General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20267 min read

Aotu World (凹凸世界)

Aotu World (凹凸世界, also romanized AOTU) is a Chinese original 3D web animation produced by the studio 七创社 (7DOC), the animation brand of Shanghai Jupiter Creative Design Co., Ltd. Set in a world ruled by an arbitrary creator god, it follows contestants who enter the god's "Aotu Tournament" (凹凸大赛) to win the power to change their fate. Two pilot episodes streamed in November 2015, the first season premiered on June 28, 2016, and the series ran through four seasons before production passed to a new studio, 光和社, which launched a remake, Aotu World: Reborn, in 2025.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Format	Original 3D web animation (not an adaptation of an existing manga; the animation and comic were created in parallel by 七创社)¹
Seasons	S1: June 28, 2016, 32 episodes; S2: October 8, 2017, 20 episodes; S3: January 25, 2019, 40 episodes; S4: April 29, 2022, 20 episodes¹
Reboot	Aotu World: Reborn (光和社) premiered March 14, 2025, 15 episodes; a new series, Aotu World: 新生, was scheduled for May 1, 2026¹^•³
Visual style	Low Poly geometric 3D character modeling, chosen when most Chinese 3D animation pursued realistic, beauty-focused designs⁴
Premise	Contestants receive supernatural abilities (元力) in the creator god's tournament; the winner's wishes are granted; the protagonist Jin (金) enters to free his enslaved home planet and find his missing sister²
Mobile game	First official game launched June 3, 2020; over 5 million pre-registrations, 10 million registered users within four months, and a 9.6 launch score on TapTap⁵^•⁴
Fanbase	About 70% female; 68% of paying users aged 16 to 24; among the most active Chinese animation IPs in fan-created content⁵

Spoilers

Premise and style

The setting is a universe created by a capricious deity who made some planets rich and others barren, some peoples free and others enslaved. The one escape is the Aotu Tournament: contestants receive abilities granted by the god, and whoever wins has every wish fulfilled. The protagonist Jin, a boy from a mining planet, enters to change his people's fate and to search for his older sister, who joined a previous tournament three years earlier and never returned.² The story is built on the classic shonen trio of friendship, growth, and victory.⁶

A deliberate visual break. When the project was planned, mainstream Chinese 3D animation emphasized realistic, attractive character faces; Aotu World instead adopted a Low Poly, geometrically abstracted look, which was novel for 2016 and became the series' signature.⁴ Director Zhou Liang (周亮) described the creative philosophy in a 2016 interview as simply "however cool it looks" (怎么酷炫怎么来), with distinctive character designs and flashy fight scenes as the priorities.⁷

Production history

The project predates its studio. Around 2008 and 2009, the designer known as 迷之七 ("Seventh") had posted early character and scene concepts online; Qu Xiaodan (曲晓丹), previously one of the founders of the animation Nano Core, saw them, started a company around the property, and spent about two years producing an early trailer. The core team settled as 迷之七 on character and scene design, Yun Luo (云落) as screenwriter, Qu Xiaodan as producer, and Zhou Liang as director.⁷ The company, Shanghai Jupiter Creative Design Co., Ltd., was formally established in 2013, with 七创社 as its original animation brand; its other titles include Zhan Shou Zhi Ren (斩兽之刃), Aotu Academy (凹凸学园), and Neko Album (猫灵相册).⁸

The release record runs as follows:¹

Pilot episodes: November 2015, two episodes that drew attention for their block-like visual style and world setting.⁹
Season 1: from June 28, 2016, 32 episodes.¹
Season 2: from October 8, 2017, 20 episodes.¹
Season 3: from January 25, 2019, 40 episodes.¹
Season 4: from April 29, 2022, 20 episodes, registered with the National Radio and Television Administration as a 20-episode, 400-minute production of Shanghai Jupiter Creative Design.¹^•¹⁰

In March 2018 the first two seasons were pulled from streaming platforms for content review while the studio applied for television broadcast permission; three months later the series passed review and returned online with television broadcast planned.¹¹ The series has also been broadcast in Japan on Asahi Broadcasting Corporation's anime block, with Zhou Liang credited as chief director, Yun Luo as screenwriter, and Qu Xiaodan as producer.¹²

Fandom and doujin culture

Aotu World became one of the most fan-active original Chinese animation IPs. Even before the animation aired, the official Baidu Tieba forum founded by the studio in October 2012 hosted large amounts of fan creation, and the studio invited netizens to co-create during the planning stage.¹³^•¹⁴ In 2014 the studio attended the COMICUP doujin convention as an official exhibitor, and in October 2016 it released the characters' 3D models through an MMD video on Bilibili, explicitly encouraging fans to download and remix them.⁵

The numbers are large for a domestic original work. On LOFTER, the series' tag recorded 566,000 participating posts and over 2.12 billion reads, and on the platform Bansciyuan (半次元) it held first place in the original-work ranking with its characters taking the top nine character positions.⁵ Qu Xiaodan stated in a 2017 interview that the series ranked first in fan-created content among all animations circulating in China, domestic or imported, with roughly 1,000 new fan videos added on Bilibili every 20 days.¹⁵ Even during the gap after season 4, the fandom stayed in LOFTER's top five creative rankings, and before Ne Zha 2 opened it was the only Chinese animation IP in that top five.¹⁶

The audience skews young and female: about 70% of fans are women, and 68% of paying users are aged 16 to 24, matching the studio's original target of 13-to-18-year-old viewers.⁵^•¹⁵ This fan profile was unexpected for a hot-blooded action series and shaped the studio's strategy of tolerating and supporting derivative creation.⁹

Commercialization

Merchandise first. The animation cost roughly 20,000 RMB per minute to produce, yet season 1 reached about 22 million views on Bilibili, close to the leading domestic title Hitori no Shita season 1 at 27.33 million.⁶ Rather than gambling early on games or film, the studio chose merchandise to recoup production costs. In October 2017 a crowdfunding campaign on Modian (摩点网) for merchandise production raised about 3.15 million RMB from 13,554 backers, at the time the top sum for a domestic animation crowdfunding project.¹^•¹⁷ Combined merchandise sales and crowdfunding passed 7 million RMB by 2018.¹⁸

The mobile game. The studio's first self-developed game, an RPG based on the tournament premise, launched on June 3, 2020 after a troubled development in which an almost finished version was scrapped and rebuilt.⁵^•¹⁹ It drew over 5 million pre-registrations, passed 10 million registered users within four months, and topped the App Store free-game chart for a week.⁵ The game remains in operation with regular updates and seasonal events.²⁰

Later seasons and the Reborn reboot

Season 4, which arrived three years after season 3, drew fan criticism over plot padding and characterization, with some fans leaving the fandom; the studio's practice of changing the main creative staff between seasons made quality and reception uneven.²¹ Bilibili follower counts nonetheless rose each season, from 1.48 million for season 1 to 3.48 million for season 4.²²

In May 2024 the studio announced that the originally planned fifth season was canceled and that subsequent production would be entrusted to 光和社, with 七创社 retaining the license and continuing to operate its accounts.³ At the series' eighth-anniversary livestream, Guanghe Studio announced a restart of the animation as a parallel-world story titled Aotu World: Reborn, which adjusts details of the familiar plot to restore narrative tension.¹⁶ Reborn premiered in mainland China on March 14, 2025 with 15 episodes, continuing the tournament premise.¹^•² A further new series, Aotu World: 新生, was scheduled for May 1, 2026 on Bilibili.³

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › Scripted television and comedy series › Animated television series (individual series) › Children's animated adventure and fantasy series › Superhero and action-adventure series

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

Notice something wrong?