2024 RT Amination Banner.gif

China Daily

Asia Pacific> Global Weekly> Content
Saturday, July 20, 2019, 22:50
Valued characters
By Pan Mengqi
Saturday, July 20, 2019, 22:50 By Pan Mengqi

Cartoon culture captures the imagination of Chinese, who are willing to pay more for licensed merchandise

(SONG CHEN / CHINA DAILY)

After hearing that a magnitude 7.0 earthquake had hit the southern Japanese island of Kyushu on April 16, 2016, Tang Qiulin, a college student from Chongqing, immediately tweeted: “Are you safe, Kumamon?”

Eric Tang, a student from Hong Kong, also tweeted a few minutes later, “Are Kumamon and his friends safe?”

Lee Mingjang, from Thailand, posted, “Pray for Kumamoto and Kumamon,” a sentiment that was repeated thousands of times that day.

The quake, one of the severest to hit Japan, killed at least 50 people and injured more than 3,000. It toppled office buildings and damaged tens of thousands of homes.

In the wake of the disaster, while many Japanese residents shared information on social media about the safety of their friends and relatives, many netizens overseas, such as Tang, were asking whether Kumamon was safe.

Kumamon, a bear cartoon character about 1.5 meters tall, with glossy black fur, round red cheeks and wide, staring eyes, is registered as a civil servant in Kumamoto, a city on the island of Kyushu in southwestern Japan with a population of 700,000.

In Japanese, Kumamon is an abbreviation for “the people of Kumamoto” in the local dialect. Created in 2010 as the city’s official mascot to boost local tourism, the character quickly shot to fame.

Kumamon carries out thousands of activities under the title of “sales manager” for Kumamoto prefecture. The character plays an active role appearing in tourist campaigns run by the local government.

Images of Kumamon can also be found on cookies, bags of rice, hotel bed linen and even on a plane operated by the budget carrier Solaseed Air.

After the quake, Kumamon’s Twitter feed, which has 808,000 followers, was flooded with thousands of comments asking about his safety.

Simon Lee, a senior lecturer at the School of Accountancy at the Chinese University of Hong Kong’s Business School, said: “Generally, a mascot does not have any stories, but the government of Kumamoto prefecture has successfully built Kumamon’s cute and naughty personality through marketing activities.”

In China, Kumamon has a huge fan base. In Shanghai’s Xintiandi district, the Kuma Cafe attracts hordes of the bear’s selfie-taking fans. The cafe, which opened in January 2017, was an instant hit with young people who often wait in line for up to two hours just to get a table.

A Miffy-themed subway carriage in Shenzhen. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

According to the Kumamoto prefecture office in Shanghai, sales of Kumamon items last year in the domestic and overseas markets reached a record high of 150.5 billion yen (US$1.4 billion). Their sales figures set a record for seven consecutive years, with the cumulative sales volume exceeding 660 billion yen.

Fujimoto Nobuhiro, Kumamoto prefecture’s representative in Shanghai, said: “Kumamon is very popular in China. In fact, we changed his official Chinese name in March just because we wanted to satisfy the Chinese fans.”

The former official Chinese name, a combination of the written characters meaning cool and cute, is pronounced ku ma meng in Mandarin as a transliteration of Kumamon. In March, this was replaced by the new name Xiong Ben Xiong. This had long been the unofficial and more commonly known name for the mascot used in China since its debut.

An Quan, a staff member at IMMG-Beijing Co, a Japanese company that handles licensing for Kumamon on the Chinese mainland, said: “Since Kumamoto prefecture lifted the ban on the use of Kumamon’s image by overseas companies last year, IMMG Beijing has licensed more than 200 applications, as many companies want Kumamon to appear on their products or marketing campaigns.” 

According to a report by iResearch, consumers among China’s emerging middle class are increasingly prepared to pay more for licensed merchandise involving their favorite film and TV characters, as opposed to counterfeit items. 

In February, the first Tintin-themed shop in China opened in Shanghai. News of the iconic Belgian cartoon character’s arrival in the city went viral on social media, as fans from across the country flocked to the store.

