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For the generation of young people who grew up with the Internet, especially Generation Z, they may have had a period of life accompanied by characters in anime and games.

This kind of companionship can sometimes bring strength to people. Just like the Chinese girl who drifted on the sea for a day and two nights not long ago, she said that she thought of the character Funina in "Genshin Impact" many times when she was helpless on the sea. Similarly, Funina in the plot relied on courage to persevere until the moment of rescue. She is the same.

It is not uncommon for virtual characters to bring encouragement and healing to young people. In that unconstrained, fantasy-filled and free world, young people see similar situations, struggles, and ideals, and gain the courage to face life.

And this seems to have become a gentle footnote in this anxious era.

Text |Yi Fangxing

Editor|Zhang Qingsong

Operations |Killer Whale

Intertwined Worlds

It only takes 23-year-old Yu Li ten seconds to climb a tree.

She likes forests. In Sanjiang, Guangxi, which is located in the mountains in the southwest, trees are the most common. Her favorite tree to climb is a yellow fruit tree in front of her home. The tree is older than she is. October is her birthday every year. The yellow fruits on the tree are ripe and she can't eat them all. She lies on her favorite branch, picking fruits and eating them, with her parrot standing on her shoulder.

▲Yu Li and her parrot are eating fruits on a yellow fruit tree. The parrot’s name is “A Si”, which means “a child that breaks out of its shell at the hour of Si”. Photo/ Provided by the interviewee

But this time, the "she" who climbed the tree was special. She was wearing green clothes, green hair, and carrying a golden bow and arrow. The most eye-catching thing was the two moving ears on her head. This time she played Tinari, a character in "Genshin Impact". This was one of her cosplay works. Cosplay refers to the use of costumes to play the role of characters in anime, games, etc. to express love and respect for the characters. It is not only a form of entertainment, but also a form of artistic expression.

▲Yu Li cosplays the character "Tinari" from "Genshin Impact". Photo/provided by the interviewee

This is a rather unique idea. In the original God, this character is a rather gentle character who works as a forest ranger. Players like to call him Xiaoti. In the crisis of the forest again and again, Tinari's mission is to study and protect the forest. "The moment I saw this character, I thought it was him." Yu Li, who likes forests, and Tinari, who also likes forests, overlapped with each other through cosplay.

In fact, Yu Li's real-world job is a bird breeder. Because she often needs to live in a bird breeding base in the mountains, she often calls herself a "savage". She raises all kinds of parrots and devotes a lot of love to them. Because there are too many parrots, she names them according to numbers, and has raised them from the first to the nineteenth. In order to understand the growth process of parrots, she usually starts raising them from the time they just hatch. Take now, for example, she is taking care of two newly hatched parrots. For this reason, she needs to feed them chick food every two hours, so she can hardly get a full night's sleep.

But such care is rewarded with the birds' closeness to her, especially Lao Shi, a cockatiel, which can be released into nature. When it is tired of flying, just call it and it will fly back, just like a flying puppy. The birds and trees add a layer of agility to Yu Li's cosplay that others do not have. As a popular character, many people have cosplayed Tinari, but the special thing about Yu Li's Xiaoti is that she not only restored Xiaoti's daily work as a forest ranger, but also restored the feeling of the bird lying intimately on her shoulder and getting along harmoniously with nature.

This attempt at cosplay was a great success. Netizens exclaimed, "I saw the real person," and some said, "This is the real version of Xiaoti." For any cosplayer, the degree of restoration is an important goal they pursue. In a sense, she also saw her own shadow in Xiaoti. When she was working as a bird keeper, she never thought that one day her job would be intertwined with the fictional world.

As an amateur cosplayer, Yu Li has been doing cosplay for eight years. As a hobby, there are many people like Yu Li who are doing it out of love. Now, through cosplay, Yu Li, who works as a bird breeder in real life, can better reach that ideal world.

