CATDOLL: Facing the market gap in the development of domestic animation, what should the 80s and 90s do?

As a populous country, China's population base should determine that it is a consumer country, including animation products. However, compared with the early situation when Japanese animation dominated the domestic market, the current consumer spending on domestic animation products is obviously a bit rational. In this era of rapid technological development in the Internet, the general Chinese people are less familiar with Japanese animation products. So can we take advantage of this opportunity to accelerate the development of domestic animation with the current popular Internet thinking? When we see that the industry giants are building an emerging cultural industry chain spanning literature, games, film and television, and animation around high-quality IP, we can get some inspiration. Under the new situation, how can domestic animation use people's most trendy Internet thinking mode to discover the turning point has become a new topic nowadays.

Current status of Japanese animation development: high production costs and difficulty in recovering costs lead to uneven distribution of benefits in the industry chain

As a country with a very high output of animation, Japan's animation industry has achieved what it has today, all thanks to the mature and complete industrial cycle chain of "animation production - media broadcasting - derivative product development - income - reproduction" that has been formed in the production stage. Such an industrial model can not only accumulate the number of comic readers, but also lay a good foundation for the subsequent development of animation and animation derivative products, and form a competitive animation brand. However, although this industrial model and steps can play a good guiding role in the standardized market development, in fact, very serious problems have arisen behind it. In Japan, it costs about $100,000 to produce an episode of animation, and the production cost of a season of about 12-13 episodes is about $1.3 million, including the following processes (as shown below)

There are usually only three ways for an animation to recover costs: selling broadcasting rights to TV stations, making Blu-ray DVDs for sale, and producing animation derivatives for sale. In the market, a good animation with good material can develop in many ways, and the survival space of new animation brands is getting narrower and narrower in such a fiercely competitive market. When a few brand animations with high market acceptance have a large market share, the cake for new animation works to recover costs and make profits through the above three directions is getting smaller and smaller in such a mature market. As a result, due to the large number of companies and personnel involved in the entire production process, the distribution of benefits is uneven.

Current status of domestic animation development

From this perspective, the development of animation production teams today can be said to have taken advantage of the right time and right place. Unfortunately, due to the wrong audience positioning and the failure to develop according to the normal industrial chain, the development of the entire animation industry has stagnated. Looking at the entire industry, the animation production team seems to have overlooked two points: first, animation works are not only educational, but also entertaining; second, in the animation market, the post-80s and post-90s are mastering the power and ability to actively consume, and they are beginning to have cultural and entertainment consumption needs.

What should domestic animation do in the face of the market gap of the post-80s and post-90s?

In the animation industry chain, content creation and production are upstream. If you want to go far in the animation market, brand building is undoubtedly the kingly way. In recent years, the importance of literary IP is gradually being valued. With its textual characteristics, online literature is at the upstream of pan-entertainment. Regardless of various forms of presentation such as games, movies, and animations, it is the "mother body". It can be said that it has become the "fulcrum" for leveraging the "pan-entertainment" industry. Works such as "Why Sheng Xiaomo", "Mi Yue Biography", "Qin Shi Ming Yue", "Hua Qiangu", "Grave Robbers' Chronicles", "Nirvana in Fire", and "Song in the Clouds" are all derived from popular online novels. Most of them are interconnected with film, television, games, animation and other businesses. Through the Internet platform, a huge industrial chain has been created around the intellectual property rights of online literary works, which will also become a key point in the transformation of domestic animation.

When it comes to precedents of pan-entertainment animation, people often only think of well-known foreign animation giants or some domestic children's works. Disney's business model can stand the test of practice, but it may not be unimpeded in China. If Chinese animation wants to follow the precedent to achieve pan-entertainment of the brand, the first thing is to be well versed in the essence of Eastern culture and meet the needs and habits of Chinese online game players. Take "The Legend of Chusen" as an example. Before it was made into a game and animation, the novel was officially serialized online from December 16, 2012, and ended in April 2015. During this period, it accumulated a total of about 60 million reading fans. In addition, such a large number of reading fans range in age from 16 to about 30 years old. In addition to reading novels, they also like to play computer games, mobile games, watch animations and movies. Therefore, as the leader of the IP pan-entertainment industry, the first wave of Internet technology companies carefully allowed "The Legend of Chusen" to develop normally in the industrial chain, which led to the launch of "The Legend of Chusen" web game, "The Legend of Chusen" mobile game and "The Legend of Chusen 2" mobile game. With the determination to become a high-quality Chinese brand, they have entered into all aspects of animation, TV series and anime derivatives, bringing a better animation experience to the post-80s and post-90s Chinese.

IP is important, but it is not the only thing. The pan-entertainment strategy built around IP is obviously not a game that everyone can play. In fact, as long as we go deep into the bottom of the interactive entertainment industry and build a cultural industry chain with entertainment as the core layer by layer, rather than just setting up a model for a certain product, then this is the interactive entertainment needed in the future and the arrival of a new era for the animation industry. The road is long and arduous, and there are still many unknown factors on the road to the rise of domestic animation. While Chinese animation is advancing in technology, it should enrich the diversified story themes as soon as possible, strengthen the operational grasp of details, and at the same time divide the Chinese animation market and audience into targeted categories to create animation.