#looked up early 2000s AMVs on YouTube

[yutaan]

Papercraft commission of Sheena and Zelos from Tales of Symphonia! This one was quite elaborate with all the flying costume elements, cards and lightning magic, as well as interesting facial expressions and poses; I had SUCH a blast putting on the game soundtrack and getting down to work!

[olderthannetfic]

Something a music YouTuber I watch said was that he noticed a huge spike in the popularity of AMVs after Linkin Park released the music video for Breaking The Habit, which was done by an anime studio and took great care to make sure the visuals matched the original artist vision of Mike Shinoda (who is an art school graduate and thus had a lot of input and ideas). Can either you or other people who were in fandom circa 2004 when it was released confirm this? It does sound like that would make sense, as Linkin Park fans and anime lovers overlap a TON on a Venn diagram (and AMV makers and Link Park fans, even moreso) but I'd be curious to see the numbers before and after. Unfortunately, though, since it was pre-YouTube, most AMVs were hosted on individual sites, so I can't really go digging and figure this out personally, given my lack of knowledge on where to even look for fandom content from that era + the fact many of those sites are offline now.

--

Ahaha. Anon, it is far easier to research AMVs from back then than from the youtube era.

Unlike Media Fandom vidders, AMV editors were fine being out in the public eye, and they very heavily used animemusicvideos.org. I hear the BL crowd didn't as much, but everybody who was entering mainstream con contests listed all their shit there.

The site opened in late 2000. Youtube started in early 2005, though it didn't fully take off for a while. (Red shows the era between these.) AMV editors may have been using YT for hosting early on (I don't recall), but it took a long time and a lot of turnover for them to stop bothering to list their work on AMVs.org. (It's primarily a database of what exists, not hosting, though it does also have some downloads.)

On the face of it, yes, AMVs seem to have boomed around 2004-2006, so that Youtuber is superficially correct.

However, I suspect this has more to do with the community getting organized and anime cons with AMV contests sprouting up like mushrooms in that era. No doubt the obscene popularity of Linkin Park on AMVs.org was influenced by that official video, but I don't think this was the main driver behind editors editing in general.

(I admit, though, that the height of my anime fannishness was like 1996-2003, and I was not a Linkin Park fan, nor did I care much about AMVs aside from the ones at YaoiCon.)

The rapid decline from 2007 on probably reflects more and more editors being Youtube-only rather than con contests ceasing or anything like that.

The music overall reflects the era and demographic on the site:

But before you assume too much from this huge Linkin Park number, the site overall lists 169,973 videos.

[perryhedge]

what the hell is going on with japanese memes

i realize this is exactly the kind of thing I usually dump about on discord or something, so why not here? this is an example of the kind of rabbit hole searching that i love to do, and one of the reasons why I love language learning -- it's advanced eavesdropping!

So it all started when I came across this tweet of the vtuber Houshou Marine singing...something in karaoke. The backing instrumental sounds familiar, but the lyrics seem to be completely made up. What she's singing can be loosely translated to:

Teikyou Heisei University! You can learn a wide arrange of disciplines, including Confucianism! This place is amazing! Teikyou Heisei University! I want to live! Take me with you!

Of course, any self-respecting One Piece fan will instantly recognize that last bit, which is all the more impressive given how quickly Marine is able to shift into a really spot-on impression of the famous line by Nico Robin during the Enies Lobby arc. I thought this was really fun, but the lyrics seemed a bit too random to be made up on the spot, with the smooth transition and everything. So I looked it up on Youtube and here it is, a meme from November with 5 million views:

This is an 音MAD, or "sound MAD". MAD is sort of the Japanese word for AMV, but you can see in this video that it encompasses something much wider to that, maybe comparable to a Youtube poop or some other kind of meme. It seems the 音 (sound) qualifier, as far as I can tell, refers to an edit that chops up dialogue in such a way that new words can be heard. We've all seen those videos of like, Barack Obama singing an Ed Sheeran song or whatever -- it's kind of like that.

This one is particularly impressive, at least to me, because the cuts between the natural dialogue and the made up dialogue are really smooth, and the made up dialogue sounds pretty good. The idea is basically that it's an ad for Tokyo Heisei University to the tune of the ED of the 2022 Urusei Yatsura series -- presumably because the phrase "Teikyou Heisei Daigaku" matches well with the melody and lyrics of "Tokyo Shandy Rendezvous", as well as the fact that the monologue at the beginning of the One Piece openings refers to a Great Age of Pirates (dai kaizoku jidai) which is easily modifiable to Great Age of Universities (dai daigaku jidai).

The dialogue is mostly taken from Japanese commercials for One Piece Red (at least, I believe) which are much memed upon in Japan. They're modified to be testimonials of the Straw Hat crew talking about how great it is to enroll. In the middle, there is an extended clip of Chopper's dialogue from the Drum Island arc with the caption 2 years ago: "I have a horn, and hooves...I want to learn a variety of disciplines, but...." and the Nico Robin bit just caps it all off.

That's pretty much it. There's not a lot of irony or metacommentary or anything. Even the comments seem to be surprised at how old school it is -- reminiscent of memes on Nico Nico Douga back in the late 2000s and early 2010s, which often consisted of silly, absurd, creative fan edits like this. Again, this is somewhat like the Youtube Poops that we had in the anglosphere.

Anyway, that's as much as I was able to piece together from the meme, just thought it was neat to go on a detective journey like this. A lot of the thrill of language learning, for me, comes from these kinds of situations. People are talking to each other, making in-jokes, and I just like to figure it all out.

[ukaiknowsbest]

Review: Tamayomi

[will contain spoilers]

Lately I have been pretty bored with the recent developments in Daiya no A and Oofuri. New Shonen anime stuff just don't appeal to me, so I bit the bullet and watched Tamayomi for at least one episode a day.

Like me, people would normally think "HOW TF ARE THEY GOING TO PLAY BASEBALL? AREN'T THEY WEARING SHORTS??? IS THIS JUST FANSERVICE?? OMYGOD"

But I did it. I watched the whole thing. 12 episodes.

And I enjoyed it.

THE SETUP/PLOT

pretty standard fare

Pitcher Yomi Takeda accidentally reunites with her childhood friend who's actually a nationals-level in middle school catcher when they both end up in the same highschool.

School: former powerhouse located in Saitama, now baseball club is almost non-existent. Yomi and a few other will try to revive the team from scratch.

Basically Shin Koshigaya is a brand new team where they struggle to look for new members and majority are first years.

They have to face other stronger teams even when they have a few members and some decent players.

Demographic is SEINEN (like oofuri, last inning, one outs, etc.)

CHARACTERS

Yomi Takeda as Main character and pitcher- skilled, resilient, funny, hardworking, does a lot of research which enabled her to perfect her form and hone her breaking ball. She keeps improving in a good pace too.

Tamaki Yamazaki former childhood friend of Yomi. Is a decent catcher in middle school. A bit well known. Good communicator.

Yoshino - team manager and coach. srsly she is a boss. She's not infallible but she tries her best.

and other decent players with adequate skill

For a sports anime they have decent cast. This is probably the closest we can currently get of a story where the girls are just focused on the sport, do their own strategizing/planning/training. All of them are cute but also serious about what they do.

There's no boys here so there's no talk about het-crushes and other distractions. It's a clamfest babyyyy.

I've seen a little of Major 2 (the one abt the son and his coed team) and I couldn't stand it because it was just slice of life in sportsy undertones.

There is also decent communication among all the players. It's pretty refreshing to watch. The catcher is well rounded and the pitcher is good. Everyone talk things out and there is not a lot of drama.

FANSERVICE

Wearing shorts to a sport that involves a lot of making contact with the ground is just illogical lmao.

Their school uniform skirt is pretty short

A little bit of their manager prodding the thighs of each person she meets but with good reason (she can tell how much muscle/exercise a person does just by a little prodding). It's a trope thing.

That's all. There are no panty shots, unnecessary locker room nudity, boob action, see through sweaty shirts. Most of the cringy things I've seen in other girls sports anime aren't present.

Eventually I even forget that they're wearing shorts or that it impedes their performance. It seems like it doesn't matter much to the characters so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I don't know if like the hugging or holding hands is considered fanservice. In my experiece we ladies just act like that irl. What they do is nothing out of the ordinary.

REALISM

3/5. They wear shorts and dont tie their hair up. The baseball part seem pretty decent though. The pacing of the story and matches was like watching IRL Koshien. It's all very clinical and straightforward.

Plus they include a lot of interesting baseball stuff which I haven't seen happen in early stages of other shonen anime like: specifically training the pitcher in other positions, showing what fielders yell to each other, letting other relievers start to reserve their ace (ppl can yell DnA did this but remember Tanba was injury boy throughout Act 1).

COMPARISON TO OTHER BASEBALL MANGA

based on technicality Tamayomi is prolly one of the top among baseball anime/manga I have seen.

Last Inning

Oofuri

Tamayomi

Daiya no A

Now don't chase me with pitchforks because of this ranking just yet. The fact that Shin Koshigaya coach's decisions and reasonings for plays and lineups are discussed makes the show at par with Last Inning and Oofuri. (we dont see DnA kataoka talk abt this sht like..ever)

Moreover Tamayomi has similar vibes to Oofuri/Big Windup but less dramatic. I do not think it's good for beginners too (especially with just 12 episodes). You need to have prior baseball knowledge to understand what the characters were doing.

However, this show is probably the most no-fuss baseball anime/manga I have watched. It does not rely on hype like DnA and it also don't have heavy topics like Oofuri and Last Inning. It's not wacky like One Outs and it's not uber slice of life like Cross Game. It's just baseball.

