Development and Current Situation of Chinese Market for Japanese Animation

■周昊昱/1.安徽師范大學外國語學院；2.布萊諾大學人文學院

Abstract:The Chinese market has become the main force for the rapid growth of the overall scale of overseas markets for Japanese animation in the past five years. But there has been few English publications produced to depict this emerging market. People should notice that this market is still immature.Therefore, the dissemination history and current status of Japanese animation in China need to be analyzed sensibly for the future commercial expansion.

Keywords:Japanese Animation anime Chinese cultural market popular culture

一、 Introduction

For a hundred years since the birth of Japanese animation, or “anime”(アニ メ), as a unique and fascinating audiovisual art, it has gradually gained global popularity. However, in contrast to the extremely developed industrial chain in Japan, the overseas business situation of anime has never formed a consistent and perfect condition yet. Especially in Japan’s neighboring country of East Asia, the People’s Republic of China,anime was once far from easy to introduce and make money. But now it has been changed - since 2012, with the rapid rise of video streaming service websites and the continuous victories in the campaign against piracy, Mainland China, where the home video disc market has completely declined though, grew into one of the largest overseas market for anime in past five years. However, in such a commercially prosperous situation, some factors are still threatening the commercial expansion of anime in China. In order to better predict the expansion prospects of Japanese animation in the huge and growing Chinese entertainment market, it is necessary to sort out and analyze both the dissemination history and the current business situation of anime in Mainland China.

二、 The History and Develop ment of Anime Dissemination in Mainland China

（一） The Beginnings: Childhood Memories on Televisions

First of all, what needs to be clear is that the history of Chinese audiences coming into contact with anime is not short, making anime has accumulated a profound mass base for many years. In 1978, the signing of the “Treaty of Peace and Friendship between Japan and China”was the starting point for China’s formal introduction of Japanese cultural products.In 1980, China Central Television introduced and broadcast Astro Boy(1963). Since then, China’s national and local TV stations had begun to broadcast some anime series. Then, around 1990, the broadcast of Saint Seiya caused a fanatical trend that caught the attention of young people nationwide. Under this trend,translation and publication of Japanese comic (or “manga”) books begun to prosper in Mainland China, though most of them are illegal publications. In 1998, a number of television stations in Mainland China broadcast Slam Dunk, triggering a greater wave. Meanwhile, some other East Asian regions has banned the spread of piracy to a large extent under the constraints of the Special 301 Report,and has begun to legally and vigorously introduced anime. From this period,Japanese cultural products have been flowing into Mainland China in large numbers, through mostly piracy.

（二）The Depression: Restrictions and Piracy

Under the impact of cultural inflows,Chinese viewers rely less and less on TV stations. In 2006, foreign animations began to decrease on China’s television,in order to protect the domestic animation market share and prevent excessive invasion of foreign cultures. After that,under the pressure of such restrictions and the impact of piracy, anime rarely appears on television. After entering the Internet era of the 21st century, various cultural products were illegally recorded and made into pirated digital files, which spread through the Chinese language networks.In this phase, there were still a large number of illegal organizations and individuals relying on selling pirated content to seek illegal interests.Meanwhile, multitudinous fansub groups were born in Mainland China. Although they provided unauthorized content, but members of these groups are non-profit volunteers.It is during this time that long-running anime series of Naruto, One Piece and Detective Conan had become the most popular existence among Chinese teenagers, making anime a long-lasting influence in China’s schools. Later, as the Internet service becomes cheaper and more convenient, the quality of DVDs was surpassed by downloading and streaming,so pirated DVDs gradually lost their market, and have nearly disappeared in the past three years.

（三）Capital Boom in the Internet Age

The benefit of the Internet has been abused, but never been limited to bad practices - The amazing development of legitimate business has also been achieved. With the audience’s eager anticipation of latest television series, and the development of China’s economy and society, major streaming websites have begun to pay for intellectual properties. As the result, several anime series began to be broadcast simultaneously on a Chinese streaming website by the end of 2011.This kind of simulcast streaming with Chinese subtitles is not only free (now the major streaming sites are gradually entering the charging phase), but also usually just half an hour later than the local broadcast in Japan, far faster than the fansub groups’ overnight process of recording, translating, encoding and uploading. Since Internet programs are comparatively easy to release, this broadcast method spread immediately.Several major streaming sites in China competed to purchase broadcasting rights of anime to attract young users, and these sites pushed prices extremely high. This competition injected new capital dynamics into the anime industry and has enabled the total amount of overseas markets to increase substantially for several years. In the movie market, there is also a prosperity corresponding to such passion: In 2015, the box office of the CG animated film Stand by Me Doraemon in China surpassed that in Japan; then in 2016, China’s box office of the animated film Your Name. is second only to Japan.In 2017, although the capital fever has fallen slightly, Mainland China has become the country that broadcasts the most anime titles outside Japan.