With the development of the times, this resonance is becoming common. As the world's largest animation and game market, China's market size continues to expand. According to a report released by CIC, the market size of China's related content industry has reached about 63.2 billion yuan in 2021. At the same time, the user scale has reached nearly 460 million people, of which Generation Z accounts for more than 60%.

All the data show that with the development of the times, animation and game culture is no longer limited to niche circles, but is gradually integrated into mainstream culture and becomes more closely intertwined with the real world.

This interweaving is widespread and universal, even across industries and countries. Take the recent Paris Olympics for example. On August 2, Greek long jumper Tentoglou appeared in the finals in the "Gear 2" style of Luffy, the protagonist of the anime "One Piece". Not only him, but also shot putter Peyton Otda appeared in the finals in the "Super" style of Franky, the main character of "One Piece". Both Luffy and Franky have passionate, sincere and never-give-up personalities. In a sense, people also see qualities that they can identify with from these characters, which is also a kind of "sportsmanship".

Some people have directly joined the animation and gaming industry, transforming from enthusiasts to practitioners. Even traditional professions such as teachers have begun to undergo new changes.

For example, Fang Shanchuzi, a 34-year-old university teacher, teaches e-sports courses at Nanjing University of the Arts and Sciences, one of the earliest universities in China to offer e-sports majors. One of his teaching tasks is to help students better understand the culture of the gaming world.

▲Fangshan Chef in the classroom. Photo/ Provided by the interviewee

Some of his teaching methods are also unique. Two years ago, during the epidemic, Fangshan Chef gave online classes to students and found that the students were not focused at all in class. "The biggest problem is the efficiency of the class. It is difficult to concentrate. I have tried many ways to improve everyone's attention."

He discovered a great way to teach students using a virtual image. When the real teacher became a virtual character, the students' listening efficiency in that class improved significantly.

▲Fangshan Chef cosplays as the character Xiao from the original God. Photo/provided by the interviewee

At the same time, the employment scope of this industry supported by passion is also expanding. For example, Ling Lingyi, director of the "Esports Commentary and Network Anchor Teaching and Research Section" of the Esports College of Nanjing University of Media and Communication, has recommended some students to become hosts or commentators of esports events.

She feels very lucky. "I made the choice to combine my hobbies and work. I never thought that the virtual world and the real world are completely separated."

▲ Ling Ling Yi. Photo/ provided by the interviewee

The power of healing

The reason why we care so much about this fantasy world is that many people have been healed by it to varying degrees.

For Yu Li, her first cosplay was eight years ago when she was just fifteen years old. The threshold to join the cosplay circle is actually not high, the only thing required is love for the character. She liked a character called "Crane" in the game Touken Ranbu (because she likes birds), but she didn't have money to buy clothes for cosplay, so she decided to sew them herself.

That was her first time sewing clothes. She had studied Chinese painting and had a certain foundation in painting. "With the help of others, I drew a figure design, and then disassembled every detail of the clothes according to the figure." The rest of the work was basically done by herself, measuring the body size, then cutting the cloth according to experience, and finally sewing the pieces of cloth together bit by bit. Even the embroidery was done by herself.

This process took a total of three months. It was a fulfilling and loving time. Sewing clothes for your favorite character, and then wearing them yourself, becoming that character, this kind of happiness can only be experienced by cosplaying in person. Although the character is virtual, the love and sustenance contained in this process are real.

This experience of love is particularly precious to Yu Li, because in a sense, reality is the one that brings her more harm.

"I am an orphan abandoned in the mountains, so I think I am a child raised by the mountains." She was abandoned by her biological parents when she was young, and lived with her grandmother in the mountains. Her grandmother is also her "mother". When she was still in elementary school, she learned needlework from her grandmother, even sewing soles. This also became the basis for her to sew cosplay costumes by herself later.

