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timegal25 · 5 years

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The Odd Side of Youtube

YouTube, the popular video sharing website, has been around for over a decade. It’s had it’s over abundance of videos themed around Fortnite, “emotional apology videos” stuffed to the brim with ad revenue, a disturbingly high number of poorly animated nursery rhymes, and surprisingly graphic skits targeted at kids. But it’s also been an outlet for creative expression and connection for those outside the mainstream. For a socially awkward and isolated kid who found companionship in watching YouTube, fandom videos offered a sense of connection, belonging and reassurance that there were “odd people” out there who shared his interests and passions.

While the vast majority of people know about things like “Gangnam Style” and “Let’s Plays,” not as many can say they have extensive knowledge of the various niche fandom videos that make up a good portion of the website itself. These are the odd clips that either you only come across by looking up directly, or have randomly pop up in your recommended feed with no real reason as to why. In my case, I remember a majority of these from watching them when I was younger, and then rediscovering them when looking deep into the site on late night nostalgia binges. It’s a common hobby of mine, and it usually leads to me finding some of the strangest things as a result. Oddly, a great many of these strange finds just so happen to include Sonic the Hedgehog.

Let me preface this by saying what follows is in no way an attack on any of the creators of these videos, nor is it a call for others to go out and harass them. In fact, that’s part of the point. Many of the people who create some of the more odd or innovative content on YouTube are doing it as creative expression of who they are or what interests them. It’s a place to express a part of themselves, and it takes courage to do it. It’s easy for those who aren’t so brave to attack the creators. I actually enjoy a lot of the content I’ll be referring to because the people behind it are genuine and clearly having a ton of fun making it. This is all done in good fun, and shows just how strange and odd fandom culture as a whole can be. And for some of these innovators who dared to put themselves out there, it paid off big time just by how fondly remembered they are by those who talk about them. Now that that’s out of the way, let’s begin.

Part One: Hedgehogs and Dragon Balls

To start things off, let’s look at a project that is fully animated. Before YouTube, there was the popular website Newgrounds, a place where you could watch videos, play games, and just mess around. This is where a lot of influential and important creators got their start by posting their little animations on the site. On August 14, 2006, user Chakra-X (real name Aaron Cowdery), posted the first part in a three-part movie called Sonic: Nazo Unleashed with part two coming a week later and part three following in 2007. All three parts were later uploaded all into one HD remaster under the title of Sonic: Nazo Unleashed DX on YouTube in 2014. The film follows Sonic and his friends as they take on the mysterious and powerful Nazo, an unused form of Sonic from a promotional video for the anime Sonic X.

Now what makes this special from say the dozens of Sonic themed fanfics that follow a somewhat similar premise? Chakra-X did something no one had dared to do before. The animation was very heavily inspired by the anime megahit Dragon Ball Z and its then airing sequel Dragon Ball GT . The sound effects used and the presentation of special moves were ripped right from the series and even parts from the climax are just ideas presented in the show such as two characters fusing to make one new powerful being. In 2006, it was unheard of to see Sonic characters perform such high speed anime action. What was even more notable is that it was created by one single guy on the internet. The professionally produced Sonic X TV show that was airing at that time paled by comparison, even with a team of professional animators with high tech equipment.

In the decade since Nazo Unleashed originally came out, Chakra-X has been a part of various animated collabs and now works for Titmouse Inc , an animation company that has done work for companies like Warner Bros., Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, and even Disney. What was even more inspiring for me, Chakra-X is a young black man . This was the first I’d become aware of anyone who looked like me being a much sought after animator. It told me that I could be him, I could be in his position if I put in as much effort and love into a creative project. And with how amazing the upcoming sequel he’s working on looks, I feel that kind of hopeful inspiration even more.

The next piece I’m going to examine is another well known series in the Sonic fandom community that also is heavily influenced by Dragon Ball Z. While it is also animated and is full of high speed action packed fights, this one has its own amazing identity. The series I’m talking about is the always spectacular Super Mario Bros. Z by Mark Haynes, aka Alvin Earthworm, starting in 2006 and going until 2009. While this series was originally created on Newgrounds, it’s real exposure and popularity came from being uploaded to YouTube.

