Over 200,000 animation, comics, games, and novels fans from across the world joined a grand gathering of Red Land on Fuxing Island in Shanghai over the National Day holiday, embarking on a vibrant journey of adventure driven by a shared love and passion.
Red Land, also known as Open World Adventure Island, is an offline gaming and anime-themed event launched last year by Xiaohongshu, or Red-Note. This year, the event's second edition was held from Oct 2 to Oct 6, gathering over 160 popular IPs, including Chinese titles such as Honor of Kings, Black Myth: Wukong, Genshin Impact, and Delta Force, as well as global hits such as Disney's Zootopia and Marvel series.
Expanding its exploration area from 80,000 square meters to about 150,000 sq m, the event offered an immersive experience with diverse interactive activities throughout the day.
The whole event was built as a large-scale open world game. Visitors instantly became part of the adventure on arrival, and every activity they participated in on the island formed their own unique story. They were able to meet fellow enthusiasts, try new games, see performances, join in auditions and contests, walk through the building and markets in game settings, and have direct casual talks with producers.
"Red Land is not a fully organized comic convention, but rather an offline community festival created collaboratively by fans," Chen Wenbi, founder of the event and head of marketing at the Community Department of Xiaohongshu, said. "We hope that when they step into each booth, they'll feel they're entering not just an exhibition booth, but a world they can truly step into and interact with."
Particularly, this year's Red Land also featured a rarely seen large-scale ACGN-themed parade. Among the impressive parade floats were big ones themed on game and anime IPs, as well as various smaller ones made by about 150 Xiaohongshu users. With their creativity and passion, they went from being enthusiasts to taking center stage in the parade.
"The culture of the young generation is not only reflected in their consumption habits, but is also collectively created through understanding and self-expression," Gao Tingting from Xiaohongshu's community department said.
Gao shared that the Xiaohongshu platform had seen rapid growth of posts related to games and anime over the past year. Its monthly active users interested in gaming have surpassed 120 million, while the audience for anime-related content has reached 137 million.
The nation's vibrant ACGN scene is also drawing global participants to the event. Maverick Games, an independent studio based in the United Kingdom, revealed its debut title, Clutch, at the event. The cinematic open-world action-driving game features a captivating story narrative, proprietary physics engine, and deep vehicle personalization system that allow players to build cars defined as much by identity and style as raw performance.
Mike Brown, creative director and founder of Maverick Games, told China Daily that the team had been working on the title for nearly four years. Describing the game as "beautiful, dramatic, and exciting", he has received positive feedback from Chinese gamers at the event.
"This is our first time to Red Land. It's a place where you get to join in the experience and the games," Ben Penrose, art director at Maverick Games, said. "We've been aware that there is a big market of car enthusiasts in China, and it's also been interesting for us to see how car culture is blossoming here."
Ben Bergmann, better known as Maul Cosplay, was also deeply impressed by the gathering. As one of the world's best known cosplayers, the 47-year-old German most enjoyed the smiles on the faces he met on the island.
"I've never been to such an open-air event before. It's huge and amazing, and I love the culture and vibes here," Bergmann said with a big smile. "People coming together with the same interest are all happy and in a good mood, sharing a kind of innocent joy."
