In 18 months, 16 domestic network animations and 6 animated films were launched in Japan. It is still early to say that “counterattack against Japan” is early, but our penetration in overseas markets is getting deeper and deeper.
Editor’s note: This article is from WeChat public account “Sanwen Entertainment” (ID:hi3wyu), author Dkphhh.
More and more Chinese animation works are online overseas.
7 January this year, the three entertainment in “ Domestic animation counterattacks Japan? said that at least 20 animation works were launched in Japan within 18 months. Two months later, there were two domestic animated films, “Rom Little Black Wars” and “White Snake – Yuanqi”, which were registered in the Japanese cinema line and received a good evaluation. In particular, the 2D animated film “Luo Xiaohei Battle” has won the praise of many Japanese animators.
Although counterattacking Japan is still an expectation, it is undeniable that the penetration of Chinese animation works in the Japanese market is getting deeper and deeper.
In addition to the Japanese market, there are actually quite a few Chinese animation works in Southeast Asia, North America, and Middle East.
For example, in September, two “Bear Infested” animated films were recorded in 1,000 theaters in Russia, and the Chinese dark horse animated film “Where” was released in North America (Review: Where is the $4 million North American box office, isn’t it?).
On November 15 this year, “White Snake – Yuan Qi” will also be released in Los Angeles, the publisher is GKids. In the past nine years, 11 of the films released by GKids have won the Oscar for best animated films, including “The Family of the Family” and “The Song of the Sea”.
So, how do Chinese animation works go overseas in the end?
How come out to sea? International exhibitions are a good choice
This week, the MPCCOM was officially opened. In the world’s largest film and television content trading event, we saw a lot of Chinese figures.
There are more than 100 Chinese companies and institutions participating in the current Cannes TV Festival, including many well-known domestic animation companies such as Huaqiang Fant, Aofei Entertainment, 2:10, original power, and baby fish.
Dollfish at MIPCOM booth
Huaqiang Fangte has participated in the Cannes TV Festival since 2008. It is one of the earliest animation companies participating in this trade show.
By continuing to participate in these overseas exchange activities, they sold dozens of animations including “Bear Infestations” to overseas famous video platforms and publishers including Netflix, Nick Kids Channel, Sony, etc., and successfully distributed to More than 100 countries and regions around the world.
On October 11th, Huaqiang Fangte held a press conference in Zhengzhou and announced six new works, including “Bear Infest: Wild Land”, which is the seventh film in the series.
The reason why Huaqiang Fangte chose to announce new works at this time is also to promote the promotion of overseas markets. On October 12th, one day later, the seven animation works will be released again at the Cannes TV Festival. The second time is released to overseas buyers.
For Chinese companies that have little visibility overseas, presenting their work at international trade shows is the most direct way to open up overseas markets.
Of course, Chinese companies are not newcomers at the Cannes TV Festival. In the past few years, with the growing trend of “going out”, many animation companies have noticed that this is a bridge to the international market.
In addition to Huaqiang Fant, the “Beijing Opera Cat” of the starry sky, the “Pig Man” of the singer anime, and the “Loo Baby” of Daye Media all go overseas through the Cannes TV Festival.
“Beijing Opera Cat”
The “Beijing Opera Cat”, which combines elements of Peking Opera, was introduced to Southeast Asia and aired on Astro TV in Malaysia and New Media Channel 8 in Singapore.
“Luo Bao” was introduced by Canada’s 9 Story company and aired in Canada and the UK.
Two years ago, the news of the animation of the anime and Crane Kahn LLC to jointly create an international version of the 3D anime brand “Pig Man” was also announced at the MIPCOM in Cannes, France.
The animation company in China performed well on this MIPCOM. One of the five works of the MIP Junior project roadshow was the new work of “Amazing School Bus”. Thunder Entertainment’s “A-Squad” entered the top 10 of MIP Junior’s most popular projects, ranking 8th.
How come out to sea? Streaming media platform is a new opportunity for animation to go to the sea
Benefits streaming media such as NetflixTaiwan, China’s animated films are also broadcast in overseas markets including Japan. In 2018, four domestic animated films were bought by Netflix, namely, “Big Fish Sea Bream”, “Minding Youth”, “Mama Mia Duck” and “Future Machine City”.
Netflix has been trying to expand its animation content in recent years, and has spent a lot of money to collaborate with Japanese animation companies to launch original content. With the expansion of streaming media platforms such as Netflix, Disney+, Prime Video, and Apple TV+ to the global market, their demand for overseas content will increase. This is good news for Chinese animation companies.
At this MIPCOM, these big platforms became the main sellers of non-English programs.
According to foreign media reports, Netflix’s content budget this year is about $15 billion, and Prime Video’s content budget is estimated to be $7 billion this year. Apple’s Apple TV+ content budget is about $6 billion. Disney’s content budget for this year is $22 billion, and Disney’s dedicated budget is $10.
