Promotional material for Boonie Bears Photo: IC

A court's ruling that the studio behind popular Chinese cartoon Boonie Bears is 10 percent responsible for the death of an 8-year-old girl evoked dissatisfaction among Chinese netizens on Wednesday.

China's News site The Paper reported on Wednesday that a court in Southwest China's Sichuan Province recently upheld a previous verdict that the studio of Boonie Bears must pay over 60,000 yuan ($9,284) in compensation for the death of an 8-year-old girl in 2018. 

In 2018, a 6-year-old boy went to the 8-year-old girl's house to play. The two watched the cartoon Boonie Bears and decided to imitate a scene from the show by tying a rope to the girl and playing a rock climbing game. While they played, the girl accidentally fell from the window of her sixth-storied building home. She died from injuries a few days later. 

Although a warning appeared during the show, the two children were too young to read it. Additionally, the two were unattended as the girl's father was busy taking care of his mentally disabled wife. 

The girl's father later sued the cartoon's production company and the boy's parents. The court finally ruled that the father was 80 percent responsible for his daughter's death, while the boy's parents and the cartoon studio were 10 percent responsible each.  

The hashtag about the case has earned 410 million views on China's Twitter-like Sina Weibo as of Thursday. Many Chinese netizens expressed their disagreement with the verdict, saying that they think the studio is both innocent and a victim. 

"It is nonsense that the parents did not carry out introspection themselves, but blamed the cartoon's producer. If everyone shirks responsibility in this way, who would dare make a cartoon in the future? This is a big problem for the development of Chinese animation," one netizen complained on Sina Weibo.

"This is soabsurd! If the children were watching Tom and Jerry and imitated those scenes, would the father sue the overseas cartoon studio?" another netizen posted. 

Some netizens also recalled a previous example when an episode of the once hit cartoon Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf was removed after a 10-year-old child tied two younger kids to trees and set them on fire in imitation of a scene from the cartoon. 

Shen Binti, a lawyer based in Beijing, told the Global Times that the court will usually rule that a company bears part of the liability in such cases, and 10 percent to 15 percent liability is very common. 

"In my opinion, the sentence is relatively light. This little bit of compensation will not impact the animation company and cannot raise the company's awareness to take social responsibility seriously," said Shen.

Chu Chaohui, a research fellow at China's National Institute of Education Sciences, told the Global Times on Thursday that children naturally imitate others during childhood. 

"Children who are 8 years old usually have safety awareness, but the dead girl did not have this consciousness, which shows that she lacked safety education from her parents," said Chu, suggesting that while the TV world is very colorful, it is not all-rounded, and parents should take their children outside to experience nature.