Since The box office of Monkey King: Hero Is Back reached nearly 1 billion yuan in 2015, the Chinese comic was exited, which had been suppressed by Japanese and American comic for a long time, and the Chinese comic saw a glimmering of hope for its rise. Various capitals began to be ready to move, and increased their market share. Chinese comic enterprises also kept innovating and achieved good results under the support of capital.
Among them, Rosen Digital is one of the most rapid development of comics in recent years, its “Painting lake” series has won the recognition and love of comics friends, also ushered in the favor of capital. At the end of January 2017, it obtained B round financing from Songhe Capital, Shengwan Investment, Guoxin Hongsheng and Junchuang Capital, with an estimated value of more than 2 billion yuan. In July of the same year, it was listed in the 2017 Future Unicorn TOP150 jointly published by Internet Weekly and eNet Research Institute.
Under the long-term suppression of Chinese comics by Japanese and American comics, It is really commendable for Rosen Digital, as a Chinese comics enterprise, to achieve such a good performance through the haze, and its influence in the Chinese comics market also confirms its proud capital. But Zhang’s assertion that “we, like Disney, cannot replicate” may be overconfident.
Self-confidence cannot copy if sen, in fact, with mystery very close
In order to create an original IP brand matrix with the “Painting Lake” series, He got rid of the path of Chinese comics and gained the favor of audiences of all ages, among which the “Z generation” was the majority. He also took advantage of the hot iron to carry out more extensive business cooperation around this series of IP, such as games, movies and TV plays, stage plays, derivatives, etc. The “Painted River” series was the foundation of Jossen’s success, but it was not achieved in one go but over a long period of time.
In the early stage, Ruosen was in trouble due to high production cost, long cycle, difficulty in obtaining capital support and insufficient revenue to cover costs. It can be said that Ruosen’s current glory is based on the original desire of the team to stick to it. Xuanji, who is one year younger than Ruosen, had a rough start in her early years. She spent ten years cultivating the IP of “The Bright Moon of Qin”, and received numerous fans in the circle of chivalrous culture stories with the magnificent 3D effects and “history as bone, art as wing”. It is not difficult to find that there are many similarities between the two.
First, when the policy is good, did not draw too many nutrients. Since 2000, national policies have been in favor of the animation industry, including tax exemptions, subsidies, compulsory increases in the number of domestic animation broadcast and restrictions on foreign animation broadcast. As a result, many entrepreneurs were moved by the wind, and many domestic animation production enterprises appeared in the market for a time. The output of domestic animation once surged to 300,000 minutes, three times that of Japan, the kingdom of animation. Obviously, behind the high production capacity, many opportunistic generation made up the numbers.
And if at the time, launched “spiderman” and mystery of the warlords moon for 3 d animation, high production cost, long cycle, capacity than the other animation enterprises is much lower, so did not get much subsidy policy, coupled with the early days with the virtual high yield can affect flood into China, the diffuse low royalties, also did not form the animation industry chain, difficult to have the market, both go hard.
Second, the original IP strength is equal. The poor people of painting jianghu is the turning point if sen, “spiderman” if at first, make also like other companies through loss dilemma, to be a way out if abandoned the policy subsidies directly and adult audience setting, plot chasing the flow dividend boom resources provided free of charge to all major network platform, to obtain a large number of users, and a great success.
According to public data, by March 2018, the total number of online views of the series exceeded 11.2 billion. The mysterious “Legend of Qin” series has racked up 11 billion views on demand. In addition, “Heavenly Journey Nine Songs” and “Wugengji” also accumulated 1.68 billion and 2.2 billion views, respectively. Judging from douban’s rating, the painting rivers and Lakes series score around 7 points, while the Qinshi Mingyue series generally get high rating of 8 or 9 points, both of which are recognized and sought after by the “Generation Z” who have a tricky taste.
Third, capacity is comparable. At present, If Sen and Xuanji have adopted the form of zhou Geng, abandoning the earlier part of the domestic model. One can continuously lift IP in the hearts of fans heat and feelings; Secondly, it can interact with each other to understand the likes and dislikes of IP in the hearts of fans and adjust the plot and characters in real time so as to achieve the best popularity of IP. Although it is a great progress that domestic 3D animation can achieve a single IP or even multiple IP weeks, the time of each episode is too short to meet the expectations of comic fans. In the long run, it is easy to cause the loss of audience. Therefore, both sides still need to make continuous breakthroughs in 3D animation production technology.
Fourth, take IP as the core to blossom comprehensively, imitate Japanese animation industry chain. Although in the form of the presentation of the works, Chinese comic starts with the 3D style of European and American comic rather than the 2D style of Japanese comic, the operation of the animation industry chain is following the footsteps of Japanese comic. The difference is that Nippon Comics is mostly based on games, radiating to animation, film and TV series, variety shows, peripheral, virtual idols, etc., while Xuanji and Ruosen develop multilateral commercial realization channels from original animation IP as the core.
After the bad Man of Painting All Over the Country gained a large number of secondary users, Rosen started the layout of the derivative industry. While continuing to launch wonderful original IP stories, he also authorized other enterprises to develop games, network dramas, derivatives, stage plays, live-action movies, etc. For example, If sen adopts the supervision and repair strategy to grasp the IP original taste, the bad people’s first online drama has achieved good results in terms of word-of-mouth and audience rating, but in the second online drama, it suffered Waterloo because of trying to tilt toward the public aesthetic.
