Bad Apple Explained: History and Analysis
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- Опубліковано 19 лип 2020
- The history and an analysis of a viral music video: Bad Apple. Originating from the Touhou Project franchise, Bad Apple is arguably the most famous thing to come from it... but where exactly did it come from? And why is the video so mesmerizing? That's what I hope to answer today.
Bad Apple Explained Part 2 is out now: • Bad Apple Explained Pa...
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My Patreon: / megapig9001
Footage and Songs:
Bad Apple (Original Shadow Art Official Upload): • [Alstroemeria Records]...
Storyboard: • Bad Apple!! original ...
Animation 1: www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm4693242
Animation 2: www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm5178867
Bad Apple Live: • Video
Bad Apple (Cristina Vee): • Touhou Project- "Bad A...
Bad Apple (Bullet Hell I): • BAD APPLE!! || METAL C...
Bad Apple (Bullet Hell II): • BAD APPLE!! (Japanese)...
Bad Apple (Marasy Version): • 【ピアノ】「Bad Apple!!（feat...
Bad Apple (Siivagunner): • Bad Apple!! (Akyu's Un...
#Touhou #TouhouProject #BadApple #BadApple!! #bad_apple #BadAppleExplained - Ігри
Although I am Japanese, it is unknown what kind of 3D software and model was used for the shadow play PV. (Because there is no comment from the author "Anira" so far.) However, it is known that the model is completely self-made and the motion is a basic hand and some physics.
In addition, the production of Immaterial and Missing Power is set so that the gourd of Immaterial and Missing Power will produce an infinite amount of sake, but the gourd has a stopper and stops when a certain amount of alcohol is produced (Immaterial and Missing Power Yakumo Purple Story ED). The reason why Saigyoukai is in half bloom is that Saigyoukai was never in full bloom in Touhou Youkai Yume, where Yuyuko appears. The movement of Suzusen is the movement of the original (Touhou Scarlet Weather Rhapsody, Touhou Hisoutensori).
I always thought the animator use MMD
This kinda reminds me of another animator, minusT who also an animator making his own Touhou character model ,which means the whole video itself was just like minusT who all made by one person from scratch
@@pozkitt2326 It's possible that the animator used Blender, the animation quality is comparable to MinusT
my guess is MMD
The song: Talks about society, disconnection and depression
Everyone: *Funky Vibing*
just vibin
Me, who doesn’t know Japanese: 💃
Bad Apple was the "Pumped Up Kicks" of the early 2000s
We live in a Gensokyo I mean Society
That's because I like sad songs, after I listened the English cover I started liking the song more.
"Its cool to see whats your favourite character is doing"
Nitori: *Proceed to run and dive into water
Me: *Interesting*
Lmao; fun fact about that scene though: the storyboard outlines a hot spring for an extended period of time for multiple characters, including Nitori. Iirc, Anira cut that section out of concern for age restrictions, but that’s why Nitori’s scene in the final video involves her jumping into water.
By the way this is my favorite comment I've gotten so far lol.
@@Megapig9001
It's better that way, imagine if Anira kept the hot spring scene, Bad Apple will be much bigger than it is right now, and also people will think Touhou is an ecchi anime
@bubble fro She is also arguably the character that leaves the biggest impression lol
My favorite is Yuuka simply because I love Flower Land, Tiny Little Adantium, and rember hapi day. So glad I got a key shift!
That animation was made 11 years ago and it still nails better than much of the animation we get today.
Imma have to disagree with you, animation has advanced way to far for this to be even passable anymore
@@themanofsex3173 Ex Arm might argue with you
@@themanofsex3173 Yeah, no. Some modern 3D animated shows are really badly animated
@@themanofsex3173 so we gonna ignore sds season 3
@@themanofsex3173 Remember Berserk 2016?
"Bad Apple isn't just a love letter to older fans, but also acts as a welcome letter to new ones." This quote really struck me. Filled my heart with warmth. Bad Apple welcomed me as a fan in 2010, and Touhou remains my favorite franchise of all time.
Same
I wanna get into it but I'm bad at bullet hells and don't know where to start lol. It's so saturated
@@Marlyjade they have fighting games too, and official books/manga! Bullet hells just take practice. I'm bad too but there's no shame in playing on easy or normal mode with continues lol, or watch someone else play it on UA-cam or something. It's the characters that truly make it special.
Cosmic!
Me too buddy, me too.
Been a fan of the franchise since 2010, ran a music channel from 2011 to 2018 (got busted) and just restarted another one.
Touhou has and always will have a special heart in my place, the games, fanworks and fanbase really helped me through DARK times.
"Bad Apple solidified itself as an imperishable hit" i see what you did there
Yep
i was like, "wait... that sounds familiar... omfg did you just make Imperishable Night pun"
Badum tsssss
Lol I read that the exact time stamp
i read that right when the vid got to that part lolol
I can't believe this started as some rando's MS Paint storyboard. They had the vision, but not the skills to bring it fully to life. I'm glad someone did that for them. A lot of people aren't that lucky. And this was an idea that deserved to see the light of day.
As the commentor above you said, this makes me wonder how many great ideas died in the minds of people who didn't have access to the tools to bring them to life, or weren't lucky enough to have someone do it for them. Just imagine all the old, obscure and almost lost storyboard videos out there that are still waiting to see the light of day, waiting for the day when a talented animator will stumble upon them and bring them to life
@@whatever5401 In most cases, it's easy to have ideas and much harder to realize them, so while the ideas may have value, the ability to come up with them is less valuable than the ability to realize them. Almost all those ideas from people who only storyboarded and weren't able to animate their videos will remain in obscurity, which is a shame, but the sheer number of ideas in the world is far too many to be realized with any degree of quality, so the ideas which are realized will mostly be the ones had by animators or other types of creators. That's how I've come to see it, since I've had many great ideas which I didn't have the ability to realize and ended up forgotten, while a few of them, some not very good, mostly the simpler ones, have actually become some sort of product and represent my actual impact as a creator. This situation where someone will take a detailed idea several years old and turn it into an extremely high quality animation is the exception rather than the rule.
