/jp/ - Otaku Culture

Space gijinka is great and sad.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNFWVRiYuPE

I like this group.

I've been wondering this for some time now, but how do Jap illustrators end up going "official" and get recruited to do stuff for long-running series? Like Disgaea or Neptunia. There are millions of artists on say, places like Pixiv, but some of these guys don't even have a Pixiv or any kind of social media account. Like Alphes - illustrated an official Touhou game but has seemingly no accounts anywhere. I'm just curious as to how that works. Are they just art students that get scouted out/form connections from the school? I've checked out a lot of interviews but they never touch on this subject.

It's also interesting to note that they seem to get a lot more recognition/status than illustrators in the West who seem to go largely unnoticed in the games they design for.

>>21067759
The path of discovery is paved with the accomplishments of the dead. At least they got to rest knowing they did a job well done. A lot of people don't even get that much.

>>21068015
Touhou itself is a doujin series. In the case of Alphes, it's likely that he was already part of Tasogare Frontier when ZUN contacted TF to ask if they wanted to collaborate on a fighting game. IIRC FS itself got started when ZUN simply contacted Harukawa out of the blue. Email is still a thing that exists, you know.

Also nobody pays attention to Western character designers because characters in the west arr rook same.

What percent of people in this thread actually know Japanese? I want to shitpost about various NicoNico series I've been watching but I feel like the last time I did this kind of thing nobody responded.

>>21068275
I don't. Maybe I should lurk the DJT.

>>21068015
>>21068151
>illustrators in the West who seem to go largely unnoticed in the games they design for.
They don't usually have a following like Jap ones do. People can probably name western illustrators that do TV cartoons, but only a couple of people have been notable outside the games they do stuff for. Metzen is the only one I can think of for a video game myself.

There's a weird separation between films, tv cartoons, comics, and video games (for both voice actors and artists) in the west. It's probably due in part to the lack of interest in random illustrations outside the context of comics, concept art, or niche pornography commissions, so you don't get this following of people who go "X is doing Y" But if like Todd McFarlane or Rob Liefeld or Peter Chung were working on a game, it'd probably be noted.

There's also a lot more situations in Jap games, especially doujin ones, where still art is used. I don't think western games even use character cut ins or whatever those things are called. (Tachi e? I think they had some name like that.) when someone's speaking. The closest is like some comic book-esque page or something. That still art allows you to show off the artist's art unlike the west's 3D renders of some other guy's concept art. Even more for things like VNs and the bishoujo/bishounen game genres as a whole.

>>21068293
That's almost the last thing you should do, the thread is 99% worthless shitposting.

The resources are good though. Click the links in the OP and ignore the thread.

>>21068275
I know Japanese enough to understand conversational dialogue and be able to understand completely other things if I bother taking the effort to fully translate it, and can read without looking up every other second. I don't know much about Japanese culture so humorous references that aren't otaku shit or memetic commercials are lost on me. I probably also don't care about the content of your series and wouldn't respond anyway.

>>21068293
>>21068421
Before DJT got moved here it was actually a really good resource for learning/questions. A shame it got turned into what it is now.

>>21068465
Anki threads used to be good too and we didn't need a DJT. /a/ ruins everything.

>>21068409
I think the doujinshi culture is probably a big reason why illustrators have more prestige in Japan. The only illustrators who are well-known in the West are, as you noted, famous because of their work on major commercial products. There isn't really a major commercial market for just "random illustrations," so illustrators in the West can only get exposure to a wider audience if they manage to get hired onto a big commercial product, and even then those products don't heavily promote the artists. In Japan, there's more opportunity because of the size of the doujin market, where profit is often secondary to the pursuit itself. It's only really with the advent of high-speed Internet that the West is having a robust culture of non-commercial "low" art, whereas Japan has had Comiket since the 70s for people to share their amateur drawings and comics.

>>21068425
>I probably also don't care about the content of your series and wouldn't respond anyway.
the sad truth of just about everything in this thread

>>21068507
>whereas Japan has had Comiket since the 70s for people to share their amateur drawings and comics.
Well it's not like the west didn't have conventions for western comics and I'd hesitate to call Comiket things non-commercial. They may be indie, but they were still created to be sold. While doujin culture is definitely a reason that drives the market for amateur art, I think it's the ability to put it online that's helping people be discovered in Japan as well. Especially the ability to just toss up collections of backgroundless anime girl portraits instead of full manga.

Especially since we're talking about video game art, none of that other stuff mattered until the 80s and 90s. In the context of doujin games, I'm not sure doujin games give artists that much exposure. People even give Touhou more credit than it deserves. It may be that otaku games aimed at otaku give the illustrators "prestige" because the otaku were following them to begin with.

I was going to say something else that I now realize is very weird. It was going to be about how you can just hire lots of random artist to make cute illustrations for cards in some mobile game, but there's no western market like that to aim at outside of western anime otaku. However there is such a western otaku market, just all aimed around comic books and perhaps table top games like Magic. Trading cards would probably be the easiest entry point but they don't really successfully cross over into western video games for some reason. But the weird thing is by saying a western otaku culture not centered around anime and manga but excluding western otaku centered around comics and cartoons is imagining a void. Some sort of abstract situation where people like looking at kitsch art but not of either western or eastern comic styles. It's probably that artists, even small ones are well known in their western circles, from card artists to webcomic artists to random illustrators that got to do cartoons. The closest thing is the kind of paradoxical ideal of western artists that have eastern inspiration to their styles but aren't trying to be anime or manga, but who would even want that?

I can imagine if like King's Quest and Myst style games were popular, there might be a sort of niche for well known amateur illustrators in games, but I'm not sure how random images would ever be popular outside of the fetish commission niche I mentioned. I mean the majority of Jap things are probably just random porn and demiporn too, but what would it take to get people to look at random western art? There's also the problem that westerners don't seem to put in effort unless they want to be a comic artist or video game artist.(which is that weird idea again because niche Jap artists probably want to be manga artists and video game artists too). I guess it's just that they more expect to be able to submit their shitty no-effort art and be praised for even participating. Think about whenever some (probably K)MMORPG does an art contest, how the western designs or loading images compare to ones on other regions.
4x games might be another way, if they felt like adding in different art for factions done by various artists.

>>21068151's original end statement kind of applies to both big and small name artists too. People mostly care about the designers and writers in the west. While they push graphics, I can't think of any that rely on someone's particular art style. Maybe Rare's games? I would say Dragon's lair, but that's Don Bluth. It may be that there's not the same sort of focus on character designs in games, due to preferred genre differences, and now that I think of it, there's not a lot of "unique" games made, that is they rely more on making games out of things that weren't games instead of long running series like SMT, KH, even Touhou.
What ARE even some western long running original game series? Especially ones that have constant characters that aren't real people.(e.g. sports) Mortal Kombat? I mean like 8 or 10+ games. I wouldn't count like Tomb Raider. (unless it has like 10 games and I didn't know) A lot of them probably are like abstract goal games like Simcity/The Sims too. (like you couldn't say "The Sims 17, with designs by Yoji Shinkawa" and have people really give a shit)

In conclusion, I like Sugar Star's games' art http://sgst.blog.fc2.com/ https://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?id=535376&type=illust and /jp/ should make a /jp/ card game.

>>21068516
Well that's why the thread exists, so you can post it anyway.

I'm not sure why, but I really feel like hitting this bitch in the head with a shovel...

>>21068869
For part of what you mentioned, I think a main thing is just a difference in work ethics and culture. I think Eastern artists are generally better just by virtue of how much competition there is and how much work you need to do to actually succeed (it's a well known fact that manga artists have to basically slave away their soul to their work just to make a living). The oversaturation of artists constantly pitted against each other for relevancy and popularity means you have people who put a hell of a lot of work into their art to stand out, on top of the demand that many of their games still use some of or are entirely 2D art further driving up the need for high quality art. There are a lot of amateur artists in the West, but there isn't that same level of competition - flat out medicocre artists can make like $1000+ on Patreon. There are some good ones though, Kriss Sison has some really cute art, especially his Alice, and there's the Skullgirls guy and the Va-11-hall-a artist too.

>>21069043
what server are you on?

>>21069135
>I think Eastern artists are generally better
Better at what though? They probably aren't generally better at eastern art than westerners are at western art. I really think westerners are just more willing to show off their shit art.

>There are a lot of amateur artists in the West, but there isn't that same level of competition - flat out medicocre artists can make like $1000+ on Patreon.
Yeah but this is in what? The anime and SFM niche? VS the comic and fantasy art markets.

>>21069142
Ruairi

>>21069198
get on alexina please

>>21068409
Are there subcultures of Western artists where the same people do everything from comics to video games to animation and develop a reputation thanks to it? Maybe /mlp/ is like that since it seems like its own world closed off to outsiders.

>>21068869
From what I've read, the earliest Western otaku and manga-inspired comic book artists used to hang out together at America's science fiction conversions. The artists there probably had real-life recognition, a demand for their commissions, etc. But then the Western fandom grew, original Japanese imports become more accessible, pushing their works out of the spotlight, and they lost their importance.
>but who would even want that?
Tumblr, and I don't mean this in a "ha ha, let's point at laugh at Tumblr" kind of way. I think the main trait of the "Tumblr art style," as much as it exists, is that the artists who started drawing in this style were inspired by anime and manga, but then decided to go their own way. Which apparently meant putting all the emphasis on the nose.

>>21068869
>a /jp/ card game
Who'd be the characters, the old tripfriends?

Play the Genuflect card for an instant humiliating surrender!

>>21069135
>Kriss Sison
Wow, this guy is good. Is he a Westerner? The Twitter says his studio is located in the Philippines.

>>21069225
/mlp/ is completely irrelevant, especially so since /mlp/ mostly attempted to even be as relevant as touhou (which is not very) via trying to rip off as much as possible from the perceived fandom. The greater fandom is just furries as normal, which actually are pretty close to a western otaku culture. If they weren't just a bunch of niche fetishes banding together for acceptance.

>Western artists where the same people do everything from comics to video games to animation and develop a reputation thanks to it?
I'd probably point to the flash subculture.

>>21069375
Is the Flash subculture going to survive the death of Flash?

>>21069749
Probably. It'll become within the realm of emulation, or probably just continue as normal since no one's stopping people making players and developing new flashes. Given how shitty all browsers are nowadays, someone will probably make a new borwser and allow flash support in it, at least until they get a team and they fuck it up down the line.

>>21069749
Probably. It'll become within the realm of emulation, or probably just continue as normal since no one's stopping people making players and developing new flashes. Given how shitty all browsers are nowadays, someone will probably make a new browser and allow flash support in it, at least until they get a team and they fuck it up down the line.

I have scraped https://jp.booru.org/.. You can download your own copy of this piece of history from https://files.catbox.moe/tclnv0.zip (186 MB). The metadata is preserved in self-explanatory JSON files. For example, here is the metadata for the attached image.

