Written by Sub-article
Edited by Qiu Shuwan
If the most impressive childhood memories of the 60s and 70s are the villain books, then in the world after the 80s and 90s, animation is the most important "enlightenment course", from the domestic "Haunting Heavenly Palace", "Black Cat Sheriff", "Little Tadpole Looking for Mother", "Nine Colored Deer", "Huluwa", to Japan's "Astro Boy", "Robot Cat Doraemon", "Slam Dunk Master", "Dragon Ball", "Sailor Moon", "Saint Seiya", and then to "Tom and Mouse", "Popeye", "Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck" in Europe and the United States The Adventures of Tintin, The Smurfs... These classic cartoons have become unforgettable common memories of a generation. Whenever I came home from school to finish my homework, I watched the cartoons in front of the TV on time, and I still remember it vividly.
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Animation as a comprehensive art, it integrates painting, film, digital media, photography, music, literature and many other art disciplines in one, its definition is to create the art of life movement. This form of artistic expression originated in England in the first half of the 19th century and flourished in the United States. In fact, animation has more than 100 years of development, and has established a relatively complete theoretical system and industrial system, of which the more mature countries are represented by the United States and Japan.
Chinese animation originated in the 1920s, when the "Wan Brothers" (Wan Gu Toad, Wan Liming, Wan Chaochen and Wan Dihuan) filmed one of China's earliest advertising cartoons in Shanghai, and then filmed several other animation films, until 1941, when he made China's first full-length animation "Iron Fan Princess", which caused a great sensation in Asia, and it was because of this work that Japanese animation giant Osamu Tezuka began to decide to devote himself to animation (in 1952 he made the classic animation "Astro Boy").
Therefore, from the beginning and quality of animation production, the start of Chinese animation is not late at all, and it was relatively advanced in Asia at that time. Since then, it has also experienced two golden and silver periods in the 60s and 80s, taking the Shanghai Fine Arts Studio, the base camp of animation films, as an example, since the establishment of the factory in 1957, it has produced more than 500 art films and won more than 400 domestic and foreign awards. In the early days, in order to get rid of the influence of the Soviet style, Chinese animators also created a lot of national style works, of which the representative is the new process of ink animation, the elegant Chinese ink painting and animation film combination, the formation of the most Chinese characteristics of the artistic style, the representative work "Mudi" won the highest international honor in the animation industry - in 1979, Denmark's third Odense International Fairy Tale Film Festival Gold Medal, Chinese animation at home and abroad to gain a higher and higher reputation. However, in the face of the adjustment of the market economy in the 1990s, coupled with the huge impact of the animation production mode under the original planned economy by the industrialization of foreign animation, Chinese animation began to become difficult.
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Now when it comes to the industrialization of animation, we have to talk about Japan. The most important thing behind the development of the industry is to have a complete industrial system to support. Japan has a very well-established ACG industrial system and its own animation production committee. It is in this mode that the current number and quality of Japanese animation are far ahead in the world. The "Japan Animation Industry Report 2020" mentions: "In 2019, the revenue of the Japanese animation market reached 2,511.2 billion yen (148.9 billion yuan), up more than 15% from 2018; overseas markets accounted for 47.8% of the overall market." ”
The so-called ACG industrial system mainly refers to the five parts of animation (Anime), comics (Comic), games (Game), toys (Toy), and music (Music). Anime in Japan is generally based on manga, and first magazines collected works by manga artists, selected excellent manga with market potential, and began to serialize them in magazines. Young people who like to read comics buy magazines, which not only increases the popularity of comics but also increases the sales of magazines, and then popular comics will be published by the publishing house for collections, and a large number of fans will buy them for collection. After that, the animation company will animate the popular manga and broadcast it on TV in the form of a drama. When animation is widely disseminated, toy companies will buy the rights to the cartoon and start selling the characters or scenes in the play as toys. In addition, there are game companies that buy the rights to adapt the game to make games, record companies will make the music in the animation into discs, and even hold concerts and concerts. In this way, from content to traffic to product sales, a complete ACG industrial system is built.
From the Japan Animation Industry Report 2020
For example, commercialization has always been an important peripheral income of the Japanese animation industry. According to the "Japan Animation Industry Report 2020" report, in 2019, the sales market of anime character goods alone reached 1.55 trillion yen (about 91.94 billion yuan), an increase of 1.1% year-on-year. In April 2019, after the success of the phenomenal anime "Devil's Blade", the supply of related characters around the hand was in short supply.