The series follows Mario, Sonic and friends as they go on an epic race against time to secure the powerful chaos emeralds from the clutches of the evil Mecha Sonic. Much like Nazo Unleashed, the influence of Dragon Ball Z series is anything but subtle, with the plot of “good guys need to find powerful objects before bad guys” being one of the key ways to describe Dragon Ball as a whole. One of the key things that makes this stand out on its own is the fact that this entire series is animated using sprites from the games. Just about every character that wasn’t made specifically for the series has their models taken right from their games. Mario and Luigi for example come from the Mario and Luigi role playing game (rpg) series on the Gameboy Advance (GBA), while the Sonic and Shadow sprites come from Sonic Battle also on the GBA. An extra step is taken by having the characters act like they do in their retrospective series. Mario and Luigi never actually use dialogue boxes in their games, with other characters still understanding them. The same is true here with the brothers’ words never actually being seen on screen. Going that extra step to emulate the games made the videos feel more authentic.

I was relatively young and new to the internet when Super Mario Brothers Z (SMBZ) started popping up. I wasn’t fully aware of what sprite animations were, as they weren’t as easy to make or common back then as they are now, so I would see all the action and Sonic and Mario on screen together and I thought that it was an actual game. I wanted to play it so badly on my Gameboy Advance SP. On one trip to a Gamestop, my young self boldly walked up to the lady working the register and asked “Hey, do you have Super Mario Bros Z ?” She gave me this look that said either she knew exactly what I was talking about or didn’t have a single clue at all and just nicely said that they didn’t. I went on to repeat this at several more gaming stores before I realized that it wasn’t a real game, nor did it ever claim to be. It was then that I started looking for games I wanted myself because sometimes just saying a title out loud can make you look like the strangest person around.

What made the SMBZ series so attractive and so entirely different from anything found on YouTube at the time was the animated action. You might think that since the series is using pre-made assets and models, that there must be some limitations on what can be done. However, with a bit of help from some custom new sprites as well as some fast editing and sound effects, things can get insane . Being able to translate the speed and intensity of a Dragon Ball Z fight is hard enough to copy with regular animation, yet Mark was able to do this with 2 dimensional sprites and flashing lights. And even that pales in comparison to the pure adrenaline of fights concerning the series main antagonist, Mecha-Sonic.

Originally starting off as a mostly side boss in Sonic and Knuckles , Mecha Sonic became a fan favorite thanks to this series. Like any good antagonist, he can easily prove himself as a threat to the heroes while also being able to take the hits himself. This comes across easily in the series most popular episode, Brawl on a Vanishing Island . This 30 minute episode has a variety of characters going up against each other, but the mood quickly turns the second Mecha Sonic arrives and absorbs the power of the Chaos Emeralds. What follows is an absolutely brutal beatdown of another team of antagonists, the Axem Rangers X. The speed, the sound effects, alongside an amazing remix of Sonic and Knuckles’ Doomsday Zone playing in the background, this is a simply amazing bit of animation that can’t really be put into words without it sounding absolutely ridiculous. And much like with Nazo Unleashed, so much of this was done by just one guy.

After episode 8 in 2009, things basically ended on a cliffhanger with the series being presumed over. Haynes had his own life and things to deal with, and something that took up so much time to make could be easily seen as poor use of it. In the years following, many others tried their hand at sprite animations with heavy action scenes with that becoming its very own subgenre on YouTube. Then, in 2016, Mark made a glorious return with the first episode of what was basically a reboot of the series. Fans loved it, amazed to see how far things had come. And then..there was basically nothing else. Originally, Haynes had a Patreon set up so that fans could fund him making this as well as possibly being a way for him to make this his job. It was shut down, most likely due to him directly saying it was going towards the series and Nintendo seeing it as someone else profiting off their IP. With any funding that could go towards rewarding all this time and effort being taken away, as well as Haynes having more important personal things and depression, it is unlikely that we’ll see an update anytime soon. It’s been three years since the first episode went up on YouTube, and while I still hope someday he’ll return, but as someone who knows that forcing yourself to make something others want even if you don’t want to is like, the personal happiness and health of Mark Haynes is so much more important. He’s already left an amazing legacy on the net, and the stuff he’s given us is already great enough as is.

And now to go from flash animation, to sprite animation, we’re reaching the next logical step. Out of all the series discussed in this part, this one is my absolute favorite. And it is one of the weirdest things out there. Another crossover series featuring the world of Mario and Sonic, alongside a few notable others. One that’s full of action and character, and it’s all animated in PowerPoint (no, I’m not kidding), this is Chocobro Cinemas’ The “Dimension” Saga. Strap in, things are gonna get really, really weird.

