“It has long been recognized both within academia and in the various communities organized around fandom that the practice of being a fan does not merely consist of passive consumption. Rather, fans are also producers, making everything from interpretations of their favorite television shows to extratextual products like wikis, fan fiction, and fan videos to data about their own consumption habits and those of their peers that can be used to market new products.”
Mel Stanfill and Megan Condis, Fandom and/as labor
Fanart
Brittany’s Fanart
Stella’s Fanart
Fan Projects
With the anime community being a large portion of the internet, fans have taken their love of their favourite series in forms other than fanfiction as well. One of them being the rise of fan parodies popularized by the internet persona, LittleKuriboh.
His Yu-Gi-Oh Abridged series kicked off very early on in his career. He plays off the peculiarities and the silliness of the original show’s English dub and takes his own spin on it. The entire main cast is voiced by him, along with the editing. LittleKuriboh incorporates references from other media, like Star Trek, for example.
In the beginning, the videos had ranged from 3-6 minutes and eventually increasing the length and production value with a total of 86 episodes.
Inspired by LittleKuriboh, other parody channels started to arise, one of which was TeamFourStar, created in 2008. They’re a group of three guys, Lanipator (Nick Landis), KaiserNeko (Scott Friedrichs) and Takahata101 (Curtis Arnott). Then, on June 6th 2008, was when the first episode of their series Dragon Ball Z Abridged came out. They reached out to different youtube channels, one of which was MasakoX, who played the voice of Abridged Goku. Then eventually, they needed someone to voice act Frieza, one of the main antagonists of the series. That became LittleKuriboh.
Dragonball Z Abridged was a beloved project for both the fans and the creators that once they were starting the next arc, which was the Android Saga/Cell saga, the production value went up. KaiserNeko, the editor, worked on tweaking scenes from the show to the point where they were seamless. For example, he had removed entire characters from scenes, reposition hands, like Vegeta pulling the middle finger rather than a piece sign. Even original English dub voice actors became fans of the series. (Though Goku’s voice actor Sean Schemmel didn’t really approve due to legal reasons). At a convention, Takahata101 met Cell’s voice actor, Dameon Clarke. He talks about it on his own youtube channel and on a review series that the main channel made. Essentially, Clarke was so excited to hear who was going to voice Cell that he even coached Takahata101. All this because they uploaded a fun project amongst friends on the internet.
Eventually, once Dragonball Z Abridged was finished, they created another fan show, which takes place right after Cell gets killed by Gohan (also played by MasakoX) called HFIL (Home for Infinite Losers). It takes place in Hell and the whole idea is based off the villains going through rehabilitation. It is filled with the same type of jokes fans loved in DBZ Abridged, even giving a nod to certain recurring references that fans like to quote. The animation is done by DevilArtemis, who creates mini parody videos on blender.
Animation Memes
Animation memes are a crucial part for artists who mainly use Youtube as their main platform. Animators use a snippet from a song and animate a character to it, and other animators or amateurs are encouraged to make their own version of the animation, some prefer to create a version almost as similar as the original “animation meme” while others stir things up! But it is called an “animation meme” because it is a chain of animators who recreate an animation with their own skills. They’ve been around since around 2008, and are still on going now!
Music
While others express their love for fandoms through art whether it’d be digital or traditional or as parodies, some artists take a different approach. Sometimes it could just be the a song about a video game or in Starbomb’s case, an entire band dedicated to video games. The members are Daniel Avidan, Arin Hanson (Also known as The Game Grumps) and Brian Wecht. Most of their songs are explicit, filled with humour, but if that’s what you’re into go ahead and check them out!
The great thing about spotify is that although sometimes they don’t have the original music, there are incredible artists who make covers of popular franchises. I made a playlist with all the ones I like. It’s mostly Pokemon and Legend of Zelda re-orchestrated sound tracks, but feel free to have a listen.