Now even "childlike" adolescence

Rhino Entertainment Original

Text|Fat Department Editor|Park Fang

The youth puppet drama that has not been seen for a long time has produced two well-discussed works in a row.

Compared with "When I Rush to You", which was launched earlier and broke out of the circle with a small counterattack by word of mouth, the popularity of the station exceeded 9,000 in three hours and exceeded 10,000 in 30 hours, and the barrage reached the top 1 of the current station "Secretly Can't Hide", which did not live up to the name of this year's most watched puppet works, and even drove various hot search topics after the broadcast.

Controversy ensued.

Although both dramas are adapted from Takeji's IP, compared with "When I Fly to You", which focuses on the sweet hearts of high school students, the female protagonist and the male protagonist met in the second year of junior high school and "Secretly Can't Hide" that is five to seven years younger in age, which fell into a lot of controversy after the broadcast, and some voices believe that this setting has a tendency to mislead minors.

It should be considered that this kind of controversy is also an inevitable adaptation dilemma to deal with the theme of youth. Similar discussions, around the current controversial point of adolescent "early love", have actually occurred many times.

This also points to the forbidden area of domestic "early love" stories, which have become tighter and tighter in the past two years with the amplification of the public's discourse. Compared with before 2020, the number and volume of existing dolls, especially youth-themed dramas, have declined significantly.

Continuing to tell adolescent stories in this environment, "Can't Hide It" and "When I Fly to You" move around the serpentine position of the "early love" minefield, which is impressive.

College comes in time to fall in love

There is no time to be ignorant and cute

Although there is no explicit rule that minors are not allowed to fall in love, and there is no good end to falling in love, it has always been an iron law for domestic film and television dramas. In recent years, sadistic dramas have abdicated and sweet dramas have taken over, and there is no option of "no good ending", which can only make boys and girls feel affectionate.

Just like "Can't Hide Secretly", it is very careful to grasp this scale, even if it is implied that the heroine Sang Zhi has secretly promised the male protagonist Duan Jia from the first meeting, she is still very careful when dealing with Duan Jiaxu's feelings for Sang Zhi, and remains in a state of an older brother to sister until adulthood.

But because the overall strategy of "Secretly Can't Hide" in the adaptation is highly restored, this also means that many shameful famous scenes in the original work have also been put on the screen. Objectively speaking, similar problems occur, it should be considered that there are certain limitations of the original work itself, making it more difficult to grasp the scale of the play.

Some people on the Internet have calculated that Bamboo was only 16 years old when he created the original work "Secretly Can't Hide", and the material extracted was his previous experience, which also means that the original work is a content with a strong sense of age and a clear audience, so the age sense after adaptation is still low. So in the play, many places have tried to reduce emotional expression on the basis of the original work.

Relatively speaking, "When I Fly to You" does not have so much baggage. The play is adapted from another work of Takeji "She Is Not Mildly Ill", which unfolds the story with the ignorant minds between two high school students. This avoids a lot of controversial points, of course, "early love" is still an absolute minefield, even if it is already playing "two-way crush".

Look at this new word, "two-way crush", the male and female protagonists must not confess, around "early love" can be said to play a serpentine position. Of course, you also have to sprinkle sugar, the key is whether the means are smart, whether the audience can have empathy, and drive the personal memory of the past.

This is also the reason why "When I Rush to You", a drama without the participation of the head lineup, can be out of the circle, the straight ball between the two college bullies, the female protagonist desperately strives to give the male protagonist the opportunity to tutor English, will make the audience feel those careful opportunities in high school, and will smile.

Not only the emotional value provided by the male and female protagonists, but also the nostalgia for the relationship between the former family and friendship. This is also the reason why the brother Sang Yan played by Ma Boqian in "Can't Hide Secretly", the word-of-mouth feedback staged "Earth and Sky Board" after the broadcast, the natural quarrel between brothers and sisters, concern for each other, also has the energy to make the corners of the audience's mouths rise.

And these audience needs fully show the audience characteristics of youth puppet dramas.

