It is a small problem for the box office to break through 3.5 billion, and the pace of the revival of the domestic animation industry is a big problem.
Editor’s note: This article is from WeChat public account “Internet and entertainment geeks” ( ID: TMTphantom), author Yu Pei, Jiao Shan.
What happened?
“Where is the devil of the world”, the box office and word of mouth double harvest, just the initial battle of domestic animation. At the same time, 80-90% of the domestic animation movie box office is less than 100 million, the market is completely supported by a small number of head explosions. In the final analysis, the rise of domestic animation requires continuous, large-scale production of high-quality works, and the Long March has only taken the first step. We cut in from the perspective of consumer audience expansion, the industry’s dilemma and solutions, and conduct an in-depth analysis of the industry chain’s profit model and realisation space. With the history and model of the US and Japanese animation industry as a reference, we explore the rise of domestic animation. route map.
The domestic animation moves from “children” to “all ages”. Adults have more than ever demand for fantasy and moving. In 2018, the size of China’s animation users was 346 million, and it is still expanding at a rate of 12.3%. According to our monitoring, the high paying willingness and spending power groups of 20 to 29 years old account for more than 50% of animated films and at least 40% of online animations. Due to historical reasons, domestic animation has always been dominated by “children”, but the success of “Where” is the victory of “all ages” – may be late, but will not be absent forever.
The lifeblood of animation is talent, the story is the finishing touch, and technology is the icing on the cake. The animation industry must form positive feedback on box office and word of mouth with high-quality works. In fact, the current level of technology in the domestic animation industry is not low, the biggest bottleneck is talent: a large number of professionals have been snatched away by the better-paid gaming industry. Fortunately, the influx of capital is changing the scarcity of talent in the animation industry. Good stories are also scarce resources, but they can be solved by comics and novel IP adaptation.
Animated films have high profitability, long production cycles, and limited production capacity. The explosion of animated films such as “The Return of the Great Sacred” and “Where” has a benchmark effect, which has brought great attention to the animation industry. However, the essence of animated films is still film, low predictability, production weekLong period and long cash recovery period. Under the same conditions, the production capacity of animated films is much lower than that of the drama. The development of domestic animation cannot rely on a few explosive films, but a product matrix with multiple platforms, multiple categories, heads and long tails.
Network animation relies on high exposure, and IP derivatives have a wide range of realizable space. The production cost of network animation is much lower than that of TV dramas played by real people; although the ability to realize cash in the playback link is not strong, as long as the IP value is cultivated, there is a lot of room for subsequent derivative realization. From the income structure of Disney, the theme park in 2018, copyright and publishing and games, retail and other revenue accounted for 42%. In 2017, the size of the Japanese animation commercialization market was 523.2 billion yen, accounting for 24% of the size of the Japanese animation industry. In contrast, China’s genuine derivatives market is just getting started.
What should investors care about?
The domestic animation industry is from the upstream to the middle to the downstream, showing a situation where the market concentration of the two markets is high and the competition in the middle is scattered. Due to the integration and scale effect of content resources and traffic, we are optimistic about the upstream platform with rich content IP and the broadcast port of downstream network animation. As for the production process, it is difficult to confirm the winner before the competitive landscape becomes clear.
In the domestic animation industry, Tencent and 哔哩哔哩 are two giants covering the entire industry chain (upstream IP, midstream production, downstream channels), the former has inexhaustible traffic and financial resources, the latter has powerful The community’s tonality and ability to control content will surely become the biggest beneficiary of the rise of the industry. As the largest online novel platform, Reading Group has a wealth of IP resources, and there are many tests in animation production and production. Light Media has proved its strength in animation production through “Where” and “Big Fish Sea Bream”, especially in the animated film market, it is rare for the same level of competitors.
“Which” is successful, the journey of domestic animation has just begun
The long march of domestic animation has taken the first step, and the expectations of the audience are still rising. On August 11, 2019, the box office of “Where the Devil’s Angels Comes into the World” broke through 3.5 billion yuan, far surpassing the box office record of 1.527 billion yuan, the original champion of Chinese animated film history, “Crazy Animal City”, and also boarded the box office of the mainland movie box. The fifth position. In the streets and alleys, people are all talking about: Is the domestic animation rising? The reason why this question is asked is because people need too much domestic animation to rise!