Similarly, the adaptation of “The Bright Moon of Qin” is not well received by moon cakes, both ratings and public praise. It can be seen that quadratic yuan IP adaptation should be loyal to the original work. After all, most of the people who can pay for quadratic yuan works are their original loyal fans. The loyalty degree of loyal fans to the original work should not be easily provoked, otherwise they will face the dilemma of public praise at any time. The failure of guo jingming’s most adapted novels is the best example.
From the perspective of the development of Xuanji and John Sen, apparently much the same, enough to see That John’s model is not replicable, both sides are the Japanese industrial model, to IP as a breakthrough point in full bloom.
It’s not the wine that counts
But Johnson’s ambitions don’t seem to be in the anime industry. Instead, he wants to move from original anime IP to games, using its IP as a long-term advertising campaign for games, much as Hasbro uses anime to promote its toys. But can This vision be realized through shell animation? The answer is yes, but it’s not so easy to overtake on a curve.
First of all, He’s good at anime, but not in games. On the one hand, for a game to last, it needs a production team as big and sophisticated as Jossen’s. On the other hand, At present, Rosen is still licensing IP game development to other game companies, so it takes a lot of time and a lot of money to build a sophisticated game team again. Although Johnson has lowered the bar of entry for practitioners through the mandala system, the production schedule has not improved significantly.
Next, review domestic game market, Tencent, netease duopoly position is hard to shake. The actual sales revenue of China’s game market reached 203.61 billion yuan in 2017, up 23.0% year on year, according to the Game Industry Commission. According to the 2017 annual financial reports of Tencent and netease, Tencent’s game business revenue in 2017 was 97.883 billion yuan, while netease’s was 36.282 billion yuan. Tencent and netease alone account for 75.7% of the total market revenue, leaving little market space for other enterprises.
Moreover, although Sen has a mature animation IP operation industry chain, but the duopoly pattern has been determined, it is too late to enter the game field at this time. Especially in the pan-entertainment ecological layout, compared with Tencent and netease, Rosen’s advantages are difficult to show. So, If Sen wants to achieve curve overtaking is not so easy.
Even so, There’s still a good chance that Johnson will get a piece of the action in the gaming space run by Tencent and netease, where it’s not hard to catch up with or even surpass the second-tier players. But want to seize only second to or even no less than Tencent, netease two giants of the game market share, the difficulty of the coefficient can be imagined.
Instead of “curve into the tour” it is better to focus on small ecological production
In fact, both games and animation are an indispensable part of the pan-entertainment ecosystem, and each part of the ecosystem is complementary. With original animation IP as the core, Rosen has expanded to film and TV series, games, derivatives and other fields. In fact, it also belongs to the partial layout of pan-entertainment ecology. This model also has the inherent mutual diversion advantage, and the market prospect is very considerable. Data shows that the scale of China’s animation industry has reached 150 billion yuan in 2017, and is expected to reach 210 billion yuan in 2020. The prospects for marvel are very good, and perhaps a focus on the small ecosystem of marvel will take Him further than the curve.
First of all, roaming linkage belongs to the small ecosystem of diffuse production. Animation IP can not only help games to achieve more revenue, but also promote the development of film and television plays, peripheral, stage plays, virtual idols and so on. Roaming linkage is a big part of the realisation of animation enterprises, but the realisation strength of film and animation linkage can not be underestimated. For example, Monkey King: Hero Is Back, Big Fish & Begonia and Boonie bears respectively received 956 million yuan, 565 million yuan and 522 million yuan, indicating that the film and animation joint market also has infinite potential.
Secondly, Tencent and netease block the game market, and If Sen enters the game, it can only share the niche market. Firstly, The layout of Tencent and netease in the small ecosystem of the game industry has been improved, which not only has solid technical barriers and excellent operation team, but also has a steady stream of original IP transfusion, as well as live streaming platform and social platform drainage. The combined effects complement each other and are impeccable. If Sen gets in, it’s hard to make a big difference.
Secondly, Tencent and netease not only have a small game industry ecosystem with great linkage effect, but also have already laid out the entire pan-entertainment ecosystem, such as Tencent Literature Group, Tencent Video, Penguin Video, Douyu Live, Tencent Micro Video, Tencent Music and a number of secondary enterprises invested by them, etc. Netease’s netease comics, netease CC, netease Cloud Music, netease News and cooperation with other quadratic enterprises, if Sen wants to compete head-on with them, it can be an ant ant.
Therefore, It is only by focusing on the small ecology of production that Mr Johnson will prosper. But if He wants to strengthen his niche, it’s a good idea to partner with industry giants.
On the one hand, the pan-entertainment ecosystem is born in response to The Times. After realizing the powerful linkage effect of pan-entertainment ecosystem, Tencent, Ali, netease and other companies are actively building pan-entertainment ecosystem. On the other hand, It has the high-quality original IP of Painting Jianghu, which has gained many fans, but it does not have the strong ecological layout and capital backing of Tencent, Ali and netease. Therefore, cooperation with giants can help It develop rapidly and integrate into the pan entertainment ecology. Such as Xuanji will be grafted into Tencent’s pan-entertainment ecology, and received a lot of support from Tencent resources, such as the popular “Wugengji”, “Douluo continent”. Xuanji also launched with netease cooperation “Day encyclical”, mutual diversion live.
Generally speaking, the IP operation of “Painting Lake” has contributed to The success of John Sen today. Although the road is bumpy, it is always bright. And If Sen wants to use shell animation IP to enter the game field, though it is feasible, it can only share the niche market. Only by consistently focusing on the small ecosystem of comic production can there be more space for imagination, and embracing big men will help it improve the small ecosystem of comic production quickly.
Article/Liu Kuang public account, ID: Liukuang110