For some reason this made my day 😊
There’s something wonderful about hobbyists doing this sort of stuff not for money or personal gain but just because it’s what they want to do
thats why our society needs to encourage all kinds of inteligence and skills, together we can go really far
I just want to take a moment to throw some love in Haruka's direction. The video didn't mention her, but she was just a teenager when she wrote these lyrics. She's a great writer, and went on to do some other things in the shadows, such as the opening to Blue Dragon. Without her creative writing, this could have been a much different song.
I know she'll never read this, but regardless, thank you Haruka.
Do you know her last name? I’d love to add her music to my playlist
@@angelajeffrey8364 I'm not sure if you saw yet. I answered this already, but the comment disappeared. :(
Aw, man. Well, I'm glad she's getting credit for her work, regardless.
You can kinda tell a teenager wrote it. It reeks of angsty sad teenager vibes haha
@@B3Band Absolutely. The original lyrics spoke of things like apathy and numbness. And "oh, you could never understand me!"
It seems even from another culture, we can still almost relate to her teenaged angst.
i love that MV because the motion is so realistic.. how their clothes and hair sways, thats splendid for an animation... its very realistic..
It was also 2008
For a pv from 2008, that surely is very impressive considering graphics softwares back then was still not as simple as they are now.
It helps that it's all black and white in my opinion, there's a slight suggestive power about it. But i still agree, it's very impressive
@@rizqyjauhary397 not at all. That tech was out for more than 5 years. Look at hl2's engine (source). It could most likely do all of this. The engine was made in 2003. If you also look at Pixar in 2008, it was a thousand times more advanced than this. This is actually really poor for showing off graphics at the time. As for cloth and hair physics. Big woop, it's still really not that impressive for something that came out in 2008.
@@no-ld3hz You just compared a one man team to a big corparation worth billions of dollars, congratulations.
"bad apple has been played to death"
Night of nights: Hold my beer
Ig I'm lucky cuz I've only hear this song once from finding it in my recommendations.
me, who put it into some of the animations i made: *huh, familiar...*
hold my knives
@@Supergamer2525 Hold my Pa- *Knifed*
un owen is also overplayed... somehow
As a middle school weeb, I remember having to do a song essay for a language arts/visual arts course. I chose this one, and the teacher played it for the class. Looking back, I am both highly embarrassed, yet still glad I was able to show it to people. It deserves the recognition to be appreciated for its quality regardless of the viewer being an anime/game fan or not.
sweet, so what 's the result
you know what, nevermind
This hit me *right* in the part of my brain that holds my 2nd hand embarrassment.
Like you said, it's an objectively slick video, whether you're a anime/game fan or not. No need for you (or anyone else in these comments??) to feel embarrassment.
After all, we're here watching a video about a video made over a decade ago. And it's STILL a slick video.
@@pluspiping I really appreciate this outlook, thank you for such a kind reply c:
@@pluspipingYou lucky bastard! You can actually watch talent shows without getting embarrassed on behalf of the contestant and other stuff like that? Damn, I wish I were you…
I can't believe you didn't mention the massive community of homebrew developers using the video for demos. It's great for that because it can be replicated with very low color count (just black and white if you discard the shades of grey in the flames), is still recognisable at low framerate and resolution, and due to being low-complexity compresses very nicely.
This video has been played back on countless retro systems. NES, game boy, mega drive, SNES, PCengine, C64, calculators, electronic toys. As laser art, on flip dot displays, on massive airport departure displays.
For retro devs there's two questions: Can it run doom, and can it run bad apple.
Damn, never realised, that honestly really cool!
The only reason I'm aware of it is all the devs out there who took it upon themselves to run it on different displays. I never knew what it was from until today.
Btw it was even played on youtube captions
I don't want to diminish your love for Bad Apple, but that's wrong. Google auto-fills "can it run" with only two games, Doom and Crysis. For Retro-Devs the focus is on Doom.
@@Chraan Well then you haven't taken a look into the homebrew and demo scene. Bad Apple is a staple and tradition there. Just because Google doesn't autocomplete it doesn't mean it's not extremely popular in that niche community.
There's a port of it on every single retro console and computer starting from the Atari 2600. There are novels worth of forum threads discussing the ports, the best way to compress and display the video. On some platforms there are multiple competing ports with different tradeoffs taken. When a new fantasy console or homebrew hardware is created, or an old piece of hardware gets a new SDK, usually a bad apple port is one of the earliest demos created for that platform. It's ubiquitous, impressive to look at and showcases display and sound capabilities pretty well. It's such a meme in the homebrew scene it's starting to become cliche and overdone for some.
I dont know whats happening but im interested on what youre talking about.
Same
I'm not alone? Wow!
Same
Same ^^
Yess same!!... This song came to me as a hidden memory... And now I know what it truly is
Makes you wonder how many great ideas died in the minds of people who didn't have access to the tools to bring them to life
People who had neither the tools nor the time... It really is true
I feel called out.
...and absolutely agree at the same time
agreed yoshi gaming, agreed...
It's really sad if you think about it...Those people could've been the creators of legendary and iconic videos like Bad Apple and will be remembered for something even after their deaths...if they were lucky enough. Just imagine all the old, obscure and almost lost storyboard videos out there that are still waiting to see the light of day, waiting for the day when a talented animator will stumble upon them and bring them to life
I had a lot of ideas that died because I don't know how to bring them to life
for the longest time i thought bad apple was a vocaloid song up until recently and before watching this video i had no clue what touhou was but now im genuinely interested in getting into the franchise
Just curious: what made you think this was a Vocaloid song? Because this seems to be a surprisingly common misconception that I've seen almost everywhere and I want to know why. Is it because of the singer's voice? Or because of how the PV has the vibes of an early 2009s Vocaloid PV?
