The (Trans)Feminine Horror of Metal Sonic (SQZ #1)

Everyone knows that Metal Sonic is cool as fuck. But did you know that he's... a GIRL?

 

    I've always praised 1993's Sonic CD for its take on the damsel-in-distress trope. It's still there, and it doesn't do quite enough to shake the bad taste the trope leaves in my mouth to be wholly exempt of criticism, but it's handled in a way that I've always found at least a little sweet. First of all, the trope's traditional roles are entirely reversed; Sonic the Hedgehog is a love interest to Amy Rose, and not the other way around. That may seem like a bit of inconsequential and semantic phrasing on my part, and it totally is, but that one small change within their dynamic carries so, so much weight and influence on both of their characterizations. At least in canon, Amy's feelings for Sonic are wholly unreciprocated, and that leads to a lot of interesting and (bitter)sweet interactions—Sonic moving on from Amy after saving her before she can even thank him in Sonic CD comes to mind—and even if that fact often leads to Amy falling into something of a "crazy psycho ex" trope (particularly from around 2001-2017 (which I greatly despise), the potential for interesting characterization and interactions between to the two makes the risk of any potential weird misogynistic shortcoming at least a little worth it. Sonic and Amy, in the hands of a skilled and intentional writer, can be something beautiful, and I think, if done right, that can eclipse even the worst of their portrayals.

    There's someone we're leaving out of this damsel-in-distress discussion, though—Metal Sonic. Typically, the "abduct-er" in damsel-in-distress stories is the least fleshed out of the trio; sure, the woman is reduced to an object of desire worth saving specifically for a man's potential romantic or sexual gain, which is a) greatly dehumanizing to all women and b) leads to some pretty one-dimensional characters, but the person who puts her in that situation to begin with (typically also a man) most often does so purely to create a narrative in which a helpless woman is in the position to be saved by a heroic man, with little-to-no genuine thought put into their plot in terms of making a good, impactful story; analyzing their motivations within the context of the narrative (as in, without getting meta with it) often reveals their plans to be grievously nonsensical. Shit doesn't make sense in Super Mario Bros. any more than it does in Sonic CD; these characters are most often moustache-twirling, blank slates of villains who exist to act as nothing but a framing device. In fact, within Sonic CD, Metal Sonic is so underdeveloped that he appears twice across the entire game; once in Collision Chaos Act I, in which he kidnaps Amy, and once in Stardust Speedway Act III, where he races Sonic and is accidentally and unceremoniously killed by Eggman's laser wall of doom, never to be seen again. He also appears in hidden holograms, depicted beating up some animals (serving both as a deterrent to the local wildlife and as a character assassination of the real Sonic), but those are side content within side content; they're entirely missable, and unless you're doing a 100% run, there's basically no reason to find them. So, if that's the extent to which Metal Sonic appears in his debut title... why do we find him so compelling?

    Well, I guess I'd chalk that one up to his design. I mean, a character who appears twice throughout an entire game with ~1 minute of screen-time doesn't just manifest on a game's box art on accident. It's because Metal Sonic's design—and pardon my French, here—fucking owns. It's punchy, it's edgy, it's memorable, and if there's anything that can describe Sonic the Hedgehog in the 90s and 00s, it's those three words. The character's concept—a menacing, robotic facsimile of Sonic the Hedgehog; the clawed antithesis of everything Sonic stands for that practically wears his skin—also captures the imagination. Sonic CD's Metal Sonic is appealing just for the suggestion of his character, and that may seem like a negative, but given the hardware, that's really all they could have done (at least with those FMVs on the cart); this is further demonstrated by the years and years of talented writers' interpretations of the character, from Sonic the Hedgehog: The Movie and Sonic Heroes to, like, all of the comics—all stemming from this one, simple appearance. He's literally just that interesting conceptually.