My minor complaint is that they don't give numbers when talking about things like pitching speed tho. It would've been more realistic if actual numbers were dropped XD

ART/ DESIGN/ANIMATION

A.k.a the thing most viewers complain about.

Character design is subpar. Everyone's faces are almost the same. You can tell who's the character not by face but by hair and height. Personally I don't mind this. I don't really look for realism in most things I watch. And I think the hair designs are cool.

Lots of people drop this show because of bad animation. There are shots/scenes where it's like I'm watching fanmade AMV's in nicovideo/youtube from the early 2000's. Pitching motions and Batting motions look like character movements in rpg games.

It's not really a problem for me though. I think it's charming for some reason. I don't mind it. A lot of people do but I'm not them.

CONCLUSION

NGL I wanted more. 12 episodes is too short. I hope a better animation company picks this up. I'm rewatching the whole thing because I enjoyed it a lot. I'll even check out the manga if I have time.

If anyone's interested here's my tamayomi livetweet thread

This is one of the closest thing I could get to what a decent girl sports anime looks like. If the character designs, art, animation and the uniforms were just better this show would have gone pretty far.

Compared to Shonen types of manga this was relaxing to watch, especially before bed. I'd honestly recommend it you wanna watch smth that doesnt involve a lot of feelings and drama but still feel like watching an actual sport.

Girls are fun. Finally.

[personal notes under the cut]

I get that people reading this would think I'm being too optimistic about a show they considered shtty but I kid you not, I dropped Bakuten (boys gymnastic's anime) coz even with it's wonderful animation i thought it was boring af.

I have dropped so many prettily animated shows coz i just cant get into the characters nor the story.

I've also said before in my Two Car review that I am actively avoiding shows with popular VA's. Idk much abt female VA's in anime, therefore watching Tamayomi was the perfect solution for me.

The reason I like tamayomi so much is that it gave me the same feeling of watching Summer Koshien 2021. I just think an anime that made me remember that kind of feeling was cool.

I'll rewatch hanebado next. wish me luck.

[profesorlayton]

me ranting like an old man below lol sorry for my english

----

i'm gonna be honest, i am starting to miss the early days of fandom/content creation on the internet (2000s-mid 2010s) because i really despise that more and more platforms are joining this "for you"/"let's make some algorithm decide most of what you're going to see on social media" trend. it's not only bad for people who make artwork and other creative stuff but it just stresses me so much, one of the biggest charms of being in fandoms and such is that it's the fans themselves who are passionate about their interests and therefore look up or even "investigate" the things they love. thinking for themselves lol

like what's up with this mute-autoplay thing on youtube, for example? let me click the videos i want to watch

and don't get me started on tiktok... i installed the app and it's just so stressing bruh how can people enjoy watching random infinite vertical videos... fr i made this weird amv thingy with my cats and some random music and then deleted it

tldr: i hate this era of not only short/instantaneous and meaningless but randomly selected internet content and yeah im 22 but i am a boomer. also i miss adobe flash player every day of my life, that was the shit, so much good art lost :( dolldivine azaleas dolls wacky deviantart animations newgrounds aaaaa

[tricksterwitchkat]

Ok i see this and it makes me realize that either ive lost my mind or im like the only person who grew up with Danny Phantom that immediately clocked that Dumpty Humpty was a reference/parody of Smashing Pumpkins.

Ok so... Danny Phantom, like a lot of early 2000s shows aimed at kids/teens, was strongly influenced by 80s/90s media. Danny Phantom in particular liked 'teen' 'highschool' and 'horror' flavored 80s/90s media.

In addition to taking a lot of inspiration from classic and (at the time) modern horror films, books, and cartoons (think Goosebumps, Nightmare on Elm Street, and the boom of Stephen King everything) also took inspiration from popular movies in teen/highschool settings (think anything from The Breakfast Club to Heathers).

Nickelodeon was also really into trying to cash in on niche interests/subcultures that were seen as 'cool' at the time. Sometimes more normal things (think surfing, skateboarding, video games) but they *really* liked Sci-fi and Horror right then. Got a *ton* of alternative subculture inspiration right then for their animated shows - Samurai Jack, Invader Zim, My Life As A Teenage Robot, and pretty much everything else.

(Fun fact if you want a little insight into Nickelodeon flirting with Alt Culture, try looking into the creator of Invader Zim, his older works are a scream)

All this to say, if you're looking for musical inspiration for an early 2000s nickelodeon show (Early, not Mid or Late, certain trenchcoat assholes ruined Alt Fashion associations for everyone) look to 80s/90s alt bands. In this case, 80s/90s bands that were also popular in the early 2000s.

...also it just seemed really obvious to elementary school me that it was supposed to be Smashing Pumpkins.

(Also i feel like Lincoln Park and Fall Out Boy took a couple more years to get its super popularity, more 2005-2006-2007ish and were usually more associated with Naruto and Toonami shows. Danny Phantom AMVs on file sharing sites and early YouTube were like... Evanescence and Cascada, maybe Flyleaf or the occasional trap remix of a horror movie soundtrack.)

What do you guys think Dumpty Humpty would *actually* sound like? Obviously they're based on the big pop-punk/ scene of the time -the name, the designs, the massive in-universe appeal they have to EVERY teenager we see- so I think it's probably something between Linkin Park and early Fall Out Boy but with an egg theme... which makes no damn sense ...compels me though

[greed-the-dorkalicious]

A diehard Mangahood fan’s opinion on why YOU- YES, YOU- should watch FMA 2003

(Yes, those are his actual lines in this scene. These are the Netflix captions.)

2018 is off to a great start, with both FMA anime being back on Netflix! But ever since Brotherhood overtook 03 in popularity years ago, the FMA fandom has been so deeply divided on the subject of the two anime that even today, a lot of FMA fans who have never seen 03 vehemently refuse to watch it, simply because they heard from someone else that it’s bad.

As someone who’s been in the FMA fandom for about 9 years, could easily go on for hours about the endless problems with 03, and firmly believes the manga is better than both anime anyway, I think that this attitude is bullshit. While I understand that 03 is not everyone’s cup of tea for sure, I think refusing to even try it is a very narrow-minded approach that will only make you miss out. So, from one Mangahood fan to another, here’s my take on why YOU should give 03 a try now that it’s back on Netflix!

A whole 51 episodes + 1 movie worth of FMA content you haven’t seen yet! Come on, what better reason do you need? For those of you who are always craving more of those good good Elric boys and their merry band of friends, here’s a perfect opportunity to see them in all sorts of new situations, in all their fully animated and voiced glory! More fight scenes! More banter! More brotherly love! More Riza Hawkeye shooting things! More alchemy! It’s a deal you can’t miss.

Learn about the FMA fandom’s history! Ever wonder why Hohenheim seems to get so much more hate than he deserves, or why that one Ishvalan kid who got like 3 lines is sometimes called Rick? Have you ever found yourself in the deep reaches of DeviantArt or Google Images and found strange images of armor Al with tattoos, Rose with dark skin and pink bangs, an edgy-looking kid with similar clothes to Envy, or a low quality gif of Havoc crying and aggressively writing in a journal captioned with “I have all these feels”? Confused about the phrase “In those days, we believed that to be the world’s one, and only, truth”? Do you occasionally see content of the “Tringham brothers” or “Alfons Heiderich” and not understand who they are? Have you seen the “tiny miniskirts” clip on YouTube, but never been able to find it in context? Just where did the titular tumbleweed of International FMA Tumbleweed Appreciation Day come from, anyway?! All these questions and more can be answered by watching 03!

Beautiful music! A lot of great music came out of the 03 era, such as silly OST pieces like Pint-Size Alchemist or Favorite Daughter; Beautiful pieces like Equivalent Exchange or Memories; Haunting choruses like Ishbal or Dante; Fun and memorable theme songs FMA’s oldest banger, Melissa, or the Resembool Trio anthem, Hagane no Kokoro; And of course, the unforgettable masterpiece of a duet that spawned a legacy transcending years and languages, Bratja aka Brothers.

Talented voice actors! 03 had a slightly different voice cast from Brotherhood. For the dub, we’ve got the loveable and unforgettable Aaron Dismuke as Al- You might know him for his triumphant return in Brotherhood as young Hohenheim, but he was the original Alphonse Elric, when he was just 12 years old! Aside from that, we’ve got Chris Patton as Greed, Dameon Clarke as Scar, Monica Rial as Dante, and “sexy Greed” Troy Baker as Robocop himself, Frank Archer! And for the original Japanese version, there’s Nana Mizuki (Lan Fan in Brotherhood) as Wrath, Tooru Okawa as Roy, Megumi Toyoguchi as Winry, and Junichi Suwabe (perhaps best known as Victor Nikiforov and Aizawa Shouta) as Greed. And more!

Bonus content from the manga that wasn’t in Brotherhood! While Brotherhood initially rushed through the beginning of the plot under the assumption that we’ve all seen it 500 times already so let’s get to the new stuff, 03 actually took its time and included episodes based off the early stories, such as Youswell or the battle on the train. Not only that, but 03 also includes episodes based off some of the bonus chapters (Dog of the Military, the military festival, the one where Havoc went on a date with Catherine) and even some content from the light novels (The Tringham brothers, the haunted warehouse).

