How can we express the history and traditional spirit of Chinese culture in domestic animation and pass it on to the next generation? Perhaps our forefathers have shown us the way.
In 1980, an anime called "Eight Hundred Whips" was released. The anime is presented in the form of a fairy tale, with the theme of fighting against the forces of evil and promoting justice and virtue.
The protagonist of the story is a poor boy named Xiaoliang, who works in the landlord Liu Heitian's house, and gets the help of the divine bird in an accident, and uses wit and courage to fight against the evil officials, and finally wins.
The positive energy and traditional virtues conveyed by this story are important values that we should pass on to our children.
Xiao Liang is a brave and kind boy, one day he was carving wood carvings with his heart, and was unfortunately discovered by the bully landlord Li Heitian. Li Heitian was very angry when he saw it, and rushed towards Xiao Liang with a whip, and Xiao Liang was beaten to the point that his skin was open.
Xiao Liang's blood stained the wooden bird red, and suddenly the wooden bird came back to life after absorbing Xiao Liang's blood, and ** his wounds, which surprised Li Heitian. It just so happened that the emperor had a strange disease and released the world, and whoever could cure the strange disease would be rewarded heavily.
So Li Heitian took Xiaoliang and Wood Bird to treat the emperor, which triggered a series of comedy stories and farces. The film uses the paper-cut form commonly used in early Chinese animation, but the character modeling and action design are very detailed, without the stiffness and disobedience that comes with paper cuts.
This is the embodiment of the superb skills of the paper-cutting producers and the vivid voice performances of the voice actors, and also benefits from the unique cultural characteristics brought by the paper-cutting style, which adds a lot of color to the animation.
In short, this is a very well-made animation, and it is also suitable for children to start education. There are many touching stories in Chinese history that promote truth, goodness and beauty, and have created many images of young people who are wise and brave, jealous and hateful.
Xiao Liang is one of them, he bravely faces difficulties and conveys the spirit of kindness and bravery with his actions, which is an excellent animation worth watching again and again.
"Eight Hundred Whips" is an animated film, which expresses the struggle against fate, the struggle against ** and the yearning for light, and the yearning for a happy life through a series of vivid stories.
Although there are not many characters who appear, the identities of each character and the class they represent are very distinct, which makes the story more refined and exciting. The protagonist Xiaoliang represents the oppressed kind and brave civilian class, Liu Heitian and ** represent the greedy and domineering oppressive class, and the emperor represents the ignorant and mediocre ruler.
The story between these three classes is strongly satirical and contrasting, and vividly portrays the social landscape of the Dark Ages. In addition, the story revolves around magical wood carvings, expressing the idea that good people in the eyes of the ancients would be loved by God.
Although Xiaoliang's blood brought the wooden bird back to life and endowed it with magical powers to heal diseases, not everyone has a kind heart, and this kind of human and divine creatures generally do not like to deal with it.
In the story, we see a world full of darkness and corruption. Prime ministers, generals, ministers and others, they are all black-hearted ghosts in this world, eating and taking cards, and peeling off layers of skin.
But in this seemingly simple fairy tale, the darkness of society and the greed of ** are revealed. Each character successfully portrays a microcosm of all levels of society, a condensation of the darkness of the entire society.
And the cut-out style of the animation adds realism and irony to the story. This art form is developed by borrowing the artistic foundation of traditional Chinese shadow puppetry, and combining traditional arts such as folk paper-cutting culture.
This makes the story more vivid and interesting, and at the same time makes us reflect more deeply on the darkness of society. Overall, the anime is a work of deep realism, revealing the darkness and corruption of society through storylines and character portrayals, as well as the artistic expression of the paper-cut style, while also allowing us to see the brilliance of human nature.
This is a work worthy of our deep thought, and it is also a work of art worthy of our appreciation.
Shadow puppetry and cut-out animation are good at expressing the side shapes of the characters, and each side has to be carefully designed to suit different scenes. Xiao Liang is the protagonist of the play, and his styling design refers to the shape of most children, with a round face, two round buns, and manly eyebrows and facial features.
These elements are in line with the depiction of boys in many traditional stories. The patches on his clothes highlight his impoverished living conditions. Of course, the embodiment of the face element is also indispensable, and as a frequent guest who participates in the character design in domestic animation, the face is also reflected in this play.
The whitening around the eyes of the landlord Liu Heitian draws on the image characteristics of the ugly student in Peking Opera, with a pair of mung bean eyes and a lewd three-handed beard, which further highlights the image of a treacherous landlord and old wealth.
The shape of the two gatekeeper generals is even more exaggerated, and the faces are directly used in the face of Wusheng in Peking Opera, one white and one purple, one with an ugly face and the other with a treacherous personality. Their exaggerated mouths and small heads are more like monsters that choose people to eat.
Especially when they looked at Xiao Liang and asked him for payment, their ugly faces made people shudder.
In this animation, the character of Qin Shi Huang is portrayed with Chinese characteristics, and the combination of his facial elements and character creation makes the animation more successful, while also showing the essence of facial culture as a traditional theater culture.
And the protagonist Xiaoliang's struggle against fate, although it is an incomplete struggle of "only anti-** and not anti-emperor" in the style of "Water Margin", but the reason behind it comes from the road of China's feudal monarchs that has lasted for thousands of years since Qin Shi Huang ruled the world.
In order to stabilize the political power and strengthen the government, the ancient kings always racked their brains to take various measures, and tried their best to spread the idea of loyalty to the monarch, so that their subordinates would obey it with all their hearts. Qin Shi Huang's feudal measures institutionalized the blind obedience and foolish loyalty of the people and ministers to the monarch, and this idea gradually took shape with the emergence of the feudal system.
In the period of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, Dong Zhongshu stood on the position of the ruling class, and pushed this idea to a new peak out of the need to strengthen the centralization of power.
Yuan Shao gave a new interpretation of the idea of loyalty to the monarch, emphasizing that "the Son of Heaven is under the command of Heaven, and the world is under the command of the Son of Heaven", and believed that the people must absolutely obey the emperor, which is the will of heaven and the divine right of the monarch, which cannot be violated.
This view made it possible for rebellion to find a reasonable excuse to be supported in ancient Chinese feudal society. Yuan Shu had the heart of being the emperor in the second year of Emperor Xingping, and he summoned his subordinates to ask whether conforming to the mandate of heaven was to usurp power and claim the emperor, and everyone did not dare to answer, only the main book Yan Xiang immediately refuted.
In the Qing Dynasty, the feudal idea of loyalty to the monarch reached its peak, and the Qing Dynasty regarded the emperor as the master, and loyalty was regarded as more important than life. Hai Rui was thrown into prison for scolding Emperor Jiajing, and was not released until after Emperor Jiajing's death, which fully reflects the influence of this idea.
Hai Rui was devastated when he learned of Emperor Jiajing's death, not because he hated the emperor to the core, but because he was loyal to him. This kind of loyalty to the monarch, which is deeply rooted in the bone marrow, made Hai Jui regard loyalty as a basic political moral norm, which seriously affected his political personality.
In the cult of the monarch, he lost his reason. This kind of loyalty to the monarch that prevailed in the feudal era is undoubtedly extremely harmful. It made people pedantic and servile, and it was a shackle that bound people's morality at that time, and it was also a tragedy of the feudal era.