    Still, I mean, you've seen the title of this post—I'd imagine that, even with all of this in mind, it's a little weird to be considering Metal Sonic from a feminist perspective beyond what I've done already, and even weirder to be considering him from a transgender one. Maybe that's true, but it seems you've forgotten something; you're on my blog, bitch. I can talk about whatever I want!!! Graghhhh!!!!!!!! *T-Rex roar*

    ... Anyway. Let's return to that damsel-in-distress dynamic I outlined at the top. for now, we'll leave Metal Sonic out of the discussion; we're only considering the relationship between Sonic and Amy for the moment. Within their relationship, Sonic acts as something of the epitome of healthy masculinity; he's not afraid to help people in need, and he doesn't expect anything in return for his heroic actions—he doesn't even stick around for thanks. This is a common theme for Sonic's character, and it's the crux of a lot of Sonic stories; we're presented with Sonic, the perfect version of masculinity, who is contrasted with a male antagonist who reflects an imperfect, more toxic version of masculinity that is flawed in some critical way, whether that be over-independence, arrogance, or what have you. By contrast, Amy Rose is the epitome of femininity, at least when written well; it's not super obvious in CD (given that she has no dialogue and has even less screen-time than Metal), but in most games she's prevalent in, she is the ambassador to healthy femininity—in Sonic Adventure, she's able to compassionately resolve Gamma's turmoil by appealing to emotions he didn't even know he was capable of having; in Sonic Adventure 2, she performs a similar miracle by unintentionally echoing the dying words of Maria Robotnik (who, if you subscribe to a particularly Windiian school of thought, is the other 'epitome of femininity'; I dunno, not my area of expertise. Go talk to her about it. Also, tell her happy birthday if you're reading this when it's published!), which flips Shadow's moral framework in an instant. In a way, a lot of Sonic is about dealing with toxic masculinity by appealing to either a healthier version of it, to femininity, or both at once. So, if Sonic is the epitome of masculinity, and Amy is the epitome of femininity... then what's that?

    Metal Sonic is a hollow imitation of Sonic the Hedgehog. Does that mean, then, that Metal Sonic is a hollow imitation of masculinity? Ehhhh, kind of. The thing with Metal is that he isn't necessarily more feminine than he is masculine; he's directly in the middle, and not really in a non-binary way (though that would also be cool), since he is, in body, a direct imitation of a male figure. In mind is a different, more muddy story. In canon, Metal, especially in the hands of later writers, is defined by his desire to be the 'true' Sonic the Hedgehog; something that he generally plans to achieve by killing and replacing Sonic, along with anyone similar enough to him to be a threat (most often Shadow, sometimes Silver). This suggests that mentally, Metal is comfortable with the idea that he is Sonic the Hedgehog. Yet, still, I imagine that the imagery of this cold, emotionless mockery of masculinity, host to a mind that is theoretically separate from its body, is incredibly evocative to a lot of trans people, specifically (but obviously not limited to) trans women—I know that it rings a bell for me. I don't find it all that much of a stretch to introduce Metal being innately feminine into the equation; Metal's body and mind unwillingly being the malleable property of Eggman, affront to his self-actualization, is a distinctly feminine piece of body horror—but introducing the more specific and nuanced aspects of gender into the equation leaves trans people with a fresh piece of representation and, perhaps more impactfully, a powerful and evocative symbol. This reading has brought new life into this character, and I'm happy to see that other people seem to have independently come to it, as well. If you're interested, there's a truly countless amount of fantastic fanworks relating to this interpretation of Metal; below is a panel from one of my favorites, to get you started. Additionally, you'll find a lot of great, similarly-themed stuff in the MetAmy sphere; given what we've talked about, hopefully you're able to piece together why. T4T MetAmy yuri FTW.

Panel from "reformed metal sonic she/they struggle" by scolo-centipede on Tumblr. The image of the disillusioned Metal in that long dress has stuck with me for a long time. She's literally me...

     Anyway, that's about all for this post. I've got more to say, trust me, but all of it's a little out of the scope of a simple blog post, and, after the few weeks I've had, I, truthfully, can't be fucked. This is certainly a call for further ink being spilled on the subject, both from me and from others; this isn't the last you've heard from me on this issue. Sorry about the wait for this one, everybody! Between a hellish streak of personal and work-related issues to dealing with a fucking infestation in my home, I haven't been able to catch a break. I haven't had a good day in, like, a month. God, please save my soul. If that doesn't work, can someone buy me a pack of cigarettes? Pretend I have a Ko-Fi or something. I really should open one of those... then again, I'm not sure if this is worth money. Is this worth money? Tell me. Comment it to me (you can't). E-Mail me. I don't know. I don't know anything anymore. Someone, anyone, free me from my hell...

