back to the future

Here's this saturday's morning cartoon: a geat example of creative talent from China. It was made as an MV (music starts at 1:55) for Chinese 8-bit producer Baifan. It is the very first animation by Chinese animator, painter and VJ Wang Meng, whom I had the pleasure to interview for NeochaEDGE.

"When I was doing this series, I put forth a concept I call “I’m gonna regret the rest of my life if I give up my transformers and be a mama’s boy.” (如果为了比别的小朋友小红花多 而放弃玩变形金刚，我会遗憾终生的。)

(...) We started losing that happiness in high school when we were pressured to study excessively, and now we are pressured to work excessively, etc. – but what’s it all for? What’s the relationship between the “ideal” and reality? Is the “ideal” that we spend so much time studying and working really all that great?

Over the last few years there has been a resurgence of all things “retro” in China – 8-bit music, of course, can be included in this trend. This trend has greatly influenced me and my work. I think the reason people are into these things is not because the retro games or fashions of the past are better than the modern games or fashions or whatever. It’s mostly because people nowadays want to rediscover the happiness we all had when we were kids. That’s what’s happening with 8-bit music, it’s being made all over again as a re-fabricated retro thing because it makes us happy."