One of the best 2D-animated Chinese donghua (anime) is A Will Eternal (aka Yi Nian Yong Heng).
Based on the xianxia novel by renowned Chinese author Er Gen, it is one of the most popular and longest fantasy martial arts donghua released in the last few years.
If you like a good cultivation donghua, it should also be on your Must Watch list.
What’s the A Will Eternal plot?
While a typical cultivation story, due to its almost cult-like status in China and internationally, it is also a novel millions of fans of Er Gen’s work were hoping would get a TV series.
That TV series arrived in the form of a BC May-animated donghua in August, 2020, with Season 2 hitting in 2022, and the ongoing Season 3 kicking off in July of this year.
A quick rundown of the first few minutes of its plot goes something like this:
A Will Eternal follows Bai Xiaochun, a crafty albeit sometimes annoying young man who lives in a small village.
He is not particularly gifted, but Bai Xiaochun still has a huge ambition: he wants to live forever, and he is willing to go to great lengths to achieve this goal.
Bai Xiaochun’s journey to immortality begins when he enrolls in the Heavenly River Sect, a sect that trains cultivators in the art of immortality.
Soon he finds himself cultivating much faster than those people around him due to two strange things.
First, he is challenged to a duel by a jealous sect member after Xiaochun is given a job in the spirit food kitchen he wanted.
And second, when asked to choose a wok by the kitchen supervisor, he chooses an old one that may not be quite what it seems.
So, with that introduction out of the way as to why you should watch A Will Eternal, where can you do that for free?
Platforms where you can watch A Will Eternal for free — and legally
As A Will Eternal is a Tencent Penguin Pictures-produced donghua, as you might expect that is also the company licensing it for streaming rights.
That means Tencent is one of only two companies in the west that legally streams A Will Eternal, but it does offer two places where you can watch the donghua.
The first is Tencent’s streaming app/website WeTV, which offers all 128 episodes released so far for free.
Well, Episodes 126-128 are currently listed for VIP subscribers only but, by the time you get to those, they will have been released for everyone else as well.
The second place A Will Eternal is streaming is Tencent Animation’s YouTube channel.
There you can watch every episode for free, and legally, with the first 106 episodes offered in videos of 10-episodes per video. (Watch Episodes 1 through 10 in the video down below).
Be warned, the English subtitles are not as good as they should be, especially in the earlier episodes, but the story is understandable and you are watching the Chinese anime legally, thus supporting the animation studio that created it.
You can also watch A Will Eternal via Viki but, unless you have a subscription to that platform, only the first 10 episodes are free to view.
Viki also doesn’t currently stream any episode after Episode 106, which is only to the end of Season 2.