On day 100, what the crocodile really experienced was a "social death" that no one had ever thought of.
"The Animated Movie Release Date and Starring List of 'The Crocodile That Will Die in 100 Days' was officially released."
Just this past February 17, such an animated film news, quietly and silently appeared on social media and major film and television websites, but it was quickly covered up in a complicated information trend, and only a small number of people who personally experienced those 100 days would suddenly have such a feeling:
"There seems to be such a thing."
The film was officially titled "The Crocodile That Lived for 100 Days"
According to Japanese media reports, the animated film based on the original manga "Crocodiles That Will Die in 100 Days" (hereinafter referred to as "100 Crocodiles") will meet the audience on May 28 of this year, 100 days after the announcement date (February 17), when the film will follow the end of the manga and tell the life of crocodile friends after losing their friends.
Obviously, the day of "100 days before the release" was a deliberate preparation made by the filmmakers for the publicity, hoping to create a topic for the film as much as possible through the theme of the original manga, so the producer invited the actor who had starred in "Your Name", and Ryunosuke Kamiki dubbed the protagonist "Crocodile Jun".
Unfortunately, this news did not attract much attention after it was released, and the boom that swept the global social network a year ago seems to have disappeared completely, and there is not even a trace of debris left, as one of the most spreadable topics in 2020, such an effect is obviously not in line with his "identity".
"Crocodile that will die in 100 days"
The Crocodile That Will Die in 100 Days is a four-panel manga created by Japanese manga artist Kikuchi Yuki (きくちゆうき), which has been serialized on his personal Twitter for exactly 100 days since December 12, 2019.
In this comic, the author uses his extremely concise (simple) and even somewhat "childish" style to depict the daily life of a crocodile who can only speak human words. Unlike the ordinary "everyday" four-panel comic, each update of "100 Crocodile" will be accompanied by a line at the bottom of the comic "Death Countdown" - "×× days before death".
Smirk at the TV
At first glance, "100 Crocodile" seems to be another funny comic that relies on the "sand sculpture" painting style to attract popularity, and many netizens also hold the mood of "watching the hilarity" and pay attention to the life of this crocodile. But soon, readers began to discover that the work may not be simply "playing with the terrier".
The protagonist of the comic, Crocodile, lives an extremely ordinary life with his friends. In the rest of his life, the crocodile has neither experienced a thrilling adventure nor seen through the world, he is like an ordinary person who knows how to be "content and happy" the most, he will joke with friends in chat, shrink in front of his favorite predecessors, yearn for the life of professional players, but stop at imagination.
Because I didn't hold back, I ate my own "stored grain"
Because of the ordinary and ordinary, readers slowly for this can be "anyone" crocodile, a spiritual "empathy", coupled with his kindness and simplicity, and more and more approaching "death date", looking at this crocodile who knows nothing about everything, people began to guess the ending of the story, hoping that death is just the author's "bad taste" joke, many netizens are trying to use the "predict death" secondary creation to avoid the upcoming "death FLAG" for the crocodile.
Second creation by netizens the day before the arrival of 100 days ("Killing City" meme)
Unfortunately, the netizens' requests did not impress the author, Kikuchi Yuki seems to have conceived the ending for the story at the beginning of the series, according to the author himself, the opportunity to create the manga itself came from his friend who died suddenly at the age of twenty.
On March 20, the 100th day, friends who had made an appointment to enjoy the cherry blossoms gathered in the park, but there was no crocodile. On the other side, on the side of the road where cherry blossoms are scattered, a chicken arrives safely on the sidewalk of the street, and a mobile phone falls to the ground, but the crocodile is not visible.
With a cherry blossom fluttering camera switch, this 100-word story and the life of the crocodile finally come to an end here.
Although not explicitly stated, the distant red signal lights and scattered cherry blossoms became the most straightforward hint of the ending
On March 20, the last word was issued, the number of likes once exceeded 2 million people, more than 700,000 retweets, the keyword derived from the comic "Crocodile Jun" directly became the first place in the global hot search, and the number of followers of Kikuchi Yuki's multiple social accounts also doubled in just 100 days.
During the comic strip, the author followed the number of people on the Twitter account
On the "convention" program at the end of 2020, "#Twitter热点大赏", the "data carnival" that confirmed that it took place was once again displayed in front of people in a very intuitive way.
"#Twitter热点大赏" is from 2017, Twitter to the keyword data statistical combing, and finally came up with the most "topical" 20 keywords of the year, publishing and commending (for works or individuals) activities, in addition to the comprehensive ranking, there are eight different types of "sub-awards".
In this event, "100 Crocodiles" defeated the "Ghost Blade" and "Animal Forest Friends" to rank fourth in the annual hot spot, and also won the double crown of the "most retweets" and "most likes" departments in the sub-awards, becoming the biggest winner at the award ceremony.
"#Twitter热点大赏2020"
Shortly after the final words of "100 Crocodile", the well-known Japanese band "Biological Chief" released the linkage MV "Alive (生きる)" with the manga, taking readers back to the crocodile's 100 days of life, the gentle and simple voice of lead singer Seikei Yoshioka, with the ordinary but happy life of crocodiles and friends, readers have been directly "broken defense" by this set of "tear-jerking combination fists", immersed in the afterglow of sadness, and thinking about "life is short".
"Alive"
However, what readers who are immersed in sadness did not expect was that with the release of the MV, a commercial account called "the crocodile formula that will die in 100 days" and a series of typical "commercial" cross-media activities, keywords such as "book decision", "cinematic decision" and "peripheral activity development" quickly appeared in the public eye in less than "an hour" after the crocodile died.
