My Animation Era

Chapter 1089 LoveLive!

Naifly is a good friend of Wanbao.

Over the years, almost all of Wanbao's animation works and overseas online versions have been represented by Naifly, and the two parties have forged a deep friendship.

Although they are in business, this kind of business friendship cannot withstand the test and may fall out one day.

But Naifly did promote many interesting projects to Wanbao. The previous "Angry Birds" animation is a typical case.

Naifly had mentioned the animation adaptation of "League of Legends" to Wanbao a long time ago, but Gu Miao never nodded considering the related copyright issues and Penguin's unclear attitude.

As everyone knows.

League of Legends is a game operated by Penguin, which is the parent company of the game developer. Wanbao and Penguin are also competitors in the animation field.

The good news is that Penguin is not monolithic within the company and may not interfere with the game developer’s decision-making. As long as Riot Games is persuaded, Wanbao may win the animation production rights for “League of Legends”.

The bad news is...

Although League of Legends is one of the most popular games in the world right now, even if it gets the animation adaptation rights, it actually doesn’t mean much to Wanbao.

After all, the copyright is not yours, and no matter how well you do it, you are just working for others in vain.

"Pity."

Gu Miao really likes the game League of Legends, but unfortunately, his position determines that it is impossible for him to make animations like "Battle of Two Cities".

Unless Penguin or Riot comes to you and offers extremely favorable terms, otherwise, if he comes to others, it will be no different from "licking a dog".

Let’s look at Seto in the distance!

In the second half of this year, the Wanbao Neon Branch held a "Fantasy Wanbao Award" light novel collection event, offering huge bonuses and animation adaptation opportunities, and collected many excellent light novels.

Must admit...

Neon's light novel industry is really developed, and there are a lot of new generation authors.

There are thousands of works submitted for this Wanbao Award in various themes. After excluding some nonsense toilet paper, there are three works selected for the final gold medal list.

One is a traditional otherworld theme, with a slightly strange imagination. Others were reincarnated as various nobles, and at the end they were civilian geniuses. But he was reincarnated into a slime...

The other two are both urban themes.

One is a harem romantic comedy in which ordinary high school students live together with many big sisters. During this period, various embarrassments and welfare are constantly happening, and the laughter is relatively dense.

The other one is a unique approach, taking the school idols that are more popular among modern young people as the theme, telling the story of several girls facing the crisis of school abolition and choosing to become idols to save the school.

"LoveLive?"

Gu Miao immediately thought of this animation and felt that the setting of debuting to save an abandoned school sounded very familiar, so she asked about it.

The result is really LoveLive!

It can only be said that it is a coincidence. Although the novel is not called LoveLive, but is called "Celebrity School Girl", the names of Honoka and Minami Kotori are not unrecognizable in the second dimension, right?

"Celebrity school girl? What a ridiculous name... Even if it's more straightforward, call her School idol!" Gu Miao's expression was tense.

"Yes, that's what I thought too. The title of the book is too hasty."

Seto was equally dumbfounded on the phone: "This light novel should be the most promising of the three gold medal-winning works."

"The content is actually quite well written, and the adaptation value is also extremely high. However, the title is a bit too outrageous, as if it were forbidden literature."

"Let him change it, forget it, let me come up with a name! LoveLive! School Idol Project, I'll inform him like this later..."

Changing the title of a light novel is a very common operation, especially for light novels that are submitted for submission. Once the editor or animation producer is dissatisfied with the decision to publish or animate the novel, it may be "voluntarily renamed" at any time.

It can only be said that most light novel authors may be good at writing articles, but they are absolutely useless at naming.

This can be seen from the titles of light novels in the industry.

The titles of today's light novels are stinky, long, and difficult to remember, and are far inferior to the short and concise naming methods of the past.

An essay competition actually unearthed a film called "LoveLive!", which surprised both Gu Miao and Seto.

"We will continue to hold essay collections in the future!"

"The Wanbao Award is very well done. In my opinion, I will come here every year to discover more light novels with great potential for adaptation."

Gu Miao suggested: "By the way, you should also pay more attention to the novel about another world where you are reincarnated into a slime."

"You mean..."

"Don't think too much, I just think that works like this in another world where people are reincarnated into non-human beings may become mainstream in the future."

Unfortunately!

