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"title": "The Three-Body Problem in Minecraft (我的三体)",
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"excerpt": "The Three-Body Problem in Minecraft (我的三体, My Three-Body) is a Chinese animated adaptation of Liu Cixin's Three-Body trilogy, begun in 2014 as fan-made Minecraft machinima by Shenyou Bafang on Bilibili, later officially licensed under Three-Body Universe, spanning four seasons (2014–2024) with Douban scores of 9.4–9.6 for its first three seasons.",
"snippet": "The Three-Body Problem in Minecraft (我的三体, My Three-Body) is a Chinese animated adaptation of Liu Cixin's Three-Body trilogy, begun in 2014 as fan-made Minecraft machinima by Shenyou Bafang on Bilibili, later officially licensed under Three-Body Universe, spanning four seasons (2014–2024) with Douban scores of 9.4–9.6 for its first three seasons.",
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"markdown": "# The Three-Body Problem in Minecraft (我的三体)\n\n**The Three-Body Problem in Minecraft** (我的三体, *My Three-Body*) is a Chinese animated series adapted from [Liu Cixin](https://www.edgepedia.org/liu-cixin)'s science fiction trilogy *[Remembrance of Earth's Past](https://www.edgepedia.org/remembrance-of-earths-past)*, begun in 2014 as a fan-made animation recorded inside the sandbox game [Minecraft](https://www.edgepedia.org/minecraft) and later turned into an officially licensed production. It was created by the Bilibili uploader 神游八方 (Shenyou Bafang), whose real name is Li Zhenyi (李圳宜, romanized by English-language sources as Zhenyi Li), and it became the first screen adaptation of the trilogy ever released.[1](https://wyb.chinawriter.com.cn/content/202009/28/content56552.html) • [2](https://www.andrewliptak.com/cixin-liu-the-three-body-problem-minecraft/) • [3](https://otakublend.com/how-many-screen-adaptations-of-the-three-body-problem-are-there/)\n\n| Key fact | Detail |\n|---|---|\n| Origin | Uploaded to Bilibili in 2014 by the fan \"神游八方\" (Shenyou Bafang, Li Zhenyi) as a Minecraft-recorded adaptation of *The Three-Body Problem*[1](https://wyb.chinawriter.com.cn/content/202009/28/content56552.html) |\n| Official status | From season 2 the team joined the Three-Body Universe IP development team and received official adaptation rights and funding[4](https://www.chinasf.com/main/documentdetail.php?DocumentID=20352) |\n| Seasons | S1: 11 episodes (Feb 2014 – Oct 2015); S2 *The Legend of Luo Ji*: 11 (Jun 2016 – Mar 2018); S3 *The Legend of Zhang Beihai*: 9 (Jan–Mar 2020); S4: 9 (Jul–Sep 2024)[5](https://thetvdb.com/series/376773-/allseasons/official) |\n| Douban ratings | Season 1: 9.5; season 2: 9.4; season 3: 9.6; season 4: 8.1[6](https://bkso.baidu.com/item/%E6%88%91%E7%9A%84%E4%B8%89%E4%BD%93/17578266?fromModule=lemma_inlink) • [7](https://chinasf.com/main/documentdetail.php?DocumentID=20201) |\n| Bilibili views (as of May 2024) | Season 1: 54.294 million; season 2: 77.774 million; season 3: 130 million[8](https://castjournals.cast.org.cn/joweb/kpcz/CN/1149693264686662518) |\n| End of production | The team disbanded at the end of 2024 after season 4's ratings decline; a planned fifth season was never made[9](https://www.ithome.com/0/896/893.htm) |\n\n## Spoilers\n\n### Season 4 and the end of the team\n\nSeason 4 premiered on Bilibili on July 14, 2024, in 9 episodes of about 25 minutes each, co-directed by Li Zhenyi and Kong Qing, presented by Three-Body Universe and Bilibili, and produced by Helium Flash Animation. It adapted the third novel, *Death's End*, including Cheng Xin's Staircase Program, a plan to accelerate a human brain to one percent of the speed of light toward an alien fleet.