Written by丨Hoshino
Editor丨Meiqi
Entertainment Value Officer Interpretation:
ID:wenyujiazhiguan
Following the "Flower Order", "Cherish the Flowers" and "Ink Rain Clouds" to achieve the "triple explosion of ancient costumes", the recently launched "Du Hua Nian" continued Youku's momentum of soaring progress in this track, not only setting a record of "TOP1 popularity value of Youku dramas on the first day of broadcast in 2024", but also exceeded 10,000 popularity values on the station four days after the broadcast, and further consolidated Youku's track advantages with its excellent performance.
Youku's successive breakthroughs in emotional dramas are cultivating more users' habit of chasing dramas, attracting a large number of new users to enter the game. After a strong start in the first half of the year, Youku decided to take advantage of the victory and consolidate the market volume and user enthusiasm into a differentiated content mentality through the brand upgrade of emotional theaters.
On July 2, Youku Pet Theater officially announced that it was upgraded to Shenghua Theater. The launch of Shenghua Theater not only continues Youku's continuous cultivation of emotional dramas over the years, but also is based on in-depth insight into the market pattern and user needs, and it is also a new attempt to expand the high-quality path of emotional dramas with the power of the brand.
Youku Pet Theater was upgraded to Shenghua Theater
The list of 15 films creates a benchmark for emotional dramas
It is understood that the slogan of Youku Shenghua Theater is "Love in the heart, flowers in Vientiane", which means that as long as there is love in the heart, the road will be able to grow flowers all the way and bloom for love.
On the one hand, "Shenghua" not only refers to the same frequency blooming of the hero and heroine in love, but also a new interpretation of the emotional concept of "running in both directions and moving forward side by side", so that the love narrative transcends the superficial expression of sweet pets and sugar, and gives more power and depth to the shaping of gender relations. On the other hand, "Shenghua" not only means emotional flowering, but also means that life blossoms, the world blossoms, and shows how the characters realize their self-worth in society and history in addition to the love of children.
The 15 high-quality emotional dramas officially announced by Shenghua Theater this time are based on this content concept, and deeply deconstruct and present the diverse emotional cores and love concepts of contemporary people through multiple themes such as workplace, growth, light joy, and fantasy.
In the first half of the year, Youku ranked among the top 10 online dramas in terms of feature films, Youku took the top five, and "Between the Ink Rain Clouds", "Cherish the Flowers" and "The Order of the Flowers" in the Shenghua Theater film list ranked the top three. These costume dramas that break through the ceiling of the genre give us a glimpse of the refreshing emotional tone of the Shenghua Theater. The "Spring Flower Weariness" and "Shu Jin Family" to be broadcast in the film list will continue to broaden our imagination space for this genre.
"Spring Flower Weariness" is adapted from the popular IP, which has attracted much attention since the establishment of the project, and the number of reservations on Youku and Kumeow TV has exceeded 500,000. The extreme pull and confrontation between the strategizing prince and the tenacious and sober female killer, as well as the super high popularity accumulated by the male and female protagonists from "Flower Order" and "Ink Rain Clouds", have made this drama gather enough potential energy to explode.
"Shu Jin Family" focuses on the image of an independent woman, telling the story of Ji Yingying, a spicy lady in Shuzhong, who struggled to grow into a legendary figure on the Silk Road in the late Tang Dynasty, from a little lady in the Sandaoyan Dyeing Workshop, and the audience will see the indelible value of women in history and cultural inheritance.
After blowing a long-lost breeze for the ancient puppet market, Shenghua Theater is also about to bring some quality shocks to the current puppet market. "Eating, Running and Love" confronts the economic gap and practical obstacles in the process of love, and the two parties are no longer confined to the entanglement of love and non-love, but gradually understand each other and achieve self-achievement in time. Shhhhh "The King is Hibernating" integrates the emotional line of sweet pet healing with the cruel challenge of ice and snow sports, and leads the audience into the fantasy ice and snow world through real-life shooting in multiple places. "Hard to Coax" uses realistic brushstrokes to dig deep into the confusion and choices of contemporary young people in love, friendship, family affection, etc., and shows their tenacity and growth in the face of life's difficulties.
