(Yicai Global) Dec. 12 -- Bilibili's animated television series of the award-winning Chinese sci-fi novel ‘The Three-Body Problem’ notched up more than 100 million plays on the video streaming platform on its first day and set a new record for simultaneous viewings.

The first two episodes hit 200,000 plays in the first 10 minutes of their debut on Dec. 10. Total views exceeded 100 million in the first 10 hours, according to the show's official Weibo account, and more than 550,000 bullet screen comments had been posted as of 5 p.m. yesterday.

Bilibili owns the exclusive streaming rights for the animated series and will release one episode every Saturday. Only Bilibili’s paid subscribers will be able to watch from the fifth episode onward.

The show’s plotline is based on the second book of the Hugo Award-winning trilogy by author Liu Cixin, focusing on the encounter between Earth and an alien civilization from a nearby three-body star system. Chinese animation studio YHKT Entertainment co-produced the project. 

Audience opinion is split, with some saying that battle scenes were shocking and the tension coming from a post-apocalyptic world and multi-civilization conflict was well established, while others noted that the plot was difficult to follow for those who had not read the books. The biggest controversy came from the animation style itself, as many viewers complaining about the rough rendering.

“The audience has high expectations, which is both a pressure and a motivation,” Ruan Rui, founder and chief executive of YHKT Entertainment, told Yicai Global earlier. “As the creative team behind the animated series, we hope to be recognized and loved by the audience. But it is impossible for any film or TV work to satisfy everyone. Despite affirmation or criticism, the audience hopes we’ll get better.”

Published in 2008, 'The Three-Body Problem' became one of China's most successful sci-fi novels. The second and third books of the series were released in 2008 and 2010, respectively. The trilogy focuses on humans making contact with an alien civilization, the exchange between them, subsequent war, the invasion of Earth, and the rise and fall of the two.

In 2015, Ken Liu's English translation won the Hugo Award, a literary prize for excellence in the field of science fiction and fantasy, helping the book gain a global following.

Editor: Martin Kadiev