@@whatever5401 i just listened to a lot of vocaloid and covers of this song always got recommended so i just assumed it was a vocaloid song lmao-
So have you got into the touhou hole?
@@whatever5401 wait, this is common? it really doesn't sound vocaloid at all
@@MidnightNachos it surprisingly is. I've found some threads of people asking "Which Vocaloid sang Bad Apple?", and even on this video you can find some comments of people they thought this was a Vocaloid song. There are also a lot of "Vocaloid playlists" with this song
It shows the strength of the design. Every character is recognisable from just their silhouette.
Recognizable for Touhou fanboys
@@HyperVanilo I don't know a single character of... whatever this franchise is but each one is very distinguishable from each other, which is one of the signs of good design lol
I wish the English side of this fandom was a little bigger.
English ≠ West | English = Global Communication
Bigger English fandom might backfire but yeah
@@stray_demon That's always the case.
Just look at Undertale.
Its pretty big, but westerners tend to be really toxic
@@dontsayflan4315 any fandom will get a pretty toxic side if it gets big enuff
@@micanikko yes thats why gatekeeping exist
I have been listening to this song for years and never knew. I think im going to join the touhou cult
Good luck! Bad Apple is a good starting point! There's a ton of free fangames and fanworks available, but if you have the cash, Touhou Luna Nights is a fantastic game.
@@Megapig9001 thank you. By the way honesty the first time i saw the video is sent those shivers down my spine too.
@@noahfischer3088 One of us one of us one of us one of us
@@noahfischer3088 Join us brother
Assimilation is complete
One more thing. An _extremely_ important thing to remember when comparing this to the original song (especially regarding exactly which version got the video that catapulted it into the stratosphere) is that Zun isn't concerned with making his scores _singable._ He's just making what he think fits the game and character, and he's going to use a lot of pitch changes and tempos that a human voice can't reasonably accommodate. Some BGMs _are_ easy to set lyrics to (Lullaby of a Deserted Hell, The Gensokyo That The Gods Loved, Let's Live in a Lovely Cemetery, Beloved Tomboyish Daughter, and Futasuiwa From Sado come to mind) and some aren't. Seriously, listen to Love-Colored Master Spark again; any faithful adaptation of that would require at least three singers. So songwriters have to make compromises...cut here, adjust there. Not much different from, say, American Idol.
This is an excellent talking point, but I do want to bring up the fact that there’s one exception: ua-cam.com/video/bTlA_Lfssp0/v-deo.html “Innocent Treasures” has lyrics written for it by ZUN himself, which is why I think a lot of fans see the song as his theme
u : one more thing
"writes a paragraph "
@@Kaison6969columbo moment
Sorry, what does American Idol have to do with this? I'm confused.
@@Kaison6969 I save my concise bullet-point analyses for stuff that actually matters, thank you.
("Columbo"? What's that, a brand of coffee?)
So lemmie get this straight-
This is a fan music video of a fan storyboard for a fan remix of an original song?!
Yep
Timeline
Original Bad Apple: 1998
Masayoshi Minoshima's Bad Apple remix: 2007
Storyboard: 2008
Anira's Shadow MV: 2009
Internet culture fascinates me. It's like a huge experiment to see what happens when you present something to possibly millions of people. Sometimes not even twenty people acknowledge it exists and sometimes it's shown to a third of the human population (not accurate because I don't know how much of humanity has computers or internet but you get the point). There's also so much opportunity to work with others or gain inspiration. You can make friends who you'd never have met otherwise because you're on opposite side of the world. It's just such a huge step towards achieving communication and understanding other cultures and people. And don't get me started on the development of humor through the internet.
It always amazes me when something is released on the internet, and many years later people suddenly know about it. It's like: "What the fuck happened during these years?"
Maybe those are true, but it also leads to bandwagoning, circle-jerking, and effectively creates a breeding ground for societal outcasts to push their otherwise shitty opinions that would’ve gone ignored in real life. I’d like to believe there’s more merit to internet culture than there’s not, but after seeing how much cancerous garabage has spewed out of it over the past few years, I’m starting to think it would’ve been for the better if it did not exist at all.
I think that the internet is great in bringing the world together but at the same time it separates and divides us but that is what makes it interesting. Because it also allows people to be anonymous they like to say whatever they want but that also has its has its upsides too you can meet new people and it usually does not matter who you are, or where you are and you can have a conversation such as this one here. Ying and Yang you cant have one side of the internet without the other.
Right? I saw this as an Atari demo because I'm into seeing what people can cram into a single megabyte, but had no idea of the context until I saw this video. I enjoy the demo a lot more knowing its origin, and seeing the dedication of the community that made it happen is pretty awesome.
@@Arcvx That's a trait of humanity, it's just revealed itself more on the internet due to the lack of restrictions on speech. It's why communities and individuals should mitigate it not by pushing them away, but by addressing the problem at hand.
"hey do you know bad apple?"
"Yeah! It's a cool song!"
"Cool, Do you know where it came from?"
"Idk, vocaloid probably"
-_-
👁👄👁
👁👄👁
👁👄👁
👄👁️👄
👁️👄👁️
I'm still so awe struck by whoever hand drawn every frame of that stunning animated mv...this one person made this world class video 14 years ago that entire studios may not produce the same quality even today.
You mean the frame stop-motion? That's made by Shige-ruuu
It's 3d animated. Not hand-drawn.
It's crazy to think about how much of an impact Touhou has had on the internet and on communities unrelated to the franchise. Bad Apple!! isn't the only viral hit that Touhou has; Night of Nights, Tiny Little Adiantum, Galaxy Collapse, Ronald McDonald insanity...
