Taiwanese animated film On Happiness Road (幸福路上), directed by Sung Hsin-ying (宋欣穎), was on Monday last week awarded the grand jury prize at the Tokyo Anime Award Festival at AnimeJapan.
News of the film’s success was celebrated by Taiwan’s creative industries and was widely covered in domestic media. What follows are some thoughts on the significance of the award and how to develop an indigenous animation industry.
Japanese media quoted Sung as saying: “Because there is no animation industry in Taiwan, it was really difficult to get this film made, so it is very inspiring to have won this award.”
Sung’s remark certainly hit the nail on the head, but why does Taiwan not have its own animation industry? There are two main reasons:
First, audiences are not very fond of Taiwanese-produced anime. Since box office sales determine the market, and the majority of Taiwanese audiences have been brought up on a diet of Japanese and US animation, they might not believe Taiwan has the ability to produce quality animation.
This is a problem faced by all sorts of creative artists in Taiwan. A large proportion of Taiwanese have no confidence in literary, art, film or other creative works produced by their fellow citizens. Many are unwilling to spend money to support them, and many even wait for a Taiwanese artist to achieve success abroad to confirm that a book is worth reading or a film worth watching.
Second, the government and the private sector have for many years failed to recognize the potential economic benefits and international focus that the “story industry chain” can bring to Taiwan. A lack of investment in the industry means that animators have to go it alone and struggle with the difficult task of self-funding their work.
The “story industry chain” refers to content sourced from “upstream” creative industries, such as novels, manga or historical novels, which feed into the visual media industry and are turned into products. The industries are closely intertwined and complement each other.
The main reason On Happiness Road received an award was because of the fluency of the story, which drew upon the director’s own life experience and interwove this with Taiwanese history and linguistic culture. As a result, the story is extraordinarily touching and able to transcend not just generations, but also cultures, and therefore resonates with an international audience.
On Happiness Road might be able to break through the stereotype held by many Taiwanese, who believe that cartoons or anime is only for children and is therefore somehow ahistorical.
However, a large number of Japanese cartoons and anime incorporate a lot of historical background and culture to create epics such as 2001’s Millennium Actress directed by Satoshi Kon, 2013’s The Wind Rises directed by Hayao Miyazaki and 2016’s Your Name directed by Makoto Shinkai.
On Happiness Road’s breakout success should encourage other Taiwanese animators to produce stories with a local historical perspective.
Fortunately, the Ministry of Culture has noticed the problem and, according to media reports, plans to increase its budget for funding television and film productions to NT$10 billion (US$342.6 million) over the next few years.
Hopefully, the grand jury prize for On Happiness Road will be the beginning of a new chapter for Taiwanese animation that will stimulate the birth of an indigenous animation industry full of new ideas and pave the way for a bright future for animation in the nation.
Chiang Wen-yu is a professor at the Graduate Institute of Linguistics at National Taiwan University.
Translated by Edward Jones
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