Image source@Visual China
Text | Reading Entertainment, Author|Zero One
Compared with 2022, the Chinese comic drama market will usher in a new prosperity in 2023. Whether it is from the perspective of long-term updated quarterly broadcasts, annual sequels, or creative cutting-edge works with a less commercial atmosphere, there are quite a lot of representative works that can be won by Chinese comic dramas in 2023:
"Chinese Strange Tan" has achieved a real sense of the whole people out of the circle;The Douban score of "Painting the Bad People of the Sixth Season" is as high as 9.6, setting the highest score in the past 5 years; "Douluo Continent" and "The Legend of Mortal Cultivation of Immortals" are still the animation channels on their respective platforms, and they have won more recognition than before in content production; and the new works "Cangyuan Tu", "Dart Man" and "Fire Phoenix Liaoyuan" opened for the first time in the year The overall word-of-mouth is above 8.5 points on Douban, and the audience evaluation is quite high, and they have the potential to open up their own territory.
From the perspective of the overall observation of the industry, Yu Yujun believes that the Chinese comic drama market in 2023 will present the following new normal:
First, the market cultivation has been a small success, and the overall animation drama market capacity has expanded significantly;
Second, the expansion of market scale and the upgrading of creative technology have helped the head boutique content to increase production capacity and touch the upper limit;
Third, long-term production and broadcasting and IP development thinking have become mainstream.
Of course, there are still new and old problems in the industry: 3D animation dramas have fallen into the dilemma of homogenization in visual design; fantasy is still in the absolute mainstream, and the diversification of themes is not obvious; compared with the improvement of the overall visual effect, the shortcomings in the ability of screenwriters still need to be improved; in addition, there are roughness and short-sightedness in the linkage development of the IP industry chain, as well as the lack of industry communication and co-creation mode in the production process.
How are these phenomena and problems reflected in the works? We can interpret them from the new works and sequels of the dramas that will be broadcast in 2023.
Year: Grasp the long-term value of IP in stable companionship
In June 2023, the animation of "Douluo Continent" officially ended, and the final chapter served a large feast for fans with "Two Gods vs. Two Gods", and even launched a two-hour "Director's Cut Ending". The final moment also made many viewers feel that time flies, but "Douluo Dalu 2: Peerless Tang Gate" was also broadcast subsequently, and the story of this Guoman IP continues.
When it comes to the cultivation and growth of the Chinese comic drama market, "Douluo Continent" is one of the points that cannot be bypassed. This animation is the first "year" after the domestic drama entered the Internet era, and there are 7.401 million people participating in the review and scoring on Tencent Video, and it is also the national comic work with the highest total number of broadcasts. From the premiere in 2018 to the end of 2023, the span from episode 1 to episode 263 is almost the epitome of the production technology and market operation development of the Chinese comic drama industry.
In terms of animation production, aesthetic level, and narrative rhythm, "Douluo Continent" is actually not the best reputation in 3D Chinese comic dramas. Looking back at the growth of this Guoman IP,"The value of continuous output" has been maximized:With the "Douluo Continent" update of the early Guoman market environment,"Year" is definitely not a rational choice,Because the production team is facing great challenges in terms of technical ability,Production capacity and market returns。
However, with the joint efforts of Xuanji Technology and Tencent Video, although the animation of "Douluo Continent" is not perfect, it has at least completed 263 episodes of content in the finished product above the level. The charm of the original IP, the charm of the characters and stories, and the long-term span jointly build the evergreen effect of the content, and it has become the collective memory of a new generation that accompanies a large number of viewers through their youth.
So we will see that whether it is "The Legend of Mortal Immortals" or "The Great Jugnaut", "Breaking the Sky", "Devouring the Starry Sky" and "Perfect World", the head Chinese comics of "Nianfanhua" almost occupy the top of the popularity list of various platforms, bringing more hot broadcast data and communication effects, as well as more considerable investment promotion and membership performance. And the launch of many annual dramas is obviously not that the platform side likes to invest heavily and with high risk, but the inevitable result of the expansion of the overall animation market capacity and the improvement of technological upgrading and production capacity mentioned at the beginning.
However, the healthy development of the long-term production model of Nianban must have a clear goal - the production and broadcast of each episode can enhance the overall value of IP, rather than consuming the popularity of IP sources. At this point, the current achievements are perhaps "The Legend of Mortal Immortals" and "Perfect World".
