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This is week two of our three-week pause of Albert Barillé’s Once Upon a Time… series. Next week we’ll finish My Jungle Book, Your Year, and the week after that we’ll start Once Upon a Time… The Americas.

“‘Fanime Fun Time’? But what is fanime, exactly?”

A fanime (etym. blend of fan + anime) is basically when someone makes an anime-style cartoon show by drawing frames in MS Paint; compositing them in Windows Movie Maker with pirated music, stock sound effects, and dialog recorded in one take on potato microphones; and posting the result to YouTube. This isn’t necessarily accurate of all fanime, but the throughline is in any case that fanime is a form of democratized amateur animation combining anime aesthetics with “Internet Ugly”. The style is most associated with the Western anime fandom of the mid-2000s through mid-2010s, where it was often difficult to distinguish sincere fanime shows from parodies of the genre.

What’s the chef cookin’ tonight?

My Jungle Book, Your Year (abbrev. MJBYY) is a 15-episode slice-of-life comedy series released from March 25, 2011 to November 17, 2012, with a two-minute 10 year anniversary special in 2021, and a few other specials/shorts contemporary with the original “broadcast”.

I first learned about MJBYY back in 2019 from this 19-minute video review, and was so sold on it that I immediately binged the first three episodes. However, despite finding it inspiring that two teenagers could make a show like this together, I nonetheless decided not to continue MJBYY after episode 3, simply because the dialog’s audio quality was just too hard to understand. So this is why I want to revisit MJBYY: if the audio quality was the one thing keeping me from enjoying it, maybe I’ll like it better now, especially if I’m joined with some other people who could help fill in the gaps of my own hearing.

I should mention that one of MJBYY’s co-creators, Dagian Drupe, is STILL making fanime to this very day; and both Dagian and MJBYY’s other co-creator, gigisxcircus, seem to be pretty accomplished artists today. I should also mention that, even after 13 years, episode 6, as well as episodes 8~14, as well as all the specials/shorts, have still not cracked 10K views on YouTube. This is to say that finishing this show means joining a “club” of <6,900 people (least viewed full episode), alternatively a club of <1,600 people (least viewed short).

Yeah, this show is OBSCURE obscure!

Plot description: The series is about Ribbonista Hime and Demonica Bishi, who is studying at a high school. Demonica Bishi is aiming to become Student Council President. The reason why is because of her vanilla-caramel ice cream, which is sold at the vendors around the school. Fuu Fuu Furi Furi Pupi is also aiming for the same goal, but he wants to become President to remove all the vendors in the campus, so he will stop crashing into them. Demonica doesn’t want that and wants to makes sure she gets the title. Demonica and Ribbonista team up for the elections and Fuu Fuu Furi Furi Pupi teams up with Marbel and Cones.

※ Plot description courtesy of Fanime Realm

We will be watching the first half of MJBYY tonight, incl. a few specials/shorts:

  • Episode 1 (c. 11 mins)
  • Episode 2 (c. 9 mins)
  • Episode 3 (c. 12 mins)
  • Episode 4 (c. 10 mins)
  • Episode 5 (c. 12 mins)
  • Episode 6 (c. 11 mins)
  • Episode 7 (c. 13 mins)
  • Halloween special (c. 12 mins)
  • Short: “Kyu Kyu Kyu Nyah MJBYY” (c. 1 min)
  • Short: “「ribonista」 Caipirinha☆” (c. 1 min)
  • Short: “Bubble Pop” (c. 1 min)
  • Short: “Halloween Special Cookie Dude Edition” (c. 2 mins)
  • Short: “A Very Furi Christmas” (c. 3 mins)

This amounts to ~100 minutes of planned content.

Content warnings and accessibility

Audio description: Not available.

Sign language: Not available.

Captions: Evidently not available, which is particularly regrettably given the audio quality. It actually seems like this show sometimes shows subtitles on screen which don’t actually reflect what the characters are saying, as a joke? Hmph. And I doubt I’ll have time to type out my own subtitles on such short notice, either, not that I necessarily want to spoil myself by doing that.

Language: English, occasional gratuitous Japanese.

Content warnings:

This series seems to include:

  • Teenage girls having their boobs grabbed
  • A character coughing up blood
  • A character covered in blood
  • A character experiencing catatonia
  • A character apparently dying

This is based on the plot descriptions and YouTube thumbnails, as well as skimming the TV Tropes page. However, like last week, bear in mind that this show was literally made in MS Paint, so it is pretty tame on the whole.

♫ Uniting nations at the speeeed of liiiiight ♫
[epic sax solo]
♫ Station of the '20s — TV☆3SIS! ♫