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Aug 2020

I know about anthropomorphic turtles that are mutants, ninjas and teenagers, the franchise is worth billions...

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Shrek. Who knew a green ogre named Shrek could become such an icon.

I would say by those standards half of Marvel's franchise is really weird, lol.

Thinking about it though the idea of living creatures being kept in mechanical balls and being used to fight each other and be shown off in pagents by 12 year olds is pretty up there. (Pokémon. I'm talking about Pokémon.)

I mean, Power Rangers is pretty f#cking wild?
Nowadays most story concepts are no longer weird, just by association with other weird stories. They're all weird, so none of them are weird.

They made this cartoon about a cleaning sponge that lives in a fruit and the kids went nuts over it...

In all seriousness. Spongebob was really "out there" when it first came out and a lot of creative types and parents sort of scoffed at it.

Pixar's Cars is another example of this, it was so bizarre when it was first announced that people were like "What's next? A movie about talking shoes?"

One that has been sort of lost to time a bit was the Shmoos from Lil Abner. People went crazy and they created merch for it.

Also. CatDog.

We're desensitized to weird stuff. xD

To be fair to 50Shades (something I never thought I'd say) the there was actually nothing strange about it except how popular it was (if you take it as intended as erotic romance and not some thriller/dark horror romance like it kinda is). It was a basic harlequin romance fantasy plot of rich guy sweeps you off your feet and gives you everything you want and when he forced gifts it was so you could remain modest and not be a gold digger, it's fairly common in things like Mills&Boon (there's actually an entire subgenre within Mills&Boon for that exact plot and was well before 50Shades), it just had a slight BDSM twist which is nothing new or exciting either. It just got lots of exposure and wasn't really well done.

But the actual question: card game anime in general but especially Yu-Gi-Oh. Because magical ancient Egyptian ghosts who are very good at evil magic card games somehow became wildly successful. There is a is great video somewhere on just how actually insane Yu-Gi-Oh's world building is and Kaiba and capitalism is the real villain. And pre-card games was also insane: ancient Egyptian murder ghost murders people through children's murder games.

What if (insert an object, a country, or an animal here) was an attractive young person?

From Hetalia, Kemono Friends, to Internet Explorer-Chan.

:smile: I love that anime, but yeah, super weird, do you remember the alien ghost thing? or the post-apocalypse world with motorbikes like Akira? I know they're another generation, but it's still the same franchise lmao.

Oh boy man the spinoffs got wilder (I love the series I make fun of them out of love) but yeah they kinda get progressively insaner:

  • Insane card game based school island (same timeline as DM)
  • Capitalism ruins everything + Aztec (I think) and a sprinkling of Norse mythology + zombies + androids + time travelling evil cosplayers (still the same timeline) (card games on motorcycles)
  • Augmented reality, alien ghost, reincarnated rock aliens, toddler dads, and dragons that created the universe (new time line, card games in space) (also, noticeably the most popular spinoff in Japan despite hate in the west)
  • Actual solid creations of card games you can interact with (don't think about that for too long) split all the previous series into their own worlds and call them parallel universes and they're at war because realistic consequences of children having to deal with the fate of the world means they might as well be child soldiers. (The point where everyone realized Director Ono needs to stop abandoning the series for Symphogear please)
  • Card games in virtual reality + using people's consciousnesses to create AI by abducting and torturing children (the first YGO to ever get so bad behind the scenes and so unpopular it got cancelled half way through)
  • Current season, no idea what's actually going on, it's only just started but everyone is noticeably younger and it's a new studio so who knows but I'm sure it'll end up insane and there's a love of 7s.

Anything high concept and made for children. Veggie Tales comes to mind for me. A reasonable chunk of my childhood was watching vegetables talk to me about bible stories.

You know what`s crazier?

Seto Kaiba`s facscination with the game led him to develop a massive card game tech industry to the point it became one of the three biggest industries of the world and made the world revolve around a card game to the point he was able to fund a card game school and actually make a profit.

Seto is one of my favourites excentric millionaires.....definitively not a hero, but the sheer concept of how far he is going for a freaking card game is hillarious and entertaining.

Ok funny story here, related to the Teletubbies are the Boohbah:

Both shows are all preformed by dancers and acrobats. My uncle (I will call him uncle, he's my dad's cousin) was the blue Boohbah and his boss was Lala. He then went on to choreograph some of the London Olympics opening ceremony (the flying wires parts) and now does so all over the world for big events. You can get places doing these weird kids shows, it's insane.

I think ‘one punch man’ was pretty weird....although looking at the other examples, this might be a rather sane idea after all XD

All of mine are more "successful within certain groups of people, particularly internet communities" more than mainstream media, but:

The story premise itself wasn't THAT weird, but the worldbuilding and characters in Undertale were pretty out there.

Also, in relation, Homestuck was a wild ride from start to finish and was wildly popular for quite a few years.

Finally, honorable mention to intentionally weird stuff like Don't Hug Me I'm Scared and OFF that was mostly just popular on like, 2010's Tumblr for a bit, but still had their fifteen minutes of fame.