"The Legend of Mortal Immortals" did not achieve outstanding results when it premiered in 2020, and the number of followers at station B in the same period was not as good as "Yuanlong", which was less well-known than IP, but with the gradual acceptance of its 3D facial capture visual aesthetic style, the unique character design of IP also began to show its charm, and then it became the head player in station B, and the number of followers has exceeded 8 million. After entering 2023, the New Year's episode of "The Legend of Mortal Cultivation of Immortals" will be broadcast on November 25, and the 82nd episode of the main action scene has received a lot of praise after it was opened.
The annual broadcast of "Perfect World" can be regarded as a replica of the "companionship effect" of "Douluo Continent" to the greatest extent. The story starts from the protagonist Shi Hao's childhood, to the "bear child" leaving his name everywhere, and then to the later "Battle of the Two Stones" and "The Nether of the Seven Gods", the animation continues to output, and then the special chapter created with a lot of money to strengthen the famous scenes out of the circle, and has now accumulated a good audience base. The advantages and disadvantages of "Perfect World" are very obvious, fast-paced, high-quality fights, and exquisite and likable character modeling are the "hard power" of this year, and if we can continue to pay attention to the optimization of the narrative in the future, I believe it will be more stable.
However, the "long-term production and broadcasting and IP development thinking" mentioned by Reading Yujun at the beginning is not as long as it is "year", and there are also some years of poor performance, according to observation, most of them are due to two reasons: one is that the output rate cannot keep up with the construction period, resulting in a decline in quality, and the other is that the screenwriter does not pay attention to the screenplay, which leads to too rough literary drama, which is actually an overall industry problem.
The annual model needs to shift from "production capacity advantage" to "high-quality continuous output advantage", if the continuous update affects the highlight of the content, it may be a loss to the wife and the army.
Not only "volume" visuals, but also "volume" stories
It seems a strange phenomenon that the number of young people in the Japanese animation market has decreased significantly compared to the past, in addition to the old national animation, in recent years, even the top "Demon Slayer", "Attack on Titan", "Jujutsu Kaisen" and so on have also adopted a seasonal broadcast mode.
On the one hand, the reason behind this is due to the change of the broadcast model,Before the era of Japan was dominated by TV stations,A fixed time period needs to be filled with popular content,The national year is tantamount to a long-term meal ticket;Now the concept of the entire anime consumption has long changed,Large and long comics are extremely rare,After the emergence of popular new works, the timeliness of adaptation is extremely high,Everyone has to follow the progress of comics,At the same time, the public's demand for high-quality content has also increased greatly,"Water injection original" This early in "Naruto" The common practice in such works has almost disappeared.
On the other hand, it is the market return consideration, and the method of quarterly broadcast can effectively test the waters to collect feedback, and the producer can also consider whether to renew the follow-up as soon as possible.
However, most of the IP sources of domestic annual editions are network text IPs that have long been completed, but there is no contradiction between progress and content in the annual edition.
The development direction of the domestic season is "more volume", and the gap between the head and the tail is large - the head is the upper limit of the pursuit of audio-visual expression to maximize cultural output, and the tail is to fill the content with quantity as the king, and the current trend has been obvious in the 2023 Chinese comic drama market.
Among the current seasonal broadcasts of Chinese comics, Reading Yujun believes that the common problem is that the level of drama is somewhat unable to keep up with the level of animation technology.
In the new IP adaptation dramas, the plays and visual performances are about "Fire Phoenix Liaoyuan", "Thirty-six Horsemen" and "Dart Man", the common feature of these works is that the story of the original work is better, and the adaptation is more and the reputation is still good, "Cangyuan Tu" should be strongly promoted.
"Cangyuan Tu" is adapted from the work of the platinum writer I eat tomatoes at the starting point, compared with the original work, the animated version is extremely bold to add a large number of details of the reversal of the play, and gives the supporting roles more three-dimensionality in the creation of group portrait characters, which belongs to the level of "changing to the level where even the original fans don't know and can be praised", this phenomenon is relatively rare. It can be seen that the audience is not necessarily obsessed with "restoration", but many adaptations are not "adding color" but "injecting water".