{
"url": "https://img.booru.org/jp//images/1/ea98e7e51b2f84aabc2ecd2ae053baa0c445841c.jpg",
"tags": [
"2hu",
"gay",
"green",
"homo",
"sanae",
"slut",
"touhou"
],
"id": 8,
"posted": "2012-10-18 23:14:16",
"uploader": "thebuttranger",
"size": [
1201,
1698
],
"source": "/jp/",
"rating": "Questionable",
"score": 2
}

>>21070721
Actually, I better delete the image least it be reported for dicks.

>>21070728
*lest
Consider this a replacement.

>>21070721
Several dozen pictures were missing from that archive. Here they are.
https://files.catbox.moe/nwipji.zip

Two of 5ch's international boards have a /jp/ thread. We should meet there if 4channel goes down.
https://agree.5ch.net/anime8/
https://agree.5ch.net/img8/
There was a thread about 5ch here in January.
>>/jp/thread/S20718377

>>21070721
>https://jp.booru.org/
Why is some 3DPD slut on the first page?

>>21072872
These pics were spammed all over booru.org, and the /jp/ booru has no meido to clean them up.

There was a thread with somebody posting a bunch of these imitation crayon Cirnos they made last week. Somebody crosslinked from /bant/ though and a bunch of retards raided it and started posting porn to get it deleted. I hope it didn't scare him off, I thought they were cute.

>>21072733
can't access from yurop :(

>>21074005
Try Tor?

>>21074072
no luck

>>21074123
You can at least read them through an archive.
https://archive.fo/nUfDJ
https://archive.fo/XFs5F

Some Chinese artists draw really nice anime-inspired art. I like this guy's relaxing slice-of-life images of women and military technology.
https://www.pixiv.net/member.php?id=12136588

>>21074236
The first one was my favorite, but I'll post a couple more.

>>21074244

>>21074249
This one raises too many questions to be relaxing.

/jp/'s original 2hus from the booru: a collage.

For anyone who orders curry through amazon, which brands do you recommend? I wanna start making it but there's a lot to choose from.

Could someone please share the original MP3 of the first theme song, i.e, not a recompressed track ripped from YouTube/nico?

I never thought I'd see a Japanese artist draw an obscure Soviet luxury car.

Apparently the artist was born in Japan and raised in Brazil and is a Slavoboo who can actually speak Russian.
https://www.pixiv.net/member.php?id=181419

I found him thanks to this, though.

GeoCities Japan closes tomorrow. Read this while you still can.
http://www.geocities.jp/kasai_syuji/index_e.html

>>21079327
Mixtape.moe also closes tomorrow. Make sure to back up any thing you might have uploaded to saved links to.

>>21079327
Mirrored it. I have converted the pages to Unicode and replaced the banner with a notice that it's a mirror, but otherwise the content is the same.
https://seifuku.neocities.org/
The sprites look cute in Neocities' file manager.

I clipped this cute scene from Ookami Kodomo no Ame to Yuki.

Those of you who follow the various VN threads in /jp/ (or VNs in general, really) already know, but visual novel developer Light just went under, hot on the heels of minori just earlier this year. The era of eroge is coming to a close.

>>21079677

>>21082390
Who the heck is Light?

>>21082390
An era is ending, but perhaps commercial sudios closing will mean more attention for doujin eroge.

I bought a few doujin CDs recently and I figured I'd share them. Everything is ripped in flac with scans that are probably too big.

[ion] しぐいおん/Sig*ion
https://drive.google.com/file/d/13Priiu3xezOGs6_6hZYDeu9hdBz0Ve2X/view?usp=sharing

[ion] Orbit
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_EyqvT_VgyaNupQrSLVYUYt4SFqxUE5F/view?usp=sharing

These two are IIDX remix albums. If you've ever listened to Spiritual Spellers, one of ion's Touhou albums, you'll know what to expect here.

[TAMUSIC] SaGa Violin
https://drive.google.com/open?id=17LLP9okTVhr_Ya8RPuX8m15HvixNjgJs
Crossfade: https://soundcloud.com/tamtamusic/tam3-0143

As the title suggests, this is a SaGa series remix album. This is probably one of TAM's better albums, but I might be biased since I like SaGa music.

[Golden City Factory] CHRONICLOTH haq. Remixes BEST
https://drive.google.com/file/d/109Fe88wkG3Bc-CkuvMukKMYH-BP8h3Ez/view?usp=sharing

Mostly Key remixes but there's a few songs from some other VNs. haq. has an interesting, sort of ambient glitch style that makes this stand out from other Key remix albums.

>>21085173
I am not familiar with SaGa (except for emulating the original Game Boy game once), but I liked this track. Violin rock is cool.

[Golden City Factory] Labyrinth
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1u66ucl5Cpnjart_uEXcQ85VX938i1Y-X/view?usp=sharing

Video game remixes, including some Touhou. I tried to tag this one the best I could, but there's little to no information about it anywhere on the internet. Tracks 13-19 aren't listed on the booklet either.
All I know is, 13 is GEAR from Higurashi, 17 and 18 are 双星 and 月童 from Air, and I think 15 is from a shump but I can't place it. If anyone recognizes what the bonus tracks are, let me know.

[Nerddelic Studio Works] 歌以詠志
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CZg9K66HwJFjhm4vJPwqsfaPAxfguoS9/view?usp=sharing

Original Guri album. He's usually associated with Golden City Factory but I guess Nerddelic Studio Works is his solo circle. This album is pretty similar to his work on the 東方ミッドナイト MAXIMUMTUNE album series.

Also, if anyone has Golden City Factory's Etrian Odyssey album, SF Sekaiju FIGHT -Ready Go!-, could you please upload it? It's one of the few albums I can't find from them.

>>21085254
Yeah, the violin rock is surprisingly good here. They've done other violin rock albums before but the violin and guitar would clash and it kind of sounded like a mess.

>>21079327
And it's down.

[C-hicken工房] その素敵な音楽を・・・Vol.1 〜蒼の世界〜
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wpzyIoz38W_bCX3rDYXBMK-PfEkAdVQP/view?usp=sharing

Aria image album? I don't recognize the melodies from Aria's soundtrack but it's certainly got that nice acoustic Aria feel to it.

[C-hicken工房] その素敵な音楽を・・・Vol.2 〜薔薇の園〜
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uoSWmTFIUuw1xn1OskLu_PA420Y1BjRX/view?usp=sharing

Sequel to the above.
Unfortunately, the third album in the series, その素敵な音楽を・・・Vol.3～黄昏の謳姫～, was out of stock. I'll just have to hope it gets restocked around Comiket unless someone else has it and is kind enough to upload it.

[Blue Records] guitar de aria uno
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qAmpQCWhD5zqnE0dUBrTJbzKvQRM6SDZ/view?usp=sharing
Crossfade: https://soundcloud.com/user-99679489/guitar_de_aria_uno-xfd

It's exactly what it sounds, acoustic guitar arranges of Aria songs. It might seem redundant considering the soundtrack features a lot of guitar and string instruments already, but the solo guitar definitely gives it something unique. This one is specifically arranges from Aria The Animation.

https://nhentai.net/g/263730/

It's still strange to me that Japanese think of westerners as less prude/shy about their bodies than themselves when they're the ones that have common nude bathing to begin with. Westerner women are sluts because they take an active interests in having sex and might want to be on top/the active one instead of being passively raped, even though Japan is the one with the schoolgirl prostitute problem and active mainstream borderline sex services.

[Blue Records] guitar de aria due
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1myjxpyjrnt5CgyxXoAbhUVfD0qMQ0NtH/view?usp=sharing
Crossfade: https://soundcloud.com/user-99679489/guitar_de_aria_due-xfd

Aria the Natural arrange.

[Blue Records] guitar de aria tre
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xyf2CzPGRG6tLRmJVjH9OiqwIOVbjkY5/view?usp=sharing
Crossfade: https://soundcloud.com/user-99679489/guitar_de_aria_tre-xfd

Aria the Origination arrange.
That's all from me.

https://nhentai.net/g/263730/

It's still strange to me that Japanese think of westerners as less prudish/shy about their bodies than themselves, when they're the ones that have common nude bathing to begin with. Westerner women are though of as sluts because they take an active interest in having sex and might want to be on top/the active one instead of being passively raped, even though Japan is the one with the schoolgirl prostitute problem and active mainstream borderline sex services.

>>21085720
>the schoolgirl prostitute problem
Is that an actual problem or another moral panic around a small niche phenomenon?

>>21085842
Does Japan seem like a place that has moral panics about small scale things? Moreover when you think of moral panics, aren't they typically about something that may as well have been made up entirely?

I don't know about nowadays, but >>21079327 >>21079771 wasn't lying about the outbreak of stuff in the 3.7 & 3.8 sections. If you were around in early 2000s/late 90s internet, you'd see it around too, places advertising kogals and ura videos.

There is a Japanese version of Softporn Adventure, the text adventure game that would later become the basis for the first Leisure Suit Larry.
https://www.mobygames.com/game/las-vegas__/screenshots

From what I've seen this game looks shit but at the same time embodies 80s-90s anime.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayXJeakJsMI

>>21085667
>>21085695
>>21085704
Thanks for these, anon.

>>21085143
Thanks for all the music, I collect stuff like this.

>>21085498
Is it though?

>>21088074
Is that your geocities.jp mirror, anon?

>>21076932
S&B Golden Curry is pretty good. Some of the spicier stuff is more expensive, so it's more cost efficient to use mild as the base and adjust the flavor with your own spices.

I really really wish this was real.

Do you still remember Yumemi, /jp/?

>>21089058
CLANG CLANG CLANG

>>21089068
goddamnit

Pick your favorites.

>>21089058
>>21089068 is all I ever knew about her to be honest.

>>21089562
11. WHIRR WHIRR~

>>21089068
>>21089834
Is this a trend?

>>21089897
For years? Yes. beep~

>>21089562
>>21089834
>She has a strong affinity for huge weapons

>>21089058
This was a great movie, poor Yumemi ;_;

>>21090042
PEW PEW
PEW PEW PEW

Bigger Yumemi.

At some point I was planning to do a quick digest of the fun Nico has been having with the most disliked sequel in history but I never found the time.

>>21078582
Never mind, it was on the FTP. It probably isn't recompressed because it has the original bitrate of 160 kb/s. I've uploaded it to a few places just in case. The zip file contains the full version plus instrumental and a capella.

https://files.catbox.moe/2mxip7.zip
http://void.cat/#X1a4PL9h4xVKfbwITEqKIgzkR9f:f037c69aa4231afcdd78c88aad4cadbb:de3d9d98ee90d10f94f17c58a81591df

>>21098472
Cute! I like how she's blonde, so you know she is American.

