How can this cartoon ＂produced in Shanghai＂ ＂look good to the world＂？
In 2018, the original animation "Wu Liuqi" produced in Shanghai was born. With its unique style and touching story, it quickly accumulated the first batch of loyal fans. In the second quarter of 2019, "The Strongest Hairstylist of Wu Liuqi" was broadcast, and the popularity and reputation rose again. The animation in the two seasons won the praise of Douban with 8.9 points and 9.2 points. With the announcement of the Magnolia Award in this year’s Shanghai TV Festival, the second season of Wu 67, The Strongest Hairstylist of Wu 67, became the only original animation in China that won the Magnolia Award for Best Animation Script in recent five years.
Award-winning poster of "The Strongest Hairstylist of Wu Liuqi"
"The Strongest Hairstylist of May 67 th combines many elements of online culture, which is casual, simple and fashionable. It is a bold and innovative work with a narrative style." The international judges of this year’s Magnolia Award and well-known animators in the industry all praised the works. John Derderian, head of Netflix Animation, also thinks it is "a high-quality work that has the opportunity to arouse the resonance and favor of animation fans all over the world".
How can an original animated series in China "show the world well" on the basis of retaining its own China characteristics? As a practitioner of China’s cultural and creative industries, Zou Shasha, founder and CEO of Aha Entertainment, producer and producer of Wu Liuqi, shared her feelings.
Zou Shasha
Based on Shanghai, Building a "Talent Platform" for Content Industry
Zou Shasha chose to settle Aha Entertainment in Shanghai before, which is because he took a fancy to the deep animation foundation of this city. China’s first self-made cartoon "Make a scene in the Studio" was brought by Shanghai Wan Brothers, which was released two years earlier than Mickey Mouse of Disney in the United States. Shanghai Animation Film Studio has created a series of excellent original animations of China, which has accompanied the growth of several generations and influenced a large number of animation creators at home and abroad internationally. In recent years, the Shanghai government has also issued many policies, which have greatly supported the animation industry in terms of capital and resources.
"China animation and other story forms need to continue to explore the upgrading in three dimensions: aesthetic presentation, cultural transmission and human thinking, in order to enhance the competitiveness of works in the process of globalization." Zou Shasha introduced that in terms of aesthetic presentation, Wu Liuqi insisted on its own system, "neither American nor Japanese", and explored the aesthetic road with China characteristics. In terms of cultural transmission, "Wu 67" integrates China culture into the plot, with distinct China elements and strong local characteristics, and at the same time, it has international narration. In terms of human thinking, Wu Liuqi takes the protagonist Wu Liuqi’s search for lost memories as the main line of the story, and tells the story that the protagonist uses love and tolerance to resolve hatred and prejudice in the process of helping others and finding himself. "The work takes love and tolerance as the core, and conveys the love for life while bringing joy to the audience. Such a theme can cross national and national boundaries." Zou Shasha said.
Stills of "The Strongest Hairstylist of Wu Liuqi"
In addition to continuously creating high-quality boutique content and building a comprehensive and international content ecology, Aha Entertainment is also committed to discovering and supporting young creators with potential in China. For example, He Xiaofeng, who cast Wu Liuqi, is a very creative director, who not only arranged for the director, screenwriter and camera, but also acted as the voice of the protagonist Wu Liuqi.
Up to now, the "567" animation has been played more than 3 billion times on the whole network, and it has also been shortlisted as the main competition unit of the French Anxi International Animation Film Festival, which is known as the "Oscar in animation". At the beginning of this year, "Wu Liu Qi" even reached a global distribution cooperation with Netflix, and landed in more than 190 countries and regions around the world as the first Netflix Original animated series in China. On May 7th, The Strongest Hairstylist of Wu Liuqi landed on Netflix again, which was the second invitation sent to Wu Liuqi by the world’s top streaming media platform based on its performance, which also meant that Wu Liuqi had told a China story to the world audience, and this story will continue to be told.
Netflix finalized poster of "The Strongest Hairstylist of 567"
Make good use of stories to explore the maximum value of China’s cultural and creative content.
According to statistics, the largest overseas audience of "567" is English-speaking countries, and the total number of fans in the United States and Canada accounts for 35% of the total overseas fans, followed by South America, Europe, and then Japan and Southeast Asia. Netflix itself has always been open to content cooperation in China. In fact, many overseas manufacturers and institutions do not have a particularly obvious understanding of national boundaries and regions, and they are more content-oriented. Zou Shasha said that at present, "donghua" has been used overseas to refer to China animation, just as animation refers to Japanese animation. YouTube also has a well-known kol to comment on China animation in English, which shows that the influence of China animation in overseas markets is gradually rising.
The popularity of "Wu Liu Qi" in Netflix further proves that China, with a history of 5,000 years, has never lacked the source of good stories. However, going to sea is not the ultimate goal, but a way to maximize the value of China’s cultural and creative content. In the future, while improving the level of industrial production and cultivating the long-term vitality of the content, we should also consider the benign interaction between business and content, so that excellent content can have the ability of "automatic hematopoiesis".
Stills of "The Strongest Hairstylist of Wu Liuqi"
In addition to animated series, other IP derivatives such as comics, movies, games, stage plays, publications, live-action film and television dramas, derivatives, music and offline performances are all under planning. The third season of "567" animation is planned to be launched at the end of this year, and then I hope to maintain the rhythm of updating one season every year; At the end of last year, the first comic book "Wu 67: Black and White Ssangyong" based on different protagonists in the world view of Wu 67 was serialized, and there are plans to make it an independent IP in the future; At the same time, four animated cinema films of "Wu Liuqi" have entered the development stage, and the first set of book publications of "Wu Liuqi" will soon be published in more than 3,000 offline bookstores; The "Wu Liu Qi" series hand-made jointly with Bandai Nanmeng Palace in Japan is in hot sale, and there will be more brand-new hand-made launches in the future; Up to now, "567" has reached a linkage authorization with six games, and the linkage version with ByteDance’s popular mobile game "My Kung Fu is awesome" has just been launched.
Netflix launched in the second season of "Wu Liu Qi"
In the past, when talking about IP, people always talked about "Disney Empire" and "Marvel Universe". Zou Shasha hopes that "Wu Liu Qi" can be used as a cultural symbol of China belonging to this era, and accompany audiences of different ages through different IP forms. "The growth space of this’ Shanghai-made’ original animation work is not only in the China market, but also in the future, it will have the opportunity to make the vast global market a consumer market for cultural content and business in China."