In 2020, the film industry had a tough time.
According to data released by the National Film Administration, China's film box office revenue in 2020 was 20.417 billion yuan, down 68% from 2019 and back to the same period in 2013.
The film industry is not happy, after more than half a year of the release of the animated movies "Mr. Miao" and "Jiang Ziya", word-of-mouth box office has also suffered Waterloo, 2019 just turned over the animated movie to 2020 pearlescent bleak.
Compared with animated movies, the web animation of 2020 is a hundred flowers. There are 9 works with more than 100 million plays on the B station alone, "Yuan Long", "Spirit Cage" (second half of the season), "Mortal Cultivation Immortal Biography" In July, the immortal fight, "Blessing of the Heavenly Official" came strongly in the second half of the year. Tencent Video, a major animation player, has won 11 billion plays with a "Douluo Continent".
Popular works are dazzling to the audience, and it is inevitable to leave some pearls in the sea. Considering the comprehensive genre and theme, the author has presented five small and beautiful works for anime fans.
My Three-Body Problem: The Legend of Zhang Beihai
"The Three-Body Problem" has been shouting for several years, but finally let a group of square people take the lead.
"My Three-Body Problem: The Legend of Zhang Beihai" (hereinafter referred to as": "Zhang Beihai Biography") cannot be completely regarded as a "pearl left in the sea". Even when the epidemic was at its most difficult, "The Legend of Zhang Beihai" still received the attention of many science fiction fans.
The "My Three-Body Problem" anime series was first serialized in 2014 and was created by amateur Kameo Hachikata and others using the game Minecraft. The first work in the series, "My Three-Body Problem", is still a relatively rough fan work in nature, although the degree of restoration of the original work is very high, but the pixel-style painting style and slightly stiff characters still cause certain difficulties in the dissemination of the work.
Until 2016, the production team of "My Three-Body Problem" was acquired by Youzu, and with the blessing of the professional team, the second work "My Three-Body: Luo Jichuan" launched had a qualitative leap in terms of screen, dubbing and plot.
After four years, "The Legend of Zhang Beihai" was launched. As the third work in the "Three-Body" series, the world view of "Zhang Beihai Biography" is more grand, and the story plot tends to be deep and complex. Compared with the previous work, the quality details of this work and the use of lenses are moving closer to cinematization, and the presentation of many future science fiction pictures in the play even surpasses "The Wandering Earth" in some aspects.
From fandom to official, "Zhang Beihai Biography" seems to respond to that sentence: the master is in the folk.
"Please Eat Red Bean 3"
"Please eat red beans" is a bowl of healing medicine for urban social animals.
The world background of "Please Eat Red Bean" is very interesting, telling the story of a red bean living in Guangzhou, which is made into various desserts every day, hoping to complete his ideal of being eaten by humans, but always failing.
Based on the background of the story, "Please Eat Red Bean" adopts a simple and cute cute painting style, and at the same time matches a variety of world scenes composed of desserts in the play, so that this animation naturally has a sweet and warm temperament.
Although it takes a red bean as the protagonist, behind the cute painting style, "Please Eat Red Bean" still tells a realistic story. Hong Xiaodou and his friends also have real pressures such as commuting, housing prices, social networking, and appearance anxiety. The valuable thing is that the characters in "Please Eat Red Beans" are always happy with themselves and spend every day in the spirit of Buddhist optimism. For three consecutive seasons, the ideal of red beans has not been realized, but unconsciously, the audience has begun to look forward to the day when red beans are eaten.
A red bean looks at life, looks at the story in the play, and tastes the taste of life.
The Mask of Truth
In 2020, as many as 198 new anime works will be launched online. In a number of fantasy, romance themes of the dynamic comic, "Truth Mask" produced by Weibo Animation strongly broke through.
"Mask of Truth" is a dark animation, the story tells that the protagonist inevitably accidentally obtained a "truth" mask that will be recognized no matter what he said after wearing it, and thus encountered a series of fantasy stories.