>>21096293
>I was planning to do a quick digest of the fun Nico has been having with the most disliked sequel in history
Please do it when you find the time, anon!

Scarth sent me. Thank you, Scarth!

>>21100584
What?

https://twitter.com/VNDBTXT had potential.

>>21098597
I'll give this thread one more bump and if I haven't posted it by this time tomorrow I gave up.

>>21102343
Osu!

>>21101188
>2013
gtfo

Anybody else ever play multiplayer JP games? It's such a pleasant experience playing netoge with them, there's almost no try-hards or metagamers, they just do what's fun and they're really friendly. It's almost relaxing in a sense. The difference in how they act versus Western and Euro servers is really something.

Supposedly they're really good at stuff like fighting games and things of that nature, but I've never played them.

>>21104613
Are you playing popular games or doujin games? I bet that on every continent the players playing doujin games are older, nicer, more enthusiastic and just more likely to be there to have a good time than mainstream players. The genre probably matters, too. I am told that moba players are assholes the world over.

>>21104613
They're usually the best when it comes to fighting games outside of specific ones like, Tekken, King of Fighters, and 2v2/3v3 games with assists.

Via >>21087478, two books on youkai (not the 2hu kind).
http://www.enryo.ro/carti/Japanese%20mythology%20A%20to%20Z.pdf
https://files.catbox.moe/hfgu2a.pdf

So, my original plan following up on >>21102343 was to gather up all the Nicovideo videos made about Kemono Friends 2 with 500+ mylist and create a brief summary for each one, which if you haven't heard by now was an absolute bomb and managed to create the most hated anime episode in Nicovideo history. The anime itself isn't on-topic for /jp/ but starting somewhere from around episode 5 ratings absolutely tanked and it eventually spawned an Nicovideo entire cottage industry of videos doing their level best to tear the show limb from limb, ranging from Hitler rants to extended takedowns to videos of people blowing up the production studio with cruise missiles, which became such a phenomenon in and of itself that I thought people might be interested in it. (I never did watch the damn thing myself.)

However as I compiled the list there were almost a hundred of these and I realized that I could hardly do them all in one go even if I just did one sentence for this one so for as long as this thread sticks around I'll just drop some summaries in the thread as I go along. The super tl;dr about the whole situation is:

January-March 2018: Kemono Friends comes out and is a big hit.
September 2018: Director is fired over something. Cue shock and anger from fans.
January 2019: Kemono Friends 2 comes out. Doesn't look so good. Fans react with caution.
March 2019: Everything just goes to absolute shit, inspiring an avalanche of... interestingly directed creativity among fans.

That's probably the bare minimum you need to know of how it's going to play out. I'll try to drop the first batch of summaries tomorrow.

>>21108337
Right, those 2018s should be 2017s. Time flies when you're not having fun.

>>21108337
Do you need to have watched season 1 to watch season 2? I wasn't able to stomach season 1, so I wonder if season 2 would be watchable, but if it's just continuing the series in a way fans didn't agree with, I can just skip that too.

>>21104613
Which games are you talking about?

>>21108345
t. Zoomer

>>21112187
based retard

>>21108337
Looking forward to it.

https://danbooru.donmai.us/wiki_pages/67957
This is too much.

Following up on >>21108337, here's the summary of 500+ mylist videos from January 2019. This is actually remarkably uninteresting because Kemono Friends 2 has only reached it's third episode at the end of the month, and at this point in time merely aggressively mediocre instead of the garbage fire of the century, and so the videos created this month are almost a "typical" Nico reaction to an airing anime - but I'm adding it anyway just so we can marvel at how much things can change in the space of a few short months.

Part 1 - January - Hoping for the Best

As a sequel to one of the most loved and acclaimed anime in recent history (no, really, it won awards and stuff) the first few episodes of Kemono Friends 2 were somewhat of a disappointment for most fans, although having seen some of the previewed visuals there was hardly shock and horror. The studio was new to 3D and Director Kimura was still, at this point in time, just "that Aikatsu guy." His name will go down in history for another reason later on, but we're not there yet. Without further ado:

1/06 Carnival Friends [Fossa Complete Edition] (https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm34431413))
- A brilliant animated version of the Carnival Phantasm OP with Kemono Friends characters. Actually an updated version of an earlier video, adding Fossa, who had been left out in an oversight. One of the stanzas of the KF1 OP "Welcome to Youkoso Japari Park" is, after all, "nobody gets left out." The description of the video itself leads with: "Let's all look forwards to Season 2!!!", a peace offering and auspicious event to mark the coming of the new era of Kemono Friends.

1/07* Kemono Friends 2 Preview
- I think there was a preview stream here. I didn't watch this.

1/10 Moose-sama's Adorable Gourmet Race! (https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm34451804))
- A rather unremarkable video, as it's one of many hundreds if not thousands of anime MADs set to Kirby's Gourmet Race. It's primary fame to claim, though, is that at this point in time it is the second most viewed video in all of Nicovideo history (!), gracing the top of the Nicovideo daily ranking for months and months on end, continuing into the present day, and probably well into the future. At nearly 22 million views, it's hot on the heels of #1, the original Bad Apple!! video at 26M+ views, having taken only months to surpass ancient classics like 2007's Let's Go! Onmyouji (~18M) and Miku Miku ni Shite Ageru (~13M). This is, of course, because it's being botted to shit. Also everybody knows it's being botted to shit. I think they think it's funny.

1/15* Kemono Friends 2 OP - Hop in! Japari Beat (https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm34476537))
- The OP. It's okay, I guess. Executed by Doubutsu Biscuits (the seiyuu unit for 3/4 main KF1 characters) and PPP (the seiyuu unit for the in-universe idol-group also named PPP.) Not really a match for Welcome to Youkoso Japari Park but not much is.

1/15* Kemono Friends 2 Episode 1

1/18 KF2 OP set to Kaban's Journey (https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm34492664))
- The first blow for nostalgia: a video overlaying the S2 OP Japari Beat with the events of Kemono Friends Season 1. Very well-executed, covers all the highlights you'd want it to. Excellently choreographed, really. Hardly a declaration of war but it does go to show you that everyone left their heart in S1.

1/19 KF2 ED overload (https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm34498238))
- ED Connecting the Stars by new seiyuu unit Gothic x Luck for characters Western Parotia and Greater Lophorina (both birds), 中毒 version. It's no Boku no Friend, but still decent.

1/21 KF2 OP on Strings (https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm34505481))
- Exactly what it says on the tin.

1/22* Kemono Friends 2 Episode 2

1/27 American Version of the KF2 OP (https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm34537947))
- A sequal to the American version of the KF1 OP, where they've managed to replace all the characters with (sadly, CGI and not real) hulking WWE wrestlers cosplaying as Kemono Friends characters, which is about as ridiculous as it sounds. Get your laughs in while you can.

1/29* Kemono Friends 2 Episode 3

So there you have it, a month of NND videos so unremarkable that one might wonder why I even bothered summarizing them, to which I can only say that I guess I'm a completionist. Things don't quite start burning to the ground in February, but they do start to get interesting, which I'll do tomorrow or the day after if the thread's still around.

>>21108520
There's almost certainly no reason to watch KF2 no matter what you thought of KF1.

>>21113858
Thanks, anon! Now I know to keep an eye on this thread for the rest of the story.

>>21113870
Why, what's so bad about it? It's still just a pile of cute animal girls doing stuff in the end.

I was gonna write a long post about what happened to touhou fan-artist Chirorian, but couldn't finish it, and the story is getting more stale the longer I put it off.

Basically he is now in twitter and pixiv jail after his IP was leaked on an Hyouibana livestream. Some of the viewers put it on iknowwhatyoudownload and saw tons of doujins getting torrented.

Took all his shit on twitter and pixiv down, then wrote a long apology about it. There's some other details, though, and the story developed a bit after he wrote the apology.

Recently I've been on a MARIKIN Online 4 kick. I found it by total accident when i bumped into its developer, and its kept me invested ever since thanks to its weird bridge between polish and newgrounds stickman game.

>>21114929
There was a bit more to it than that which got audiences hooked in the first place, though I'm not one to talk seeing i didn't take well to the original in the first place.

>>21113858
I think something worth noting is density of 音MAD content, which if we ignore botted gourmet race was nearly absent in comparison to the first show's almost immediate and early representation alongside inmu, ゼERO, and on its own. It may have been because it looked like complete shite at first, but it ultimately reflected people's engagement on the whole.

>>21113858
>1/06 Carnival Friends [Fossa Complete Edition] (https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm34431413))
This is great. I'm replying just to highlight this video. You can watch it in HD (1440p! Take that, nico.) on YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCIuMHuadyg

For you artificial intelligence otaku.

Prompt: "The Emoji Movie"
GPT-2:
>The Emoji Movie: It’s called In The Beginning. This is the third anime of the Jōyo and Shōjo series, and is currently airing on Yomai TV (Japanese TV/film) in Japan. The show follows the protagonist Shōjo (Nara Natsume) in the past while learning to use his own powers of communication. It was adapted into TV anime by SGI Entertainment. The anime was released in Japan on December 2011 for SGI Entertainment’s North Korean imprint. The original broadcast schedule of the show has not been finalized.
>In the film’s premiere sequence and opening sequence, it is revealed that one of the main characters, Chito (Miko Ota) is an idol. The story begins with Chito’s family watching television together after an accident. When his parents come home from an island festival, they discover their daughter was killed by a monster as part of an experiment. On the television a reporter named Jun (Hiroko Todatsu) asks why he was sent there to report on the “surprise” and reveals the true identity of their daughter. The story also opens with her father, Chito’s grandmother, being killed by a mysterious monster and the parents having their children’s memories erased.
>In the opening sequence, the show opens to explain that this is an all new “World Wars”. In terms of how this new world will unfold, it is revealed that if the two of them become part of the Jōyo family, their daughter Chito can become a member of any group that can summon her to battle it out with other Jōyo, and that the two of them will join forces to fight against something greater that the Jōyo that were brought back.

https://ask-gpt.tumblr.com/post/183968029501/the-emoji-movie

>>21118651
I would watch that.
Is ask-gpt based on the cut down sample or the full unreleased gpt2?

>>21118838
The cut-down one, sadly. Check out https://ask-gpt.tumblr.com/about.. The full version would write more coherently. They plan to give researchers access to it. Maybe someone will set up something like this with the full version, or maybe it will find its way to bittorrent.

Continuing from >>21113858, the 400+ ML videos from the first half of February 2019. This is mostly uneventful, with one or two viral hits, right up until a truly remarkable video that heralds a new era of Kemono Friends @ Nico. You may have noted that I have not actually summarized the the content of any of the episodes themselves or really even the premise of the show itself. This is because, in some sense, up until now it hasn't actually mattered. Given that it's about to start mattering, I'll just crash everyone in with the bare minimum to understand what's to come.

