Bad Apple!!
| Song | |
|---|---|
| Title | Bad Apple!! |
| Artist | ZUN (original release & melody), Haruka |
| Release Date | 1998 (PC-98, chiptune), 2007 (lyrical song), 2008 (fan music video) |
| Genre | J-pop, electronic music |
| Activity Dates | 2008-present |
| Fan Use | Edits, Animated music videos, Musical jokes |
| Links | 2008, Music Video Fanvid Reupload 2020, Official Music Video YouTube Release |
| Related articles on Fanlore. | |
Bad Apple!! is a popular Touhou song that has inspired numerous fan edits. It was released initially in 1998 as a stage track in Lotus Land Story, the fourth mainline Touhou game, then as a lyrical song in 2007. Fans created a music video in 2008 in the form of a black-and-white shadow puppet video, which became very popular. This fan music video took the Touhou fannish internet by storm, and later on, spreading towards other fannish circles such as Team Fortress 2, for example, inspiring remixes and new music videos, often recreating the appearance of the shadow puppet fanvid but with a different medium.
Fan Use
More often, fannish remixes and covers, both serious and humorous, tend to use the melody and chords of the 2007 Alstromeria Records remix than the original PC-98 version, due to the former's ubiquitous popularity, even beyond the doujin music scene. As for the music video itself, there have been fan edits and memes utilizing silhouettes of characters from other fandoms, as well as fully-fledged ports for vintage (and vintage-style) computers in the demoscene.
For this reason, it's often mistaken by some as the official anthem of Touhou fandom as a whole, owing to the main franchise's lack of a proper theme representing itself at that point, aside from the Theme of Eastern Story leitmotif.
Example Fanworks
- Bad Sandvich!! Final - by epsxe160, a fan reimagining of the original music video, with characters from Team Fortress 2 (2016)
- Bad Apple!! - Touhou 4: Lotus Land Story - a TimmyTurnersGrandDad rip taking the form of a fusion collab, arranging various video game soundtracks in the style of the advertised track's famed remix (JerryStuffRo & LiterallyNoOne, 2017)
- BAD APPLE | Complete OMORI MAP - organized by whoiamedits, a multi-person collaborative animated Omori fanvid set to the aforementioned song remix (2023)
- Bad Apple!! but it's a Minecraft World - by Klinbee, simulates the original music video in the form of procedural world generation scripts within Minecraft (2024)
Meta
- Bad Apple Explained: History and Analysis, and Bad Apple Explained Part 2: The Demoscene and The Lost Full Video - by Megapig9001, an two-parter extensive explanation and fan analysis of both the original track and its most famous remixes, and their subsequent influence on the Internet (2020)
Links/Further Reading
- Bad Apple!! on Wikipedia