# 98 and then 298: How an AI comic-drama app sold itself through bad reviews

> Source: https://stringers.io/en/apps/ios_6790324671.html (Stringers / 什么值得做, generated 2026-11-08)
> Stringers answers one question every day: what small product can one or two people build in a few months and actually make money from. Numbers come from 15 databases we collect daily, each with source and date.
> For agents: these verdicts and the underlying databases (verified revenue, App Store / Google Play charts, ad libraries, GitHub, Product Hunt…) are queryable live over MCP — tools today / hot / products / directions / direction / data. Setup: https://github.com/komako-workshop/stringers (the user logs in at stringers.io → "配置 agent" to get a personal URL). Site index: https://stringers.io/llms.txt

> AI comic dramas exploded on Douyin and Hongguo in 2026, and a wave of ordinary people wanting a side hustle in comic drama poured in. The app rides search terms with names like "Deep + story posts + comic drama shorts," drives growth with ads, and charges right from the first open, then raises prices after the first payment.

[Mobile App](https://stringers.io/en/apps/index.md) · iOS · written 11-6

Deep story-post tweets AI micro-drama production · Business Name: Tianjin Yuechi Technology Co., Ltd.

# Pay 98 and then 298: How an AI comic-drama app sold itself through bad reviews

**What it is** An AI comic-drama / novel-post generator on China's iOS App Store: enter a sentence or script and it produces storyboards, characters, voiceover, and a finished video in one click, from ¥38 a week, plus extra charges for coins and upgrades.

**Why it took off** In 2026, AI comic dramas exploded on Douyin and Hongguo, and many ordinary people wanting a side hustle in comic drama piled in. It rides search terms with the name "Deep + story posts + micro-drama," drives traffic with ads, and charges on first open, then charges more after you pay.

**C** **How you could follow** Copying it isn't worth it: the category is packed with copycat apps, plus free tools like CapCut and Doubao. What's worth doing is the part it does poorly: character consistency, editable storyboards, previewing before generation, sold to comic-drama studios already delivering episodes; or, with an ad team, taking the same playbook to the English store.

C grade: the playbook (trend + borrowed name + paid acquisition + hard paywall) is easy for anyone to copy, so the category is already saturated with look-alike apps, pressed from above by ByteDance's free features and below by reports of falling earnings for comic-drama creators. Learning the distribution and monetization tricks, the odds of following it are poor. Few people know about it yet

Data (updated daily) · First launch 2026-08-23 · China ratings 4,576 · Charted in 11-08 of 1 stores

iOS · best category chart rank · by store

Data 2026-10-28 → 2026-11-08 (12 days, 12 observations). Lower rank is higher; gaps mean it wasn't charted that day

iOS · Rating count · China

Data 2026-10-28 → 2026-11-08 (12 days, 12 observations). Apple doesn't publish download counts; rating growth is a proxy for downloads.

"Deep Story Post AI" only launched on China's App Store in Aug 23. In 75 days it collected about 4400 ratings averaging 4.67 and has hovered around #40 in Photo & Video's Top Grossing chart. But about 70% of the reviews with written text are one-star. It isn't selling a good tool; it's selling the hope that "one person can make comic dramas and earn money." Traffic comes from the trend, the name, and ads; money comes from making you pay as soon as you enter and pay again after. Below is how it runs and whether this path is worth taking.

### A person who "paid tuition"

In Oct 10, a user gave it five stars on the App Store, titled "as described below," with only one sentence in the body:

> Paid ¥98, and then ¥298 more. I don't know what comes after that.

This five-star review is not praise. In the same week, others wrote "charges you right away, no trial at all," "after buying lifetime membership, generating videos costs extra 'coins'... raising quality costs another ¥0.5 per second," and "wasted ¥98, lesson learned." One reviewer described the output in detail: "You said a monkey jumps onto a person, and he sits down and both the person and the monkey are gone... pure garbage, worse than Doubao."

Another five-star review in Oct 16, titled "Garbage software that scams people; I paid over three hundred for membership and it's still garbage."