Behind the support system has also given birth to a series of enterprises, representative companies are: animation (Anime) is divided into production companies and distribution companies, the main production companies are Kyo Ani, Gainax, MADHOUSE, etc., the distribution companies are mainly Sunrise, Toei Animation, Toho and so on. Comics, the main manga publishers or magazines are Shueisha, Shonen JUMP, Autumn Bookstore, and so on. Games, the main companies are Nintendo, Bandai Namco, Sega and so on. Toy, the main companies are Bandai, Tamiya, TAKARA and so on. There is also Music, the main music production and distribution companies are AVEX, Sony Music, Kenyin and so on.
These companies and studios have gradually formed a very complete industrial chain, which also has an important "conductor" role - the animation production committee, which is responsible for the distribution of copyright and industrial management, which has greatly promoted the industrialization process and established a mature market environment. Therefore, many outstanding talents in the industry have been cultivated in various fields, such as animation master Hayao Miyazaki, music wizard Yoko Kanno, excellent prototype master Kunio Ogawara and so on. They love their work, are extremely authentic to their fields, are full of craftsmanship, and insist on their dreams to create classic works.
China's post-80s and post-90s childhood period is in the era of Japan's economic take-off, so the overall social environment can support creators to create at any cost, and the result of this benign operation has also stimulated the growth of Japan's domestic GDP.
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In fact, compared with Japan, the development level of China's early animation industry is ahead of other countries and has a good strength. The most representative Shanghai Fine Arts Film Studio has produced many masterpieces, such as "The Little Tadpole Finds Mother", "The Haunting of the Heavenly Palace", "The Story of Avanti" and so on. From the perspective of expression, it is very diverse, including puppet animation, ink animation, shadow animation and so on. These classic works are done at any cost by investing a lot of manpower and material resources, and the natural quality is very superior, and many foreign animators are learning from China. The state invested a lot of financial support, which should have paved the way for the subsequent batch industrialization, but in fact, with the retirement of a number of animation masters such as Tewei, Wan Liming, and Qian Jiajun, the industry was also in a state of stagnation. Objectively speaking, the Shangmei factory did not complete this historical responsibility.
At the same time, a large number of foreign animations poured in, and television replaced movies as the main way for audiences to watch movies and television. On September 1, 2006, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television announced that prime-time television stations would ban the broadcasting of foreign cartoons. Its main purpose was to protect the local market, as most television stations at the time were broadcasting Japanese or European and American cartoons. However, from the fact that on the surface, it is from the source that children are only stopped from watching foreign animation, but in fact, it may cause the aesthetic power of children to decline, because the quality of domestic animation at that time was not ideal, the plot was boring and single, and young people began to watch foreign animation on the Internet, resulting in a change in aesthetic taste. As a result, the ratings of animation films on major prime-time television stations have declined.
The quality is not ideal because there is not much capital, manpower and material investment, no industrial chain has been formed, the market is in a state of chaos, and there is no good environment to produce independent original animation. At the same time, most animation companies at that time helped foreign animation distribution companies to outsource to survive, let alone do original animation.
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It was not until after 2013 that the mobile Internet began to spread. China's post-80s and post-90s generations are gradually entering the workplace, which means that the generation that truly understands ACG culture has grown up. Capital began to be willing to try to invest in this field, so a number of new original animation companies, toy brands, game companies and ACG exchange platforms appeared, gradually forming our own industrial chain, each developing its own track.
Taking the number of works as an example, from 83 online in 2018, to 113 online in 2019, and then to nearly 200 films in 2021, the domestic animation field is ushering in a small climax. According to iResearch's animation industry data, the size of China's online animation market will exceed 20.5 billion yuan in 2020.
From the perspective of the entire ACG industry chain, the more prominent representative companies in China are: the original animation company Dream Animation has a large number of excellent original IP, such as "Hundred Demon Spectrum", "Convex Heroes", "Under One Person", etc.; Bilibili has become a gathering point for young people's ACG culture, has a huge flow, and was listed in the US stock market and Hong Kong stock IPO in 2018 and 2021 respectively; toy derivatives representative Bubble Mart seized the hobby of girls in the new era. Starting from the Molly series, the blind box culture was carried forward and listed in Hong Kong at the end of 2020. Traditional enterprises such as OPPO, ANTA, Midea, etc., have gradually launched domestic IP co-branded products, opening up the road of business model innovation. In addition, the music field, game field, film and television field around animation IP content are also beginning to exert efforts.
Today's China is in the stage of vigorously developing cultural industries and emphasizing cultural power. This generation of young people watched Japanese animation and American animation when they were young, and now with the development of Chinese animation, I hope that the next generation will have more opportunities to see Chinese original animation again. As a part of the cultural industry, the animation industry needs to further improve the development model of the industry to promote the development of the industry, and also calls for the further establishment of an animation production committee to better coordinate the development trend of the entire industry.