"China Qitan" is on the whole network, and the B station animation is okay again?

Author| Bai Lu

Disclaimer| The title image comes from the Internet. The original article of the Sting Institute, if you want to reprint, please leave a message to apply for confession.

In the evaluation of the "Three-Body Problem" animation continues to hit the street, a "Chinese Odd Tan" that will be broadcast on New Year's Day 2023 has regained a little face for Station B.

This animation, jointly produced by Station B and Shanghai Art Film Studio, consists of 8 independent stories, and although it has only been updated for 3 episodes so far, the Douban score has been maintained at about 9.5 points. Judging from the evaluation of netizens, "China Qitan" has attracted the attention of the whole network with its unique Chinese aesthetic style and imaginative plot, so some netizens have evaluated "China Qitan" as "China's version of love death", and more people regard it as "the hope of Chinese animation".

However, people have also noticed that there is a huge gap in word-of-mouth between the "Three-Body Problem" animation and "Chinese Qitan", also produced by Station B and launched on the front and back feet. And "The Three-Body Problem", as the first IP of Chinese science fiction, has been placed on high hopes from the beginning, and now it is not as good as "China Qitan". The reason for this phenomenon, in addition to the difference in the work itself, actually reflects the special strategic positioning of station B for animation in its content ecology.

What's so good about "Chinese Odd Tan"?

In terms of content quality alone, "China Wonder Tan" is particularly outstanding. In terms of painting style, "China Qitan" continues the "art film" style of Shanghai Art Film Studio in classic works such as "Trouble in the Heavenly Palace", "Nezha Troubles the Sea", "Tianshu Qitan" and "Black Cat Sheriff", and also carries out stylized innovation of Chinese animation with the help of advanced animation technology.

The first episode of "Summer of Little Monsters" draws on the meaning of Chinese ink splashing and green landscapes, blends a unique painting style with Chinese charm, and immediately awakens the childhood memories of childhood cartoons in the minds of netizens; The second episode of "Goose, Goose and Goose" gives full play to the freehand of Chinese ink. Only black, white and gray are used to depict the peaks, trees, sea of clouds, birds and beasts in the background, presenting the classic ink and danqing rhyme of Chinese painting, and there is no dialogue in the whole collection, relying only on second-person subtitles to advance the plot, like Chaplin's silent film; In the recently updated third episode "Lin Lin", the ink elements born from two-dimensional painting are integrated with the three-dimensional context, coupled with the post-frame extraction process, which has both the texture of hand-painting and the spatial expression of three-dimensional pictures, giving the freehand expression of Chinese ink painting a new form of expression.

Not only does the unique Chinese style of painting attract the audience's attention, but the imaginative story setting and plot of "China Strange Tan" are an important reason why it has attracted phenomenal attention.

"Summer of the Little Goblin" is set in "Journey to the West", but puts the perspective on the bottom monster on a small hill on the way to the scriptures. The core of the story is not the four masters and apprentices who go west to descend demons, but the workplace encounters that the "social animal" pig demon strives to show for the "Tang Monk Broth" promised by the "Great King": leaders who arbitrarily deny their ability to work, work goals that change overnight, hierarchical hierarchical systems, and flatbread drawn by bosses that can't be eaten at all...

The workplace situation of the little pig demon is very similar to that of a young person in real life. When the plot that mirrors reality is expressed in a humorous way, the audience is deeply involved in it while laughing. In addition, the pig demon's mother tells the child to drink more water, cares about how her son becomes bald, and persuades the little pig demon not to be so ambitious and follow the king to do a good job, which is also like a real scene of young people working hard outside, and every time they return home, they have to be read by their parents. Humorous, authentic and deeply resonating, "Chinese Odd Tan" has captured the hearts of audiences from the first episode. Then to "Goose Goose Goose" and "Identity" "Linlin", which tell the "changeable heart" of people, although they tell stories, they are combined with thinking about reality and are thought-provoking.

