After a three-and-a-half-years gestation period, General Lijing's wife finally gives birth. But instead of a child, it is a strange fleshy ball like the closed petals of a plant. Slicing it open with his sword, Lijing finds a tiny finger-sized boy inside. The immortal Taiyi arrives on a crane, bestowing Nezha (for so he is named) with the Cloth of Celestial Confusion and the Cosmic Ring. The boy soon grows up, but the land of his birth is constantly troubled by the predations of four dragon kings who bring storms, floods, fire and ice to the humans.
The first wide-screen feature animation made in China, NEZHA CONQUERS THE DRAGON KING combines several elements from The Creation of the Gods (Feng shen yanyi), a Ming Dynasty chronicle of ancient myths. As with many other Shanghai Animation Studio productions, there is an inevitable connection to the Monkey King, though this one is distant: Nezha also appears as one of Monkey's foes in UPROAR IN HEAVEN. This might make him seem like a strange choice for a feature, but the movie's subtextual appeal takes on new meaning in the light of the earlier fall of a very different Gang of Four in 1976: the real-world enemies were not Dragon Kings, but the instigators of the Cultural Revolution. The folktale is well-known in the rest of Asia, and is the remote inspiration for the Japanese anime LEGEND OF THE FOUR KINGS.
Jonathan Clements