    I'd like to say thank you for the support this blog has gotten so far, by the way. Even if we immediately went into an impromptu hiatus and missed the majority of May, you all have been great. Big thanks, specifically, to those who have gone out of their way to give me scoops and recommendations for posts. It's really heartwarming to see that people are so interested in the blog that they'd like to pitch in with ideas and suggestions; I never once thought something like that would happen, especially so many times, and it's a really nice feeling. I'm, like, entirely booked up—I've got topics easily stretching most of the summer, and, if you recall how I feel about time pressure from my last newsletter, you know that that makes me very happy. If you'd like to send me some tips or recommendations (or anything, really), my Bluesky DM's are open, my E-Mail (sonicsegajp@gmail.com. Nice name-snipe, right? *Evil laughter*) is there for you, and my Tumblr asks are open for those who'd like to remain anonymous. Not everything can be turned into a post, obviously, but I'm more than happy to get your input.

    Metal Sonic is a scary thing. She's an unwilling imitation of masculinity, her body and mind are not her own, and she wants to kill everybody. If that's not girlhood, what is, am I right?!?!?! Aha. Ha. Ha... okay, I'll go. See you next week... sniffle... sniffle hic...

-Kim 

Corpse Party: Tortured Souls and Slender Man (TVT #1)

It’s often said that April showers bring May flowers, but in this week’s Marvelous Mystery Stream, April showers bring… um, May BLOOD showers. Yeah, dude. Fuckin’... rad.

     Halloween may very well be my favorite holiday of all time. I don’t need to explain myself, as this is a universal opinion that everyone obviously agrees on. As with all seasonal holidays, one of the primary ways our culture signifies the start of the Halloween season is through media—specifically, horror media. Even if I’ve never been particularly scared by horror media (which, I suppose, would then categorically classify most of it as a complete failure), there’s a unique atmosphere inexplicably grafted onto even the worst of it that I just can’t help but enjoy. To me, horror is incredibly interesting conceptually, and you can spend a lot of time analyzing every work that calls the genre home from a lot of varied political and/or philosophical viewpoints. I don’t want to do any of that though—I want the trashy shit. To quote the great Ljot Swanhild, "I like garbage. It's where I DWELL!" Here's what we watched on last night's broadcast.

1. Ghost Stories (2000, episode #7, directed by Shigeki Hatakeyama and written by Ryōta Yamaguchi, ADV dub. Note that I'm not writing anything on this one. Not a lot to talk about, sorry! By the way, I picked this episode specifically to make a Kamen Rider Ryuki joke. Laughs: 0.)
2. Corpse Party: Tortured Souls (2013, episode #2, directed by Akira Iwanaga and written by     Shōichi Satō)
3. Slender Man (2018, directed by Sylvain White and written by David Birke)

    All in all, the broadcast was fun! We've definitely had better (oh, how I miss you, Kaiju board...), but that's on me, and, in any case, it was nice to return to the stream after our small impromptu hiatus. Let's get into my thoughts, because, boy, do I have some. Spoilers for the first two episodes of Corpse Party: Tortured Souls and all of Slender Man.

 This has got to be one of the worst images on the internet. Wholly incomprehensible.

All in attendance of last night's broadcast: AZ, K (that's me!), SP.

 

Corpse Party: Tortured Souls (#2)

"The Kisaragi students learn that Heavenly Host is the site of a murder incident where school teacher Yoshikazu Yanagihori allegedly severed the tongues of four children. Ayumi Shinozaki and Yoshiki Kishinuma are attacked by one of the victims' ghosts, but are rescued by the ghost of Naho Saenoki, a famed blogger who posted the Sachiko Ever After ritual online. Following her advice, they look for the murdered children's tongues to return them and lay their spirits to rest." -Wikipedia

    Honestly, I didn't have nearly as much to say about this one as I thought I would. I'd scoped out the first episode prior to screening this one, and, though useful for setting my expectations, I ended up deeming it non-conducive to a fun viewing with friends (y'know, with the hanging at the end, and all). I chose to screen the second episode, which was generally better about that, even if not by a lot; laughs were had, and even if they were nearly entirely at the expense of what we were watching, that's still a win in my book. Across the board, it was decent—it was well-animated, well-directed, and the atmosphere was great (probably better if viewing in ideal circumstances, which basically means "without the security your friends")—but there's a couple of things that caught my eye. Actually, (one) more than a couple.