If you consider it from the perspective of the creator, there is no problem in commercializing such a popular work, but this "first seven" has not yet passed the "sale of property", and the "memorial" commodity sales in stark contrast to the heavy "death" theme of the work itself, it is inevitable that some netizens will have disgust.
A sale of merchandise called "100 Crocodile Memorial Service"
Driven by boredom, more and more negative reviews about "100 Crocodiles" and its authors began to appear, and the information of the production staff who was left under the MV of the "Biological Unit Chief" became the key to the complete break of the reputation of the work. Many netizens pointed out that the publicity planner "Fundamental Yangping" in the film production list is an employee from dentsu PR, a subsidiary of the "Dentsu Group".
"Dentsu Co., Ltd." is a founded in the beginning of the last century, Japan's largest, and the world's fifth largest advertising agency, its social style is known for its harsh and harsh, its corporate training, once had ten extremely squeezed labor rules known as "Ghost Ten Rules", until the suicide of a male Dentsu member in 1991, finally caused social concern about the rationality of "Ghost Ten Rules".
In 2015, a female new recruit of Dentsu chose to jump off a building to end her life after only half a year of employment, and then the information about the female member's overwork, as well as the harassment and sexual harassment by the authority was successively published, making the whole incident one of the most serious cases of "overwork suicide" in the 10s.
Dentsu also won the "Honor" of the first prize of the "Black Heart Enterprise Awards 2016" for this incident
"Squeezing employees to death" and "crocodiles that will die after 100 days" are connected with "dentsu" and "death", and the "preciousness of life" that the comic author wanted to show seems to have become a satirical farce in the eyes of netizens, and many angry netizens began to speculate that "100 crocodiles" from beginning to end is a commercial performance directed by Dentsu, aimed at the wallets of readers.
"100 Crocodiles" has undergone a transformation from heaven to hell in just one day, and the simultaneous coexistence of popularity and inflammation on such a scale is extremely rare on social networks. People who felt deceived began to look for evidence of the "real hammer" commercial farce from the clues left by the author on the Internet.
As part of the response, mizuno Yoshiki, the leader of the "Biological Unit Chief", together with the original author Kikuchi Yuki, conducted a "descriptive" live Twitter broadcast the next day, explaining and debunking the rumors on the Internet about the timing of the commercialization plan and the rumors on the Internet about "Dentsu controlling everything". According to Kikuchi Yuki, although the film's promotional plan came from Dentsu PR, Dentsu was not directly involved in the project, and the cross-media business activities were also decided after the manga began to be serialized.
The live broadcast led by Mizuno Yoshiki can be called a "model" "fire extinguishing", and the harm of rumors is controlled to the minimum extent possible.
Ryoki Mizuno (left) and Yuki Kikuchi (right)
Unfortunately, the damage caused has been irreparable, the simplicity and emotion that the work itself wants to express have long been shattered by the aftermath of rumors, and those commercial cooperation that are still carried out according to the original plan have only become a simple circle of money actions, and the crocodiles that have "died" in the work have also ushered in a gradually effective "social death".
In the time since, Kikuchi Yuki's attention has been reduced almost inversely from the time of the manga series, and in terms of commercial cooperation, in addition to the manga and movie plans that have been decided before, "100 Crocodile" has added plans to link cafes and mobile games, but it has not saved the rapid decline in the heat of the topic.
"100 Crocodile" linkage café
On April 7, 2020, due to the intensification of the epidemic, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government issued an "Emergency Declaration" requiring companies and individuals to reduce their working hours and avoid the gathering of people, which was equivalent to giving the "100 Crocodiles" a heavy blow to the cross-media planning, and the film and game plans with relatively long production cycles had to be shelved for the time being.
And this shelving, the time is coming to February 2021.
Affected by the virus, people have a more profound understanding of the concept of "impermanence of life", the film production team said that in order to let the audience see the most real "life", they specially rewrote the original script, the story will be closer to the life of ordinary people in the current era, which has the news at the beginning of the article, and the "awakening" of the memory a year ago.
But now, a crocodile that has experienced two "deaths" obviously can no longer use the same means to attract the attention of the public.
In the eyes of many people, from the moment the "social death" appeared, the crocodile was already "dead".
Up to the "100 Crocodile" formula website can be found, until now under its "gamification" tab, there is still no useful information, "Coming soon!! The words have been hung for nearly a year, and the crocodile holding the game console and smiling in the picture is particularly eye-catching.
To this day, the "100" gamification reads "Coming soon!" " of the words
As the creator of the work, Kikuchi Yuki's Twitter account, the number of followers at its peak, once reached more than 1.9 million, this number can be ranked in the first echelon of Japanese manga artists, and this goal that most people may not be able to achieve in their lifetime, Kikuchi Yuki only took 100 days.
From the base attention of 1.19 million, we can still see the traces of that carnival
More than two months after the announcement of the end of the "100 Crocodile", Kikuchi Yuki did not choose to give up on continuing to create immediately, and more than two months after the announcement of the end of the "100 Crocodile", Kikuchi Yuki opened another four-panel comic called "Seals That Will Fly Where To If You Don't Catch Anything", and preset the time to 100 days, and in order to take care of overseas readers, this time he also specially chose Japanese and English for serialization.
In the second half of last year, this "seal", which also ended the first 100-word serial (the serialization continues after 100 words), has also experienced several rounds of commercial marketing, but compared with its predecessor "100 Crocodiles", which has seen big winds and waves, this equally magical-looking seal has really raised interest in the Internet.
Seals that don't catch anything and fly where they go