Making a splash in Cannes, Mediawan Kids & Family world-premiered its early-school anime series “Ki & Hi in the Panda Kingdom” at MipJunior on Saturday, earning warm applause from industry attendees who filled the Debussy Theater.
Adapted from the best-selling manga by popular French YouTuber Kevin Tran — who also serves as co-producer and showrunner — the 52×11 title follows the daily adventures of 10-year-old Ki and his boisterous six-year-old brother Hi. The pair bicker and bond their way through the whimsical Panda Kingdom, a vibrant world that blends the everyday with the extraordinary, carrying animals and humans alike into something at once magical and mundane.
Those carefully chosen character ages mirror the show’s target audience — a demographic that Mediawan Kids & Family general manager and CCO Katell France calls a “safe bet.”
“There’s still real strength in that age group,” France tells Variety. “It remains a reliable market — even if things have slowed a bit. These are kids who are deeply attached to animation, not yet ready to leave cartoons behind for live-action.”
“We really wrote the series for kids around seven or eight years old,” she continues. “That’s the age when they’re starting elementary school, when they begin to develop a sense of individuality, to take on a bit more responsibility, and to navigate small conflicts and confrontations. The show reflects that everyday life for kids aged six to ten — school, home, family, sports, all of it.”
Of course, the project also speaks to the vast global sway of anime and manga — and to the broader industry shift toward developing and producing such content closer to home. Titles like “Ki & Hi in the Panda Kingdom” and the Paris-set “My Life is a Manga” — now entering production with the backing of 11 European public broadcasters — signal the rise of a so-called European Anime movement, blending the dynamic visual style and character design of Japanese originals with storytelling sensibilities tailored to Western audiences.
“Kevin’s world mixes realism and everyday life with the imaginary,” says France. “That gives the series a whimsical quality you don’t often see in Japanese manga, which tends to be either completely imaginary or entirely realistic.”
Tran’s success and notoriety — with nearly six million YouTube subscribers and more than one million books sold — paved the way for initial commissions from Canal Plus in France and RTBF in Belgium. However, Mediawan is cautious about expecting the same level of recognition in international markets, instead betting on the narrative and visual universality that initially propelled Tran’s comic series up Gaul’s publishing charts.
“Most international buyers will see this as an original creation,” France adds. “But the successful IP certainly made things easier — we were able to get it into production quickly, because the commissioning editors really supported us right away.”
The English-language episode screened in Cannes moved at a breakneck clip, beginning in medias res with the dueling brothers already at each other’s throats, thick stink lines wafting off them after their shared Mother’s Day gift falls victim to sibling rivalry. Into the fray swings their neighbor and perpetual mediator, Sha — but the young girl, a confidante to them both, can only hold the fraternal chaos at bay for so long.
“We wanted to use conflict as a source of comedy, and to create a blend where the humor naturally emerges from the situations,” says France. “The quarrels and pranks between the characters are treated with both fun and heart, because at the core of the series is a special bond between the two brothers, a bond that mixes conflict and solidarity.”
Series creator Kevin Tran later echoed that tone when he took the mic following the screening, playfully expressing his bemusement at the portmanteau positioning the series as “franime.”
“Who came up with this name?” he laughed.
variety.com
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