Bad Apple Explained: History and Analysis

Although I am Japanese, it is unknown what kind of 3D software and model was used for the shadow play PV. (Because there is no comment from the author "Anira" so far.) However, it is known that the model is completely self-made and the motion is a basic hand and some physics.

The song: Talks about society, disconnection and depression Everyone: Funky Vibing

"Its cool to see whats your favourite character is doing" Nitori: *Proceed to run and dive into water Me: Interesting

"Bad Apple isn't just a love letter to older fans, but also acts as a welcome letter to new ones." This quote really struck me. Filled my heart with warmth. Bad Apple welcomed me as a fan in 2010, and Touhou remains my favorite franchise of all time.

I just want to take a moment to throw some love in Haruka's direction. The video didn't mention her, but she was just a teenager when she wrote these lyrics. She's a great writer, and went on to do some other things in the shadows, such as the opening to Blue Dragon. Without her creative writing, this could have been a much different song. I know she'll never read this, but regardless, thank you Haruka.

"Bad Apple solidified itself as an imperishable hit" i see what you did there

I can't believe this started as some rando's MS Paint storyboard. They had the vision, but not the skills to bring it fully to life. I'm glad someone did that for them. A lot of people aren't that lucky. And this was an idea that deserved to see the light of day.

That animation was made 11 years ago and it still nails better than much of the animation we get today.

i love that MV because the motion is so realistic.. how their clothes and hair sways, thats splendid for an animation... its very realistic..

I dont know whats happening but im interested on what youre talking about.

As a middle school weeb, I remember having to do a song essay for a language arts/visual arts course. I chose this one, and the teacher played it for the class. Looking back, I am both highly embarrassed, yet still glad I was able to show it to people. It deserves the recognition to be appreciated for its quality regardless of the viewer being an anime/game fan or not.

for the longest time i thought bad apple was a vocaloid song up until recently and before watching this video i had no clue what touhou was but now im genuinely interested in getting into the franchise

Internet culture fascinates me. It's like a huge experiment to see what happens when you present something to possibly millions of people. Sometimes not even twenty people acknowledge it exists and sometimes it's shown to a third of the human population (not accurate because I don't know how much of humanity has computers or internet but you get the point). There's also so much opportunity to work with others or gain inspiration. You can make friends who you'd never have met otherwise because you're on opposite side of the world. It's just such a huge step towards achieving communication and understanding other cultures and people. And don't get me started on the development of humor through the internet.

I have been listening to this song for years and never knew. I think im going to join the touhou cult

One more thing. An extremely important thing to remember when comparing this to the original song (especially regarding exactly which version got the video that catapulted it into the stratosphere) is that Zun isn't concerned with making his scores singable. He's just making what he think fits the game and character, and he's going to use a lot of pitch changes and tempos that a human voice can't reasonably accommodate. Some BGMs are easy to set lyrics to (Lullaby of a Deserted Hell, The Gensokyo That The Gods Loved, Let's Live in a Lovely Cemetery, Beloved Tomboyish Daughter, and Futasuiwa From Sado come to mind) and some aren't. Seriously, listen to Love-Colored Master Spark again; any faithful adaptation of that would require at least three singers. So songwriters have to make compromises...cut here, adjust there. Not much different from, say, American Idol.

I can't believe you didn't mention the massive community of homebrew developers using the video for demos. It's great for that because it can be replicated with very low color count (just black and white if you discard the shades of grey in the flames), is still recognisable at low framerate and resolution, and due to being low-complexity compresses very nicely. This video has been played back on countless retro systems. NES, game boy, mega drive, SNES, PCengine, C64, calculators, electronic toys. As laser art, on flip dot displays, on massive airport departure displays. For retro devs there's two questions: Can it run doom, and can it run bad apple.

Makes you wonder how many great ideas died in the minds of people who didn't have access to the tools to bring them to life

"bad apple has been played to death" Night of nights: Hold my beer

It's crazy to think about how much of an impact Touhou has had on the internet and on communities unrelated to the franchise. Bad Apple!! isn't the only viral hit that Touhou has; Night of Nights, Tiny Little Adiantum, Galaxy Collapse, Ronald McDonald insanity...

Fascinating story of how one small request to animate something got the ball rolling for a worldwide sensation. I grew up with old school rock-n-roll of the 60's, 70's, 80's. I'm not a gamer. I fell into loving this genre of music by accident, in 2011, while watching, of all things, a college football game between Auburn and South Carolina. The background music was Sandstorm by Darude, and the stadium was rockin'. A search for that led me to emotional trance, which led me to a variety of remixes, which led me to electronic, dubstep, independent artists, touhou, vocaloid, Miku, and now I am a complete fan of all this.