Blog 6 – Something that looks simple does matter

You may feel that the title of blog is a little burdensome. “What? I go back home after 8 hour tiring work or studying. I just want to relax and get rid of anything. Now you want to say even having dinner needs thinking” Yep. What we eat is considerable for anyone. Something may not result in a specific situation very soon but it may get an influence after a certain time without your knowing. Like the animation, when somebody take as simple and naïve or anything else, they ignore the potentiate impact in people’s minds.

At the very beginning, I notice the bias that animation is naïve is simple by itself. But the people have that thought may not be simple. There must be some gaps between the bias and minds of those animation fandoms, especially the adult fandoms. Some aspects of animations may not be known by some people holding the bias. A reality is that there are thousands of Chinese animation fandoms who watch animations most of which come from Japan. I think animation is not simple at all. It is very attracting and has its own very specific charms. Since the majority of these Chinese animation fandoms are the adolescents, their parents, the educators and the entire whole society need to care about the fact. Because the growing adolescents may have strong curiousness and desire to simulate the actions or the characters from the things and animations that they are close to, we should pay a lot attention to animations. Of course, we always hope that our young children can inherit our cultures generation by generation. But the children are been impacted by animations from other countries. It is good to access these foreign animations since they are good works. But if the children only access the foreign animations, the impact from the foreign animations on the children are not predicted and uncontrolled and this status could influence the inheritance of local culture. It is very needed to change the situation somewhat. If we don’t do something, we are irresponsible to our next generation. How do we change this situation? How do we make a deep changing on it? We cannot ban the introducing of foreign animations because this method is simple and not considerable at all. Meanwhile we cannot stop the children access the foreign animations online. What we can make effort is to make good animations and compete with bravely. That's it? No. We need to make clear the situation of Chinese animators right now. They have invested too much money in the animation industry always, but why cannot they create excellent animations right now. Yes, the technologies they used are advanced but they don’t focus on the storytelling in animation for the next step. Storytelling is the core of animation. They should invest their passion and concentration here next.

Furthermore, the establishment of animation rating system is the foundation of this industry. The rating system is not only the guideline for the audiences but also the free stage for the animators. With the boundaries set by rating system, they know what to focus.

In this article http://articles.latimes.com/2012/apr/11/business/la-fi-ct-disney-china-animation-20120411, I think the understanding that foreign prominent animation media help develop Chinese animation industry is full of ambiguities because they don’t understand our culture at all. The ideas come from the inside of our animators. Don’t copy and don’t be lazy.