General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

Tiger Crane (虎鹤妖师录)

Tiger Crane (虎鹤妖师录, also written 虎×鹤妖师录; English title Tiger and Crane) is a Chinese xuanhuan (Eastern fantasy) manhua created by the cartoonist Huang Xiaoda (黄晓达), serialized on webcomic platforms since 2010 and still unfinished, which has been adapted into a 2023 live-action drama on iQIYI and a 2024 3D animated series on Bilibili.¹^•² The story follows two mismatched young demon masters, the wild orphan Hu Zi (虎子) and the aristocratic imperial demon-master captain Qi Xiaoxuan (祁晓轩), whose fates become entangled through a treasure called the red pearl (赤珠).¹

Key fact	Detail
Original work	Manhua by Huang Xiaoda, serialized from 2010 on a webcomic platform, still unfinished¹
Popularity (2015)	About 600 million cumulative clicks on the Youyaoqi platform after five years of serialization²
Live-action drama	Premiered 2 October 2023 on iQIYI; 36 episodes of about 45 minutes; directed by Guo Hu³^•⁴
Drama cast	Jiang Long as Hu Zi, Zhang Linghe as Qi Xiaoxuan, with Wang Yuwen, Ye Qing, He Landou, and Chen Youwei⁵
Animated series	3D donghua, 24 episodes, premiered 5 October 2024 on Bilibili; chief director Zhao Bingle; animation by Motion Magic (幻维数码)⁶^•⁷
Animation reception	Bilibili score of 9.7, level with the platform's most popular donghua, but per-episode views about one tenth of theirs⁸

Spoilers

Story and world

The story is set 500 years after a war between the human race and the demon race. In that war the demon race was gravely weakened, and humans founded the Guoyu Yaoshi (国御妖师), an organization of demon masters tasked with hunting down the remaining demons.¹ In the climactic ancient battle, human demon masters sealed away the great demons with cultivation of over 500 years, while weaker demons were left for the Guoyu Yaoshi to handle.⁸

The present-day plot begins when the organization is escorting the treasure known as the red pearl and demons ambush the convoy.¹ The optimistic mountain orphan Hu Zi accidentally swallows the pearl, a treasure of supreme yang energy, and is forced to travel with Qi Xiaoxuan, the cold, fastidious captain of the Guoyu Yaoshi who was charged with finding a replacement pearl.³^•¹³ Along the way they are joined by companions including Zhao Xintong (赵馨彤) and Wang Yuqian (王羽千), and the group uncovers a conspiracy inside the Guoyu Yaoshi and the truth of the war five hundred years earlier, while the sealed demon army stirs.¹³^•⁸

A literary review in Wenyi Bao highlights the work's treatment of its characters: humans, demons, and even sentient magical artifacts each have their own temperaments and aims, and the line between good and evil is often blurred. Hu Zi's extraordinary talent is tied to demons, Qi Xiaoxuan carries a "twin soul" in his body, and the elder who guides the protagonists, the Immortal Yi Mei, keeps demons and kills without scruple. The review reads this moral ambiguity, layered over the shonen-manga core of friendship, effort, and victory, as the work's distinctive suspenseful quality.¹

The manhua

Huang Xiaoda began serializing the comic in 2010 on a webcomic platform, and it remained unfinished more than a decade later.¹ It originally ran on the platform Youyaoqi (有妖气) and later moved to Bilibili Comics.⁹ By October 2015, after five years of serialization, it had accumulated about 600 million clicks, and the production company Beijing Zhengzaisheng Media described it as a top-ranked work in the costume-fantasy category.² A December 2015 industry report listed it seventh among Youyaoqi comics by monthly votes, with 539.¹⁰ The comic has continued to run; a reading site listed chapter 561 as the latest installment.¹¹

One commentary on comic-adapted dramas describes the work differently, calling it a 2012 Hong Kong comic with a relatively narrow readership.¹² The Chinese-language sources that cover the work directly consistently date the serialization to 2010 on a mainland webcomic platform.¹^•⁸

Live-action drama (2023)

The live-action series was directed by Guo Hu and adapted from the manhua, with Jiang Long and Zhang Linghe as the lead male actors, Wang Yuwen and Ye Qing as lead female actors, He Landou in a special appearance, Chen Youwei as a guest lead, and Wang Ji and Fan Ming among the supporting cast.⁵ Filming began on 15 January 2022 and wrapped on 14 May 2022, when the director announced the completion.⁵ Development had taken two to three years, with the longest phase being finding the adaptation's positioning; because the comic was long-running and unfinished, the screenwriters had to expand the material, organize the plot lines, and complete the worldview.¹⁴

The series premiered on iQIYI on 2 October 2023 and ran for 36 completed episodes of about 45 minutes each.³^•⁴ iQIYI listed it among its 2023 originals for international release, with subtitles in more than ten languages and Dolby sound.¹³ Reception was mixed: an animation review in The Paper described the 2023 drama as having altered the plot excessively and suffering poor word of mouth.⁸

Animated series (2024)

A 3D animated series produced by Bilibili premiered on 5 October 2024, with 24 episodes airing weekly on Saturdays through March 2025.⁶^•⁷ The chief director is Zhao Bingle (赵丙乐), whose previous work includes Battle Through the Heavens and its well-regarded special "The Thirty-Year Promise"; the animation studio is Motion Magic (幻维数码).⁶^•⁸ The adaptation covers roughly the first 100 chapters of the comic, telling how Hu Zi and Qi Xiaoxuan come to know each other, fight demons together, and then set out on their separate paths.¹

Action design. The animation review in The Paper praised the fight choreography as the production's strength: each character has a distinct technique, such as Qi Xiaoxuan's Yumo Jue, which manipulates ink through a purple-gold writing brush and can summon a crane for wide-area attacks, and the production used "black-and-white flash" frames, a technique common in 2D hand-drawn animation, to heighten impact in 3D. It singled out episode 11, a life-and-death duel between Zhao Xintong's father and the demon Heifeng, as a roughly 20-minute continuous battle that also served character development, calling it one of the best single episodes of Chinese animation in 2024.⁸

Reception. On Bilibili the donghua scored 9.7, level with the platform's most popular Chinese animations A Record of a Mortal's Journey to Immortality and Mu Shen Ji, yet its per-episode view counts were only about one tenth of those works', a gap that commenters frequently noted.⁸ A Wenyi Bao review credited the adaptation with a solid story core and rich presentation that let it stand out among comparable works.¹

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › International serial drama and telenovelas › East Asian drama series › East Asian web and streaming serials › Titles Sp to Z

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

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