To sort of officially christen this blog with a review, I wanted to begin by taking a look at a film that has had new life breathed within it by collaborating with a famous mobile game, where its main protagonist will be featured in the game as a playable character! This sort of new life is perfect for the new year, especially as Chinese New Year will be upon us in a few days. 恭喜发财，红包快拿来！ (Wishing you prosperity and wealth; quickly bring the red envelopes!)
This specific film is A Deer of Nine Colours (Jiu Se Lu), also known as The Nine-Coloured Deer.
(Truthfully, I could christen this blog with numerous reviews of numerous shows: my childhood ones, including more of the Shanghai Animation Film Studio films, considering my knowledge gained of them from my undergraduate thesis; The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation/The Founder of Diabolism (Mo Dao Zu Shi), due to it just having gotten an official English translation and being one of the first series to revitalize the donghua industry; Nezha 2019 because of its fame… But hey, I had to pick something, and this particular piece of news is quite exciting!)
A Deer of Nine Colours is another one of the films made by the Shanghai Animation Film Studio, released in 1981, when China had just begun opening back up to the world after it became communist due to turbulence from war. The film itself is rather short, having a run time of only around half an hour, and is not quite as elaborately animated as some of SAFS’ previous work, and yet it nonetheless carries many traits that mark it as SAFS film.
One of the main things is that it once again adapts a myth, a habit that my undergraduate thesis allowed me to explore in deeper detail. Before I get into that, however, I would like to review the film itself!
The specific myth it adapts comes from a Buddhist Jataka tale, turned into a cave painting in the Mogao Caves in Dunhuang, China. To learn more about that, there is a documentary about it on YouTube here.
As for the film itself, the plot is incredibly faithful to the myth it is adapting, although it does expand on it a little by providing a few more details. A mystical deer is shown to help animals and humans alike, with its generosity towards the latter species earning it concern from its bird friend. When the emperor hears about the magical nine-coloured deer from some Persian merchants it had helped when they got lost, his empress demands the deer’s nine-coloured skin for herself.
The deer itself is blissfully unaware of this, believing in the conscience of humans and their capability for gratitude. This backfires on it, however, when it rescues a merchant who sells medicine for snake bites from drowning. This merchant vows not to reveal the deer, yet immediately decides to sell the deer out as soon as he learns about the award. In the end, he leads the king’s men toward the deer and lures it out by pretending to drown once more, but when the men try to shoot, the deer is protected by its magic. It condemns the merchant, who suffers before he actually drowns, pecked into the water by the deer’s bird friend.
As stated, it is a rather simple film.
The deer is beautiful and often animated with an otherwordly grace, but this film is not nearly as detailed or smooth as the SAFS’ more famous work, such as Uproar in Heaven (Danao tiangong) from 1961-1964 and Nezha Conquers the Dragon King (Nezha naohai) from 1979. The latter two I analyzed in detail in my undergraduate thesis on Chinese animation for my honours specialization in Film Studies.
Having brought them up again, I’d like to go back to the myth-adapting habit of the SAFS since it’s relevant now!
As you can probably tell, those earlier films were also adapted from myths. This has to do with the complex concept of national style, which was something of a guideline that SAFS tried to follow, because many of the studio bigwigs (from Te Wei to Wan Laiming and his brothers) believed in animation as a higher art form that could convey Chinese culture and art to the world. Even then, I interrogated this concept in my thesis, as it’s rather hard to pin down and animation is not nearly as national as some people like to believe—in fact, it is quite international!
Uproar in Heaven and Nezha both showed that given their own origins, but on the topic of A Deer of Nine Colours, the transnationalism can immediately be seen in the fact the myth is a Buddhist Jataka tale, and Buddhism spread in China from India.
The merchants presented in the beginning of the film also appear to be foreign (perhaps Persian), showing different cultures mingling. Similarly, quite a few of the characters, including the emperor and his guards, have darker skin. The merchant does as well, and there is an interesting sequence where his skin darkens twice more when he decides to sell the deer out. At first I was somewhat dismayed given Asian beauty standards have often valued lighter skin (at first due to paleness indicating being rich enough not to work in the sun, and then from admiration of western cultures after westernization), but the third shade the man’s skin becomes is so dark and grey it looks almost inhuman, like he has already become a corpse. Right after his skin darkens to such a shade, he is also bothered by a swarm of bugs that he tries to stop by slapping himself. His eyes are even an unnatural yellow in some shots after that, and when he finally dies, his eyes are extremely scarlet and almost seem to be bleeding. All of this furthers that corpse-like metaphor, suggesting he is condemning himself to death.
The deer notes after he drowns that evil will not meet a good end. As you can probably tell, the moral of the story is pretty clear and even a bit too obvious. But it is exactly what the original myth said, and it carries a lot of weight.
Because of that, I personally find the film not particularly innovative or new, especially given its seemingly lower budget (this would also be around the time SAFS would start struggling, as China opening up meant that animators left for studios from other countries and more studios would pop up in China, which stopped SAFS from having the government’s sole support). Even then, I do appreciate it for its artistic significance and clear intent to create something meaningful.
It would appear that those at SAFS themselves also continue to value this film, considering the news!
I just think it’s really exciting that SAFS would collaborate with a mobile game such as Arknights of all things, transforming the deer into—believe it or not—a pretty anime-esque girl! I’m even disappointed this collaboration didn’t happen while I was still writing my thesis, because at least then I could have talked about it in perhaps my conclusion, where I had to write about SAFS’ modernization (and the growth of the donghua industry as a whole). It would have been cool to include it, as a sign of SAFS’ evolution—and China’s (mobile) game industry too!
I mean, most people already know about the behemoths Genshin Impact, as well as its sister series Honkai Impact and others such as AFK Arena, Love Nikki, Onmyoji, Tears of Themis, and more! Arknights is part of that growing industry, just as A Deer of Nine Colours is a part of the growing donghua industry.
I was seriously mind-blown when I found out, immediately tweeting about it and posting it to my Tumblr, since I like sharing any new Chinese media news with my followers. SAFS has remained a lot quieter since the 1990s, after the Chinese animation industry had to compete with more international (and domestic) studios, and the films they’ve made since things turned digital have not been quite as well-animated or even artistic as their most iconic work from the 20th century. Despite that, their importance to Chinese animation cannot be overstated, and they’re often celebrated to this day: for example, this Arknights collab, this e-commerce commercial where their characters were reimagined for a new audience (if you can’t access it, here’s a tiny clip from it here!), and this Beijing Olympics ad.
That’s why I’m still pretty taken aback but pleasantly so to see that Arknights has made the nine-coloured deer a collectible character! You can find the PV for the game collab here! As some of the commenters have remarked, it’s pretty wild that they turned this character into an “anime waifu” ahaha.
Finally, if you’d like to watch the original film, you can find that here!
Happy Chinese New Year 2022! May all of you have a wonderful year of the tiger~
Despiteg