I recently read an interesting essay by Hayao Miyazaki that his theory behind the manga/anime boom in Japan was the possibly a result of the immense stress Japanese adults were feeling under the strain of rapid industrialisation, and therefore needing more escapism and fantasia than ever before. I wonder if you think we are seeing a similar phenomenon in China, given they are steadily forecast to outpace North America as a global consumer of animation?
Thanks for the question, James. There is probably a certain element of the societal changes you describe that has become a contributing factor. However, I don't think societal changes alone is driving Chinese consumption of animation.
In the case of Japanese anime, China has been enjoying their imports since the 1990s. It's the reason why 'The First Slam Dunk' performed so well in the country last year and is now the third-highest grossing anime film released in China. That property is based on a manga and anime that were popular in China and the rest of Asia in the 1990s. Other locally popular titles include 'Doraemon' and 'Fist of the North Star'.
Government restrictions, however, closed the country to most foreign-made animation works for about a decade starting in the mid-2000s. When import restrictions were finally lifted, a new generation of audiences rediscovered animation as a mature storytelling medium. That also spurred interest in domestic creators of animation, leading to an across-the-board boom in animation consumption.
Thank you so much for the detailed response! This was really illuminating and I appreciate my initial assumption was quite narrow in assessing the surrounding industry conditions. The ThinkChina article was great. Their claim that anime has served as a cultural bridge between both nations through nostalgia is a compelling one.
On the flip side (re anime popularity with Chinese audiences), what have you learned about donghua's popularity with Japanese audiences and the wider international audience for anime and adult-animation? Have you written much on this topic?
Japan is still importing Chinese animation today, but to a lesser extent than before the pandemic. Now, feature films rather than serials are driving this market in Japan and globally. I reported last year about a cluster of Chinese animation films making their theatrical debuts in Japan: https://news.animenomics.com/p/summer-of-chinese-animation-kicks
Fuji TV is one company that's still investing in Chinese animation, last year committing to create a programming block on its networks specifically dedicated to Bilibili-produced serials dubbed into Japanese. But Bilibili has a profitability issue that's being exacerbated by China's current macroeconomic slump: https://news.animenomics.com/p/chinese-streaming-platforms-slow Bilibili is the one company to monitor to see how Chinese animated serials perform in Japan.
I wrote a lot more about Chinese animation in the years that I led the news team at MyAnimeList. In one interview I did with the now-defunct Emon studio in 2017, I got the sense that it was the Chinese players who were pushing to invest and distribute in Japan, rather than Japanese audiences seeking out Chinese animation: https://myanimelist.net/news/51216255
This approach is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, many Chinese animators learned the animation production process and business from Japan, which made it easier at the time to bring in Chinese-produced titles that are close in style to Japanese anime, dub them into Japanese, and present them to Japanese audiences. On the other hand, the Chinese animation industry is now trying to find its own artistic style, and when they start to deviate from Japan's anime style, Japanese audiences may not be as eager to seek out Chinese-produced works.
Fascinating insight. Thank you. I think it is an interesting time for Chinese animation. We can see more and more a distinctive and unique voice developing in Chinese animation. I wonder if there is a wider market for it beyond the Chinese-speaking audience?
So I read the ThinkChina article, and having gone back to China multiple times in my youth, even if anime was not allowed to air on TV or there was limited exposure, there was an abundant illegal VCD/DVD market where children could easily get their hands on anime. I personally bought fake Naruto manga in China around 2005/2006. If you were resourceful enough, even in the early 2000s, my cousin had a Windows 2000 computer, and was able to watch Dragon Ball online.
But the thing is, illegal revenue is not reported. Now, some of the kids that grew up in the 80s and 90s and had to depend on their parents money to enjoy anime, make their own money. They have the resources to purchase legitimate anime merchandise. It is partly why the resale value of genuine Pokemon and Yugioh cards went sky high during the pandemic. Adults enjoy revisiting childhood nostalgia. So my answer to the boom, based on anectodal evidence, is that part of the boom comes from illegal revenue transferring to legal revenue.