An interesting reimagining of FMA, with new perspectives explored, and new characters! It’s true that 03 has a very different plot and overall tone from Mangahood, and maybe it’s not for everyone, but why is the mere concept of being different seen as a bad thing? Think of it like a fanfiction, an interesting AU with its own distinct flavor. Who knows, maybe you’ll enjoy 03′s style! It features interesting (not always good, not always bad, but certainly interesting) new characters, such as Dante, the Tringham brothers, Wrath, Sloth, Frank Archer, Lujon and Lydia, and Rick and Leo. It also explores new possibilities and new directions that the manga didn’t. Ever wish Nina, Sheska, Lust, Rose, Martel, or Mason got more character development? Do you wonder what the state alchemist exam might be like? Do you think the homunculi simply being created by Father is too boring an origin story? Are your favorite superhero comic storylines the ones that involve alternate universes crossing over with each other? Ever wanted to see a cyborg shoot bullets out of his mouth? Are AMVs featuring Scar set to early 2000s emo music your niche but passionate hobby? If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, 03 is the anime for you!

Also ngl, some of the fight scenes are really cool. Ed vs. Greed in particular... now THAT was some animation, woah. I love it.

In conclusion, if you’re a FMA fan and you haven’t seen 03 before, I highly recommend you check it out! After all, it can’t hurt- Either you’ll enjoy it and have a fun time with more FMA content, or you’ll learn for yourself that you don’t like it, and can simply stop watching. But you’ll never know until you try! Please, don’t listen to bitter, negative fans who only want to drive you away from something you might enjoy. (Ngl, most of them probably weren’t even around before Brotherhood came out anyway; I can tell you from experience that before Brotherhood got really popular, 03 was actually considered to be a really good anime, and had it not been so successful Brotherhood would never have even been created.) Open up to new possibilities, and give 03 a try!

[heavenlyglory]

so i saw someone else mention this and i just wanted to know do you miss the 2000s era youtube animations? like i'm so proud of how far those animators have come since then, and i'm so proud of the young animators NOW utilizing software and learning and coming up with great stuff, but i just miss the purity and aesthetic of ms paint and movie maker and warrior cat amvs to edgy 2009 screamo songs and everyone and their dog had an animated series and idk i just yearn for that again!

YES i feel that…..i miss the animated series days!! i kinda feel like that won’t ever come back like it was before tho, just bc its so time consuming to actually make a series and standards are soo high now…like back in the day u could do whatever and put together a full ep of just like 2 frame scenes and ppl would be like YEEAAAA but now like….idk?? its hard to explain, but i feel like ppl are so pressured to put out only Perfect content. that’s how i feel anyway, i get a little nervous sharing my stories and ocs bc ppl have such high expectations for story-telling these days. i’m worried people won’t like my content and think my stuff is boring or bad. i also spend a loottt of time on work for my animated series, i feel like the animation has to be perfect to be able to stand against other content that’s out there…and for people to actually give it the time of day. i don’t even know how the next ep of voh will do with views and such, since i haven’t put out that sort of content in so long and it’s not really what’s popular right now. but anyway these aren’t necessarily bad things, that means the community is improving and that’s awesome that people are putting a lot of thought into their stories! but sometimes i do miss the Simple Days. sorry to ramble but since i’ve been developing kundi’s story recently its fresh on my mind haha i wish i was as loose as i was when i was younger with working on stories, i used to just CREATE and not think too hard about how it will be received and not sweat over making animations/art look perfect…i used to just have fun and pump that shit out. i created god complexx to sorta bring back that feel of creating in the early 2000s and got quite a bit of flack for it lol so we’ll see how that fairs in the Modern animation community when i get around to making that

[milkshakedoe]

Tag when you joined the internet and how accurate this is: 2017 expanded edition

2016-17:  Undertale has shaped your life for better or otherwise, or you at least know how it ends. If you joined close to this year, you still enjoy reaction animals and rage comics unironically and you use 9gag and watch Minecraft youtubers. If you’re LGBTQ or have a lot of friends who are, you’re already passingly familiar with communist memes. You reblog tons of posts with 100s of thousands of notes and reaction gifs attached to them

2012-15: Politics begins to subsume Tumblr’s web presence around this time and if you were here from early on in your time on the net that’s the majority of what you know it for. You reblog a lot of politics, one way or another. Even if you weren’t one of them, you have an opinion on Superwholock and you remember when their influence was at its height. You know that John Green is the reason we can’t edit reblogs anymore. What the fuck is Myspace? Weird Twitter defined Twitter for you. You reblogged at least one (1) Stevens Universe discourse post. If you’re very young, Minecraft is ubiquitous enough that you probably remember playing it with your friends at the public library as well as online more broadly. You love/hate Five Nights At Freddy’s, Undertale also changed your life, and you’ve played Agario.

2010-11: BRONIES. It was exploding across the net and you couldn’t seem to hear the end of it. You either love the show, hate it, or remember it fondly for what it could have been but not what it ended up being, but you have an opinion on it one way or another. This is around when you started to notice Tumblr if you weren’t on it already, and if you were you remember pizza. You've read all of HOMESTUCK, or else this is when half of your friends started getting into it. You liked rage comics and reaction animals unironically. You saw the rise of Pewdiepie, Game Grumps and other gaming youtubers, and every flavor of Minecraft let’s plays

2006-09: This is the early days of MINECRAFT and word was getting out quickly. You were there for the rise of Youtube and the gradual decline of YTMND, Albino Blacksheep, Newgrounds etc, you look fondly on the golden age of youtube poops and you watched not a few AMVs and shot Runescape and Counter-Strike videos with Unregistered Hypercam2. The launch of cheezburger.com saturated the net with lolcats and you and everybody else used them. Also demotivational posters. You might be into animash and you’re at least aware of Warriors. The old MMOs held continuing relevance for you, even if it was declining by this point.

2000-05: Has fond memories of at least one of these: Old Runescape, Neopets, Gaia Online, Maplestory, AdventureQuest, early WoW. Likely to know about the old days of 4chan and Something Awful. Hung out around Digg, Fark, Slashdot and a dozen other miscellaneous link aggregator sites in the days before Reddit. Myspace and AIM accounts, LiveJournal if you were a nerd. Blogger if you were an ultra nerd. Tons of niche interest and RP forums running on InvisionFree or VBulletin. Might be a youtube poop or Newgrounds expert. You still remember when lolcats were called “cat macros” and you remember Ventrilo Harassment, and you were there for the endless wave of stickman flash animations aping Xiao Xiao. The declining days of VCL, the heyday of DeviantArt, and the start of Furaffinity

the 90s: Still uses Yahoo Groups, subscribed to Usenet, source of mythic net stories that get circulated on tumblr these days. Used to play Trade Wars and LORD on dialup BBS, hung out on MUDs, Neverwinter Nights and Ultima Online elsewhere. Remembers AOL and Earthlink, Webrings, VCL and Furcadia if you’re a furry (and missmab’s panda girl mascots holding the little “NC-17″ sign), shareware, and pirating off IRC. The early days of Neopets might have figured into it too. Also phreaking, probably. Dink Smallwood? Had a Geocities

the 80s: Bearer of arcane knowledge, still salty about Eternal September. Keeper of ancient fandom history if you’re a furry, you’re personally familiar with the stuff Spacetwinks’ essay was talking about. Likely had computer access via a university or worked for a prestigious corporation like a bank or a software company. Remembers the era of tighter controls on what content was meant to be shared on networks. There’s a decent chance that people who joined in this era pine for the Good Old Days of proper netiquette.

60s-70s: Worked for ARPA or a university, was there for the Mother of All Demos, possibly the ghost of Vannevar Bush or Dennis Ritchie. You remember punchcards and magnetic tape and you were there for the birth of Usenet.

[battlegeekplus]

Battle Geek Plus: 6 Years Later

Hey guys, Ryan here.

It’s been 6 years since we’ve launched Battle Geek Plus into the wild. On October 1, 2011, we launched the official BGP website with 10 videos on our old YouTube Channel and now defunct blip account. Around March of 2012, we lost our adsense account and decided to move to our current channel in August of 2012. Alot of people think we started in 2012 due to our channel stating that in our about page, but we really started in 2011 and I wanted to clear up that confusion.

After six years, we have over 5000 subscribers and over 700 videos, so where do we stand now?

Battle Geek Plus is not my first foray as an internet content producer. I’ve been through the ups and downs of internet success and failures, but I have entertained millions of people worldwide in various different ways.

I want to talk about not only the origins of Battle Geek Plus, but a bit into my background and to do that, we at least need to go all the way back to my childhood and teen years, most specifically 1997-1999. This is reflection on my nearly 2 decades of content creation.

As a kid, I always loved being creative. I did everything from write stories, draw pictures, make comic books about video game characters, etc. None of these things I was particularly good at, but I had so much fun doing them anyways. From an early age, I always *had* to be making stuff and being creative.

In 1997 as a teenager in high school, I got into making webpages about various subjects like video games and Sailor Moon. In 1999. had achieved my first *real* success, a Dragon Ball Z website called “Vegeta Insane” dedicated to the character of Vegeta under my old nickname “Castor Troy” from the Nicolas Cage movie, Face/Off. You can still find remnants of my DBZ work by looking up “Castor Troy DBZ” on google.

Since Dragon Ball Z was exploding through Cartoon Network and even topped the search engines over Britney Spears in 1999, I garnered a massive audience of fans and it was the first time I felt I received real recognition for the silly ideas in my head. Later in 1999, I made my first AMV (Anime Music Video) and that literally skyrocketed my traffic to the point where I had to leave free website hosting services like Geocities and accepted a hosting deal with the prestigious planetnamek.com, which was the biggest Dragon Ball Z site on the web at the time.

In 2000, I rebranded Vegeta Insane as “Ginga GIRI GIRI” in order to cover all of Dragon Ball other than just Vegeta. Sadly the Internet Advertising Crash of 2000 happened which forced me to move Ginga GIRI GIRI off planetnamek. The early 2000′s was a pretty horrible time to have a website. Many of the free providers like Geocities were enforcing a 1GB bandwidth limit for their webpages per day. Homestead, Angelfire, Tripod, and Fortune City would literally plaster your pages with ads, and many people we knew who had hosting and servers didn’t wanna touch us. Those who hosted us would literally kick us off within a few months so our site URL was always changing.

