Three Strange Serieses I Like

I have been introduced to a new genre that I am seriously digging.  Mostly, I dig them because they're weird and each one unique and require a lot of thought.  They are not conventional entertainment.  But hey, maybe my fans don't want conventional entertainment!  So I will share them with you.

The genre are stories told by YouTube animated videos.  Usually they're shorts a few minutes long, but some serieses have much longer episodes.  The format allows for a freedom of creation you can't get in television shows, and effects you can't get in books.  The animation is inevitably basic, and instead the creators focus on exploiting the potential of those basic formats.  So, the three I've gotten into so far...

Ratboy Genius.  This is a series of heavily music focused videos in the 3-5 minute range by 'Ratboy Genius.'  Ratboy Genius is not a visual artist.  His 3D art skills improve as the show goes on, but he's going for a weird 'children's scribble' flavor anyway.  It's all one story, but presented in miniserieses that follow different main characters and subplots.  It's all pretty surreal.  I started with the Little King John miniseries, and I love that arrogant mostly beneficent god-creator of his own little Minecraft world.

The big thing with Ratboy Genius is the music. I don't have enough of a background to describe why it is good, but the creator is, well, a genius at electronically produced music.  If you're inclined to that, throw yourself at Ratboy Genius immediately.

Petscop.  This is a fake game Let's Play, telling a story by having a YouTuber play a supposedly rare, forgotten Playstation game and recording it for some unknown friend.  There is no actual Petscop game, and the most brilliant part of the series is how flawlessly it looks like he's recording a game, instead of animating videos.  It's meant to be creepy (I don't creep out, so I don't know if it is) and a puzzle for the audience to figure out.  So much so that there are whole (dysfunctional, of course) online communities dedicated to doing so, and meta commentary on how the YouTube page is structured and possibly outside websites.  There are YouTube serieses just about analyzing Petscop.

Important:  Petscop has obvious symbolic themes of child abuse, and contains references to real life cases of fatal child abuse, if you put together the pieces.  It's all presented that way rather than blatant actions, but knowing that theme can help decide if a viewer will love it or hate it.

It is much slower than the other two shows I'm discussing today.  Episode length is mostly 10-30 minutes.  Unlike the other two, Petscop is ongoing, but releases at a tremendously slow rate, sometimes months between episodes.

Finally, Kuroi_Channel!  Man, what a head trip this series is.  27 episodes, most less than two minutes.  Are you aware of the 'virtual YouTuber' phenomenon, where voice and sometimes video sync animation programs substitute a cartoon/anime character for the YouTuber?  Well, this is about one of those.  Or three of those.  Except they're not substituting for anybody, they're nearly incoherent artificial beings who've had their third dimension destroyed in a war and are trying to learn 3D modeling to get it back.

I... think.  Kuroi_Channel is nonstop glitch aesthetics, one of the purest and most brilliantly evolving portrayals of that aesthetic ever.  If you particularly liked Portal because of how obviously broken GlaDoS was, Kuroi will be the thing for you.

Unlike the other two, Kuroi_Channel does not have a big fanbase.  It is tiny and relatively unknown.  If I can point a few people towards that freaky armless glitch cat and her two sisters Homebody and Thumbnail Witch, I'll have done a good deed.

That's it for today!  I'm trying to get back to using this blog, because what stopped me was mostly stressing over my publisher.  Maybe in the next day or two I'll review She Ra.