Bilibili unveiled over 50 new Chinese anime titles and a new initiative to target the overseas market at the ANIME MADE BY BILIBILI 2021-2022 event. The slate includes the second seasons of Bilibili’s highly viewed titles Heaven’s Official Blessing and Link Click.

The event was held in Shanghai on Nov 20, 2021.

Bilibili also released a new trailer for an animated version of The Three-Body Problem by China’s most celebrated science fiction author, Liu Cixin.

It was also revealed in the event that Shanghai Animation Film Studio will adapt a new title, Yao—Chinese Folktales, which involves eight “monster” (or “yao” in Chinese) related stories originating from Chinese culture.

Additionally, Bilibili will produce Sword and Fairy 4, a classic gaming and TV drama IP in China, into animation.

A sequel to Fog Hill of Five Elements, which features special art style resembling traditional Chinese paintings, and an anime adaptation for the Legend of Princess Chang-Ge, the famous cartoonist Xia Da‘s comics set in the Tang Dynasty, was also announced at the event.

Some widely popular titles will see their sequels back on the platform, such as the third seasons of The Daily Life of The Immortal King and Fairies Albums, having views reached over 500 million and 200 million respectively.

The annual press conference also highlighted Bilibili’s past accomplishments and future plans for the company to grow globally

“Chinese anime will become a mainstream content category of cultural consumption in China, but our goal should not be limited to the domestic market,” Carly Lee, the Vice chairwoman of the board of directors and COO of Bilibili, said in her unveiling speech.

The company has changed its slogan from “Made for China” to “Made for Global” as it looks to expand into the international animation market.

Inspired by the similar video sharing websites, Bilibili has grown to become one of the leading Chinese anime production companies and home to a huge number of high-quality Chinese anime works.

It has released 430 Chinese anime titles and produced 178 of them. On Bilibili, over 340 million viewers watched Chinese anime, with 1.9 billion total viewing hours and a 40% average annual growth rate.

The company has also formed ties with anime giant Funimation, NETFLIX and Sony Music Solutions, to bring to bring Chinese anime overseas. It further acquired a major original comics platform, U17.com and plans to adapt 17 comics from the platform along with five additional titles from Bilibili comics into animation.

The streaming website had claimed it would release 33 animated titles at the 2020 press conference and succeeded to launch 24 Chinese anime titles globally from 2020-2021.

Bilibili stated that it improved the “Little Universe Program,” which was first established in 2016, and upgraded to “Light Catcher Initiative”; it identifies and trains animation students and individual anime creators, in order to better encourage industry talent.

Some of the previous year’s award-winning initiatives have gone into production with the help of Bilibili.

Source: Cartoon Brew, PR News Wire