*Breaking Through the Book Together, Mutual Rush* Has Been Taken Down! This Time, the AI Motion Comic Went Too Far

This is blowing up! The controversy around this wave of AI comic dramas is far more than an ordinary flop. Recently, Transmigrating Into a Book to Rise Against the Odds, Running Toward Each Other shot into the spotlight because of its absurd premise: right from the start, the female lead Lin Shiliu is written as a “pomegranate spirit” who transmigrates into the heroine of a tragic romance, and then it immediately throws out a plotline where she “gives birth to 999 babies in 8 hours.” Viewers weren’t just shocked after watching it—their blood pressure practically hit the ceiling. Even more outrageous, the male lead jokes that “not even a Gatling can match how much this woman can give birth,” and this treatment—turning childbirth into a punchline and women into a gimmick—instantly set off public outrage.

Now here comes the key part. Online discussion around this work quickly split into two camps: some people thought it was just absurdist trolling and not worth taking too seriously; but far more netizens directly blasted it, arguing that this kind of setup is not only disrespectful to women, but also completely defies basic common sense, serving purely to force conflict for the sake of sensational traffic. On April 16, Beijing News published an article naming and criticizing it, with a heavy-hitting headline: “‘Giving Birth to 999 Babies in 8 Hours’: AI Comic Dramas Cannot Be Vulgar, Sensational, and Entirely Without Bottom Lines,” directly pointing at this kind of content for harvesting attention through anti-intellectual premises and dragging the content ecosystem further and further off course.

But! What is really worth watching is not just whether this one title gets taken down. On April 17, reporters confirmed that Transmigrating Into a Book to Rise Against the Odds, Running Toward Each Other had already been removed from major short drama platforms, and related information was basically no longer searchable. This shows that the fermenting public backlash and criticism from official media did indeed trigger immediate action. But the problem is also right here: does taking it down feel like defeating one monster while the map keeps spawning smaller ones? Investigations show that similar AI comic drama themes like “giving birth to 999 children” have not disappeared. Pomegranate’s Hundred Babies Season 2 is still online, and although its first season had previously been taken down for violations, the second season is still able to keep running.

This completely exposes the industry’s weak points. Right now, after many problematic works are dealt with, producers often only need to make minor revisions, and at worst the punishment is simply removal—a cost so absurdly low that it effectively gives some people room to repeatedly test the boundaries. Beijing News made its position very clear this time: the key to governance is not just deleting things quickly, but extending the accountability chain—for example, by establishing stricter traceability mechanisms, putting producers whose works are penalized for vulgarity and distorted values onto key review lists, and directly banning repeat offenders’ accounts and placing them on blacklists. That would be real enforcement.

Looking at regulation, the new rules for AI short dramas that officially took effect on April 1 actually laid out the framework quite clearly. All AI comic dramas must be labeled “AI-generated,” and they explicitly prohibit vulgar borderline content, grotesque rewrites of classics, unauthorized use of real people’s likenesses, and similar behavior. At the same time, new productions must be “filed before release,” specifically to block the old routine of chasing traffic first and completing the paperwork later. The National Radio and Television Administration has also stated that it will continue to monitor the development of AI technology, strengthen value guidance, build a solid cultural security barrier, and keep purifying the online audiovisual ecosystem.

From the perspective of content trends, AI short dramas will definitely continue to increase, but a larger quantity does not mean people can do whatever they want. No matter how fast the technology runs, if the direction is wrong, it will only accelerate disaster. This issue is a reminder to platforms, creators, and audiences alike: don’t mistake outrageousness for creativity, don’t treat vulgarity as a traffic formula, and above all, don’t turn women’s issues and childbirth into cheap jokes. My judgment is very straightforward: platform review is only going to get stricter from here, and for accounts that repeatedly cross the line, what they face in the future will not be something as light as mere takedowns. That saying is absolutely right: as technology moves upward, the bottom line cannot move downward.