Season 1: Kaban-chan awakens on a park full of animal girls called Friends, and joins Serval and Lucky Beast on a quest to find the library and discover what kind of animal she is.
Season 2: Kyururu, accompanied by Serval and Caracal, follow clues left in Kyururu's notebook in the search for "home."

So, there we are. The first half of this month is unremarkable except for one video near the end in which the summary is so long I dumped it into a separate post. Our time in limbo is ending; you are entering purgatory.

Part 2 - February (First Half) - A Flame is Lit

2/05* Kemono Friends 2 Episode 4 "Different Kinds of Houses"

2/06* Doubutsu Biscuits x PPP Third Single "Hop in! Japari Beat" PV

2/06 Jaguar has arrived! / Japari ga Yatte Kita zo! (https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm34589703))
- Really more of a highly overdue S1 work given the choice of characters, but Kemono Friends it is. A hand-animated parody of "Akari-chan ga Yatte Kita zo", a well-known video from GYARI (best known for "Akane-chan who will listen to anything you say." I thought this might be a Jaguar-driven UTAU but it's the original audio. It's still cute, though.

2/07 Komiya Friends 2 ~Hop in! Japari Beat~ (https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm34593437))
- A voice MAD cover of Japari Beat by Idolmaster's Komiya Kaho, or more accurately, her UTAU. Although it's really not quite just her UTAU, since that they've replaced not only all the vocal parts with Kaho's voice, but all the instruments as well. Those of you who have heard Japari Beat may remember that it is instrumentally backed by trumpets and near an entire brass band, so the results of replacing the whole thing with Kaho voice clips are... quite something. As always, the effort the Japanese people into random MADs never fails to impressive.

2/12* Kemono Friends 2 Episode 5 "Human's Strength"

2/13* Kemono Friends 2 Opening Theme

2/14 Yukkuri commentary on KF2 #5 (https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm34631105))
- And here we fucking go. First, what it is: an anaylsis/commentary video of Kemono Friends Episode 5 narrated by the omnipresent yukkuri voice that's everywhere on Nicovideo. At it's core, it's not that unusual: it's essentially vblog commentary with impressions and criticisms of about an anime episode. What IS sort of unusual is the amount of fame it received: it's not every day that a video featuring an animatronic voice merely talking about an anime gets nearly 3K mylist. (Incidentally, one must thank the Japanese tendency to produce videos utilizing text-to-speech and powerpoint-style presentations, rather than creators forcing people to listen to their dumb voice and look at their dumb face for fifteen minutes. Talking head videos should be outlawed.) At nearly 17 minutes, the whole thing is too long to summarize cleanly, so I'll just try to cover the major points... in another post, since it got really, really long.

Continuing from >>21113858, the 400+ ML videos from the first half of February 2019. This is mostly uneventful, with one or two viral hits, right up until a truly remarkable video that heralds a new era of Kemono Friends @ Nico. You may have noted that I have not actually summarized the the content of any of the episodes themselves or really even the premise of the show itself. This is because, in some sense, up until now it hasn't actually mattered. Given that it's about to start mattering, I'll just crash everyone in with the bare minimum to understand what's to come.

Season 1: Kaban-chan awakens on a park full of animal girls called Friends, and joins Serval and Lucky Beast on a quest to find the library and discover what kind of animal she is.
Season 2: Kyururu, accompanied by Serval and Caracal, follow clues left in Kyururu's notebook in the search for "home."

So, there we are. The first half of this month is unremarkable except for one video near the end in which the summary is so long I dumped it into a separate post. Our time in limbo is ending; you are entering purgatory.

Part 2 - February (First Half) - A Flame is Lit

2/05* Kemono Friends 2 Episode 4 "Different Kinds of Houses"

2/06* Doubutsu Biscuits x PPP Third Single "Hop in! Japari Beat" PV

2/06 Jaguar has arrived! / Japari ga Yatte Kita zo! (https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm34589703))
- Really more of a highly overdue S1 work given the choice of characters, but Kemono Friends it is. A hand-animated parody of "Akari-chan ga Yatte Kita zo", a well-known video from GYARI (best known for "Akane-chan who will listen to anything you say.") I thought this might be a Jaguar-driven UTAU but it's the original audio. It's still cute, though.

2/07 Komiya Friends 2 ~Hop in! Japari Beat~ (https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm34593437))
- A voice MAD cover of Japari Beat by Idolmaster's Komiya Kaho, or more accurately, her UTAU. Although it's really not quite just her UTAU, since that they've replaced not only all the vocal parts with Kaho's voice, but all the instruments as well. Those of you who have heard Japari Beat may remember that it is instrumentally backed by trumpets and near an entire brass band, so the results of replacing the whole thing with Kaho voice clips are... quite something. As always, the effort the Japanese people into random MADs never fails to impressive.

2/12* Kemono Friends 2 Episode 5 "Human's Strength"

2/13* Kemono Friends 2 Opening Theme

2/14 Yukkuri commentary on KF2 #5 (https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm34631105))
- And here we fucking go. First, what it is: an anaylsis/commentary video of Kemono Friends Episode 5 narrated by the omnipresent yukkuri voice that's everywhere on Nicovideo. At it's core, it's not that unusual: it's essentially vblog commentary with impressions and criticisms of about an anime episode. What IS sort of unusual is the amount of fame it received: it's not every day that a video featuring an animatronic voice merely talking about an anime gets nearly 3K mylist. (Incidentally, one must thank the Japanese tendency to produce videos utilizing text-to-speech and powerpoint-style presentations, rather than creators forcing people to listen to their dumb voice and look at their dumb face for fifteen minutes. Talking head videos should be outlawed.) At nearly 17 minutes, the whole thing is too long to summarize cleanly, so I'll just try to cover the major points... in another post, since it got really, really long.

>>21120192
If I were to include the reasoning and examples underlying all the theses of the video this post would just become 17 minutes of translated text and fill up like ten posts, so I'll try to cut the examples as short as possible and present just the underlying points.

2/14 Yukkuri commentary on KF2 #5 (https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm34631105))

>In this video, I will be analyzing Kemono Friends 2 Episode 5. Why? There were so many things I wanted to say about the episode that I decided I'd get it all out at once. Since this is supposed to be an analysis video, I will attempt to do so without falling back on comments like "how dare you drive out director Tatsuki" or "they changed the director so it's shit."

>The first and foremost is that the whole thing feels "farcial" (茶番感). And by this, I mean, it feels like "the plot has been written, and now the characters must act it out." Essentially, "doesn't this problem only exist so that Kyururu can solve it?" One might ask, "wasn't S1 the same way?", but this is not the case.

Followed by general criticisms of the episode and an extended comparison between S1 and S2 -

- S1: Animal traits are integral to the story. S2: Animal traits are irrelevant trivia. (ex: house building vs territory fight)
- S1: Character's ideas are naturally motivated. S2: Character's ideas come out of fucking nowhere. (ex: snow house vs kamizumo)
- S1: Friends, living according to their instincts, encounter problems which are naturally solved. S2: Friends with personality problems appear and must be fixed. (ex: owls vs pandas)

I've left out pretty much all the motivation for these theories so they might may sound profoundly unconvincing, but that can't be helped. You can always watch it for video yourself. (If you speak any Japanese and have even any passing interest in this whole series of events, even if not Kemono Friends itself, I think it's worth watching as some sort of amazing organic phenomenon.)

This follows up with a criticism of the nonsensical nature of the panda episode (#2), a criticism of the nonsensical nature of the gorilla episode (#5). Recapping (ten full minutes later), the final main criticisms are:

- Difficult to see why the animal traits are of any purpose.
- Difficult to see why characters created the things they did.
- Friends show up with completely unnecessary personality defects.
- The problems encountered in the episode remained fundamentally unresolved.

Choice quotes from the video:
>In Kemono Friends 2, rather than "this character has this personality so these problems occur," the feeling is, "this character has this personality in order to make these problems occur." [Image 1].
>It renders the characters into inanimate objects, like those completely incapable characters from shitty narou novels who exist mostly to make the main character look good you see from time to time.
>I said it again, but I'll repeat it: even I were to completely set aside the Tatsuki incident as a circumstance that couldn't be avoided, I should have been able to enjoy of the world and Friends of Kemono Friends, and I'm overcome by sadness that the only thing that comes to mind when I watch Kemono Friends is "unappealing." [Image 2].

So there it is, a highly stripped-down summary of a spectacular attempted takedown of the entirety of Kemono Friends 2. Is it accurate? Who knows. You'd have to watch Kemono Friends 2 to find out and I wouldn't wish that kind of thing on anyone. What I do know, though, is that this is just the first of what will eventually become dozens and dozens of videos dissecting, nitpicking, and bashing at the innumerable not-so-loved developments of Kemono Friends 2, from the animation to the voice direction to the plot to the underlying corporate structure and really just about anything else you can think of. Enjoy the bashing or enjoy the schadenfreude; whichever it is, there's going to be more of it.

Incidentally, I have a feeling that the text bricks I'm dumping are going to start composing most of the thread, I already feel like I'm spamming. I guess this is the kind of shit that normally belongs in a blog. From this point on I'll probably host my posts externally and just link them to this thread. (Also, forgot my image.)

>>21115697
I looked back on the videos from those early months and wow, those were the days. S2 certainly didn't come even close to materializing the same level of enthusiasm, but through January when you judge the popularity judged by the standards of a "regular anime" that hasn't become some sort of ludicrous Nicovideo phenomenon, it's not too bad a showing.

>>21117858
The original Carnival Friends is actually the most favorited Kemono Friends video of all time, so good eye. When S1 was at it's height, the sheer quantity and quality of Nicovideo output and enthusiasm caused people who drank a little too much of the kool-aid to proclaim that the series could be the savior of Nicovideo itself. Ah, to be young again.

>>21120308
You are not spamming. I loved season 1 and I am fascinated by your analysis of season 2 and the Japanese reaction to it. If you keep posting it will be appreciated.

Since we're talking about Kenomo Friends, watch this.
https://files.catbox.moe/3h3p04.mp4
I don't have the source.

A list of 2channel's English boards.
http://namelessrumia.heliohost.org/w/doku.php?id=2ch_embassy

>>21120681
That's easy. It's just Susumu Hirasawa x Kemono Friends.

https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm32568483

Try this for something similar:

https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm32198436

>>21120741
Thank you, anon.

the fate of all fictional girls

the fate of all 2D girls

>>21123672
Please explain.

>>21123672
translate it weebs

>>21113858
>>21120192
>>21120268
>>21120308
I am not into Kemono Friends, but these posts are the kind that makes these threads worthwhile. It's interesting to read about how events in otaku culture unfold. I have to watch KF now.