[5](https://thetvdb.com/series/376773-/allseasons/official) • [17](https://cbgc.scol.com.cn/news/5138898) • [18](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzQYbbmSNpQ)\n\nThe season's Douban score fell to 8.1, against an average of about 9.5 for the first three seasons, and at the end of 2024 Shenyou Bafang announced in a Bilibili video that the production team had already disbanded; the planned fifth season never entered production. In the video he thanked Lin Qi, Yoozoo Games, Bilibili, and the audience, and described ten years of creation within the [Three-Body](https://www.edgepedia.org/three-body) worldview. Lin Qi, the Yoozoo founder who held the trilogy's adaptation rights, had been poisoned to death by a Yoozoo subsidiary head in December 2020.[6](https://bkso.baidu.com/item/%E6%88%91%E7%9A%84%E4%B8%89%E4%BD%93/17578266?fromModule=lemma_inlink) • [9](https://www.ithome.com/0/896/893.htm) • [19](https://apnews.com/article/8be6d243838f90226e31efffe97e923b)\n\n## Origins as fan animation\n\nThe project began when Shenyou Bafang, a fan who had read the trilogy in the magazine *Science Fiction World* in 2006, uploaded a *Three-Body* fan animation recorded in Minecraft to Bilibili in 2014. He wanted to share the novels with other readers across the country and to lower the reading threshold of a work widely considered difficult.[2](https://www.andrewliptak.com/cixin-liu-the-three-body-problem-minecraft/) • [10](https://media.people.com.cn/n1/2020/0312/c200167-31629238.html) Season 1 ran from February 2014 to October 2015 in 11 episodes, covering the first novel.[5](https://thetvdb.com/series/376773-/allseasons/official)\n\n**Humble production.** The first season was made primarily by one person with an amateur team and extremely low production quality; the Minecraft engine's limits and the team's inexperience showed in stiff, blocky visuals. Even so, it attracted a large following among readers of the novels, and from the ninth episode the team switched to the 3D software C4D, noticeably improving the picture.[11](https://radii.co/article/the-three-body-problem-bilibili) • [6](https://bkso.baidu.com/item/%E6%88%91%E7%9A%84%E4%B8%89%E4%BD%93/17578266?fromModule=lemma_inlink) Chinese commentary credited the series' early success not to its visuals but to its respect for the source text and its fit with the novels' grand, tragic atmosphere.[12](https://www.stcn.com/article/detail/752714.html)\n\n## Official adoption and the biography seasons\n\nFrom season 2 the fan project was absorbed into the official IP structure. The production team joined Three-Body Universe, the company formed by the rights holder Yoozoo Games to develop the franchise, and obtained official adaptation rights and funding.[4](https://www.chinasf.com/main/documentdetail.php?DocumentID=20352) • [13](https://www.theworldofchinese.com/2024/05/three-body-conundrum-why-liu-cixins-trilogy-defies-adaptation/) Season 2, *The Legend of Luo Ji* (我的三体之罗辑传), ran from June 2016 to March 2018 in 11 episodes; production paused for over a year after the first two episodes before resuming on a weekly schedule in January 2018.[5](https://thetvdb.com/series/376773-/allseasons/official) • [6](https://bkso.baidu.com/item/%E6%88%91%E7%9A%84%E4%B8%89%E4%BD%93/17578266?fromModule=lemma_inlink)\n\n**Splitting the second novel.** The second book, *The Dark Forest*, follows two independent threads, Luo Ji's dark-forest deterrence and Zhang Beihai's escape-ism. The team split these into two biography-format seasons: season 2 centered on Luo Ji and season 3, *The Legend of Zhang Beihai* (我的三体之章北海传), on Zhang Beihai, with added original scenes to flesh out the character.