Mulan (Disney's)

This archery scene is only made for fun in Disney's Mulan animation of course, but they still made some mistakes in it.


Mistakes:

1. Both Mulan and captain Shang shoot left handed in this scene, while they are otherwise right handed.
2. Mulan uses a Mediterranean grip, which is wrong in two ways. Mediterranean grip uses three fingers, Mulan uses only two. The second mistake, they didn't use that release method in China. Asians used mostly Mongolian release, which utilises the thumb holding the string. It requires a thumb ring.
3. Captain Shang shoots three arrows in this scene to show how well the Chinese soldiers must learn archery (and after a training montage Mulan and all the others have learned this trick). Shooting three arrows is possible, but hitting three flying targets and then nailing them to another target is not. Of course, but this is a fun scene, so I won't complain about it anymore. Although I really put the red ring here because there's nothing to keep those arrows holding there.
4. Shang uses four finger grip, but again, it's necessary in this three-arrow-shot. Anyway, usually using four fingers is not a good idea, since it turns the string too much and can effect the flight of the missile. But the real mistake here is the Mediterranean style instead of Mongolian.
5. Arrows don't have any space behind their fletching for fingers to grip and the fletchings do touch both Mulan's and Shang's fingers while they draw.

Good, or... at least okay I guess:

1. Recurve bow, since Asians mostly used these. Although it doesn't look much like a Chinese bow.
2. Hip quiver, again different than real Chinese quivers, but at least it isn't a standard Hollywood back quiver.
3. The arrows are on the left side of the bow here. It would be right if they were shooting with European style, and the bow would be properly on their left hand. But now it's actually not wrong either, since Chinese (as most Asians) shoot the arrow on the thumb side (right side, but in this case, when the characters are mirrored, on the left side). This is most probably a coincidence, they certainly didn't think that much while drawing this scene. It just happened to go right this once. Arrow on the wrong side of the bow is one of the most common mistakes.

And finally a photo from the beginning of the 20th Century. Manchu archers demonstrating Chinese style archery. Note the arrow on the right side, "overdraw" style of shooting, very long fletching on the arrows and typical East Asian quivers with arrows held in place only at their tip.