 

1. The Gore

    Listen, I'm not about to fault a horror anime for having gore in it. It wasn't particularly disturbing, even if it was graphic, and that's coming from someone who's pretty squeamish—if you've seen, like, the first episode of Elfen Lied, you'll be fine. As for a lot of horror media, the gore is just an inexorable part of the appeal, and it's often something of a shorthand for "good" horror; like, sure, it's probably better if you're not solely relying on it for making the audience uncomfortable, but no one's fault you for it, at least not without being seen as something of a pearl-clutching buzzkill—in fact, a lot of people would gleefully accept it as a full-on substitute for genuinely well-crafted scares, and I find myself unable to really fault that. Part of horror's appeal is the gore, and that's all there is to it. However, I'd argue that, in the case of Tortured Souls, it's actually disproportionately integral to the experience—for example, within seconds of starting the second episode, we see a close-up of an eyeball being stabbed as blood and tears simultaneously gush and leak out of it, all while hearing the victim's screams—and it gets to the point, particularly with how cartoonishly graphic it all is, of near desensitization. The show seems acutely aware of this, as we can see one character, Sakutaro Morishige, occasionally stopping his journey through Heavenly Host to photograph the various rotting corpses and piles of organs (which are so gruesome that he remarks with amazement that "this was once a human being"), regarding them with a sort of quietly perverse amusement and using the images of their mangled bodies as reassurance that he's "still good." 

 

    This is a fairly cut-and-dry case of desensitization. He's in a high-stress situation, and to cope, he chooses to "revel in their misfortune." This spell is broken, however, when he views the pile of organs that was once his beloved Mayu, learning (via ghostly shenanigans) exactly who they used to be. The information drives him mad(der?), leading him to go on a rampage throughout the school. Mayu's death leads us nicely into our next problem...

2. The Fan-service

 

    Please keep the theme of desensitization in the back of your mind as you watch this clip. The only way to convey this scene to you is by witnessing it with your own eyes and ears. If you've seen Tortured Souls, you likely know exactly what I'm about to talk about.

 

    I don't need to explain to you the ties between the sexual (or, at least, the sexually suggestive) and the horrifying in media. They have the same aims (the arousal of specific bodily mechanisms—sexual arousal or fear, respectively)—and that's why they mix so freely. Desensitization often drives one end of the spectrum towards the other; desensitization to horror (specifically, violence) drives a piece of horror media towards sexuality (pointless fan-service, nudity, sex scenes, etc.) and, similarly, desensitization to sexuality drives a piece of sexual media (i.e., pornography) to violence ("rough" porn, choking, beating, etc.*). I hope you've noticed that women are the primary victims of this phenomenon. I feel that, in a way, the clip you just watched is the symbolic culmination of this effect; we get a prolonged, detailed panty shot of an underage girl mere seconds before she is violently dragged across the ground, half-face-down, with her own blood skidding behind her, before she is, in one fell swoop, lifted up and lunged into a wall with such force that her body immediately combusts, leaving her as nothing but a black mark, survived by nothing but some intestines that slowly slide to the ground. There's absolutely nothing funny about this scene on a conceptual level, and yet, all I could find myself doing was laughing. I'll leave you with that, I suppose; I've nothing more to say than that image. Wait, what's that below me? A clarification? You mean I have more to say?! NOOOOOOOOOoooooooo....

 

    *(Let me be clear, here, since, upon rereading, this comes off the wrong way a little in a way I can't easily fix—this is not to say that engaging in these kinks personally is inherently a bad thing, nor is it to say that you'd be a bad person for doing so; between consenting adults, in my opinion, go nuts. It's not at all my intention to imply or suggest that these kinks are the problem here—they aren't. However, you must recognize that women are commonly victimized within these settings—both in mainstream horror films and random porn—and that victimization perpetuates a lot of what women go through. It's less to do with kinks and more to do with how we engage with them in media, if that makes sense. Thanks.)

 

Slender Man (2018) 

"In a small town in Massachusetts, a group of friends, fascinated by the internet lore of the Slender Man, attempt to prove that he doesn't actually exist - until one of them mysteriously goes missing." -IMDB

    This movie was nearly unwatchable, and that's no secret—in fact, I'd offer a cash prize for anyone who could show me someone who genuinely and uncompromisingly enjoyed the film (if I had any cash, anyway). Still, allow me to summarize my general thoughts undeterred. Let me have this.

