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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

"it didn't just come from one person: it came from decades of them" .That's what on a personal level(and for many others I'm sure) made this video special: there was a lot behind it, hidden, my 10 year old self didn't know what the shadows and lyrics meant but everything about it was deliberate and beatiful and purposefully cryptic. I understood it wasn't an official thing so it made me realize that communities could do great stuff out of love. Ty for that video on a subject that interested me a lot

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.

I feel like this video will get thousands of views in the future Edit : when I commented here it had about 400 views XD

i totally understand what you mean about the Flandre part, it gave such a really good vibe to the point it was what made me search about what this is and made me discover Touhou. while i do admit she is overrated among the community i too see her as my favorite character in the franchise. but that was even before i got invested in the memes and the theme songs, it was mainly because right after this song i watched the first three episodes of Touhou memories of phantasm (that was all there was at that time about 8-9 years ago, i was still in my first year of middle school) and i remember the hype of the fourth episode finally coming out after a lot of delays. and that finale to the scarlet mist incident was the cherry on top of the cake of why Flandre is my favorite character.

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.

The transitions in the video are really good. Obviously the black and white theme fits with the lyrics, and the game, but it's also briliantly used to smoothly transition from one object or person to another, constantly throughout the video, in different and creative ways each time.

Somewhere, there exist, or existed, あにら's full set of 3d models of all the characters. Having this cultural artifact without those models is like having the Lycurgus Cup without knowing the required metallurgy.

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...

"hey do you know bad apple?" "Yeah! It's a cool song!" "Cool, Do you know where it came from?" "Idk, vocaloid probably" -_-

Megapig9001: **thanks to everyone that made bad apple exist** Me: *_Thank you Zun’s parents for raising an absolute legend_*

I'm still so awe struck by whoever hand drawn every frame of that stunning animated mv...this one person made this world class video 14 years ago that entire studios may not produce the same quality even today.

Me : *plays Bad Apple in classroom My weeb friend : "wHaT AniMe IS ThIS?"

I wish the English side of this fandom was a little bigger. English ≠ West | English = Global Communication

So lemmie get this straight- This is a fan music video of a fan storyboard for a fan remix of an original song?!

everytime i watch bad apple, it feels like i'm watching some forgotten internet scrolls. It's like a time machine haha

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.

It shows the strength of the design. Every character is recognisable from just their silhouette.

What a wonderful explanation with such a sincere attitude behind it! Thank you so much for the way you presented these thoughts! I'm one of the many fans who was similarly impacted and guided into Gensokyo through this animation. I was aware of Touhou before, from things like the IOSYS flashes, and appreciated it passively -- but Bad Apple is what completely blew my mind and forced me to get serious in learning about it. Now, Touhou is unquestionably the most important piece of media in my life. I honestly didn't think I could be taught more about this video that I've looped to death, but I actually had no idea about the previous drafts/storyboards of the animation... Bad Apple has always been a symbol to me of both the individual and collaborative fan talent that is integral to Touhou's community, but knowing about even more steps in its creation pushes that even further. You did an amazing job covering the themes, the wider significance as a phenomenon, and more intimately how it reflects the series proper. This is something especially important to me about it -- like the use of yin/yang symbolism, the relationships between characters -- it was so beautifully artistically captured, in a way that perhaps sparks inspiration through its abtractness while simultaneously presenting straightforward ideas to latch onto whose relevance never gets old. Very much like canon Touhou.

Bad Apple also shows a saying which refers to how iconic the characters are. I can't remember the origin nor the quote, but it was along the lines of you knowing when your character is iconic and unique when people can recognise their silhouette. And Bad Apple is arguably the best example for that because it was the first to make a video in this style online

"Why is this important? it's not! I just like Reisen." yeah, but who doesn't like Reisen?

When 2021 starts: RU-vid: Bad Apple

It's so weird that a meme got this endstage without me ever seeing it

as a person who isn't a fan of touhou, you talking about modern and classic reimu and marisa at the beginning and end, along with their significance and connection, really struck an emotional chord in me. thank you for this video, megapig, it's very insightful.