And the original animation that can take care of both and has a good reputation, it seems that there is only Douban 9.6 points "Painting the Bad People Season 6". In recent years, whether it is in 2D or 3D form, the visual expression of Guoman dramas is well-known, but many phenomenal works are often injected with love and hard work by small teams with outstanding technology, but they may not be consistent with mature screenwriting ability, which ultimately affects the upper limit of the work.
For example, the famous "Foggy Mountains Five Elements Season 2", in terms of visual expression, it is enough to become a god, and the picture performance alone is enough to enter the ranks of gods, but if there is a better story than now, can it be taken to the next level? Another example is the second season of "Pillow Knife Song" broadcast on December 5 , still continues the top martial arts cold weapon action fight in the first season, hearty and powerful enough to amaze the public, but at that time, the first season was really lackluster in addition to fighting, and the second season added an attempt to tell from a different perspective, hoping to greatly strengthen the literary drama, although the effect is not yet known, but the idea is clear.
Therefore, Reading Yujun believes that paying more attention to screenwriting and narrative may be an important shortcoming to be made up for in the current development of Chinese comic dramas. "Dart Man", "Cangyuan Tu", "Fire Phoenix Liaoyuan", "Thirty-six Horses", "Douluo Continent 2", "Wu Liuqi: Shadow Fate" Douban scores are all above 8 points, this year's new quarterly dramas have a lot of good reputation, compared with the mainstream of Chinese comic dramas two or three years ago, it can also be clearly felt that the importance of new works to dramas is increasing day by day, how to bring shocking visual effects in the future, and output a complete, smooth and charming story, will definitely be an important criterion for audience evaluation.
In addition to the dramas in the conventional sense, the collection of animated short films represented by "Chinese Strange Tan" and "Capsule Project Season 2" has also attracted more and more attention. The form of the short film collection of the "Capsule Project" is relatively close to the well-known overseas animated short film collection "Love, Death and Robots", but the content tonality obviously has stronger local cultural characteristics, and has reached the international first-class level in technology, aesthetics and form. It's just that compared with the effect of "Chinese Strange Tan" successfully out of the circle with "The Story of Little Monsters", "Capsule Project" still focuses more on technological innovation, and the degree of work out of the circle is not high, and its value is currently more in cultivating emerging forces in the industry.
2024, towards the "era of stars"?
The reason why the 2023 Guoman drama is summarized as "a hundred schools of thought contend" is not only because of the considerable popularity and the number of works that are out of the circle by word of mouth, but also because the new and old production companies are also working together. Needless to say, the old brands such as Xuanji Technology have been steadily output in the two parts of "Douluo Continent 2" and "Devouring the Starry Sky", and old companies such as China Film Nian, Painted Dreams, Shimei, and Fuxi Film and Television still produce a lot.
But on the other hand, there are also many new companies established in recent years that have emerged, such as "Five Elements of the Foggy Mountains" Six Ways Without Fish, Jun Yixin behind "The Legend of the Dark River of Juvenile Songs" and "The First Sequence", and Shenman Culture behind "Cangyuan Tu".
With the continuous prosperity of the Guoman drama market, we may also have some new expectations for the development of Guoman dramas in 2024.
In terms of content, can Chinese comic dramas appear in new phenomenal works outside the fantasy track? The simplification of the subject matter will intensify the current visual aesthetic homogenization, and the pursuit of diversification and originality of the subject matter will have a broader sky. Online novels provide ample creative sources for Chinese comic dramas, and we also hope to see more other IP sources introduced to provide more diverse backgrounds and depths for stories. In addition, just like the drama industry, the importance of screenwriters may be more valued in the production process of Chinese comic dramas in 2024.
Long-term thinking will further become mainstream. This not only means that we should pay attention to the quality and depth of the story when creating, but also take into account the development of derivative products, games and other follow-up products, and create a strong IP effect.
For the industry as a whole, the development of standardized industrial processes is also necessary. By improving production efficiency and standardizing processes,You can reduce costs、Improve quality,And promote the healthy development of the entire industry,At the same time,Cooperation between different companies and teams can achieve resource sharing、Complementary advantages,It can also jointly promote the innovation and development of Guoman dramas,This may also be a big difference between the current Guoman dramas and the Japanese comic market。
For video platforms, animated dramas are gradually growing into an important growth line outside the drama section, and there is a high probability that the investment support will increase unabated. In 2024, it is expected that the Chinese comic drama will continue to produce more masterpieces and more commercial successes, so that the domestic animation market will shine like stars.