Chinese streaming and anime giant Bilibili has announced the release of AniSora, an advanced open-source AI model designed specifically for anime video generation. The model, trained on over 10 million clips from 1 million animated videos, allows users to create fully animated scenes from simple prompts, images, or frame sequences—all with a single click.
Bilibili, known for producing hit series like Fire Force, Link Click, and The Heike Story, is positioning AniSora as a breakthrough tool aimed at speeding up animation workflows and lowering barriers for indie creators and smaller studios. The model supports a wide range of anime styles, from manga-based adaptations to VTuber content.
Unlike generic text-to-video tools, AniSora offers advanced creative control. Users can animate specific elements within a scene—such as a character’s facial expression or a waving cape—while keeping the background static. The model also supports multi-task learning, enabling it to handle complex tasks like lip-syncing alongside general animation, which is especially useful for dialogue-heavy content.
AniSora is designed to reflect the detail and precision of traditional animation but with significantly less manual effort. It also includes features like reference-based generation and localized motion control, helping it maintain consistency and stylistic coherence across frames.
The launch of AniSora comes at a time when the animation industry is increasingly divided over the use of AI. While Bilibili highlights the potential to speed up processes like inbetweening and storyboarding—often seen as production bottlenecks—the model’s reliance on unlicensed data has drawn criticism. Since AniSora was trained on videos the company did not own, some artists and studios have expressed concerns about its potential to compete with original content and blur ethical lines.
Bilibili joins other major players like Netflix and KADOKAWA in embracing AI tools for animation production. However, not all industry voices agree—platforms like Crunchyroll have taken a more cautious stance, rejecting the use of AI-generated content in their productions.
As the debate continues, AniSora represents both a technological leap forward and a new flashpoint in the conversation around creativity, ethics, and automation in anime.
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