Not only that, Shenghua Theater will also continue the in-depth display of women's group portraits and female friendship in dramas such as "Flower Order", "Cherish Flowers" and "Ink Rain and Clouds", and continue to pay attention to the wonderful bloom of women in all walks of life, and the realistic plight of women in society and hand in hand transcendence. Among them, there is not only "In the Name of Beauty", which focuses on the profession of plastic surgery and prosthetist doctors in China in the new era, and sharply analyzes the phenomenon of medical beauty and appearance anxiety, but also "The City of Dance", which shows the relay between two generations of female ballet dancers to pursue their dreams and climb the peak of art.
From the sincere list of Shenghua Theater, we can see Youku's ambition to pursue full coverage of genres and themes in the emotional drama track, as well as its enterprising consciousness of continuous exploration and breakthrough in content creation.
Shenghua Theater costume drama "Four Rings"
Achieve breakthrough progress with innovative exploration
Although Youku Shenghua Theater has just been officially announced, its content concept has already been undoubtedly revealed in the "Cherish Flowers", "Flower Order", "Ink Rain Clouds" and "Spend the Year of China" launched this year. Through these dramas with different styles and good responses, we can clearly feel the creative theme of Shenghua Theater's anti-routine, anti-suspension, and emotional resonance with the times, and we can also feel its innovative exploration in terms of theme types, character settings, and expressions.
Whether it is "Flower Order" or "Hua Nian", they have integrated and innovated on the basis of traditional costume dramas, bringing the audience a refreshing experience of chasing dramas, and also opening up a new path in the stock market. "Flower Order" skillfully integrates suspense and thriller elements into the love narrative, while keeping the plot suspenseful and fascinating, the emotional line has also become natural and smooth, sincere and moving because of the joint investigation, with freshness and excitement, it has attracted more audiences, a small and medium-cost ancient puppet drama, and has broadcast S+ results.
"Spending Time" perfectly integrates the power struggle of the family and the country temple with the light-hearted and humorous light comedy style, departing from the clichés of traditional costume rebirth dramas, and has a sense of life and joy close to reality.
At the same time, Shenghua Theater is also leading emotional dramas to step out of the narrow vision of male and female love, zooming out the camera, showing a broader social space, and exploring greater possibilities in life outside of love and family. Taking "Cherish Hua Zhi" as an example, it not only tells the story of Hua Zhi and Gu Yanxi attracting each other and going hand in hand in the intertwined fate, but also shows the "entrepreneurship" process of Hua Zhi leading the women of the family step by step out of the predicament and rebuilding the family business, depicting the struggle between personal destiny between family, love and responsibility, so that every female audience can be ruthlessly substituted.
The reason why "Between the Ink Rain and Clouds" can become the "first hit of the summer" proves that Shenghua Theater's new setting for female characters just hits the aesthetic coolness of young audiences. We finally saw a real heroine with a strong spiritual core and a reversal of the situation against the wind, which vividly embodied the subjective consciousness of female characters and the life concept of "those who save themselves are saved". Not only that, "Between the Ink Rain and Clouds" also subverted the "perfect character design" of the traditional cool drama face, the heroine is three-dimensional and plump, flesh and blood, and the audience witnessed her transformation from fragile to tenacious, from fear to bravery, and was deeply touched by her true and delicate self-awakening road.