"Chances are, if you clicked this video..." *me waiting for him to tell me that i just looked up Why Bad Apple Is So Popular*

This video made me appreciate Bad Apple even more! If only this was recommended to me earlier, not 5 months later.

I really resonate with the concluding remarks, the Touhou fandom is so unique in it's fan creations. Touhou really provided a platform on which artists and creators of all different fields can come together, learn and sharpen their skills. There really isn't anything like it.

- Prelude - I just recently came across "Bad Apple" (the metal cover in english) as song via a misunderstanding, I expected a GN'R cover, but got something completely different. (yay?) and it's extremely intriguing. And no, I've not become a "fan" of Touhou or any other musical work linked towards it. Why is Bad Apple so intriguing? It's the melody(-ies). I play, along other instruments, guitar and used to play in a band, so I do have a certain interest in the basics of music itself. This song is extremely reptitive and simple without it being negative in any way. In fact it handles both of these, simplicity and repetitiveness, very, very well. - Design - It begins with it being a rather fast song, this created through how it's starts with the fairly simple, as said, repetitive hook. And then the lyric melody kicks in, which does the rest of the charm. It goes up and down like soft waves. How the words are spread out throughout the melody does the topping. In addition this song breaks with the tradition of prelude-verse-chorus-verse-chorus-interlude-chorus-postlude. It does have an intro and outro, the mid part is kind of the interesting story. It's rather rare for songs not being build in the traditional way today. Usually those are story-based songs. But that's the thing, this song is not telling a story, but it's also not the usual at the moment prominent style of lyrics. It's more like a "burst" of emotions just spilling out. What does this song a favor is that it is, due to it's "breaking" convention, it is refreshing/different. - Sound - In the Japanese version it's actually sung in a bitter-melancholic/sad tone, while the english version is almost sad-angry, but not the specific kind of "angry" but more the "unfocused" level of angry. And this is not just in the tone of the melody but also in the wording of the lyrics in each language. The english version being almost aggressive, but without actually attacking. In that sense it has a small taste of classic punk in it. A fun thing about the melody is that at my first time listening to it, it was pretty easy to predict to which note the melody of the lyrics part would go next. It's not just its repetitive nature, as said, it's like waves, they are, as soon as you see them, very predictable in their path. - Lyrics - What also shouldn't be underestimated in the impact a song has is the pure meaning of the lyrics and what they can mean / interpreted into by its audience. Especially darker lyrics about the self, not dark lyrics in terms of "Blood for the Bloodgod" (first that came to mind, sorry), which are about external violence, but in the sense of internal conflict. As this is something many, many people deal with, without being able to talk about it. (And there's my other field of expertise, sometimes I hate that understanding and dealing with emotions and human interactions are actually core part of my job) - Something Noteworthy - An important sentence, within the English lyrics, is actually "But it wouldn't mean a thing if I told you how I feel", obviously in the context of the full song. Overanalyzing this, because it is fun, this is very resembling of how many people, especially teenagers feel, at some stage in their life and with humanity growing slowly apart and human interaction becoming more and more mundane, it really doesn't matter whether you tell someone how you feel, as they likely do not care. *(And no, this is not the fault of technology, this would be deep-diving into an extremely complex topic. A very important topic we will sooner or later will have to deal with, it includes education systems just as it includes economic structures and system and whether they should serve humanity or humanity should serve them. And no, this is far from being just a "philosophical" question. We are already dealing with the side-effects of unhealthy systems we have implemented in various parts of our society. We are talking about suicides, students running amok, but also all kinds of depression, social pressure etc. etc. etc. We are technically, in the "civilized word" continuesly de-constructing our own emotional and psychological health. It's still bearable for majority, but in the long run, we will lose, if we don't change. And I've already gone deeper into this topic than I wanted, so back to the song / ending of my comment by adding the tl;dr)* - TL;DR / Roundup- The song is very melodic and yet very simple and resembles almost a wave with rather predictable but due to that very "catchy" up and downs, which make it easy to get "into" the song melodic-wise. It's dark and internal nature of the lyrics, angry-sad in the English version, rather sad-melancholic in the Japanese does its work in gathering an audience just as well. The lyrics being rather a "spilling" of emotions, then a told story. With this emotions / emotion-spilling being rather relatable in some way to many people. (Add, yeah I did add headings in a yt-comment. DEAL WITH IT!) Happy new year, guys! ;)

This song is a good and bad thing: Good: It made touhou a little bit more popular. Bad: People dont look further into other touhou music even if there could be smth better for them. Oh btw, touhou isnt about ying yang or black and white. In fact it has many colors or grayscales. Even the relationship between youkai and humans is pretty complicated.