 

    I was thoroughly impressed by the film's uncanny ability to get unfathomably worse as it went on—which I now know was likely due to a lot of scenes being cut late into production, for reasons we'll get to shortly—but, overall, it was a fun time, if only because I was watching with friends. Removed from that context, I would probably have fallen asleep before the end. There was one moment that I could feasibly see scaring someone—Wren's little body horror episode in the library—but, apart from that, the thing failed to even hold the potential of scaring anybody, and, without having any fun ideas, good acting (I thought Joey King's portrayal of Wren was great. I mean, she's, like, sobbing on the floor and shit, she's really selling Wren's remorse, and... *scary noise* Wuh-oh. I wonder how King will convey Wren's reaction to the abrupt... Oh, oh. She's done crying, now. Okay.), compelling writing or evocative cinematography, the film generally fails spectacularly by practically ever measure by which we typically measure a film's quality. It's so bad that it's impressive, and, in a way, genuinely sort of beautiful. A team of people got together, worked tirelessly to make this product, and it sucked ass. That's great, seriously. Still, I left the film feeling nothing.

 

    In fact, the film was such a nothing-burger that, after the immediate departure of AZ upon the film's closing (me too, dude), me and SP had a lengthy dialogue (over my sick Emily Wants to Play gameplay, of course) that held the express purpose of coming to even the most mundane of conclusions about the movie's thematic aims. A particularly notable point of discussion started early on in the film, when SP, with consideration of the film revolving around a group of teenage girls who are all "messed-up" in some way, wondered aloud if the film had something to do with 2014's infamous Slender-Man stabbing. Not having seen the rest of the film yet (I believe they had just summoned Slender-Man), I, politely as I could, waved the idea off—it was an interesting idea, but there's no way they'd do that, right?

 

    Only later, upon finishing the film and beginning to talk it over with one another, did the idea float up again. I initially held the same reservations as I did an hour prior, but his insistence—paired with my independent realization that the stabbing and the ensuing moral panic surrounding creepypasta were valuable cultural context, given the time of release—made me finally consider his perspective without reservation or skepticism. The results of that consideration bring me to what I believe to be the most cohesive explanation of the film (which, honestly, isn't saying much). First, please read the film's closing monologue, narrated by, Lizzie, little sister of Hallie—one of the film's dual protagonists. 

  "Hallie, Katie, Chloe, Wren. There's almost always a pattern. He only shows himself just enough to infect us. The more fear he creates, the more fascinated we get. We talk and write about him—share pictures, click on links, Photoshop images—that's how a virus works. That's how it spreads. And some people cross the line and actually seek him out, like my sister and her friends did... and those messed-up people go out and do messed-up things that become more stories for people to tell. It's all spreading his word, y'know?"

    It's pretty hard to read Lizzie's monologue as being about anything but the stabbing, isn't it?

     Herein lies an explanation for the film's strange pregnancy (repeated instances of Slender-Man tendrils shooting violently out of wombs) / Christian (the blink-and-you'll-miss-it church cameo, the crosses adorning Chloe's house, the weird pilgrims/demons talk at the start, etc.) imagery, as well. If the film were to, even if loosely, center around the Slender-Man stabbing, it'd likely be in participation or response to the subsequent moral panic. The film expresses a clear culturally Christian / culturally conservative stance on youth, particularly teenagers (Wren shouts "troll!" to indicate she's messing with her friends; the film introduces Hallie and Katie by showing them watching cat videos together; Wren's first words are "Twitter poll," which she (and all teenagers, probably?) apparently says whenever she's about to ask for an opinion;), who are at risk of corruption and/or pose a significant risk of corrupting younger children by way of the horrors of the internet (Slender-Man is summoned on a sketchy, "Russian malware-y"(???) website; Katie jokingly states that she doesn't sneeze because she wants to keep demons in her soul, "if [she] had one"; Wren expresses pride and glee upon finding out that Lizzie got into trouble at school for wearing one of her implicitly obscene shirts; Wren's room has a large OBEY poster; Hallie and Lizzie's family judgmentally discuss one of Hallie's friends, Delores, and her teen pregnancy, which recently caused her to drop out of school; Wren takes Lizzie into the woods, probably (see two paragraphs from now) as a sort of sacrifice to Slender-Man (ring any bells?), leaving her hospitalized and delusional). The numerous instances of the Slender-Man-tendril-wombs are evocative of a desecration of youth, viewed from a mother's perspective, by the lurking threat of Slender-Man, here symbolic of creepypasta, or, more broadly, general moral depravity children are frequently exposed to online (or, at least, what these types think that is), and the Christianity is just the icing on the cake.