In 2001, my site partner Mike aka Dr. Bond decided to finally get us a dedicated server that he was paying out of his own pocket and by 2002 they gave us our final bandwidth warning and shut us down. We finally decided to close the doors on the DBZ web as I moved onto AMVs.

Working on Vegeta Insane and Ginga GIRI GIRI not only let me express my creativity and love for Dragon Ball, the skills I learned making those sites landed me jobs in both the web and graphic design fields, allowed me to have a casual business relationship with FUNimation that we still maintain to this day (They put me on the DBZ Resurrection F Blu Ray Extras!), and helped me develop a large audience and make more friends than I could ever dream of.

In the early 2000′s, AMVs were starting the take off, especially digitally edited ones on computers as opposed to 2 VCRs. I wasn’t an early generation AMV editor like Bobby “C-Ko” Beaver, Maboroshi Studios, Kusoyaro Productions, Kevin Caldwell, etc, but I was lucky enough to catch the AMV ride on the advent of the digital age and the massive influx of AMV contests at conventions. A friend of mine convinced me to enter AMV contests at conventions and over the years AMVs provided me a ton of great opportunities that I would have never dreamed of. I’ve won over 2 dozen awards, coordinated several Multi-Editor Projects, was a guest at conventions, spoke on panels, had an AMV play in the Nokia Theater (now the Microsoft Theater) where the winners of American Idol were announced, ended up working in the film industry as a paid professional editor, entertained packed rooms of 6000+ people, and made tons of fans and close friends that I still remain in contact with to this day.

In 2005, the AMV community wasn’t prepared for the advent of a new and upcoming website:

YouTube.

Now AMVs existed in a legal gray area where we were protected by fair use as our AMV work was transformative in nature, so the anime companies would usually turn a blind eye to them. However, the music industry was not so forgiving as we usually used full, unedited songs as we mashed up anime footage to the rhythm of the songs. Anime Music Videos.org, one of the biggest resources for AMVs on the web was hit by a cease and desist letter by the record label of Creed, Seether, and Evanescence forcing the .org to remove all videos containing songs with those bands, regardless of the lead singer of Evanescence being a huge fan of AMVs to her work.

People were also uploading our AMVs to YouTube without our permission, usually gaining thousands upon million of views, so we had to begrudgingly join YouTube in order to combat these unauthorized uploads. I started my first YouTube account in 2005 and gained millions of views for my AMV uploads.

After google purchased YouTube in 2006, things began to change as YouTube began rolling out “Copyright Violations” which was what Content ID was called back in the day. I remember getting my first copyright violation in 2007 and was forced to delete one of my AMVs from my channel. A year later in 2008, I got my first copyright strike from TOEI animation. Throughout the years, my videos would constantly get both copyright violations and strikes, but never hitting the 3 strikes needed to terminate my account. Sadly, in 2011, my first YouTube account finally bit the dust as TOEI finally gave me my third strike. I’ve tried to appeal various times, but to no avail.

Also in 2011, my interest and passion towards AMVs was dwindling down because I had wanted to finally start moving onto filmmaking and directing. I tried to convince myself to pursue filmmaking and do AMVs on the side, but I realized I couldn’t do both, so I had made the decision to finally retire from AMVs in 2012 and go out with my final video “Naruto Ball Z Shippuden: Heroes Come Back” which was a crossover between Dragon Ball Z and Naruto Shippuden. It went on to win over a dozen awards, including Best of Show at Sakura Con in Washington and my home con of Anime Expo. I couldn’t have asked for a better way to go out with a bang.

Even though I’ve been on YouTube since 2005, I was still very unaware of how the algorithm worked and what audiences liked, I was a huge fan of the Angry Video Game Nerd, The Nostalgia Critic (who was on blip at the time), Angry Joe, Mega64, etc. Back then, YouTube was just a dumping ground for my AMVs and never thought it was something people could make a living off of.

In early 2011, Josh had created the original Battle Geek Plus as “Wild Project Battle Geek Plus” which was a parody of Japanese sounding titles. He only recorded 5 episodes and asked me for feedback on them. He also said he was going to be moving to California from Indiana and asked if I wanted to be involved with BGP. My initial reaction was we were going to continue the current “Wild Project Battle Geek Plus” show and I would be a supporting character.

When Josh and his girlfriend (now wife) Heather came to California to do apartment hunting, we had dinner and Josh explained he wanted to do a reboot of the Battle Geek Plus brand from scratch, so I proposed that we follow the structure of The Nostalgia Critic’s site: thatguywiththeglasses.com where we would have a site featuring videos.

When Josh and Heather finally made the move to California in Summer of 2011, I had just won a $1500 prize from the Anime Expo 2011 AMV Contest and used that to buy our first DSLR camera, the Canon T2i which was highly recommended by our friends. We filmed several videos over the summer and finally launched the BGP site on October 1, 2011.

Our initial audience was just our family and friends at first, but we had our first semi-viral hit in Nov 2011 with our “Batman Arkham City Addiction” skit which got over 10,000 views overnight. I was still very unaware of how successful content creators released videos on YouTube since the only thing I knew from The Nostalgia Critic was to release a video weekly.

As the weeks went by into 2012, our videos were only averaging 60-100 views even after the success of Batman Arkham City Addiction. By 2011, the YouTube Algorithm had changed to cater to longer videos and the majority of our skits were on the short side. Sometimes we would get 500-1000 views if we got lucky, but the traffic was never consistent.

In early 2012, we got an email from former MMA fighter Bas Rutten who saw our “Boss Booten” parody videos and complimented us. Bas was awesome enough to send us free shirts and even invited us to hang out at the beach with him. This was our first real celebrity encounter from doing Battle Geek Plus.

In March of 2012, there was an exploit going around YouTube called “clickbombing” where people would use programs to massively click ads on videos to raise the revenue and would end up getting your adsense account shut down. This happened to quite a few YouTubers, most famously Markiplier’s first channel. I remember checking our adsense account and noticed we had earned several thousand dollars from a Skyrim parody video. Hours later, when I tried to log into our adsense account again, I got the dreaded “Your adsense account has been suspended” message. I’ve tried to appeal several times, but was denied each time. We stayed on the old channel to at least try to get more of an audience until August of 2012.

It was really difficult having to start again from scratch because out of our 2000+ subscribers we earned from the old channel, only about 200 of them followed us to the new one and less than 50 watched our reuploaded videos.

In 2013, I tried to apply to attend E3 with the Battle Geek Plus website and YouTube channel, but was denied. A friend of mine from the AMV community put us in touch with Team Kaizen Games who were able to get us into our first E3 and we’ve been great friends with them ever since. At E3, we were able to meet alot of developers and even had dinner with developers and executives from Eidos Montreal and Square-Enix.

Later in 2013, Screwattack used to feature user content on their front page and advertised several of our videos which brought us some good traffic. I had also decided to send some of our videos to the newly developed Smosh Gaming Alliance and they praised and awarded several of our videos on their channel.

The biggest prize of all in 2013 would be when Capcom was hosting a Ducktales Sing-Along contest for their Ducktales Remastered release, so I went to Disneyland and filmed a video there dressed as Scrooge McDuck. Not only did I win the contest, I was featured on the Ducktales Remastered Homepage and I was given one of the rare Ducktales Remastered Press Kits. Thanks to the Screwattack, Smosh, and Capcom promotions, we earned about 1500 subscribers about a year into our new channel.

However, because I didn’t have an adsense account anymore and I couldn’t monetize any of these new opportunities. I got a partnership with Maker for a 50/50 split which was a big mistake. Luckily I was able to break away from Maker in 2015 and joined the much better Screenwave Media MCN.

2014 was one of the toughest years of my life as I was fired from my previous full time job in 2013 and after getting nothing from applying to every job I could, I went with a temp agency that placed me at jobs only lasting from one week to one month. It was stressful for me that year because I never knew how long my jobs would last and if I would be able to pay the rent.

However, 2014 was also probably the most important year for BGP for the following reasons:

- We made our first business deal with PDP and Nintendo at E3 2014 to promote their Wired Fight Pads for the Wii U.

- We applied for the thatguywiththeglasses.com (Now Channel Awesome) talent pickup and were accepted out of 1200+ applicants.

We were still a small channel at 1500 subscribers and only getting 10-60 views a day regardless of the Screwattack, Smosh, and Capcom promotions from the previous year, but we were able to make our first real business deal and get a chance to work with one of my idols, The Nostalgia Critic months within each other.

However, all of this was short lived as 5 days later after our acceptance into Channel Awesome, I was let go from my current job which added alot of stress to my life. Unfortunately, we were still months away from our debut on the site, so my main goal was to not starve/be homeless/etc. to finally see our videos get posted on Channel Awesome.

Throughout most of 2014, I started to feel tightness in my chest and muscles throughout my body, regardless of keeping up my workout regime consistently. In October of 2014, I had finally felt my first full on panic attack which literally felt like I was having a heart attack. I called 911 and was immediately rushed into the ER. I was informed by the doctors that it was a panic attack and not a heart attack and there hasn’t been a day since October of 2014 where I haven’t felt tightness and numbness in my body due to stress. I’m taking medications now, but the main culprit of all of this was the stress I was feeling not being able to keep a job and wondering if I was going to still keep a roof over my head.

