This is an introductory article to the Japanese video-editing culture known as MAD movies. To browse MAD-related meme entries, please refer to the sub-meme section.

About

MAD is a modern Japanese term referring to parody or remix videos and audio clips that have been edited and rearranged by "creative-secondary" authors. A typical MAD movie is put together by combining visual fragments of anime and manga with an edited anime or J-pop soundtrack, varying in length from a few seconds to several minutes but may not include music at all, mainly for comedic effect. Because MAD movies are created in parodical nature with their own unique narrative plots, they are distinguished from fan-made videos and artworks that are still based on the original canons. Video-sharing communities like Nico Nico Douga have resulted in MAD artworks have become an essential base of Japanese internet culture.

Origins

The earliest form of MAD culture can be traced back to personal exchanges of MAD tapes – cassette tapes containing re-edited, mash-up footage of various news clips – among Japanese university students in the 1980s. According to this MAD FAQ page,^[1] alumni students from Osaka University of Arts & Music are cited as the original pioneers of audio MADs as well as anime MADS, sometime in 1978. The term "MAD" stems from one of the early cassette tapes originally titled "Kichigai Tape" (Tape of Madness), but for some reason, it became more commonly known by the English equivalent.

On September 4th, 2010, the term was added to Urban Dictionary^[2] by user Pope Pius IX, receiving 35 likes in 10 years (definition seen below).

A【MAD】Movie is a Japanese fan-made video, much like an anime music video (AMV). They are similar to Youtube Poop Music Videos but include more word splicing, other than pitch shifting. MAD can also describe the Japanese AMV community, although they can be anything from audio clips, edited pictures, to wholly original creations. MADs do not necessarily even need to be related to anime, though the more popular ones typically are.

Types of MADs

While most MAD contents in circulations are anime-related, non-anime MADs also exist.

Audio MAD (in Japanese)

Pioneered by Imai during the early days of MAD tapes, Audio MADs consist of stringing together dialogue from popular anime to editing news broadcasts straight from the television, ultimately resulting in a new dialogue made of various sound-bites (examples seen below).

Visual MAD

Similar to Audio MADs, Visual MADs were pioneered early on and paired with anime and news broadcasts to produce new soundbites spliced together. Touhou Project is one such example (shown below).

Notable Examples

Hissu Amoto San / Airmoto

Hissu Amoto San (Japanese: 必須アモト酸) or Airmoto is a popular tag associated with MAD parodies based on My Beautiful Life (すばらしき わが人生), a promotional interview with Japanese comedian, actress, singer and tarento Masami Hisamoto released by the Japanese evangelist Buddhist organization Sōka Gakkai International (“Value Creation Society” in English). Somewhat similar to Western parodies of Scientology & Tom Cruise, most of these MAD videos are aimed at mocking the well-connected religious sect and the celebrity actress Masami Hisamoto, who has made several media appearances in advocacy of the Sōka Gakkai movement in Japan.

Ichiro Suzuki

Ichiro Suzuki (Japanese: 鈴木一朗, Suzuki Ichiro) is a Major League Baseball outfielder for the New York Yankees, who became quite famous for his fast-paced and immaculately precise throws dubbed by fans as the Ichiro Laser Beam (イチロー レーザービーム), as well as his 2009 TV interview response “I was almost coming” (ほぼイきかけました hobo ikikake mashita). This was seen by many as both inappropriate and suggestive, making it exploitable for broadcasting.
Because of these phrases, the Japanese baseball superstar became the target of online parodies, including a series of MAD videos.

Billy Herrington / Gachimuchi

Billy Herrington is an American adult film actor and bodybuilder affectionately nicknamed “Big Brother” (兄貴, aniki) in the Japanese online communities 2channel and Nico Nico Douga. Herrington’s internet fame in Japan began in 2007 after clips from one of his films titled “Workout Muscular Men 3” became used as a bait-and-switch video and the source material for high-quality MAD remixes.

Shuzo Matsuoka

Shuzo Matsuoka (Japanese: 松岡修造) is a now-retired Japanese professional tennis player, perhaps best known for his appearance at the Wimbledon quarter-finals in 1995. Since his retirement, Matsuoka has become a popular television sports commentator and gourmet reporter in Japan. He hosts the “Shuzo Challenge”, an annual tennis camp for young children run by the Japan Tennis Association.
Shuzo is mostly known for his motivating and energetic character. And his unique messages airing through TV commercials and his official website have been one of the most popular subjects for MAD videos on Nico Nico Douga (NND) since 2008.

The Crazy Live Report

The Crazy Live Report MADs (Japanese: 電波実況MAD, Denpa Jikkyou MAD) refer to a series of MAD videos based on footage of an excited e-sportscaster providing a play-by-play commentary during a second-round match of the fighting arcade game Guilty Gear XX at the Arcadia Cup Tournament in 2003. The remix fad became widespread on the Japanese video-sharing site Nico Nico Douga (NND) after the video was uploaded in 2007.

Bittan Bittan

Bittan Bittan (Japanese: びったんびったん) refers to a series of hand-drawn animated videos and MAD videos reusing the audiotrack "Fight Against Monsters" which is taken from Nintendo's 1996 Mario video game Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars.^[1] Many videos in this series have been uploaded to the Japanese video sharing service Nico Nico Douga (NND) since early 2010.

Search Interest

External References