[1](https://wyb.chinawriter.com.cn/content/202009/28/content56552.html) Season 3 aired from January to March 2020 in 9 episodes and became the most celebrated entry, scoring 9.6 on Douban, at the time the highest-rated [Chinese animation](https://www.edgepedia.org/chinese-animation) on the platform, and one of five Bilibili donghua rated 9.9 on the site's own ranking.[5](https://thetvdb.com/series/376773-/allseasons/official) • [14](https://www.jiemian.com/article/8590177.html) • [10](https://media.people.com.cn/n1/2020/0312/c200167-31629238.html) • [1](https://wyb.chinawriter.com.cn/content/202009/28/content56552.html) Reviewers praised its script, storyboarding, editing, voice acting, and music, and noted that it reproduced the novel's plot and details almost exactly.[15](https://wyb.chinawriter.com.cn/attachment/202007/29/705c31b8-546d-4b48-8bc0-fec07617b103.pdf)\n\nLiu Cixin himself took a permissive line toward the adaptation. In an interview, Shenyou Bafang recalled that Liu told the team to change details freely rather than fixate on minor points, as long as the core of what the trilogy wanted to express was preserved.[16](https://www.sohu.com/a/368210502_99899130)\n\n## Reception and the Minecraft aesthetic\n\nAcross its run the series drew audiences with fast pacing and faithful adaptation of the source material, and all three of its first seasons held Douban scores of 9.4 or higher.[11](https://radii.co/article/the-three-body-problem-bilibili) View counts grew each season: 54.294 million for season 1, 77.774 million for season 2, and 130 million for season 3 on Bilibili as of May 2024, with the season 4 trailer alone approaching 2.6 million views before release.[8](https://castjournals.cast.org.cn/joweb/kpcz/CN/1149693264686662518)\n\n**Why blocks worked.** Chinese critics argued that the blocky pixel aesthetic suited the novels' qualities rather than fighting them. Minecraft's cube-based building logic, applied to scenes such as the Red Coast base, the First Emperor's palace, the human-column computer, and the nano-wire \"giant guqin,\" matched what one critic called the trilogy's aesthetic of constructing an imagined universe on cold logic. The stiffness of the block figures also produced an alienating distance: viewers watching the blocks on screen were, the critic suggested, in the position of the Trisolarans or a higher civilization watching humanity.[1](https://wyb.chinawriter.com.cn/content/202009/28/content56552.html) The science fiction author Chen Qiufan called the Minecraft-style character design a smart idea, since it spared the team the problem of nuanced facial expression, though he noted that dense information sometimes made episodes feel cramped.[20](https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1005300)\n\n## Place among the adaptations\n\nThe series was the first screen adaptation of the trilogy ever released, predating the 2023 Tencent live-action series and the 2024 Netflix *3 Body Problem* by nearly a decade.[3](https://otakublend.com/how-many-screen-adaptations-of-the-three-body-problem-are-there/) One scholarly assessment of the franchise's screen history calls the 2014 Minecraft adaptation the most successful effort to adapt the novels to visual media.[21](https://www.chinacenter.net/2024/china-currents/23-1/the-global-spectacle-of-netflixs-3-body-problem/)\n\nThe contrast with the official 2022 Bilibili animation *Three-Body*, produced by YHKT Entertainment at far larger cost, sharpened the fan series' reputation. The big-budget adaptation saw its Douban score fall from above 7 at launch to 4.6, with over 58 percent of more than 120,000 reviewers giving it one or two stars, while commentators repeatedly held up the low-budget Minecraft series, with its 9-plus scores and plot unchanged from the novel, as the standard of fidelity.