In 2015, I wanted to finally do a big crossover with all of the other Channel Awesome Producers which was the Capcom Bidding War. While the video didn’t get the reception I expected, it was hands down, the most beneficial video I ever did for the channel as it helped me get in contact with the rest of my Channel Awesome producers, it helped land us cameos in the TMNT 2014 and Hocus Pocus Nostalgia Critic reviews, and tons of other cameos with the other producers. I still remember how excited I was when I got my first email response from Doug Walker himself only a few hours after I emailed him saying that he was totally cool with cameo-ing in the Capcom Bidding War and getting his footage days later.

Shortly after E3 2015, Josh sat us all down and tried to explain why our channel wasn’t growing as fast as we wanted it to. It was mostly because we weren’t focused and were trying to release a different video every week. I always thought just as long as you had a consistent schedule, that’s all what mattered, but our schedule would be a different type of video each week and audiences weren’t always into different videos. Josh also explained we were a small 4 person team trying to make enough shows to become our own network.

For example, one week would be a sketch, the next week would be a Kung Kwon Todd video, then the week after that would be a Jimmy Buckrider video, etc. Even though we were posting consistently week after week, our content wasn’t one consistent show that our audience was expecting every week.

Josh saw that one of our old Let’s Play videos got a decent response, so he suggested we stick to doing a Let’s Play video every week and we called the show just plain “Battle Geek Plus” which was eventually re-branded to “Battle Geek Plus: We Play Games”.

The reception to “Battle Geek Plus: We Play Games” was modest, but nothing spectacular. I had alot of difficulty editing the show mostly because we agreed to keep episodes 15 minutes or shorter, but we had over 30+ of footage each time and it was *very* difficult to cut that all down to 15 minutes. Also, “Battle Geek Plus: We Play Games” was on a much tighter deadline since we could barely have episodes done ahead of time due to our different schedules.

In 2016, our main gaming review show, “Awesome Video Game Memories” was beginning to pick up some steam and Josh was also pushing us to have a podcast for many years. Seeing the feedback eventually made us decide to focus on “Awesome Video Game Memories” as our flagship weekly show and we also released our first “Waxing Pixels” podcast episode that year as well.

Josh also recommended that we start playing games live on twitch and I started streaming daily, but burned out heavily midway into 2017 trying to balance streaming and producing edited content.

After the reception to the Capcom Bidding War, I was pretty discouraged from doing another big crossover with my fellow Channel Awesome producers which is why we didn’t do one in 2016. I decided to bite the bullet and wanted to create a documentary based on our own experiences with the Nintendo vs. Sega war. I came up with an outline, a script, and asked Doug Walker if he wanted to be part of it and he immediately agreed.

I was incredibly afraid to release a big video on this scale due to the reception of the Capcom Bidding War, but to my surprise, the Nintendo vs. Sega video with the Nostalgia Critic not only received a massively overwhelming positive response, which was a complete 180 from the Capcom Bidding War. It became our most successful video to date which still gets us views to this day.

Now that it’s been 6 years since we began Battle Geek Plus and 20+ years since I started doing internet content in general, where do I stand now and what are my reflections of all of this?

I would have to say my internet content “career” in general has been alot like Kevin Smith’s (my favorite director).

DBZ Websites: Clerks AMVs: Chasing Amy Battle Geek Plus: Tusk

DBZ websites were my first initial claim to fame which got me millions of views throughout the years, AMVs while a much smaller community, was my most well received work critically, and Battle Geek Plus was my more experimental phase with mixed results, but nowhere near as well received as the previous 2 efforts.

I left the DBZ web site community mostly because of bandwidth problems in the early 2000′s, but I brought back my DBZ site in 2010 as an archive of all my work at http://www.3gkai.com

Alot of people have criticised me personally on why I left AMVs when I was at the top of my game and the main reason was to pursue filmmaking. Like “Why did you give up all that fame and fortune to do YouTube videos in an already saturated market?”. My declining interest in anime and amvs was already beginning to become apparent as far back as 2006 after the big YouTube boom with members of the AMV community quitting altogether to pursue other things and it was hard to stay motivated without the community I was used to. I was also going through that phase in 2006 where I was entering my last 2 years of college and had to wonder “What am I gonna do with my life?”. When I was managing the 4th Video Game AMV Project in 2007, I *really* felt the massive dissonance of working on that as opposed to the 3rd Video Game AMV Project in 2005 where we had a more dedicated and motivated group. An archive of the 5 Video Game AMV Projects I helped coordinate is at: http://www.vg-projects.com

2005 was the year I felt was the last really big year in AMVs in terms of community, innovation, and general camaraderie before the YouTube boom and every one I knew moving onto different things. After seeing AVGN, The Nostalgia Critic, and many other webshows, that was the path I wanted to start moving towards.

I still put every bit of energy into all of the AMVs I did from 2006-2012 and announced my retirement when my Naruto Ball Z: Shippuden video won the Best of Show at Sakura Con 2012.

When doing Battle Geek Plus, my absolute favorite part of any AVGN, Nostalgia Critic, or Angry Joe video were the sketch parts, so I wanted to mostly focus on different types of sketches with wacky characters based on video games.

Unfortunately, when we entered the webshow scene in 2011, the YouTube algorithm had already changed to cater to longer videos and reviews were still king, so we were kind of doomed from the very start in a way.

Shows like Battle Geek Plus Adventures, Kung Kwon Todd, Jimmy Buckrider, Boss Booten, Totally Tubular Tim and many other of the wacky characters we made are shows I could *never* pitch to anyone convincingly, so I always made those shows for myself because *I* wanted to see how they would turn out. I do admit that I cringe watching alot of my older videos, but I actually started rewatching alot of the older videos while vodcasting them on our twitch channel and had a good time watching them again because I remember I loved the “new-ness”, the excitement, and remembering the happy person I was years ago working on them.

There are many times I felt that I wanted to turn back the clock and just begin with reviews right off the bat instead of sketches, but now I wouldn’t trade those memories for anything in the world because of the great memories and excitement I had coming up with and working on them to see the finished products.

Every time I feel sad and frustrated due to the lack of views and growth, I always have to remind myself: I chose this path. I could have easily stayed on the top in the AMV community, but I would see AVGN, Nostalgia Critic, and many other webshows through the looking glass and say “I wish I could be like them.”. Now, my group and I are part of that.

Without the sketches and wacky characters me and the crew have created, Battle Geek Plus would not be where it is today. We certainly would have not been praised by Bas Rutten himself, get our first business deal with PDP and Nintendo, and get on Channel Awesome. Even though we were a much smaller channel back in the day, they all saw a potential in us through our work itself rather than the views and subscribers.

This is why my stance on views, subscribers, and especially *the numbers* have changed and they don’t mean to me as much as before.

Let’s be honest here. It’s not difficult to get views.

We can simply start making drama videos, calling out other youtubers, capitalizing on controversial topics, etc to easily get the clicks.

Or we can simply ride on the latest fads like Spider-Man vs. Elsa, and many of the other ones throughout the years like reply girls, Gangam Style, etc.

In all honesty, the content we make would have been far more relevant in 2007-2008. Who wants to see another “Mega Man 2 review” in 2017? Why not focus on all the newer games?

Because I wanna make the content that *I* want to make without trying to cater to the YouTube algorithm or trying to get those clicks. Yeah, people have done tons of Mega Man 2 and Super Mario Bros reviews before, but I wanted to explain my personal memories with them because they are my own and nobody else’s.

It’s *very* easy to manipulate the system in order to just get views, but I don’t want to do that. I tried reviewing newer games while they were still relevant in the past, but would always get far more traffic for videos covering older games.

I want to make content that I’m passionate about and want to be proud of. Audiences can EASILY see when you’re being dishonest and desperate for attention and relevance. I never want Battle Geek Plus to be the center of any drama or anything controversial. I simply came into this just wanting to express the weird ideas in my head rather than trying to be the next *big youtuber*.

I’ve been through the highs and lows of internet fame multiple times before and it’s *NEVER* easy to be in a big position no matter how much views, subs, and money you get. Everything on YouTube is dictated by advertisers and constantly changing algorithms. YouTube is honestly in a weird place right now where it doesn’t know what it wants to be. Back then, YouTube was a place where you could put your cat and family videos, hence why their old motto was “Broadcast Yourself”. But with the TV and Movie Studios constantly imposing their copyright rules, people abusing the system for clicks and views, YouTube is trying to move into being more of a corporate TV station rather than a place where people used to post videos for fun, so I’m very uncertain about the future of the platform.

I feel that I’m very fortunate to have gotten into content creation far before we were ever able to get paid for it. I never earned a dime for any of my DBZ websites or AMVs (except the $1500 prize money from Anime Expo 2011′s AMV Contest), but working on those led me to actual paid jobs and careers over the years. DBZ websites and AMVs were never about the money. It was always about just having fun and expressing myself.

When it came to YouTube and the promise of a monetary reward, I do admit I used to be really obsessed trying to make YouTube my living for a long time and even tried to make content catering to *their* rules with mixed results. I would feel discouraged and jealous at times saying “Why did that guy who filmed himself falling off a bike get far more traffic and a sponsor deal than the videos I spent hours on?”.

I’ve seen a ton of people trying to get into the YouTube game feeling all gung-ho at first and after the first few months or years without any progress, they immediately quit. It pains me to see people not live up to their potential because of the prospect of being able to become famous and make money was their major goal and not doing it for the fun. I had a friend who made really good comedy videos, but he quit due to the lack of views.

Personally, I’m just “wired” to make content and be creative. Playing games is fun and all, but I’ll go absolutely *nuts* if I don’t create something. I absolutely love the entire process of making content from the initial thought process to the finished product.

Do I still want to do videos for a living? Absolutely, but I’m not as concerned or obsessed as I was about it before. If it’s gonna happen, I’ll get there *my* way without catering to short lived trends, advertisers, and algorithms. I want to create a body of work that can still be evergreen no matter when you watch it. I want an archive and a library of work rather than quick videos nobody will watch in the future.

