2ch Chronicle/2ch Flash

A small segment of 2ch users produced a massive amount of flash videos and games that satirized certain aspects of their culture, as well as giving a feel of what it was like to be on 2ch in that era.

Shift_JIS Characters

Just like image macro memes in the English-language internet, complex Shift_JIS art has created an entire culture of characters based on 2ch's (and its predecessor Ayashii World's) rants and ravings.

• We are 2ch's ASCII ART - A quick intro to the whole cast.
• Shii's Song - Shii, sometime called Shii-chan, is often depicted as a female cat in a box, waiting endlessly for “her” love to come back. “She” is a female counterpart of Giko Neko with asterisks on “her” cheeks. This beautiful Shii’s Song video was one of the first to mix English and Japanese in it. As a matter of fact, it may have been one of the first instances to introduce the Japanese Shift-JIS characters to the Western web as early as 2002 (via Newgrounds).
  • Know Your Meme: Giko Neko

Flashbomb Competition

The annual 2ch Flashbomb Competition challenges the greatest flash making teams to create masterpieces of 2ch culture.

• Flashbomb 2004
• Flashbomb 2005
• Sunafesta 2005 - A continuation of the Flashbomb tradition after it shut down unexpectedly.

Clairvoyance Flash Team

Clairvoyance was a famous team of 2ch flash creators that won many awards for their Flash masterpieces. Amazingly, the Internet Archive has captured and preserved a copy of their flash videos for all time.

• Nightmare City - An eye-popping flash movie series where two AA characters fight to escape from a "fake", cyberpunk city. Won an award at Flashbomb 2005. 4chan users made their own variant inspired by this flash series, 4chan City.
  • Nightmare City: Catastrophe - The thrilling sequel, where they finally make an escape.
• Final Fantasy AA Opening - An earlier work by Clairvoyance, an AA Flash adaptation of the story of Final Fantasy. Includes music by TAMusic.

Thread Drama

• UNIX.swf - This is a monument to a legendary event in 2ch's history. When 2channel was at threat of shutdown, users from the UNIX board worked together to significantly improve 2ch's Perl server-side code, reducing the server strain and saving the site. It is spoken in English with Japanese subtitles, perhaps because Japanese vocalizers did not exist yet.
  • YouTube
• IOSYS: Itteyoshi (2005) - satirization of 2ch's default response to the stupidity of newbies. "Itteyoshi" means "go away", and also "kill yourself".
  • Danbooru YouTube - Transcript + Translation

Sources

• Dagobah 2ch Flash Archive
• Penfifteen Flash Archive