Excuse me WHAT
RONALD MCDONALD'S INSANITY CAME FROM WHAT.
Cirno's math class too
@@orein1880 it came from U.N. Owen was Her, so yeah, from Touhou.
Touhou fans came up with the iPad before apple did
@@RemsHusbandlol
Me : *plays Bad Apple in classroom
My weeb friend : "wHaT AniMe IS ThIS?"
Our country calls that "fishing" as you "fish" other Touhou fans with the question "wHaT AniMe IS tOuHou"
@@forge16hanadamaintenancedr43 what anime is touhou? No like, the actual animation of touhou.
@@potentia16 *_tap E to disable all intelligence_*
@@12KTOYOTA Bro he's still holding it [btw he's trolling(or atleast I hope so, he claims to be into Touhou)]
@@potentia16 Touhou isn't anime, its hentai and only hentai.
Somewhere, there exist, or existed, あにら's full set of 3d models of all the characters.
Having this cultural artifact without those models is like having the Lycurgus Cup without knowing the required metallurgy.
I can imagine none of them would be textured but it would be incredible to see behind the scenes footage of how this was made
@@NegaTheImpmon9508 It's mostly animated and edited you can replicate the animations themselves on blender and do the polish on a editing software like sony vegas pro but as you'd expect it's very time consuming and needs skill and patience to fully create a masterpiece like bad apple
ok
Fascinating story of how one small request to animate something got the ball rolling for a worldwide sensation. I grew up with old school rock-n-roll of the 60's, 70's, 80's. I'm not a gamer. I fell into loving this genre of music by accident, in 2011, while watching, of all things, a college football game between Auburn and South Carolina. The background music was Sandstorm by Darude, and the stadium was rockin'. A search for that led me to emotional trance, which led me to a variety of remixes, which led me to electronic, dubstep, independent artists, touhou, vocaloid, Miku, and now I am a complete fan of all this.
Hey, in a similar boat here, and I can offer an explanation. The connection between rock and a lot of what your talking about is video game music in general.
A quick bit of music history. Classical orchestra, and to a lesser extent piano, are built around chord progressions. A bunch of notes played at once, across many octaves, maybe with a more complex pattern from one instrument. But the pattern is the shifts from one chord to the next.
Blues and rock originated with a lot more single-note instruments. Brass, flute, of course the human voice. And while guitars have chords, the physical limitations of picking notes with one hand mean there's usually three or four notes being played at once, with multiple notes duplicated. Just no way to approach the complexity of a piano.
So those forms of music rely a lot more on scalar motion to build complexity. (Bach was considered an oddball in his day for writing scalar music, today his stuff resembles a lot of hard rock). And as the video game industry developed, heavily constrained by the number of simultaneous sounds it could put out at once, it produced music that structurally resembled rock. Especially because boss fights need pumping jams, heh.
So while a lot of American synth pop music was evolving from more classically trained roots, the keyboard as an electronic orchestra, a lot of Japanese music was evolving synth rock. On the surface a lot of it may seem light and fluffy, but structurally it's mostly rock music.
Bad Apple also shows a saying which refers to how iconic the characters are.
I can't remember the origin nor the quote, but it was along the lines of you knowing when your character is iconic and unique when people can recognise their silhouette. And Bad Apple is arguably the best example for that because it was the first to make a video in this style online
Non-Touhou fanboys only recognize Sakuya and Flandre
@@HyperVanilo Congrats on missing the point but this is about character design. You can tell which character is which just by their silhouettes, which is nice, it means that they're distinctive.
@@raccoonchild
And because of that distinction like I said non-Touhou fanboys only recognize Sakuya and Flandre
@@HyperVanilo That's because they know them from memes or whatever. They don't know the other characters. Isn't that obvious? Not sure why you repeated your comment, like I said, it missed the point.
Iconic and unique silhouettes are always great. Other games have nailed this aspect as well and you can see that in TF2 (Team Fortress 2 not Titanfall or whatever you were thinking.) And I'm sure there's other examples but that's the one I'm most familiar with.
I feel like this video will get thousands of views in the future
Edit : when I commented here it had about 400 views XD
I’ve actually gotten more views on the video in the past two days then I did when I launched it lol. Here’s to hoping for 1,000.
@@Megapig9001 4000 baby
edit:39,700 babyyyy
edit: 53k ayyyy
edit: 100k yoooo, 10%
edit: 170k nice
edit: 330k 1/3
edit: 469k nice
The algorithm finally found this gem
Might be partially my fault. Been getting into touhou a lot in the last week tbh
Share this video to your friends or confused stranger
Megapig9001: **thanks to everyone that made bad apple exist**
Me: *_Thank you Zun’s parents for raising an absolute legend_*
ffs i saw you again man
@@arudoren ayeee
Wau you're even here xd
Do you think ZUN's children want to follow their father's step by continuing the series or be a rival?
epic
"Why is this important? it's not! I just like Reisen."
yeah, but who doesn't like Reisen?
Junko, Lunarians, etc.
as a person who isn't a fan of touhou, you talking about modern and classic reimu and marisa at the beginning and end, along with their significance and connection, really struck an emotional chord in me. thank you for this video, megapig, it's very insightful.
I really agree here. I have no idea who these characters are, but seeing someone else talk about the impact of early and modern character designs.. it’s emotional
Came to the comments to see if someone said the same. I don't know anything about Touhou except for Bad Apple!! so why did both that part about Reimu and Marisa and the conclusion of this video hit the feels so much?
The transitions in the video are really good. Obviously the black and white theme fits with the lyrics, and the game, but it's also briliantly used to smoothly transition from one object or person to another, constantly throughout the video, in different and creative ways each time.