-Online pirate sites have ads and malware. Sometimes the first website we click has the video we want (yeah), sometimes it doesn't and we have to go through 5 websites to find one that works (annoying), sometimes the server is slow and the vid pauses every couple seconds. (free but unstable customer experience)
-Netflix and Crunchyroll offer a seamless high-definition anime experience with no ads, no malware for a monthly fee (convenience premium)
To answer your question about the manga/anime boom, I hope that helps to paint part of the picture of the boom.
Then to answer the part on "a result of the immense stress Japanese adults were feeling under the strain of rapid industrialisation, and therefore needing more escapism and fantasia." We could say the same for why there are so many gamers. Can't succeed in life, lvl up in a game, escapism at its finest. I would avoid fancy language and dumb it down to, ppl in first world countries are stressed in the competitive job market. China employees are resorting to "laying flat." When we have time off, we want to maximize dopamine.
Part of the anime boom, that is not mentioned in that theory, is that the entertainment value and production quality of anime has improved drastically. What got me back into anime was Demon Slayer Season 2. Every episode was like watching an action movie. Japan owes it to the anime studios that have been outputting straight bangers. The reason Jujutsu Kaizen and Demon Slayer are so popular is because the entertainment value per minute is beyond many forms of media out there. If I could erase my memory and pick between rewatching Avengers Infinity War in the movies, or Demon Slayer S2 in the comfort of my own home, I'd pick Demon Slayer S2.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Alan. I definitely agree anecdotally on the point of illegal revenue converting to legal revenue. This behavior is never documented well, but it does happen. I saw it growing up in Indonesia as well.
I recently read an interesting essay by Hayao Miyazaki that his theory behind the manga/anime boom in Japan was the possibly a result of the immense stress Japanese adults were feeling under the strain of rapid industrialisation, and therefore needing more escapism and fantasia than ever before. I wonder if you think we are seeing a similar phenomenon in China, given they are steadily forecast to outpace North America as a global consumer of animation?
Thanks for the question, James. There is probably a certain element of the societal changes you describe that has become a contributing factor. However, I don't think societal changes alone is driving Chinese consumption of animation.
In the case of Japanese anime, China has been enjoying their imports since the 1990s. It's the reason why 'The First Slam Dunk' performed so well in the country last year and is now the third-highest grossing anime film released in China. That property is based on a manga and anime that were popular in China and the rest of Asia in the 1990s. Other locally popular titles include 'Doraemon' and 'Fist of the North Star'.
Government restrictions, however, closed the country to most foreign-made animation works for about a decade starting in the mid-2000s. When import restrictions were finally lifted, a new generation of audiences rediscovered animation as a mature storytelling medium. That also spurred interest in domestic creators of animation, leading to an across-the-board boom in animation consumption.
Data shared in one Reddit post confirms this. The vast majority of the highest-grossing animation films released in China came out after the mid-2010s: https://www.reddit.com/r/boxoffice/comments/15i4evk/highest_grossing_animation_films_in_mainland/
Fore more context, Singapore-based ThinkChina has an excellent overview of China's relationship with Japanese anime: https://www.thinkchina.sg/chinas-youths-love-japanese-anime-no-matter-what-anyone-says
Thank you so much for the detailed response! This was really illuminating and I appreciate my initial assumption was quite narrow in assessing the surrounding industry conditions. The ThinkChina article was great. Their claim that anime has served as a cultural bridge between both nations through nostalgia is a compelling one.
Hi Richardson,
On the flip side (re anime popularity with Chinese audiences), what have you learned about donghua's popularity with Japanese audiences and the wider international audience for anime and adult-animation? Have you written much on this topic?
Good question, Jerome.