The setting of masks is not uncommon in previous film and television works, and most of them explore the boundary between truth and hypocrisy. The Mask of Truth is no exception.
But in addition, from the perspective of a high school student, "Mask of Truth" shows more mental health problems of adolescents, native families, school violence, educational discrimination, innocent abuse... Behind the mask is a bloody reality.
Presented in the form of a dynamic comic, the dark and eerie painting style of the original work is retained to the greatest extent, and the cruel plot makes this work more impactful.
In some ways, animated comics may be the best destination for Masks of Truth.
The second season of "A Little Zen Monk"
The hot word in the film and television industry in 2020 is "short". Short dramas, short films, short roundups, the most popular is of course "short videos". In the short video market, short video animation is quietly rising.
The hottest short video animation in 2020 is "A Little Zen Monk". From November 2019 to the end of 2020, the total number of fans of "A Little Zen Monk" on Douyin and Kuaishou has exceeded 60 million, achieving a fault-type victory. However, in fact, the first season of "A Little Zen Monk" was already launched on video platforms such as iQiyi and Tencent in 2016, but the playback results were not ideal.
The story of "One Zen Little Monk" is very simple, telling the warm story between the 6-year-old little monk Yi Zen and his master Ah Dou, his friend Ah Wei and the little bell. The story lasts from 1 minute to 5 minutes, and most of the time it is to share some life principles and funny daily routines.
But it is this short, light, and unburdened short film that pokes at the audience's fragmented viewing needs, and flies up with the east wind of short videos.
The linkage film "A Zen Little Monk" "Ami and the Little Bell" takes the hilarious "dog abuse" daily theme as the theme, and entered the short video platform in June 2020, accumulating nearly 10 million fans in only half a year, and its recent comment volume is twice that of "A Zen Little Monk".
The so-called "no matter the black cat or the white cat, catching the mouse is a good cat", at the moment of the rapid development of the domestic animation market, "A Zen Little Monk" has a certain symbolic significance.
"Dates Know"
From summer to winter, Qin Hao led the audience to climb the mountain for more than half a year. Stepping on the tail of 2020, Qin Hao brought the audience the animated short film "Jujube Knows", which is also climbing Mount Emei this time.
Qin Hao's "Jujube Knows" as a narrator is an animated short film, but it can also be seen as an advertising film. It is the first film of the "New Cultural Creation Project for World Cultural Heritage" launched by Tencent and Yuwen.
The story of "Jujube Knows" is adapted from the short story of the same name created by the "Squid Who Loves Diving", and its content is based on the legend of Mount Emei, "Xuanyuan Asks for the Tao in Emei". The plot of the story is very traditional, telling a magical treasure hunt story that is tragic due to greed.
Whether it is the storyline or the overall style, "Jujube Knows" has a strong sense of retro,
The whole film of "Jujube Knows" is made into a stop-motion animation using the "clay sculpture" of Sichuan's intangible cultural heritage. Although the whole film is only six minutes long, the time and space transition after the protagonist's dispute, and the delicate and eerie gem jujube tree in the treasure house, are very stunning.
The concept of "inner peace with its gods, except for its desires" conveyed by the story comes from the "Notes on the Everlasting And Quiet Scriptures of Taishang Laojun", the original text is "People can subdue their hearts, calm their gods internally, and remove their desires, then they are naturally quiet." This style of thinking with traditional culture as the core idea is even more back to the basics, bringing the audience back to the era of Shanghai Fine Arts Studio.
It is worth mentioning that the director of this film, Weng Jie," has previously made stop-motion animation masterpieces such as "Temple of the Wind and Snow Mountain", "Tower in the Wind", "Prequel to the Assassin Nie Yinniang", and "Peony Pavilion • Garden Dream", all of which are excellent works for the development and innovation of traditional culture.
【Text/Jiujiu】