Since the explosion of youth works in the film industry in the 2010s, nostalgia has always been the most critical value provided by this type of content, and adult audiences still dominate the absolute mainstream.

And to better stimulate emotional value, compared with related works, more in line with the requirements of censorship, legal love in college, ignorance and budding in high school, provide more nostalgic value and memory symbol content, which is also the inherent need of such dramas even if they are serpentine.

On this basis, in recent years, long dramas have been sadistic and sweetened, avoiding the bitterness and pain of youth emotions, and showing commonality in some treatments, such as first, the style focuses on light comedy with a light rhythm, the second is that there is rarely a tangle of polyamorous love in the content, less salt and more sugar, and the third is aesthetically focused on visual and aesthetic systems. All of this further opens up the dialogue space with younger audiences.

"Early love" is not possible, but in the episode shots, it seems that it will always appear in the next second, and what the series has to do is to let the audience enjoy this waiting process.

Now it is difficult to make a popular problem "can't hide"

Although similar operations are becoming more and more familiar, it is still difficult for the industry to change the reality that it is difficult to produce explosive models.

Among the predictions for the blockbuster dramas in 2023, "Can't Hide Secretly" is almost the only one mentioned; And so far this year, only "Go to a Windy Place" has basically reached the level of explosion.

The problem is supported by several manifestations, one is the degree of out-of-circle, from last year's "The Rest of Your Life, Please Advise", "The Two Eight Laws of Love", "Ignite Me, Warm You", the broadcast data is remarkable, but from the perspective of popularity and discussion, it has not spread to the public's vision.

The second is the "taking flight" of the main actors, compared with Zhao Liying, Yang Yang, Li Xian who once came out of the current dolls, in the past two years, more rely on Yang Zi, Xiao Zhan, Zhao Lusi and other traffic actors to "play people", rarely appear "play people", last year Chen Feiyu was frequently on the hot search during the hot broadcast period, and the driving effect on himself is still limited.

Third, from the perspective of the number of industry projects, according to Artist's data, the number of dramas in the romance category will be reduced from 137 to 104, and the total proportion will drop from 42.8% to 34.6%; The number of urban dramas dropped from 150 to 95, accounting for 31.6% from 46.9%. Conversely, this further affects the strategy of choosing traffic-oriented stars for head puppet dramas.

The reason is still the negative impact of the blowout of puppet dramas in previous years. From the market level, the audience has developed a clear blunt feeling of such works, or even negative impressions, and it is more difficult to break the circle.

From the policy level, the advocacy of "can't sip sugar and inject artificial saccharin with water" began in 2020, which put the brakes on the current dolls, especially sweet pet content, and some bad plots such as falling kisses directly cannot pass the trial.

From the industry level, the risk of continuous improvement of such content is more likely to fall into the result of "invalid dramas" in the context of cost reduction and efficiency increase, that is, the concept of "pseudo-waist drama" proposed by iQiyi Wang Xiaohui. Under the general direction of the platform's concentrated head, the current puppet and sweet pet are mainly left to the sub-accounting track, becoming a To C wrestling field that relies on content to speak.

In this environment, "Can't Hide Secretly" and "When I Rush to You" have walked out of the upward line in terms of word of mouth and popularity, which may have brought some new observations to the industry.

The market is showing a conservative and even retro preference, since last year, the influence of mainstream dramas such as "The World" and "The Road of Life" and serious dramas on the Internet is showing more circle aggregation among mainstream people; Including spy war dramas, era family dramas and other content, it also has good broadcast results this year.

Under this trend, the youth category has once again gained the favor of the market, which seems to be a natural success. Especially the style of light comedy and light reality, blending sugar in the current market environment, has more reasons for the audience to stay.

However, compared with the 2010s, today's market risk is also greater, in addition to policy tightening, the tolerance of public opinion on the minepoint of "early love" is greatly reduced, which is also the reason for the controversy of "Secretly Can't Hide". How to effectively avoid risks and highlight selling points requires the drama party to come up with ideas from content to marketing.