General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20267 min read

Super seminary (超神学院)

Super seminary (超神学院, Super Seminary) is a Chinese 3D science fiction web animation series produced by the Virtual Impressions studio (虚拟印象) of Guangzhou Junhao Hongfeng Network Technology Co., Ltd., directed by Salale (刘怀) and Wei Qi (韦琪), and first broadcast in mainland China on December 6, 2013¹. The series grew out of a League of Legends fan animation, gradually replaced its game-derived characters and setting with original material, and became one of the most commercially successful original Chinese web animation franchises of the 2010s². Its fifth season, released under the new title Xiongbinglian (雄兵连), drew more than 65 million views for its first episode on the first day of streaming³.

Key fact	Detail
Format	3D science fiction web animation; first season 10 episodes of about 12 minutes each, first aired December 6, 2013¹
Creators	Directed by Salale (刘怀) and Wei Qi (韦琪); original story by Salale; distributed by Guangzhou Junhao Hongfeng Network Technology¹
Origin	Began as the League of Legends doujin animation Lalala Demacia (啦啦啦德玛西亚), first released December 2011²
Viewership	First four seasons, 40 episodes, accumulated over 2 billion views; Xiongbinglian first episode passed 65 million views on its first day³
Seasons	Season 1 (2013), Season 2 Juxiahao (2014), Season 3 Shen yu Shen (2015), Season 4 Heijia (2016), Xiongbinglian (2017), Xiongbinglian: Zhutian Jianglin (2019)⁴
Monetization	Season 4 Heijia earned over 4 million yuan in platform revenue-sharing against a production cost of about 4 million yuan; the 2017 mobile game reached 50 million yuan in revenue within about two months⁵^•⁶
Funding	The studio behind the series completed a 30 million yuan Series A round⁷

Spoilers

Seasons and story

The series is set in a universe where Earth is drawn into conflicts among civilizations including angel, demon, and Denor civilizations, discovered through a spacetime wormhole; to counter cosmic threats, the time god Kelan and others establish the Super Seminary, recruiting super soldiers from Earth¹. Director Salale described the premise plainly as "a group of superpowered Earthlings fighting aliens," and said the worldview took more than five years to build, drawing on films such as Independence Day and X-Men⁹.

Season list. The seasons ran as follows⁴:

Season 1, Super Seminary, December 2013 to April 2014, 10 episodes
Season 2, Super Seminary: Juxiahao, June to October 2014, 10 episodes
Season 3, Super Seminary: Shen yu Shen, January to October 2015, 10 episodes
Season 4, Super Seminary: Heijia, April to August 2016, 10 episodes
Season 5, Xiongbinglian, from June 1, 2017, a remake of seasons 1 and 2 in 33 episodes across three arcs (Tianhe Campaign, Xiongxin, Qiankun)
Season 6, Zhutian Jianglin, from January 24, 2019, 26 episodes in five arcs

Xiongbinglian was originally planned as a theatrical film titled Tianhe Zhizhan Xiongbinglian. The team had completed models, storyboards, and plot development before the film plan fell through, and the prepared material became the web series instead; Salale said the large-scale battle scenes of the Tianhe campaign suit a cinema screen, and that he still hopes to make a theatrical animated film⁹. The series is described in Chinese coverage as the country's first long-form 3D science fiction military animation¹⁰.

From fan animation to original series

The series traces to Lalala Demacia, a 3D doujin (fan-made) animation based on the game League of Legends, whose first season began streaming in December 2011 and became widely known among players with the help of promotion through the game client². After three seasons, the fourth installment was renamed Super Seminary and began streaming on multiple platforms in 2013. The plot was already new, but the main characters still carried the names of game characters².