（四） The Diverse Current Status

On March 27, 2018, bilibili, a video sharing website focused on anime culture, became the first Chinese streaming website company to be listed on NASDAQ, which proves the commercial influence of anime in China today. Because of the similarities between Japanese culture and Chinese culture, the popularity of anime has made Chinese more easily influenced by Japanese-many Japanese words are directly used in Chinese. In this commercially prosperous situation, however, illegal fansub groups in China are still active currently, though many of them have been cracked down on pirated subtitles. There are three reasons for fansub groups’ vitality: First, some people still hold traditional antipathy to the legal streaming websites, whether they are free or not. Second, there are some anime titles due to content sensitivity or being too unpopular, aren’t purchased by streaming sites. Third, the fansub groups provides higher video quality and better translations.

三、Risks and Difficulties the Market Currently Faces

（一） Restrictions from the Cultural Atmosphere

However, even such a prosperous market still has considerable room for improvement. This article does not discuss the pros and cons of anime itself or its market competitiveness, but rather analyzes various hidden risks of the Chinese market itself. The foremost concern for most Japanese animation studios is the the sustainability of this market. For anime, a kind of cultural products, there has always been some innate hindrances in China. First, many adults have a prejudice: Animation is just a kind of children’s entertainment and naturally unnecessary to be highly recognized, even with superbly knowledgeable works. Second, Japan has not yet reached a detailed consensus on its war crimes and territorial disputes with China, so there is a certain hostility between the two nationals. Notably in 2018, there is an anime production project［New Life+］ that caused a boycott engaged by Chinese anime fans after being known to the public, since the original novel, on which the anime is based, glorifies an bloodthirsty Imperial Japanese soldier.

More importantly, the Japanese animation industry is also very controversial in the world. The Japanese law specifies what content shouldn’t be covered by cultural works, and there is a widely accepted content rating system in Japan, which has led some content of anime works to have the difficulty being easily accepted by all kinds of viewers,since creators have been allowed to do anything within the bottom line of law: particularly, there has always been violent and sexual content in the “l(fā)atenight anime” titles. In Europe, the United States, and even Japan, anime often causes controversies because of some unexpected and unreasonable content.Considering that all cultural products released in China can be accessed by national of all ages, and China can be deemed as a comparatively conservative country, the domestic ideological climate is more likely to cause some sensitive content in anime to be difficult to obtain public tolerance, and even to be criticized and opposed by public opinion.In addition, because many Japanese animation studios still lack a positive and in-depth understanding of China’s social needs, they feel confused and hesitant. It can be predicated that in the future, there must be some Japanese animation studios taking the initiative to respond to the Chinese market in cleverer ways. However, at the same time,Chinese animation has been rising in the inevitable, and has won the hearts of many young domestic audiences. Once some Japanese works cross the tolerance limit,it may lead to more audience turning to support domestic works.These are the obstacles caused by cultural conflicts.

（ 二） Serious Immaturity of the Current China’s Anime Market

Another aspect that cannot be ignored is the condition of China’s anime market, despite its enormous prosperity,remains as immature as other cultural industries. As for the anime market in China, its immaturity is mainly reflected in three fields.

The most important is certainly the issue of piracy. There is an true event demonstrating the status quo: In 2017,the Japanese police arrested a number of Chinese lived in Japan, who were engaged in piracy activities, and these arrests provoked sharp-pointed opinion confrontations in China: many people thought that it was time for the law to be further implemented; on the other hand, there were still lots of people who insist that they were kind volunteers who had spread the culture. Therefore, there is clearly a long way to go to eliminate piracy.

The second concern is that many Chinese audiences’ conservative viewof consumption, tending to be passive in most cases involving copyrights.Generally streaming sites only require a monthly membership fee of about two U.S. dollars, but many people aren’t willing to pay for it- the consciousness of pursuing free products passed down from the era of piracy hasn’t changed,let alone more expensive books, CDs,toys, figures, games and other anime related products. Even so, this is not to say that Chinese people still lack the exact concepts of copyright awareness and active consumption. In fact, longterm incorrect habits and the gradual awakening of copyright awareness have created conflicts in Chinese consumers’minds, and it has showed very good momentum.

At last, it should be pointed out that the sole relatively mature business in China today is subtitled simulcast on streaming sites, and it’s limited to be Chinese subtitled, while the Mandarin dubbed versions are very rare. Besides,Disc publications are impossible since China’s disc industry has completely declined under the double strikes of the Internet and piracy. But it is worth noting that there is an unexpected business rapid growth of anime-song live concerts and Japanese voice actors’ “fan meetings” in the past three years.

四、 Conclusion

Nowadays China has made amazing economic achievements, but the cultural industry can not grow up with only money. Studying the development of Japanese animation in China has great implications for understanding Chinese cultural trends and commercial institutions. It will also help understand similar obstacles encountered by other foreign cultural products when entering the Chinese market. In the future, the cultural industries of Japan and Western countries will inevitably need China’s emerging and huge market to help them gain the capital they need to move forward. The improvement of these conditions requires the concerted efforts of both the Chinese and the foreigners.Although it looks difficult to make major changes in the short term, with the growth of young people, the expansion of economic exchanges, and the irresistible tide of globalization, China’s cultural industry will surely move toward a more open and mature future.