This gave me such chills, and I'm not even a Touhou fan (yet)! I'm happy to understand the song and video in a deeper way than before ^^

Without Bad Apple, I would have never met my friends and it massively impacted my taste in music. It introduced me to Touhou. I watched RU-vidrs who played fan games who turned to streamers where I found my current circle of friends. Touhou also broke me out of my "hard rock phase". First, I only listened to covers by Demetori but grew more accustomed to remixes and covers of different genres of music. Bad Apple had a surprisingly huge effect on my life. And I don't feel any shame saying that. The song is awesome on many many levels.

0:00 Yeah, I know the beat it's from the song blue monday oh

I have never heard of touhou before, I just appreciate all the videos people make of this. My favorite as of now is one where the guy made a program that automatically formats code to show the frames of the video

Finally i know the history of this song is like a lil mystery for me that has been stuck for years. Maybe I could’ve researched but every video was a repost and I’m not in the fandom;; so yeh amazing video!!

I never analyzed the video like this, great work! One thing to note is that the black and white aesthetic made the video pretty much ageless. It doesn't use outdated 3D models which would look bad 5 years or so after initial release; the lack of detail in the models actually makes your brain to fill the blanks and get a better picture of it. Pretty genius decisions.

Man, the video makes Hina’s spinning very refined. It was one of my favorite parts of the video! Now, that I played Mountain of Faith.. well.. it’s pretty funny. Now that I know way more, the video makes the characters feel more epic than how they’re portrayed in the fandom. Touhou’s grip is so wide, and Bad Apple really shows it

I must confess, yes, I also got into Touhou through that video. And I've never played a single game of Touhou (because I'm financially and geographically challenged). But now, about 4 years later, I find myself knowing about 90% of the information you just relayed in this video, surprisingly enough. It's amazing what you can fall in love with through a certain media.

im become a Touhou fan because of the TF2 remix xD (10:34)

i've loved touhou for 5 years now, and i can thank the undertale version for introducing me to it. i was intrigued by the transitions and the movement and of course, the song. thankfully, i made my way to the original and clearly remember making my way through the touhou wiki trying to learn the names and personalities of all the girls. i also started playing the games, which i love. the characters, the music, and the constant challenge makes it such an addicting experience

I never imagined animations in 2009 was able to be soo good! Deffinatly a professional with passion.

It is also great as a demo, and a benchmark. Everything that has a CPU can play Doom, and everything that has a screen can play Bad Apple. It is surprising how smooth this looks even on very simple systems with low framerates.

I'll be honest, this video is what my brother showed me to introduce me to the Touhou franchise, and I am glad he did. I've never seen such an all-encompassing and welcoming fan base before, and I'm very happy to be a part of it. I've recently started reading the manga and playing Touhou Lost Word, and I enjoy the different characters and the relationships between them. All the passion and talent of this fanbase is incredible to me

I just thought whoa shadows and cool animated shadows whoa back then... did not think there was a lot going in the background

I'm just glad that Bad Apple is still timeless and most people still know of it, and it makes itself known too. If you were to go to any games and anime convention, and this was being played ... a lot of people would perk up their ears and stop to listen. There is undoubtedly a lot of memories that this song triggers to people, for me it reminds me of my golden age of internet interaction, the late 2000s, and all the Touhou games I was exposed to in Warcraft 3 customs. The lyrics when translated are something I think we only got when we were older. For me I heard this song when I was like, at the start of highschool so it didn't hit.