I’d rather do a review of Bubble Bobble than Destiny 2 any day of the week.

I got into DBZ Websites and AMVs just at the right time, but I entered the realm of webshows in 2011 which was already far past the prime date to grow. But, I don’t let that discourage me.

Battle Geek Plus is in a weird position on YouTube where we don’t get that many views on the initial releases of our videos, but over time, people begin finding alot of our older stuff. While the view count still isn’t huge for our archive, it shows that people are still finding our work regardless of it being years old.

I know we’ve slowed down alot in the variety of shows we do mostly for time reasons and my personal health. I really want to approach things from a more relaxed and chill perspective rather than trying to chase the shiny object that will get us the most views. I’m at the age where I really need to be more concerned about my health and don’t want to stress out over things like subscribers, views, and numbers that take away from me creating videos.

As we move into the final months of 2017 and the beginning of 2018, here are few things I have planned that I can disclose right now:

- There’s going to be a major step up in quality for the “Awesome Video Game Memories” series as we’re planning to make bigger, better, and more in-depth episodes. We’re also going to slowly incorporate alot of the classic Battle Geek Plus humor like we did in our Nintendo vs. Sega video in a way where it won’t disrupt the video. I know alot of people have been asking “When’s Kung Kwon Todd or *insert character here* coming back?” and even though our original characters haven’t been a main priority for a while, you’ll see them come back in many ways as we really step up the quality of the Awesome Video Game Memories series.

- We’re going to focus alot more on twitch streaming and also doing alot of special stuff to make our streams more fun and interactive. I burned out on streaming a few months ago, but now I feel that I’ve found a good pace for myself without feeling forced or mentally exhausted. The other BGP crew members are also planning on streaming on days that I won’t be streaming.

- We’ve moved our Waxing Pixels Podcast to a live broadcast on Twitch with audio only versions being released on YouTube and itunes. We also plan to have special events and guests in future episodes.

- Since the Battle Geek Plus Universe is so huge and expansive, there will be a huge emphasis on our “Universe” with our new channel trailer and special videos and events that will reference that.

- I’ve already spoken with Doug Walker and there’s going to be *several* collaboration videos with the Nostalgia Critic next year as opposed to only one per year. I also plan to do more collaborations with my fellow Channel Awesome producers and other producers.

As they say, the journey is always far more important than the destination and doing webshows felt like the fresh start from the bottom I needed after being on the top in the DBZ and AMV communities for several years. I do admit there were times I felt discouraged about my lack of growth, but nowadays, I’m grateful for every little victory and opportunity I’ve had with Battle Geek Plus. Starting from the bottom again has really made me appreciate the hard work that me and the rest of the BGP crew puts into every aspect of our production and now it’s time for us to scale things up to *our* liking and not for any trends, advertisers, or algorithms.

I’m still excited for the show more than ever. Not in the “OMG new-ness” way back in 2011, but from a more refreshed and relaxed perspective. I want to work smarter and not harder. I still want to do this as my living, but I realize even if it never happens, I still have a massive body of work for over 2 decades or more that I’m going to be really proud of.

As for wondering if Battle Geek Plus has been successful or not? Well, I work with some of *the* greatest content producers on the internet, work with various gaming/tech/anime companies, and got the attention of a celebrity like Bas Rutten. We get to go to tons conventions and events, meet new people, and BARELY any of this has to do with views and subscribers as our work speaks for itself. Even though we have small fanbase, I’m always happy to chat with them on twitter, our comments, and twitch. Whether we have 10 or 10000 subscribers, I’m always willing to take time out of my day to tell them how I’m doing and ask about how they’re doing as well.

Right now, I work a really stable day job that I enjoy, doesn’t stress me out, and pays me well to still invest in the show. I live in a nice apartment that’s a short commute from my job, and I exercise regularly to keep my stress levels down. All of this is a major positive change from 2014.

Battle Geek Plus sits at over 5000 subscribers and while that’s still considered small, it’s far leap from when we struggled to even get our first 50.  I’m here to continue the journey to grow as both a producer and person with the simple mission of expressing the wacky ideas I have in my head.

Here’s the links again to all of my old and current work:

3G Kai - Ginga Giri Giri Kai: My DBZ and AMV archive: http://www.3gkai.com/

Video Game AMV Projects: http://vg-projects.com/

Battle Geek Plus YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/bgpawesome

Battle Geek Plus Website http://www.battlegeekplus.com/

Battle Geek Plus Twitch: http://www.twitch.com/battlegeekplus

My Twitter: https://twitter.com/ThatRyanMolina

BGP Twitter: https://twitter.com/BattleGeekPlus

Thanks for reading and stay awesome!

- Ryan

[whatstartswithwar]

I honestly can't remember sinking into my obsession that is Darksiders, but I really believe the AMV (as they were called in the early 2000's) ALIVE by FORTH ANGEL was how I discovered the series. Naturally, seeing a huge, godly man wielding a sword of chaos on a black beauty of a horse with flaming hooves made me instantly fall in love.

It kinda just went from there. I started looking up clips on YouTube, and bam I'm in love with War and the concept, probably aged 13? (2013). Then, Darksiders 2 had just been released and I bought both for super cheap on Steam and then Abomination Vault, a book I reference often and call one of my absolute favourites of all time--not just for the fact it's DS, also just the writing and world building itself is phenomenal. I've read it 4 times.

Now, 4 games in and 2 books (I also bought the "On Death's Door" magazine from Dark Horse publishings). I couldn't imagine my life without DS, from the friends I have made to the incredible Joe Mad's artwork inspiring me to improve my own. I hope to make more lifelong friends from all over the world (message me anytime!!)

Here is the link to the music video if Tumblr allows-- 2:04 if you want to swoon;)

General question:

How did you guys got to know about Darksiders?

Me, a of mine friend wrote a fanfic about it and I went ‘oh this sounds interesting’ and then bought the games.

[yuli-ban]

Remember back in 2006 or 2007 or 2008 when...

...everyone had BlackBerrys? Those little slabs of crack were a status symbol in middle school.  They’re also what said middle school admins hated the most. I swear, I have this false memory of a schoolwide “Anti-BlackBerry” day. Like, supposedly BlackBerrys were the enemy of education, and only the vain popular kids would bring them to school to harass the rest.

Yeah, way to demean your own studentry, motherfuckers. Especially those prole kids who saved up their money to buy this fancy piece of tech and are now being demonized as bourgeoisie pigbitches by their own teachers and principals for it.

No, that has no basis in reality.... as far as I know.

Possibly because my synapses are shooting off this connection between BlackBerrys and old trends. Fucking Cupid Shuffle and Stanky Legg, my god. They even referenced the latter in this school recitation of some standardized-test hype-up bullshit— “If your leg is stanky, wash it.”

WHAT THE FUCK.

And then there was that one kid. You know who he is. He’s wearing black and he’s got black fingernails, but he’s not a goth. He’s also worryingly interested in knives. He’s an emo! For whatever reason, most if not all of the emos at my middle school had this hard-on for Naruto. To this day, I can’t help but associate Naruto with three things—

1. Emos. That’s mid-2000s emos, not the early’00s-on-back variant. We had all already figured Sasuke was an emo, but it’s crazy how many 12-to-14-year-old emos fell in love with that anime as a whole circa 2006.  2. Linkin Park. RIP Chester Bennington, but seriously; Minutes to Midnight had just dropped, and it seemed every angsty 14-year-old with a YouTube account was creating AMVs to either Naruto or Dragonball Z. I can even identify what makes a particular song AMV-friendly, and I have this little in-joke term, “AMV Rock.” I can tell or show you what AMV Rock is, but let’s move on. 3. The Two-Fingered Buttstab. And that’s all I’ll say about that.

Now that I think about it, I also associate emos with MySpace.

MySpace Associations:

1. Emos and Scenes. Like, my god. 2006-2009 was like 1986-1989. Except the crazy hair-sprayed anime hair is dyed black, red, and green, and instead of neon wristbands and spandex, there’s edgy poetry, Invader Zim, and skintight faded ripped jeans. 2. Blingee. You know that fucking place, where you can sparkle up any picture. It feels like Scenes loved that the most.  3. My Chemical Romance. They were to MySpace types what Linkin Park felt like to Naruto. Then again, there was probably a lot of overlap. All the MCR fanfiction, my god. But it wasn’t just them. It was any cute boy rock band. Like it was the Jonas Brothers for a period, but then the emos invaded and it was more MCR and screamo bands. And crunkcore. CRUNK. CORE. Crunk music + screamocore. HOLY. SHIT. DID HUMANITY FUCK UP OR WHAT. But scenes and emos seemed to love it. I know because that’s what I kept hearing when I made the effort to try to see what the big fuss was about with MySpace. Fucking place wouldn’t stop playing people’s music. And while one beautiful one did inadvertently rekindle my interest in Sum 41, it was mostly miss.

Those 2007-era scemo kids are now the hipsters and indieheads of today, I want you to know that.

I never owned a BlackBerry, but I assume you could somewhat browse the web and access MySpace.

This. Is Perfect.

