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In the past two years, the voice of "the rise of the national comic" has been endless. Since 2015, when "The Return of the Great Sage of Journey to the West" earned 954 million at the box office, this exhilarating slogan has been shouted in almost every domestic animated film since then. Until 2019, "Nezha's Devil Boy Descending" won 5.035 billion box office in one fell swoop, sitting firmly in the third place in the total box office list of Chinese mainland, giving great confidence to domestic animation films.

All along, the audience has given the national comic full tolerance and confidence, and a number of national comics with different styles and different themes have not disappointed the audience, and have a good performance in content innovation and market feedback. Released in July 2021, "White Snake 2: Green Snake Robbery" exceeded 400 million yuan in two weeks at the box office, making it one of the best performing domestic films in the summer file.

Also in July, the news came out that the animated movie "Tianshu Qitan" had completed a 4K restoration after half a year, and its poster seemed a little naïve and out of place in a group of new national comics with exquisite painting style and dreamy characters. Young audiences do not know or have forgotten that domestic animation films have reached their peak, and "Tianshu Qitan" is one of the works of the peak period, when the big ship carrying this ideal was countless post-80s and post-90s "dream factories" - Shanghai Fine Arts Film Studio. Between the 1960s and the 1980s, the Shanghai Film Studio spewed out countless masterpieces, and Chinese animation films had a gorgeous beginning.

The animated film "Tianshu Qitan" is adapted from "The Legend of Ping You" compiled by Luo Guanzhong and Feng Menglong, which was released in 1983 and is full of the aesthetic charm of Chinese animation, with a length of only 85 minutes, but it has about 1440 manuscripts in one minute, and 120,000 original paintings alone. It sounds like a huge complex project.

China's first animation film can be traced back to 1926's "Big Trouble Studio", when it was written and produced by Wan Liming, Wan Gu Toad, Wan Chaochen, Wan Dihuan four brothers, at that time Wan Brothers only understood the Chinese shadow puppetry and marquee principles, they used a picture manuscript instead of a grid of films for experimentation, drew nearly 10,000 pictures, after four years to make the 12-minute "Big Trouble Studio" came out, "Wan Brothers" is also considered to be the pioneer of Chinese art films.

In 1941, the Wan brothers created China's first animated feature film "Princess of the Iron Fan", which restored the classic story of "Journey to the West" with a complete storyline and vivid character actions, and this 80-minute animated film stunned the world, even the author of "Astro Boy" and known as the "god of manga", Osamu Tezuka, was also deeply influenced by it. In April 1957, Shanghai Fine Arts Film Studio, China's first professional fine art film studio, was officially established, the director was Tewei, gathering early Chinese animators such as Wan Brothers and Qian Jiajun, which opened the golden age of Chinese animation films.

Previously, China's first color animation film "Why the Crow is Black" won the Grand Prix at the 7th Venice International Animation Festival. Since then, Shanghai Meiyi Film Studio has launched "The Proud General", a 30-minute animation that tells a fable story of "pride makes people backward", using ethnic elements such as Peking Opera faces and traditional music, with a strong traditional opera charm. This cartoon is also considered to be the pioneering work of the "Chinese School".

The representative work of the "Chinese School" that really shocked the world is "The Great Haunting of the Heavenly Palace" that the Wan brothers have been brewing for 20 years. Sun Wukong is a dream that Wan Liming had in his heart when he was in exile in his early years, and after the establishment of the Shanghai Film Studio, screenwriter Li Kewei and director Wan Liming adapted and created a script for the first seven times of "Journey to the West". The ending of "The Great Haunting of the Heavenly Palace" overturns the tragedy of Sun Wukong being suppressed under the Five Finger Mountain in the original work, but instead Sun Wukong picks up the golden hoop stick, rushes to the Lingxiao Treasure Hall, smashes the throne of the Jade Emperor, and laughs loudly in a ruined heavenly court. The main creative team of "Haunting the Heavenly Palace" has dozens of painters, who take materials from ancient Chinese architecture, costumes, sculptures, etc., and lasted for several years to draw more than 150,000 frames of pictures, completed nearly 70,000 paintings, and finally created the image of Sun Wukong, a rebellious hero, which is very romantic. In 1965, the first episode of "The Haunting of heavenly palaces" won a gold medal at the London Film Festival, and then it was screened in 44 countries, causing a huge sensation and making the name of Shanghai Mei film studio resound at home and abroad.

In the same period, the "Chinese School" also discovered the unique treasure of "ink animation", in 1961, Shanghai Meiyi Film Studio took Qi Baishi's flower and bird paintings as the character image, and created China's first ink animation film "Little Tadpole Finds Mother". The animation story is a well-known popular science fairy tale, which was once selected as a primary school text, and the image of the protagonist, The Little Tadpole, comes from Qi Baishi's famous work "Frog Sound Ten Miles Out of the Mountain Spring". This film has won many awards at home and abroad, opening the chapter of Chinese ink animation, and since then, ink animations such as "Mudi", "Deer Bell" and "Landscape and Water" have amazed the world again and again.

Paper-cut film is also one of the representative types of the "Chinese School", which is a fine art film style developed on the basis of traditional arts such as shadow puppetry and folk paper-cutting. The audience is most familiar with the paper-cut film is "Hulu Brothers", the earliest paper-cut film is the 1958 Wangu Toad director's "Pig Eight Commandments Eat Watermelon", the color of the paper-cut piece is bright, the shape has a folk paper-cutting style, "Golden Conch", "Fishing Boy", "Goat and Wolf", "Jigong Fighting Cricket" are representative works. In addition, Shanghai Mei film studio has also created classic animation works such as puppet films such as "Ma Liang", "The Story of Avanti", and "Cao Chong Called Elephant".

Domestic animation in the 1980s to mature, released in 1979 "Nezha Noisy Sea" won the Popular Film Hundred Flowers Award for Best Animated Film Award, the story is taken from the mythological story in "Fengshen Yanyi", the film Nezha is bold, rebellious, uncompromising, Nezha tearful self-deprecating picture has made many viewers cry. The spirit of Nezha has also influenced a generation, and the symbol of the band is the image of Nezha in "Nezha Noisy Sea", and there is even a band called Nezha Band.

1999's "Baolian Lantern", the peak of the Shanghai Mei film studio, is based on the Chinese myth of the same name, telling the story of Agarwood who went through hardships to learn the art of the teacher, and finally defeated her uncle Erlang Shen through the Baolian Lantern to save her mother. Director Chang Guangxi borrowed from the production process of Hollywood animation films, canceled the professional voice actors, and replaced them with Jiang Wen, Tranquility, Xu Fan, Chen Peisi, Liang Tian and other actors to dub, first dubbing, and then the creative team designed the animation according to the voice shape, tone, expression, etc. "Pauline Lantern" became China's first truly market-oriented animation commercial blockbuster, and recovered 12 million yuan in production costs in less than 3 months of release. The film eventually grossed 29 million, ranking third at the 1999 mainland film box office and leaving the Hollywood animation Mulan behind.

Unfortunately, in the 20 years of the new century, the Shanghai Meiyi Film Studio has not yet produced amazing works. Today's audiences are pleased with the "rise of national comics", and there are also different voices: "National comics always borrow stories from traditional mythological IP, not innovative enough." But the national comic works that really affected the world at that time were taken from traditional Chinese stories, and the two-way rush between the national comics and the audience is gratifying, perhaps the real rise of the national comics will take time, but it is confident enough.

Source: Qilu Evening News