Cherry Cherry, a manga artist who has gained popularity through the manga and anime Cherry Maruko, died of breast cancer at the age of 53 on the evening of August 15.
The editorial board of RIBON, a serial magazine of the manga Cherry Maruko, Cherry's personal blog, and Fuji TV, also published obituary reports expressing their condolences.
After learning the news, netizens left messages thanking Ms. Miura for bringing them childhood memories.
Fuji TV also announced that in honor of Miura Miyuki, it will change the content of the "Cherry Maruko" anime that aired on September 2, and one of the episodes will be changed to a remake of the first episode of the original anime, "Quarrel with My Sister".
01
Big god-level IP "Cherry Pills"
Cherry Maruko is known in Japan as "Sunshine Manga" and "Longevity Manga". The healthy and humorous content and style have made it a well-deserved national comic strip for men, women and children.
"Cherry" is actually the pseudonym of manga artist Miura Yoshiki. Cherry Girl debuted as a manga artist in 1984 and created Cherry Pills, a 1970s story based on her childhood.
She gives the protagonist the same name, date of birth, blood type, constellation, etc. Characters in comics can also find prototypes in reality.
"Cherry Pills" is about The Little Pills when they were in kindergarten and the lower grades of elementary school, and Cherry once confessed in the afterword of the manga that the little pills were almost her own shadow. It is precisely because of this real and grounded role setting that she has won the love of many people.
The cherry balls were serialized in RIBON magazine from August 1986 to June 1996, during which the magazine recorded the highest sales, and since January 2002, it has been published in the occasional issue of RIBON magazine, and it is a popular work in Japan.
The manga Cherry Pills ended on December 31, 2011, but the anime version is still in the series.
In 1990, Cherry Pills was first animated and broadcast on Fuji Television, and on October 28, 1990, it reached a 39.9% rating.
Coinciding with the booming Japanese animation industry, the anime quickly became the most watched anime in Japanese history on record, and has long been among the top three japanese anime ratings, a feat that has lasted for 20 years.
In 1995, "Cherry Pills" was animated for the second time and has been broadcast until now, with a total of 1155 episodes (excluding 23 special episodes) as of June 24, 2018.
The broadcast of the animated version allowed Xiao Maruzi to go out of Japan and land in Asian countries such as China, South Korea, and Thailand, and set off a boom in ratings and peripheral product collections, becoming an anime character that children and even adults are particularly sought after.
In order to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the debut of Cherry Balls, the author of "Cherry Pills" from Shimizu City, Mayor Nobuhiro Tatsuji also issued a resident registration certificate of Clearwater City to Cherry Pills.
The household registration certificate of "Cherry Pills" records the basic information such as Xiao Maruzi's birthday, date of naturalization, address, hobbies, family members, height and weight.
In Japan, famous anime characters such as Crayon Shin and Robot Cat have official accounts.
02
Let the audience pay the bill, not only rely on feelings
"Cherry Pills" such a mythical IP, in addition to animation of course, but also indispensable to other aspects of development, in 2016 "Cherry Pills: Teenagers from Italy" big movie released.
Cherry Pills: A Teenager from Italy is the third in the Little Pills animated film series, written by original comic book author Cherry, and the first time that the classic cartoon character of "Little Pills" has appeared on the big screen in China.
Before the release of the film, many fans of The Little Pill said that they wanted to pay for the film.
But since its release, there has been a lot of controversy surrounding the film. Some viewers believe that the boyfriend of the little pill is just a gimmick, and the harvest of the audience's childhood memories is true, but the plot is too simple and only suitable for young children to watch.
But some people think that the film is full of feelings, the main focus is still the daily life of the small pills, the small pills learn to grow, learn to part, learn to cherish the process is very moving.
Although the film's highly discussed Douban score also reached 7.0 points, the box office was not as popular as expected.
Compared with the animation "Funny Bird Story: Cute Treasure Flying in the Sky", the number of people who want to see "Cherry Balls" has reached nearly 50,000, which is much higher than "Funny Bird Tales", but at the box office, "Funny Bird Tales" is several times higher than the small pills that play the love card.
In fact, there are not a few Japanese classic anime adapted into big movies, and another japanese big country comic "Doraemon" can achieve a double harvest at the box office after being adapted into a movie.
This phenomenon makes people wonder, how can the box office of the same Japanese national anime be so bad? In fact, this is not the first time that "Cherry Pills" has lost at the box office.
The first theatrical version of Cherry Pills, The Years of Friendship, and the second, The Song I Like, were released in 1990 and 1992, respectively.
These two small and medium-sized pills are only supporting roles, after the release of the movie, the audience did not buy the theatrical version of the story, many fans reflected that the difference between the theater version and the TV version is too big, and the witty style in the TV version has become serious and preachy in the theater version.
23 years later, with the help of the 25th anniversary of the TV version and the start of several live-action TV series, the third "Cherry Pills: Teenagers from Italy" finally pushed the small pills to the big screen.
However, the "Cherry Pills" adapted into a movie obviously lacks plot depth, and it is difficult to mobilize the interest of audiences of all ages. It should be said that in addition to those IP fans and children, such a simple and gentle animated film has no advantage in box office competition.
03
The crisis behind Japanese manga
With the departure of Cherry, we find that the original authors of Japan's "Four National Manga", "Cherry Maruko", "Doraemon", "Crayon Shin-chan", and "Miss Conch" have all passed away.
In recent years, there has been frequent discussion about the crisis of Japan's "national manga". Including the replacement of voice actors in "Crayon Shin-chan", the possible cutting of the sluggish ratings of "Miss Conch", and the death of Cherry, a series of news, seem to herald these national manga born in Showa, which will ironically bid farewell to the glory of the past with the end of Heisei.
Although works such as "Attack on Titan" and "Your Name" in recent years have also attracted a lot of attention, they are difficult to be household names. Compared with "Cherry Pills" and so on, the gap is still very large.
In fact, most of the new works born after 2008 have been mediocre. "Japanese manga is not good" has become a common idea of many manga fans. Homogeneity of content, lack of themes, and quality degradation have caused Ribo to be widely criticized.
In a 2015 interview, Miyazaki said, "The Japanese animation industry is now in decline because it has become completely exclusive to otaku. ”
In addition to the obstacles to content innovation, the works of the older generation of authors have frequently encountered piracy, which has also hit the comic book market.
In May 2017, Ken Akamatsu learned of the preemptive release of his work "Long-Standing Holders" and revealed his views on piracy on Twitter, saying that "piracy is not more evil than good".
Now, the physical book is out of print and there is no electronic situation that makes Akamatsu Ken very sad, if the genuine version does not make more changes, perhaps more and more cartoonists will also enter this embarrassing situation, so that good works are forcibly submerged.
The emergence of piracy, in addition to authors, has a great impact on publishers.
In August 2017, The publisher of Cherry Pills, Jiyingsha, held a general meeting of shareholders and a board of directors to release the final account information for the 76th issue.
Sales were 4.4 percent lower than last year at 117.521 million yen, and sales fell significantly this year after exceeding 120 billion yen for two consecutive years.
According to the Japan Cultural Products Overseas Circulation Promotion Agency (CODA), the number of visitors to The Manga Village, Japan's largest and most well-known pirated manga website, has totaled 620 million people in the six months since September last year, and it is estimated that the loss to copyright owners is about 320 billion yen.
Although publishers' revenue from e-comics has increased significantly, the revenue from e-comics is not enough to support the decline in sales in the entire comics market, and publishers must also make more effective reforms to transform the current decline of print media and restore the glory of the three major comic book publishers in the last century.
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