In terms of plot, "Chinese Odd Tan" also preserves an open imagination space for the audience. For example, at the end of "Summer of the Little Goblin", the little pig demon was not only not killed by Sun Wukong's stick, but also received 3 life-saving hairs. Some people propose that this is the fantasy of the little pig demon, because the nobody, in reality, cannot enter the eyes of such a big person as the "Great Saint", and there is still a chance to escape from death and get acquainted with the big guy.

"Goose Goose Goose" perfectly restores the characteristics of ancient Chinese strange novels from the plot to the character setting, telling the story of a cargo man on the way to delivery in a plain way, giving people unlimited imagination through the bizarre plot. At the end of the story, Lang picked up the earrings of the "goose girl", but the earrings turned into birds and dissipated among the mountains, and the regret and dazedness of "just gained and lost in an instant" made the audience fall into the story together.

In the third episode of "Linlin", the wolf cub Lin Lin Lin turns into a human form and plays with human children, through the two lines before and after Orion, "She is like us" and "She is different from us", as well as the wolf skin worn by Orion and the foot cover that can step on the wolf's paw prints on the snow, which triggers the audience's thinking about the identity of human characters. Some netizens pointed out that the humans here are not people but hounds, so what the story really wants to express is the cruel reality that hounds and wolves, although very similar on the surface, are completely opposite in nature.

With the unique aesthetic of Chinese painting style, novel story settings and profound allegory that reflects reality, "Chinese Wonder Tan" has given everyone a surprise and made domestic animation a god again.

"Chinese Strange Tan" illuminates the production problems of station B animation

Compared with the "Three-Body Problem" animation, the excellent quality of "Chinese Wonder Tan" can be seen with the naked eye, and it is also revealed that Chinese animation has been extremely lacking in storytelling in the past period.

Sting Research Institute in a previous article "From animation to the "three-body universe"? mentioned that the "Three-Body Problem" animation hopes to create the external look of a "Hollywood blockbuster" through the sense of substitution of 3D sports lenses, the "wasteland" style of urban street scenes, the urgency of speeding car chase scenes, and the magnificent scenes of ETO organizing gatherings and space stations. However, it has seriously deviated from the original work in terms of creation, and has also lost the unique romantic feelings of Chinese science fiction literature in the character shaping of key characters. In comparison with "Chinese Strange Tan", the flaws of this creative ability are also particularly conspicuous.

In fact, from some large scenes in the "Three-Body Problem" animation, it can be seen that the level of domestic animation in special effects production and other technologies has made significant progress. However, in the case of budget and ability, the "Three-Body Problem" animation is still broken by word of mouth, and it is even inferior to "China Qitan", which is obviously "underbudgeted" in special effects. The reason for this result is, in the final analysis, the different attitude of station B towards IP adaptations and original IP animations.

As the "largest animation project in the B station level", the "Three-Body Problem" animation has already raised the audience's expectations through various publicity means before it was released, and has won a number of brands including Changan Automobile, China Construction Bank, Nanfu Battery, HP notebooks, etc. And "China Qitan", which started broadcasting 20 days after the launch of the "Three-Body Problem" animation, has neither brand cooperation nor overwhelming pre-publicity, and is not even in the "2022-2023 National Creative Animation List" released by Station B last October.

According to public reports, the "China Qitan" project was a joint production project that was actively contacted by Shanghai Film Studio in early 2021 when it found Station B. Inside Station B, "China Qitan" is positioned as a non-commercial project. As a co-producer, Shanghai Fine Arts Film Studio is responsible for the overall content, art style and technology control, while Station B serves as an animation broadcast and production platform, providing support from the perspective of market and users.

The production background of the "Three-Body Problem" animation is that Station B is responsible for funding, investment, operation and publicity, and the three-body universe authorizes the adaptation copyright, and jointly develops the script with Art Painting Kaitian, and hands it over to the latter to be responsible for content production. According to the results, the production of "Three-Body Problem" is obviously wrong - the probability is that there is a disagreement between the licensor and the producer, and the B station as an investor can't wait to spend more time to push back and start over, after all, in addition to the "Three-Body Problem" animation, the drama version of "Three-Body Problem" produced by Tencent Video and Netflix is also about to be launched, who can preemptively bring the adaptation of China's first sci-fi IP film and television works to the market, can take the lead to maximize the value of IP. Therefore, the "Three-Body Problem" animation, which did not have time to polish the plot and character details, could only be ridiculous and finally laugh generously.

