of the audience is to see the heroine continuously defeat demons and obtain new supernatural powers. Characters in AI comic dramas are more easily regarded as symbols of refreshing pleasure, and the audience accepts that she devotes all her energy to killing without extra fetters.

However, in the field of long-form dramas, when facing real actors, the audience will instinctively expect characters to have emotional gaps, interpersonal bonds and inner struggles. If the heroine always only focuses on slaying demons and leveling up, it will lead to a thin character setting. In order to make the characters more empathetic, live-action projects often strengthen emotional connections such as companionship and master-disciple relationships, which dilutes this pure monster-killing narrative.

Although the setting of *The Legend of Ten Thousand Demons* is "male soul in female body", that is, a modern man's soul travels into a woman's body, it still fully proves that the killing narrative of CP-free heroines has achieved market success in comic dramas, and has reached the commercial ceiling that crosses both male and female audiences. This also shows that the audience boundary of the CP-free heroine narrative is much wider than long-form dramas previously expected, and is not limited to the fixed female-oriented content circle.

The second type is the farming / reclamation management type, represented by the masterpiece *I Get Rich in Ancient Times with Modern Cuisine*. The heroine Jiang Yue travels to ancient times and becomes a peasant girl. With modern cooking skills, she sets up stalls and opens restaurants, gradually expanding the snack stall into a restaurant. The main plot focuses on making money through food business and leading her family to get rid of poverty, with almost no romantic scenes. It has been updated to the fourth season so far.

The appeal of this type of drama comes from a sense of healing, and there are no strong conflicts or big villains in the whole story. The core expectation of the audience is to watch the heroine develop new dishes, manage stores, and make money slowly. This single, gentle positive driving force can be continuously maintained by lightweight units in AI short dramas, but it is difficult to support the narrative volume of dozens of episodes in long-form dramas.

The third type is the stockpiling / doomsday survival type, represented by the masterpiece *In the Doomsday of Natural Disasters, She is Invincible After Stockpiling Full of Supplies*. The heroine Han Qingxia is reborn after being calculated by her close relatives. She sells her house to raise funds, frantically stockpiles supplies, and transforms the abandoned air-raid shelter into a solid base. She is not obsessed with love and focuses purely on career-oriented survival. This drama once ranked first on the Red Fruit AI comic drama list, with views reaching 173 million.

Among them, the stockpiling preparation stage that the audience most wants to watch is a static and repetitive construction process, which lacks the dramatic conflicts required by live-action films and television. AI comic dramas are suitable for splitting the preparation list and base expansion into small units for continuous output, continuously maintaining the satisfaction of predicting and avoiding risks, without forcing the story to advance to the later stage of intense conflicts.

The fourth type is the power struggle / cross-dressing as male type, represented by the masterpiece *Rising to the Clouds, Imperial Examination*, adapted from the well-received online novel IP *Ding, You Leave a Good Name Through the Ages, the Young Lady Starts to Study Hard*. The heroine Xu Yue disguises herself as a man, and enters the officialdom through the imperial examination with the help of a famous minister system. The plot extends from the imperial examination hall to the court power struggle, and has been serialized to the fourth season.

This type of IP has a complete and long growth context, and itself has the adaptation foundation of live-action costume long-form dramas. However, high-investment female-oriented costume long-form dramas are still generally accustomed to taking love as the core driving force. There is still a lack of successful samples for stories that are completely CP-free and only revolve around study and official career.

These four tracks have all achieved serialized long-term operation models in AI short dramas, while most of the current CP-free attempts of long-form dramas stay at "removing CP in stages" — the heroine can be independent midway, but the narrative framework still reserves an entrance for the romantic line.

There is no real long-form drama with a strong female lead that has been fully released and does not take the romantic line as the core driving force throughout the story, and the obstacle mainly comes from its commercial logic. After all, CP has always been the key for long-form dramas to attract investment and maintain topic popularity, and platforms tend to add romantic lines in the project approval stage.

But there are also upcoming long-form drama projects such as *The World of Flowers* and *Miss Zhu* that have already put forward the publicity label of CP-free strong female lead. However, the dramas have not been launched yet, so it is impossible to draw a conclusion for the time being whether they can stick to this narrative bottom line from beginning to end.

AI short dramas have gone further in the narrative of CP-free heroines, which also reflects that long-form dramas are constrained by commercial goals and it is difficult for them to go all out. Such a dilemma that specific themes are difficult to be implemented in long-form dramas also exists in other tracks.

It is Easy to Create a Refreshing Opening, but Hard to Complete a Coherent Long Story?

System farming and unrestrained imagination, these two types of themes can bring refreshing pleasure to the audience at the beginning of short dramas, but they are difficult to adapt to long-form dramas.