The light novel that stands out in this Wanbao Award is not the original "Reincarnated Slime" animation that Gu Miao remembers.

The two have almost nothing to do with each other. If we have to say what they have in common, it's probably that the protagonists were reincarnated into low-level monster slimes.

Since this slime is not the cute king Rimuru, there is no need for Gu Miao to be too concerned. The reason why Seto pays attention to this work is just to prepare for a rainy day.

After the explosive following of other world light novels, animations and comics in the past few years, there has now been an extremely serious "aesthetic fatigue".

It’s not just the audience who doesn’t like watching it.

Animation producers, light novel editors and cartoonists in the industry immediately turned pale when they heard the words "different world".

This directly led to a sharp decline in the number of otherworld ACGN works this year, and the output was far less than in previous years, not even one-tenth.

Is the other world completely dead?

Gu Miao thinks not!

As a major genre of fantasy works, isekai may experience a brief trough, but it may not be that easy if it dies completely.

At present, most of the otherworld works that audiences hate or even reject are toilet paper light novels that lack innovation and have seriously homogeneous plots.

If a highly innovative and distinctive otherworldly work suddenly appeared at this time, everyone would still support it.

"Non-human" may be the next trend.

Today's audiences are tired of seeing the setting where the protagonist reincarnates into a human being.

The setting of being reincarnated into another world and becoming a non-human is still relatively new for the time being, and there may be another wave of follow-up trends next year and the year after.

"Skeletons, slimes, spiders, vending machines..."

Gu Miao was speechless and choked when she thought of the various novels and anime from other worlds in her previous life, where even vending machines could be reincarnated.

Don’t even say it!

It seems that light novels about another world that are reincarnated as non-human beings have a slightly higher chance of producing high-quality products than light novels about being reincarnated as normal humans.

Aren’t the adaptations of Bone King, Cute King, Spiderman, etc. all very popular in animation?

…

Seto was digging for gold in shit, and he actually found gold like "LoveLive!" for him.

Gu Miao was envious.

So he came to Nantong and Lao Zhang to discuss, thinking about holding a similar essay competition in China.

"It's not like I haven't done this before. Have you gained anything?"

Lao Zhang said disdainfully: "Three years after I became a son-in-law, I no longer pretended to be the Immortal King. This is the final work we collected from our essay collection."

"That's better than nothing."

Although the works that came out of the first essay collection were really embarrassing, Gu Miao still felt that it was bad luck last time and it would definitely be different this time.

Moreover, in this essay collection, he does not intend to include fantasy, fairy tale and other works in the collection scope. The activity is limited to "science fiction".

"Isn't that seeking death?"

Nantong shook his head and said: "There are only a few authors who write science fiction novels in China. Who can sign up for the competition if they can write some famous books?"

“If you give me enough money, I won’t worry about no one signing up.”

"Besides, what I want to collect is not the works of science fiction masters who have been famous for a long time, but the works of newcomers who are writing science fiction novels for the first time."

Gu Miao smiled slightly.

It is indeed unlikely that a great science fiction author who has been famous for a long time will sign up for Wanbao's essay competition.

But this is not necessarily the case for new authors.

As long as the rewards offered by Wanbao are attractive enough, there is no need to worry about not receiving manuscripts, and there is no need to worry about the scarcity of science fiction authors.

In fact, many people, especially men in science and engineering, have a science fiction dream in their minds!

It's just that we don't usually write articles much, let alone outline the imagined pictures in our minds in the form of words.

But if these people start writing under the stimulation of Wanbao, who knows whether one or two new people will emerge?

Just do what comes to mind.

After a closed-door discussion between the three of them, the plan for the "Wonderful Ideas" science fiction essay contest jointly organized by Wanbao Comics, Wanbao Animation, and Wanbao Games was soon officially released.

In this essay competition, the "Wanbao Award" of the Neon Division has been established. There are three gold awards for long, medium and short, as well as six silver awards, as well as ten grand awards for the best creativity.

Among them, the long article should be no less than 100,000 words, the medium article should be no less than 20,000 words, and the short article should be no less than 1,000 words.

The gold award will receive a bonus of 1 million yuan and the opportunity for animation, film and television adaptation, while the silver award will receive a publishing opportunity and 200,000 yuan.

This kind of reward is considered a grand prize in the entire science fiction world.