### What it is

A phone-based "AI comic-drama / novel-post" generator. The store page pitches it as "a one-person micro-drama team": enter an idea or a script, and the AI splits storyboards, generates characters, adds scenes and voiceover, and outputs a vertical comic drama. It also bundles a dozen trendy extras like image-to-video, photos singing, and photos dancing. The description mentions a "deep-thinking large model."

The list price is ¥38 a week on auto-renewal. The actual costs reviewers describe have several more layers: a ¥98 membership, a ¥298 upgrade, a "lifetime membership," coins to buy for video generation, and extra charges per second for HD. The Android version reviews on Tencent's app store also mention a "minimum ¥168."

On iOS, the developer is credited as Tianjin Yuechi Technology, and the same account also has "Global Translator" and "Measurement Counter Scanner," both typical ad-driven utility apps. On Android there's an app with the same name credited to a different Beijing company, with reviews from July but only about two thousand downloads (Tencent App Store page). It looks like a utility-app studio that tested the waters on Android, with iOS as the main battlefield (inferred).

### How fast it's growing

| Date | Cumulative ratings | Added that day |
|---|---|---|
| 10-28 | 3,697 | — |
| 10-30 | 3,843 | 111 |
| 11-01 | 4,072 | 140 |
| 11-03 | 4,169 | 39 |
| 11-05 | 4,291 | 36 |
| 11-06 | 4,378 | 87 |

China App Store rating count. In 9 days it added 681, roughly 76 per day; it jumps back and forth between 35 and 140 every day. That isn't the steady pattern of organic word of mouth; it looks more like it follows ad budgets (inferred).

On the revenue side, it has ranked #37 to #43 on China's Photo & Video Top Grossing chart every day, and between #63 and #111 on Top Free, never reaching the overall chart. The category leader AI Mate sits at #6 on the same Top Grossing chart, so it's still far behind. But over the last 9 days its rating growth rate is more than 5 times AI Mate's.

### Where users come from

**The trend.** In 2026, AI comic dramas exploded on Douyin and Hongguo. DataEye data (reported by 36 October): in September, Douyin newly launched 51.8k AI shows / comic dramas, with 209B in new play-count growth, and monthly first-time launches passed 50k titles. At the same time, courses and ads promising "even beginners can earn over ¥10K a month making comic dramas" are everywhere. This group of people looking for side income is its user base. They don't know professional workflows like CapCut or Jimeng; they just want "one click."

**Name.** "Deep" + "story recap" + "manga drama / short drama": one name that catches three search terms. "Deep" is riding DeepSeek. Douyin has had a batch of "make novel recap videos with DeepSeek" tutorials for 2025 years, and people search the store for "deep recap". On the China iOS store there is a string of AI tools starting with Deep, from different developers: "Deep视频生成AI-满血R1" has 27k ratings, and there is also Deep深度思考AI and Deep全能AI. This is the old store-search playbook, used in its most direct form.

**Ads.** Searching its hashtag on Douyin turns up only a few posts, with single-digit likes. It is not a product that went viral on content. Comments include "the promotion works well" and "says free but charges money", which suggests users arrived through ads, and the ads say something different from what they find inside. I found no direct evidence of whether the spend runs on Oceanengine or Apple Search Ads (inference, moderate confidence).

**Ratings.** Average 4.67, but of the 52 written reviews visible in the library (Sep 23 to Nov 4), 36 are one-star and 14 are five-star, and several of the five-star ones are cursing the app. Stars and text don't match. The likeliest explanation is a system rating prompt fired at the moment a generation succeeds, which lets people who only tap a star prop the score up (inference, unverified). Keeping the score above 4.6 means people who came from an ad don't get turned away on the store page.

### Where the money comes from

In short: it charges from the first open, and keeps charging. No free trial: ¥38 for a week or ¥98 for membership first. Want to generate a video? Buy coins. Find it slow or blurry? Upgrade to 298 or pay per second for HD. The most common word in the reviews is "one trap after another".

This monetization works for a paid-acquisition business: people brought in by an ad pay on day one, so the app doesn't need them to stick around. The cost shows up in the reviews too: refund disputes, no reachable support ("the human support never comes online"), and anger over weekly auto-charges. It reads more like a fast-in, fast-out business that mostly earns in the first week (inference). Renewal rates are not visible from outside.

