Film Name: 开心超人 / Happy Heroes
I watched “Happy Heroes” twice because Wong Wai-ming is one of my favorite domestic animation directors, even though he himself might not be Chinese.
He personally established the most crucial foundational worldview and creative methodology for “Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf”—how to develop storylines and introduce new characters. This worldview and methodology proved so practical and robust that even after he was excluded from the project, the series’ storylines continued to expand smoothly.
As is widely known, after leaving Pleasant Goat, Huang Weiming created a new animated series, “Happy Heroes,” which remains brilliant! This is truly remarkable, for while a single success might be deemed a fluke, consistent success should be seen as a necessity. This inevitability lies in the fact that Huang Weiming possesses genuine animation intelligence. Like other domestic animation directors, he studied and drew inspiration from foreign works—for instance, Happy Heroes incorporates elements from American blockbusters like Independence Day. Yet his original creations form the distinctive, unshakable core of his films.
From Pleasant Goat to Happy Baby, Huang Weiming has consistently employed ensemble protagonists, with each “flat character” targeting a specific audience demographic, their personality positioning remarkably precise. Particularly in character design, Huang seems to possess innate intuition—whether it’s Pleasant Goat, Grey Wolf, or Happy Superhero, these designs rival the world’s top cartoon characters. Their outlines are highly recognizable, with each character dominated by a signature color reflecting their personality—all while maintaining an essential cuteness factor. Huang has mastered one of the world’s three most popular children’s animation archetypes.
Yet the greatest leap from Pleasant Goat to Happy Baby lies in the evolution of antagonist design. The controversial “domestic violence” gimmick of Red Wolf, criticized by nitpickers, was absent in Happy Babies. Instead, it introduced a safer, more wholesome duo of clumsy villains: General Big Monster and Corporal Little Monster. The premise itself is inherently comedic: a general commanding only one soldier, both utterly inept, yet perpetually scheming to cause mischief.
Naming characters is another specialty of Huang Weiming. From the Yangyang series to the Superhero series, from Grey Red Wolf to Big and Little Monster, each name is memorable and stylish, perfectly matching the characters’ personalities. Most impressively, they all carry a hint of cultural sophistication. He began by borrowing Chinese idioms containing the reduplicated syllable “yangyang” (like “joyous and radiant,” “bubbling with excitement,” “warm and cozy,” “lazy and languid”) and then started inventing his own (like “Slow Sheep”). He also exhaustively used words containing the character for ‘heart’ (like “happy heart,” “flirtatious heart,” “careful heart,” “careless heart,” “sweetheart”). These delightful names make the characters truly stand out. Moreover, Wong Wai-ming himself may have been deeply influenced by Japanese culture, as each of his films features several characters with distinctly Japanese-flavored names, such as “Grey Wolf” and “Dr. Otaku.” Both ‘Taro’ and “Otaku” originally stem from Japan, giving his films a sense of Chinese culture embracing Japanese elements.
From a narrative perspective, Wong’s ability to craft such a cohesive and flawless debut feature like Happy Heroes further highlights his talent. I emphasize that this is his first animated feature film. We know directing TV animation and feature-length animation are entirely different endeavors—from plot structure to production workflow, the workload and required organizational skills are on a completely different scale. Yet Wong achieved it, albeit through immense hardship.
“Happy Heroes” tells children a story about believing in oneself. Happy Hero must believe in himself, Dr. Homebody must believe in himself, and every ordinary passerby must believe in themselves. Most intriguingly, while set on a fictional planet, it employs a very real Earth-based backdrop—the impact of the internet age on modern society and human lifestyles. The scene where families use online calls for meals carries a distinct comic-book flavor. The director observes life and elevates it through a comic-like language. Of course, the film would have benefited from more such relatable micro-scenes that allow viewers to mirror their own lives.
Note that I began by mentioning comics. This is my key point: viewing Wong Wai-ming’s work without considering its comic origins makes it difficult to fully grasp its charm. This likely stems from Wong Wai-ming’s origins as a comic artist. His comics consciously employ the social four-panel format—a style emerging during the Republican era that profoundly influenced Hong Kong and Taiwan—to depict the multifaceted aspects of observed life. When he transitioned to animation, if any influence persisted, it was most deeply rooted in his early comic-driven mindset.
I’ve seen some friends comment that certain gags in Happy Heroes feel like flab, unrelated to the plot—like the opening scene where two people are hanging upside down in front of a billboard during an interview. But I actually think this is precisely the kind of sequence that embodies Wong Wai-ming’s signature style. It’s precisely because the film is filled with a thousand such moments that it becomes a work bearing Wong Wai-ming’s distinct imprint. If you’ve seen this film, imagine a four-panel comic like this: Panel one: Interviewer A asks a question, Interviewee B answers. Panel two: Interviewer A asks a question, Interviewee B answers. Panel three: Interviewer A asks a question, Interviewee B answers. Suddenly, in panel four, the camera pulls back to reveal they’re hanging upside down in midair. Interviewee B shouts, “Can we get back on solid ground before we continue this interview?!” What a brilliant four-panel comic! The shift in the fourth panel completely disrupts the spatial continuity of the first three, shifting the audience’s focus from the conversation’s content to the absurdity of the situation itself. Is this scenario irrelevant to the theme? Of course not. It establishes the spaceship crash through dialogue, indirectly hinting at danger; it introduces the host whom the protagonists collectively admire via the interview, laying groundwork for later plot developments; and it sets the stylistic tone for the entire film through the formal beauty of the four-panel comic format. Such a crucial gimmick—how could it be superfluous?
The subsequent car chase sequence, where Corporal Little Monster performs “manual navigation,” also embodies this four-panel comic aesthetic. The moment when Corporal Little Monster misinterprets General Big Monster’s intent and lets Dr. Otaku escape could equally be rendered as a four-panel comic. The earlier scene of the family dinner using a network prompt to signal “dinner is served” is another four-panel comic element. Listing them all, you’ll find that every gimmick in the film could essentially be transformed into a four-panel comic. It’s not that we deliberately link these gimmicks to four-panel comics; rather, the director consciously or unconsciously crafted the film using his innate four-panel comic skills.
“Happy Heroes” is precisely such a film—a movie composed of countless, densely scattered four-panel comics within a predetermined plot outline.
Of course, if we nitpick, I personally feel the film’s minor flaw lies in its opening car chase feeling a bit drawn-out. That fight sequence was a tad excessive—it could easily have been the climactic battle of an entire TV anime episode. If the car chase had served its purpose of introducing the main characters and then wrapped up the first battle cleanly, swiftly advancing the main plot of the shape-shifters invading Earth, the pacing would have felt much better.
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