Looking back now, everything her grandmother taught her was about how to survive in this cruel world. When her grandmother took her to collect herbs, she would bring a notebook and draw pictures of the herbs. The mountain people lived off the mountains, and the herbs they collected could be sold to the medicine shops at the foot of the mountain. A whole sack of herbs could be exchanged for 50 yuan.

▲The prescription written by Yu Li many years ago. Photo/ Provided by the interviewee

Among the few good memories of her childhood, picking mushrooms with her grandmother is one of them. When she was seven or eight years old, she carried a small flower basket and went into the mountains with her grandmother. The small flower basket was soon full, and she poured the mushrooms into her grandmother's big basket. Just like the song "The Little Girl Picking Mushrooms" sang.

My current love for birds is also related to that period. At that time, Yu Li was painting under a tree by a small river. It started to rain. When she took shelter under the tree, a yellow-billed sparrow with its feathers not fully grown fell down. "This was the first time in my life that I decided to take care of a young bird. The tree was very tall, and I thought it seemed to be dying, so I took it back."

Grandma taught little Yuli how to take care of the bird. Since there was no mother bird, she thought of herself as the mother bird. She kept the bird in a box and even put the box next to her pillow when she slept. "The bird survived very hard. It was very good and obedient. This little sparrow was my first childhood friend."

However, this story has a good beginning but not a happy ending. "The kids in the neighborhood didn't like me very much, and my bird was later caught by them. They tied stones to the bird's legs and sank it into the river."

Witnessing all this, Yu Li was deeply traumatized. From then until now, she has always felt a sense of guilt, "I didn't protect it well." She said. In her opinion, the human world is much more complicated and difficult than the bird's world, and the word love is often associated with pain. Therefore, when she later sewed cosplay costumes for her favorite characters, she was able to temporarily withdraw from the real world.

That year, she wore this outfit and went to the largest comic exhibition in Nanning, Guangxi. She remembers the deer antler decorations she bought at the exhibition, and the "especially delicious" donuts that cost 15 yuan for two. It can also be said that this experience led her to a wider and more distant world.

▲The deer antler headband that Yu Li bought. Photo/ Provided by the interviewee

Relying on virtual characters to get healing is a common phenomenon for many people today. Nowadays, when searching for reviews of anime and games on social platforms, "healing" is actually a high-frequency word. Some people get healing from the sincerity and love of their youth from Hayao Miyazaki's anime works, and some people get some kind of thinking about the certainty of life from games like "The Sims". Even Musk, the founder of Tesla, mentioned in his autobiography that he liked to play a game called "Civilization" since he was a child, and it was this game that accompanied him during his student days.

However, in many people's growing up experiences, playing games or watching anime sometimes brings up some not-so-pleasant memories. For example, Fangshan Chef had a mother who was extremely strict with him in his studies when he was a child. When he was in elementary school, he studied very well, as evidenced by the fact that he skipped two grades in the fourth grade and entered junior high school. "It was just that I was two points short of being admitted to the key class of junior high school, so my mother didn't let me go. Then in the fifth grade, I skipped a grade again and was admitted to the key class."

Studying is a long race, but this is not the end. His mother required him to be the first in the grade. "Once I got the second place in the grade exam, and then I got beaten when I got home. They asked me why I couldn't get the first place." In their family, corporal punishment was sometimes very extreme. For example, his mother would prick his hands and mouth with a needle.

Under such great pressure, the virtual world became a temporary haven for relaxation. His favorite character is Doraemon. From today's perspective, Nobita in the comics is a rather relaxed person. Although he is not good at studying, he has a kind heart. Doraemon will help him when he encounters difficulties. Fangshan Chef remembers, "At that time, there were those Doraemon comics at the entrance of our elementary school. They were two yuan a copy. I had two boxes. Later, my mother found them and threw them all away. It was so sad."

For many people, this is why they retain their love for these fictional characters even as they grow older, precisely because it would be hard for them to imagine how they would have gotten through that time without them.