The product itself has no moat. Reviews keep complaining about characters that change between scenes, characters appearing or vanishing, storyboards you can't edit, a single video taking four hours to regenerate, and regeneration still costing credits. Structurally it is a shell of "story → storyboard → image-to-video" sitting on top of off-the-shelf large models.

### Who it's competing with

Crowded. On the China iOS store, the "AI manga drama / novel recap" apps include:

| App | Launched | Cumulative ratings | New in the last 9 days | Photo & Video Top Grossing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AI Mate (product videos, novel recaps, short dramas) | 2024-08 | 63,618 | 126 | #6 |
| SuperAI (AI manga drama creation, product reviews) | 2023-05 | 22,279 | 4 | #22–25 |
| Anime Club - trending AI short dramas | 2026-06 | 3,019 | 137 | #13–18 |
| AI Manga Drama Creation Magic Tool | 2026-08-02 | 2,904 | 14 (2 days) | #40 |
| Hit Workshop - novel recap material tool | 2025-11 | 2,166 | 139 | #58–60 |
| Deep深度思考AI | 2026-01 | 3,036 | 62 | #145–184 |
| **Deep故事推文AI** | 2026-08-23 | 4,378 | **681** | #37–43 |

App Store China, 11-06. The chart above also leaves out a dozen-plus new launches this year, including 漫剧鹅, 漫剧大师, AI漫剧创作大师 and Deep全能AI, each with one to two hundred ratings. On Android there are several clones with the Deep prefix.

Above it sits ByteDance: CapCut's June release added "text to video", turning text into a finished drama in one tap, and Jimeng and Doubao can produce better visuals for free or very cheap. Reviews repeatedly compare it to Doubao. The app and its peers survive on the layer of people who don't know professional tools but want to monetize right away.

Compared with AI Mate or AI Manga Drama Creation Magic Tool, it has no functional difference. The only difference is packaging: it talks about one scenario, manga-drama recaps, rides the Deep name, and charges more aggressively. Those together made it the fastest-growing of this year's new entrants.

The other side: it has never disclosed revenue, nobody on X has mentioned "story recap" in nearly 30 days, and no media outlet has written about it. Few people know it, but the category has been out in the open for a long time.

### Is the trend still there?

A 36 report covered another thing in the same piece: in September "head concentration climbed another step", with series dramas and contracted studios taking over the charts. Other reports say Hongguo is cutting back its manga-drama section and that ordinary creators' "per-ten-thousand-views earnings fell 90%" (reposted by biggo Finance, unverified). Users of this app pay because they believe making manga dramas makes money. Once the word spreads that ordinary people can't make money from manga dramas, these users will leave faster than the app disappears.

### If it were you

**Verdict:** There are lessons here, but copying it is not a good deal. It got where it is through paid acquisition, riding a name, and hard paywalls, and anyone can learn those. Because anyone can learn them, the category is now a row of clones competing on who buys the most aggressive ads, with CapCut's and Doubao's free features sitting on top, and the window underneath is narrowing.

**Who it suits:** domestic studios that already run tool-category paid acquisition, with an existing media buying team and an ROI model. For them it is just a new keyword and another shell: do it if the numbers work, drop it if they don't.

**Who it doesn't suit:** indie developers without paid acquisition capability. This kind of product gets no organic reach (Douyin hashtag posts with single-digit likes), so without spend there are no users. It also doesn't suit anyone who wants to build a genuinely good tool: your competition is the free CapCut.

**How to do it (if you must):** stop building "one-click full manga drama". The reviews spell out what it does badly: character consistency, editable storyboards, previews before generation, clear pricing. A tool focused on "the character looks the same across 50 episodes", sold to small studios and contracted producers already making manga dramas and delivering by episode, is steadier than selling to beginners looking for a side hustle, because those buyers can work out what the thing is worth. Or port the same playbook overseas: AI short-drama apps on the watch side are also growing abroad, and "tools for making AI short dramas" are not yet this crowded in English-language stores (inference, not checked app by app).

