Hai Mao
Hai Mao (海猫 or 海猫络合物), known by the Global community of Arknights as Lowlight (taken from his Pixiv username, lowlight kirilenko) and also known as UmiNeko, is one of the founding members of Hypergryph who currently acts as the vice president as well as the head producer of Arknights.
He is the illustrator of 12F and created concept arts which the Doctor, Kal'tsit and W are based on. He also made an in-game cameo on the good ending of The Ultimate Beautiful Girl April Fools mini-game.
Biography
Born Zhong Qixiang (钟祺翔) at Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, Hai Mao enrolled in China Academy of Art on 2009 and graduated with a bachelor's degree on Architecture in 2014. During his college days, Hai Mao was actively involved in various doujin circles, primarily those focused on Touhou Project which he was an ardent fan of. At one point Hai Mao met Wei@W in a Touhou Project fan forum and later learned that he is his senior, leading to him joining the 2-Dimension Mirror (弐維鏡像/二维镜像) fan club led by Wei@W, where Hai Mao befriended him as well as Huanxiang Heitu and NoriZC among others. It was during this period that Hai Mao made his own fan club, 14Lab, and befriended Yuzhong (羽中) who would later found Team MICA (now Sunborn) of the Girls' Frontline fame, as well as publishing a series of works and participating in various events which gradually earned him fame and connections in the Chinese ACGN scene.
In 2013, Hai Mao joined Team MICA as one of their main illustrators and notably responsible for the artworks of T-Dolls who were part of the Anti-Rain Team (M4 SOPMOD II, M16A1, M4A1 and RO635) in Girls' Frontline. At some point Hai Mao also created concept arts for characters which he originally wanted to be added into GFL that would become the basis for the Doctor, Kal'tsit and W.
In 2016, not long after the public beta test of Girls' Frontline, Hai Mao left Team MICA and ended his friendship with Yuzhong. Publicly, the reasons remains unknown, but the Chinese community of GFL speculates that both have conflicting views in regards to the game's thematic and creative subjects. Hai Mao then went on to found Hypergryph with Wei@W and others, and has since best known for being the man behind Arknights, which some Chinese players believed as "what GFL could have been".
Despite his popularity both inside and outside China, especially after Arknights' worldwide release in 2020 for the latter, Hai Mao rarely makes direct public appearances and prefers to keep a low profile about his life. Even then, he is constantly active in various fandom activities such the 2020 New Year fandom gala on Bilibili and the first official offline event Terra Discovery Society.[1]
Notable works
Arknights
 |
Original design
| Operators |   |
|---|---|
| NPCs |  |
Other
- M4 SOPMOD II, M16A1, M4A1, and RO635 (Girls' Frontline)
Gallery
Hai Mao's most famous meme on the CN community, "The Pharaoh's Blessing" (see Trivia)
Trivia
- His penname literally means "sea/ocean cat" in Chinese.
- Hai Mao's English alias, lowlight kirilenko, refers to L (whose full name is L. Lawliet) from Death Note and the Russian professional basketball player Andrei Kirilenko.
- Hai Mao's favorite designer is Daniel Dociu.
- Hai Mao's favorite mangaka are Takeshi Obata (Hikaru no Go, Death Note, Bakuman, and Platinum End) and Eiichiro Oda (One Piece).
- The CN community of Arknights nicknamed Hai Mao "the Pharaoh" for his love of the ancient Egyptian culture. Some even joked that he was "building a pyramid" when Hai Mao announced the development of Arknights in 2017.
- While still working for MICA Team/Sunborn, his colleagues often referred to him as "the Pharaoh."
- This results in the birth of a meme featuring Hai Mao known as The Pharaoh's Blessing. This meme was eventually acknowledged and became a canonical joke. In the logo of "Choices of Hai Mao," a mini rewarding event during Arknights CN's 3rd anniversary livestream, Hai Mao's body in this meme could be seen, though his head was replaced with the symbol of Orundum.
- His Sina Weibo page states Egypt as his nationality.
- He loves cats, which were regarded as sacred animals in ancient Egypt.
- The KR community called Hai Mao avant-garde due to how some of the elements, storyline, and advertisement of the game are sometimes unusual or considered new compared to other mobile games.
- Hai Mao has become the subject of several memes by the Arknights community:
- On August 9, 2020, a Bilibili uploader named T灬hunder uploaded a short, deepfake video featuring him singing Baka Mitai, which then had become a popular meme. As Arknights (and Hai Mao himself) was at the height of their popularity during this time, the video suddenly became viral among the Chinese Internet. As of May 2022, the video has received more than ten million views.[2]
- Hai Mao himself took this meme further by personally singing Baka Mitai in Hypergryph's year-end party in 2020. After the video was uploaded onto Bilibili, the meme became even more popular. As of May 2022, it has received more than five million views and ranks 26th on Bilibili's most watched videos.[3]
- "ALL" or "Lowlight's God's Hand", which inspires the Anniversary Wheel of Fortune. See the furniture's article for more information.
- During Arknights CN's 1.5th anniversary livestream on Bilibili, Hai Mao and Rua Niu (HG's developer/designer) made a speech on the livestream's introduction. For some reason, Hai Mao gave off a "cringy" look when saying Scary? Yes, it's really scary. (很可怕吗？是的，很可怕。) This particular phase has become a meme not only to refer to Hai Mao's awkwardness, but also to Arknights' bleak theme.[4]
External links
- 海猫络合物 on Moegirlpedia (in Chinese)