Ling Lingyi also had a childhood accompanied by anime. She liked Digimon at the time, especially Angewomon and Tailmon. These characters are images of justice, sunshine and light. Sometimes, when there was no one on the way home, she would recite the lines of the characters in the anime. Usually, people call this kind of fantasy of imitating the two-dimensional characters "Chuunibyou" (because it is more common in the second grade of junior high school, it is a loving name), and Ling Lingyi can be said to have a very obvious symptom.

At that time, she also became the moderator of a forum related to the second dimension, where she met a group of friends who also liked Digimon. When her parents banned her from the Internet in high school, her friends in the forum did not forget her, and even posted a special thread in the forum, replying to posts and checking in every day, waiting for her to come back, and some people would write to her.

During that time, she was under great pressure from studying and was anxious about life. When she occasionally had time to surf the Internet, it was the encouragement from these friends she had never met that supported her. She was often moved to tears after reading their posts. "I think it is difficult to have pure feelings in modern times, especially in that era. We didn't know each other's appearance in real life, and even our ages were vague. But our relationship was pure, and we were very happy when we met online. This was a very touching period for me."

Dreams become reality

Any time you have ever spent will not be meaningless, and the things you have experienced will often echo when you grow up. As this field becomes more and more accepted by the public, those who grow up with this process will also reap the gifts that belong to them in their destiny.

Today, Yu Li is an up master with 120,000 followers on Bilibili. The characters she cosplays the most are related to Genshin Impact. Since she started playing Genshin Impact two years ago, she has become more in tune with this open world game that incorporates many Chinese elements.

In terms of plot, Genshin Impact has a high degree of recognition. The perspective of the protagonist in the game is to use his own footsteps to explore the countries in the game and solve the unique crises of each country. When Yu Li played to the Grass Kingdom, a character in the game sacrificed himself to save the entire forest kingdom. The scene was like a child being embraced by a mother-like existence. Then the mother disappeared, and the child lived alone in the world. When Yu Li saw that, she burst into tears.

She also thought of her grandmother who passed away when she was in the sixth grade of elementary school. From then until now, it can be said that she has used all the skills her grandmother taught her to support her life to this day.

Becoming a cosplayer and going to comic conventions also brought her a lot of warmth. She said that she used to be a closed person, and what she often did was to sit alone on a tree in the mountains, so she went to comic conventions alone. But one time, she met a girl from the "same crew" (referring to cosplaying characters from the same work), and the two of them went to comic conventions together, and she found that comic conventions were so interesting. "There is such a big difference between going alone and going with friends, I was very shocked at the time," she said.

▲Comic exhibition scene. Photo/ provided by the interviewee

Since then, she has always invited her friends to go with her. She, who used to be "closed", has gradually become cheerful. Her friends and netizens on the Internet often describe her as "cheerful and sunny", which was only her grandmother who had said this before.

In recent years, Fangshan Chuzi, as a professional teacher of e-sports commentary in college, has also felt the change of the times. "In the past few years when recruiting students, some parents would ask about the details of the major and what they could learn. In recent years, it has been much better, especially after e-sports was included in the Asian Games, such voices have become less and less."

At the national level, this industry is also gradually being recognized. Take e-sports as an example. It will be included in the Asian Games as an official competition event at the 2022 Hangzhou Asian Games. It marks that this sport has been recognized by international sports organizations and will help promote the formalization of e-sports. At the same time, a group of outstanding e-sports athletes have emerged in China, winning places for China in international competitions.

▲Esports competition at the Hangzhou Asian Games. Photo/ Visual China

This is also an example of its huge development potential as an emerging track. According to the consulting report of China Research Institute, the relevant market in China has shown explosive growth in recent years. By 2024, the estimated scale has reached 120 billion yuan, and this figure is still growing.

The student from Shandong province impressed Fangshan the most. "His family didn't understand him at all before, and Shandong people are traditional, so he was miserable. Later, I took him to participate in game commentary and sent some of his work experience to his family." Fangshan found that when this boy was doing what he liked, "the happiness was very real."

