Film

A Chinese Ghost Story: The Tsui Hark Animation

A 1997 Hong Kong animated film that adapts the classic supernatural romance *A Chinese Ghost Story* with Tsui Hark's signature visual chaos. It's playful and anarchic, mixing romantic longing with slapstick horror-comedy, built on dizzying action sequences and a paper-thin plot that barely matters. For lovers of gonzo animation and weird genre mashups who don't need their stories to make sense.

TMDb rating3.1

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you love a tender romance tangled up with slapstick and creepy supernatural set pieces, and you don't mind a cartoon that swings between giggles and goosebumps in the same scene.

Skip it if the loud, busy tone can feel cluttered if you want something quiet or subtle, and its late-nineties animation may look dated next to slicker modern cartoons.

What it asks of you: a brisk ride of under ninety minutes, where the tone lurches between playful and eerie quickly, so it wants you alert rather than lazily half-watching.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Spirited Away2001

A masterpiece of supernatural romance where love across worlds matters more than plot logic. Shares the dreamy, painterly approach to ghosts and the commitment to visual spectacle over coherence.

But Slower and more meditative than the Tsui Hark chaos; this is poetry, not slapstick. At two hours, it demands patience.

Spirited Away poster

Paprika2006

Satoshi Kon's dazzling animated fever dream about reality collapsing into surrealism. Same commitment to visuals as pure storytelling, same willingness to abandon sense for beauty and weirdness.

But Genuinely difficult to follow and emotionally abstract. The plot is almost deliberately obscure.

Paprika poster

Urusei Yatsura: Beautiful Dreamer1984

Mamoru Oshii's beloved 1980s anime that throws out plot entirely in favour of mood, comedy, and cosmic weirdness. Romance, aliens, and a universe on the brink of collapse with a smile on its face.

But Very Japanese 1980s in its references and humour; some of it will not translate. The pacing feels baggy to modern eyes.

Urusei Yatsura: Beautiful Dreamer poster

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from A Chinese Ghost Story: The Tsui Hark Animation

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Jiang Hu: The Triad Zone2000

Both are Hong Kong productions that treat narrative coherence as optional in service of pure visual and tonal chaos. The same sensibility in different mediums.

A Hong Kong live-action film that captures the same chaotic energy, tonal whiplash, and visual inventiveness as Tsui Hark's animation work. It has the same DNA—slapstick, action, and melodrama colliding at high speed.

But Incoherent and aggressively silly in ways that feel almost hostile to plot. The plot is genuinely impossible to follow, even on a second viewing.

Jiang Hu: The Triad Zone poster
More like this (8)

Ghost in the Shell1995

Another Mamoru Oshii masterpiece from the same era, blending philosophy with action and gorgeous animation. Proof that 90s anime could be art, not just spectacle.

But Philosophical and slow. If you wanted more romance and comedy, this is cerebral science fiction instead.

Ghost in the Shell poster

Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust2001

A supernatural gothic romance animated with baroque beauty, where the hero and heroine are on opposite sides of a war. Gorgeous gothic horror-romance in anime form with top-tier action choreography.

But More straightforwardly serious than Tsui Hark's version. Gothic and melancholic rather than chaotic and funny.

Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust poster

Perfect Blue1998

Satoshi Kon's debut from the same year—a psychological horror animation that's genuinely unsettling and visually inventive. Proof that 90s anime was willing to be truly strange and dark.

But Disturbing and occasionally grotesque. This is horror that doesn't pull punches, and has no romance or comedy to ease the tension.

Perfect Blue poster

Millennium Actress2002

Kon's meditation on cinema itself, where animation allows for reality to shift moment by moment. Surreal, romantic, and wildly inventive with visual storytelling.

But Requires you to care about cinema history and classical cinema references. The story is abstract and dreamlike.

Millennium Actress poster

Pom Poko1994

Studio Ghibli's shape-shifting tanuki fable that mixes magic, slapstick, and genuine pathos. Cheerful chaos with a melancholic edge, where the stakes are heartfelt.

But Episodic and meandering, especially in the middle. The tanuki transformations sometimes veer into crude humour.

Pom Poko poster

Akira1988

The animation and action set the standard for cyberpunk. If you loved the technical ambition and kinetic energy of Tsui Hark's animation, this is the ancestor of that visceral approach.

But Dense, cold, and often incomprehensible. No romance, minimal warmth. A visual and conceptual overload that demands repeat viewings.

Akira poster

Night on the Galactic Railroad1985

Both use animation to escape the constraints of live-action storytelling and create worlds where normal rules don't apply, but they point in opposite emotional directions.

A Japanese animated film about anthropomorphic cats on a mystical train journey that exists in dream-logic rather than story-logic. Eerily beautiful, melancholic, and utterly strange. Shares the willingness to abandon realism for emotional truth.

But Slow, meditative, and tonally very distant. Not funny or chaotic—this is quietness and philosophical sadness about mortality and loss.

Night on the Galactic Railroad poster

Stalker1979

Both are built on longing—the desire to reach across impossible boundaries toward someone or something that shouldn't be reachable. One is chaotic and fun; the other is grave and slow. Both believe in the power of that longing.

Andrei Tarkovsky's 163-minute Soviet science-fiction film about desire and faith. A completely different register, but it shares something essential: the collision between romance and the supernatural, and faith in the impossible.

But Glacially slow, hermetically serious, in Russian, and almost three hours long. No action, comedy, or visual spectacle. Purely philosophical and meditative.

Stalker poster

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A Chinese Ghost Story