In 1934, Belgian cartoonist Georges Remi, known by his pen name Herge and as “the father of Tintin”, met in Brussels, the Belgian capital, with Zhang Chongren, a student from Shanghai studying architecture, to create his story The Blue Lotus, which is set in the Chinese city.

The Blue Lotus is the shop’s main theme. Products on sale range from a customized paper lamp at the door to a shelf displaying all the characters from the Tintin series.

An extensive range of official merchandise and art books, including limited items, are available at the store. Prices are similar to those in Europe, ranging from 200 yuan to 280 yuan (US$29 to US$41) for adult-sized T-shirts, and figurines costing from 100 yuan up to 1,000 yuan.

Philippe Wang is a representative in China for Moulinsart, the company that protects and promotes the work of Tintin creator Herge.

“Many of the country’s Tintin fans are interested in limited-edition models rather than mass-produced key rings and trinkets, hoping to own unique Tintin products,” he said. “In the 1980s, most Chinese did not have the chance to travel overseas, so Tintin opened a window for us into the rest of the world.”

Although Tintin books were not officially published on the Chinese mainland until 2001, Chinese readers were already familiar with his adventures because of pirated copies.

According to iResearch, last year there were nearly 350 million ACGN — anime, comics, games and novels — users in China, with more than 200 million aged from 8 to 50.

Creativity lies at the core of the animation and cartoon sector, but more than 70 percent of the industry’s profits are generated by the development of related products based on intellectual property. Sales of toys and peripheral products, as well as the construction and operation of theme parks, are the main source of revenue for the sector.

An event is held in Beijing in March to change the official Chinese name of Kumamon. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

Zhang Ning, 29, a loyal fan of Miffy, a small female rabbit in picture books drawn and written by Dutch artist Dick Bruna, said she has spent nearly 10,000 yuan on Miffy products since junior high school. 

Since giving birth to a daughter two years ago, Zhang has come across more children’s items, such as clothing, footwear and crockery, featuring Miffy designs.

Frank A.J. Padberg, business development manager at Mercis, the Dutch publisher and rights holder for Miffy, said the cartoon figure has many adult fans in Asia, but in the Netherlands, its home country, Miffy is largely viewed as a children’s character.

“The character is recognized as something typically Dutch and has been an icon for the past three generations,” Padberg said.

Since 1955, when the first Miffy booklet was published, total sales of Miffy books have reached more than 90 million copies and have been published in over 50 languages. Television series starring Miffy have been broadcast worldwide for years.

In China, revenue from products related to cartoons and animation reached 76.4 billion yuan in 2017, almost twice that of the market for books, movies and TV series, compared with Japan, where revenue from the former was eight to 10 times that of the latter.

Tang Junshu, a lecturer from the School of Animation and Digital Arts at Communication University of China, said anime and cartoons have captured and widened imaginations globally, especially among young people.

“Not only do certain anime franchises perfectly capture the modern-day concerns of Chinese audiences, they also provide the perfect medium for viewers to escape their worries,” Tang said.

“More important, animation and cartoon products are also important conveyors of values and soft power. From Tintin to Kumamon or Miffy, these characters represent the unique culture of the creator’s own country, promoting cultural values and at the same time bringing huge economic benefits to their home nations when people buy these products,” Tang added.

Even if a character does not come from a cartoon movie or comic book, it can still capture the hearts of China’s consumers, if it is cute enough.

Line Friends, a global brand featuring characters based on stickers from the messaging app Line, was launched in 2011 by a subsidiary of South Korean internet search company Naver Corporation.

The Line app triggered a trend where people used sticker characters to express their feelings during online chats. Although Line is not the main messaging app in China, Line Friends characters like Brown the bear and Cony the rabbit have millions of fans in the country.

Line Friends has more than 10 stores in China, which are visited by thousands of customers every day. They buy smartphone cases, backpacks and stationery, or have coffee in the Line cafe and take selfies with the characters.

“What separates the Line Friends characters from ordinary emoticons is the strong emotional bond that has developed between them and their users,” said Tang, the Communication University of China lecturer.

panmengqi@chinadaily.com.cn


Share this story

CHINA DAILY
HONG KONG NEWS
OPEN
Please click in the upper right corner to open it in your browser !