It Is 2007. It Is The End Of Days. Imagine a scene girl and her emo boyfriend. Living in suburbia. Writing poetry. They have memorabilia from Invader Zim, Lenore the Cute Little Dead Girl, The Nightmare Before Christmas, and probably Naruto. They’re listening to My Chemical Romance, Linkin Park, Paramore, Three Days Grace, Evanescence, Fallout Boy, Taking Back Sunday, Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, Good Charlotte, Blink-182, Panic! At The Disco, AFI, Green Day, and let’s throw in Jack Off Jill. They’re browsing MySpace on their BlackBerrys, using their desktop to check out the best Blingee images and look for more hair dye. Also, their wrists have more scars than a Vietnam veteran. That scene girl? She definitely has Twilight on her book shelf. That emo boy? He identifies with Sasuke Uchiha, but he always thought he was more like Riku. Except guess what, he has a new idol— can’t fight dem emo urges Neku Sakuraba. They go to school to avoid interaction with all the sheep who also happen to have BlackBerrys. And there’s a school dance, where they get to see their 58-year-old math teacher do the Cupid Shuffle. In their desks, they got to see this... thing carved all over the place alongside the swastikas and pentagrams—

Oh, and they were probably making AMVs on YouTube and happened to catch a glimpse of “Leave Britney Alone!” or “Chocolate Rain” the day they came out, while also seeing a trailer for Halo 3. 

You know who you are. I was always the guy in the background, trying to not be noticed. But I was watching you. I was watching you evolve with befuddlement. Here I am, ten years later. Your neighbor, what a guy.

And I still don’t know what the fuck you were on about. But the BlackBerries were kinda cool. They were the key to all this.

[recentanimenews]

The Definitive Ranking of Bleach OPs

  For many years Bleach ruled the roost in the United States fandom as the coolest comic running in Shonen Jump magazine. For a period of time the anime was similarly successful, inspiring everything from cosplay to fanfiction to a live-action movie. Even more than Naruto, a far more sprawling franchise, Bleach defines a specific period of early 2000s anime fight media that briefly enraptured countless high school students as they illegally pored over multiple-part episode splits on YouTube, crafting AMVs set to Linkin Park while listening to Number One on repeat. And yes, I'm including myself in that crowd.

  The Bleach manga ended years ago, and the anime did too. That's all to the good for our purposes though, because it lets us build a genuine historical record based on the anime's most significant achievement: its range of incredible opening songs and animation. What is the best Bleach opening of them all? To craft this list I used this thorough and objective criteria:

  1. Is the song a banger?

  2. Is this opening at least as cool as Sonic Adventure 2's "Escape from the City?"

  3. How does it stand up as an artifact of its time, and how does it stand up today?

  Let's begin!

  15. "BLUE" (ViViD) 

    I like the attention to scale and space in this opening, with energy blasts blowing through whole rows of buildings and Ichigo knocking enemies over like bowling balls. But there's so much fighting happening here, crammed into such a short space, that it's hard to follow. Not a fan of the song either, so this one's placing at the bottom.

  14. "Anima Rossa" (Porno Graffitti)

Porno Graffitti has a long history composing opening themes for anime, accompanying everything from 2003's Fullmetal Alchemist to My Hero Academia. The song they've contributed here is a bluesy number that I'd rank above several other entries on this list. Then why is this #14? When watching this opening, I couldn't shake the feeling that this sequence could have been servicable for any other shonen anime series. Bleach earned its fame through a certain je ne sais quoi, and if it's not here, no matter how competent the sequence is otherwise, what's the point?

  13. "Chu-Bura" (Kelun)

  When rewatching openings to put this feature together, I was frankly blown away by the first half or so of this opening sequence. The cast being cute together and hanging out at the beach! Some unexpectedly fluid animated hijinks as Ichigo walks to school! A pretty good song! Then the fighting kicks in and the rest of the opening is comparatively boring. Worth a watch, though.

  12. "Harukaze" (SCANDAL)

  This was the last Bleach opening to be featured in the anime series, and features some fun callbacks to earlier episodes like a runthrough of every episode title card (!!). I wouldn't say this is one of the show's best, but it gets stronger as it goes along and features some neat and stylish visual tableaux. The doors opening at the end to reveal the sponsors is a nice touch, too.

  11. "Alones" (Aqua Timez)

  Watching Bleach openings on YouTube as a child, I used to be freaked out by the sight of Kon the stuffed animal very loudly singing the theme song. On rewatch, though, I think I underrated this one: it's a splintered sequence of memory, love and grief that bears the strong iconography Bleach had in its prime. Aqua Timez would later do better, though!

  10. "Tonight, Tonight, Tonight" (Beat Crusaders)

  What makes a Bleach opening? Is it the music? Outrageous poses? Fast-paced fights? This opening doubles down on "style," which is admittedly Bleach's ace in the hole. There are sequences here that refer back to the first opening sequence, but on a grander scale: like the red and black silhouettes of Ichigo and Rukia being mean to each other, but projected on several television screens! Or every character recieving their own cool spinning CD cover. The song isn't really to my taste, but overall it's a good time.

  9. "chAngE" (Miwa)

  This opening makes an immediate statement when we see Ichigo's hometown erupt into an unmistakable mushroom cloud freeze frame. My other favorite bit is when the spooky devil hand reaches towards the other hand, just as the vocals spike. What can I say, I'm a mark for scenes in anime when hands reach out to each other but don't quite connect! I'm an Ikuhara fan, sue me.

  8. "Velonica" (Aqua Timez)

  This is the first great example on this list of a classic trope in Bleach openings: The Pose. It's no secret that Tite Kubo draws not so much to tell stories (though he can do that on occasion) but to showcase characters wearing cool outfits while they do cool things. This opening wrings everything it can out of the cast of the show standing in exaggerated poses while the camera swings from one angle to another. And it works! The bit of the Vizards being swallowed up by darkness, followed by Urahara's hat tip, has been lodged in my brain since seeing this.

  7. "Ichirin no Hana" (High and Mighty Color)

  More poses! The main cast looking very tired and noble as they stand on the battlefield. Shunsui's sword kata. Screaming vocals. When I asked the barista at the coffee shop today for his favorite Bleach opening, this was his answer; the harsh sound of the Soul Society arc's grand finale. It's a great pick, but the effects are a bit dated for me in 2020. Byakuya's special attack in particular screams early 2000s CG.

  6. "Shojo S" (SCANDAL)

  More outrageous poses from your favorite characters, except that you also have Rukia, Orihime and Rangiku doing a choreographed dance! I wasn't sure what to make of this sequence when I first saw it, but it's risen higher and higher in my estimation with each successive watch. Now I'm at the point where I'd say this is the Bleach opening I initially underrated the most (though there's some real classics coming down the pike!)

  5. "After Dark" (Asian Kung-Fu Generation)

  Bleach openings can be maximalist, so I find it fascinating how restrained this one is. Ichigo's friends running in the desert, the repetition of symbols juxtaposed to flaming credits, and a black-and-white super-cool layout of Aizen's war chamber. That's it. But set to the riffs of all-time great Japanese popular rock band Asian Kung-Fu Generation, that's all you really need.

  4. "D-technoLife" (UVERworld)

  This is the Bleach opening that defines the whole series for many folks. The theme song to the start of the Soul Society arc, it harnesses the band UVERworld (still putting out songs for shonen anime even today!) to a carnival of non-stop forward momentum that keeps topping itself with cool characters and fight sequences. Within its specific niche of early 2000s anime openings about shonen heroes determinedly running toward the camera, this one's never been topped. But it's not my personal favorite, so I'm putting it at number 4! The scene where Yourichi takes a bite out of Soi Fon's sword and holds it between their teeth is outrageously good, though.

  3. "*~Asterisk~" (Orange Range) 

    It's fascinating in retrospect how little Bleach's first opening actually has to do with what happens in Bleach. We don't see much in the way of hollows or shinigami, and the only swordfighting we're given is a brief few seconds of Ichigo fighting some interchangable bad guys in kimono. Instead we're given a vibe: Ichigo's friends wearing stylish clothes straight from the manga while the camera darts from one angle to another, Orihime and her friends spray-painting the title of the theme song on the screen, the camera revolving endlessly around Ichigo as he stands in the middle of the city. The promise of this sequence was eventually crushed beneath a never-ending tide of new characters and concepts as the series collapsed under its own weight... but for me and my friends, watching this opening relentlessly on YouTube as teenagers, it convinced us of Bleach's effortless cool. The best first Bleach opening.

2. "Ranbu no Melody" (SID ❤) 

  Like the previous opening, "Ranbu no Melody" is notable as much for what it doesn't show as for what it does. We see Ichigo, the hero of the story, for only a few seconds. Instead of our heroes running endlessly toward the camera, we are given the slow unravelling of reality by invisible forces that repeatedly squish and stretch the aspect ratio and blast the viewer with impossibly fast, overlaid images. The brainchild of Masashi Ishihama, one of the best directors of opening sequences working today, this one works as both a horrifying short film of dramatic climax and as a sneakily crafted foreshadowing-laden promise to longtime fans of Bleach that the story has been building to this arc from the very beginning. The best opening.

  1. "Rolling Star" (YUI) 

  As a child, I would watch the first six openings of Bleach over and over on YouTube. I loved the first, and the second, and the third. But the one I would return to over and over again, even though it came from a section of the series that I never reached myself, was "Rolling Star." Seen in retrospect, it's a synthesis of all the aspects that made Bleach openings memorable. It's stylish, rendering Ichigo's hometown as a neon-lit sunset hangout where battles secretly play out just around the corner. It's just a bit scary, with Ichigo duelling his masked evil self as traumatic future events are carefully foreshadowed. But more than anything, this opening sells a closeness between the main cast as they eat together and fight together. A careful juxtaposition between the high school gang of friends who were way cooler than you'd ever be, and the supernatural terrror just barely poking out from beneath the surface.

  This opening was also directed by Masashi Ishihama, though the previous listed entry represents a more concentrated form of his style. "Ranbu no Melody"'s sequence may very well be superior from an animation perspective, but from my point of view, "Rolling Star" is and will always will be the best Bleach opening. And the song's a banger, so there's that!