>>21123910
you really dont, you kind of missed the boat on the S1 hype. its really cute but also incredibly mediocre. its charming and comes from the heart which is the only reason why its popular

>>21123820
>armed JK hanko-chan seems to have gotten pretty popular, so I've been getting messages like "just my type," "would rape," "would abuse," "would hang her from her ankles" and so on.
>now, see here,
on my first reading it i thought it was just one of his characters but hanko-chan is actually a stand-in for the artist himself, which makes the whole thing that much weirder.

also, you can be an armed JK too! of course, if you can't draw nobody will pay attention to her, but that's the difference between people who can draw and people who can't.

http://shindanmaker.com/874076

>>21124103
I am so sick of shindanmaker

>>21120308
thanks for the write-ups anon, I'm interested on them, specially with the episode 5 cutoff.

>>21124103
She's cute. Would cop a feel in a densely packed train.

Does anyone know what this says?

>>21126061
Let's not turn this into a request thread, "please". Ask >>>/wsr/.

>>21108337
>Director is fired over something
The official story was that he was using the Kemono Friends IP for personal commercial projects without permission from Kadokawa, but the whole episode seems too bizarre for that to be the truth. A lot of rumours speculate that Kadokawa wanted too big a cut and the director called their bluff

>>21126173
What I knew (or thought I knew) from the debacle is the former.
>Kemono Friends IP for personal commercial projects
Except if by "personal commercial projects" you mean extra episodes of Kemofre that Kadokawa didn't even pay them to make.

>>21120268
Thanks for these. I really liked KF when it came out. I felt it had somewhat the same vibe as Girls und Panzer, Strike Witches and Touhou in general when it came out, though some people may disagree.
I was dillydallying on whether I should watch the new season or not after the director incident but now Im thinking I shouldnt.

>>21118651
Moon Sign “Moonlight Ray”
Hail Sign “Hailstorm”
Flower Sign “Gorgeous Sweet Flower”
Fire Sign “Agni Shine”
Hell Sign “Mountain of a Thousand Needles”
Sun Sign “Royal Flare”
Cold Sign “Lingering Cold”
Hermit Sign “Fenghuang Egg”
Puppeteer Sign “Maiden’s Bunraku”
Noisy Sign “Phantom Dinning”
Cherry Blossom Sign “Perfect Ink-Black Cherry Blossom -Spring Sleep-”
Oni Sign “Blue Oni Red Oni”
Firefly Sign “Meteors on Earth”
Vocal Sign “Howl of the Horned Owl”
Origin Sign “Ephemerality 137”
Flame Blossom Sign “Frosty Flame of Flowers”
Titanium Blossom Sign “Mister’s Flame of Frosty Flame -Spring Frosty Flame-Red”
Zoom Sign “Holly Haze of Frosty Fire Glow-”
Rain of Crimson Light “Zoom of Crimson Light”
Mountain of Blue Frosty Light"
Rain of Fire and Thunder Rainbow Rainbow Rainbow Rainbow Rainbow Rainbow Rainbow Rainbow Rainbow Rainbow Rainbow Rainbow Rainbow Rainbow Rainbow Rainbow Rainbow Rainbow Rainbow Rainbow Rainbow Rainbow Rainbow Rainbow Rainbow Rainbow Rainbow Rainbow Rainbow Rainbow Rainbow Rainbow Rainbow Rainbow Rainbow Rainbow Rainbow Rainbow Rainbow Rainbow Rainbow Rainbow Rainbow Rainbow Rainbow Rainbow Rainbow Rainbow Rainbow Rainbow Rainbow Rainbow Rainbow Rainbow Rainbow Rainbow Rainbow Rainbow Rainbow Rainbow Rainbow Rainbow Rainbow Rainbow Rainbow Rainbow Rainbow Rainbow Rainbow Rainbow Rainbow Rainbow Rainbow Rainbow Rainbow Rainbow Pink Metallic Light Light Rainbow Rainbow Shining Light Light Rainbow Shining Shining Light Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining Shining...

https://ask-gpt.tumblr.com/post/184010409892/moon-sign-moonlight-raynhail-sign

Have you ever commissioned a Japanese artist, especially for non-lewd stuff? How did it go? Was it expensive?

>>21130434
I plan to, one day, and I expect it to be. I think I've seen prices in the six figures (yen) floating around.

Continuing from >>21120268, 300+ ML videos from the third week of Feburary 2019. This is somewhere around where things start to get ugly. Most of the drama revolves around the appearance of the season one protagonist, Kaban-chan, and the events of episodes 5 and 6. Were people delighted to see a beloved character from the previous season take center stage again?

February (Week 3) - The Lights are Going Out Across Japari Park

At this rate Zeno's paradox says I'll never get to the end of February given that this particular post covers half as much time as the previous one. Unfortunate. I do plan to try and try to speed through this as much as possible. Incidentally, the answer to the previous question was no.

2/15* Connecting the Stars GothicxLuck Official MV

2/19 Kemono Friends 2 Episode 6 "A New Dawn"

2/19 Theory of Kaban-chan being the mastermind (https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm34656520))

Episode 6 aired on Nicovideo at 02:35 and this video was submitted at 08:46, so one can conclude that instead of going to sleep after watching his late-night anime like a normal person, the uploader of this video instead stayed up all night messing with AviUtl to make this video just for you.

- Thesis: "Perhaps Kaban is actually the mastermind, manipulating friends from behind the scenes?" The first of a number of "theory videos" created about season two, this one being one of the few serious theories that were presented before the whole train went off the rails. Episode 6, in some sense, left a lot of room for speculation. A massive laboratory? Dismantled Lucky Beasts? Beast friends? Friend experimentation? Could it be that the person behind all of these sinister events was... Kaban-chan? The theme of episode 5 was "animals under the control of humans," after all. Perhaps the strange events and inexplicable decisions we've been seeing up until now were just all part of a plan. Perhaps the characters were are drugged and put to sleep... with their TEA. How else can you explain Kaban doing nothing to help while Serval and Caracal were attacked in their sleep, by a vial of dangerous Cerulium carelessly left on a table? Isn't that a little too convenient? And if that's the case, is that really something the something the Kaban-chan we know would ever do? Is she even Kaban-chan at all? After all, she calls herself "watashi" now, and referred to Lucky Watch as "that thing." Is that really the way someone would refer to a comrade of many journeys? Perhaps this person who calls herself Kaban is not Kaban-chan at all, but simply some person - or, perhaps, something - that has taken to calling itself Kaban-chan. The tofu thickens.

Honestly the whole thing is sort of a vacuous conspiracy theory but the person who made this video was clearly having fun, it did highlight some things that people thought were off about the episode, it's possible that parts of this theory actually might have some explanatory power behind it, and it did so way more politely than what's up next.

2/19 Der Fuhrer appears to be upset that the leaked Kaban-chan storyboard was real (https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm34656550))

- Why rant about something when you could get Hitler to do it for you? The first of many Downfall parodies to come, where Der Fuhrer delivers an unhinged rant about everything he hated about Kemono Friends 2 after learning that a storyboard leaked months ago was real. Up until now even the videos criticizing Kemono Friends 2 have been somewhat "professional" about it, but this one chucks that all up the window and simply starts unloading on the staff, singling out producer Hosoya, scriptwriter Matsumoto, and director Kimura for an avalanche of insults along with an original sprite animation that rolls in IP creator Mine to boot. The bashing itself isn't exactly a new phenomenon, as people had been doing so on various anonymous ghettos for a while, but if my reckoning is correct this is it's first major showing on Nicovideo. The majority of the hatred is unloaded onto director Kimura himself, who is taken to task for, among other things, blocking people who criticize the show, a poorly chosen quote about how "it doesn't matter who the director is", referring to S1 as a two-person journey rather than a three-person journey, generally dunking all over S1, lackluster animation quality, an avalanche of specific criticisms of various points of the show, and overall a proclamation that this guy was roughly as bad as Stalin.

There's a second half to this featuring the Joker, subbed in Japanese in the style of Downfall that I'll get to in another post since it won't quite fit here. (Vader choking that one guy and Pennywise luring Georgie to his death are also popular scenes for radical subtitling.) It's a testament to the excellent acting in the original that the Joker "sounds" so reasonable while saying rather insane things that it doesn't even feel unnatural.

>>21132438
The second half of the video features the Joker, complaining that Kemono Friends Project is awful while "true friend" (a derogatory term for fans who generally sided with KFP in the wake of Tatsuki's dismissal) Batman beats the shit out of him trying to get him to take it back. If the first half of the video was about the season itself, the second half is itself about the drama and online shitflinging that surrounds the season. What a mess.

Excerpt:
"Mein Fuhrer, if you don't like it, couldn't you just not watch it?"
"Shut the fuck up! I fucking hate it! I haven't even watched more than a few scenes here and there!"
"Then, why are you so mad about it?!"
"I could easily ignore it if it were some derivative work but it's the fucking OFFICIAL version!"

2/19 Der Fuhrer appears to be upset about KF2 episode 6 (https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm34660004))

- You can tell people were extra mad about this one because there were two Hitler rants about it in one day. This one just goes totally ham on Kemono Friends season two for representing a bad end to season one (Kaban and Serval separated, Serval's memories erased) and generally making a complete garbage fire of things, copy-pasting all the appearance while retaining nothing that made it good, and having cognizable explanation for being the way it is other than that the writer simply hated Kemono Friends. At some point Der Fuhrer just degrades into a pitiful bargaining wreck, which I guess was how it was in the original. What a series.

Chaser: Hitler reacts to Kemono Friends S1.

Excerpt:
"What were fan's reaction to Serval and Kaban-chan's touching reunion?"
"Mein Fuhrer... Serval didn't recognize Kaban-chan. Not a trace of their companionship could be seen."
* Hitler removes glasses.
"Everyone who felt sick when Kaban-chan treated Boss like an inanimate object, leave this room at once."
* Everyone files out.
"I can't believe Serval is FUCKING DEAD."

2/20 (Reupload) Nomurish Kemono Friends First Half (https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm34661026))

- Finally, a break from the negativity that seems to have been seeping into things... and of course, it's yet another super overdue season one video, this time Episode 1 dubbed over in "Nomurish". Explanation: Around the time of Final Fantasy 7, the character designer for FF changed from Amano Yoshitaka to Tetsuya Nomura, at which point in time the term "Nomurish" was coined to make fun of some of the unique notions and styles that he added to the game. Fast-forward nearly twenty years (oh god where does the time go) and the term lives on, one spinoff of which is the "Nomurish series" adaptation where characters are dubbed over with lines that could have come out of FF7. EG, Kaban's "don't eat me" gets translated into "Don't eat me like some common beast! Instead, fight with me to change the world!" and so on. The entire episode (well, the first half here) is rendered into this kind of absurdity.