Japan is still importing Chinese animation today, but to a lesser extent than before the pandemic. Now, feature films rather than serials are driving this market in Japan and globally. I reported last year about a cluster of Chinese animation films making their theatrical debuts in Japan: https://news.animenomics.com/p/summer-of-chinese-animation-kicks
Fuji TV is one company that's still investing in Chinese animation, last year committing to create a programming block on its networks specifically dedicated to Bilibili-produced serials dubbed into Japanese. But Bilibili has a profitability issue that's being exacerbated by China's current macroeconomic slump: https://news.animenomics.com/p/chinese-streaming-platforms-slow Bilibili is the one company to monitor to see how Chinese animated serials perform in Japan.
I wrote a lot more about Chinese animation in the years that I led the news team at MyAnimeList. In one interview I did with the now-defunct Emon studio in 2017, I got the sense that it was the Chinese players who were pushing to invest and distribute in Japan, rather than Japanese audiences seeking out Chinese animation: https://myanimelist.net/news/51216255
This approach is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, many Chinese animators learned the animation production process and business from Japan, which made it easier at the time to bring in Chinese-produced titles that are close in style to Japanese anime, dub them into Japanese, and present them to Japanese audiences. On the other hand, the Chinese animation industry is now trying to find its own artistic style, and when they start to deviate from Japan's anime style, Japanese audiences may not be as eager to seek out Chinese-produced works.
Fascinating insight. Thank you. I think it is an interesting time for Chinese animation. We can see more and more a distinctive and unique voice developing in Chinese animation. I wonder if there is a wider market for it beyond the Chinese-speaking audience?
So I read the ThinkChina article, and having gone back to China multiple times in my youth, even if anime was not allowed to air on TV or there was limited exposure, there was an abundant illegal VCD/DVD market where children could easily get their hands on anime. I personally bought fake Naruto manga in China around 2005/2006. If you were resourceful enough, even in the early 2000s, my cousin had a Windows 2000 computer, and was able to watch Dragon Ball online.
But the thing is, illegal revenue is not reported. Now, some of the kids that grew up in the 80s and 90s and had to depend on their parents money to enjoy anime, make their own money. They have the resources to purchase legitimate anime merchandise. It is partly why the resale value of genuine Pokemon and Yugioh cards went sky high during the pandemic. Adults enjoy revisiting childhood nostalgia. So my answer to the boom, based on anectodal evidence, is that part of the boom comes from illegal revenue transferring to legal revenue.
Why?
-no one buys pirated VCD/DVDS anymore (online pirate sites killed them)
-Online pirate sites have ads and malware. Sometimes the first website we click has the video we want (yeah), sometimes it doesn't and we have to go through 5 websites to find one that works (annoying), sometimes the server is slow and the vid pauses every couple seconds. (free but unstable customer experience)
-Netflix and Crunchyroll offer a seamless high-definition anime experience with no ads, no malware for a monthly fee (convenience premium)
To answer your question about the manga/anime boom, I hope that helps to paint part of the picture of the boom.
Then to answer the part on "a result of the immense stress Japanese adults were feeling under the strain of rapid industrialisation, and therefore needing more escapism and fantasia." We could say the same for why there are so many gamers. Can't succeed in life, lvl up in a game, escapism at its finest. I would avoid fancy language and dumb it down to, ppl in first world countries are stressed in the competitive job market. China employees are resorting to "laying flat." When we have time off, we want to maximize dopamine.
Part of the anime boom, that is not mentioned in that theory, is that the entertainment value and production quality of anime has improved drastically. What got me back into anime was Demon Slayer Season 2. Every episode was like watching an action movie. Japan owes it to the anime studios that have been outputting straight bangers. The reason Jujutsu Kaizen and Demon Slayer are so popular is because the entertainment value per minute is beyond many forms of media out there. If I could erase my memory and pick between rewatching Avengers Infinity War in the movies, or Demon Slayer S2 in the comfort of my own home, I'd pick Demon Slayer S2.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Alan. I definitely agree anecdotally on the point of illegal revenue converting to legal revenue. This behavior is never documented well, but it does happen. I saw it growing up in Indonesia as well.