The series started in 2007, with Dimension Mix-Up as it followed various characters from Super Mario Bros, Sonic the Hedgehog, Frogger, Invader Zim, and Calvin and Hobbes. That was all 100 percent serious, and to the credit of both this and Super Mario Bros Z, there is a feeling of self-awareness running throughout the whole series. I unironically love this entire series from start to finish, mostly just due to the fact that there’s so much creativity and love being put into something that most people would just brush aside as another cheap fanfiction. When I originally found this back in 2007, it was like the most amazing thing ever. The computer I had at the time took forever to not only load flash animations, but even playing them took like 5 years for just a few seconds. I hadn’t really known what Newgrounds was fully back then either, so Super Mario Bros Z also wasn’t something I watched at the time, and I came across this. An action filled adventure that had characters not only from Sonic and Mario, but also Invader Zim which was still super huge at time, and Calvin and Hobbes?! To a megafan of all those things who would actually spend their time on Fanfiction.net reading stories about this stuff (Yes, even Calvin and Hobbes), this was like the holy grail. Also Frogger was there, so...that was cool?

This story should not work, these characters all being together on screen expecting viewers to care for them all should not work, this idea of using powerpoint back in 2007 to simulate animation of any kind should not work. Yet somehow...it does. Even with the fact that this is clearly just a camera recording a screen at this point, there’s something rather entertaining about it all. And the action isn’t half bad for something made with a tool that clearly was never meant to be used in this way. It can actually be creative with how some fight scenes are done. The whole of episode 6 is able to show off a giant robot boss battle with some pretty decent speed, while episode 8 can trick viewers with its looping backgrounds. The best part of this comes just from watching how not only does the quality of the video improve over time, but so does the writing and the story. Dimension Takeover and Dimension Obliteration are amazing and admittedly addicting watches that have the same level of love and care put into them as the previous two series discussed in this. Giving the fans such high quality action and adventures while also doing a really great job of making all the interactions feel like they’re from their source material. Well, at least as close and one can get when you have a hedgehog talking to an imaginary tiger and a group of cartoon frogs. I can’t say thank you enough times to the people who’ve made all their series, as my love of writing stories based on my own favorite series probably wouldn’t be as strong today. And hey, one can surprisingly do a good job with powerpoint. At least it wasn’t just a slide show.

Part Two: These literally are just slide shows!

Sticking to the topic of Sonic, he seems to be a super popular subject for crossovers. Besides Mario, he and his friends have appeared in both official and nonofficial meetups with all kinds of pop culture favorites. The one series that seems to dominate the realm of Sonic crossovers online is My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic . The series itself has had quite the impressive run of nine years, with its final episodes airing this year. What probably would have been seen as just another cheap product placement by the majority of people if it hadn’t been for the rather large audience of grown up fans that for a time basically ruled the internet. While in the later years the fan base has shrunk as all fandoms do, there are still those that happily enjoy watching cartoon ponies and doing various things related to them online, myself included.

Now how does a super fast and cocky blue hedgehog that saves the day from an evil egg shaped man and his army of robots have any kind of connection to a cartoon about six colorful and talented ponies as they go through their lives learning about and solving problems with the power of friendship? Well, both are series that have similar characters with Sonic and Rainbow Dash both being blue,fast, and cocky. Both series deal with giant world ending disasters by using powerful gems and the power of teamwork. And both believe in the real power of friendship. So, yeah. There’s bound to be a ton of fan series based on seeing these two worlds meet up. And hoo boy, Youtube sure seems to love hosting a ton of them.

The common theme in all the Sonic/My Little Pony Crossovers in this part is that they’re all going to be slideshows. There might be a few clips from the shows or games, maybe a piece of fanart or two, but 99 percent of the stuff in these videos is just going to be static text. Let’s start with the...highest quality one of the three brought up in this part, Sonic X Equestria by Speedstar Productions . The plot is nothing new. Eggman shows up to wreak havoc and Sonic must team up with the cast of My Little Pony, or Mane Six as they’re called, to help stop him. When I said most of these are just slideshows... I wasn’t kidding. The entire series will go from random screen cap to random promotional images, with text overlaid on the bottom. There is no original voice acting either, with the only voices that occasionally can be heard coming from the clips or sound bytes. There is no promised sense of consistency either, as photos of the characters can be pulled from different seasons, games, comics and shows all together. In this, Sonic is supposed to have his normal modern look but some screenshots are from Sonic Boom which is a show with different designs. Another example of this comes from shots of Twilight Sparkle. This show takes place in the My Little Pony world after Twilight becomes the princess of friendship and gets her own wings. Even shots from the first episode will use photos of her without them. It’s never actually a thing that matters to the show, as it acts like everything is on model, and that we can perfectly see everything that’s going on.