The removal of game material proceeded season by season. Season 2, Super Seminary: Juxiahao (2014), continued the first season's plot and character designs. In Season 3, Shen yu Shen (2015), the character names were changed, and the original character Angel Yan (天使彦) was introduced; her popularity shifted fan attention toward the new storyline⁸. Season 4, Heijia (2016), was a spin-off with entirely new characters and plot, retaining only the character Qiangwei from the earlier work, and even her appearance, abilities, and voice actress were changed⁸. By the fifth season the title itself dropped the words "Super Seminary": Xiongbinglian, named after the squad the characters form, had no remaining connection to League of Legends. Liu Huai said the de-gaming process took several years, remarking that the only similarity left was that the protagonist wields a large sword⁸.

Copyright concerns drove part of this transition. The team considered copyright from the start of Lalala Demacia, but the issue became pressing as financing progressed: investors questioned the copyright status of the first two Super Seminary seasons during the 2015 funding round, since the work had grown into a long-term property rather than the few dozen episodes originally planned⁸.

Audience and reception

The franchise built a large following during its doujin phase and retained it through the transition to original content. The first four seasons accumulated over 2 billion views; Douban ratings for seasons 2 through 4 were all above 8, and the Baidu Tieba forum for the series had 130,000 followers and over 3 million posts³. Season 4 Heijia alone reached 9 million views on Bilibili⁶. A JETRO market survey of Chinese animation popularity ranked Super Seminary tenth among domestic animated works, with a popularity index of 15,312.28¹¹.

The audience skews young and is willing to pay: according to the studio's analysis, viewers aged 16 to 30 form the main audience, and 78 percent of them showed willingness to pay for content⁷. The original character Angel Yan, developed across the first three seasons, became the most popular character in the series².

Business model

Monetization was difficult at the start. According to the first season's own end credits, season 1 earned zero profit; in the early 2010s Chinese web animation studios mostly lived on outsourcing work, and Super Seminary began considering merchandise to cover costs². Early seasons carried the names of Duowan and Tencent's League of Legends project team as co-producers, which covered part of the production cost and brought in game players².

Paid streaming. Season 4 Heijia introduced paid on-demand viewing on Tencent Video and Youku with an early-access model. More than 400,000 viewers paid, generating over 4 million yuan in platform revenue-sharing (over 3 million yuan from Youku and about 1 million yuan from Tencent) against a production cost of about 4 million yuan, roughly breaking even on platform payments alone⁵. This paid model pushed the studio's business toward direct-to-consumer revenue and laid the groundwork for the Xiongbinglian series⁵.

Game adaptation. In 2017 the franchise was adapted into a mobile action game developed by Chuangyu Network. The game passed 10 million yuan in revenue in its first week and reached about 50 million yuan within roughly two months of launch, and it won the 2017 Blackstone Award for best action game⁶. The game's producer cited a fan base of 40 million for the IP, with core fans and general users in a roughly 2:1 ratio showing similar payment and retention figures⁶.

Funding and spin-offs. The studio reported that the Super Seminary series had surpassed 2 billion cumulative views and had completed a 30 million yuan Series A round, with revenue coming mainly from IP licensing and platform streaming deals⁷. Xiongbinglian was jointly produced by Penguin Pictures, Xinghui Entertainment, and Chaoshen Pictures¹², and its first arc, the Tianhe Campaign, reached 400 million views during its run¹². The 2019 sequel Xiongbinglian: Zhutian Jianglin accumulated 300 million views after its January 24 debut⁹. In 2019 Liu Huai founded a new animation film company, Guangzhou Virtual Pictures, with core members of the Super Seminary team¹³.

Significance for Chinese web animation

Industry commentary has treated the franchise as a case study in how Chinese doujin animation can convert game-derived popularity into an original commercial IP: build an audience with fan animation of a well-known game, raise the proportion of original content season by season, resolve copyright risk, and then monetize through paid streaming, licensing, and games¹⁴. Unlike the renamed My Name is MT, whose popularity fell sharply after its rebrand, Lalala Demacia carried its fan base forward into Super Seminary¹⁴. The first season earned nothing, while later seasons broke even on paid streaming and the game adaptation generated tens of millions of yuan, a progression that shows the monetization path the series opened for original Chinese web animation²^•⁵^•⁶.

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) › Adult animated drama and genre 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?