    I think, with all of that in consideration, that this reading is somewhat feasible. I'm grasping at straws, here, and that's frustrating; when I watched Slender Man, I wasn't exactly expecting metatextual analysis. Still, when I went to bed last night, that was what I had reached. When I woke up this morning, my suspicions were largely confirmed.

    Upon some further (though, still cursory) research, it seemed that a large amount of content had been cut from the film, likely in response to backlash surrounding similarities to the stabbing (a particularly notable portion of which coming from Bill Weier, father of one of the stabbing's perpetrators, Anissa Weier). Thankfully, this isn't purely the work of whistle-blowers—we have some concrete proof that multiple scenes were cut, and, reasoning with each scene's contents in mind, it's fairly obvious why they never saw theaters. In the film's first trailer, we can see a scene involving Hallie's approximation of a boyfriend, Tom, committing suicide by jumping off of the roof of the school. In the film, he asks Hallie out on a date, does a scary, is seemingly disinterested in Hallie following the scary, and disappears forever. In another scene, one of the film's four main characters, Chloe, stabs her own eyes with a dissection scalpel in front of an entire biology class. In the film, she has two notable encounters with Slender-Man before disappearing from the plot forever, sans a brief shot where she stares blankly at Wren and Hallie (y'know, to show how crazy she is). Using context provided by the film, both acts of self-harm were presumably committed because of Slender-Man's influence. Finally, another scene, featured at the end of the trailer, shows a character and scenario involving police surrounding a dishevelled girl emerging from a forest, which is entirely absent from the film. "Who the fuck is THAT," I shouted while watching the trailer this morning, much to the confusion of the guy walking his dog outside of my open window. These anomalies within the trailer align with numerous online rumors that suggest entire integral characters and plotlines—not just a few scenes and deaths—were hastily removed from the film at some point after shooting. Due to NDAs, not a lot more could be revealed—whether or not you think that's true, or just some liar's easy excuse, is up to you.

    All in all, I think that's a pretty compelling argument as to what Slender Man was really about, as well as why it doesn't necessarily feel like it. They tried to hide it, but basing your film upon such a well-remembered incident leaves you with a scent you can't really scrub off. Still, I find myself wishing that they had kept all of these scenes in—if I could tell that the film was loosely responding to the moral panic caused by the stabbing, they did such a bad job of hiding it that they might as well not have tried—because, even if its message would have been polarizing, and even if I would have vehemently disagreed with it and its goals, that doesn't mean it shouldn't have the right to exist. What we're left with is a horrible, incomplete mess of a film—where police have custody of a laptop, then Wren inexplicably has it in her possession not two minutes later; where Katie goes missing, and we care about Katie, then Chloe goes missing, and we care about Chloe instead of Katie, then Lizzie goes missing, and we care about Lizzie instead of Chloe or Katie; etc., etc.—that I refuse to believe a single person was happy with upon release. Honestly, I'm in agreement with Bill Weier; the film, under the pretense of it being based upon the stabbing, is incredibly distasteful, and if the world was mine, I wouldn't want it made, but that doesn't suddenly mean that the creative vision the film had should have been compromised in such a way. Art is allowed to talk about uncomfortable things; art is allowed to question our morals; art is allowed to disagree with you; and it's a tragedy that, in light of what could have been an incredibly interesting reflection upon the stabbing, internet culture and how we, as a society, treat our youth—even if that film would've been bad, too—we've been left with a nothing but a $10,000,000 hole in the ground.

    See you next week.

-Kim  

Twitter poll! 

An Otachan in the Shadows (KYN #1 - May 2026 Edition)

    Hi, everyone! I'm Kim, and this is the May 2026 edition of Kimbahly YouTube Newsletter. I'm very excited to share all I've been working on this past, um... year. It's certainly been a while, but I assure you that, throughout a maelstrom of serious life problems and numerous creative droughts, I've been working on a lot.

