[Weekly Update] I'm exhausted, but it was worth it.

Sorry for the late update. After a very productive March, effectively producing 4 videos, I'm rather exhausted, so I took a break. That said, I'm pretty proud of the wide variety of videos for our March upload. I hope they are as fun for you to watch as it is for me to make.

I'm currently preparing my equipments for the upcoming solar eclipse, and some of my newly purchased items turned out to be faulty. One lens doesn't focus to infinity, and I had to swap it with a much cheaper lens, wasting 200 bucks in the process. But everything should be in order now, the rest is just testing.

So, for the next two weeks, I'll be taking things slowly. Time to rest up, write my personal projects, and come back to the channel fully recharged. Here's the docket:

CHANNEL UPDATE

Hope you enjoy our April Fools video! It was a ton of fun to make, even if part of the research process drained my sanity to a dangerously low level. Challenges include finding a clean copy of Meet the Banes and read up on the original 4chan post; Finding the original copy of Dream Hunter Rem that doesn't have burn-in subtitles; and scrubbing through hours worth of pornographic materials to find tentacle scenes that is useable.

At the end, it's all worth it because I found multiple interviews with Toshio Maeda, and dude was such a delight to listen to. It's his funny but rebellious attitude that made me believe his work was "an erected middle finger to censorship."

I always knew that our channel have a surprising amount of female viewers, something like 30 to 35%. What I didn't expect is the amount of tentacle loving girls and women coming out to share their perspective and how they came across the genre. It's nice to see everyone being so open-minded about a topic that's often considered taboo. The comments are an amazing read, full of humor, personal anecdotes and additional information. Give it a read if you are interested!

Our next video will be coming towards the end of the month, and it'll be about how Maggie Cheung walks, a lesson on the fundamental of acting. After that, we'll return to our Chinese Dynasty series, covering the Han Dynasty, the Three Kingdoms Period, and the Jin + Southern Northern Dynasty.

WEEKLY UPDATE

Let's talk more about tentacles, because I didn't actually fit everything into our short video.

Originally, I also wanted to cover tentacle erotica from outside of Japan as well, as it is a surprisingly common fantasy. However, further research shows the genre has only ever seen a golden age in Japan, so I narrowed it down to only the animation genre. But as the Wikipedia article on this topic shows, French artist Martin van Maële also illustrated some tentacle stuff.

I also remember seeing some tentacle stuff in low budget horror movies. Oddly, a lot of them involves moving tree roots. The one that comes to mind is Troll III, more uniquely known as The Crawlers (1991). It's an Italian horror movie about a nuclear mutated forest. The poster is everything you'd expect from tentacle erotica, but the actual movie is pretty boring, and not at all sexy.

The other, and by far more famous one is The Evil Dead (1981), in which a woman is attacked by a tree. The scene in question starts off mostly about the horror of strangulation, but quickly devolves into erotic horror, as the roots creeps up her legs.

Galaxy of Terror (1980), a Roger Corman production, also has a perverted tentacle monster, an alien this time. This film's depiction of tentacle actually feels very similar to the Japanese iterations, except it's more horror and violent focused. This film came after Toshio Maeda's manga, but before the mid-80s tentacle anime boom. I wonder how much it influenced Japan in this regard. As far as I know, this film did very well in the home video market in Japan as well.

Did you know they make live action tentacle adult films? Like, just straight porn with adult video actresses. I found that out during the research and was like... "yeah I'm not going to bring that up." I saw the covers (didn't feel like paying 30 bucks to buy a copy), and as far as I can tell, the tentacles are practical. Can't say I'm not curious about the logistic of it, honestly. But if anything, it'd just be some poor PA standing just off screen, wiggling some silicon tentacles like jump ropes.

It instantly reminded me of Bride of the Monster (1955), an Ed Wood movie in which multiple characters struggled to fight against a rubber octopus. The dang monster doesn't even move, the actors are just rolling and screaming on their own. The scene was recreated in Ed Wood (1994), the Tim Burton Biopic about the director of Bride of the Monster. I use that scene in the opening of the video.

Alright I think that is deep enough of a rabbit hole for today. I hope all this adult talk doesn't make you too uncomfortable. I'll see you in our next weekly update!