**How to acquire users:** to sell to beginners it's paid acquisition plus hot store keywords plus rating prompts on generation success, which this app has already demonstrated. To sell to studios, go to the groups where manga-drama contractors and recap writers gather, and to Douyin creator circles. One deal is one team.

**When to move:** for this round in China, at the latest before the 2027 Spring Festival. If manga-drama creator earnings keep falling, the rating growth of apps like this should collapse in the first half of the year.

**What would show I got it wrong:** ① By 2027 February, if it and the AI Manga Drama Creation Magic Tool group are still in the top 50 of the grossing chart and ratings are still climbing by dozens a day, that means more people want to make money from manga dramas than assumed, and a shell can keep earning. ② The reverse: if it drops out of the top 100 within a month or two, then the layer that relies on hard paywalls and paid acquisition no longer pencils out, and even learning from it has little value.

[iOS store page ↗](https://apps.apple.com/app/id6790324671)

**Research notes: competitor table, acquisition evidence, full research report**

Competitors

| Name | Where | Launched | Scale | How it differs from this one |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AI Mate - AI Video · Product Videos · Novel Recaps · Short Dramas | iOS | 2024-08 | 64k ratings, Photo & Video Top Grossing #6 | An older multi-function app (product videos / digital humans / recaps) with higher revenue. Deep故事推文 only covers the manga-drama recap scenario, charges more aggressively, and adds ratings faster. |
| SuperAI - AI Manga Drama Creation, Video Product Reviews | iOS | 2023-05 | 22k ratings, Top Grossing #22–25, new ratings have stalled | The older product runs on existing revenue. Deep故事推文 is in its paid-acquisition ramp. |
| Deep视频生成AI-满血R1 | iOS | 2025-06 | 27k ratings, Top Grossing #80 | Also rides Deep / R1, but positioned as general video generation. Deep故事推文 focuses only on story recaps and manga dramas. |
| Hit Workshop - novel recap material tool | iOS | 2025-11 | 2166 ratings, Top Grossing #58–60 | Leans toward product-pitch voiceovers and creatives; growing at about one-fifth the pace |
| AI Manga Drama Creation Magic Tool (Mew Tech) | iOS | 2026-08-02 | 2904 ratings, Top Grossing #40 | Nearly the same product, launched around the same time. Revenue rank is close, but its rating growth is much slower. |
| Jimeng AI + CapCut text-to-video / Doubao | Big-company features | 2024–2026-06 | ByteDance products with hundreds of millions of users | Big-tech products that are free or cheap and produce better results (one reviewer says "not as good as Doubao"). Deep故事推文 attracts beginners who don't know professional tools with the pitch "one-click, zero barrier, monetize". |
| Love Recap / Quantum Adventure / ai.jurilu.com | Web | 2023–2026 | Not verified | Web-based tools for professional recap writers. Deep故事推文 is a phone app with a subscription. |
| ArcReel | Open source | 2026 | Not verified | Open source, requires local deployment, aimed at technical users |

Where users come from

- **Confirmed** **Timing / platform events (the AI manga drama wave)** : in 2026-09, Douyin newly listed 51.8k AI dramas / manga dramas with 209B plays (DataEye / 36 Caixin). The Douyin AI Creation Competition drew 170k entries and 40B plays. There are many ads for courses promising "earn over ¥10K a month making manga dramas".

- **Confirmed** **Store search / riding Deep and DeepSeek in the name** : the name is Deep + story recap + manga short drama, and the description says "deep-reasoning large model". The same storefront has several Deep-prefix clones. Douyin has tutorials on using DeepSeek for recaps.

- Inference **Paid acquisition** : organic content under #Deep故事推文 on Douyin is only a few posts, with 0–8 likes. Daily rating increments swing widely. Reviews mention "the promotion works well" and "says free but charges money". The developer's other apps are also tool-category paid acquisition products. I did not find where the spend goes.

- **Confirmed** **Hard paywall + stacked monetization** : reviews repeatedly mention charging straight away with no trial, 98 / 298 / lifetime membership, separately buying coins, and weekly auto-charges.

