Cosplay fest to homegrown talent - Legions of fans drive catch-up in Chinese comics and animation industry

Record ID: 1354739

  • Title: Cosplay fest to homegrown talent - Legions of fans drive catch-up in Chinese comics and animation industry
  • Date: 4th September 2018
  • Summary: HANGZHOU, ZHEJIANG PROVINCE, CHINA (FILE - JUNE 8, 2018) (REUTERS) MARKETING DIRECTOR OF NETEASE COMICS, LUO QIANDAN, AND HER COLLEAGUE WORKING IN MEETING ROOM LUO LOOKING ON MODELS OF COMIC CHARACTERS (SOUNDBITE) (Mandarin) MARKETING DIRECTOR OF NETEASE COMICS, LUO QIANDAN, SAYING: "According to data from our platform, 'Guoman' (Chinese comics and animation) do not have a difficult or high threshold for the local audience to accept. People are willing to read 'Guoman' and they would not think that domestic comics are worse than Japanese ones. From my perspective, domestic comics are of high caliber."
  • Embargoed: 18th September 2018 12:51
  • Keywords: Cosplay Chinese comics graphic novel animation China Netease
  • Location: HANGZHOU AND BEIJING AND SHANGHAI, CHINA
  • City: HANGZHOU AND BEIJING AND SHANGHAI, CHINA
  • Country: China
  • Topics: Arts / Culture / Entertainment
  • Reuters ID: LVA00B8WCML3T
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: Cosplayers showed off their costumes and weapons on stage, fans danced with animation music while models in costumes posed to promote various comics and animations. This year, the Bilibili World expo in Shanghai, organised by China's Bilibili anime streaming platform, attracted 170,000 visitors, 70,000 more than last year when it was held for the first time.
    China's animation and comics market - known as 'dongman' (pronouned tong-maan) a portmanteau of the Chinese words for animation and comics - is growing fast with expectations to hit a value of 216 billion yuan ($33.22 billion) by 2020, according to the EntGroup consultancy, from 150 billion yuan ($22 billion) last year.
    It is being driven by young Chinese audience, born between 1990 and 2009, who make up 60 percent of the customers in the domestic industry and are consuming comics and animations in vast amounts online.
    "I've changed from purely reading Japanese comics to gradually falling in love with domestic comics. I have followed these domestic comics for a long time and their production quality is definitely not worse than Japanese comics," said sixteen-year-old comics and animation fan Xu Xindi.
    However, China still lags behind the Japanese and American markets in terms of production and sales, and Chinese technology and internet giants like NetEase, Tencent Holdings and Baidu are splashing out on comic artists and production firms to play catch up.
    Growing up in the Chinese port city of Dalian in the 1990s, Zhang Hongchang spent hours immersed in Japanese cartoons like Dragon Ball and Naruto.
    Now, Zhang is one of China's hottest cartoonists and his latest hit comic - which stars a high school student who is also a Taoist priest with secret super powers - has been viewed 160 million times online.
    "When I started, I was copying Japanese cartoons and my favourite cartoons, but eventually I find out that everyone has their own style. In the Chinese market, everyone is doing their individual style and there are differences," Zhang said in the Hangzhou studio where he draws comics that are made available to readers on a platform operated by the local technology firm NetEase Inc.
    NetEase Comics has also created a character "Lu Niang" translated into "deer girl", which it hopes will promote the company's business of comics and create more opportunities for brand licensing and intercompany crossover with other brands, while U.S.-listed Bilibili has invested in dozens of local comic and animation companies and Tencent's film arm has launched a "100 animations" project to support domestic productions.
    Experts say these firms are rightly-so playing the long game, as they look to reap the monetary benefits of the emerging 'dongman' sub-culture being galvanised by China's young generation that are wealthier than their parents were, and have no qualms about spending money on their favourite cartoons.
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