Another thing that this and many others like it seem to have in common is the idea that Sonic is the one doing all the work, while all the ponies just kinda...watch in the background. Sure, Twilight will pitch in with her magic every once in a while, but if Sonic’s taking on Eggman? He’s mostly going in solo. Sure, these ponies have easily taken on things like chaos incarnate, and powerful tyrants with black magic. But a man in a giant robot suit? Too unpredictable . Sure, one could argue that it’s because the mech being used in the fight only has images of Sonic fighting it...but in a later episode , the girls join in a fight that’s entirely animated! I shouldn’t be mad about this, yet I am!

Though..despite the rant, I still find myself enjoying watching this series. I can’t fully explain if it’s ironic or if it’s unironic. Maybe it comes from the fact that everyone still acts in character to their on-screen counter parts, leading to interactions that fans wanted to see. We want to see the ponies talk to Sonic characters, and help take down Eggman. The use of actual pictures from the shows and games helps too, making us help visualize it as if it were an actual episode. Maybe it comes from the fact that it feels like something I would watch in the early days of Youtube. The kinda low effort yet also decent attempt of trying to make events appear coherent in some way, even if the images shown aren’t the most in continuity. Though, episode 11 is literally the Shadic vs Nazo fight from Nazo Unleashed. Those things aside...this is still kind of a guilty pleasure watch that I’ll binge from time to time.

Sometime last year, I was looking up Nazo Unleashed videos late one night, due to that time bringing out a large sense of nostalgia for days gone. As I was looking, I saw a thumbnail that stuck out to me. Or rather...a title that stuck out to me, as well as a runtime that had my interest set to max.

The Adventures of Sonic in Equestria Nazo Unleashed The Movie HD , by Adam Selvig, is a title that feels like it should be one of those videos that promises an upload of a current movie in HD that only links to scam sites that will give your computer a virus. It isn’t that. This is a slideshow that’s the length of a movie. College lectures aren’t this long. The best way to describe this one is that Sonic and the ponies must come together to defeat Nazo as well Tempest Shadow, a character from the My Little Pony movie. Also, Sonic and Rainbow Dash have a daughter called Sondash, which is literally just art of a child Rainbow Dash. This series is weird. Another strange thing is that a lot of the channels posting Sonic / My Little Pony stuff in series like this...usually have around 1K subs. That’s nothing to any major Youtuber, but the idea that even just one thousand people subscribe to watch this stuff as soon as it comes out..is just mind blowing.

This film is part of a series, one that started all the way back in January of 2018. The playlist for this thing says that the series as of March 4th, 2019...is 103 videos long?! And with seemingly all of them in the 20 minute range...the question becomes, how long has Selvig been working on this thing, and does he have others help him with it? And again...why is it always Sonic that seems to be doing everything around here? Are the ponies just lazy now that an outsider is here?

The odd thing is that there are so many Sonic/My Little Pony crossover videos on Youtube, but when looked into, so many of them are the exact same content. Stills and transparent photos with clear backgrounds with text overlaid. And so many are able to get these creators at least a few hundred subscribers. In a surprisingly deep sea of similar executions, are there any left that stand out above the rest? Good news, there is at least one series that goes in another direction. In more mixed news, well…

This is Harmony and Chaos by Michael Evans. While originally popping up as text on gradient background sometime in 2017, the whole series is now being voiced over by its creator. That’s all this is. Text on a background while one man narrates over it in various voices. And for the most part, there isn’t much there at all in terms of action. Now, I’m only nine episodes in this seemingly sixty plus episode run with multiple seasons series, so I might be wrong. The main focus of this series is romance, and boy is there a lot of it. If there’s a male character from Sonic and a female character from My Little Pony that interact a lot in this thing, there’s a pretty good chance they’ll end up smooching somewhere on down the line. This sounds exactly like what many seem to see fan bases as general as, writing overly long amounts of fan fiction that are also chock to the brim with romance and needless drama. In this series, Rainbow Dash is getting a divorce from her husband who she thought was cheating on her, when really he only made it seem that way so that she wouldn’t have to know that he was dying from a deadly disease. It’s a move right out of the soap opera playbook.