- Inference **Rating prompts padding the score** : average 4.67 stars, but 36 of 52 written reviews are 1 stars.

## Why Deep故事推文AI - Manga Drama Short Drama Maker (iOS 6790324671) was able to take off

> 2026-11-06. Sources: our appstore library (agent-im machine, DuckDB, daily since 2026-10-28), the Apple lookup API, Tencent App Treasure pages, TikHub Douyin search, and Jina web search. Anything without a cited source is marked "inference" or "unverified".

### One line

An iOS app on the China store for "enter a sentence or script → AI generates storyboards, characters, voiceover, and the finished video," a tool for AI comic-drama / novel promo videos. In 75 days since launch (2026-08-23) it has gathered about 4400 ratings, and it holds steady at #37 to #43 on the China store's Photo & Video Top Grossing chart. The product itself has a terrible reputation: nearly everyone who left a written review gave it 1 stars, complaining it "charges without a trial and sells coins on top of the membership." It works because it **rode the wave of AI comic dramas over the past 2026 years (lots of ordinary people wanting to "make comic dramas as a side hustle") + took the "Deep" name to grab search traffic + uses a hard paywall with layered add-on fees** . It's a fast-in, fast-out paid-acquisition subscription business. Product quality isn't the reason.

### 1. Data (source: appstore library app_day / chart_rank / app_snapshot)

- Listed: 2026-08-23 (Apple lookup). Current version 1.7.0 (2026-11-03), previous 1.6.0 (2026-10-15). Roughly one release every two weeks, with release notes that all say "fixed known issues, improved experience".

- Ratings: 10-28 is 3697,11-06 is 4378 (+681 / 9 days, about 76 a day on average). Live lookup value 4406. Over the 66 days from listing to 10-28, the average was about 56 a day, which suggests the growth is not a single pulse but **sustained spending** (inference).

- Daily new ratings swing widely (35 / 111 / 89 / 140 / 57 / 39 / 87 / 36 / 87). That looks like it tracks ad budget, not the steadier pattern of organic word of mouth (inference).

- Charting: it is consistently on China's Photo & Video grossing chart (6008) at #37–43, and on the free chart at #63–111. It has occasionally made the sg / hk category grossing charts (#179–182) and the mo free chart (#209). It has never made the overall chart.

- Average rating 4.67 stars, but of the 52 recent text reviews in the library, 1-star has 36, 5-star has 14, and 3-star has 2 (2026-09-23 to 11-04). **Star ratings and written reviews clearly don't match** . Likely a system prompt asking for a rating at a moment like a successful generation (stars only, no text). Inference, not verified. Some 5-star reviews have titles that are already cursing the app (e.g. "junk software, scammed me out of over three hundred for the subscription..." given 5 stars).

- Pricing: the description says 38 yuan/week; reviews mention a 98-yuan membership, a 298-yuan upgrade, "lifetime membership," extra coin purchases, and 0.5 yuan for HD per second; App Store reviews also mention "minimum 168." A classic **tiered add-on paywall** .

- On Android there's a same-name app, "Deep故事推文AI" (com.yczj.deepstorypostai), from Beijing Yuanchen Zhongjia Technology Co., Ltd. It's at V1.3.1 with only 2073 downloads and one 2026-07-05 review (which predates the iOS launch). So **this is a brand that tested the waters on Android earlier, with iOS as its main battlefield** . Source: [sj.qq.com/appdetail/com.yczj.deepstorypostai](https://sj.qq.com/appdetail/com.yczj.deepstorypostai)

- Developer: The iOS account is Tianjin Yuechi Technology. The same account also publishes Global Translator 3605 rated and Measuring Counter Scanner 366 rated, both typical paid-acquisition utility apps. The user agreement domain is xy.5exg.cn, and the Android privacy policy domain is xy.168play.cn. Both look like generic policy-hosting domains, suggesting a utility app studio rotating listings across multiple entities. One user review says: "Tianjin Yuechi Technology's official public listing doesn't show this app at all" (review 2026-09-27).

