There may not be much time left for "daily comics"

Text | Ling Hu Boguang

Makoto Shinkai's "Suzuya Journey" was recently released in China, and the animated box office has already broken the box office record of Japanese animated films in China, predicting that the final box office will exceed 600 million (about 100 million US dollars). It has surpassed the 557 million of Makoto Shinkai's "Your Name", but the word-of-mouth controversy of this animation is still quite large.

You know, Makoto Shinkai is already the king of Japanese animated films in the new era. Not only in China, the box office of New Age animated films is the highest in the world, but many people think that the popularity of Shinkai Makoto represents the decline of Japanese anime.

This decline of Japanese anime is also a cliché, so has Japanese anime declined?

The answer depends on which angle to analyze, if you compare different eras of Japanese animation, then Japanese manga does have a clear decline, because when we talk about Shinkai Makoto, when we talk about whether Japanese anime is in decline, then it has already declined.

The peak of Japanese animation was the previous generation before 2000, about 708090 in the past thirty years. In the past thirty years, the peak of Japanese animation film directors is Hayao Miyazaki, and world-class serial animations include "EVA", "Dragon Ball", "Saint Seiya", "Sailor Moon", and the four major migrant comics in the late 90s.

And after 2010, the peak director of Japanese animated films is Makoto Shinkai, or Mamoru Hosoda. The serialized animations are "Attack on Titan", "One Punch Man", "Chainsaw Man", "Ghost Slayer Blade" and so on.

Therefore, when we compare Makoto Shinkai with Hayao Miyazaki, Nichiman is not called decline, what is called decline.

Shinkai Makoto is king, and "Ghost Slayer Blade" dominates? Is the day manga in decline?

I believe that for most ordinary audiences, the rise or decline of anime does not lie in professionalism, you talk about professionalism most people can't say why, the easiest way is that an anime can be watched several times, whether you can remember the name. And because of talking about this issue in China.

Most Chinese audiences are interested in whether Japanese comics are in decline, that is, there are several excellent blockbuster works a year.

For me personally, there are very few Japanese manga that have become popular in China in recent years, and there are very few Japanese comics that can be watched repeatedly, and there are mostly various routine anime. It's easy to get tired of it over time. And said that everyone may not believe it, many works feel that they are still the remaining routines of domestic online literature.

For example, there are only a few world-class comics that have become popular in China, and then world-class ones that can be watched repeatedly.

The above listed "Attack on Titan", "One Punch Man", "Spell Return Battle", "Ghost Slayer Blade" and so on. "Chainsaw Man" in 2022, as well as the popular game animation "Cyberpunk Edge Walker" and so on. But at the peak of Japanese anime, such works can be said to be innumerable.

For example, everyone says that "Ghost Slayer Blade" is the first day comic in the new era, which proves the decline of Japanese comics.

Of course, I believe that veteran Japanese comic fans can list a bunch of excellent works of good quality, unique painting style, depth of expression, or creativity. But it goes back to the above problem, for ordinary audiences from time to time the explosion is called rise, your explosive works are becoming fewer and fewer, excellent works are becoming more and more niche, which is essentially decline.

Because the mainstream of the market is now highly homogeneous, short-term works, homogenization means that the ability to innovate is insufficient, and you can only pick up people's teeth and follow the trend of creation, and there are two kinds of short-term.

One kind of author has insufficient storytelling ability, can not be rolled out, can only do short-term, the other is that the audience does not buy it, can only cut the waist, why not buy it? It's because it's not pretty.

In the eighties and nineties at the peak of Japanese comics, there was no soil for survival at all, and the reason why four grids could appear was because the four grids hardly needed to consider the connection of the plot and the advancement of the main line.

For example, "Megumi Amano's Body is Full of Flaws", "Delusional Student Council", etc., just reflects that more and more Japanese manga authors have gradually lost the ability to tell complete stories, including the ability to start and transfer.

And now, the narrative ability of the Japanese manga people has been further weakened, let alone four frames, and even more radical single-page stories have appeared, such as a series of "XXX Days Later Will XXXX".

Is Riman powerful now? Of course, there are, for example, Yusuke Murata's drawing skills are very strong, some manga authors work directly with light novel authors, and there are also good works (the current trend of light novel to manga is increasing, and conversely, the original works of manga artists themselves are decreasing), but overall daily manga is declining.

Similarly, there are Japanese animated films, and the directors at the peak of Japanese animation were Hayao Miyazaki, Toshi Ima, Katsuhiro Otomo, Mamoru Oshii, Shinichiro Watanabe, Hideaki Anno and Osamu Tezuka.

Now there are indeed great directors such as Makoto Shinkai, Mamoru Hosoda, Gengen Void and so on.

But every year in the Japanese film market, there are already a lot more "Ghost Slayer Blade" theatrical versions, anyway, a variety of well-known serial animation theatrical versions, the proportion of remakes is very high. It was not without before 2000, but the proportion of independent animation directors such as Hayao Miyazaki and Toshi Ima.

It's the same as Hollywood blockbusters, Hong Kong movies. If a cultural market is healthy and upward, then creative works must be hot in the market. On the contrary, like Hong Kong is now full of police and bandit films, Hollywood blockbusters are superheroes every year, or well-known IP sequels, prequels, prequels, reboots, derivative movies.

This proves that the entire market is in decline, because you can only make money by constantly frying cold rice from classic works.

Is the decline of Nichiman getting worse? Why

In recent years, daily comics have indeed been relatively declining, the works are becoming more and more routine, a routine can produce N anime, which is mixed with several high-quality comics, it has become a fact that the old manga of the day is better than the new one, so why is the daily manga declining?