That’s why I love it so much the song is a bop and the video is just so smooth and fluid in the movement and the minimal art style plays into both the lyrics and the way the video moves
@@violetraven9440 yes.
"it didn't just come from one person: it came from decades of them" .That's what on a personal level(and for many others I'm sure) made this video special: there was a lot behind it, hidden, my 10 year old self didn't know what the shadows and lyrics meant but everything about it was deliberate and beatiful and purposefully cryptic. I understood it wasn't an official thing so it made me realize that communities could do great stuff out of love. Ty for that video on a subject that interested me a lot
I remember being SO excited about this song/video being a big hit back in the day! it got aired and talked about on CNN and other US news networks, and I went to school that day bursting with joy, desperate to talk to everyone about how I knew where it came from, LLS was my favorite Touhou game and everything....... no one cared, but I was still excited lol
I have a lot of nostalgia for Touhou, and it's good to see people talking about it (and it's unique fan community) even now
i've loved touhou for 5 years now, and i can thank the undertale version for introducing me to it. i was intrigued by the transitions and the movement and of course, the song. thankfully, i made my way to the original and clearly remember making my way through the touhou wiki trying to learn the names and personalities of all the girls. i also started playing the games, which i love. the characters, the music, and the constant challenge makes it such an addicting experience
i totally understand what you mean about the Flandre part, it gave such a really good vibe to the point it was what made me search about what this is and made me discover Touhou. while i do admit she is overrated among the community i too see her as my favorite character in the franchise. but that was even before i got invested in the memes and the theme songs, it was mainly because right after this song i watched the first three episodes of Touhou memories of phantasm (that was all there was at that time about 8-9 years ago, i was still in my first year of middle school) and i remember the hype of the fourth episode finally coming out after a lot of delays. and that finale to the scarlet mist incident was the cherry on top of the cake of why Flandre is my favorite character.
Honestly, one of my favorite interpretations of Flandre is the “EastNewSound” mix of UN Owen; it’s super catchy and super creepy at the same time.
@@Megapig9001 "who killed un owen" by kororo yakoh is great too ^^
@@EinManU Just listened it to the first time... or maybe not! Akatsuki Records collaborated with Liz Triangle and did a rock cover of this. Both sound cool though; I like how the tempo of the song changes for each section.
@@Megapig9001 and then megapig never Saw ein again...
Bro I remember that, this will go down in history
everytime i watch bad apple, it feels like i'm watching some forgotten internet scrolls. It's like a time machine haha
I have never heard of touhou before, I just appreciate all the videos people make of this. My favorite as of now is one where the guy made a program that automatically formats code to show the frames of the video
This gave me such chills, and I'm not even a Touhou fan (yet)! I'm happy to understand the song and video in a deeper way than before ^^
It's so weird that a meme got this endstage without me ever seeing it
fr tho
you made your account 3 years ago, don't be surprised
@@chadm2343 i've been on youtube for 8 years my guy, this account is new.
When 2021 starts:
UA-cam: Bad Apple
Man, the video makes Hina’s spinning very refined. It was one of my favorite parts of the video!
Now, that I played Mountain of Faith.. well.. it’s pretty funny.
Now that I know way more, the video makes the characters feel more epic than how they’re portrayed in the fandom.
Touhou’s grip is so wide, and Bad Apple really shows it
Okay
I really resonate with the concluding remarks, the Touhou fandom is so unique in it's fan creations. Touhou really provided a platform on which artists and creators of all different fields can come together, learn and sharpen their skills. There really isn't anything like it.
"Chances are, if you clicked this video..."
*me waiting for him to tell me that i just looked up Why Bad Apple Is So Popular*
that's me too
This video made me appreciate Bad Apple even more!
If only this was recommended to me earlier, not 5 months later.
Algorithm’s weird sometimes lol. I’m pretty happy this video’s growing more though.
i just remembered this song today and after like seven years of knowing this song i finally know the orgin pffft
I was never into the games, I was only into the memes and animations from the fandom tbh. But man I never realized how long I’ve been around witnessing these things
Same
I'm not surprised if you never read Touhou wiki either
man the community around this has figured out how to play this on literally everything. minecraft copper bulbs, rubix cubes, minecraft sheep, ext
0:00 Yeah, I know the beat
it's from the song blue monday
oh
No way this got hearted just within 5 minutes!! I'm still watching it, very cool analysis and hope you like the song if you just found out about it.
I thought that too
How does it feel?
- Prelude -
I just recently came across "Bad Apple" (the metal cover in english) as song via a misunderstanding, I expected a GN'R cover, but got something completely different. (yay?) and it's extremely intriguing. And no, I've not become a "fan" of Touhou or any other musical work linked towards it.
Why is Bad Apple so intriguing? It's the melody(-ies). I play, along other instruments, guitar and used to play in a band, so I do have a certain interest in the basics of music itself. This song is extremely reptitive and simple without it being negative in any way. In fact it handles both of these, simplicity and repetitiveness, very, very well.
- Design -
It begins with it being a rather fast song, this created through how it's starts with the fairly simple, as said, repetitive hook. And then the lyric melody kicks in, which does the rest of the charm. It goes up and down like soft waves. How the words are spread out throughout the melody does the topping. In addition this song breaks with the tradition of prelude-verse-chorus-verse-chorus-interlude-chorus-postlude. It does have an intro and outro, the mid part is kind of the interesting story. It's rather rare for songs not being build in the traditional way today. Usually those are story-based songs.
But that's the thing, this song is not telling a story, but it's also not the usual at the moment prominent style of lyrics. It's more like a "burst" of emotions just spilling out.
What does this song a favor is that it is, due to it's "breaking" convention, it is refreshing/different.