I literally just found out about this video today, so it’s really cool to see the history of it! I sorta wrote it off as just another Vocaloid song or something, but finding out it was originally 16-bit is so cool! Thanks man :)

I always felt like Touhou needed a youtube community, unfortunately, I think a lot of youtube culture and communities weren't developed back in the very early 2010s.

OMG I DON’T KNOW WHY THIS DOESN’T HAVE MORE VIEWS

2023, February 9th, 5:40, Just discovered the song and its killer. I'm gonna look at the full plot now. To think this was popular and i never seen it makes me sad. The more we know...

i just watched some video where someone made this animation in minecraft with sheeps i don't even know what this song is

I remember being SO excited about this song/video being a big hit back in the day! it got aired and talked about on CNN and other US news networks, and I went to school that day bursting with joy, desperate to talk to everyone about how I knew where it came from, LLS was my favorite Touhou game and everything....... no one cared, but I was still excited lol I have a lot of nostalgia for Touhou, and it's good to see people talking about it (and it's unique fan community) even now

I've never seen an English translation before and I'm surprised for there are a nuance between lyrics in Japanese and in English. It's funny how different translators can produce different translations.

I've always thought this song a part of vocaloid since it was recommended to me when I was a fan of vocaloid. But I also thought its weird since the singing voice sounds more like human and I've never seen vocaloid characters like the ones in the video. It was the 3D characters that made me think of vocaloid. Didn't know the history of its origin is this interesting. This has been one of my favorite song since I was 13 and now at 23 I still love it. Thank you for the vid!

As someone who has been suicidal and depressed for a while now, the lyrics and song in general for some reason help me cope with it.

So, I came here because of r/place of 2023, the mad lads made the bad apple animation on the canvas, this blew my mind, and I started to search about and here I am.

The gods have spoken. *You, dear mortal, are worthy*

Love the video! Bad Apple is such an awesome display of the Touhou fandom and your video analysis of the Shadow Art version made me realise why I loved it back in the 2010s before I even knew it!

“What’s Touhou?” That, my friend, is a beautiful can of worms. It is a vertical danmaku shooter (or a bullet hell with pretty patterns). There are currently 18 mainline games in the series and the 18th game released not too long ago, even! There are also side games like fighters and games where you take pictures of the danmaku! There are also pretty fun fan games like fantastic danmaku festival, luna nights, and lost word! There are many places to get into the series! Don’t get me started about the music…I will not shut up about the music. It is so good! The official works and remixes just bop! There is nothing quite like listening to Year - Round Absorbed Curiosity at 3 AM. The places to start the official games, in my opinion, are 15.5 Antimony of Common Flowers for the Nintendo Switch. It just released and also boasts the largest OST of any official Touhou game. Another good place is Touhou 14 Double Dealing Character. It is one of the modern era of games and it’s where I started (technically…I started with both 14 and 15 lmao). If you want to just jump in no matter the difficulty, I’d recommend starting with 15 Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom or 12.8 Great Fairy Wars, my two favorite games in the franchise. 15 is hard, to say the least. 12.8 is a danmaku, but you earn score by freezing the bullets in place. It’s a really cool concept! If you wanted to get into the series, I hope this helped!

Bad apple was what introduced me to touhou many years ago. I remember seeing all the characters and wondering who they were and Flandre was the first character I ever read about. Now when I look at bad Apple it all makes sense, I can name ever character and their backstory. I’m so grateful to have stumbled upon this video. My life wouldn’t be the same without touhou. It also helped my depression during a really tough time ironically.

This animation had a lot of impact on the demoscene and retro coding. I had no idea about Touhou (and even to this day I have not played the game) but I've seen so many attempts to efficiently pack and play the same animation on oldschool 8bit-16bit systems. Some of them are interesting as they use the original hardware (like the C64 one fitting in one freaking 170k disk ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-OsDy-4L6-tQ.html) others would run on old systems but use extra storage hardware to fit in. It's pretty challenging on these old hardware to play such animation, but everybody has tried it in most 8-bit or 16-bit consoles/home computers, it's the same as "does it run Doom?".