In essence, of course, it is a fundamental problem such as economic reasons and population, but if you look at the Japanese manga market in recent years. You may not believe it, Japan's animation industry is thriving from a macro point of view, and now Japanese animation is easy to make money, basically selling copyrights to video websites can return the money.

Since about 18 years, Japanese animation has also received funding from the United States.

Therefore, there is capital and market continuous blood transfusion, and Japanese animation has exploded in business. This is also a bit like Japanese games, do we feel that Japanese games have also grown in the past two years? Similarly, the Korean Wave, which is close to the United States, has not exploded through Netflix in recent years.

However, with the retirement of Miyazaki's generation of old-timers, there is also the shrinking of Japan's local animation industry. The commercial atmosphere of Japanese animation is getting stronger and stronger, and the style of Hollywood commercial assembly lines is getting stronger and stronger, which is not a good thing for Japanese animation.

In recent years, the number of Japanese comic works has grown rapidly, but Japan's animation talent training can not keep up with the speed of industrial development, excellent talents have been diluted, the average quality of animation has declined, and the quality can not be spelled, you can only fight the theme, what people watch will do, the result is that the theme of another world is flying all over the sky.

The reasons why Japanese animation is not powerful are as follows: a bad capital expelled good money, and I could rely on soft to fill up what a bicycle; Second, there is no academic system of animation directing in Japan, compared with Hollywood film industry talents are trained by top film art academies, which Japanese animation is the right professional counterpart of the Eight Classics? Seldom.

There are only a few directors who have caught up with film masters for more than twenty years, and the screenwriter level is worse than Hollywood and Hollywood film and television screenwriters. The gap in the knowledge of the three older generations of animators and the new generation of animators.

Fukuno big bald head, Miyazaki Hayao have experienced Japan's defeat in World War II and the Cold War, and the themes of the things made are relatively heavy (superficial and one-sided, and now the imaginative Masaaki Yuasa can't beat the empty-brained Makoto Hoshikai at the box office, and he can't beat Mamoru Hosoda, and the rest are some cats and dogs who are European in addition to the explosion.

Hideaki Kuno is right: take jujube pills.

To be honest, there are still good works every year, as long as you look for them, you can find them. At least in terms of TV animation, Japan has not encountered the problem of bottlenecks, on the contrary, independent animated films have become fewer and fewer good works in recent years, which is very consistent with Hollywood blockbusters, Hong Kong films, including Korean films.

Day manga declined, national comics did not rise? What inspiration does this give Chinese animation

Japanese anime and manga do show signs of decline compared to the 80s and 90s. But the skinny camel is bigger than a horse, and it is certainly much stronger than domestic animations and comics.

In my personal opinion, there is nothing to say about the national comic technically. Although there are still many to catch up, 3D to learn the United States, 2D to learn Japan, but at the moment it is enough, just like domestic animated films. Here is mainly to talk about the plot, there are currently two roads, one is the comics and animations of the web text, this is how it is compared to the original, not to mention that China's web literature can hang Japanese light novels, but crushing is definitely no problem.

The other way is original works, which are currently different from Japanese comics, but they are beginning to rise, such as "Under One", "Dartman", "Zi Silent" and so on.

The third point is that the aesthetic level needs to be improved, if Hollywood is too serious ZZZQ, Hong Kong is full of old people, and Japan is too serious about homestead aesthetics.

In the past, the male protagonists of Japanese anime, such as Son Goku of "Dragon Ball", Kenjiro of "Hokuto Shinken", Big Air Tsubasa in "Football Boy", etc., are all characters with muscles and quite masculine personalities, and the overall plot is relatively vigorous, even the wasteland anime such as "Hokuto Shinken" gives people a sense of hope.

At that time, it was already quite strange to have a chaotic horse, not to mention that Shinji of "EVA" was even more weird.

But as Japan's economy continued to slump, the Japanese began to mentally emasculate themselves. After 2000, the male protagonists of Japanese anime gradually became unrestrained chickens, with feminine and unassertive personalities. The plot has also slowly changed from the previous hot-blooded king manga to fried cold rice and selling color.

Now Japanese anime has no spirit at all, so how can you produce good works.

Chinese anime now also has this tendency, but in essence it expresses a work of passion. In addition to the obviously delayed "Ancestor of the Magic Road", most other works adapted from online novels are still "my life depends on me" resistance in expression, but the modeling is too popular and has no character or is not very good.

The storyboard, dubbing, theme, narrative rhythm, especially the problem of telling a story well does not need to be talked about, there are too many problems, and there is nothing more possible with Japanese comics, and it is far from it.

Finally, Japanese animation is indeed in obvious decline compared to before, because times have changed, large novels such as "Sea of Dead Fire" are losing their market, and new feature-length works are difficult to get on the top, so fast-paced manga like "Ghost Slayer Blade" is on fire, of course, Ghost Fire Extinguishing half is due to the UFO Society.

Now it is becoming more and more difficult to innovate the Japanese animation theme, and it is too difficult to appear a completely new theme, so now I can only make a better story and a better picture. As for why there are so many cross-genre anime - because it's easy to make money.

This industry pill has been shouted in Japan for many years, but there is no real pill either. Japanese manga is indeed in relative decline, but Japanese animation in the world market is currently no other country product can replace, after all, it is the only one in the world to play (especially the 2D animation industry), Hong Kong movies are in decline obviously, I predict that the next 5 years may be completely marginalized.

Korean movies have also had this trend in the past two years, but the time will definitely go up in 10 years, as for this daily comic, how many years do you think it will take?