When talking about the concept of “domestic animation”, we first need to distinguish between domestic animated movies and domestic animated TV series (including web animation). From 2015 to now, the annual box office of domestic animated films has fluctuated violently with the number of output items and the box office pulling effect; domestic network animation in 2016-2018, from the perspective of output quantity and playback volume Both are on the rise, and the amount of new animations on the singles is also climbing.
But if we carefully organize the box office distribution of animated films, it is not difficult to find that 80% to 90% of the domestically produced animated films are under 100 million, and the overall box office is completely a few heads. .
In contrast, imported animation movies have a more uniform box office distribution and more “medium explosions”. Since 2015, imported animated films have only over 1 billion box office works in 2016 and 2017, namely “Crazy Animal City” (1.527 billion yuan), “Dream of Dreams” (1.212 billion yuan) and “The Thief” Dad 3″ (1,037 million yuan); and the number of works per 100 to 500 million box office per year is 20% -36%, which means 4-10 each year. This means that even without the explosions like “Crazy Animal City”, imported animated films can rely on “Spiderman’s Parallel Universe” and “Superman Story 2” to support the box office of not less than 2.5 billion for the whole year.
Where is the next “Where”? We cannot give a clear answer. What is certain is that if we rely solely on a few explosions such as “Where” and “The Return of the Great”, Chinese animated films cannot rise, and the entire Chinese animation industry is hard to climb to the next level. The red highlight of “Where” is just a primer, let us start thinking: How to achieve the sustainable development of domestic animation?
The domestic animation has a large gap between supply and demand. Due to factors such as the limited variety and quantity of high-quality works and the fact that the profit model is not yet fully mature, both animated films and online animations are still on the eve of the outbreak. This article analyzes in depth from the perspective of the animation industry chain and tries to answer the following questions:
1) Is the user audience of domestic animation really only children? How to see the scale of the user audience of Chinese animation in the future from the American “Family Carnival” animated film and the Japanese two-dimensional animation?
2) At this stage, what is the development of the domestic animation film and network animation industry? Is it a lack of funds, lack of technology, or other factors?
3) In addition to the direct benefits of animation, where is the future of the industry chain?
4) What is the competitive landscape of the domestic animation industry? What are the variables in the future competitive landscape?
The group that guards the animation is far bigger than you think.
Forever young, always tearful”
Children are more likely to accept animations that are exaggerated or surrealistic, but do not mean that teenagers and adults cannot accept animation. If we have seen animation and comics at least once in half a year to define “anime users,” then the size of China’s anime users in 2018 is 346 million. At the same time, the number of children under the age of 14 in China is only 245 million. It can be seen that the group of anime users far exceeds the category of “children”. In 2018, the domestic online animation and comics users were 208 million and 167 million, respectively, with year-on-year growth rates of 36.8% and 46.5%, respectively.
According to the “Microblogging Animation White Paper”, as of 2018Q3, Sina Weibo MAU is 446 million, including 248 million users of pan-anime interest, 31.26 million core animation users, and 34,000 head KOL accounts. The scale is more than 350 million. Weibo added 36,000 anime topics every year, and the topic discussion increased by 110 million times. The number of topic readings increased by 103.4 billion. It can be said that whether it is from the coverage, the frequency of viewing or the hot topic, the animation is universal and age-oriented.
The visualization and commodification of the imaginary world can pin up and satisfy people’s lofty ideals. When it comes to animation, you can’t avoid the concept of “two yuan.” Today, the “secondary element” has long been confined to animation and comics, but refers to the “imaginary world” that opposes the real world. Characters in ACGN (animation, comics, games, novels) can be called secondary characters in a broad sense. People who like the second yuan may be ordinary hard-working students. They may be busy and tired office workers, or they may be passers-by. Animation works can be constructed with a brush and technology to create a fantasy world and express real life movies.