[14](https://www.jiemian.com/article/8590177.html) • [22](https://www.jiemian.com/article/8763955.html) When the official animation launched, coverage of it repeatedly pulled the nearly decade-old fan production back into the spotlight.[11](https://radii.co/article/the-three-body-problem-bilibili)\n\n## References\n\n1. [叶昕昀. 方块世界里的三体美学——评科幻国漫《我的三体·章北海传》. 文艺报, 2020-09-28.](https://wyb.chinawriter.com.cn/content/202009/28/content56552.html)\n2. [Andrew Liptak. Watch The Three-Body Problem adapted as a Minecraft-style animated series. Transfer Orbit.](https://www.andrewliptak.com/cixin-liu-the-three-body-problem-minecraft/)\n3. [Otaku Blend. How many Screen Adaptations of The Three Body Problem are There, Really?](https://otakublend.com/how-many-screen-adaptations-of-the-three-body-problem-are-there/)\n4. [科幻影视IP的资料库消费与宏大叙事研究——以\"三体宇宙\"为例. 中文科幻.](https://www.chinasf.com/main/documentdetail.php?DocumentID=20352)\n5. [我的三体 – Aired Order, All Seasons. TheTVDB.com.](https://thetvdb.com/series/376773-/allseasons/official)\n6. [我的三体. 百度百科.](https://bkso.baidu.com/item/%E6%88%91%E7%9A%84%E4%B8%89%E4%BD%93/17578266?fromModule=lemma_inlink)\n7. [\"三体\"叙事的伦理问题研究. 中文科幻.](https://chinasf.com/main/documentdetail.php?DocumentID=20201)\n8. [科普创作评论 (期刊页, 含《我的三体》播放量数据). 中国科普作家协会.](https://castjournals.cast.org.cn/joweb/kpcz/CN/1149693264686662518)\n9. [《我的三体》系列动画制作组解散：第四季口碑下滑，将没有第五季. IT之家, 2024-11-12.](https://www.ithome.com/0/896/893.htm)\n10. [动画《我的三体》热播 三体开发未来可期. 人民网传媒, 2020-03-12.](https://media.people.com.cn/n1/2020/0312/c200167-31629238.html)\n11. [RADII. Bilibili's Adaptation of 'The Three-Body Problem' Gets Mixed Reviews.](https://radii.co/article/the-three-body-problem-bilibili)\n12. [《三体》动画版引发论战，两部真人剧引领明年影视化高峰. 证券时报.](https://www.stcn.com/article/detail/752714.html)\n13. [The World of Chinese. Three-Body Conundrum: Why Liu Cixin's Trilogy Defies Adaptation, 2024-05.](https://www.theworldofchinese.com/2024/05/three-body-conundrum-why-liu-cixins-trilogy-defies-adaptation/)\n14. [《三体》动画五年问世，却深陷舆论\"黑暗森林\". 界面新闻.](https://www.jiemian.com/article/8590177.html)\n15. [2020年上半年国产科幻影视动态综述. 文艺报, 2020-07-29.](https://wyb.chinawriter.com.cn/attachment/202007/29/705c31b8-546d-4b48-8bc0-fec07617b103.pdf)\n16. [专访B站《我的三体》制作人：面壁者神游八方，我是你的破壁人. 搜狐.](https://www.sohu.com/a/368210502_99899130)\n17. [《我的三体第四季》系列动画定档7月. 川观新闻, 2024-06-27.](https://cbgc.scol.com.cn/news/5138898)\n18. [《我的三体 第四季》My Three-Body S4, Made By Bilibili, YouTube, 2024-07-14.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzQYbbmSNpQ)\n19. [China executes man for poisoning gaming tycoon linked to Netflix's '3 Body Problem'. AP News.](https://apnews.com/article/8be6d243838f90226e31efffe97e923b)\n20. [Sixth Tone. Viewers Give 'Three-Body' Animated Series Two Thumbs Up.](https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1005300)\n21. [China Center. The Global Spectacle of Netflix's 3 Body Problem. China Currents 23-1.](https://www.chinacenter.net/2024/china-currents/23-1/the-global-spectacle-of-netflixs-3-body-problem/)\n22. [《三体》的神话与笑话. 界面新闻 (海克财经).](https://www.jiemian.com/article/8763955.html)\n\n---\n*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) › Adult animated drama and genre series*\n\n*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 21, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*\n\n*Copyright 2026 EdgeChat AI, a subsidiary of Biostate AI.*\n\nLicense: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license\n",
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"speakable": "The Three-Body Problem in Minecraft is a Chinese animated adaptation of Liu Cixin's Three-Body trilogy, begun in 2014 as fan-made Minecraft machinima by Shenyou Bafang on Bilibili, later officially licensed under Three-Body Universe, spanning four seasons with Douban scores of 9.4–9.6 for its first three seasons."
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