    I've got plans for videos easily stretching into next year, and as someone who really isn't good with time pressure, that makes me, for lack of a better term, one happy Kim-per. My channel's next string of videos are no longer a panicked matter of "what" idea I'll go with, as was the case shortly after its liberation from Sonic the Hedgehog topic-dom, but a calm and excited matter of "which one." I've longed for days like these ever since my impromptu YouTube hiatus, starting in April of 2025, and I'm incredibly happy with the situation I've found myself in.

    Let's get down to brass tacks, here. You've been waiting for videos, so here they are. I'm excited to share with you my next (and first) video on the Kimbahly channel:Otachan: An Anime YouTube Post-mortem.

An Otachan Emerges... 

 

(A screencap of the video's title sequence, featuring the awesome logo I made by viciously stealing two free fonts online—an act roughly analogous to being a bad person.) 

    This video, as you can see by the title, focuses on "Otachan." If you don't know what Otachan is—which is highly probable, don't worry—it's an original YouTube anime webseries, conceived by English anime channel OtakuVs (ran by Yusef Iqbal) and animated by Studio Yuraki (with help from Collateral Damage Studios), formerly produced by the now-defunct Tonari Animation, and, as of a certain point, from what I can gather, partially animated by an in-house team (at least, they stopped explicitly crediting specific studios). If you're in the loop with all of the hot anime studio drama, I'm sure one of those caused you to raise an eyebrow. "Eeee-yup," I say, as I gesture wearily to the world.

    Financially supported by ~666,000,000 YouTube subscribers and ~5,000 Patreon supporters (~$6,000/mo), OtakuVs has been publishing episodes of this professionally-produced, original anime for free on YouTube, on-and-off due to numerous financial issues (as one could imagine, given that premise), since 2019. Starting in 2011, nearly a decade prior to this incredibly—arguably, foolishly—ambitious endeavor, OtakuVs produced uniquely spirited content-farm-adjacent videos, from slop listicles to MVPerry styled "What ___ Says About You" videos (well, there's only one of those, but—BUT!—that video was an adaptation of an Amino post by user Sarcasm+Anime, if that makes up for it. What the fuck were these guys doing...?). These videos, though unassuming and seemingly belonging in an internet landfill somewhere, had clear passion and care put into them, even if subdued and suppressed by a thick veil of business-type cynicism and irony; they hosted an intricate weave of multi-video running jokes, characters and motifs that fostered, if anything else, a sense of continuity that endeared them to their audience. This, above all else, was what piqued my interest. And so, here we are.

    In Otachan: An Anime YouTube Post-Mortem, I conduct the following, organized into an internet-friendly numbered list.

1. A detailed analysis of the history of the OtakuVs channel (pre-, during and post-Otachan); an in-depth, episode-by-episode review of the entire webseries, all in an attempt to ascertain clarity on its rise, peak, and slow yet gruesome fade into obscurity, along with an analysis its themes, both intentional and unintentional (a.k.a., the misogyny);
2. An empathetic approach to examining the Otachan project's continued (yet failing) fight for survival among its home platform's ruthless algorithmic pressure, touching upon corporate exploitation, industrial suppression of passion and creativity, and the mistreatment of workers;
3. A character study of the early series' two main characters—Otachan and Cam—under the context of their implicit* lesbian* relationship, followed by an evaluation of its underlying intent, value as representation and what it personally means to me;
4. A personal reflection upon what I was able to take away from the wider OtakuVs story, including how it changed my views on the internet as industry, helped me empathize with even the most soulless of content farms, served as both a word of warning and encouragement as I presently arm myself to delve deeper into the eldritch-abomination-like online industrial marketplace, and how it taught me to find meaning in mediocrity, as well as that meaning's worth in media analysis.

    That's not all, obviously—I can't spoil everything, can I?—but I hope that, with that summary, you can come away with a better idea of what this video is all about. I've no updates on when it's set to release, as, unfortunately, I'm still fairly early on in development. I'm a good way through the writing process, and I've begun to edit together small portions of non-narrated video (adding and formatting outside footage, along with their corner credits, syncing / looping / mixing background music, etc.) as well as various other pre-production stuff (compiling music lists and sources, primarily). Preliminary research (most gruellingly, sitting through 6 hours and 7 gigabytes-worth of OtakuVs videos (which only accounts for what's public on their YouTube channel) is out of the way. The nightmare is far from over, though...