The starting engine of system farming in short dramas is extremely short. The system does not need to explain its source, cost and rule boundaries, it only needs to take effect directly in the first crisis. For example, the hit IP *In Famine Years the Whole Village Eats Bark, I Have a Full Warehouse of Meat with the System* has multiple versions of live-action and AI. The heroine travels to a famine-stricken village in the second episode of the opening, and the whole family has no food to eat. So she unlocks the system and exchanges wild vegetables for living supplies.

For short dramas, the narrative perspective is completely focused on the protagonist alone, and the system is private information exclusive to the audience and the protagonist. All character highlights and counterattack refreshing points only serve the protagonist's single narrative, with consistent logic and pure viewing experience.

However, long-form dramas must create group portrait narratives, which need to lay out multi-line character relationships of family members, neighbors and opponents. Once the system is taken as the narrative core, but only the protagonist can see it, no one else knows or empathizes with it, it will create a narrative isolated island. The characters are in a lonely game throughout the story, and it is difficult to establish the necessary character connections for long-form dramas.

The long-form drama track is not completely without system farming themes, *The Story of Xingfu* is an example. But its system is more like a packaging shell, and the core conflict falls on the house fight and romantic lines.

The gap in unrestrained imagination themes is more direct. AI short dramas can test settings in batches at extremely low cost, and replace them if they do not work. *Qin Shi Huang: I Have an All-Star Lineup of Chinese Civilization* directly presents the setting that a medical student travels back to the Qin Dynasty and uses a time machine to summon Zhuge Liang and Huo Qubing to assist Ying Zheng to the audience. The first season has more than 3.1 million collections, and more than one month after its launch, it still ranks 24th on the Red Fruit Short Drama Hit List.

Characters such as Qin Shi Huang, Zhuge Liang and Huo Qubing in the drama come with inherent public cognition, the audience does not need to be introduced to who they are, and creators can devote all their space to the imaginative plot behind. But once long-form dramas choose this kind of highly adapted unrestrained setting, the risks of copyright and historical adaptation will multiply.

In addition, *One Yuan Coin Creates a Trillion Dollar Business Empire* follows the modern prediction flow, leveraging a huge commercial territory with one yuan coin, with the peak popularity of 61.06 million on Red Fruit. *Bringing Weapons to the Song Dynasty* tells the story of modern people returning to the Song Dynasty to reverse history, which has also been made into a long-term series. No matter the modern or ancient background, the common feature of this kind of short dramas is to throw out an extreme unrestrained setting and quickly deliver the refreshing points.

However, it often takes two or three years for long-form dramas from project approval to broadcast, and the investment of a single project is calculated in tens of millions. At the decision-making level, it is almost impossible to verify whether an unrestrained setting can be successful by trying one season first.

The refreshing pleasure of these themes is basically built on the basis of a single-point perspective and simplified logic. Short dramas can reduce information density and quickly create stimulation, while long-form dramas need to take into account group portraits, rationality and risks, so it is difficult to directly copy these themes.

Cyberpunk and Infinite Flow, the Must-Compete Fields for Both Short and Long Dramas?

Different from the hesitation of the previous categories, long-form dramas are concentrating their bets on the infinite flow and cyberpunk tracks in a heavy industrial way.

In the first half of 2026, many infinite flow projects came into the audience's view, projects such as *The End of Ten Days*, *The World of Flowers*, *Today I Didn't Turn Into a Doll* were promoted one after another, all platforms including Tencent, Youku, iQiyi and Mango joined in, and leading companies such as Linmon Pictures and Linghe Pictures collectively placed bets. Noon Sunshine also laid out the same track, shooting the time loop themed movie *The Undeliverable Express at the Beginning*.

The weight of this bet can be clearly seen from the investment of *The End of Ten Days*. The total investment exceeds 200 million yuan, with three seasons shot in a row, a total of 72 episodes promoted at one time, the special effects budget accounts for nearly 40%, an 8000 square meter virtual studio is built, and the visual effects are handled by the team of *The Wandering Earth*.

In the cyberpunk direction of long-form dramas, *The Nomenclature of the Night* was filed with 24 episodes and started shooting in Q1 2026, taking the cyberpunk setting of "Inner World" as the core worldview; *Reborn* takes the metaverse level-breaking as the framework, started shooting in January 2026 and finished in March.

The investment logic of this batch of high-concept projects is relatively consistent. Most of them rely on mature leading online novel IP to hedge risks, and only iQiyi's *Reborn* is an original level-breaking setting incubated internally by Linghe Pictures.

However, the supply density of short dramas on the same track is difficult for long-form dramas to catch up with