What's even more commendable is that several dramas of Shenghua Theater have abandoned the female competition routine of traditional "big heroine" dramas, and turned to the thick ink rewriting of female group portraits and female friendship. In "Cherish the Flowers", the female characters are no longer the background board to accompany the heroine, everyone has their own story and character, showing the real spiritual life of women in different situations, and jointly composing a symphony of female power. In "Ink Rain and Clouds", because Jiang Li reached out to help, Xue Fangfei, who suffered betrayal, was emotionally redeemed, and in order to avenge Jiang Li and wash away the stigma, Xue Fangfei rekindled the will to fight for survival. The friendship of comforting each other and entrusting each other in desperate situations presents the audience with a new model of positive and benevolent female relationships.
The concept of equality and mutual assistance in the Shenghua Theater also makes many audiences yearn for it while knocking on sugar. The love in "The Order of Flowers" transcends the beauty and ugliness, regardless of the shape, and the male and female protagonists can understand each other's hearts without words, which can be called the ceiling of intellectual sexuality. In "The Year of China", the male and female protagonists are evenly matched, and the two meet and entangle on the road to self-worth realization, and the emotions of enemies to allies and lovers are progressive, which fills the sweetness between this pair of happy enemies step by step.
Keen insight into the aesthetic changes of young audiences
From the source, make the drama industry "reservoir" bigger
Among the long video platforms, Youku is one of the first to start refined operations and layout content theater. As early as 2020, Youku noticed the taste preferences and group demands of young users, launched a pet theater that contracted young people's "sweet yearning", and brought warmth and healing to the audience through a series of "sugar dramas" with rich themes.
Now, Youku has gained insight into the diverse and deep-seated emotional needs of today's audiences, paid attention to their emotional thinking about inward exploration and outward growth, and took the lead in responding through the upgrade of the theater brand.
Since last year, the phenomenon of "sexual brain" has become the target of unanimous criticism from the official media to the public. The audience gradually lost interest in sweet pet dramas with overflowing sexual brains and outdated values, and was tired of the boss routine of "the male protagonist controls the overall situation, and the female protagonist passively waits", and hopes to see the story of the male and female protagonists growing up hand in hand and moving forward side by side. Compared with the traditional sweet pet drama that is superficial and deliberately suspended industrial saccharin, they appreciate the heart-to-heart sympathy between lovers based on soul resonance, and the sincere emotions of mutual understanding and mutual improvement.
Not only that, the "Research Report on the Innovation and Development of Chinese Drama Dramas and Aesthetic Diversification" recently released by the Film and Television Communication Research Center of Tsinghua University shows that young audiences are eager to see dramas with novel plots, unique character settings, and diverse themes, especially suspense dramas, ancient puppet dramas and romance dramas, but hope that these dramas can get rid of clichés and cheesy plots, be closer to reality, reflect social issues, and have depth and connotation.
Based on the keen insight into the psychology of young audiences and the in-depth analysis of the bottlenecked sweet pet market, Shenghua Theater took the lead in jumping out of the sweet pet track and creating a new market increment with a new brand connotation.
Whether it is to rejuvenate traditional themes through genre grafting, or to arouse strong resonance with the audience with the help of self-reliant and novel subversive characters, or to relate to the ideological connotation of the emotions and social issues of the times, Shenghua Theater is ahead of the industry in the exploration of emotional dramas, and has been continuously sought after by a new generation of young audiences.
At the recently concluded Shanghai TV Festival, Xie Ying, vice president of Youku, participated in the "New Aesthetics, New Themes, New Expressions - "Research Report on the Innovation and Development of Chinese Dramas and Aesthetic Diversification" Release and Seminar", and talked about Youku's successful methodology at the meeting. In her view, if the "stock theme" wants to become the source of "making the reservoir bigger", focusing on the emotional needs of contemporary audiences is the benchmark, and leading the audience's aesthetic innovation and expression innovation is the key.
The brand iteration of Shenghua Theater is an excellent response to the above-mentioned industry trend insights, which confirms Youku's determination to strengthen users' minds through differentiated content and enhance the value of the platform with a high-quality route. There is reason to believe that the launch of Shenghua Theater will bring the domestic emotional drama market into a stage, usher in the spring of a hundred flowers, and convey more beauty and warmth to the public.