    As a fun treat, here's a sample of the current script. This is in the first section, where I'm getting the viewer acquainted with OtakuVs. Subject to change, obviously.

"Part 1: OtakuVs FUCKING Sucks, and Here’s Why

    There’s a lot of ways I could introduce you to OtakuVs. I could start with their founder; I could start with the concept of their channel; I could start with their distinctive style; I could start with how I discovered them, et cetera; but, if I’m gonna be honest with you, after gathering 7 gigabytes-worth of content, stored in a folder containing every public video on their channel, in chronological order, which I painstakingly sat through for a collective six fucking hours, much to the agony and total despair of my compadres, whomst I gleefully forced to accompany me, with little to no regard for their public cries for help, I came to a realization—just because you’re the viewer, that doesn’t mean that you’re off the hook. You’ve watched this far; welcome to my nightmare. Instead of introducing you with any of that, I’m just going to wheel out the old CRT, 9/11 style, step outside for a smoke break, and make you watch OtakuVs’s first ever video: “The 6 Girls You’ll Date in Anime.” Good luck.

“... This is you. And these are the six girls you’ll be dating throughout anime. The Young One.”

    ... Well, that was fast!

    Seriously, though, I want to walk you through this—and, 1., no, I’m not making you watch the whole thing, I was joking, I’m sorry, we’ll go out for ice cream later, just give me a minute, and, 2., even though that looks really fucking bad, I’ll have you know that, later on in the video, they put “““you””” in jail. And hell.

    Actually, I want to talk about that “you” for a second, because, for such an innocuous detail, it gives us a really good look at who their target demographic is here. The title, “The 6 Girls You’ll Date in Anime,” assumes that “you” “date” “girls”—which, fair play! Love wins, girls! Still, to get even more specific, we need look no further than frame #1, with the physical manifestation of this video’s viewer surrogate... This guy. Eugh...

    This pretty explicitly places this video’s target audience into the role of a heterosexual man, and given the humor and subject matter, we can probably assume that they’re on the younger side, which... Ha! That’s, um, fine. I’m used to it! It’s, uh... not like I wanted to know the six girls I would date in anime! I’m here for THIS GUY! Aha! Ha! Aha! I’m... ha... ha... *Gollum noises* rr... I’m... rrrrrrrrrgh... I’m not mad... I’m not angry... RAYGHHH!!!!!! *normal* Seriously though, I’m not exactly complaining about this demographic being targeted, per se—like I said, it’s totally a fair play—but I do take issue with how that demographic is used to avoid having the video meaningfully engage with its own subject matter, and that, above all else, is what already gives me an inclination to categorize this in “content farm” territory.

    After the first six seconds that I’ve already shown you, the video goes on to discuss and satirize various anime tropes—namely loli, tsundere and yandere characters—under the premise of the young, male viewer being romantically invol... HEY, KYN READER! IT'S ME, THE MONEY MAN! YOU MUST DEPOSIT $4.99 INTO MY MONEY HOLE TO CONTINUE THE PREVIEW. GUAHAHAHA!!!"

   ... Okay!  

    Speaking of pre-production—I got a new microphone in preparation for this video! Came into some spare money and decided to—with much pain, hesitance and agony—dump a portion of it on a Blue Yeti. It's certainly not the most advanced mic out there, but for my budget and in consideration of what I had previously (nothing, sans some rentals / highly contested studio space), I'm more than happy to take it. The average viewer won't care that I'm using what most people consider to be a pretty sub-par mic. It gets the job done, and that's all I care about. With this—now that I don't have to worry about when my next access to a mic will be, let alone its quality or how much time I have with it, if I can even make that time—my productivity has, theoretically (haven't started recording yet), fucking skyrocketed. The lack of a decent mic was my biggest hurdle for a long time, and it's finally gone. That period of uncertainty and scavenging for rentals wasn't a bad thing, I'd like to add, at least not entirely; it forced me to hone in on my writing skills, and since my last upload in December of 2024, boy, can you tell... shudders. That's an up-side that everyone is thankful for, I'm sure.

    Well, that's about it! I've got lots of things planned—so many things that, at a certain point, you have to look back at your ever-expanding list of future video ideas and say to yourself, "how the fuck am I going to do all of this?" The answer, my friend, is simply "one step at a time." 

    See you next month!

-Kim