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China's Bilibili Streaming Service Announces Original Karl Marx Web Anime
posted on by Lynzee Loveridge
The Chinese streaming service bilibili announced on the Sina Weibo blogging site on Tuesday that it will stream an original anime series centering on The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital author and philosopher Karl Marx. Reports vary on the animation studio behind the work, dubbed The Leader in English. South China Morning Post states The Leader is being produced by animation studio Dongmantang and the Global Times writes the studio as Wawayu.
Anime News Network could not independently locate the bilibili post on Sina Weibo. The streaming service has a holder page for the series.
Chinese video site will soon release the country's first animation about Karl #Marx's life, love story will Jenny, his friendship with Friedrich #Engels. Marx's philosophy made him the top on @BBC poll of “millennium's greatest thinker.” #Marx200 https://t.co/jPUgWVmeq2 pic.twitter.com/5N7NzMONN7
— Global Times (@globaltimesnews) December 19, 2018
The promotional video has been viewed 211,000 times on bilibili and over 41,000 times on Twitter since it launched on Tuesday and 37,000 users are following the series page.
The anime is being sponsored by the Project to Study and Develop the Marxist Theory, an initiative launched by China's Communist Party in 2004. The series will look at multiple milestones in Marx's life from the time he met his wife Jenny von Westphalen to his collaborative friendship with Friedrich Engels. The anime commemorates Marx's 200th birthday and should launch on the bilibili streaming service "soon."
The series is also backed by The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences; a research group and think tank, Weiming Culture Media, and the government-operated People's Daily newspaper.
Source: Global Times (Zhang Han), South China Morning Post (Mandy Zuo)