“Loo Baby”
This is an opportunity for all Chinese companies, especially when platforms such as Netflix are increasingly focusing on animated content (Shocking Oscar, 95 original animations on the line, can Netflix incite Disney?).
Now, as the US-based streaming media market has fallen into the growth ceiling, these large-scale streaming media platforms are gradually turning their attention to Europe and emerging markets, and domestic animation has always been good in emerging markets such as the Middle East, Southeast Asia and Africa. which performed.
As shown in the opening chart, animations such as “Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf”, “Bear Infested”, “Shan Hai Bao” and “Amy” are extremely popular in emerging markets. Because local animation production capacity in these areas is relatively low, it is unable to meet local demand.
In reality, the purchasing power of emerging markets is clearly not comparable to that of developed European and American markets. Many Chinese animation companies are not willing to sell their works to these markets because “the selling price is low and it is highly likely that they will not be able to return. “.
But now, with a well-off American streaming company, money is no longer a problem. Last year, the domestic animated film “Future Machinery City” was bought by Netflix for a high price of 30 million US dollars. Earlier, Netflix also bought the right to play some of the works in the Bear Infest series.
Amazon also bought another child from the anime animation to the animated “Deasing” and put it into emerging markets.
What are the difficulties with Chinese animation going to sea? Language culture and grading system
At the same time, we can also find that most of the people who can really go overseas today are children’s animations. The reason is also very simple. The younger age is more likely to open up borders and regional cultural differences. The animation often requires a deeper cultural background or a higher level of production to impress the audience.
But it’s not that simple to let children animate the sea. In the target countries of China’s animation, such as Singapore, Malaysia, and Vietnam, there are film and television grading systems, which have strict standards for children’s animation.
More developed European and American countries have more complicated grading systems, and even different administrative regions have different regulations.
Chinese animation does not appear to be excessively violent and erotic, but like swearing, smoking and yellow jokes, we seeThere is no harm to the content, but it may become a hindrance to the overseas work.
When this year’s “Where” was released in North America, we mentioned the details of a line translation. The original Chinese line “Go to your bird life!” was translated into “Forget your fate!”, which is actually The translation team consciously circumvented the American grading system and turned the original swearing into an ordinary line, trying to make the work more visible to others.
Speaking of lines, you have to ask questions about translation and dubbing.
For overseas children’s animations, animations must have a local language dubbing. For preschool children, it is undoubtedly difficult to read subtitles.
Even if it is an animated work for teenagers or adults, it is easier to open the market with dubbing, because most foreigners do not have the habit of watching subtitles. Usually, subtitles are prepared for the hearing impaired.
But the dubbing does not mean having a good “localization”. If the lines of the dubbing are not translated “native”, the charm of the work itself will be greatly reduced.
Huaqiang Fangte has done a good job in this regard. When they turned their attention to overseas markets in 2008, they realized this problem, so they formed an English dubbing team, all of which were English-speaking voice actors. At the same time, they will also design lines specifically for the English dubbed version.
The sound of Anime’s “Pig Man” didn’t have an English dubbed version at first, but CraneKahn, which helped them to be released overseas, solved this problem and changed the original English name “GG Bond” of “Pig Man” to more. “Kung Fu Pork Choppers” which is easy to attract foreign audiences. Moreover, they also made some modifications to the original animation to adapt to the overseas market.
From this point of view, in fact, to find a good issuer for animation, can evade many problems for the animation of the sea trip, but at present most of the domestic animation works are selected directly to the projection channel. This may make more money, but it is not conducive to opening up overseas markets.
For overseas audiences, cultural barriers are another major obstacle to their appreciation of Chinese animation.
We can find that the animations that have been successfully exported to overseas markets are basically universal in terms of stories, and there are not too many elements of Chinese traditional culture. “Bears infested”, “Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf”, “Pig Pigman” Both and “Loo Baby” are the same.
The only exception, “Beijing Opera Cat”, is exported to Southeast Asia, but this is mainly because there are Chinese communities in Southeast Asia.
So playing Chinese traditional culture cards will not work? Not necessarily.
There is a gap in culture, but the most fundamental thing in cultural works is the quality of the work itself. This year’s overseas performance of the “Magic Dao” animated version of the fusion of fantasy elements. On YouTube, the cumulative amount of “Magic Daoist: The Predecessor” has reached nearly 3.5 million.
On the overseas animation rating website MyAnimelist, more than 17,000 viewers gave it an average score of 8.57.
Moreover, these achievements are based on the premise that only Chinese dubbing and English subtitles are available. “Magic Dao” can achieve such a result, or excellent production touched the audience.
However, Tencent has not released the overseas copyrights of animations such as “Magic Dao” and “Full-time Master”. Now all overseas viewers can only watch these animations on the official Tencent video channel on YouTube.