Many sci-fi novelists who were short of money immediately came up with the idea of ​​contributing to Wanbao when they saw the gold medal award.

Not just science fiction writers.

There are also many ordinary people who may have never written science fiction novels before, but were shocked by Wanbao's generosity this time and want to win a gold medal. They also plan to write a science fiction novel and submit it to Wanbao to test the waters.

Among them was a grassroots power engineer working at a thermal power plant.

He saw this news on the Internet. As a man of science and engineering, he was full of interest in science fiction novels. Coupled with the temptation of the gold medal, he couldn't restrain his inner restlessness and started writing the first science fiction novel in his life. …

The gears of fate began to turn.

The popularity of the essay competition exceeded Gu Miao's imagination.

When he learned that as soon as the event announcement was released, the submission mailbox was flooded with emails from all over the world, he was shocked.

Damn it! Are there so many science fiction authors in China?

Just kidding!

Aren’t we saying that China’s fantasy, fairy and martial arts genres are the mainstream, while science fiction novels are a niche among niches? Why do so many science fiction enthusiasts suddenly appear?

There are so many manuscripts, some with hundreds of thousands of words, some with thousands of words. It is really hard to review...

Gu Miao still had to produce the "Martin's Morning" animation, and couldn't spare much free time to review the manuscript. She could only distribute this work to Huang Kun, Ma Kui, Hou Bin, Guo Hongwei and others.

As the saying goes, there is strength in numbers!

Gu Miao alone might not be able to finish all the manuscripts in the mailbox next year, but with his help, the preliminary screening of manuscripts was carried out smoothly.

From the end of November to mid-December, for half a month, Gu Miao read countless novels, novellas, and short science fiction novels.

Most of them are short stories.

This is normal!

After all, the essay competition has only been open for half a month. After excluding plagiarism and other situations, it is not unusually difficult to write a long science fiction novel of no less than 100,000 words in half a month.

Most people just want to give it a try and submit a short story of several thousand words.

The level varies...

Some short stories are indeed wonderfully written, making people applaud as soon as they read them, and their imaginations will reach the sky.

However, some short science fiction novels are written like a primary school student's diary, which is simply painful to read, and I really cannot praise their literary quality.

Of course, this is not the best.

What troubles Gu Miao the most is some science fiction novels. Maybe the author is engaged in this industry, so he uses a lot of professional terms and advanced technical concepts, which makes laymen confused.

"forgive me……"

Ma Kui said he couldn't stand it. He was just an ordinary liberal arts college student. Some novels were too brain-burning and he really couldn't understand them!

What is this called?

Knowledge is poisonous!

The science fiction novels written by these science and engineering men were each more abstract and outrageous than the last. Not to mention that he couldn't understand the principles of science fiction, he couldn't even understand the formulas and calculations in them.

Not only Ma Kui couldn't stand it, but people like Hou Bin, Huang Kun and Guo Hongwei were not much better. They also had a headache when they helped Mr. Gu screen manuscripts.

"Forget it, I'll find someone else."

Seeing that they were really unable to help, Gu Miao had no choice but to contact several well-known science fiction writers in the industry to replace Ma Kui and others in reviewing the submission letters in the mailbox.

This efficiency is very high!

When Ma Kui, Huang Kun and others were here, although the screening of the first draft was carried out smoothly, the efficiency was not very high. After all, they were not professional science fiction writers.

But since Gu Miao paid a lot of money to hire foreign aid to do the screening of the first draft for him, his efficiency took off immediately, and the crowded mailbox was wiped out in an instant.

“Any good submissions?”

"have!"

Facing Lao Zhang's curious inquiry, Gu Miao chuckled and said: "Although it is a science fiction short story, I think it is very interesting. It seems that it can be turned into an animated movie."

"Oh? What's your name?"

""Chao Wen Tao"!"

"If I hear it in the morning, I will die at night? This name sounds interesting. What story does it tell?" Lao Zhang was very curious.

"I haven't finished reading it yet..."

Gu Miao shook her head and said with a smile: "I have only read about a third of it, but I have already decided that this work must be one of the gold medal winners!"

ah? !

Lao Zhang's eyes were a little dazed.

You didn't even finish it and decided to give it a gold medal? Is this too hasty? Wouldn’t it be more appropriate to read it first and then make a decision?