Despite all of this, I find myself coming back to all of these series and watching them in huge chunks. It comes from a sense of odd curiosity on how the story is going to play out. It also helps that the people behind this stuff seem like just genuinely nice people that want to post their creations online and share it with the world. It’s just that the stuff they make is really weird, not bad, just strange. And even then, it’s not the most strangest thing on the net that’s out there.

Part Three: Big Adventures, Bigger Casts

The best way to start this final part was with an image. An image that perfectly tells someone everything they need to know, as well as absolutely nothing at all. Welcome to Pooh’s Adventures , a seemingly endless number of movies and tv shows that are “edited” to include characters from Winnie the Pooh, My Little Pony, Transformers, Thomas the Tank Engine and so, so many more. I put edited in quotes because really, does this count as editing in any way, shape or form? To give a basic plot outline of just about every single Pooh’s/Thomas’/Insert Character name here’s adventure, large group of characters are inserted into popular movie or show, where they help the main character of said movie or show against the antagonist who is now usually joined by other villains from various forms of media. Rinse and Repeat for every movie ever with vague hints of events from previous adventures running into this one. Take any movie, and there’s a good chance there’s at least the idea for a Pooh’s Adventures on it. Like for example Winnie The Pooh vs. Jaws , which while not a real movie as of this writing does have a devoted page on the fan wiki . And it seems to promise quite the cast of characters.

It can actually be somewhat hard in trying to find some of these, due to the fact that they’re just full movies with other copyrighted clips put in at random intervals. Those that are still up on Youtube seem to be the ones that use the most obscure of movies as their source . And just like with the Sonic/Mlp stuff, all of these channels seem to have at least a few thousand subscribers thanks to it. Of all the adventures that still remain on Youtube, Winnie the Pooh Goes to Hotel Mario / Pooh’s Adventures of Batman Forever is the one I’m most proud still remains. There is no connection between the two, besides the fact that both Hotel Mario and Batman Forever are both seen as surreal experiences that have very little connections to their source and are enjoyed in a “so bad it’s good” way.

There are still ways to find both older and newer uploads of the various adventures online. Many of the members will just upload their older stuff to Google Drive or Dropbox , and more recently, a lot of uploads are being moved to Pandora.tv, a mostly Korean based website where they can run ads on the video.

The wiki for this fandom is massive, with there being over thirty five thousand articles as of the time of this being written, with new ones being added or updated seemingly every few minutes. Most fantasy wikis can’t reach numbers that high! Though, most of the pages on it are bare-bones with only a single line or two for a ton of characters while others are pages clearly ripped right from other fandom wikis. There’s also ideas for series that are just the title and then nothing else, along with transcripts and posters put next to dozens of dead or empty links. For a site that seems so bloated and full, it’s actually pretty empty and hollow upon closer look.

I wanted to share all of this because so much of this resonates with me in some way, even Pooh’s Adventures , since I’d be lying if I said I haven’t thought up crossovers with insanely large casts that really should have nothing to do with each other.I guess in a way...I saw these all as the things I wanted to make but never knew how to. I’ve always wanted to animate, to tell my stories with these characters that I know and love to as many people as possible, to hear their feedback on all of it. That’s why I got so passionate talking about all certain moments or episodes, it’s all the things I would do! They’re people just like me, and that’s why I wish Mark Haynes the best in his life, why I’ll say the guys who work on the Sonic and My Little Pony seem like nice people. That’s why I’ll be so amazed by someone having a thousand subs or more. I see myself in these creations and the experiences of their creators. The pains of depression, the joy of seeing how their work has influenced others, the effort and care put into these things. I want to see them succeed and be supported, because that shows me that I can succeed too.

#informal essay #crossover #sonic the hedgehog #pooh's adventures #smbz #Super Mario Bros Z #sonic #super mario #Mario bros #nazo unleashed #My Little Pony #my little pony friendship is magic #dimension mix up #youtube #essay #calvin and hobbes #invader zim #fandom

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