Station B's ambitions

If the failure of the animation of "The Three-Body Problem" exposes the drawbacks of the joint production model between Station B and the copyright party and the producer, then the success of "China Qitan" undoubtedly made Station B understand a truth: instead of betting heavily on heavyweight IP projects and handing over the initiative of controlling content quality to copyright owners and producers, it is better to try to create IP together with high-quality content producers. In fact, based on the existing industrial layout of station B, this production model is very likely to become an important strategy for station B animation and its downstream derivative market in the future.

Public information shows that station B has been actively deploying in the animation industry in recent years, and as of the fourth quarter of 2022, station B has invested in a total of 43 animation companies, and in 2021 alone, station B has invested in 15 animation companies. Among them, in 2021, the acquisition of Dream Animation with 610 million yuan and the acquisition of Youyouqi with 600 million yuan are the two largest single investments in the animation field of Station B. The reason why Station B is willing to win these two companies so much is because of their ultra-high production capacity and quality.

According to media reports, Dream Animation was founded in 2013 as the Dream Painter New Animation Alliance. In 2018, the domestic two-dimensional animation production business undertaken by Dream Animation accounted for more than 80% of the market share. Not only does it occupy half of the country in terms of quantity, but since its establishment, Dream Animation has also produced many popular animation works such as "The Daily Life of the Immortal King", "The Fox Demon Little Red Lady", "Under One Man", "Once Upon a Time There Was a Spirit Sword Mountain", "Mr. Marvel in China", "Duan Brain" and so on. Dream Animation also established a joint venture with Station B, Doraemon, focusing on original animation.

Founded in 2009, the well-known comic platform Youyouqi has a number of popular comic IP including "Zhenhun Street", "100,000 Cold Jokes", "Duan Brain" and "Baby Bee". And since 2012, Youyouqi has launched an online animation business, and the first work "100,000 Cold Jokes" has become a phenomenal work of station B, with a cumulative number of online views of more than 3 billion, and the two animated films derived from and developed since then have also received hundreds of millions of box office.

In addition to dream animation and demon spirit, Station B also invested in well-known animation companies such as Fang Yi Huatian, the producer of "Spirit Cage", and the producer of "Soul Street", Al Square and other well-known animation companies, as well as comic companies such as NetEase Comics and Comic Entertainment Culture. Previously, Li Ni, chairman and COO of Station B, revealed that there are about 120 companies that can produce high-quality animation, and Station B has carried out in-depth cooperation with 90% of China. As a result, through the layout of the upstream and downstream of the animation industry, Station B has mastered stable film and television adaptation resources, and even reached absolute resource advantages to some extent, realizing a complete link from comics to IP film and television adaptation.

Referring to the animation industry in the United States and Japan, we can see that from comics to IP film and television adaptations, and then to derivatives is the complete value closed loop of the animation industry. However, the domestic derivatives market has not yet formed a scale, so IP film and television adaptations have assumed more responsibility for commercial monetization, which also leads Station B, as a producer with IP in hand, to pay special attention to the results of commercial monetization in the process of film and television adaptation, so it ignores the quality of content. In this way, the fight on the street of the "Three-Body Problem" animation is not accidental.

Returning to the phenomenal attention aroused by "China Qitan", this fact proves that external special effects technology is not a necessary condition for creating high-quality animation works, and domestic animation needs to innovate in story creation and work style while already having advanced technological strength.

For all animation producers including Station B, the emergence of "Chinese Strange Tan" also reminded them: as one of the content industries, animation has never restricted its development of the theme or painting style, but the imagination of the creators. The layout of the upstream comic field can indeed provide a steady stream of materials for IP film and television adaptations, but IP itself is not equal to high-quality film and television adaptations, and in the face of the future of China's animation industry, Station B still needs to do what it can.