And finally, the last video of the week:

2/22 Theory of Kaban-chan being the mastermind Part 2 (https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm34671584))

The first part of this video series theorized that Kaban was not Kaban-chan at all, but what if this is the real Kaban-chan, whose body has been hijacked by some malevolent entity? After all, she seemed to have SOME reaction to Serval, so does this mean her memories are still there? This, plus a cavalcade of observations about points in the show that didn't seem quite right, are piled on top of each other to the support the theory that the thing inside Kaban has been pulling the strings the whole time.

- Kaban has been observing Kyururu the whole time
- Kyururu is a memory-wiped cyborg created by Kaban by fusing human and machine
- Kyururu's "house" is the place she lived in the outside world before Kaban got her
- The unusual behavior of the other Lucky Beasts, such as talking to Friends, is because they are Kaban's experimental creations

(Nobody ever does explain, as far as I can tell, why Lucky Beast can talk to Caracal when they don't normally talk to Friends. There is an alternative theory where Caracal is secretly a human. Wild.)

And then, sadly, it's revealed that this whole theory is an extended farce. "Honestly I don't think that the people who made this actually thought it through this far." Followed by an even WILDER conspiracy theory, in which Kaban and the owls are identified as part of the Tatsuki faction and made evil, and all the members of Tatuki's unauthorized animation 12.1 are sarcastically called out when faced with a バス敵 Cerulean of their own. If you couldn't laugh you would cry.

Anyway, that's it for the first half of the second half of February. I won't be able to finish off February by tomorrow but I'll try to get it in a few days. I feel like I've done more talking about the series itself than talking about the videos about the series which isn't quite appropriate for this venue will try to keep it in mind.

I was a little rushed for time this time around so there's probably some editing errors, repetition, and various other flaws in the summaries I made this time around. I will try to get out the next part in a timely fashion but it might be Wednesday before I have time to do it.

>>21126173
>>21126209
Sometime at the start of April someone has a theory about that (regarding the structure of Kemono Friends as a media mix project) which I'll cover if I ever make it to April. The thing about these theory videos is that while you watch them, they seem really convincing whether or not they're actually true. I guess that's why there's so many unironic conspiracy conspiracy theorists out there.

>>21131720
Per drawing?

>>21132542
take your time anon

>>21132652
Yep.

>>21137736
These must be either popular artists or extreme tasks like "draw every single named Gundam character". I can't imagine even a talented, experienced and hard-working rando charging 1000$ for an average colored digital drawing anywhere in the world.

>>21137784
Well, you'll find out if you ever try to commission one, won't you?

>>21137817
Yes. Now I want to try to commission something just to find out if that's true. Though if it were, I'd expect legions of Western artists offering their services in broken Japanese, which doesn't seem to be happening.

I've searched warosu for keywords like "commission" and found posts suggesting prices of $50-$500 for a color image or $100 for a manga page from a good artist. Those posters didn't say where they got them. The majority of commission talk is in the monstergirl thread, but they work with Western artists there. (Apparently some anon has spent $15k on commissions.) The most practical thread I have found about commissioning a JP artist is >>/jp/thread/S11149678.. In 2013 bkub asked anon for $50 for three drawings of Ciel.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mkkYvaNXE1ualkUmh6KHZCcKeDX-bpO8-OKj0VNQTOg/edit
>151 : 無題 2018/07/10 07:02:01 No.10631308
>俺が聞きたかったのは海外の東方2次創作文化だったんだが…
We too, Toshiaki, we too. What I am quoting is a thread where 2channers went on /jp/.

>>21139075
>ゆかりんのどこが好き？みたいなスレみてたら全部だ！があってダメだった

>>21139075
>>21139187
Translate it weebs.

>>21139250
https://translate.google.com/

>>21139250
The pleasure of being cummed inside.

>>21139075
>boobhuスレいいよね
sasuga japan

i woke up to momocashew writing an apology over some tweets she made about mental illness. does anyone know if the deleted tweets were archived somewhere? missed all the juice.

>>21139075
I like how they take like ten posts to figure out where "2hu" comes from.

>>21139075
> グーグル翻訳でいけるかと思ったがダメだった
Oh the irony.

>>21143240
The most relatable post I've ever Google Translated.

>>21139075
>By the way, it seems that Tenko has eaten Frankfurt by a thread.
>A funny material like Tenko eating a frank-flavored drawing
No one can resist corndog Tenshi, her appeal transcends cultural boundaries.

An anon on /wsr/ (>>>/wsr/652262) posted an original pic his grandfather took in 1965.

>>21124123
i am so sick of picrew

>>21124123
>>21144913
Lets destroy them all!

bump

I'm behind on my original video report, but there's something remarkably stupid going on right now in the KF fan world, so I'll just post about that instead: earlier today, the administrator of Kemono Friends Channel, which is pretty much THE Kemono Friends matome site by this point, got a mail presuming to be one Eiji Kato from Age Global Networks, a founding member of Kemono Friends Project, asking him if they could meet in person to explain the truth of some of what has been going on (the exact event that will be explained is not clear.)

The administrator subsequently made a post about it. The instant feedback he has been received has been roughly along the lines of:

- they're lying
- don't go
- consult a lawyer
- consult the police
- bring a lawyer
- bring the press
- bring a recording device
- bring MULTIPLE recording devices
- bring a private security company
- make sure the meeting is held within visual range of a police box
- make sure a live record is being streamed
- don't go even if you bring a lawyer and a bodyguard
- consult a lawyer even if you don't go
- don't forget Akari went missing after the scripts incident
- bring the fucking police
- you're going to be sued
- you're going to be arrested
- you're going to be murdered by the yakuza
- really you should probably warn your family just in case

I think we can safely say at this point in time that fans at this point in time have remarkably little faith in Kemono Friends Project. Also I'm... mostly sure that this is shitposting. Or at least, I strongly suspect that most of it is. Like, probably? I don't think that people actually believe that they plan to kidnap or murder him? It seems really implausible. And honestly at this point in time it's not immediately clear that the email wasn't spoofed to begin with so this could all be a gigantic shit festival over literally nothing.

http://kemono-friendsch.com/archives/81773

My own personal take: I figured it's probably nothing, but also that there's also a fairly nontrivial risk they would try to sue him or have him arrested on libel charges (there have been some extremely derogatory rumors about Hosoya-P posted to the site lately), so I told him he should consult a lawyer anyway.

I have found an interview with the Japanese demoscener 0x4015 whose work I admire. He famously made this thing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFoyJED5A4s
That YouTube video was generated in real time by a Windows program measuring only 4088 bytes. In the interview he talks about the demoscene in Japan, his history with it and the Sharp X68000.
https://6octaves.blogspot.com/2017/06/interview-with-japanese-demoscener.html

>>21154168
I didn't know there were demosceners here, I like watching demos too.

That's really impressive for a 4k, it would win most 64k competitions. My favorite 4k is "Yellow Rose of Texas" but it is much older and not as sophisticated.

o<

>>21154168
Very interesting interview. Shows more of the elusive side of doujin software.

I am interested in Japanese mask wearing culture. I guess this is a fetish of mine.

>>21157424
If there more to it than "have cold, wear mask (sometimes decorated)"?

>>21157547
I believe there is also a privacy side to is, iirc. That said, there might be more to it that only a true facemask otaku could shed light on

>>21157626
Do facemask otaku exist?

>>21157690
They're probably overlapped with the otaku that wear headbands and certain gun otaku.

>>21157749
Cool
I personally feel like I watched too much Japanese camgirls and became addicted to the masks instead of girls

>>21157763
>became addicted to the masks instead of girls
That's healthier.

>>21157763
Do you find disposable medical masks more attractive than fashionable masks?

>>21157856
Overall, yes. I think pure black masks can be hot too, but other doesn't do much for me.

Damn, Google Translate works so well for Chinese. I envy sinoboos.

japanese tabloids are a work of art.

>>21151153
>you're going to be murdered by the yakuza
KF is getting crazy these days

>>21161029
translate it weebs

>>21161436

>>21157763
I can't get off on camgirls so this is more out of curiosity. Can you elaborate on what camgirl culture is like in Japan? I'm hoping it would feel like somewhat of an intimate experience. The closest I can relate to is probably something like a 雑談 stream from a vtuber. I'd prefer if they don't show any nudity and I'm assuming that's out law'd anyways. And if you don't mind can you share some of the girls you follow?

>>21162190
>Can you elaborate on what camgirl culture is like in Japan
I am not sure but it feels like something more amateur than something similar in the West
>I'm hoping it would feel like somewhat of an intimate experience.
Yes it kinda does, because looks like Japanese girls tend to type and chat themselves instead of Western thots who leave it to operators

You can try these
@Nayo259
@ex_sync

>>21162967
I clicked the links in their profile and found what looks like amateur gravure content. In it neither of them was wearing a mask. I am disappointed.

>>21163073
What?

Anybody have any experience talking with Japs online? Is there anything in particular they like to talk about or that will get them talking? I've made a couple of friends but it's really hard chatting with them, even on subjects they like I have to lead most of our conversations. I know enough Japanese to carry on basic conversations but it's a really awkward spot to be in.

I don't know if it's just a Japanese thing or if I just have bad conversationalists as friends.

>>21165881
You mean texting? Then yes. I had a chat with a nice girl from Japanese twitter for a couple of months, she turned out to be a trap though

>>21165881
treat them like just another person and be lucky enough to find someone with the disposition or free time to talk aimlessly over the net.

>>21167763
>be lucky enough to find someone with the disposition or free time to talk aimlessly over the net
It's kind of funny to describe free time to talk aimlessly over the net as a scarcity on /jp/. Regarding that, perhaps >>21165881 should go on 2chan or 5ch (nee 2ch).

>>21167872
I was talking about the other party.
You can also poke people who look like they'd be responsive on twitter.

>>21168040
>I was talking about the other party.
Right, but if there are /jp/sies on Twitter, there must be Toshiaki, too. Is anyone here familiar with https://pawoo.net/? I don't know enough Japanese to really determine if it's friendly, but it should be more interested in otaku culture than Twitter.

>>21168067
oh in that sense. Also you'd be better off on friends.nico than pawoo.

The M87 has hit Pixiv. A new wave of space gijinka incoming?
https://www.pixiv.net/search.php?word=%E3%83%96%E3%83%A9%E3%83%83%E3%82%AF%E3%83%9B%E3%83%BC%E3%83%AB&s_mode=s_tag_full&order=date_d

I said I'd do something a week ago and then I didn't because I've been busy with life stuff, following some of the ludicrous yaraon-tier shit that's been going on, and going at it with other KF fans with knives in hand.

Really brief preview of something that happened later (it's on-topic because it involves Japanese SOCIAL MEDIA): the lead producer for KF2 was caught rabidly shitposting on a Twitter alt / Futaba / 5ch in the general direction of unhappy fans and even the S1 director, and earlier today TV Tokyo had to issue an official apology for it. I would have preferred one of those full-blown press shazai conferences where the president of the company and the responsible individual slowly walk out in front of a stage and talk about how awful they were but you take what you can get.

