What does a New Year’s Eve special tailored for Chinese millennials and Gen Z look like? League of Legends, anime songs and plenty of meme references -- according to Bilibili.
The Twitch-like streaming platform’s countdown gala, which aired online starting at 8pm Tuesday, was the only one among eight New Year’s shows in China that wasn’t broadcast on TV.
The pre-recorded stream kicked off with a World of Warcraft themed dance. That was followed by the 2019 League of Legends World Championship theme song Phoenix, a Kris Wu performance based on his widely ridiculed freestyle rap about noodles, and the theme song of Japanese anime classic Spirited Away -- which was shown in China’s theaters for the first time this year.
The show, which drew 82 million viewers at its peak, was staged in partnership with state-run news agency Xinhua. Bilibili, better known as a hotbed of internet slang and viral memes, recently started hosting state broadcaster CCTV. The platform, which requires anyone to pass a 100-question quiz to qualify as a full member, currently boasts some 128 million monthly active users.