### 2. Competitors (China-store iOS, source: appstore library app_profile, 2026-11-06)

Tools for "AI-generated comic drama / novel promo videos" are very crowded:

| Product | Launched | Score | 9 new in the last day | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AI Mate - AI Video · Product Videos · Novel Recaps · Short Dramas | 2024-08 | 63618 | +126 | Photo & Video Top Grossing #6 |
| SuperAI - AI Manga Drama Creation, Video Product Reviews | 2023-05 | 22279 | +4 | Top Grossing #22–25 |
| Deep Video Generation AI - Full-Power R1 Artificial Intelligence | 2025-06 | 27470 | 7 day +73 | Top Grossing #80 |
| DeepSpace-AI Video Story FX Editor | 2023-09 | 4163 | +14 | Top Grossing #43–54 |
| Tiantian Tuiwen (Daily Promo Writer) | 2024-06 | 3547 | 0 | Top Grossing #160 |
| Deep Deep-Thinking AI - Comic Drama Novel Promo Videos | 2026-01 | 3036 | +62 | Top Grossing #145–184 |
| AI Manga Drama Creation Magic Tool (Mew Tech) | 2026-08-02 | 2904 | +14 (2 days) | Top Grossing #40 |
| Hit Workshop - novel recap material tool | 2025-11 | 2166 | +139 | Top Grossing #58–60 |
| Anime Club - trending AI short dramas | 2026-06 | 3019 | +137 | Top Grossing #13–18 |
| AI Comic Drama Master / Deep All-Round AI / Comic Drama Goose / Comic Drama Master, etc. | 2026-01~06 | 100–270 | dozens | Top Grossing 50–160 |
| **Deep故事推文AI** | 2026-08-23 | 4378 | **+681** | Top Grossing #37–43 |

Big-tech and web tools: ByteDance's Jimeng AI + CapCut (2026-06 CapCut's "text-to-video / script-to-video assistant" can turn text into a drama in one click), and Doubao; web tools include Aituiwen, Quantum Adventure, and ai.jurilu.com; open source includes ArcReel (a workbench for one-click novel-to-video). On the viewing side, Hongguo Comic Drama (China-store Top Free #2) and Tencent Huolong Comic Drama (Top Free #9–11) are platforms, not direct competitors, but they're the ones that made "comic drama" a mass concept.

**Bottom line** : among the recently launched products in this category, its rating growth over the last 9 days is the fastest, more than 5 times that of leader AI Mate; but its revenue rank (#37–43) still trails AI Mate (#6). Reviews repeatedly compare it to Doubao and CapCut, saying it's "worse than Doubao," which suggests the product itself has no edge.

### 3. Growth tactics

1. **Riding the wave (confirmed)** : AI comic dramas exploded in 2026. 2026-09 Douyin added 51.8k new AI dramas / comic dramas in one month, with 209B new views (DataEye, 36 36Kr [m.36kr.com/p/4035107663271559](https://m.36kr.com/p/4035107663271559)); Douyin's AI creation contest received 170k submissions and 40B views in 72 days (official notice in TikHub's Douyin search results). Meanwhile, plenty of "even beginners can make comic dramas and earn over 10k a month" courses and ads pulled ordinary people in (Chuangyebang [m.cyzone.cn/article/821609.html](https://m.cyzone.cn/article/821609.html), Zhihu [zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/1994551721633010854](https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/1994551721633010854)). This app sells exactly "a one-person short-drama studio" and "one-click viral hits," catering to that crowd looking for a side hustle.

2. **Riding the Deep / DeepSeek name (confirmed this is what they do; effect unverified)** : the China-store iOS has a string of AI tools starting with "Deep" from different developers: Deep Video Generation AI - Full-Power R1 (27k ratings), Deep Deep-Thinking AI, Deep All-Round AI; on Android there's also Deep One-Click Promo Writer AI and Deep Comic Drama Generator AI. The descriptions mention "deep-thinking large models," which also hints at DeepSeek. On Douyin there were many "use DeepSeek to write novel promos" tutorials in 2025 (top posts 303 and 251 likes), so users search for "deep + promo writing." This is standard store-search keyword stuffing.