To this day, Fangshan Chef is still enjoying this happiness. When Genshin Impact has a new plot, he will live broadcast playing Genshin Impact online, watching various stories happening in the game with netizens like watching a movie. In particular, there was a chapter called "Forest Book" before, the protagonists of the chapter were a group of cute little creatures called Lanaro, who could use the memory of the entire forest as their own power to fight against the destruction of nature. This was a series of tasks lasting more than ten hours, and Fangshan Chef kept live broadcasting until the end of the story.

It was a very touching ending, as the Lannaros sacrificed their memories to save the forest. "I cried while playing, and some netizens cried with me." There is also a setting in the game that when a person becomes an adult, he can no longer see Lannaro. Only children with a pure heart can see it.

This is very similar to the Doraemon that Fangshan Chef had seen before. He later saw a folk version of the ending of Doraemon - Nobita grew up, Doraemon disappeared, and all this was just a dream of Nobita. "I think this is a metaphor. As you grow up, one day the things that accompanied you in your childhood will disappear."

But there are things that cannot disappear. This is the significance of the virtual world. It helps people keep the most precious things from childhood in their hearts, including kindness, justice, love, adventure... These precious things will also accompany people in the real world after they grow up, and become their courage to fight against adversity and life.

The same is true for Ling Lingyi. Just like the kind and bright Angewomon she once liked, she now also likes a character named Navia in Genshin Impact. Even when the plot develops to the darkest moment, this character still retains the kindness and courage in her heart.

"I think Genshin Impact has created a very beautiful female image that is like a little sun. I am easily infected by this image because I am also trying to be such a person. I really hope that I can become a powerful woman." Ling Lingyi said. It often happens that people will find their own reflection in similar characters, or find the ideal they want to achieve.

Now, she and her team are recreating a 3D animation of a virtual character. The first character she chose to create was Navia from the original God. It tells the story of Navia being rescued with the help of her best friend. The video received millions of views, and even her colleagues and students soon knew about it. "Many people came to ask me that day, saying that they saw what I did. I admitted it generously and told them this as a teaching case."

So, she no longer has to hide her identity as a fan of anime characters like she did more than a decade ago. As recognition becomes more and more widespread, the group of people who loved these characters back then have gradually grown up and become the backbone of society.

To this day, Yu Li sometimes wonders, if she hadn't met these characters in the virtual world, what kind of life would she have led when she was drifting alone in the world? She doesn't know. From her personal experience, she relied on these virtual characters to establish a connection with the real world.

This kind of online and offline connection is precious. Just like the "Genshin☆FES" carnival held in Shanghai on August 15, its theme name is called "Across the world, gather here", from the lively atmosphere on the scene, you can see countless such moments of connection.

▲The scene of the Genshin Impact Carnival event. Photo/ Visual China

More than 100 creators came to the scene to "set up stalls", and players and creators enthusiastically exchanged their views on their favorite characters. This is the second time that "Genshin Impact" has held such an offline immersive exhibition. Compared with last year, this year's venue area has increased by nearly 30%. The newly added creator exchange area is also the biggest feature of this exhibition. Relying on a series of interactive activities and installations, players play the role of "travelers" and embark on a real immersive adventure on the scene.

At the "Creator Exchange Meeting" at the carnival, many creators told stories about how they were influenced and changed by Genshin Impact. For example, a young man named "Xie27" said that he was just an unknown company clerk before, "just going to work every day to get by." It was not until he resigned and started to do game self-media that his life changed - from a young man who "got by" to a popular up master who worked hard to update every day. Later, he even pulled his mother to make short videos together, and even accidentally improved the mother-son relationship.

In this attempt in the gaming field, he said the most important thing he realized was, "If you really find something you are willing to do, you must stick to it with all your might."

Perhaps, for these young people, this is the moment when dreams come true.

The article is original by Daily People. Any infringement will be investigated.