I was never into the games, I was only into the memes and animations from the fandom tbh. But man I never realized how long I’ve been around witnessing these things

Very nice summary of what I and many would always assume was "some anime OP". Although my first serious introduction was "Overdrive" by IOSYS, I still appreciate how the video demonstrates that the series would be nowhere without the passion, support, and incredible talent of the community. I'd be overwhelmed myself if I had known that making a 3D music video with it's own style and hand-made models. You can see how in the West, more people are becoming aware of Touhou as a love-driven franchise people can express themselves with that doesn't have anything quite like it. It's been slow, but it's clear how the efforts of everyone have made this series something incredible. You yourself included have gotten the attention of over 30k people, and are helping inspire and intrigue others just as this video did, how the storyboard offered a template for many, and how the original album inspired that artist to make such a video as well.

Mate youre effort shows, i hope i continue to see such a high quality of videos in the future.

Me who actually wants to feel nothing: *YES YES I'M LISTENING*

At the time of crossing paths with this video, times have been a bit rocky, for the entire year. I heard EB’s version and got hooked on the song. It’s intense, but it talks about a struggle that most of us face in some way. Some, worse than others. This song connects to me, and to know that it came from something as small as a video game BG music... Jesus, that’s like if someone took something like the boss theme form Super Mario World and made it like this.

Why did I get emotional dude everything about this amazing I love the editing

I found Bad Apple after someone shared a video of it running on Windows Task Manager in the ArchLinux discord. Very comprehensive and entertaining explanation video, thanks! And the black/white animation is so good, especially for something this old

I like the use of the siivagunner version during the credits to complete the cycle as that is just the Nomico version but with the classic soundfont. Beautiful

Amazing video! Didn't know that Bad Apple even had so much history. Although I already knew how talented touhou community is and how often it collaborates to create cool things, I was blown away when I found out just how many people indirectly/directly helped make such an iconic music video. Good job man, great video

Even though I have known about Touhou and its characters since 2008, ironicly I never stumbled across Bad Apple until 2021 through the retro demoscene showcasing a version running on an 1981 IBM 5160 4.77mhz 8088 (Called 8088 Domination for those curious). Amusing how that works at times, i'm glad I did find this gem eventually, and thank you for the explanation and analysis.

Back on that windows xp with old youtube. Hearing bad apple the first time, with no knowledge of touhou at all but ive grown to know the song by heart. And also the 2010's touhou memes that followed after, good times

don’t mind me, just a longtime touhou fan smiling along and already knowing all the information here

after years of getting recommended bad apple MVs, I finally get it now

what the fuck i got this in my recommended. congrats mega

Love the video I’ve been wondering the history

I know almost nothing about Touhou, and I don't know Japanese, but just watching Bad Apple I could tell there was a huge story hiding behind those animations. It's nice to finally have an idea of what it all means. I can't wait to see what obscure piece of hardware or software will be convinced to render it next. =)

Thank you so much for this analysis! Touhou community is truly incredible. I heard Bad Apple some time ago from that Alstroemeria Records album, I didn't expect that they made that remix. Seriously I can't stop listening to Touhou remixes/arrangements, now it's 95% of the music I listen. Shibayan, Syrufit, Unlucky Morpheus, Demetori, EastNewSound, xi-on, iosys, sound holic and other groups shaped my music taste a lot. I personally played Touhou like for an hour only, I stayed here for the music and art.

This is some high quality content for 100 subs lol keep it up

I'm betting 5 dollars that Anira's Bad Apple was animated in MMD

Great video! Bad Apple was what first introduced me to Touhou, and even though I've only played very little of one of the games, there is so much great music from all the doujin circles that I listen to on a regular basis. Truly a unique, and international, community!

I’m still surprised I’m not into the Touhou fandom yet even though it’s been a decade since. Although I don’t listen to the song often, I still remember the lyrics.

The Osu and Tohou community are animating this video on r/place at this moment

Me not knowing what going on: “I like your funny worlds magic ma

This video was really well made my guy, keep it up! Despite not being much of a touhou fan myself I'd love to see more content like this lol

That is the most amazing show of years of community teamwork I've ever seen, and it wasn't even coordinated to be consistently worked on; it wasn't even official! I'm glad each one of these creators got the credit he/she deserves!

I thought he said "this is bad, apple explained