  What is your personal Bleach opening ranking? Did I underrate "D-technoLife"? Is Bleach more or less cool than Sonic Adventure 2's "Escape from the City?" Let us know in the comments!

---

Adam W is a Features Writer at Crunchyroll. He sporadically contributes with a loose coalition of friends to a blog called Isn't it Electrifying? He recommends reading David Brothers's old pieces on Bleach if you want to learn more. You can follow Adam on Twitter at: @wendeego

By: news+feed@crunchyroll.com

[captainbashybae-blog]

The Advent of Remixes and the Shade of Triple Q

__________

If you were to ask me, the remix is more a part of the millennial culture than an archetypal motif of postmodernism; even if the definition of a remix lends itself to postmodernism well.

If you were to ask Kirby Ferguson on the matter, he cites remixes appearing as back as the early hip-hop days of the Chic sampling music off the Sugarhill Gang in the late seventies. And if you watched his documentary “Everything is a Remix”, Ferguson argues that all ideas are derivative off the success of others—which is pretty much postmodernist ideas in a nutshell.

After all, Isaac Newton famously wrote in a letter to Robert Hooke, “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."

What is a remix?

To remix something is to simply mix it again, a definition that seems blatantly unhelpful in elucidating the concept of a remix.

But like that definition implies, you take copy an original concept, you alter it in transformative manner, and you combine the two together into something new.

To simplify, you copy, transform, and combine.

Led Zeppelin’s song, “Stairway to Heaven” is an early example of a remix: Zeppelin took part of the melody of Randy Wolfe’s “Taurus,” used it as the opening of a new song, and earned a reputation that skyrocketed his band to fame.

One might ask what’s transformative about gluing on someone else’s riff onto their song; they’re not wrong in asking this. “Stairway to Heaven” is only one of many notable (and recent) instances of music copyright reaching the ears of judicial court.

The jury adjourned to let Zeppelin’s song sing free in a court case akin to a soap opera, but copyright cases are not always black and white. In 2013, Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams payed 5.3 million to Marvin Gaye for the use of his bass line in “Got to Give It Up”, and Funkadelic sued hip-hop group NWA for a single guitar riff. Even the first rock-themed copyright case, The Beach Boys v. Chuck Berry, ended with a strange compromise that allowed the Beach Boys to continue playing without Berry’s credit, but Berry’s company earned publishing rights.

The remix became the crux of the copyright debate as we approached the digital era, an era that once celebrated innocuous cat videos and inside jokes about hamburgers and green frogs (the ones who didn’t cause riots on the Internet). As Lawrence Lessig alluded to in his TED talk about user generated content ( http://www.ted.com/talks/larry_lessig_says_the_law_is_strangling _creativity?lang uage=en), people on the Internet have unique ways of expressing their creativity that don’t lend itself to traditional copyright law. And like the farmers who tried to sue airplanes from flying over their land only to fail miserably, the way modern times explore content should be reflected accordingly in its laws.

What’s a remix today?

The remix in modern times evolved to encapsulate many forms of media—especially in the digital era.

If I wanted to discuss the modern remix in context of online video, I can cite the many anime music videos (AMVs) that inundated the early 2000s.

I can discuss the recent landmark case of Matt Hosseinzedah and H3H3 that massively benefited the content creators who used the videos of others in a transformative manner. I can write about a similar precedent where YouTuber Ray William Johnson lost to Junkin Media in court for the “misappropriation” of the company’s content and the struggles of a website that chooses to stay neutral in all copyright disputes.

Perhaps I can talk about the many movies in the last two decades that lovingly homage themselves to previous films and genres. One that comes to mind is Quentin Tarentino’s Kill Bill, a great movie that heavily borrows from blaxploitation film, spaghetti films and Bruce Lee movies.

I can even recount the stories of Jane Eyre but with Zombies and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, books that take inspiration from historic precedent and reimagine them completely in the form of a gimmick. These books fall under copyright law as derivative work.

Let’s not forget that Fifty Shades of Gray was (and still is in my opinion) just Twilight fan-fiction set in a modern era—mixed in with torture smut. The author of Twilight did sue author E.L. James for infringement, a case dropped only after the alteration of a couple names of characters, and remains a dubious nonexample of copyright theft.

Instead, I wanted to discuss how remixes have musically flourished in the world of SoundCloud, Spotify and YouTube. I want to celebrate a place where creators embrace the derivative nature of their content, a place that gives them a chance to shape their own identity and content through an audience that stretches as far as the bandwidth of a computer.

More specifically, I wanted to look at the “mash-up artist”, creators who take two or more existing songs and combines them for the sake of a new musical aesthetic. In the case of the last couple years, the rise of YouTube channels like SilvaGunner took inspiration from the phenomenon of “Rick-Rolling” to create mash-ups of music for the sake of satire and innocuous trolling.

The content creator I’ll be discussing embraces both aspects of the art form to great success. He’s best known for frequently mashing up the songs and lyrics of Korean pop star PSY with different genres of music, amassing over 36 million views and 112,000 subscribers on YouTube.  Though these numbers pale in comparison to that of more popular, trending channels online, Triple Q’s prolific online presence beyond YouTube speaks volumes to the success found in even niche aspects of music.

The video I’ll be looking at.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1zeoDrN2Lo

#SELFIE is a new and original song which doesn't plagiarize at all

 Uploaded on May 2nd, 2014, “#SELFIE is a new and original song which doesn't plagiarize at all” doesn’t hide the fact that the video pokes fun at the Chainsmokers highly derivative single “#Selfie”, a song that pokes fun at the vapid narcissism of selfie culture. However, ironically intentional or not, the song also borrows heavily from Sir Mix-a-lot’s “Baby Got Back,” utilizes a music composition similar to songs like “Valley Girl” and LMAFO’s “Party Rock Anthem”, and tries to copy the viral nature of “Harlem Shake” with its bass line. As one YouTuber, Irvan Issacs, commented on the original video from the DJ duo, the song is “90% taking, 10% song,” and music critic, Miles Raymer, of the Chicago Tribune, slammed the song as “garbage, paint-by-numbers, EDM only there to deliver the meme.” Nevertheless, the song earned 550 million views and was a success for the Chainsmokers.

 The title of Triple Q’s mashup of the song uses sarcasm underscored by its blatant lack of capitalization. Though not an ironclad rule on the Internet, content creators often forego proper title punctuation with long run-on sentences in order to preface a joke or meme; this is the case with this video.

 The second thing to note after the title is the image used for the video: a portrait of PSY centered above a #SELFIE logo, accompanied by fictional video game attorney Phoenix Wright, record producer Bauer, Redfoo of LMFAO, Deadmau5. Wolverine, Mikoto Misaka of A Certain Scientific Railgun, a wisp from the Sonic the Hedgehog series, and Pharrell Williams—all overlaid with what looks like Dark Souls boss Demon of Song (pics below).

(the overlaid image)

 It’s noted that this 3 minute 47 second song samples from 14 tracks, all cited in the video’s description:

"Pursuit ~ Cornered" - Masakazu Sugimori - Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney

"I Wanna Take You For a Ride" - Tetsuya Shibata - Marvel vs. Capcom 2: New Age of Heroes

"Harlem Shake" - Baauer

"#SELFIE" - The Chainsmokers

"Gentleman" - PSY - Psy 6 (Six Rules),

Part 2 "Party Rock Anthem" - LMFAO feat. Lauren Bennett & GoonRock - Sorry For Party Rocking

"Animals" - Martin Garrix

"only my railgun" - fripSide - To Aru Kagaku no Railgun

"Move For Me" - Kaskade & deadmau5 – Strobelite Seduction

"sister's noise" - fripside - To Aru Kagaku no Railgun S

"Happy" - Pharrell Williams - G I R L

"Planet Wisp: Act 1" - Kenichi Tokoi - Sonic Generations

"Gangnam Style" - PSY - Psy 6 (Six Rules), Part 1

Dark Souls death sound

It’s clear from these elements that the song is remix. It copies the original song, “#SELFIE”, transforms the song by extracting its bass and melody (or whatever melody it had), and combines it with 14 different songs and a death sound into a song. It’s also just catchy.

In fact, it’s a variation of a remix known as a megamix, a medley remix containing multiple songs in rapid succession.

The composition of this megamix follows the same order of the song list in its video description. It starts off with a combination of “Pursuit~ Cornered” and “I Wanna Take You For a Ride" and ends with the Dark Souls death sound. However, what’s consistent throughout the song is the use of the bass tracks of Harlem Shake, #SELFIE and “Party Rock Anthem”, all bass tracks that are near indistinguishable from one another. This choice of composition is not only a way to harmonize very different genres of music, but it also demonstrates how derivative and musically bland #SELFIE is as a song.

Whether effective or even intentional, “#SELFIE is a new and original song which doesn't plagiarize at all” interestingly uses a copyright tactic popularized by fellow YouTuber, Jim Sterling. Though mashups of this nature are often beleaguered by automated copyright claims from media conglomerates looking to cash in on video revenue, “#SELFIE is a new and original song which doesn't plagiarize at all” has enough copyrighted material to be claimed by more than one company. In the worst-case scenario that this song is protected by copyright despite being transformative under fair use, multiple companies cannot take further action without personal negotiation—negotiation often foregone to save time and effort among all parties. Regardless, Triple Q is well-known for challenging copyright through blatant defiance regardless of the consequence.

Conclusion

Now more than ever, the remix is a symbol of post-modernist ideals that shaped the way people look at entertainment and culture. And with the proliferation of the Internet and meme culture, Space-Jam mashups and anime shitposts will probably still persist somewhere.

And as a genre of music, mashups have introduced me a much wider range of music that I would never listen to without the work of artists like Triple Q and Botanic Sage; the two of them shaped my taste in music for better or worse.