- Sound -
In the Japanese version it's actually sung in a bitter-melancholic/sad tone, while the english version is almost sad-angry, but not the specific kind of "angry" but more the "unfocused" level of angry. And this is not just in the tone of the melody but also in the wording of the lyrics in each language. The english version being almost aggressive, but without actually attacking. In that sense it has a small taste of classic punk in it.
A fun thing about the melody is that at my first time listening to it, it was pretty easy to predict to which note the melody of the lyrics part would go next. It's not just its repetitive nature, as said, it's like waves, they are, as soon as you see them, very predictable in their path.
- Lyrics -
What also shouldn't be underestimated in the impact a song has is the pure meaning of the lyrics and what they can mean / interpreted into by its audience. Especially darker lyrics about the self, not dark lyrics in terms of "Blood for the Bloodgod" (first that came to mind, sorry), which are about external violence, but in the sense of internal conflict. As this is something many, many people deal with, without being able to talk about it. (And there's my other field of expertise, sometimes I hate that understanding and dealing with emotions and human interactions are actually core part of my job)
- Something Noteworthy -
An important sentence, within the English lyrics, is actually "But it wouldn't mean a thing if I told you how I feel", obviously in the context of the full song. Overanalyzing this, because it is fun, this is very resembling of how many people, especially teenagers feel, at some stage in their life and with humanity growing slowly apart and human interaction becoming more and more mundane, it really doesn't matter whether you tell someone how you feel, as they likely do not care.
*(And no, this is not the fault of technology, this would be deep-diving into an extremely complex topic. A very important topic we will sooner or later will have to deal with, it includes education systems just as it includes economic structures and system and whether they should serve humanity or humanity should serve them. And no, this is far from being just a "philosophical" question. We are already dealing with the side-effects of unhealthy systems we have implemented in various parts of our society. We are talking about suicides, students running amok, but also all kinds of depression, social pressure etc. etc. etc. We are technically, in the "civilized word" continuesly de-constructing our own emotional and psychological health. It's still bearable for majority, but in the long run, we will lose, if we don't change. And I've already gone deeper into this topic than I wanted, so back to the song / ending of my comment by adding the tl;dr)*
- TL;DR / Roundup-
The song is very melodic and yet very simple and resembles almost a wave with rather predictable but due to that very "catchy" up and downs, which make it easy to get "into" the song melodic-wise. It's dark and internal nature of the lyrics, angry-sad in the English version, rather sad-melancholic in the Japanese does its work in gathering an audience just as well. The lyrics being rather a "spilling" of emotions, then a told story. With this emotions / emotion-spilling being rather relatable in some way to many people.
(Add, yeah I did add headings in a yt-comment. DEAL WITH IT!)
Happy new year, guys! ;)
What's wrong with adding heading in YT comments? It makes your comment pleasantly to read
Hey this is a really impressive analysis, and I don’t think it should just be restricted to a UA-cam comment. You should try making a video from it.
Thank you, but it's unlikely I'll ever do a video. I'm more of the "writing an essay"-type.
And I'd hardly call this an analysis, more a "quick" impression.
Proper headings and essays on the internet and UA-cam is a lost art. However it does clearly shows who is the educated commenter in a discussion. ;)
@@VulpesChama plenty of people like video essays!! Tbh you could just write all your thoughts down then read it aloud and add visuals, or have an editor do that
I've never seen an English translation before and I'm surprised for there are a nuance between lyrics in Japanese and in English.
It's funny how different translators can produce different translations.
This is incredibly inspiring. Thanks! It really does mean a lot to learn the backgrounds!
What a wonderful explanation with such a sincere attitude behind it! Thank you so much for the way you presented these thoughts! I'm one of the many fans who was similarly impacted and guided into Gensokyo through this animation. I was aware of Touhou before, from things like the IOSYS flashes, and appreciated it passively -- but Bad Apple is what completely blew my mind and forced me to get serious in learning about it. Now, Touhou is unquestionably the most important piece of media in my life.
I honestly didn't think I could be taught more about this video that I've looped to death, but I actually had no idea about the previous drafts/storyboards of the animation... Bad Apple has always been a symbol to me of both the individual and collaborative fan talent that is integral to Touhou's community, but knowing about even more steps in its creation pushes that even further.
You did an amazing job covering the themes, the wider significance as a phenomenon, and more intimately how it reflects the series proper. This is something especially important to me about it -- like the use of yin/yang symbolism, the relationships between characters -- it was so beautifully artistically captured, in a way that perhaps sparks inspiration through its abtractness while simultaneously presenting straightforward ideas to latch onto whose relevance never gets old. Very much like canon Touhou.
I had to do a double take when I read the username (lol); I’m glad you liked the video! It is really insane how much effort went into making Bad Apple.
im become a Touhou fan because of the TF2 remix xD (10:34)
It’s a bit strange how much the fandoms overlap lol
@@Megapig9001 lol
Tf2 made me a touhou fan.
wait wtf, i didn't know there's a TF2 version of it
The cross-polination between those fandoms has always been funny. Then again, both are memetic juggernauts with fan lore and material several times larger than their respective original games and both are about quirky, strong-willed characters with hats so... it was probably bound to happen.
Me who actually wants to feel nothing: *YES YES I'M LISTENING*
I'll be honest, this video is what my brother showed me to introduce me to the Touhou franchise, and I am glad he did. I've never seen such an all-encompassing and welcoming fan base before, and I'm very happy to be a part of it. I've recently started reading the manga and playing Touhou Lost Word, and I enjoy the different characters and the relationships between them. All the passion and talent of this fanbase is incredible to me
Finally i know the history of this song is like a lil mystery for me that has been stuck for years. Maybe I could’ve researched but every video was a repost and I’m not in the fandom;; so yeh amazing video!!
why they play bad apple on everything? minecraft, stop motion etc.?
Without Bad Apple, I would have never met my friends and it massively impacted my taste in music.