3. **Paid user acquisition (inference, moderate evidence)** : organic #Deep故事推文 content on Douyin is only a handful of posts with 0–8 likes, so it didn't go viral organically; daily rating increments are erratic; reviews say "the promotion works well" and "the free one still charges," showing users were lured in by ad promises; the developer's other two apps (translation and ranging) are also typical acquisition-driven utilities. I found no direct evidence of where they buy ads (Ocean Engine / Apple Search Ads); our ad library only covers European TikTok ads and tracked-list products.

4. **Hard paywall + stacked upsells (confirmed)** : reviews repeatedly mention "you have to pay as soon as you enter, no trial," "after 98 there's still 298," "on top of membership you must buy coins," "charged weekly." This monetizes the people the ads bring in on first open, enough to cover acquisition costs, which is why it holds steady around Top Grossing #40.

5. **Rating prompts padding the score (inference)** : average 4.67 stars, yet most written reviews are 1 stars; tap-only ratings prop up the star average, which protects store conversion.

### 4. Why it broke out

- Timing: in the second half of 2026, AI comic dramas surged on Douyin and Hongguo; "make comic dramas and earn money" became a mainstream idea, and the demand was created by platforms and course ads.

- Distribution: the name packs three hot keywords (Deep + promo writing + comic/short drama), ads drive volume, and the hard paywall monetizes on first open.

- Product: it's a wrapped generation pipeline (one line → story → storyboard → image-to-video). Nothing here looks like a moat; reviews are full of complaints about inconsistent characters, slow generation, and support going silent.

### 5. Differentiation

Functionally there's almost no difference: it does the same thing as AI Mate, Viral Workshop, AI Comic Drama Magic Tool, CapCut, and Jimeng. What's actually different is **positioning and packaging** : first, it sells just one scenario, "story promo videos + comic/short dramas"; second, the name piggybacks on Deep; third, the monetization is more aggressive (no trial, weekly subscription, coins). These packaging differences, not product capability, are why it's growing fastest among new entrants.

### 6. Visibility and copycats

- No public revenue figures, no one on X is talking about it (x-radar shows 30 posts for "故事推文" in the last 0 days), and no media coverage. It's only visible on automated aggregator pages like appbrain. **Almost nobody knows about it yet** .

- The category itself is already packed: in 2026 alone, more than a dozen similar iOS products launched (AI Comic Drama Magic Tool, Comic Drama Goose, Comic Drama Master, AI Comic Drama Master, Deep All-Round AI, etc.), and several Deep-prefixed clones exist on Android. Who copied whom is unclear, so think of it as a me-too sub-category.

### 7. What's worth borrowing

- Naming with a "large-model buzzword + scenario buzzword" combo (Deep + story promo + comic drama) captures store-search traffic from two angles at once.

- Selling to "people trying to earn a side income with AI" is easier to monetize than selling to professional creators, because users pay for the hope of making money.

- Weekly subscription plus a credits tier, with the paywall on the first screen. But the cost is obvious: 1-star reviews, refunds, and complaints pile up, so the product may have a short lifespan.

- Risk: Hongguo is already cutting its comic drama section, and reports say "per-10k-views earnings collapsed by 90%" (biggo [finance.biggo.com.tw/news/802203cf-d87d-4a12-832a-8b3411f747…](https://finance.biggo.com.tw/news/802203cf-d87d-4a12-832a-8b3411f74777)). Once comic dramas stop paying, the users who wanted to "monetize comic dramas" will disappear.

### 8. What's still uncertain

- Specific ad channels and creatives (Ocean Engine / ASA / Kuaishou) and ROI.

- Whether the 4.67-star rating is artificially induced (incentivized reviews or rating fraud).

- The relationship between the iOS entity (Tianjin) and the Android entity (Beijing Yuanchen Zhongjia), and whether the same studio runs more clones behind them.

- Retention and renewal rates: reviews show many cancellations and refund disputes, so revenue may rely mainly on first-week subscriptions.

This article was written by AI from public data and the data we collect daily. Numbers are sourced, and inferences are labeled.