The whole thing is profoundly stupid because up until about a week ago "the KF2 people hate fans and S1" was an absolutely nonsensical conspiracy theory invented by unhinged fans and now suddenly it's true. It's really fucking unreal. Remember, kids, if you're going to shill, don't do it from the company network or an account tied to your fucking corpmail. What a time to be alive.

Oh man that helps me understand all those Kemono Friends threads on Futaba, figuring out what's actually happening there was too much for me since my Japanese is still limited

>>21177745
Generic moebait animal girls are serious business.

>>21177745
wait, that was real? hahahahaha

Are you trying to archive somebody's whole long-ass Twitter feed with all the pictures in the best possible quality? Here is what you can do on Linux or Windows Subsystem for Linux. You will need https://github.com/twintproject/twint and https://github.com/stedolan/jq..

mkdir foo
cd foo
twint --json --stats --username foo -o tweets.json | tee tweets.txt
# take it easy for a few hours
jq -r '.photos[] | (. + ":orig")' tweets.json > photos.txt
wget --restrict-file-names=windows -i photos.txt

Been really into Stardom lately

>>21139075
Reminds me of when I was eating in a tempura place in Akiba last Christmas. A few minutes after the guy next to me sat down and got his meal, he pulled out his phone and started browsing 5ch.

I felt a great pride, knowing that I was sitting next to the famous and honourable Toshiaki...

>>21179493
Is it acceptable to browse 5ch in public in Japan?

>>21177854
>Generic moebait animal girls
this is exactly why the nexon game and KF2 flopped. it isn't surprising that KFP still can't figure this out.

>>21178968
Thanks. I've always wanted to mess around with Twitter data but the API is fucking awful and scraping is annoying as it is a constantly moving target.

>>21177745
ah, I remember when I wholeheartedly believed S2 problems were caused by them not quite understanding S1

bump

I looked up pics of girls with pectus excavatum today because I was wondering what Utsuho would look like without her chest eye.

>>21188779

>>21181386
Lol look at this poor dude

>>21198102
?

Yesterday I saw an full-blown itasha with custom plates parked at a local company.

I'm fairly sure that kind of thing would get you keyed on principle in most of America but there are a lot of Asians around here so I guess nobody even bats an eye.

>>21206830
What characters did it feature?

>>21206936
Kurumi on all sides and a Kurumi vanity plate.

At the rate I'm going (which is not at all) I'll never write anything else so from this point on I'm just going to do descriptions instead of summaries. It's not so much that the task is actually difficult, so much as the righteous anger high wore off and now cataloging the road to ruin is just kind of depressing.

Given how much I reduced the scope of the task I hope I can aim for existent updates, starting with one today.

>>21213853
yeah i feel you

unsubtle bump

>>21208632
What /jp/ vanity plate would you get? I wonder if the anon from 2008 used any of the suggestions he received.
>>/jp/thread/S570761

Finally, an update. Of sorts. Before I actually do the February update (man that was a long time ago), a recommendation for those of you who are Japanese-certified and want an introduction to the whole shitfest without watching 100,000 videos:

Yukkuris Discuss the History of the Kemono Friends Shitstorm
https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm34965186 (First Half)
https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm35007728 (Second Half)

It even goes out of its way to introduce the history of the phenomenon that was S1 and briefly introduces the game, so it's accessible to even those who know literally nothing about Kemono Friends or why anybody liked it, and even summarizes every major post-airing scandal. Honestly it would be a bigger public service to translate this particular video than anything else and while I'm too much of a flake to do it I'll see if I can't harass a sub group I know to do it.

And now, what was originally promised, the last week of February's videos, featuring more dissatisfaction with Kemono Friends 2 as a hole, dissatisfaction with particular episodes of Kemono Friend 2, and the usual mind-blowing galaxy-brained ingenuity that only Japanese people can muster.

February (Week 4) - Prelude to War, 400+ ML videos.

2/23 The gang from Kaiji watches the problem scenes of Kemono Frineds 2

- Kaiji is full of people daring audaciously, succeeding implausibly or failing spectacularly, and at every corner there's a reaction for it. And what better spectacular failure to witness than Kemono Friends 2? A digest of amazing (read: not amazing) scenes from Episode 6 decorated with Kaiji characters muttering, whispering, or generally losing their shit over what happens.

2/23 An analysis of the problems in the script of Kemono Friends 2 (Yukkuri)

- Another yukkuri explanation by a different uploader. Eventually goes on to produce a bunch more of these videos, but this is the first.

- THESIS ONE: in KF 1, character's overarching goals, intermediate goals, immediate goals, and character's actions are all linked. Characters act according to motivations and near their goals; each episode is set up overcoming an obstacle to that goal, exceptions being 3, 5, and 8. In KF2, the overarching goal and character's actions seem disconnected and unmotivated; the main characters seem to flail around and somehow land nearer to their objective than they did before. Loosely, the requirements of the plot puppet the characters around. Fundamentally, a good narrative links "objectives" to "actions" to "results" and KF2 doesn't do this. Cue a ton of examples fished from both seasons + Kemurikusa that purport to illustrate this point. (The E6 example illustrates the less-than-completely-helpful Kaban and gives a shoutout to the mastermind movie from earlier, eventually a lot of these videos will end up referencing each other.)

- THESIS TWO: it's hard to discern the personality and philosophy of characters in KF2. S1 illustrates that the "philosophy" (driving actions) behind Kaban's actions are: survival, gratitude, and curiosity. In S2 you can't figure this out because the disjoint between actions and results leaves you wondering what anyone's motivations are. "This is most obvious in the case of Serval, where forget about trying to get a handle on her character, what might possibly be going on in her head is so opaque that it's not clear that she has one at all." And characters respond to situations in ways that seem contrary even to the thin characterizations they do have. Tragic.

- THESIS THREE: If the theme of Kemono Friends 2 is "play" (referencing Kyururu's tendency to resolve situations through games) as opposed to Kaban's "insight", then that in and of itself seems like a nice balance from S1, but as play can only solve mental rather than material problems, KF2 is forced to fall into the structure where the primary obstacle in any given episode is then forced to be the fact that a friend actively won't let the party pass (reminiscent of the "problem friends" phenomenon from the other video). This fatal flaw in one stroke hacks away at competence, consistency, and the "gentle world" of S1. Sad.

- Forgetting even about KF2 being "Kemono Friends," even setting aside 9/25 and all that controversy simply fails at being a story. Presuming the director and scriptwriter weren't incompetent, they were rushed. "The best way to watch this series without getting angry about it is probably to mentally categorize it as simply as one countless secondary works." (Punchline: "If you really forced me to name a single good thing about Kemono Friends 2 I'd probably go with the sexiness of Bottlenose Dolphin's voice. I hope I hear it in my dreams.")

>>21222313
Are these assessments fair? Who knows, I just summarize these, I don't write them. The original work's always right there. Though in my personal assessment all the videos by this particular uploader are worth watching, this being the first one, and one I think really materializes some of the vague dissatisfaction people have had towards K2 up until that point in time (it gets much, much worse, but at this point in time I really think nobody saw it coming.)

Also, I forgot the links to the previous part, they are:

- Kaiji (https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm34675575))
- KF2 Script (https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm34681332))

2/24 Before I knew it the Kemono Friends 2 OP had gotten into an accident with train friends (https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm34685521))

- Finally, some fun stuff before we get back to the rest of the party. At some point someone realized that the call-and-response portion of "Japari Beat" matches up almost perfectly with the call-and-response portion of the (Japanese) Thomas the Tank Engine Season 19 OP and so therefore the only thing that could possibly be done was to mash them together, before rolling the whole thing into an animated PV for "Accidents Will Happen" featuring some horrifying tentacle-powered Emperor Penguin train chasing Arai-san before the whole thing rolls into Japari Library and explodes. It makes about as much sense as it sounds.

2/26* Kemono Friends 2 Episode 7 "Beyond the Speed"

2/26 Theory of Kyururu being the Terminator (https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm34695131))

- Following up on the at least semi-serious "Kaban mastermind" theory that attempted to explain away some fairly unexplicable or dissatisfying actions of hers, this slightly less serious theory attempts to do the same by Kyururu by pointing out that everything she does makes sense if she's the Terminator. 1) the machine she emerges from is a time machine, 2) Kaban's massive laboratory is part of Cyberdyne, 3) Kyururu's right eye lights up in red, 4) Serval and Caracal thump when they fall but Kyururu outright clangs, 5) Kyururu is capable of producing a fairly decent drawing in approximately 0.2 seconds, 6) Kyururu obsesses over the hourglass because she's from the future, 7) Kyururu's shoulders can resist being discloated even by the force of four mighty beasts, 8) you might think Kyururu can't be the Terminator because the Terminator is from a different series (wow) but actually this is just like how Kemono Friends S1 ripped off Planet of the Apes, and also how Terminator 3 and it's new director blatantly gutted the setting of Terminator 1 and 2.

- And finally, 9), which so conclusively proves that Kyururu is the terminator that no other explanation is possible: if you think about Kyururu's position in Kemono Friends 2, she occupies the role that Kaban did in Kemono Friends 1. That is to say, that Kyururu's role is to become Kaban, or rather, that "I will become Kaban" (watashi wa kaban ni naru.) And what do you get if you translate this line into English?

- "I'll be bag."

2/26 I liked these parts of the manga (https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm34694186))

- Someone points out all the parts of the KF2 manga that he liked. Apparently it's significantly better than the anime (probably the lowest bar in the world), but no summary at this time as it's still on my to-watch list. I might check it out one day.

2/27 Yukkuri analysis [Kemono Friends (supplement)] (https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm34700709))

- This is a follow-up by the same author of the original "Yukkuri commentary on KF2 #5" video. I recall this particular uploader as doing both excellent and entertaining analysis but the video is nearly 20 minutes by itself and I just got finished summarizing the other analysis video, so you get a rain check on this one. I hope that I'm able to get around to it when I have time.

Couldn't finish this month in the character limit, so one more post.

>>21222346
2/28 A bird's-eye view of the relay

- Episode 7 involved a relay race with friends running around a fairly massive track. At some point someone noticed that friends seem to appear and reappear at places where they really shouldn't be given that it took some of the fastest friends around much longer to travel between those same points at their top speeds. And so うp takes it upon himself to draw a bird's-eye map of the track itself so we can figure out just precisely where everybody is at any given time. Notice all the friends casually making their way back to the starting point just so they're available to shoot the shit with Kyururu when their scene comes and what might be termed, well, ~highly variable~ speeds when the episode calls for it including a twelve second TRIPLE TIME DASH of everybody including Kyururu to where they need to be for the next scene.

- Incidentally, this video is somewhat accessible even if you don't know Japanese because the absurdity of it is plainly self-evident. If you do that counts then doubly so, it's amazing how reasonable the voice work seems on its own.