It introduced me to Touhou. I watched UA-camrs who played fan games who turned to streamers where I found my current circle of friends.
Touhou also broke me out of my "hard rock phase". First, I only listened to covers by Demetori but grew more accustomed to remixes and covers of different genres of music.
Bad Apple had a surprisingly huge effect on my life. And I don't feel any shame saying that. The song is awesome on many many levels.
So, I came here because of r/place of 2023, the mad lads made the bad apple animation on the canvas, this blew my mind, and I started to search about and here I am.
same love how theres actually a great story behind this animation
6:49 sent chills down his spine
You would probably dead if you meet Flandre in real life
This song is a good and bad thing:
Good: It made touhou a little bit more popular.
Bad: People dont look further into other touhou music even if there could be smth better for them.
Oh btw, touhou isnt about ying yang or black and white. In fact it has many colors or grayscales. Even the relationship between youkai and humans is pretty complicated.
The whole point of yin yang is that nothing is black and white
That’s dark for such a colorful game.
touhou is a very bland series, there are so many things unexplained (or even unexplainable), ZUN even said it himself that he doesn't care about giving the series more lore. The series lacks depth and a touch to it
@@skyisthela
He doesn’t realise how much lore is put into it when he makes the albums and gives info in the official manga
@@skyisthela thank you someone said it I mean touhou has great concepts but it tackles them in a really shallow and uninteresting way
I must confess, yes, I also got into Touhou through that video. And I've never played a single game of Touhou (because I'm financially and geographically challenged). But now, about 4 years later, I find myself knowing about 90% of the information you just relayed in this video, surprisingly enough. It's amazing what you can fall in love with through a certain media.
Touhou in english is free lmao
If you are interested in playing the games at some point and have some cash, Touhou 10 and up are available on Steam. You do have to input the English part of their names to find them ('mountain of faith', not 'touhou', as I found out just now). You will also have to apply an English patch, but the Touhou wiki has a page explaining how to do that.
In terms of pirating the games, since buying any of the games legitimately overseas used to be hard, people are pretty chill about it. Touhou 7 is one I've seen recommended for new people (though that was a few years ago).
Piracy and open-source games/independent works.
honestly it’s so cool to see the backstory to this song and video as an outsider looking in. i remember just stumbling upon this years ago not even knowing anything about the characters or where the song originated from, all i knew is that i loved it and was obsessed with it!! so cheers to everyone who participated in the creation of this great thing and thank you for making a video explaining everything for people (like me!) who might not be so aware of the full story :)
That is the most amazing show of years of community teamwork I've ever seen, and it wasn't even coordinated to be consistently worked on; it wasn't even official! I'm glad each one of these creators got the credit he/she deserves!
I just thought whoa shadows and cool animated shadows whoa back then... did not think there was a lot going in the background
same
I never analyzed the video like this, great work!
One thing to note is that the black and white aesthetic made the video pretty much ageless. It doesn't use outdated 3D models which would look bad 5 years or so after initial release; the lack of detail in the models actually makes your brain to fill the blanks and get a better picture of it. Pretty genius decisions.
I found Bad Apple after someone shared a video of it running on Windows Task Manager in the ArchLinux discord.
Very comprehensive and entertaining explanation video, thanks!
And the black/white animation is so good, especially for something this old
I literally just found out about this video today, so it’s really cool to see the history of it! I sorta wrote it off as just another Vocaloid song or something, but finding out it was originally 16-bit is so cool! Thanks man :)
It is also great as a demo, and a benchmark. Everything that has a CPU can play Doom, and everything that has a screen can play Bad Apple.
It is surprising how smooth this looks even on very simple systems with low framerates.
I never imagined animations in 2009 was able to be soo good! Deffinatly a professional with passion.
If you visit Anira's account on NicoVideo, this shadow art is the only video they have
Even though I have known about Touhou and its characters since 2008, ironicly I never stumbled across Bad Apple until 2021 through the retro demoscene showcasing a version running on an 1981 IBM 5160 4.77mhz 8088 (Called 8088 Domination for those curious). Amusing how that works at times, i'm glad I did find this gem eventually, and thank you for the explanation and analysis.
Hey thank you for sharing the history of this music video. I had friends who introduced me to the series many years ago and this was the welcoming video for me into the series. However, I haven't known much about the series overall until now. Thanks for making things clear! Great vid!
i just watched some video where someone made this animation in minecraft with sheeps i don't even know what this song is
I found that video as well, but knew the song from rather long ago
@@sonicboom5012 same
@@TeeV479 well hello
I always felt like Touhou needed a youtube community, unfortunately, I think a lot of youtube culture and communities weren't developed back in the very early 2010s.
It definitely exists now, but mainly in the "meme", "gameplay", and "composer" areas. My goal is to become an "analysis" channel for Touhou.
“What’s Touhou?” That, my friend, is a beautiful can of worms. It is a vertical danmaku shooter (or a bullet hell with pretty patterns). There are currently 18 mainline games in the series and the 18th game released not too long ago, even! There are also side games like fighters and games where you take pictures of the danmaku! There are also pretty fun fan games like fantastic danmaku festival, luna nights, and lost word! There are many places to get into the series! Don’t get me started about the music…I will not shut up about the music. It is so good! The official works and remixes just bop! There is nothing quite like listening to Year - Round Absorbed Curiosity at 3 AM. The places to start the official games, in my opinion, are 15.5 Antimony of Common Flowers for the Nintendo Switch. It just released and also boasts the largest OST of any official Touhou game. Another good place is Touhou 14 Double Dealing Character. It is one of the modern era of games and it’s where I started (technically…I started with both 14 and 15 lmao). If you want to just jump in no matter the difficulty, I’d recommend starting with 15 Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom or 12.8 Great Fairy Wars, my two favorite games in the franchise. 15 is hard, to say the least. 12.8 is a danmaku, but you earn score by freezing the bullets in place. It’s a really cool concept! If you wanted to get into the series, I hope this helped!
I've never looked up the lyrics for this song, and it's been a minute since I was OBSESSED with it (like 5 years?). Going to this video and learning about the meaning and origin is really eye opening
OMG I DON’T KNOW WHY THIS DOESN’T HAVE MORE VIEWS
It does now
I'm just glad that Bad Apple is still timeless and most people still know of it, and it makes itself known too.
If you were to go to any games and anime convention, and this was being played ... a lot of people would perk up their ears and stop to listen. There is undoubtedly a lot of memories that this song triggers to people, for me it reminds me of my golden age of internet interaction, the late 2000s, and all the Touhou games I was exposed to in Warcraft 3 customs.
The lyrics when translated are something I think we only got when we were older. For me I heard this song when I was like, at the start of highschool so it didn't hit.
U are just amazing
Huge respect for u and hope ur carier goes well cause ur scriptwriting is just amazing. Saw that u improved over years and i m happy to know that.
after years of getting recommended bad apple MVs, I finally get it now
As someone who has been suicidal and depressed for a while now, the lyrics and song in general for some reason help me cope with it.
i hope u are ok now in 2022, Tsundere Jesus
This animation had a lot of impact on the demoscene and retro coding. I had no idea about Touhou (and even to this day I have not played the game) but I've seen so many attempts to efficiently pack and play the same animation on oldschool 8bit-16bit systems. Some of them are interesting as they use the original hardware (like the C64 one fitting in one freaking 170k disk ua-cam.com/video/OsDy-4L6-tQ/v-deo.html) others would run on old systems but use extra storage hardware to fit in. It's pretty challenging on these old hardware to play such animation, but everybody has tried it in most 8-bit or 16-bit consoles/home computers, it's the same as "does it run Doom?".
Thank you for this analysis & historic context. Your translations are much more sensible that those i've seen elsewhere. Your's is especially coherent, and explains the alignment of the graphics and mood. FWIW, I hope Nomico is doing well, and continues to sing.
Really well made video, you deserve more subscribers, keep up the good work!
I've always thought this song a part of vocaloid since it was recommended to me when I was a fan of vocaloid. But I also thought its weird since the singing voice sounds more like human and I've never seen vocaloid characters like the ones in the video. It was the 3D characters that made me think of vocaloid. Didn't know the history of its origin is this interesting. This has been one of my favorite song since I was 13 and now at 23 I still love it. Thank you for the vid!
The gods have spoken.
*You, dear mortal, are worthy*
Great video! I've always wondered how the song was made and where it came from, but didn't have the will to dig deeper. Thanks!
Wow this is a really well structured video. Good job!
Very nice summary of what I and many would always assume was "some anime OP". Although my first serious introduction was "Overdrive" by IOSYS, I still appreciate how the video demonstrates that the series would be nowhere without the passion, support, and incredible talent of the community. I'd be overwhelmed myself if I had known that making a 3D music video with it's own style and hand-made models.
You can see how in the West, more people are becoming aware of Touhou as a love-driven franchise people can express themselves with that doesn't have anything quite like it. It's been slow, but it's clear how the efforts of everyone have made this series something incredible. You yourself included have gotten the attention of over 30k people, and are helping inspire and intrigue others just as this video did, how the storyboard offered a template for many, and how the original album inspired that artist to make such a video as well.
Bad apple was what introduced me to touhou many years ago. I remember seeing all the characters and wondering who they were and Flandre was the first character I ever read about. Now when I look at bad Apple it all makes sense, I can name ever character and their backstory. I’m so grateful to have stumbled upon this video. My life wouldn’t be the same without touhou. It also helped my depression during a really tough time ironically.
Man, the Touhou fandom is one of those things where it will keep existing even past UA-cam's life cycle.
The oldest known Touhou video is a Touhou 8 gameplay uploaded on 16 December 2005 by Dracil.
I experienced a bit of Touhou when I heard a remix of "Greenwhich in the Sky" in one of Hopdiddy's videos back in 2007. Afterwards I played a rhythm game in 2016 and happen to stumble upon many IOSYS and other arrangements such as Bad Apple. It took me until 2019 to finally play the games starting from PC-98 to Windows games, and I never regretted doing it ever since. Mad props to ZUN especially his music.
Mate youre effort shows, i hope i continue to see such a high quality of videos in the future.
Love the video! Bad Apple is such an awesome display of the Touhou fandom and your video analysis of the Shadow Art version made me realise why I loved it back in the 2010s before I even knew it!
It's amazing how much a community can accomplish together!
Thanks for the cool video. I had no idea about the background story or anything despite being around on the internet for some time. Really cool stuff.
I like the use of the siivagunner version during the credits to complete the cycle as that is just the Nomico version but with the classic soundfont.
Beautiful
That’s one of my favorite rips; such a clever concept executed really well
At the time of crossing paths with this video, times have been a bit rocky, for the entire year. I heard EB’s version and got hooked on the song. It’s intense, but it talks about a struggle that most of us face in some way. Some, worse than others. This song connects to me, and to know that it came from something as small as a video game BG music... Jesus, that’s like if someone took something like the boss theme form Super Mario World and made it like this.
I know almost nothing about Touhou, and I don't know Japanese, but just watching Bad Apple I could tell there was a huge story hiding behind those animations. It's nice to finally have an idea of what it all means. I can't wait to see what obscure piece of hardware or software will be convinced to render it next. =)
There are a lot of Bad Apple videos with subtitles or just listen to the English version by Christina Vee.
I got introduced to Bad Apple when Junferno got recommened to me. I have watched so many renditions of the original video that i finally look more into the background of this music video. And it delivers.