2/28 Collected scenes of G. Roadrunner who is now brown-nosing shitbird

- The collected scenes of G. Roadrunner from Episode 7. Everybody likes her. In fact she is probably the first friend in the entire second season who everybody likes, which given that the season is seven episodes at this point is fairly mindblowing. She got nicknamed "brown-nosing shitbird" based on a nonsense comic where characters try to guess where the G. in G. Roadrunner comes from (spoilers: it's "greater") and Kaban-san guesses "gomasuri kusobad" which everybody decided was a great nickname because she really is just a little bit shitheaded. Everybody loves her anyway.

And that's it for February. You might think that things have gotten pretty ugly already, but compared to everything that comes after this all the criticism up until now has been positively lighthearted. It's sometime in March that people really start trying to launch cruise missiles in the general direction of corporate headquarters and the plot takes some turns that makes everything that's happened up until now look completely benign. The pace also accelerates from here on out, too - I covered seven videos with 400+ ML in one week just now, but by the time we get to episodes 9 and 12 people even after filtering by the criteria I've been using here you're looking like ten in one day. Hopefully I survive until then; that's all for today.

Thank you once again for your writeups, they are greatly appreciated.

>>21222385
Thanks again Japari anon, great writeup as usual
>Theory of Kyururu being the Terminator
I finally get the Kyururu arm fanart and it's ingenious
> 2/28 A bird's-eye view of the relay
May I have a link to this one?

I'll never understand this Japanese soul/soulless meme about their moe girl kuso anime. I wish they spent as much time overanalyzing other pointless series like they're Evangelion or something though, since it is sort of amusing.

>>21223468
>I'll never understand
Watch it and find out.

>>21223717
I watched some of it and it was shit. It was an episode about a loudbird being loud and I hated every second of her. Nothing in that episode was endearing, something about llama and a teahouse I think, and it was just so banal it made me wonder why anyone would watch it. Skimming through a couple others didn't bring up anything that interested me either. I fully believe that if it had come out in the exact same way around 2011-2012 it would have been fucking ignored and quietly died like that other similar looking anime that aired the same season as it about the mushroom girls or whatever.

Now that S2 is over, I might watch that through first and then force my way through S1 after and maybe make a report about watching it having not been corrupted with nostalgia, but really I don't think I can muster the effort. I haven't liked anime for a few years now. I remember looking fairly recently and seeing someone made that shitty manga about the quintuplets that I dropped into an anime a while back and dismissing anime as still being shit. There are lots of good manga though. But I don't get it, I'd rather watch DogDays if I want to see animal girls being cute. I think it's because I'm not into phonegames and Fate/Go and Strike Witches and tank girls and ship sluts and all those other kinds of collections of females kinda things.

It just feels like a waste of bad CG that could have been used for GDGD fairies 3 or Tesagure 4. I wish Himote House had been better but they're making these series too short now.
Now that I've been reminded I should check to see if any good shorts are aired lately or just wait for the next run of Fireball.

>>21137948
Did those 3 bkubCiel images ever get posted?

>>21223835
That one is really all about the journey. By the time you reach the end you have seen Kaban prove herself to the other girls, the friendship she cultivated with everyone she met, and how she is willing to sacrifice herself to save them.
I think it's a unique anime for what's being made today but a lot of it looks like mediocre CGDCT with shit visuals.

Do you guys know about any page where I can learn about kamishibai?
I've been watching the Ogon Batto anime lately and now I want to read the original stories.

>>21225459
Sounds like a typical shounen journey with girls the way you described it.

>>21223835
Well that's the problem then, most of what people are discussing happened in the latter half of the show.

>>21225785
So it's a bad show but people memed the ending?

>>21225797
>memed the ending
What does that even mean? I didn't say any of that.

>>21225797
there's about 5000 exits of kaban getting stepped on / maritime accidents if thats what you mean

>>21222970
Relay: https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm34704016
G: https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm34706815

>>21223835
If you're looking for manic comedy in the line of other low-budget MMD-ish shows you're clearly not going to get it; it's (despite what it looks like) a thoughtful story about the growth of the two main characters. It definitely can't be watched out of order.

I want this to be as cut-down as possible because if it goes too long the mods will come kill us all, but if I had to sum it up I'd guess people like the show because of 1. cute girls, 2. "healing"-type show (ie, shows where nothing happens), 3. the "central question" of the story (what happened to the park), 4. investment in the growth of ("watching over") the main characters, 5. "animalistic" traits of the animal girls developed in a way that feels more "naturalistic" and less "service", 6. travelogue atmosphere backed by light mystery and melancholy, 7. a surprisingly moving finale assuming you've bought into the rest of the show. If it's not for you it's not for you.

>>21225677
There's elements of that but with some coming of age story tied in.

If you (or anyone else) wants to know more about the show unironically make a thread in /a/ asking what's so good about the show. I'd recommend against using the existing thread because the recurring threads are mostly made of miserable people holding a neverending wake for Kemono Friends complete with the beating of breasts and tearing of clothes, but I guess they could use some cheering up from time to time so asking there might work too.

>>21225842
Like how people think Eva is all deep and awesome because of its last two episodes in what was otherwise a run of the mill robot show

>>21225875
>If it's not for you it's not for you.
It's not just that. What's so good about it that it warrants "a neverending wake complete with the beating of breasts and tearing of clothes". I don't get people's crazy obsession with it.

>>21226378
>a neverending wake complete with the beating of breasts and tearing of clothes
He listed the reasons why it's a good show but this part also has a lot to do with how complete and utter the franchise's demise was.

>>21226378
It's not the objective quality of a work that inspires this reaction so much as the emotional attachment people have to it (think shooting your dog rather than burning down the Notre Dame) and a lot of people went all-in on it because they loved the world presented.

No die

About a month ago I started my long fall into the rabbit hole of obscure otaku bullshit that is ukagaka. Ukagaka are programs that run these things called ghosts, which are desktop buddies that have anime avatars. This is the database of published ghosts: http://ghosttown.mikage.jp/.. Some ghosts are still being published and updated, and even the ukagaka programs receive regular updates, but it seems that their heyday was in the early-mid 2000's, which is where most of the ghosts in the database are from. The only limits with what you can do with ghosts are your artistic limitations, how much you understand how to write ghost code, or how deep you pockets.

Now I mentioned that ukagaka is "otaku bullshit." Besides the fact that there's almost no documentation outside of Japan, most of the ghosts are based on or around otaku topics and hobbies. The main unifying feature of ghosts is that they're "fake AI", so they'll talk while active. Most ghosts have a specific topic or set of topics to talk about, like music, games, anime, and of course, 2ch. There's quite a few that have a very specific topic that they talk about, such as Ace Combat or Phantasy Star Online. It might be stretching it to call them doujin works on their own, but it's an interesting facet of the culture that is barely known, compared to stuff like maid cafes for example.

Currently, I've been messing around with a ghost called Hinoki the Chopsticks. There's a very very tiny amount of documentation on ghosts, but one person did make a pretty thorough guide to the inner workings of one, and they included a generic template ghost (it's kind of confusing because the "brains" of a ghost is also called the ghost, while the visuals are called the "shell"). Using that ghost, Hinoki's shell, and a lot of Google Translate on the files of other ghosts, I've started learning the in's and out's of these things. So far I've been able to make a daily fortune gatcha (but I can't figure out how to make a lockout) and a game of Rock-Paper-Scissors (but I can't figure out how to make a rematch option).

>>21236537
http://keshiki.nobody.jp/index_e.html

Very cool anon! I can't get this one to work for some reason...
http://onmyouryou.sakura.ne.jp/cont/frame_a.htm
cool little site, the ghost is under etwas

I guess I'll dump a few links, when you see the text バルーン it means download for the text bubble stylization

There's are the applications used to install/load ghosts:
http://ssp.shillest.net/
http://crow.aqrs.jp/

Ghosts:
This seems like the most recently used archive of user upload ghosts something akin to the elona sprite upload one
https://sosiremi.appspot.com/

that and ghosttown seems like the 2 biggest ones so far
http://ghosttown.mikage.jp



http://tablesalt.o0o0.jp/ukagaka
http://hinoharu.s54.xrea.com/ghost.html
http://widematrix.s15.xrea.com/ukagaka/ukagaka.html
https://ponkotsu.shillest.net/gallery.html
http://nextlast.sakura.ne.jp/mokuji_u.html
http://www001.upp.so-net.ne.jp/center/
http://www.hironet.jp/ukagaka/
https://hotpepar.blogspot.com/
http://haka.sakura.ne.jp/ghost.html
https://jikutale.zuh.jp/specials
http://siroporo.sakura.ne.jp/htmls/ukagaka.html

Welp, thanks for getting me into this vortex as well. What's your favourite ones? Actually, can you maybe link the Ace Combat one? Took awhile to get the girls settled down enough to take this pic.

3

>>21225875
thank you

>>21237597
>http://keshiki.nobody.jp/index_e.html
Thanks for posting this one, it probably would have been good of me to include it, since it's much better than my summary of ghosts.

>>21237811
This is the one I saw that mentioned that it talked about Ace Combat
http://ghosttown.mikage.jp/cgi-bin/tdb/tdb.cgi?mode=Person;id=1482
It's hard for me to call out one as my favorite, since most of the time I spend with them is Google translating their code at a snail's pace and thinking about how many Japanese puns and jokes are being lost in translation. Out of the admittedly few that I actually have installed, I really like Kyodai (http://ghosttown.mikage.jp/cgi-bin/tdb/tdb.cgi?mode=Person;id=1616).). Her design is really simple and cute, and her Unyuu clone actually has multiple expressions unlike most of his kin. But I ultimately spend the most time with Hinoki (http://ghosttown.mikage.jp/cgi-bin/tdb/tdb.cgi?mode=Person;id=739)) on screen, since her shell is the one I'm using as a base to try to write my own ghost code.

>>21243363
It really put a smile on my face when I saw Emily randomly bringing up her favourite AIR character. Although now I've been too busy building up a harem on my desktop that I've been neglecting each individual one, I gotta say I really like the twins in the middle, my Harunas(though I call them Harukas due to a certain Alicesoft game). I thought the weird belt design was super cute and so did the author apparently. Her partner is a weird black block with the ascii cat face. It surprised me the first time when it suddenly turned into a do S JK. Headless Teia and almost 30s nee san are both really gentle and showers the user with lovely words. The other Emily, with the super moe outfit(kneesocks) is also incredibly adorable especially when you accidentally open a tab on top of her and her bunny eared pet runs off to the other end of the screen （ ´Д｀）.

Maybe I should start a passion project to draw some touhou shells. Did you notice that there were 3 parts to click that could give different dialogue/menus? Some of them really have some fun interactive dialogue too. It's also funny to see it redirect me to some weird thread on a text board.Though it always depresses me to click one of the recommended links to go to a place that's long gone.